I spoke this afternoon at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco to a room full of curious marketers & site owners. After the session, there was a lot of requests for the slide deck and thus I've shared it below.
Web20 Fishkin Search Landscape
I've also added Stephan Spencer's presentation on technical SEO, keyword research & targeting below:
SEO_ From Soup to Nuts Presentation 1
And, last, but not least, Eric Enge's presentatino on link building from the conference as well
Link Building: The Key to Rankings by Eric Enge
This presentation opportunity comes courtesy of O'Reilly, who published The Art of SEO late last year (somehow, I've neglected to mention it on SEOmoz until now). Big thanks to my co-authors, Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer & Jessie Stricchiola for helping out.
Great presentation Rand
Regarding slide 17, the data has changed dramatically since Google Suggest graduated from the Labs and became default.
The number of 4+ word searches are steadily trending upwards.
Here's the latest data from marketing pilgrim:
https://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/02/8-word-search-queries-up-34000-in-last-5-years.html
-AD
This is really interesting- especially given the MayDay updates which seem to be really hurting some of the larger brands in this regard. Will be interesting to see who is taking home the lion's share of this added search volume for these longer queries since the latest update.
Very interesting, thanks for this. Curiously, the % of 1-word searches is pretty stable.
I wonder if there is newer conversion rate data that can be correlated with these new stats.
% of 1 word searches is brand searches, that's why it is pretty stable. As new brands will come online, it may only increase.
Hey, how did that comment spam above me get through?! Ahem.
As a side note to the focus of this discussion, I would like to say that I really like the design of your book's cover, Rand. So many books written about SEO, and online marketing in general, have unattractive covers. This is a book I would pick off the shelf to look at more closely even if I didn't know what SEO was.
The spam comment above this has been removed by SeoMoz. Now the comment above this comment is not spam.
Thank you :)
That's CRO... which is not just an online tecnique ;)
Pardon my ignorance, gfiorelli1, but what do you mean by CRO?
Conversion Rate Optimization... don't blame yourself... I didn't really know this acronym (and many others) when I started to learn SEO :).
Surely in the very next future you will dominate the 'slang'.
Very interesting stats.
I would be interested to see the comparion of PPC clicks versus organic clicks specifically for terms that very competitive. I would assume the figure you have is helped a lot by terms that do not have PPCs.
Great presentation as usual.
I have read the book ' The Art Of SEO' and must say that I do not think all the SEO aspects could have been explained in a more simple way.
Looking forward for reading more on social graphs in future.
Are there any plans of conducting any SEO conferences by SeoMoz in India in the near future?
Great overview!
Will also help me convince my clients to go for 4-word keywords. If they can't trust you, who can they trust? ;)
Cheers, Eric
Agree. Have started to focus on four and five word keywords myself - they are easier to rank for if you are specifically targetting them, plus they seem to convert better than the trophy keywords.
Hey Rand, thanks for making the deck available! This is fantastic. I did have a couple questions, though, if you wouldn't mind addressing:
On slide 29, it states "PageRank is just 1 of 200+ factors for ranking". I was under the impression that since the removal of PR from Webmaster Tools, that Google removed PR as a multiplier from the ranking algorithm (although still used for indexation, obviously). Am I mistaken?
On slide 35, it shows traffic + CTR data as a crowdsourced ranking factor. In https://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-influence-of-usage-data you mentioned specifically that CTR data isn't taken into account because it's too easy to MTurk. I understand that this is a crowdsourced guess, but my guess is that you wouldn't have shown the slide if there wasn't something more to it. What am I missing?
RE: AJ's question on PR and if it's "still" a part of the G algo...
'fraid I too would have to add my own thoughts that it's LONG gone from same...
Rand?
:-)Jim
The Art of SEO is really an awesome book, with a ton of useful information.
I keep using it as a reference when producing content that is related to SEO. The part on linkbuilding and ranking factors are two must-have in my collection.
Thanks to Rand and all of the co-authors for it!
Regarding slides 9 and 10 - "Probably doesn't get 42% CTR"
I think that the AOL release now needs to be taken with a pinch of salt whenever we use it, given the proliferation of local results etc which are now on the 1st pages of the SERPs. Any chances of SEOMoz updating these results in the future? :-p
Interesting to see the online/offline mix illustrated in slide 19. I think there are still far too many people ignoring the influence of the web in offline purchases and decision making.
Rand, regarding the AOL Click Rate you are using - i can only confirm from internal tests of our own firm that those are (+ / - 5%) still valid.
Strange that nobody mentions that you can get this book on your I-Phone, with all the links working and great index at the end this is my quick reference to everything now. Unfortunately cannot take credit for finding the app, have to thank RobBothan.
Great presentation, thanks for sharing.
Where did you get those data about SEO Vs PPC spending (Slide 8)?
They are impressive...
Thanks in advance
Some great presentations there. I would love to see updated versions.
@hedden19 - REALLY?! Here?! Where do we start? There are so many things wrong with this.
Full Disclosure: I havent viewed the slides yet. I have just read all of the comments and its very late so the slides will have to wait until tomorrow.
