QRG Clues to How Google Evaluates Local Business Reputation

Image credit: Maura Boswell

Well, I actually read through the 172-page Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, with all of its memorable examples featuring jungle gyms, Tom Cruise, and the Utopia Animal Hospital.

I waded through this dense midge-water marsh of information hoping to enhance my comprehension of how Google understands local business reputation. I did it so you might not have to, and today’s column summarizes the clues I found amid the reeds as well as checking in with Dr. Marie Haynes for her algorithm update expertise.

For local brands, reputation is everything. It’s an always-on sales force, quality control, and a business intelligence methodology when creatively managed. It’s renown or infamy, a source of pride or a signal that improvements are required. It’s a multi-faceted local search engine ranking factor and it’s also a key component in how Google views entities. Today, we’ll take a swift trek through top takeaways from one enormous .pdf which just might inspire you to seek out many new ways of proving to Google and the public that the local businesses you market are the best in town.

The purpose of quality raters: somewhat clearer than mud!

Image Credit: Stan Lupo

Google employs 10,000+ people, referred to as “raters” or “evaluators” to judge webpages on the basis of the Search Quality Evaluator guidelines (sometimes referred to as the QRG). What sometimes confuses folks, though, is that these evaluations do not directly impact the rankings of the entities being reviewed. Rather, Google’s simplified explanation of the the purpose of this large human network is to:

“Help make sure Search is returning relevant results from the most reliable sources available”

How this works is that the raters are supposed to act as checks on whether Google’s ongoing algorithmic updates are producing better or worse results. For example, a quality rater might be tasked with looking at a set of results for the query “lead-free garden hose” before a Google update, and then compare that to the results for the same search after Google has made an adjustment. Did the adjustment produce better results, according to the principles in the guidelines? That’s the kind of question the rater is there to answer. As Google explains:

“They help us measure how well our systems are working to deliver great content.”

I like to think of the evaluators as a big flock of wading birds, probing the muddy sands of search for what they’ve been trained to think of as delicious. And why do we care what is on their menu? Because the guidelines tell us, in advance, something about how Google views search quality, and insights into their take on a good reputation are especially relevant to local business owners and their marketers.

Talking QRG + reputation with Dr. Marie Hanyes

When it comes to exploring the morass of Google’s algorithms, author and speaker Dr. Marie Haynes’ work is among the most respected in the industry and I’ve come to rely on her expertise. She has written extensively about the QRG and what it tells us about Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) and about Your-Money-or-Your-Life (YMYL) business models, and I particularly value the thoughts she shared with me about Google’s vision of reputation:

While Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines are not an exact representation of what Google’s algorithms do, we know that what’s in the QRG represents what Google is trying to accomplish in their algorithms. The QRG speaks several times about the importance of reputation. Google does not want to rank websites that are untrustworthy. What I found the most interesting in the QRG is how the raters are told to find different types of reputation information depending on the nature of the business they are researching. The guidelines say, “A website's reputation is based on the experience of real users, as well as the opinion of people who are experts in the topic of the website.”

If you are writing on YMYL topics, then I believe that in order to rank you need to have information that is backed up by experts in your field. For many sites, improving E-A-T can start with responding to reviews, rectifying negative reviews and fixing the business issues that lead to users leaving those negative reviews. In section 2.6.1 of the QRG, it says, “For YMYL informational topics, the reputation of a website or content creator should be judged by what experts in the field have to say. Recommendations from expert sources, such as professional societies, are strong evidence of a very positive reputation.”

But even if you are not writing on YMYL topics, reputation is important! The guidelines say, “For example, customer ratings and reviews may be helpful for reputation research of online stores, but much less so for medical information websites.” And also, “For some topics, such as humor or recipes, less formal expertise is OK. For these topics, popularity, user engagement, and user reviews can be considered evidence of reputation. For topics that need less formal expertise, websites can be considered to have a positive reputation if they are highly popular and well-loved for their topic or content type, and are focused on helping users.

Real users, formal and less-formal experts, and a variety of independent sources, then, all come into play when it comes to raters identifying reputations. Thank you, Dr. Haynes!

What makes for a good or bad reputation, according to Google’s Guidelines?

To start with, it’s interesting to note that Google sets an extremely low bar for many local businesses when it comes to their reputation. Nota bene:

Many small, local businesses or community organizations have a small “web presence” and rely on word of mouth, not online reviews. For these smaller businesses and organizations, lack of reputation should not be considered an indication of low page quality.

I find this quote fascinating for three reasons:

1. On the one hand, Moz readers will know that I am a very strong proponent of local businesses investing seriously in earning amazing word of mouth and a large body of positive reviews. Doing so should be table stakes for every local brand, no matter how small and no matter what Google thinks!

2. On the other hand, the fact that Google’s SMB expectations are so modest may lend a welcome note of ease to players just jumping into the local search marketing game; you need to become the best in town, but you’re not up against Google’s index of the whole world!

3. Finally, the foregoing excerpt from the guidelines is useful, because it illustrates how Google conceptualizes reputation in the context of overall page quality. In a nutshell, raters are looking around the web for proof of reputation to help them determine whether a web page deserves to be considered high or low quality.

Google’s document contains multiple examples of signs of a good or bad reputation, which I’ll pare down to just two:

Bad Reputation

Google points to a business selling jungle gyms that is the subject of multiple reviews claiming to have been ripped off and also of news articles citing fraud.

Good Reputation

Google mentions a medical facility which Wikipedia and news articles from respected sources name as one of the top four hospitals in the US.

The difference is easy to see, and your job in marketing a local business is to make it very obvious to the raters into which category your brand falls!

Where to build a reputational beacon any rater can see

Think of those thousands of raters in a boggy maze and learn to construct signals of reputation which handily guide them to a true and good quality assessment. Google lists all of the following as your options for this work:

Customer reviews

The local businesses you market will all make claims on their websites about offering top quality goods and services, but the QRG goes out of its way to instruct raters to disregard this sentiment in favor of the independent evaluations captured in actual customer reviews. Raters can examine your review corpus to see if the public feels the brand is meeting expectations. Famous brands may need to care most about reviews that judge whether a business is living up to hype, but every local company should implement a review acquisition and management strategy which seeks to prove to both the community and the raters that a high-quality reputation is being won via excellent customer service.

Professional reviews/ratings

If your industry includes a professional review site or network, make it a goal to earn this press. In the restaurant space, I’ve learned that most professional review sites don’t accept solicitations. Rather, an eatery must take the indirect approach of building up enough local word-of-mouth buzz to catch the attention of the professional reviewer. If your vertical lends itself to this type of notice, know that Google’s quality raters can closely examine this type of content for signals of brand quality.

