Deltaplan - SEO Search
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The document discusses a strategy for SEO influenced by the Dutch delta plan, emphasizing adaptability, collaboration, and innovative solutions in both water management and digital marketing. It outlines the importance of understanding user needs and responding to Google's algorithm changes through effective content strategies. The speaker advocates for a mindset that embraces long-term adaptability in SEO practices, akin to the historical evolution of Dutch water management.
Deltaplan - SEO Search
- 1. Make a "Deltaplan" for SEO. Presentation in English, talk in dutch today. 1
- 2. 2 Subtitle | double-click to edit Photo by Fenna van Casand on Unsplash The Dutch have been in battle with water since the 11th century.
- 3. 3 Photo by Peter Hall on Unsplash Actually the oldest “polder” still around is the Achtermeer polder, from 1533. This is not Achtermeer by the way, but Kinderdijk build ~1738, pretty right?
- 4. It’s a costly battle with lots of casualties… 4 1953 is the worst disaster in the history of this battle, 1836 people died.
- 5. So we worked on a plan. 5
- 7. Holding back the water. Simple, but not easy. 7
- 8. Who am I? 8 I’m Roy, 43 years old, I live 33 meters above NAP in Enschede. I am too young to know anything about the disaster in 1953, but played with Google for 20 years and do know some things about SEO.
- 9. • 1. Adaptive Delta Management: One unique feature of our Dutch approach is its adaptability over time. It involves a sequence of major planning actions that are adaptable to changing circumstances. • 2. Strategic Network Management: The Dutch Delta Plan's success largely depended on the close collaboration and interaction between various stakeholders. This allowed them to collectively manage the network and learn from each other. • 3. Innovative Engineering Solution: The Dutch Delta Plan used innovative engineering solutions to combat water threats, such as constructions to close o ff all major sea arms and shorten the coastline. These projects exemplify how engineering can work hand-in-hand with nature to provide sustainable water management solutions. Three key learnings from the Delta Plan: Three key learnings from the Dutch battle against water. 9
- 10. • 1. Adaptive SEO Management: One unique feature of SEO is its adaptability over time. It involves a sequence of major planning actions that are adaptable to changing circumstances. • 2. Strategic Network Management: The SEO's success largely depended on the close collaboration and interaction between various stakeholders. This allowed them to collectively manage the websites and learn from each other. • 3. Innovative Solutions: The SEO use innovative, engineering, solutions to combat digital marketing threats, such as other websites ranking for “your” core business keywords. Intentions going to competitors or Google/Facebook/Instagram eat all your cookies. Three key things in SEO: Let’s make this about “me”. 10
- 11. Almost duplicate content, right? 11
- 12. • Google is always changing; it will fi nd ways to serve its users the frictionless, easiest way possible. - Like Google, water is our friend and our enemy. - Water always goes to the lowest point, the fastest and easiest way, like Google’s users. - We know water is always changing, but there are constants given (tide, high tide, springtide) - Sometimes a storm comes up, we need to be prepared and not be worried all the time. Google’s algorithms changes, but we shouldn’t have to worry about that. We need a “Deltaplan” for SEO Why? For multiple reasons, lets name a pretty big one: 12
- 13. So, what is SEO again? Usually there would be the Venn diagram, but I like this de fi nition by Jes Scholz at YoastCon 2023. 13 *Yes, you can do SEO for Bing as well or marketplaces, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok or Instagram. • SEO is visibility of entities on Google surfaces* for targeted topics to build brand awareness & preference.
