Takeaways From MozCon: What Digital Agencies Need To Know About SEO Digital moves fast -- a fact that's definitely not lost on agencies. By the time we’ve mastered a tactic, a new one is right around the corner. While keeping pace with industry changes is something we all need to prioritize, that pressure is often felt even more heavily by agencies that have to juggle multiple client accounts.
Change was a big theme at this year’s MozCon, my company's annual conference for digital marketers. Topics addressed everything from the changing search engine results pages (SERPs) to organizational alignment to how to write for inclusivity. It was a great time to reflect on how far we’ve come as an industry and where there’s still room to grow. Here are some of this year’s key takeaways:
Digital agencies must adapt to the new search landscape.
Agencies that offer search engine optimization (SEO) services need to adapt to the modern search landscape or risk being left behind. Research presented by Rand Fishkin showed that, while they still hold the lion’s share of the search market and continue to send the majority of traffic to websites, Google is driving a smaller percentage of organic search clicks than they were previously. Today, nearly half of all searches result in no click, and the majority of conversions for local businesses come from the search engine results page (SERP) itself.
To adapt, marketers should stop thinking about SEO in terms of pure website clicks, and start thinking about how to leverage this new low-click landscape to drive other important initiatives like brand awareness and conversions. For example, SEOs marketing a brand with a local presence could spearhead a Google Post strategy to boost CTA clicks directly from the SERPs or highlight a special sale. And any brand can focus on earning featured snippets to both present themselves as the experts to searchers and to rank in the coveted "position zero" as the first result a searcher sees, hovering above even the organic results.
Digital agencies should embrace nuance.
It’s natural to crave black-and-white answers to our problems, but the reality is a lot more complicated.
Localization, the customization of search results based on the searcher’s physical location, is one major factor driving the shift to nuance in the search industry. Because location plays such a huge role in a website’s placement in search results, agencies that offer SEO services need to be thinking about how to provide a more global look at SERP performance for their clients. They need to be able to report on how their clients are performing in all the markets that they care about. That means getting granular with metrics like local keyword volume, understanding constantly shifting competitive landscapes and tailoring strategies to what works for each hyper-local market. And then (this is the fun part), report on everything. It's a herculean task to accomplish manually, given all the potential markets that would require analysis, but tools harnessing local market analytics can facilitate this work at every level.
Other research presented at MozCon showed that the same change applied to different websites can have drastically different results. Research like this points to the reality that agencies can’t afford to follow a single best practices checklist if they want to be effective. Instead, they need to adopt a testand-learn mentality.
Digital agencies will benefit from integrating SEO.
As a relatively young industry, SEO has struggled to find its place. Thankfully, many of our presenters revealed their tips for integrating SEO into their organizations for maximum effectiveness.
While there’s no perfect org chart that will work for everyone, many of our presenters agreed that SEO is most effective when it’s in a position to impact and be impacted by counterparts in other departments like developers, writers and paid advertising managers. There will always be friction present when asking already-busy colleagues to implement your suggestions or prioritize your technical fix, so cultivating quality professional relationships across teams and educating others about the importance of SEO can be as impactful as identifying the issues in the first place.
For example, make sure that you're collaborating with developers to stay educated on what the best solution might be for any given SEO issue. Creating more of a partnership between developers and SEOs not only makes both sides stronger professionally but also proves to be much more efficient in the long run. There could also be a treasure trove of consumer insights hidden in your paid ads data, and facilitating clear communication with your paid ads manager will only make your job as an SEO easier.
Digital agencies need to prioritize audience.
Last, but certainly not least, was the emphasis on prioritizing audience. For years, SEO has had an imbalanced focus on Google’s algorithm. We knew that if we could just reverse engineer that algorithm, we’d know exactly what to do to achieve top placement in search results. As both Google’s algorithm and the SEO industry have matured though, we’re beginning to focus on what should have been our priority all along: the real people at the other end of our code and content.
MozCon made it clear that we've shifted into a people-first industry. We're putting searchers first by investigating what the true intent is behind specific searches and providing the right content in the right formats. And because of this, search engine architects are more acutely aware of the real impact search results have on people's lives in 2019.
Search engines are for humans. This means any successful search strategy also starts with humans. Make an effort to really understand what motivates your visitors, the pain points they face and why you are the answer they most need to find. Get this part right, and search strategy will start to become obvious.
While we still need to be mindful of both the limitations and opportunities search engines present, it was clear from our speakers that helping and delighting our real, human audience should always be the goal.