Blog posts

If the community you serve is lucky enough to have one or more dedicated local blogs, their authors should be neighbors you get to know. Avoid a hard sell in your outreach. Rather, discover a meaningful way to start talking about your shared love of your city; local bloggers tend to be serious community advocates, and if you can prove that your business shares such aesthetics, you’re taking the first steps to becoming blog-worthy. If Google’s raters can find nearby writers speaking well of the brands you market, it can go far towards validating a good reputation.

Magazine articles

Many online magazines have a small business focus, and while you may need to work hard to achieve the level of fame that would win mentions of the brands you market in a publication like Entrepreneur or Fast Company, smaller concerns like Small Business Trends Magazine regularly spotlight SMBs. Columnists and editors are always looking for a good story, and while the inquiry and submission policies for each magazine will be different, thoughtful outreach on your part with an interesting business anecdote from which peers can derive takeaways is another great way to prove to the raters that a company is growing its good reputation.

News stories

From years of reading local business news stories, I’ve realized that the best way to earn inclusion is through simple helpfulness to the community. Whether that’s providing straight-up relief in a time of crisis, as in the above store of a disaster remediation company who did free work for a resident when her apartment was flooded, or from being a participant in or sponsor of events, teams, conferences, and movements, a local business can build a substantial reputation for good though its support of its neighbors. Sometimes, local stories are even of such considerable human interest that they become syndicated. Actively seek opportunities to become a business that’s known for helping others.

Forum discussions

Local business owners may sometimes wonder whether fora are too old school to be relevant. Google says no, and instructs its raters to check them for discussions of brand quality. If the community you serve has a forum, like the forum of the West Seattle Blog, where neighbors are asking one another about a restaurant, it’s a good thing to be mentioned there. Nextdoor would be another obvious option for local talk about your business. Most fora prohibit self-promotion, but if you become a member of a community hub like these, there may be opportunities for you to increase the visibility of your participation in your town or city and to respond when your company is mentioned and you’ll be offering a very positive impression for Google’s raters to consider.

Awards

I’ve served local business owners who are humble and shy of blowing their own horn, but in the quest for a glowing reputation, there is nothing to stop you from applying for prestigious awards or vying for local ones issued on a smaller scale, like the “best of the county” honors offered by this publication. Not only will it provide a strong signal of public trust on your website, Google Business Profile, and other online assets if you can say “voted best dentist in X in 2022” but the quality raters will encounter these awards and go further along their journey of believing your brand is truly earning a great reputation.

One last tip for reputation growth

Image credit: Steven Christenson

Google’s QRG is quite clear about wanting raters to rely mainly on independent sources to evaluate reputation. This is why it’s so important to get bloggers, columnists, reporters, communities, and organizations talking about the local businesses you market. You want your brands on their domains.

But don’t let a mention earned exist in one place only. When you earn press, reviews, awards, and other fame, repurpose that content on your website, local business listings, and social media profiles. Write some Google posts, shoot a video, craft a blog post, or an Instagram story. This will not only provide multiple paths for a Google search quality evaluator to discover your fame, but it will be remarketing positive messaging to the audience that matters more than any other: your customers!

The ancient Greek playwright Euripides said, “Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.” Local business owners have already built up an impressive store of sagacity simply by running their operations; taking the next step of learning to see reputation as Google does is a habit of success they can easily adopt. Always continue to think customer-first, but thinking search engine-second when it comes to building online renown is surely a tactic for the wise.

How to Measure the Impact of Content Based on Intent

When it comes to measuring the impact of content, you might think of KPIs like “sitewide conversion rate”, or picture an upward graph that shows an increase in traffic.

But are those metrics really meaningful? In this piece, I’ll argue that, no, they’re not. Instead, let’s focus on getting you actionable insights that can help your content flourish, by measuring its impact in a meaningful way.

The problem with sitewide conversion rates

Unless your website is a one-pager, the likelihood is that not all of your pages have the same intent. So why do we still measure conversion rates across an entire site?

The quick and honest answer here is that we do this because it’s easy and because that’s the way it’s always been done. But in reality, measuring your conversion rate across an entire site doesn’t give you any actionable insight - even when used in conjunction with volume of traffic.

It’s an oversimplification.

Using a sitewide conversion rate neglects to consider pages where the intent isn’t to buy something. Think about your blog pages, customer services or FAQ pages. A growth in traffic to these sections won’t directly lead to an increase in sales. But what it will do is drop your sitewide conversion rate. That’s not a bad thing, it just means that using sitewide conversion rates on their own isn’t the best way of measuring performance here.

The answer instead, is to make sure you can report on the intent of your pages to be able to understand what’s performing well and what’s not in their own right.

How can you do this? Well… we separate the pages in our reports based on their intent.

Separate pages based on their intent for reporting

Separating out pages based on their intent for reporting might sound like a pain, but there are ways you can automate this.

The biggest trick you can use is the URL structure. If you have a neat hierarchy, then this can work wonders to help you to group your pages in a way that makes sense to you.

Once they’re set up, you’ll be ready to report on your performance in a flash next time!

Here’s how you can do this in Google Analytics, Data Studio and in Excel/Google Sheets.

How to create segments in Universal Google Analytics

Creating custom segments in Universal Google Analytics allows you to pull out your data in a way that makes sense to you. It also allows you to quickly pull these segments into other reports, saving you countless hours.

What about GA4? “Segments” aren’t available in standard reports in GA4. An alternative called “Comparisons” are, but they can’t be saved once you exit the report. The key mechanics of how Comparisons work is similar to Segments, but can only be used as a quick review rather than an in-depth report. For in-depth reports that use Segments in GA4, you’ll need to visit “Explore” from the left hand tab and set up a new report.

If you haven’t used segments yet in Universal Analytics, you’ll find these by clicking on the blue circle of “All Users”. You’ll also see a button for “Choose segment from list” when looking at virtually any report in Google Analytics.

In Universal Analytics, you’ll see a list of segments that have already been created for you. But for now, these aren’t the ones we want to use. We want to create our own almighty segments.

So go ahead and click the big red button of “+ New Segment”.

Now you’ll need to give your segment a name that will help you find it again later.

Here you can segment your data in pretty much any way you can think of. But for the purposes of today, we’re looking to create a segment to work out your conversion rate based on the intent of the page they landed on. For that, we need to head over to the “Advanced” section under “Conditions”.

This is the place where the magic happens.

You can first choose whether you want to filter based on sessions or users. As we want to find sessions that started on a particular section of your site, you’ll want to keep this filter to “Sessions” and “Include”.

Next, you need to think about what section of the site you want to look at. One of the easiest ones you can start with is blog traffic, especially if you have /blog/, /news/ or similar as the defining hierarchy in your URLs.

If you have both sections, then you can lump these together by using the “OR” function of the filter. This will then show you all of the data based on landing pages that contained either the /blog/ or /news/ in the hierarchy.