- 14. Google’s problem Besides every EU lawmaker around privacy. 14
- 15. 15 Subtitle | double-click to edit Photo by Michael Olsen on Unsplash Hundreds of billions of pages indexed 100 Petabytes in size
- 16. 16 If 1 byte is 1 grain of Rice, 1 megabyte, then, would be 8 bags of rice. 1 terabyte would be equivalent to tw o container ships of rice. 1 petabyte would equal all of Manhattan covered in grains of rice. We were talking about 100 petabytes… Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash
- 17. 17 Photo by Renee Verberne on Unsplash “Every day, we discover 40 billion spammy pages” - Google in 2021 That’s 14.6T spam pages a year. Btw: on average the Rhine alone discharges an average of ~2200 M3/s With a di ff erence of 600-16000 M3/s
- 18. • ~22-27% clicks on the fi rst result. • ~40% actually clicks on result on the First result-page. • So, why bother with other results than the top results? Well maybe a little bit of Intent as well. 18 Google’s solution: index and rank better. Google’s strategy is aiming for the best and leave the rest. *https:/ /backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats
- 19. So what should be an SEOs strategy? 19
- 20. Je ff Bezos likes to ask the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ 20 Eisenberg, Bryan; Eisenberg, Je ff rey. The Rice and Beans Millionaire: The Tale of an Improbable Entrepreneur (p. 12). Buyer Legends. Kindle Edition.
- 21. How fast I can fi nd opening hours on our website? 21
- 22. How fast I can fi nd our opening hours on Google? 22
- 23. How many clicks from the homepage do I need to fi nd that speci fi c product? 23
- 24. How can I translate a keynote fi le? 24
- 25. People keep asking questions*, don’t have a lot of patience and like clari ty . 25 *We might need to rephrase this: People are looking for answers and solutions. The form is irrelevant.
- 26. • Core web vitals (fast) • User Experience (obvious, reliable) • Search Generative Experience(SGE), but only if the above criteria are met. Or maybe E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority & Trust. Answers, fast, obvious and reliable. That’s what’s Googles focus is, let me translate that in SEO terms: 26
- 27. Who, How and Why? 27
- 28. • Who: the worlds largest ad-publisher • How: organising the world’s information, by training AI with humans and thinking of smart algorithms that use signals and present them on various surfaces in an fast and easy digestible way. • Why: to keep the advertisers happy and spend more money on future satis fi ed consumers. Google as an example If you want to do it well, ask every question 5 times in a row and repeat the previous answer. 28
- 29. • Page Quality They use the Quality Raters Guidelines to train the AI what is Low quality, what is High quality. • Needs met They also train the systems to watch for signals that a users intention (needs) are met. Training AI with humans Yes. That’s how Google works these days. 29
- 30. Main content of a page • What’s the reason people should come to this page? 30
- 31. Supplementary content • What serves a second phase purpose? - Navigate further - CTA, Share etc, 31
- 32. • What’s the best result that people react on? Google doesn’t understand documents It tries to predict behaviour. Based on 13 months of history. 32
- 33. • When faking fails, Google looks stupid. A Sel ff ul fi lling prophecy? 13 months timeframe. 33
- 34. About this proces It’s a dialogue. Input, output and experimentation. 34
- 35. • Tools that monitor the SERPs see since the beginning of summer a lot of changes. • It appears that Google is able to do more ‘real time’ updates in their ranking systems, but also continuously improving their signals valuation. • It’s annoying for SEOs and Marketeers, but it’s a great improvement for users. It appears this is the ‘helpful content system’ doing it’s thing. Maybe combined with the “reviews system” launched in march 2023. Continuous improvement. 35 That’s how Google rolls.
- 36. Subtitle | double-click to edit 36 https:/ /www.analistaseo.es/posicionamiento-buscadores/ how-google-works-working-algorithms/
- 38. It’s Hard To Read The Label When You Are Inside The Bottle. 38 Eisenberg, Je ff rey; Eisenberg, Bryan; Williams, Roy H. Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It (p. 116). Wizard Academy Press. Kindle Edition.
