PWAs SEO: Optimising for the Future of the Web

EU Search Personality of 2018,Aleyda Solis was up first.  Aleyda said that apps provided a fragmented and vertical specificities app experience. They can be expensive to develop, but we end up installing a lot of them.

Why do we install apps?

• The reason is that it is easier to access apps through the home screen
• Apps can use additional phone features
• Mobile websites speed and usability 
• You need internet to access web content.
• SO mobile web is also broken.  BUT it is not more broken than the app one.
• Because of this we are sometimes forced to download apps.

What are PWAS?

They are web based presence that has same type of functionality as the mobile apps. It is an improved mobile app experience.

• PWAs close the gap between websites and apps.
• This is possible thanks to 4 technologies
• 4 key technologies of a PWA
• All modern browsers now support PWAs.
• We have not moved from desktop to mobile. It depends on the time of day. PWAs can also run on desktop. Many top mobile focused services are releasing PWAs.
• Uber have PWA features in their mobile version of their site.
• Go to the light house functionality of chrome dev tools, then there is this.

The web is going to be the new App Store. Why has it not been like this before?

PWAs have met with resistance. BUT you can also feature Pwas in App stores too. It requires a little bit of extra work.  Trusted web activities highly facilitate the for the Play Store now. 1-800 Flowers seems to be the first PWA to be highlighted in the Google Play store.

PWAs are a natural evolution of how we distribute and consume software.

There are still limitations – there was a nice analysis by Maximilian Ferdinand – he says what is supported and what is not.  (read Aleyda’s slides for more detail).

How can you create a PWA?

There are three main steps.

1. User a responsible website (what can be AMP based too) that will be for application
2. Create a web manifest, a JSON file that informs about the PWAS to be installable
3. Set up a Service Worker a JS that tuns in the background.

Check out this step by step guide from Codelabs

• You can also use the “ready to customiser and use” PWA builder files.
• Also look at HowPWAMWorks – site built by Aleyda
• You can also enable PWA features to your WordPress sites with Plugins.
• Magento now also supports AMP with its PWA studio.
• You can verify them with the lighthouse PWA validation in chrome.
• You can use ChromdevTools Application panel to verify service workers.
• Or use the PWA Builder to validate too

Closing remarks:

• Websites that adopt PWA see benefits due to the app like functionality.
• PWA relies on JS to show the content. They are using client side rendering.
• Rendering Is expensive and cannot be done immediately.
• Server side rendering is also supported by Magento too, but it is not the default.
• A full SEO audit by crawling both with and without JS is necessary
• Check out Google’s example of indexable PWAs using server, client side and hybrid rendered sites.
• Check out Martin Split’s series over YouTube 
• Follow Maximilian Firtman to keep up to date with PWAs. @firt

The Nature of Intent: How to Nurture and Measure Throughout the Customer Journey

Aiden and Jill from the Colouring In Department  talked about The consumer Cross Stitch Model.

Customer intent and consumer journey

• What is a persona?
• Aiden and Jill went through this which is useful as a thought peace and conversion to have. 
• What do the personas see, hear, say and do, think and feel?
• This is done in a UX perspective but Aiden and Jill do this for search. 

The consumer cross stitch model is taking the state of awareness like the keywords, then stitching with the customer empathy, then adding the keyword modifiers and then what is the relevant URL and what might the potential SERP look like.

So turn Jill’s spreadsheet into something more friendly.

States of awareness: Pain or Problem aware

• Keyword modifiers – what should you look for in a Tokyo hotel? How to find a great hotel in Tokyo? Which hotel is in Lost in translation?
• Customer empathy map: think and feel
• Key message for your content? – Is this a problem for people like me? What is wrong with that I am doing now?
• URLs
• Company.com-which-hotel-is-in-lost-in-translation

Bounce rate

• Bounce rate – what Google defines as a bounce rate, the person goes to web page and does not go to another page on your site.
• You can end up making bad choices by looking at it. The user may have completed their journey. 
• Blog pages have a high bounce rate but that is fine, people may have seen and got the information they need.