One tip: be careful which match condition you use. If you choose “exact match”, then this data might not include ALL of your data, as it won’t include any page landings where parameters were appended. Equally, if you have a hierarchy where the URL you’re looking to match is also used in other pages, then you might have to add exclusions to your filter.

When setting up your segment, always double check your data against your expected raw data in Google Analytics to check for accuracy. Small differences in the way you’ve set up your segments can impact the reliability of your data as you could either under- or over-estimate the volume of traffic, conversions or goals by assuming that your segment is giving you an accurate view. So, manually checking the raw data output against your logic can help to find any holes (or you could even create counter-segments using the reverse logic to check that you’ve covered 100% of your raw data).

When you save your segment, you’ll be able to review your subset of data in seconds, and pull them into other external reports.

Here’s an example of what you’ll typically find when you’re looking at a conversion rate for all users, alongside your segments for commercial pages and blog pages.Your ‘true’ conversion rate for the pages that are designed to convert is much higher than your sitewide conversion rate. You’ll also see that your blog traffic (that might not be designed to convert) has a lower conversion rate - which has impacted your sitewide conversion rate, skewing your outlook on how they’re actually performing.

How to create segments in GA4

To use segments in GA4, you’ll need to visit the “Explore” section. Here, you’ll be able to create your own custom reports and delve deeper into your segmented data. If you’re new to GA4, it’s worth reading Google’s guide to Explorations.

In Explore, segments can be found when setting up your report — you can even add a separate comparative segment to benchmark your data against.

To add a new segment, click on the “Segments” section shown below on the left.

You’ll then be given options to “Include” and “Exclude” your dimensions based on metric values.

As the naming conventions of dimensions in GA4 are different to Universal, you’ll need to include sessions where the “Page location” (URL to me and you) contains “/blog/”. You can add “Or” statements here too if needed.

Once you’ve set up your report, with Explore, you can customize the metrics to view in your reports and choose how to visualize it, unlike Universal Analytics. The world is your oyster to create custom content-based reports here!

How to create Data Studio filters

I love using Google Data Studio. I think it’s an underused tool for content management. Sure, it’s used a lot for top-level reporting, but I’m talking about the real juicy, actionable reports.

When it comes to making deep-diving reports, using Data Studio saves time and allows you to bring together data from different sources like Google Sheets, Search Console, and Google Analytics.

When setting up your data sources from Google Analytics, you’ll be given the option of adding a Google Analytics segment (you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom of your data tab). Here you can import any segment you’ve already made. I’ve imported one of my brand’s Google Analytics segments:Staysure blog.

As well as being able to import segments, you can also create your own filters when you click on “Add a filter”. Doing this prompts this box:

Here you can give your filter a name. This isn’t saved back to Google Analytics, and will only ever be found in the Google Data Studio report that you’re working on, so if you want to work on something particularly complex that you want to reuse, it’s worth adding your conditions as a segment in GA.

Above, I’ve replicated the segment in GA to show you what it would look like if I only wanted to create that filter in Data Studio.

Another benefit of using Data Studio for reporting rather than Google Analytics is that you can layer your filters and blend data together to build in-depth reports that you can jump into without having to dig through data time and time again.

So, if I wanted to find out what percentage of organic landings my page contributed to, that answer’s pretty hard to find in GA without writing down numbers somewhere else, or scrolling through a full dataset.

Instead, in Data Studio, you can use the organic segment from GA and add on a custom filter to look at just the page you want to review. To get your magic number, blend the data to pull through:

• Left hand side: All organic traffic: Dimension: Page, Metric: entrances (+ add a filter for organic)

• Right hand side: Your new ‘page only’ segment: Dimension: Landing page (to act as the key match), Metric: entrances .

To make life easier, rename the fields by clicking on the “ABC” or “AUT” box next to the field name so that it’s something different…

Once you’ve blended your data, you’ll need to create a new field. To do this, click on the Metric title that’s used for your new blended data chart - this then expands to show you data from table 1, table 2 and a new option at the bottom with a plus mark and “Create Field”. Click this to see this pop up:

Here you can create your own formulas based off of your datasets. So this is where we do SUM(my chosen page entrances)/ SUM(all organic landings). It’s important to add the “SUM” when adding calculations to blended datasets to amalgamate the data.

Finish by naming your field and boom. You now know - for any date range you’ve chosen, what proportion of organic traffic that page accounts for.

If you want to get really fancy, you can even add a comparison date range to see how this percentage changes over time.

Creating segments in Google Sheets/Excel

If you want to go old-school, you can even filter pages in Google Sheets, or Excel.

Without manually going through each of your data points, you can create a new column and use a nested “if” statement mixed with a “regexmatch” statement.

This formula has been used on some dummy data to show how you can speed up the categorization of pages based on URL mapping:

=if(REGEXMATCH(A2,"travel-insurance/"),"commercial",if(regexmatch(A2,"news|blog"),"blog",if(regexmatch(A2,"/customer-services/"),"customer services","other")))

You can then use pivot tables to compile your data into segments.

Here, I’ve created a new pivot table using the above data, using the “Group” as the rows, and “Traffic” as the values. I’ve then changed the traffic values to show as a percentage of the column instead of as a sum. This now shows me, in a quick snapshot, how much traffic is attributed to each page type. Using this method can help to segment your data and see how your pages perform based on their intent. Add metrics like conversion rates, phone calls and softer metrics to really understand what makes these pages tick.

What to do if your URLs aren’t clear when intent mapping

If the structure of your site doesn’t make it easy for you to map your intent easily, then you might need to create a master sheet of intent.

This can then be referred to via a VLookup in sheets, or to be used as a blended dataset in Google Data Studio against your other data.

If you want to get really fancy, you can tag your content data in Google Analytics by using a data import into a custom dimension. But you’ll still need to do the hard work in mapping your intent yourself.

Introduction to attribution modeling

Now you know how to review the impact of your content based on its intent, it’s time to make the story a bit more complicated.

Although measures of success with informational intent pages are seen as smaller wins, these pages can also help attribute to sales — eventually. Or, sessions to commercial pages that didn’t convert on a first hit might eventually lead to a sale a while later.

By only reviewing direct conversions in Google Analytics (which is the native metric that’s used), we run the risk of missing opportunities and not seeing the bigger picture of how people use our sites. This could lead to making decisions like culling content that’s actually helpful.

We know that people don’t live in a linear world. We don’t see a product we love and buy it immediately. (Okay, sure, I will put my hand up and admit that SOMETIMES, that’s how the world works.)

But most of the time, we hem and haw over decisions, shop around, look at various sites on our mobiles, searching via Google, social and asking our friends and family for input. We swap devices before we decide what to buy, or we might even walk into a real life shop and talk to someone about it.