- 39. • Is my site useful? Can users fi nd what they are looking for after landing on my site? • Is my site accessible? Can users access my site from di ff erent screens without issues? • Is my site usable? Can users easily navigate my website, increasing their chances of returning? • Is my site desirable? Are users aesthetically pleased with the design of my website? • Is my site fi ndable? Can users navigate my site with three clicks or less to fi nd what they’re looking for? • Is my site credible? Is the information provided on my website from trusted sources, forming stronger brand trust ties with my users? • If the answer is yes, ask yourself this: is my site the best and should it be on number 1? Google has some nice examples for a self-assessment of your content Questions about your pages That you should ask yourself. 39
- 40. • Would you trust the information presented in this article? • Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature? • Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly di ff erent keyword variations? • Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site? • Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors? • Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines? • Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis? • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results? • How much quality control is done on content? • Does the article describe both sides of a story? • Is the site a recognised authority on its topic? • Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care? • Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced? • For a health related query, would you trust information from this site? • Would you recognise this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name? • Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic? • Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious? • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? • Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content? • Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book? • Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful speci fi cs? • Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail? • Would users complain when they see pages from this site? It’s not new though… 40 These are questions Google used in may 2011 for the Panda Algorithm.
- 41. 53% of SEOs said it's harder achieving SEO goals compared to 2 years ago 41 According to a questionnaire by Aleyda beginning 2023. Published on Mozcon 2023
- 42. This means that Googles systems are doing better. 42
- 43. And we, as SEOs, need to do better. 43
- 44. • … need a site that Google actually can crawl and understand (this didn’t became easy with all the fancy technical stu ff we thought users liked). • … need to write helpful content (we could get away with ‘SEO content’ for a long time). • … need to be an authority on you subject (but Google got smarter, and we became lazy). Matt Cutts told us a long time ago: Build sites for Users, not Search Engines. But, you know what didn’t change? The three pillars of SEO. You still: 44
- 45. “Find ways to bring value to others.” 45
- 46. • Improving the CTR of already top-ranked pages Why don’t people click on my result? • Optimising internal linking of almost best ranking pages What would be the next page people would be interested in (usually it’s not ‘get a quote’) • Identifying search shifts and content decay to update & rank better Google your own queries every now and then. See what happen. Make a screenshot, keep a record. Things everyone can work on No SEO expertise needed, only some data and imagination. 46
- 47. So, About AI. 47
- 48. I imagine that by now you’ve fi gured I think that AI is only a tool. Not a solution. 48
- 49. But for Google, it’s a challenge… 49
- 51. • “We’ve constantly been bringing in AI innovations into search for the past few years, and this is the next step in the journey.” • “Over time this will just be how search works, and so, while we are taking deliberate steps, we are building the next major evolution of search.” - Sundar Pichai Googles CEO about SGE In august 2023 earning call. 51
- 52. Search in 2023 and beyond. 52
- 53. • With great power, come great responsibility • and hefty fi nes from European Governments: Your Money, Your Life 53 Google is very careful with their roll-out of SGE. Especially in Europe.
- 54. 54
- 55. • 1. Focus on your users. Self-assessment of your content is key. Ask the hard questions. Dig up the data. Experiment with the UX (please don’t try to hide de content all the time, thanks). A unique feature of SEO is its adaptability over time. • 2. Don’t worry about AI: Ai is coming. Nothing we can do about it. We better adapt. Play. Learn how to use it to make a page better for users. • 3. Adaptive Management: One unique feature of the deltaplan approach is its adaptability over a long term. It involves a sequence of major planning actions that are adaptable to changing circumstances. SEO is also a long term game, don’t focus too much on the short term. Three take-aways Or maybe one: be adaptive. 55
- 56. There’s a huge wave coming. It’s AI and to bene fi t from this, or at least prevent damage, we should focus on things that don’t change: User needs. Ride the wave. It’s more fun. 56 Photo by guille pozzi on Unsplash
- 57. Find me on social media My website [email protected] Or send me a text: 06 248 139 80 Me Best way of getting in touch. Here’s two book tips, you might recognize some things I’ve said: 57 ‘The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.’ - Eric Ries, The Lean Startup Thank you for your attention!