Time stamps in GA

• Time on page, Google calculates a bit old but best they can do.
• Go to page 1 then go and read another page. Google only say how long you have been on that page when you go to the second page and they take away the top.
• So look at custom metrics so can fire time on page. Also do event tracking.
• Dana Tamaso written about customer content and built the containers to build on the page.

State of awareness: Solution aware

• Keyword modified: Best hotels in Tokyo, Best onset, Top Jazz hotels Tokyo
• Customer empathy map: See
• Key message for your content?
• What is the impact in using your product or service? My life with your product? My experience with your product? Can you show me your solution in action?
• URLs – company.com/top-jaxzz-hotel-tokyo
• SERP result will have reviews. 
• Content grouping:
• This is your typical all pages content report.
• Content grouping massively underused.
• There is a Google demo account and you can see it. You can have 5 content groupings per property.
• You can build this based on rules.
• Eg can see 25,000 page views for bags
• Because of intent, like to build rules. You can then start to loo at the content and see how many people are shifting between the content. Can also use reg ex.
• Start using Content Groupings. The hard part is just what do you want in those groups.

Stages of awareness: Product aware

• Keyword modifiers: Park Hyatt Shinjuku family room, imperial hotel, Japan location, Hyatt near Shinjuku
• Custom empathy map: Hear
• Key message for you content?
• Am I making the right decisions?What do experts say about you? What do other customers say about you?
• URLs – company.com/park-hyatt-shinjuku-family-room
• SERP result – see the map.

To Link the Channels Role in the Customer Journey

• You need to have goals, work it as if it is a funnel. 
• Look at the different goals and create all those 20 in GA. 

The last non direct channel gets 100% of the credit.

SO when look at all the goals, you are starting to understand the intent of your channels.

Social and paid social does not tend to convert but helps get it over.

Stages of Awareness: Most Aware

• Keyword modifiers: Hilton Tokyo v Park Hyatt, Book room Park Hyatt, Hyatt loyalty club discount
• Customer empathy Mao: – Say and do
• Key message for your content – how will it be delivered? Ts and Cs, Remind me why I am saying yes to you
• URLs company.com/hilton-tokyo-vs-park-hyatt

Multi channel Funnel – Assisted conversions

• You may not know or case there are 7 attribution models.
• First interaction gets 100% of the credit
• So do not just report on your acquisition – Go to assisted conversions.
• You can also drill down into the 20 goals
• In the MCF assisted respire, go into other, type in landing page URLs and you can see the assisted conversions too.

How to Make Your Content Marketing Drive ££ Not Links

Kevin Gibbons from Re:signal started his presentation by stating that when there is a new ranking factor, people are chasing this.

Google’s algorithm does not work like that, there is not just one big thing and then you win.

It was about links for a long time. Not a bad thing but there is so much more you should be working on to make sure it is working for you from an organic performance.

Everyone wants short term success.

• Short termism is killing your long term impact.
• You need to think how it fits into the long term strategy
• For anyone thinking of content marketing campaigns, think about content marketing strategy. What will it take to be market leaders.
• Content marketing – your reporting should not be focused around what is the easiest thing to track, should be about how you are aligned with your business objectives. 
• When Kevin started in SEO, he learned by testing and learning and improving. You need to figure out by yourself.
• Do not just read blogs, think how you can experiment and change. 
• Best results do not always come from best practice.

3 pillars of SEO

1. Strategy – forming a clear plan on how you can hit your goals 
2. Creativity – producing content that stands outing has a newsworthy hook 
3. Promotion – Digital PR outreach to get publishers excited

• Don’t just work in silos and hope it will all work together.
• Not just SEO team and content team and PR team.
• Every team has a mini team focused on clients working towards shared goal.
• You have to have everyone behind you.
• It is not always the tactical stuff.

Expedia

• Resignal has created many content marketing campaigns that have been v successful from PR perspective (for expedia).
• Build links and coverage in a campaign.
• But only hit creatively and promotion.  (2 pillars).
• Creative content marketing was getting more coverage but ddid not always correlate to SEO value and organic traffic coming through.
• So Resignal identified car hire as a key app for Expedia to improve their organise search performance.
• Sometimes you need less links than you think, focus on the business goal.
• Built a set of 3,000 target app keywords, optimised 650 pieces of existing on site content and produced 75 new pieces of content and securing authority digital PR coverage with creative content marketing campaigns.
• Saw a 19`% increase in organic traffic and 38% increase in organic revenue.