To measure this kind of behavior is called multi-channel attribution modeling. It’s an understanding that people don’t simply visit and then buy in a linear way. Their decisions are multifaceted and that means our analytics should reflect that, and attribute leads or sales accordingly. There’s a great introduction to multi-channel attribution modeling by Avinash Kaushik if you fancy wandering down a rabbit hole of discovery there.

You’ll find loads of information on how to use attribution modeling in Google Analytics on a channel basis, but what you often won’t find is how you can do this on a landing page basis.

A search for “attribution modelling” “google analytics” gave me only 17,300 results on Google, suggesting it’s a pretty niche area in itself. Yet adding “landing page” in there, delivered only 2,790 results.

So, not a lot of people are talking about this super powerful report. The reason why they aren’t talking about it isn’t because it’s a secret. It’s because it’s really hard to find.

Assisted conversions by landing page

To get to your assisted conversions by landing page report in Google Analytics, you’ll need to go to Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions.

Here, you’ll see a report that shows all of your assisted conversions, based on all of your goals.

Before we get too distracted like a kid in Disney World, let’s set this report up properly with the intention of finding out assisted conversions by landing page.

1. Change the conversions this report sees as a goal from “all” to sales, leads, etc. — whatever you deem as a conversion and are actively tracking. If you don’t change this setting, you’ll also be viewing all of your micro conversions that you’ve set as goals like video views or time on site.

2. Change your lookback window to something meaningful for your business. You can set this at any number of days up to 90.

3. The report you’ll see will automatically be set to channel groupings. The suggested options for the primary dimension are all focused on channel breakdowns like Source/Medium. To change this, go to “other” and select “landing page URL”.

What does the assisted conversion report by landing page show me?

Now you’ve got your data, it’s time to learn what you’re looking at.

• Assisted conversions: shows you how many times that landing page helped someone to convert (but not in that session).

• Assisted conversion value: if you’ve attributed a goal value, this column will show you its value.

• Last Click or Direct Conversions: these are the conversions that you’d typically see in other GA reports that were part of the final converting session.

• Last click or Direct Conversions value: again, if you’ve added a goal value, you’ll see this here.

• Assisted/Last Click or Direct Conversions: this shows you a percentage of assisted conversions versus those that were part of the session that converted. The higher the number, the more important that page is as part of the journey to convert rather than a direct contributor.

How can I use the assisted conversion by landing page report?

You can use the assisted conversion report by landing page to:

• Search for the impact of blog pages as part of a converting journey.

• Use it to decide if landing pages can be removed without impacting conversion.

• Understand the role that different pages have in converting visitors.

In summary:

We’ve learnt that:

• Site-wide conversion rates don’t give us actionable insights by themselves.

• The impact of a page should be measured based on its intent: informational, customer service, and commercial.

• The intent of pages can be segmented using Google Analytics, Google Data Studio or Google Sheets, to give you a top level picture of how they’re performing as a whole towards a common aim.

• Before you make any judgment on how a page is performing and whether it should be removed, consider its wider impact and use attribution modeling to better understand its performance.

I really hope you’ve found this useful and you’re now armed to make your own intent-based reports using whatever toolset you feel comfortable with.

The Four Pillars of Relevancy: How Digital PR Campaigns Can Lead to Gains in Every Sector

Relevance continues to be a hot topic in search, especially since John Mueller broke the internet last year by saying that the “number of links doesn't matter at all”, and that relevant content trumps the quantity of content.

I head up the team at JBH the Digital PR Agency, and whilst growing the team and working with a huge range of brands over the last four years, I've realized that we wear many, many different hats.

For some of our clients, we are their link building agency. We achieve specific links that adhere to specific criteria to support SEO objectives. For other clients, we’re there to help build their brand, create thought leaders, and develop beautiful, shareable content. For those clients, SEO is secondary.

And for other brands, we’re somewhere in the middle.

What has become overwhelmingly clear is that the relevance of the links we build sits under each of these hats, and it’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time working on at JBH, in order to improve our delivery all around.

Who cares about relevance anyway?

If you’ve ever had your content outranked by a tiny, hyper-niche site, then you’ll definitely care about relevance. Even Google prioritizes relevance when deciding where to rank pages.

The good news is that we can learn from this, and apply certain processes to our own activity. In this post, you’ll see how the team here at JBH bakes the principles of topical relevance into our content, outreach, and link building strategies.

I ran a (very scientific) poll on Twitter earlier in the year — presenting my network with four different options, and asking them to select which one they cared most about when it comes to linked coverage. And the results were super interesting

Out of these four options, what do you care about the most when it comes to linked coverage for your clients/brands/sites? (I know it is all of them! But what's the most important for ✨YOU✨)

— Rebecca Moss (@bexmoss) January 17, 2022

Turns out we ALL care about relevance — more than the topic being newsworthy, and interestingly, more than keywords!

It was a trick question, really, as these are the four factors that we benchmark our content and ideas against. Nonetheless, it was quite telling that keywords were (ironically) bottom of the rankings.

What does relevance really mean in the context of digital PR?

Relevance means different things to different people. So, I decided to create a framework through which to run every single idea — with the aim of ensuring said idea sits somewhere on the spectrum of relevance for our clients.

Above, you’ll see the graphic we created to check our ideas against what we believe to be the four key pillars of relevance. As long as our ideas fit into one of the quarters, and as close to the middle as possible, we know we’re on the right track.

The key pillars of the JBH Relevance Spectrum

1. Audience — would my client or brand's audience be interested in this content?

2. Authority — is my client or brand an authority on the subject? Could they be interviewed about it?

3. Keywords — does it contain keywords that we want to rank for, and do we have a page on the site that makes sense to link to?

4. Newsworthiness — will journalists care about what we are saying? What are we adding to the conversation?

Relevant content drives links to key commercial pages

When done right, digital PR work that focuses on relevance can deliver so much more than just links — and brands are catching on to its commercial impact.

In the last 12 months, I've been inundated with requests from brands looking for links to their commercial pages, compared to links from larger creative content campaigns. The digital PR industry has come full circle, and we’re going back to the basics of content marketing.

But don’t get me wrong, building links to commercial content is really hard. Now, we dig deep into the business, the sector, and the website itself to understand how to develop our link acquisition strategy to get the best results for the brand. Instead of having a link-first mindset, we challenged ourselves to have a research-first mindset.

Relevance sits at the heart of this effort, and the impact of this work drives true commercial value — but how do we make this work for brands in different industries and sectors?

Step 1: We ask the right questions

From the second we sign a contract with a new brand, we’re on a journey of discovery. We need to know about the business, their goals, and what success looks like for them through the medium of digital PR. We stop being link builders and become intrinsically involved with the business we’re representing.

Step 2: We give ourselves clear boundaries before tackling ideation

Ideation can sometimes be a free-for-all, but setting boundaries around what topics and themes we can ideate around can be so helpful in guiding the way to a truly relevant idea that can be angled towards a prioritized landing page.

