How Google is Connecting Keyword Relevance to Websites through More than Just Domain Names - Whiteboard Friday

We're seeing Google continue to move beyond just reading pages, instead attempting to truly understand what they're about. The engine is drawing connections between concepts and brand names, and it's affecting SERPs. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains just what Google is doing, and how we can help create such associations with our own brands.

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're talking about how Google connects keyword relevance to websites, particularly how they do this beyond just the domain name.

Obviously, for a long time Google looked at the name of a particular website and the queries that were entered and might rank that site higher if the domain name had some match with the query. We called this the exact match domains or the partial match domains.

For a long time, they did have quite a bit of power. They've gone down dramatically in power. These days MozCast is reporting 2.5% to 3% of domains that appear in the top 10 over many thousands of search results are exact match domains. It used to be above 7% when we started MozCast. I think before that it was in the 12%, 13%, or 14%. So it's gone way, way down over the last few years.

Google has gotten tremendously more sophisticated about the signals that it does consider when it comes to applying relevance of keywords to a particular domain name or to a particular website.

I'll give you some examples. One is RealSimple.com. If you're someone who does searches around home organization or gadgets for the home, or especially quick recipes, not like the long, drawn out recipes, but like 10, 15 minute recipes, cleaning products, physical fitness and workouts, makeup and beauty, all of these topics Real Simple always seems to rank on the first page, at least somewhere. I'm not talking about these specific terms, but anything related to them.

It's almost like Google has said, "You know what, when people are searching for cleaning products, we feel like Real Simple is where they always want to end up, so let's try and find a page that's relevant on there." Sometimes the pages that they find are not particularly excellent. In fact, some of the time you will find that you're like, "That doesn't even seem all that relevant. Why are they showing me that page for this query? I get that Real Simple is a good site for that usually, but this doesn't seem like the kind of match I'm looking for."

You'll see very similar things if you look at Metacritic.com. Metacritic, of course, started with games. It's gone into movies and now television. They essentially aggregate and assemble, sort of like Rotten Tomatoes does and some other sites like that, they'll assemble critic reviews and user reviews from all over the place, put them together and come up with what they call a METASCORE.

METASCORES are something that they rank very well for. But around all of these pop culture mediums, PC game reviews, critics opinions on games, PlayStation games, TV show ratings, movie ratings, they always seem to be in the top 10 for a lot of these things. It doesn't have to be the broad PC game or TV show. You can put in the name of a television show or the name of a movie or the name of a game, and it will often show up. That seems to be, again, Google connecting up like, "Oh, Metacritic. We think that's what someone's looking for."

You can see this with all sorts of sites. CNET.com does this all the time with every kind of gadget review, electronics review. Genius.com seems to come up whenever there's anything related to lyrics or musical annotations around songs.

There's just a lot of that connection. These connections can come from a number of places. It's obviously not just the domain name anymore. Google is building up these connections between terms, phrases and indeed concepts, and then the domain or the brand name probably through a bunch of different inputs.

Those inputs could be things like brand and non-brand search volume combined together. They might see that, gosh, a lot people when they search for song lyrics, they add "genius"' or "rap genius." A lot of people who search for quick recipes or cleaning products, they add "Real Simple" or "Martha Stewart." Or if they're searching for PC games they look for the Metacritic score around it. Gosh, that suggests to us maybe that those domains, those websites should be connected with those search terms and phrases.

Probably there's some aspect of co-occurrence between the brand name and/or links to the site from lots of sites and pages on credible sources that Google finds that are discussing these topics. It's like, "Oh, gosh, a lot of people who are talking about cleaning products seem to link over to Real Simple. A lot of people who talk about cell phone reviews seem to mention or link over to CNET. Well, maybe that's forming that connection."