02 Getting started with a terminal emulator for SEO programming Getting started with a terminal emulator for SEO programming - Search Engine Land access to command line utilities the ability to perform SEO hacking on remote machines by opening shells in the cloud, and the ability to write or utilize programs that automate work tasks and power websites. "> 03 5 SEO Services That You Should Use Today
Looking for the perfect SEO services you need in a sea of providers competing against each other can be daunting and time-consuming.
In fact, you’re better off spending your time doing more important tasks than choosing from hundreds and thousands of SEO services in the market.
However, such is the problem with most online businesses.
It is already established that hiring the right SEO company to help optimize their websites is difficult. But all the effort of looking for one is worth it if it means ranking on top of search results for their target keywords.
Doing so will bring in traffic and conversions guaranteed to grow their business.
Luckily for you, you don’t have to keep searching!
In this post are top five SEO service providers you will need for your different SEO needs.
There are various SEO services you will be using, and you’ll find it hard to get all your needs in just one service provider.
Keep in mind that these SEO tools are all essential especially since Google keeps changing its algorithm. Your strategy may not work as well if one of them is missing.
Pathtorch – for technical SEO audit pathtorch
A technical SEO audit is made easier by using a tool like Pathtorch.
Pathtorch checks all the bits of your website to help you to understand its current SEO health.
An SEO audit helps you identify all the strengths and weaknesses of your website to take action and improve on all the necessary enhancements for your SEO strategy.
One of their clients from Epic Gardening boasts a more solid site structure after using Pathtorch.
You may find other generic tools for an SEO audit in different pricing structures, but the reason why Pathtorch stands out is that they personally craft the report so you can be sure that your whole website is future-proof.
DFYLinks – for link building dfylinks
DFYLinks is the one-stop-shop for getting high authority links.
They offer to write a niche-specific content where you can choose any specific keywords as your anchor text with your website’s URL. Additionally, their content packages are made to be highly relevant and will only be posted on several high authority domains.
According to SEOClarity, both high-quality links and content will help improve your search visibility on search engines. This makes the packages of DFYLinks the perfect combinations to add to your digital marketing campaign.
Link building is a long and difficult process, however, getting links from trusted websites is also essential to boost your website’s authority.
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If you are struggling with this, make sure to check out what DFYLinks has to offer to help you speed things up.
seocontenthero
SEO Content Hero is an article content service provider. They can accept high volume orders and even an article with up to 10,000 words.
They categorize their packages as premium, authority, and elite depending on the quality you need for the right amount.
They also cater to multiple topics and content types such as copywriting, technical writing, website pages, e-books, and landing pages.
There’s great content and there’s great SEO-optimized content.
Google won’t rank your blog if your content isn’t what users like. And Google won’t rank your site if it’s not optimized for their search engine.
They have highly regarded clients from Spamzilla and LeadsFox who backs them up to be a reliable content provider with outstanding customer service.
SEO Butler – for social signals and citation seobutler
SEO Butler complements your SEO campaigns by helping you build your site’s social signals and citations.
A social share can boost your content to be seen by thousands of people who may be your potential customers. SEO Butler’s social signals packages are a good mix of Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
They also have citation package that’s available for almost all countries except North Korea. Getting links from quality citation sites can help you get shown higher in the search engines so this is one SEO strategy you shouldn’t be ignoring.
web20
Web 2.0 Ranker is one of the top GMB SEO services we found for your local SEO service needs.
Improving your local SEO visibility helps you advertise to those seeking for you within your area or where your business is established.
If you want to increase your social presence, then it’s worth to invest in this SEO strategy. Sometimes, aiming to be at the top worldwide isn’t always the realistic approach. You could be doing better if you focus on your local SEO first.
Most of Web 2.0 Ranker testimonials confirm successful SEO results after they availed a 60-day campaign.
Conclusion One of the most important things to do for your business today is to provide value to your audience. That means creating a site that is optimized for search engines.
While you can do SEO yourself, it’s just better and easier to delegate the tasks to experienced companies with track record of producing results for their clients.
All the SEO companies featured above are some of the most touted in the industry. You simply can’t go wrong by asking them for help in improving your site’s SEO.
Author: riad monir riad monir is a professional content marketer and writer. He has helped small businesses achieve their goals by implementing a robust content strategy that emphasizes their unique selling points and promoting created content using effective online channels and methods, in particular, social media marketing and search engine optimization… View full profile ›