Step 3: We forget formats and let the idea guide us to a creative solution

Our creative solutions are always backed by data, but we let the idea guide us as to how the data will be presented. We never have a “type” of campaign in mind when we approach ideation.

Step 4: We use the relevance spectrum to stress test our ideas

Before sharing ideas with the client or brand, we’ll stress-test our ideas against the relevance spectrum to ensure we’re content that our ideas truly match the client and how they want to be presented.

Case study: How this process drove traffic and increased visibility for a private medical center in the UK

By following the framework outlined above, we were able to increase visibility for a healthcare brand in a very competitive market by over 300%. Here’s how we hit all of the key elements of the relevance spectrum, plus the impact and outcomes of following this approach:

Authority — is my client or brand an authority on the subject? Could they be interviewed about it?

We met with the founders of the facility to discuss their key campaign objectives. Much like our Twitter poll, relevance was top priority — along with showcasing the expertise of the team and their innovative approach to recovery.

We left the meeting understanding what they were willing to talk about, in addition to the topics they were not so comfortable with — helping us to keep our ideas within their boundaries.

Audience — would my client or brand's audience be interested in this content?

We also spoke with their admissions team, who were able to tell us more about the most common or frequent questions they are asked by service users. We then used this insight to help us develop campaigns or pitch ideas that answered said queries.

In addition to this, we looked more broadly at the publications the service users and their families were likely to read, and analyzed topics that might fit those outlets.

Keywords — does it contain keywords that we want to rank for, and do we have a page on the site that makes sense to link to?

We then met with their SEO team, who were able to give us an onsite content roadmap, target keywords, and a prioritized list of landing pages mapped to those keywords, as well as a timeline for those pages to be published, so we could plan our digital PR stories in advance.

They also gave us information on the competition, including how aggressive they were being with link acquisition across the board. This helped us with benchmarking, providing us with a really solid base for our activity.

Newsworthiness — will journalists care about what we are saying? What are we adding to the conversation?

With all of this information at our disposal, we were in a great place to start thinking about campaign ideas, but we needed to absorb plenty of information about the sector first so we understood what we were dealing with.

We set up media alerts for key phrases, and brand alerts for the competition, so we could see exactly what was being published. Looking closely at the competition, we learned what was working well for them — and crucially, what wasn't working quite so well.

We set up RSS feeds to deliver news relating to the priority keywords and read it each day, helping us become attuned to the newsworthy topics relating to addiction recovery.

From this, we watched out for which journalists were covering topically relevant stories, and added them to our prospecting list. We then set to work coming up with ideas that aligned with all of the above information.

The impact — high authority links to commercial pages

By following this approach, we found that we were able to secure highly relevant links and coverage — all while remaining in sync with the SEO team working on the site.

As the content we produced was so relevant to the brand, it made sense for the journalists to link to key service pages. This is how we achieved the following commercial gains as a result of pitching topically relevant content for the brand:

• Traffic was up more than 200% year-on-year

• Over half (56%) of the links built pointed to a key service page

• Organic traffic to their commercial pages increased by 500%

• 167% more keywords were on the first page of Google

This five-step checklist ensures relevance is prioritized in every digital PR campaign

In order to make this work cross-industry, we’ve developed a five-point checklist to ensure that relevance is prioritized at every stage. Depending on the brand and the sector, we’ll follow some or all of the points below to ensure that we’re considering the relevance of our digital PR campaign ideas above all else.

1. Research the industry in which your brand operates

• How well-established is the industry?

• Who are the key players you’ll be competing against?

• How competitive are the keywords that you need to rank for the brand?

• What PR and SEO activity are the key players doing? And how much?

2. Understand the business you’ve been tasked to build links to

• How well-established is the brand in relation to the competition?

• What products or services do they want to push?

• What is working well, and what isn’t working quite so well?

• Where are their overall marketing efforts being concentrated?

• What markets and/or territories are important to them?

3. Understand the website you’ve been tasked to build links to

• How well-established is the website?

• How many links or referring domains do your commercial pages have right now?

• How does that compare to the key players outlined above?

• Are there any content gaps that need to be filled?

4. Analyze the competition

• Identify competing pages and analyze how they are working well

• What links do the competition have that you don’t?

• How aggressive is their link acquisition?

• What content topics are your competitors covering?

5. Keywords and landing pages

• What are they? Do they have a corresponding landing page?

• Does your client agree with your priorities?

• What is the intent of the keywords?

• How competitive are those keywords?

This framework can be followed to achieve results for brands in most sectors — but the setup is key

It is so easy to get relevance wrong in the context of digital PR. Branded campaigns aren’t needed in order to be relevant. We now need to look more closely at target audiences and produce content that appeals both to them AND the publications that they read.

By stepping away from the link-first mindset and applying some research-led common sense we can produce more relevant campaigns that achieve measurable results against SEO metrics.

Convince Your Boss to Send You to MozCon Virtual 2022 [Plus Bonus Letter Template!]

MozCon is back in person for 2022! From networking with your peers to hearing from industry leaders, there are benefits a-plenty to attending conferences. You know that. Your peers know that. But how do you persuade the powers-that-be (aka your boss) that sending you is beneficial for your business?

Don’t worry, we’ve got a plan. (And if you want to skip ahead to the letter template, here it is!)

Copy the template

How to make the case

Business competition is fiercer than ever. Only those who are able to shift tactics with the changing tides of marketing will be able to come out on top. And that’s exactly what MozCon is going to help you do.

Covering everything a growing marketer needs for a well-balanced marketing diet (SEO, content, strategy, growth), MozCon delivers top-notch talks from hand-selected speakers over three insightful days in July.

There's so much in store for you this year. Here’s just a sampling of what you can expect at this year’s MozCon:

Speakers and content

Our speakers are real practitioners and industry leaders. We work with them to ensure they deliver the best content and insights to the stage to set you up for a year of success. No sales pitches or talking heads here!

Networking

You work hard taking notes, learning new insights, and digesting all of that knowledge — that’s why we think you deserve a little fun in the evenings. It's your chance to decompress with fellow attendees and make new friends in the industry. We host exciting evening networking events that add to the value you'll get from your day of education. Plus, our Birds of a Feather lunch tables allow you to connect with like-minded peers who share similar interests.

High-quality videos to share with your team

About a month or so after the conference, we’ll send you a link to professionally edited videos of every presentation at the conference. Your colleagues won’t get to partake in the real-time experience(the #FOMO is real), but they will get a chance to learn everything you did, for free.

Great food on site

We know that conference food isn’t typically worth mentioning, but MozCon is notorious for its cornucopia of tasty offerings.

You can expect two hot meals a day and loads of snacks from local Seattle vendors — in the past we’ve featured a smorgasbord from the likes of Trophy cupcakes, KuKuRuZa popcorn, Starbucks’ Seattle Reserve cold brew.