However, I did want to share my takeaway from this post so far...
I think I am going to buy "The Art of SEO".
:)
"The Art of SEO" is a great book. I recommend it to clients and those that attend my workshops. It is an easy read and laid out in a very logical format.
Good presentation.
The book "The Art of SEO" is very interesting!
Great Post! Thx for sharing!
Great Presentation, Rand.
Would have loved to actually listen on in the presentation though. The slide covered lots of interesting aspects, especially about Page ranking and Indexing; doing some research into that right now. Will go have a look for the book and read it up.
Thanks!
Nice presentation. Where did you end up getting the data for slide 18, Conversion rate by KW phrase length?
The data comes via OneUpWeb - there's a good analysis here.
I was surprised to learn that conversion rate grows with search phrase length till the latter reaches 4 words, and then drops off sharply for 5-6 word phrases. Does this make intuitive sense to people?
Also susprised that the PR of any page is non-zero (although it can be tiny): slide 25. What is the evidence for that?
Slide 29. PR hoarding is bad for your site. Could you elaborate please? Do you mean that it's good for SEO to link out to other relevant sites, or is there mother/something else to this claim?
Thanks as always, Rand! (P.S. The Art of SEO is the best SEO book out there, and I've read them all.)
About your last question (link out), Rand gave a very good WBF that explains well why to fine link out can be an advantage instead of what commonly thought. Hope it helps.
Hey Philip:
Conversion rate - I think this makes fairly good, intuitive sense for keyword phrase length. Up to 4 keywords are getting more specific without becoming super long tail. Once you go to 5+ terms in a search phrase, the commercial intent is often going down (more research queries) and the ability of the engine to actually find (or the www to deliver) the exact answer gets tougher. e.g. "link building analysis tool" vs. "link analysis tool google brazil"
PR - in order to work at all,the PR formula assigns every page on the web with a tiny, innate amount of PR for the initial calculations so that links pass some small amount of juice. This is likely significantly under something like a "PR 1" via the toolbar. You can read more here - https://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-pagerank-works-why-the-original-pr-formula-may-be-flawed
PR hoarding is something we don't recommend and neither do the search engines. As a good example, in this WB Friday, the NYTimes SEO, Marshall Simmonds, talked about how their sites benefitted in rankings/traffic by expanding their links out to source material. In my opinion, the engines look at this as part of relevancy and quality content.
Thanks Rand for the infos and for correcting my indication (when I was saying WBF I was meaning exactly the one you link to).
Forgive me all for the bad copy & paste from my fav's carpet :)
Rand, I really appreciate your taking the time to provide this info! Thanks you for such a thorough response.
Thanks for sharing Rand.
And I definitely would recommend reading "The Art of SEO", it has lots of examples and techniques - money well spent! :)
Hey Rand,
I'm not yet in the SEO biz but it's pretty much all I think about and just wanted to say cheers for the book. I'm nearly on the 3rd chapter and I have a highlighter pen with me while reading to mark key bits for quick reference. By the way it's going the whole book is going to be highlighted!
Although only just getting into it I recommend the book.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for sharing this presentation Rand! :-)
It's amazing that Asia Pacific gains ~30% searches of the world. But does it include China's market where Baidu's no.1 SE? Or did ComScore count all LOCAL data of each country's SE?
Best regards,
LamSEO
Thanks Rand for sharing.
Surely would have been better to be in person attending at your conference, so to give an audio to the excellent slide deck.
I am quite surprised by the graphic on the 5th slide (Global Share of Searches). Honestly I wasn't aware us European were first in Searches (I was imagining one between USA and Asia/Pacific, at least for the population factor).
I don't know if you can help in this, but it would be interesting to see the trends for the future and if exists a deeper research by countries.
And about the Art of SEO: great book that I bought personally while in NY. It has the not so common quality to make you understand easily something that easy is not that much.
I couldn't see the presentation, why？
Thanks for sharing Rand -- I see what I am missing at all these conferences!
Need to find some great mid-west conferences to start attending.
No food reference!?
Very good presentation! I finished reading the book a couple of weeks ago. Tons of fresh information and some other “basic” with excellent value! I always recommended to people who think on the SEO industry… :)
Great Slides!
Thanks for sharing this Rand. It's nice to see a deck that is a bit more self-explanatory than some of the others... I find that a lot of times I try to check these out and it's just a couple of pictures without the audio- not too terribly helpful.
This one would, obviously, be even more helpful with the audio but it is certainly self-explanatory enough to provide some value.
Thanks :)
I saw the book earlier. How much time did it take to write it? And when? You are always on the road.
Any way to see all outgoing (non-nofollow) links for a website in a list?
Hi Rand you just freaked me out. I own the running shoes site you used as on-site optimazation example in slide 44 and was just working on it when I saw your slide :) Anyway, thanks for an excellent presentation and all the valuable information you've provided over the years.
kind regards, bakken
I like this particular article it gives me an additional input on the information around the world. thanks a lot and keep giving with posting such information.
-Casey Removed Link