We hosted a member-exclusive “Ask Me Anything” event with SEO and Intent data expert Rand Fishkin, the co-founder of Moz, Inbound.org, and most recently, SparkToro.
Fifteen lucky Society members were chosen to attend the event and learn more about the dirty secrets and ins and outs of SEO and intent data strategies. Here is what we covered:
What You Can’t Control in SEO
Fishkin discussed how Google is working very hard to keep people on Google and its search results rather than send people out to other sources. This change happened around 2010 as the company realized the benefit of keeping searchers on its own content.
As a result, Fishkin identified two paths that marketers can go down when they approach this new phenomenon. First, marketers can fight this development by creating content that specifically ranks for words and phrases that Google isn’t to divert traffic from. Using SERP tools can help you prioritize keywords to target.
On the other hand, marketers can follow an “on-serp” SEO approach: Despite the fact that Google is keeping users on Google.com with features that answer the query within search, marketers are trying to influence the searcher by having their brand names present within SERP. Although searchers may not click on their website, which reduces website traffic, they will see the brand’s name. This is a tougher sell for marketers because it’s difficult to justify the loss of website traffic.
With these recommendations, Fishkin also explored Google’s growing market power. Google is reducing the value of marketers’ work by keeping visitors who perform a search for Google. As a result. Google obtains more data from that person and can do more customized advertising. A few years ago, Google made a change that didn’t allow marketers to see the keywords that sent people to their websites because of “privacy reasons,” but if they paid Google through Google Ads, they could then see the data.
Furthermore, marketers with small budgets can’t afford to lose visitors, especially folks in travel and transportation. Google is putting its own products and answers at the top of these results, like Google Flights. Google Flights wasn’t a great feature at first,but the company put itself at the top of search results. Because of this traffic, Google then leveraged user data to make Google Flights even better.
The Niche of Intent Data
Fishkin was an advisor for several companies and was also on the board of one. During these experiences, he kept encountering challenges that SEO couldn’t solve. An audience could be a good match for your company, but it might not search your products because the customers within the group are not aware.
As a result, Fishkin realized that by finding the niche channels (podcasts, subreddits, websites, YouTube, newsletters, events, webinars) certain audiences populated, marketers could target them where they were at. At first, it’s difficult to discover this information because no one is explicitly telling you what they’re reading. However, a lot of people post this information publicly on social media. SparkToro aggregates this information that marketers can use.
How to Find Your Own Niche
Marketers can search for their own niches by looking for unsolved problems that are painful but hidden under the surface. For example, marketers and advertisers are unhappy with Google and Facebook but feel that they have no other choice but to advertise and market on those platforms.
But this isn’t true because they do have choices. These marketers need to find the niche channels to advertise or market on. By making an optimal path easier, or leveraging the emerging awareness of a problem to your advantage, you can find a niche.
How to Leverage SEO as Content Writers
SEO in 2010 and 2011 was more simple: produce content that uses keywords and gets lots of links and anchor text from other websites.
Fishkin noted how over time, Google has gotten less picky about exact words and phrases you use in your content. You can now find pages that are applicable to a query but don’t have the exact keywords.This is beneficial for marketers because they can be more creative and optimize headlines for shareability and interest.
In addition, Google does a better job at recognizing that we associate brands with certain topics, so when brands publish on those tops, they may rank better. Gone are the days of having to follow stringent guidelines on what words to incorporate into content.
Fishkin also discussed the inferred link graph instead of the raw link graph. The raw link graph is when people follow links from a number of websites to certain pages. However, now many people who talk about a topic are referencing certain pages from a specific brand. Google is now monitoring trends of web-based discussion and search volume that influences where companies are ranked, even if they don’t have links. This is the doing of machine learning.
It’s better for marketers to focus on discussion and social sharing rather than perfectly matching a set of rules, and Google’s ranking method is reflecting this: “Google’s goal is not to try to make better content rank, it’s to make content that solves the searcher’s problem rank.”
The Automation of SEO Marketers’ Jobs
An attendee asked how SEO content producers can prepare for the automation of their jobs. But Fishkin mentioned how he doesn’t foresee a world in the next 20 years where machines can process the many tasks of a job of a content creator, including identifying trends, understanding people’s psychology, gathering info, producing content, dealing with content management systems, promoting the content to create conversation, and more.
In fact, Fishkin noted that he believes that 85% of the economy will be automated before SEO is. Digital marketing probably is not at the very top of what will be automated because machine learning isn’t there yet. But if marketers want to set themselves up for a world with more automation tools, it is very wise to be a part of early adopter communities
Switching Content Management Systems
One member mentioned how his company was switching content management systems. He asked how to retain the same traffic and page authority when those are transferred to the new platform.