Swag

No duds here, we do our homework when it comes to selecting thoughtful swag worthy of keeping. One-of-a-kind Roger Mozbots, a super-soft t-shirt, and more cool stuff you’ll want to take home and show off.

Wear your heart on your sleeve

MozCon on behalf of our attendees gives back each year through donating a portion from every ticket sold towards a charitable organization. Our 2022 charitable recipients are Washington Trails Associationand North Cascades Institute.

Discounts for current customers

Moz Pro, Moz Local, and STAT customers save big on their ticket cost, and there are discounts for groups of 10+ as well, so make sure to take advantage of savings where you can!

Testimonials

But of course, don’t take our word for it! There are some incredible resources available at your fingertips that tout the benefits of attending conferences:

"I've been to MozCon six times — it's worth traveling all the way from Adelaide, Australia. The knowledge sharing is next level!" — Woj Kwasi, Head Honcho, Kwasi

"MozCon is hands-down among the best organized tech-oriented conferences I’ve ever attended. From the strongly inclusive culture with rich representation of all stripes of life, to the friendly vibe around the lunch tables and after-session parties, you would be hard pressed to find a more informative and beneficial SEO conference in the US. — Eddie Childs, Inbound Marketing Manager, Mediagistic

"MozCon has been my go-to conference for the past three years. Between the top-notch speaker lineup, fantastic accommodations and memorable parties and networking events, it's truly a must-attend event for any digital marketing professional looking to further their career in the industry." — Kyle Sutton, Sr. Product Manager, SEO Gannett / USA TODAY NETWORK

"MozCon is more than a "work conference" - it really is an annual collaboration with the brightest and most talented SEOs from all over the world. Three full days of idea sharing, insights, and quality time with industry experts. Never have I ever been to a conference where the speakers on stage are humble and easily accessible. 5/5 would attend again." — Angela O'Pry, Marketing Coordinator at Access Sciences

Need a little more to get your boss on board? Check out some videos from years past to get a taste for the caliber of our speakers.

Buy ticket, save money, get competitive marketing insights. Everyone wins!

MozCon is one unforgettable experience that lives and grows with you beyond just the three days you spend in Seattle. And there's no time like the present to pitch MozCon to your boss. If they're still stuck on the "why", let them know about our subscriber or group pricing tiers to your boss — you’ll save hundreds of dollars when you do. Just think of all the Keurigs you could get for that communal kitchen!

Be sure to grab the letter template and make your case the easy way.

Sneak Peek: The Initial MozCon 2022 Speaker Lineup

Have you been waiting on the edge of your seat for MozCon to start rolling out the lineup of speakers? Well, my friend, today’s the day so hold on tight!

We’re thrilled to announce the first 15 extraordinary speakers that will be taking the MozCon 2022 stage in Seattle this July (in alphabetical order).

Meet the speakers

Amalia Fowler (she/her)

Founder, Good AF Consulting
@AmaliaEFowler

Amalia is the Founder of Good AF Consulting, a Vancouver, BC consulting firm where she helps companies build great marketing teams. She's also a marketing instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and creator of The Wholehearted Manager, a newsletter for people who believe in leading with their heart, and that all employees deserve a safe space to work. Amalia has been in search marketing for eight years, with her work focused on helping businesses understand marketing strategy, mentoring new marketers, building exceptional marketing teams and advocating for more ethical and transparent practices in our space. Her favorite saying is "It Depends," because context is everything.

Amanda Milligan (she/her)

Head of Marketing, Stacker
@millanda | @stacker

Amanda Milligan is the Head of Marketing at Stacker Studio. With a degree in journalism and a decade in content marketing, she’s spent her career helping brands harness the intersection of content and SEO.

Andy Crestodina (he/him)

Co-founder / CMO, Orbit Media Studios
@crestodina | @orbiteers

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, an award-winning 50-person digital agency in Chicago. Over the past 20 years, Andy has provided digital marketing advice to over 1,000 businesses.

Areej AbuAli (she/her)

Head of SEO, Papier (areejabuali.com)
@areej_abuali | @TechSEOWomen

Areej is Head of SEO at Papier where she focuses on all things technical and on-site SEO. She is the founder of the global Women in Tech SEO community and has been in the digital marketing industry for over eight years.

Crystal Carter (she/her)

Head of SEO Comms, Wix
@CrystalontheWeb

Crystal Carter is an SEO and digital marketer with over 15 years experience working with clients like Disney, Tomy, Kikkoman, and more. She shares insights in leading publications like Google Webmaster Central, The Moz Blog, Search Engine Land, and Women in Tech SEO.

Hannah Smith (she/her)

Founder, Worderist
@hannah_bo_banna

With more than 15 years in the SEO industry, Hannah's creative work has won multiple awards, and she's worked with a range of companies including the BBC, Dyson, Expedia, MailChimp, and Salesforce.

Jackie Chu (she/her)

SEO Lead, Intelligence, Uber
@jackiecchu

Jackie Chu is currently the SEO Lead, Intelligence for Uber, driving analytics and tooling for the SEO teams globally. She has deep experience in technical SEO, content SEO, ASO and international SEO spanning both B2B and B2C industries.

Joe Hall (he/him)

SEO Consultant & Principal Analyst, Hall Analysis
@joehall

Joe Hall is an executive SEO consultant focused on analyzing and informing the digital marketing strategies of select clients through in-depth data analysis and SEO audits.

Lidia Infante (she/her)

Senior SEO Manager, BigCommerce (lidia-infante.com)
@LidiaInfanteM | @bigcommerce

Born and raised in Barcelona, Lidia has been working in SEO for over eight years. She's been helping businesses in e-commerce, media and B2B reach their audiences on search across European markets, the US and Australia. She has leveraged her BSc in Psychology and Master's in Digital Business to drive organic growth for e-commerce sites, media, and SaaS.

Lily Ray (she/her)

Senior Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research, Amsive Digital
@lilyraynyc | @amsive_digital

Lily Ray is the Sr. Director, SEO & Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital, where she provides strategic leadership for the agency’s SEO client programs. Lily began her SEO career in 2010 in a fast-paced start-up environment and moved quickly into the agency world, where she helped grow and establish an award-winning SEO department that delivered high impact work for a fast-growing list of notable clients, including Fortune 500 companies.

Noah Learner (he/him)

Product Director, Two Octobers
@noahlearner | @twooctobers

Noah is a technical marketer, nicknamed the Kraken, who is happiest building SEO tools, automations, data pipelines and communities. When not in the lab, he loves skiing, fly fishing, camping with his family, and walking his dog, Shadow.

Paddy Moogan (he/him)

Co-Founder, Aira
@paddymoogan | @airadigital

Paddy is co-founder of Aira, a digital marketing agency based in the UK and delivering work across SEO, paid media, content marketing, and digital PR. He has been working in SEO since around 2004 when he got bored studying for his law degree.