Then where searchers on these topics eventually end up on the web. Google has access to all this incredible data about where people go on the Internet through Chrome and through Android. They can say, "Hmm, you know, this person searched for cleaning products. We didn't send them to Real Simple, but then eventually they ended up there anyway. They went to these other websites, they found it, maybe they typed it in, maybe they did brand search, whatever. It seems like there's an affinity between these kinds of searchers and these websites. Maybe we need to build that connection."

As this is happening, as a result of this, we feel as marketers, as SEOs, we feel this brand bias, this domain bias. I think some of the things that we might put into brand biasing and domain authority are actually signals that are connections between the domain or the brand and the topical relevance that Google sees through all sorts of data like this.

As that's happening, this has some requirements for SEO. As SEOs, we've got to be asking ourselves, "Okay, how do we build up an association between our brand or our domain and the broad keywords, terms, topics, phrases, so that we can rank for all of the long tail and chunky middle terms around those topics?" This is now part of our job. We need to build up that brand association.

This is potentially going to change some of our best practices. One of the best practices I think that it immediately and obviously affects is a lot of the time Metacritic might say, "Hey, we want to target PC game reviews. We've got this page to do it. That's our page on PC game reviews. All these other pages, let's make sure they don't directly overlap with that, because if we do, we might end up cannibalizing, doing keyword cannibalization."

For those broad topics, Metacritic might actually say, "You know, because of this functionality of Google, we actually want a lot of pages on this. We want everyone, we want to be able to serve all the needs around this, not just that one page for that one keyword. Even if it is the best converting keyword and our content resources are limited, we might want to target that on a bunch of different pages. We might want to be producing new content regularly about PC game reviews and then linking back to this original one because we want that association to build up."

Other best practices that we have in SEO are things where we will take a keyword and will essentially just make our keyword research very limited to the ones that have produced returns in our paid search account or in our advertising. That also might be unwise. We might need to think outside of those areas and think, "How can we serve all of the needs around a topic? How can we become a site that is associated with all of the keyword topics, rather than just cherry picking the ones that convert for us?"

That might get a little frustrating because we are not all content factories. We are not all big media brand builders. But these are the sites that are dominating the search results consistently, over and over again. I think as Google is seeing this searcher happiness from connections with the brands and domains that they expect to find, that they want to find, they're going to be biasing this way even more, forcing us to emulate a lot of what these big brands are doing.

All right, everyone. Look forward to some great commentary, and we will see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

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The 2014 #MozCon Video Bundle Has Arrived!

Your advanced course, the videos from MozCon 2014, is finally here. Whether you're looking for the latest dive into SEO, wondering what you should be doing with mobile, or figuring out how to step up your PR, the MozCon videos have a bit of everything from leading industry experts.

For MozCon 2014 attendees, you should've received an email with your unique URL for a "free" copy of the videos, included in your ticket cost.

MozCon 2014 was the best ever! I know, we say that every year, but I swear on Roger's antenna that it really was. We've settled into our new home at the Washington State Convention Center, and hosted 1,400 people at this year's gathering (a sellout crowd!). There were 28 future-focused sessions, cram-packed with advice and actionable recommendations from some of the industry's most innovative minds. Topics ranged from SEO and A/B testing to analytics and content marketing. Here's a taste:

This year, 43% of attendees took our post-MozCon survey, and here's what they had to say about the content:

56.3% said 80%+ were perfect and 36.6% said 50%+ were interesting.

If you're wondering why it takes two months to produce and perfect these videos post-MozCon, it's because we go the extra mile to create something easy-to-digest for you. Our videos show both the presenter and their presentation, so you don't have to hide the presenter's face to flip through a slide deck. You can also download each deck, so you've got easy access to links and reference tools.

For $299 for Moz Pro subscribers ($399 for non-subscribers), the 2014 MozCon Video Bundle gives you instant access to: 28 videos (over 17 hours) from MozCon 2014Stream or download the videos to your computer, tablet, phone, phablet, or whatever you've got handyDownloadable slide decks for all presentations

Non-subscribers: Save $100 by signing up for a free 30-day trial of Moz Pro!

