[Build Backlinks Online] How Should Marketers React When Google's Search Results Have Dramatic Changes?

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How Should Marketers React When
Google's Search Results Have Dramatic Changes?'


Posted by randfish

Late last month, Google made an update to its search algorithm that caused our
MozCast to spike to an all-time high of more than 113 degrees. Our work as web
marketers can be frustrating when we're aiming for a continuously moving target.
In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers how we can keep our cool and learn
from those changes when they happen.






How Should Marketers React When Google's Search Results Have Dramatic
Changes - Whiteboard Friday





For reference, here's a still image of this week's whiteboard.



Video Transcription



Howdy, Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This
week, I want to talk a little bit about how marketers should be reacting when
Google makes big, dramatic changes in their rankings and their algorithm. Now,
this can be a challenging topic, right?


So we've seen, for example in the recent past, MozCast, which is Dr. Pete's
project that monitors several thousand search results and sort of looks at
changes in the top ten and what percent of them are churning in and out, and we
saw one of the biggest spikes we've ever seen, bigger than Panda, bigger than
Penguin, just hugely dramatic.


Dr. Pete represents those in MozCast with temperatures. So the average day
temperature is 70 degrees. This one was 113 degrees. Very, very hot, meaning a
dramatic amount of change. Lots of things in the first page of results on
average moving out and being replaced by other things and lots of positions
moving around too.


Now, the way I like to approach big algorithm updates is to look at, number
one, what happened? What actually changed in the results? Because sometimes a
dramatic variety of different things can be happening. So we see through MozCast
and through monitoring lots of search results ourselves, for ourselves and for
campaigns that we pay attention to, we can see that you've sort of got one, two,
three, four ordering. That might shift over to be, oh wow, look. Almost everyone
who is in the first page of results kind of fell down or fell out of those
results, and now it's number 11, 19, 4, and 16 that are ranking in there. Wow,
okay. That was a big algorithmic shakeup. Push a lot of people down, a lot of
new people in.


Or it might just be a reordering. So, one, two, three, four went to four,
two, six, eight. Well, okay. I mean, two and four are still in the top four. Six
and eight are still in the top ten. But we've had some bouncing around. So this
is a shift, but not nearly as dramatic as the prior one, and actually MozCast
temperatures represent that because Dr. Pete looks at sort of where things are
shifting to figure that out.


Or, and we also see a lot of this, Google has introduced new types of
results. There's now a carousel at the top. There are now news results going in
there. There are other things that are pushing results off of page one that are
shaking things up, that are making things dramatically different, that are
making essentially organic visibility quite different from how it used to be.


Those different types of results are of a vast variety, and Google rolls
them out in tests all the time and then permanently when they like the results
of those tests. Now, if you're observing these patterns in the change of types
of results and observing the patterns in what's rising and falling, this can
really help you get to the bottom of, "What should my strategy be? What tactics
should I take?"


But the second question that I want to take you to before we get there is:
What is Google saying about the update? Sometimes Google is very quiet and they
don't say anything, and sometimes they'll give some information. Right?


So, for example, Google mentioned with regards to this big update that
happened recently that there's a rolling update going on, meaning you can see
spikes in values potentially over a period of time as they roll out the update,
and it will be ending on or around July 4th.


Okay. That's potentially very interesting information. That might tell me,
"You know what? Before I do a big, wholesale analysis of how this impacted me,
I'm going to wait for this whole thing to roll out. Let me just give it a few
more days, wait until the 4th of July and see what actually happens at the end
of the shakeout." Gianluca Fiorelli asked Matt Cutts, he said, "Is this a global
update or just U.S. or English results only?" Matt nicely replied, "Well, it's
global."


So that is also helpful to observe and to know so that people can get this
sense of, "Oh, wow. I'm targeting mostly Spanish language search results in
Spain or in Mexico, or in South and Latin America. I guess I should be paying
attention to whatever is going on with this update."


Third, I like to ask, "How has this update affected me?" Of course, because
I'm a marketer who observes broad trends and runs a software company in the
field, I like to see what those broad trends are and know about them. But I also
really want to see how it affects me, and as a search marketer, that's certainly
what you should be thinking about, too.


So being able to monitor this through data is really important, and there
are three points of data that you can collect from your own analytics. Those are
the number of pages that receive one or more visits from Google search, the
number of keywords that send one or more visits from Google to your site, and
the total amount of Google search traffic that you're receiving.


Then, if you want to get more granular, you can go down to the keyword level
and look at what are individual keywords sending. Of course, remember that
because of "not provided" a lot of that won't be trackable anymore, which is
frustrating and challenging.


Then the last thing that you're going to need in order to see how this has
impacted you is ranking position. So I like to collect rank position data in
non-personalized, non-geographically biased results. This is not perfect. A lot
of people are geographically biased, are searching on mobile phones or devices
that are location-enabled, do have Google accounts that are biasing them
personally. But this is the best that we're going to do, those non-personalized,
non-geo biased results.


You can achieve that by going outside of your country code. So for example,
if I'm in Google US, I'm going to go search "Google.co.uk/search?q=" whatever
keyword I'm tracking, "&gl=US". That will bias me back to the U.S., but taking
me to the U.K. and then saying U.S. will make it so that I'm not
geo-personalized to just Seattle or just Washington, or just wherever I happen
to be on the road where I'm searching.


Using "pws=0" will help remove personalization. This actually removes most
of the personalization anyway. If you want, you can also log out or use a
browser window that is non-personalized where you're not logged in. From this,
you get the best picture we can really get as search marketers about what's
going on and how the shift has impacted you, and you can see really different
things.


I mean, if I see that my rankings haven't really changed, but the number of
pages that are receiving one or more visits from Google has dropped dramatically
and that's affecting my overall total traffic, I can presume, "Hey, you know
what? This is probably an indexation problem for me."


Whatever update Google has been making, the way it's affected me is that
I've lost pages that used to be in the search results. I'm no longer performing
for them at all, and they weren't the ones that I was tracking. So probably it
means my long tail is where this is impacted, and so that can inform my strategy
and my tactics from there.


This is the last question that I like to visit whenever something like this
has happened which is: Are there actions that I should be taking? Not just what
actions, but are there actions? Sometimes I just kind of go, "Hey, it's cool.
I'm going to let Google do what they're going to do, and I'm going to do what
I'm going to do. I'm not going to worry about them."


But sometimes there are tactical actions like, "Hey, you know what? I need
to bolster some individual keywords. We lost rankings on some keywords that are
really important. Let's see if maybe we should produce new pages of content.
Maybe we should update the existing content. Maybe we should redirect the old
ones to the new ones. Maybe we should be trying to earn some new links and
social signals and shares to that stuff, whatever that might be."


Or there might be more strategic level SEO types of things like, "Man,
Google just introduced this big carousel across all these different types of
hotel and travel results. I'm not sure that keyword phrase of city name plus
hotels or city name plus places to stay is really going to help me anymore.
Maybe I should start to consider whether I need to go earlier on in the keyword
search funnel."


Maybe I need to get in here where people aren't yet searching for hotels,
but they're searching for destinations or places, or those kinds of things,
rather than targeting down here where it looks like Google is kind of dominating
the search results themselves. That's a big strategic kind of shift that you'll
have to make with your content and your website and your keyword targeting
strategy.


But being able to ask these questions, all of them, and then getting down to
the tactical and strategic can really help make you more reactive in an
intelligent, considerate way to the big changes that Google might be making.


All right, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard
Friday, and we'll see you again next week. Take care.




Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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