Dr. Pete Meyers (he/him)

Marketing Scientist, Moz
@dr_pete | @moz

Dr. Pete is Marketing Scientist for Moz, where he works with the marketing and data science teams on product research and data-driven content.

Tom Capper (he/him)

Senior Search Scientist, Moz
@thcapper | @moz

Tom heads up the Search Science team at Moz, providing research and insight for Moz's next generation of tools. Previously, he led the London consulting team for SEO agency Distilled, and worked as a chef in a roadside grill.

Wil Reynolds (he/him)

Founder & Vice President of Innovation, Seer Interactive
@wilreynolds | @SeerInteractive

Wil has been leading the charge to leverage “Big Data” to break down silos between SEO, PPC, and traditional marketing — pulling together data from various sources to see the big picture.

Stay tuned for more MozCon updates!

And we’re just getting warmed up! We’ve got lots more incredible speakers to reveal in the coming weeks including our community speaker lineup, but don’t wait to snap your ticket as early bird savings are only available for a limited time and once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.

The Professional’s Guide to SEO: Link Building Sneak Preview

We’re developing a brand-new SEO guide for you — The Professional’s Guide to SEO, designed as your next-step resource once you’re comfortable with the baseline provided by the Beginner’s Guide to SEO.

When we think of link building, one of the first people we think of is our friend Paddy Moogan at Aira, the architect of the Beginner’s Guide to Link Building, MozCon alumni speaker, and industry thought leader. That’s why we’re jazzed to announce that the link building chapter of our upcoming Professional’s Guide to SEO is authored by none other than the fine folks at Aira. And today we’re sharing an excerpt of that very chapter.

Dive in for a glimpse at our newest guide, and as always, give us a shout on Twitter if you have any thoughts or recommendations — we love hearing from you!

Link Building & Link Earning Tactics

Measuring link building

In this section, we explore approaches to measuring links and understanding which ones may make the biggest difference to traffic and rankings, along with business outcomes such as revenue.

Once your link building strategy is set and you’re underway, you need to measure your work so that you can understand the effectiveness of what you’re doing and demonstrate its value. There are a few ways that you can measure link building, which we’ll cover below, along with the pros and cons of each one.

Volume of links

You can use various tools (such as Link Explorer) to measure the volume of links to a domain and then measure this number over time. You can also manually measure the links that you build via your own outreach and record these over time.

The advantage of this measure is that it’s very easy to do and is usually a direct consequence of the work that you are doing. For example, if you engage in a tactic such as broken link building, you can see exactly how many links you were able to build as a result of that work. This will allow you to understand which activities are most worthwhile and effective at generating volumes of links.

There is a downside to this form of measurement. Not all links are created equal, and the raw volume of links isn’t very useful without important context such as the authority and relevance of those links.

One high-quality, authoritative, relevant link could do more for your site than a hundred low-quality links. If you only measure link volume on its own, then the hundred low-quality links may be seen as successful and effective.

Volume of links can be a useful metric as long as you layer it with other context, which we’ll talk about below.

Quality of links

“Quality” is generally quite subjective, but when it comes to link building, there are some good ways to understand and measure the quality of a link. The two core ways are:

1. Relevance of a link

2. Authority of a link

Let’s talk about relevance first.

Link relevance

Relevance isn’t binary. You can’t just look at a link and say off the bat whether it’s relevant or not. For example, imagine you get a link to your website from another in the same industry and which contains content similar to yours. It sounds relevant at the surface, but what if the link is pointing at a piece of content you’ve created that’s on a completely different topic — is that still a relevant link?

What if you somehow get a link from NASA to your coffee beans website? Space exploration isn’t exactly relevant to the grinders and beans that you sell, is it?!

Situations like these make relevance pretty difficult to measure, especially at scale. But it’s possible to do by using your own experience, instincts, and by asking a few basic questions when looking at a link:

• If the link is on another website, how likely is it that a potential customer for your products would see that link?

• If the link is to a piece of content that you’ve created, would that content resonate with your ideal customer?

• If someone at your company who has zero knowledge of SEO and link building saw the link, would they be happy with it?

Questions like these can help you judge whether a link is relevant to your business or not. Despite it not being the most objective measure and hard to scale, factoring relevance into your link building measurement at some point is vital. This is because the more relevant links are, the more likely they are to put you in front of potential customers and to generate real traffic.

Link authority

When it comes to authority, there are many third-party scoring methods that aim to replicate Google PageRank. Domain Authority and Page Authority are proprietary metrics created by Moz. They can give you an approximate idea of how much value a particular link has. It’s not foolproof, and no third-party metric can truly replicate Google PageRank, but they can be good enough to give you a rough idea of how much authority a link has.

Using third-party metrics is a good thing, but you should always keep in mind that these metrics are not used by Google themselves. This means that they’re naturally limited in their usefulness and, similar to link volume, they shouldn’t be used without context.

Rankings and organic search traffic

Ideally, the link building that you carry out should have a positive effect on your organic search rankings and as a consequence, your traffic as well. As we learned earlier, there are many signals that Google uses to determine organic search rankings, but building the right kinds of links is a strong one and should help you rank better.

However, it can be hard to measure the direct effect of the links you build on organic search rankings and traffic. It’s not as simple as being able to say “we built 10 links and our traffic went up by 20%.” Despite understanding some of the signals, none of us knows exactly how the Google algorithm works and even if we did, every website and industry is different.

Building ten links for a brand-new coffee bean website is likely to have a bigger impact than building 10 links for an established website that sells car insurance.

This makes our lives harder as SEOs, but not impossible. It’s also easier if you’re able to control or at least have some influence over other important areas of SEO, such as technical SEO or content.

The main thing that many of us can do, regardless of how much control we have, is to measure organic search rankings and traffic objectively over time and look for consistent improvement. Check your rankings with tools such as Moz Pro or Google Search Console and use Google Analytics to check traffic.

Referral traffic

Another way to measure the effectiveness of link building is to look at how much traffic is sent via the links that you’ve built.

It’s easy to get caught up in measurement of rankings and organic traffic and forget that you can generate traffic directly from links, too. This happens when someone sees your link and then clicks on it, resulting in a visit to your website.

Now, not every link that you build will send traffic — and that’s okay. However, one aspect of your approach should include building links that do indeed lead to referral traffic. They may come as a result of launching a great piece of content or building a new, innovative product feature that gets picked up by industry experts.

Setting expectations is important here because, as mentioned, not every link will send lots of traffic. For example, if you get a link on a page because of a great resource that you’ve created, but your link is amongst hundreds of other links on the external website, the chances of someone clicking on yours is significantly reduced.

With that said, it’s a fantastic metric to use and pretty simple if you utilize analytics tools such as Google Analytics.