Each year, we release one of the top presentations for everyone to watch for free. Last year, we gave away  Kyle Rush's on CRO, and the year before, Wil Reynold's #RCS.

This year, check out "Prove Your Value" with Dana DiTomaso, partner at Kick Point; she talks you through the best ways of reporting your work to your client or boss.

Still not convinced? Enjoy our cat Pinterest board. Or, if you're super-excited about MozCon and interested in the live show, buy your early bird ticket for MozCon 2015. We sold out this year, and expect to do so again, so get 'em while they last!

About EricaMcGillivray — I'm Moz's Senior Community Manager! You may run into me doing my best Roger voice, working on MozCon, or reading your questions on Mozinars. I *heart* our community. In my spare time, I review a lot of comic books and tweet about geeky stuff.

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Why You Shouldn't Have a Mobile Marketing Strategy

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Before I start, I should address the irony of writing this post on a site that isn't yet designed for mobile. I don't make those decisions, nor have the insight into the development backlog. I still think this is the community to have this discussion with, so I'll just have to put up with the irony.

This post isn't really about responsive websites, though. I wanted to address a broader question. There are a few marketing topics that seem to make it into board rooms sooner than others. Social media was one – I've heard a lot of senior people ask "what's our social strategy?" over the years and now I'm hearing "what's our mobile marketing strategy?". That's why I picked mobile as my topic for our upcoming SearchLove conference in London.

But I don't want to give another talk on responsive design, mobile user-agent server headers and googlebot mobile. Those things have their place, but they are inherently tactics. Instead, I want to ask myself the question "what does a true mobile marketing strategy look like?". Before I get to that, some background:

I've been closely involved in mobile since the early 2000s. Before starting Distilled, I worked for a strategy consultancy called Analysys who specialised in telecoms (and particularly in mobile). I distinctly remember every year back then being hailed as "the year of the mobile" (the earliest reference I can find online was optimistic that 2000 was going to be the year of the mobile).

It's funny because a decade ago, we were doing email on our phones (the iconic Blackberry appeared in 2003), but somehow WAP, GPRS and the Nokia 6600 all failed to achieve ubiquity.

In the end, by 2007, we'd all stopped talking about the year of the mobile, which meant that even the explosive adoption of the iPhone took a while to fully seep into marketers' collective consciousness. At the recent ThoughtWorks ParadigmShift conference, I gave a talk on the three "paradigm shifting" trends I see in marketing at the moment (the other two being what I called "your TV is just another screen" and "robots are filtering everything you see"). I showed these stats:

I'm clearly not the first or only person to have noticed this, and it's generated a huge amount of thinking about "mobile friendly" and even " mobile first" design.

Towards the end of this post, I've collected some thoughts and further reading on specific mobile tactics, but before we get into that, I wanted to dive a little deeper into the strategic layer.

There's something going on that I've referred to as there's no such thing as mobile. What I mean by this is that consumers are seeing less and less of a distinction between their devices.

To see this, we first have to realise that 77% of all usage of "mobile" devices is done from home or work where regular computers are available.

http://think.withgoogle.com/databoard/#lang=en-us&study=19&topic=54&dp=211

The vast majority of the attraction is not mobility, but a combination of a device that is:

Ubiquitous (the same device everywhere)Personal (with your settings, a degree of privacy, etc)Always-on / instant-onDesigned for rapid interactions

It's the same set of trends that is driving the "bring your own device" (BYOB) trend that IT departments are having to learn to deal with.

Our computers are fighting back by becoming more like our mobile devices (instant-on, app stores, even touch screens) and our mobile devices are adding to their ubiquity advantages with features previously limited to the desktop (faster processors, larger and brighter screens, faster connections, better keyboards).

