TACKLING SEO CHALLENGES IN 2020 - New strategies for keeping up with changes in search Four ways to deal with opaque algorithms, bigger volumes of ...
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TACKLING SEO CHALLENGES IN 2020 New strategies for keeping up with changes in search Four ways to deal with opaque algorithms, bigger volumes of information, and more complex search results
TABLE OF CONTENT
04 Introduction
05 Strategy #1:
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
09 Strategy #2:
GET A BETTER OVERVIEW OF SITE STRUCTURE
12 Strategy #3:
USE SOLUTIONS FOR BIG SITES AND BIG
VOLUMES OF DATA
15 Strategy #4:
DIVE INTO EXPERIMENTAL IDEAS & SEO
PROGRAMMING
18 Data + SEO = Data SEO
20 Changing SEO at OnCrawl
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The year is 2020.
Search is getting (more) complicated.
Search engine algorithm changes are a black box, affecting sites
without clear cause or explanation.
We find ourselves facing:
• Increase in number of ranking factors and complexity of
algorithms.
• Increase in SERP features.
• Increase in data collected.
• Increase in size of websites.
• Increase in number of websites.
What does this mean for SEO?
Let’s take a look at successful strategies you can use to deal with these
changes.
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4
STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
STRATEGY #1
TAKE ADVANTAGE
OF ACCESSIBLE
NEW TOOLS
5
STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
Google sets the example: Data Studio
More people are using Data Studio because it’s one of Google’s
freely-available tools. With native connections to the Search Console,
Analytics, and even YouTube, it connects easily to the basic tools of
Google-oriented SEO work, and is fairly easy to use.
Many SEO audit tools, including OnCrawl, have released native Data
Studio connectors, helping to improve audit summaries and monitoring
solutions for SEOs.
Auditing reporting in Data Studio. Source: OnCrawl.
6
STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
What’s more, audit data can now be combined with data from other
sources for in-depth analysis.
The SEO community has shared many templates for great insights:
• Tracking market trends
• Tracking daily keyword movement
• Viewing SEO traffic
• ...
https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/google-
update-analysis-search-console-data-studio-report-template/
7
STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/forecast-seo-data-studio/311579/
https://www.mrjonathanjones.com/2018/12/20/google-data-studio-
alternative-report-to-google-search-console/
8
STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
STRATEGY #2
GET A BETTER
OVERVIEW OF SITE
STRUCTURE
9
STRATEGY #2: GET A BETTER OVERVIEW OF SITE STRUCTURE
Internal linking
Linking--and therefore the site structure created by internal links--is one
of the central means of improvement. However, predicting the impact
of big changes can be difficult without the right information.
Chris Green has looked at methods for confronting his expectations
and testing the actual impact of changes on a website by using
OnCrawl’s Inrank. Inrank measures the on-site PageRank of each
page on a scale of 0 to 10, and an updated algorithm to provide page
popularity analysis that is better founded and closer to what Google
likely examines on a website.
He found that, for some sites, not all improvements drove the same
increase in Inrank, and even found some surprises. He discussed
his methodology in a recent ebook and at BrightonSEO’s Crawl and
Indexation summit in September.
Judging the impact of internal linking changes is notoriously
difficult… And we make too many changes without testing.
— Chris Green
Download the full ebook
10STRATEGY #2: GET A BETTER OVERVIEW OF SITE STRUCTURE
Grouping pages for improved analysis
Site structure should also reflect the purposes of your pages, their
templates and classifications.
The more we talked with SEOs, the more we found that how you group
your pages makes the biggest difference in a successful versus a
frustrating analysis.
Based on workshops and feedback, OnCrawl has realized
that SEOs need more than just a segmentation feature to do impactful
work. You need multi-level categories, intuitive navigation, and a library
of suggestions.
You should be able to switch between a view of your site depth by page
template… and by load time… and by on-SERP rank… and more.
The better the view of your site you can give yourself, the more
pertinent the trends you will be
Studying the impact of site linking changes on page depth and Inrank (internal PageRank).
Source: Chris Green, “How your internal linking scheme affects Inrank”.
11STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
STRATEGY #3
USE SOLUTIONS
FOR BIG SITES
AND BIG VOLUMES
OF DATA
12STRATEGY #3: USE SOLUTIONS FOR BIG SITES AND BIG VOLUMES OF DATA
We all know that one of the hallmarks of SEO today is the volume of
data available. As sites grow exponentially, so does the amount of data
we need to process to understand, predict, and improve performance
on search engines.
Big sites
The bigger your site, the more challenges you face when auditing:
• Is your SEO crawler fast enough or will it take months to crawl
your site?