Want more news about the Professional’s Guide to SEO? Don’t miss any of our future sneak peeks — make sure you’re signed up for Moz Blog email updates!

Keep me updated!

Core Web Vitals: What Next?

The promised page experience updates from Google that caused such a stir last year are far from being done, so Tom takes a look at where we are now and what happens next for the algorithm’s infamous Core Web Vitals.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Happy Friday, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. This week's video is about Core Web Vitals. Before you immediately pull that or pause the video, press Back, something like that, no, we haven't got stuck in time. This isn't a video from 2020. This is looking forwards. I'm not going to cover what the basic metrics are or how they work, that kind of thing in this video. There is a very good Whiteboard Friday about a year ago from Cyrus about all of those things, which hopefully will be linked below. What this video is going to be looking at is where we are now and what happens next, because the page experience updates from Google are very much not done. They are still coming. This is still ongoing. This is probably going to get more important over time, not less, even though the hype has kind of subsided a little bit.

Historical context

So, firstly, I want to look at some of the historical context in terms of how we got where we are. So I've got this timeline on this side of the board. You can see in May 2020, which is nearly two years ago now, Google first announced this. This is an extraordinary long time really in SEO and Google update terms. But they announced it, and then we had these two delays and it felt like it was taking forever. I think there are some important implications here because my theory is that — I've written about this before and again, hopefully, that will also be linked  below — but my theory is that the reason for the delays was that too few pages would have been getting a boost if they had rolled out when they originally intended to, partly because too few sites had actually improved their performance and partly because Google is getting data from Chrome, the Chrome user experience or CrUX data. It's from real users using Chrome.

For lots of pages for a long time, including now really, they didn't really have a good enough sample size to draw conclusions. The coverage is not incredible. So because of that, initially when they had even less data, they were in an even worse position to roll out something. They don't want to make a change to their algorithm that rewards a small number of pages disproportionately, because that would just distort their results. It will make their results worse for users, which is not what they're aiming for with their own metrics.

So because of these delays, we were sort of held up until June last year. But what I've just explained, this system of only having enough sample size for more heavily visited pages, this is important for webmasters, not just Google. We'll come back to it later when we talk about what's going to happen next I think, but this is why whenever we display Core Web Vitals data in Moz Pro and whenever we talk about it publicly, we encourage you to look at your highest traffic or most important pages or your highest ranking pages, that kind of thing, rather than just looking at your slowest pages or something like that. You need to prioritize and triage. So we encourage you to sort by traffic and look at that alongside performance or something like that.

So anyway, June 2021, we did start having this rollout, and it was all rolled out within two or three months. But it wasn't quite what we expected or what we were told to expect. 

What happened after the rollout? 

In the initial FAQ and the initial documentation from from Google, they talked about sites getting a boost if they passed a certain threshold for all three of the new metrics they were introducing. Although they kind of started to become more ambiguous about that over time, that definitely isn't what happened with the rollout.

So we track this with MozCast data. So between the start and the end of when Google said they were rolling it out, we looked at the pages ranking top 20 in MozCast that had passes for zero, one, two, or three of the metrics against the thresholds that Google published. 

Now one thing that's worth noticing about this chart, before you even look at it anymore closely, is that all of these lines trend downwards, and that's because of what I was talking about with the sample sizes increasing, with Google getting data on more pages over time. So as they got more pages, they started incorporating more low traffic or in other words low ranking pages into the CrUX data, and that meant that the average rank of a page that has CrUX data will go down, because when we first started looking at this, even though this is top 20 rankings for competitive keywords, only about 30% of them even had CrUX data in the first place when we first looked at this. It's gone up a lot since then. So it now includes more low ranking pages. So that's why there's this sort of general downwards shift.

So the thing to notice here is the pages passing all three thresholds, these are the ones that Google said were going to get a big boost, and these went down by 0.2, which is about the same as the pages that were passing one or two thresholds. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that was just the general fit caused by incorporating more pages into CrUX data. 

The really noticeable thing was the pages that passed zero. The pages that passed zero thresholds, they went down by 1.1. They went down by 1.1 positions. So instead of it being pass all three and get a boost, it's more like pass zero and get a penalty. Or you could rephrase that positively and say the exact same thing, as pass one and get a boost relative to these ones that are falling off the cliff and dropping over one ranking position.

So there was a big impact it seems from the rollout, but not necessarily the one that we were told to expect, which is interesting. I suspect that's because Google perhaps was more confident about the data on the sites performing very badly than about the data on the sites performing very well.

What happens next? 

Desktop rollout

Now, in terms of what happens next, I think this is relevant because in February and March, probably as you're watching this video, Google have said they're going to be rolling out this same expect page experience update on desktop. So we assume it will work the same way. So what you've seen here on a smartphone only, this will be replicated on desktop at the start of this year. So you'll probably see something very similar with very poorly performing sites. If you're already watching this video, you probably have little or no time to get this fixed or they'll see a ranking drop, which if maybe that's one of your competitors, that could be good news.

But I don't think it will stop there. There are two other things I expect to happen. 

Increased impact

So one is you might remember with HTTPS updates and particularly with Mobilegeddon, we expected this really big seismic change. But what actually happened was when the update rolled out, it was very toned down. Not much noticeable shifted. But then, over time, Google sort of quietly turned up the wick. These days, we would all expect a very mobile-unfriendly site to perform very poorly in search, even though the initial impact of that algorithm update was very minor. I think something similar will happen here. The slower sites will feel a bigger and bigger penalty gradually building. I don't mean like a manual penalty, but a bigger disadvantage gradually building over time, until in a few years' time we would all intuitively understand that a site that doesn't pass three thresholds or something is going to perform horribly.

New metrics

The last change I'm expecting to see, which Google hinted about initially, is new metrics. So they initially said that they would probably update this annually. You can already see on web.dev that Google is talking about a couple of new metrics. Those are smoothness and responsiveness. So smoothness is to do with the sort of frames per second of animations on the page. So when you're scrolling up and down the page, is it more like a slideshow or a sort of fluid video? Then responsiveness is how quickly the page interacts or responds to your interactions. So we already have one of the current metrics is first input delay, but, as it says in the name, that's only the first input. So I'm expecting this to care more about things that happen further into your browsing experience on that page.

So these are things I think you have to think about going forwards through 2022 and beyond for Core Web Vitals. I think the main lesson to take away is you don't want to over-focus on the three metrics we have now, because if you just leave your page that's currently having a terrible user experience but somehow sort of wiggling its way through these three metrics, that's only going to punish you in the long run. It will be like the old-school link builders that are just constantly getting penalized as they find their way around every new update rather than finding a more sustainable technique. I think you have to do the same. You have to aim for a genuinely good user experience or this isn't going to work out for you.

Anyway, that's all for today. Hope the rest of your Friday is enjoyable. See you next time.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com