Fishkin emphasized that he should think about redirects, or how old URLs are redirected to the new URLs. Almost every website move induces a loss of traffic because redirects aren’t fully implemented. It might even be worth it to consider recruiting an agency short term to make sure the redirects work. Markets should also think about the external links that point to the current system and ensuring that they still pass link equity to the right places.
For the top links with the most equity, keep the URLS and don’t change them. Talk to people who have made the move and see what their experiences were.
How Product Marketing & Product Work Together
A product marketer asked how the product marketing team and the product and engineering teams could work better together. Fishkin cais that when product marketers get a say in what’s prioritized in the product and engineering team, that’s when marketing becomes effective. They can bring amplification, share worthiness, share likelihood, and the community awareness perspective to the product.
At Moz, Fishkin cand his team made a marketing-driven product decision to call a metric “domain authority” because the market was calling it that by that term. As a result, Moz trademarked the name. Bringing market intelligence and community awareness to the product & engineering world is more powerful than trying to take what product is doing and try to sell it. He said, “Make things that are already made to be shared and talked about.”
He also discussed an outside example. At AirBnB, the team wasn’t doing SEO. But the team was thinking about how AirBnB might provide guides to cities and neighborhoods, which could then help the company rank in Google for those topics, thus targeting people searching for that information.The marketing was ingrained with the product thinking. This concept became AirBnB experiences — it started as an SEO play but became a product.
When product marketing is done well, you don’t have to rely on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, brand marketing, etc. — channels you don’t own.
How Startups Can Provide Value to Their Parent Companies
A member asked how startups can provide value to their parent companies after being acquired. Fishkin noted how marketers should identify why the acquisition occurred and what the goals of the acquired brand are.
For example, if the goal of the startup is to get people interested in the startup and then get them interested in the parent company, the content, PR, and marketing strategies tend to maintain the startup’s old website and then add the acquisition to the parent’s website so the two websites can funnel into each other.
If the goal is a tech play, marketers are probably going to have the parent company talk about the acquisition on its website so that the acquired company can be subsumed into the parent company.
Where to Start When Marketing a New Business or Product
When marketing a new business or product, Fishkin named three pieces of advice. Start with channels and tactics at the intersection of:
- An area where you have personal passion and interest,
- An area where you can provide unique value to your audience (do something that’s different),
- A channel that actually attracts your audience.
You can read more on SparkToro’s blog here.
SEO vs. Content Strategy
An attendee in the data security space asked how to balance focusing on SEO strategy versus content strategy. Fishkin noted that assuming SEO is very competitive in the data security space, marketers should start content strategy in a less competitive sector, like publishing headlines that catch people’s attention on LinkedIn.
Then, they can start doing keyword research to incorporate words and phrases into their headlines and content. Like Fishkin said, “Social first, SEO later,”
For SparkToro, the team first relied on link equity and attention that was earned from social-first thought leadership content that helped in rankings later on. He suggested that marketers in early stage companies should make the primary CTA for their “subscribe to our email newsletter for more.” The goal of the email newsletter should be to become the “most subscribed” newsletter, and it should be hosted on the company’s own website.
Evolution of Topic Clusters
An attendee asked about the evolution of topic clusters like Google snippets. Google snippets is trying to solve searcher’s problems without making them click a link. People that find their answers in the Google search results are more likely to search Google in the future. As a result, Google is trying to get them to use Google more.
Many marketers try to earn the snippet for their companies and then try to get the searcher to click the rest of the link to follow to their websites.
Currently for topic clusters, machine learning is learning to associate brands and websites to solve groups of searcher problems over individual keywords.
Do Google Search Ads Help With SEO?
Fishkin discussed how data suggests that if a website or brand appears multiple times on a SERP, it garners a higher aggregated CTR on the page. For example, if your company shows up both in the Google search ads section and also within the organic results on a page, your CTR will be higher. If a searcher sees a company’s name multiple times on the same page, they might assume that it is more trustworthy, which is an indirect benefit of advertising through search.
However, Fishkin believes that having an ad for the same result doesn’t change your organic search ranking. Piloting search ads might be worth testing for smaller companies, but they have to build their brand equity first to boost their organic search rankings.
Courage and Kindness
Society co-founder Maria Velasquez brought up how she heard in an interview how Fishkin approached exemplifying kindness and courage in the job. Fishkin explained that it is easy and expected for venture-backed CEOs and entrepreneurs, especially those who are privileged white men, to act a certain way and exhibit aggressiveness and a lack of transparency about their mistakes.
But Fishkin emphasized that this isn’t the way he wants to lead his life. Although he’s made many mistakes following in those expected footsteps, he has tried to be generous and kind in his roles. For example, Moz had a round of layoffs a few years ago, and he aimed to provide generous severance to those who were let go. This isn’t a huge action, but he thought it was the right thing to do for those employees.
The Cybersecurity Marketing Society and members enjoyed the “Ask Me Anything” Session with Rand Fishkin, who openly provided his advice and talked about his own experience. You can watch the full recap here.
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