• Is your crawler’s analysis based on big-data algorithms or will
indexing your billions of internal links freeze the whole process?
Auditing big sites doesn’t have to be a challenge. Source: OnCrawl.
13STRATEGY #3: USE SOLUTIONS FOR BIG SITES AND BIG VOLUMES OF DATA
Even if you can answer «yes» to questions like this, there is always
room for improvement.
For example: although crawl speed and big data algorithms have been
key parts of the OnCrawl universe since the beginning, we’ve recently
increased crawl-over-crawl comparison calculations and gained more
than 10x in speed.
The big picture
Data visualization tools and data platforms are key to turning data
points into accessible, actionable business plans.
And if we want to make the point that SEO is an essential part of any
strategic business strategy, SEO data needs to be present in business
intelligence analyses.
Even faster crawl comparisons, even for big sites. Source: OnCrawl.
That’s why connectivity with key BI solutions, like Power BI and Tableau,
and with machine learning data platforms, like Dataiku, is no longer a
luxury, but a necessity.
But what if your business intelligence and data analysis doesn’t use a
big-name platform? You still need full access to your SEO data: fast,
full, and reliable exports for cloud-based storage like Google Bucket or
Amazon S3.
14STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
STRATEGY #4
DIVE INTO
EXPERIMENTAL
IDEAS & SEO
PROGRAMMING
15STRATEGY #4: DIVE INTO EXPERIMENTAL IDEAS & SEO PROGRAMMING
One of the most important--and controversial--movements in SEO right
now is the trend of using programming skills and machine learning for
marketing purposes.
Many SEOs are eagerly learning Python, creating Jupyter Notebooks,
digging into how
browsers create web pages (and how to manipulate them for
SEO purposes after the page has been provided by the server),
experimenting with GPT-2 and GPT-3, and other exploits that are pretty
opaque to the average marketer and internet user.
Do you need to keep up?
16STRATEGY #4: DIVE INTO EXPERIMENTAL IDEAS & SEO PROGRAMMING
It’s a tough question.
At OnCrawl, we made the decision to share much of our R&D work
in its early stages to help people without research skills get access
to some of the experimental techniques (and technologies) that are
changing the face of SEO--long before they hit the market.
It’s hard to deny the advantages that machine learning can provide for
SEO, from accurately forecasting future traffic, to automatic, quality
content creation, to detecting changes in performance in real time.
Many of these practices are well on their way to becoming part of
mainstream SEO, whether you are experimenting in the front lines,
adapting code others make available, relying on your more data-
oriented coworkers, or waiting for these features to be developed and
included in mainstream tools.
17STRATEGY #1: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ACCESSIBLE NEW TOOLS
DATA + SEO
= DATA SEO
18DATA + SEO = DATA SEO
All of these point to a new direction in SEO in the 2020s:
data-driven SEO.
I have no doubt that data science will become a strong asset for
every digital marketer, especially SEO specialists. This technology
makes reliable decisions based on actual data possible, bringing a
real competitive advantage to all companies that use it.
— Vincent Terrassi
Product Director @OnCrawl
Data is the bridge between SEO as a marketing task and SEO as a
strategic business lever.
In 2020, we’ve already seen it used to predict market trends when old
strategies failed, to pilot complex migrations, to outpace competitors
on intent-based search queries, to improve collaboration and earn
project buy-ins, and to drive revenue you can rely on.
SEO data is not limited to audits, SERPs, and links, but covers the whole
ecosystems of language, business, and your industry.
If you’re a fan of data in SEO, stay tuned. We have great things coming
soon!
19STRATEGY #2: GET A BETTER OVERVIEW OF SITE STRUCTURE
CHANGING SEO AT
ONCRAWL
20CHANGING SEO AT ONCRAWL
Like the SEOs that use it, OnCrawl as an SEO platform is ready to take
on the new SEO:
OnCrawl 2020 Timeline
January 2020
x10 improvement in Crawl-over-Crawl
comparison performances
February 2020
Improvements to the Inrank algorithm to
match Google’s PageRank
March 2020
Big Data Export available in beta for all
OnCrawl data in Google Bucket et Amazon S3
April 2020
OnCrawl Labs released
May 2020
Data Studio connector in public beta
June 2020
Templates for Power BI and
Tableau Software released
July 2020
OnCrawl connector for Dataiku released
August 2020
New Data Science project for OnCrawl Labs:
Long Tail Prediction
September 2020
Data Studio connector release
Coming in October 2020
New Segmentation Explorer:
Multi-level segmentations, new UI
Coming soon
Data science solution release:
Live log monitoring
OnCrawl Genius
21Start your free trial hello@oncrawl.com www.oncrawl.com
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