What does success look like?

• You need to know this first.  (Look at the triangle)
• It needs a clear strategy
• What keywords and topics are driving organic traffic?
  What type of content are competitors creating?
• Who are the main competitors?
• Who is winning/what are they winning?
• What is your prioritisation in the market?
• You can then work backwards and make a plan of attack.
• Understand key reasons why people are winning. 

SEO opportunity, Brand fit and PR newsworthy angle. Kevin Gibbons say they have a panel of journalists. This helps them get the content sweet spot.

Trying to build links to a domain might improve organic performance but for large sites it is difficult to measure the impact.

Think of content marketing in two ways – brand and tactical.

There is a still a place for Brand Led Campaigns. Think how to get brand led campaigns link to home page.

1. Following best practice only gets you so far
2. Trying to catch competitors means you are likely to close the gap
3. To become market leaders you need to pt your customers first and build a brand

Your brand is the single most important investment

Future proof-ish Link Building

Stacey MacNaught shared her insights on link building at Search Elite. She started off by saying that none of the sites that Stacey worked on before where they did buying for links they are not ranking.

• After 2011 moved to more creative stuff. Stacey was doing copywriting to begin with.
• Link schemes have not changed
• Create unique content – that is naturally going to get popularity. 
• 250,000 blog posts published every single hour.
• Internetlivestats.com  – look at this.
• Link building is often SEOs fixing what else is broken in the company.
• Google’s advice is build it, they will come. This does not happen for most businesses.
• Turning customers not fans, that is how you get links.
• Some people have to buy products and services not cause they want to but cause they have too.

We have To Build Links

Google says that if you made links yourself it is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

So everything is against the rules.

So what do we do?

1. Paid link building – still works and organic link building is hard
2. Or you could build no links
3. Or think about link building realistically

Need to treat links like conversions.

Create a white paper and ask for links.

Publish, promote, repeat

We need a completely different mindset.

We are really good at understanding users (SEOs) so we can treat them as prospective customers.

SOOOO Stacey recommends:

1. SEO 101

Basic keyword research – what are people looking at

Competitor analysis

Finder.com/uk – off the back of a simple approach creating statistic pieces. It is driving links naturally.

2. Look at external linking

Scrape a list of the most 500/1000 articles you want to be seen it, throw them into SF or site bulb and see what kinds of sites they are linking too. What does their external linking look like?

3. Publishers have a lot of insight how consumers are consuming content.

4. Think long term.

Stacey shared a case study of one of her clients. You need patience. Stacey did not ask for the link. Asked if they would like to see the study. Stacey does not ask if something was mentioned but no link (for the press).

Measure the value of the content over years not weeks. Think about assets in the long term.

5. Think beyond the outreach email.

• Many journalists get way too many emails. So choose what’s app or call.
• Emailing for content is cold calling. Journalists do not want for information from SEOs.
• Journalists and staff writers, they have things like Viral Content as a title.
• Think about doing more creative content. Instead of all these eggs in one basket. 

6. Paid advertising

• It is a solid way to get people coming to your content (Facebook)
• For resources or other types of content writers might actively be looking at Google Ads
• For stuff nobody knows they want until they have seen it, use Facebook.

7. Publishers are looking – Journorequest hashtag

Pressplugs.co.uk – journalists push requests there

Responsesource

pressloft.com

Look at the trends in these platforms, what are journalists looking for.

We are obsessed with link but we think of links first. SO interns of assessing a link on a website and if someone stuck a no follow on their link, Is it still worth it?

8. Does the link generate sales and credibility?

• Forget about DR and DA
• Look at the other benefits from the link.
• Need to analyse the links
• We should value content and contents valued over years

Managing SEO, CRO and UX to Build Beautiful Onsite Experiences

Nils Kattau and Izzi Smith shared the stage to talk about combining SEO and CRO to build great sites.

Search Engine Establishment is  about website health and security, indexible and secure

SEO is about doing content landing pages, get more traffic. The point is to get more traffic.

Then there is also Searcher Experience Optimization which is about writing really awesome satisfying content.