So, when you realise that all our data is in the cloud and our connection to the physical device is only sentimentality (and the cost of replacement), and you consider the range of screen resolutions that can be considered "mobile", you realise that unless you mean to target customers who are literally walking around at the time, mobile marketing isn't really a distinct thing – it's just the future of digital marketing.

You only have to watch a user who's never built their own website, and therefore can't empathise with the technical difficulties, try to use a website that doesn't work on their iPhone or iPad. They swear at the device. They swear at the brand. They wonder if they're doing it wrong or if their connection has dropped. They abuse the "idiots who built this website" without realising the difficulty of what they're asking for.

There's no such thing as mobile as far as the user is concerned. Which means you, as marketers, have to work exceptionally hard to play nicely with ubiquity.

Fundamentally, people use their devices for:

communicating with other people (1-1 and 1-many)consuming media (text, images, video)searching for answers

As a marketer, you can see the opportunities to be available, be found, be recommended in any of these uses. To improve your chances, you will need to consider:

Your platform – the CMS you use, the outputs it's capable ofYour content – the strategy of what to create and the tactical executionYour audience – where are they and how can you reach them?Your conversion paths – what do you want people to do and what would encourage them to do that?Your measurement abilities – how are you going to quantify and demonstrate success, and how are you going to refine your approach in light of new data?

So, what does that sound like? It sounds a lot like the approach we take for every client who comes to us for digital marketing.

And that's what I mean when I say that every marketing strategy should be a mobile marketing strategy. Through every single step of that process, you can (and should) append "on mobile" to the question.

What if apps beat the mobile web? That's the biggest threat to web marketers right now in my opinion. Clearly this is a threat to Google as well (how do you index the app ecosystem?). So it's interesting to look at their response because they're also embracing it. Think about:

The pace of innovation in, for example, mobile gmail apps versus desktop gmailHow Chrome is sneaking an operating system onto every device you own and can now run Android appsHow much a search in Chrome looks increasingly like a search in the Google app - with features moving from the app to mobile Chrome in a similar way to the way features move from mobile to desktopThe trend towards app constellations for most of the major mobile players – taking a slice not only from the monolithic apps, but also from the regular mobile web ("there's an app for that")

I don't think the pendulum is going to swing too far this way, however. Turns out that it's not only Google that relies on indexing the sum of published human knowledge. Can you imagine going back to a world where you can't Google for an answer? I can't.

So, I think that even in this situation, "content" remains something resembling the mobile web – as does much of ecommerce away from perhaps Amazon. The long tail of providers simply works against "an app for everything". You might have an app for your favourite store and your favourite newspaper, but you're not going to have 15 of each (in my opinion).

So where do we focus our marketing? In my opinion, we focus on search, social and content. Those are the fundamental human activities which are enhanced by ubiquitous computing devices, and they're ones we understand deeply. The future looks like brands as publisher like never before.

I don't believe this is a marketing question. It's a product and business question. I think the answer could well be "yes" for many businesses if you have elements that can be improved by:

Native APIs (camera, coarse or fine-grained location, etc)Game-engine-style graphics abilitiesOffline functionalityLock-in that actually benefits your users somehow

But it's not a marketing question. Aside from a small number of communication tools that can grow via viral loops (think: whatsapp), apps are not a discovery mechanism. The vast majority of app store searches are navigational (i.e. people searching for apps they've already heard of) and I don't see that changing any time soon – an app store search isn't going to replace a general web search for knowledge and so it's not going to add people into the top of your funnel.

It's also such a hugely fragmented market that – from conversations with developers who've seen their apps sitting at #1 in moderate-sized categories – I know that even success doesn't inherently drive more downloads and more success.

Apart from repeating the advice to think about how your site appears on mobile, I wanted to end with some positive recommendations – i.e. what should you do tactically?

The key lesson here? We need to stop focussing on mobile as a device we use when 'on the go'. Mobile is no longer a distinct thing but, rather, simply the future of digital marketing. It must inform every strategy we devise as marketers, and at every step of the way. 

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