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Data Driven Optimization
That scales!
MICHAŁ SUSKI
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Michał Suski
Co-Founder of Surfer
[email protected]
Master of science at Forestry
Quality Assurance since 2014
SEO since 2016
Surfer 2017
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Agenda
● Taking Keyword Research to the next level
● Writing copy that adds relevance with Content Planner
● Creation at scale with data driven guidelines
● Audits on regular cadence
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Keyword Research
Process of finding attractive keywords for the website to target.
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Keywords
● DFS has 600M keywords for the US market
● Pages rank for dozens keywords
● All we need is to understand which we can rank together
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Clusters
● discrete items that are close to each other
● individuals collected in one place; a crowd
● galaxies or stars that appear near each other
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Why do we need them?
● To feed the algorithm
● To build proper structure
● To satisfy the user intent
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User intent
X Topic clusters
● People want what they need
● Good cluster address essential information
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Cluster level
● Domain
● URL
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What can go wrong?
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Off the topical cluster -
irrelevant pages
● SEO agency writes about TV ads
● Rankings drop on SEO related keywords
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Off the topical cluster -
irrelevant keywords
● Article is too wide
● Diluted expertise and negative behavioral signals
● Hard times with ranking and maintaining positions
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Off the topical cluster -
lacking information
● Article is too narrow
● Missing answers
● Requires a strong push from backlinks to rank
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I won’t show you how to
generate 1000’s keywords...
… clustering starts when you
already have them.
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● Manual
● Semantic
● Keyword level - SERP Similarity
● Page level - URLs’ visibility
Clustering in 4 ways
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Manual clustering:
process
● Open your researched list of keywords
● Assign each keyword to a bucket based on your expertise
● Simple but powerful if you know the niche
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Semantic clustering:
process
● Various methods on comparing two words
● Set your rules and let the algorithm work
● Check the results and adjust it
● Keywords are grouped based on semantic
commonness
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Similar SERPs:
process
● Check search results for researched keywords
● Compare results
● Group keywords which have overlapping results
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Don’t get me wrong,
I like these...
… but let’s add a bit of
science!
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Clustering Algorithms, what
do they do exactly?
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Clustering algorithms:
the method
● Compares sets of ranked keywords
● Finds look alike pages
● Creates clusters based on keywords groups similarity
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Output
● List of keywords that are commonly ranked
by competitors
● Grouped into clusters using Python or R
● Based on the Google Algorithm
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How to plan content
at scale?
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Content Planner
showdown!
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● Find the topic
● Analyze competitors
● Create guidelines
● Review the text
● Optimize it further before it lands on the page
Content Creation Process
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● Find the topic - manual process
● Analyze competitors - manual process
● Create guidelines - manual process
● Review the text - manual process
● Optimize it further before it lands on the page - manual process
Not detailed or not quick
enough :(
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● Find the topic - manual process
● Analyze competitors - manual process
● Create guidelines - manual process
● Review the text - manual process
● Optimize it further before it lands on the page - manual process
With Planner and Editor we
can cross all of these!
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● Find the topic in Content Planner
● Analyze competitors automatically
● Create guidelines - done for you
● Review the text in a single glance
● Optimize it further before it lands on the page nothing to do here!
Connecting the dots...
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The Process of
content creation
at scale!
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WHY YOU
SHOW ME
THE TOOL?
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● Keywords: organic gardening niche
● Market: US
● Action: Optimized Content Creation within topical cluster
Building topical relevance
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The Job
● 30 articles written and optimized based on data
● No backlinks acquisition
● 0.1 DA domain
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● Constant traffic growth
● Building expertise and relevancy
The Impact
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● You can rank without backlinks for niche keywords
● Content creation that covers topical cluster makes snowball
effect
● Low budget does not mean you can’t make it
The Test Results
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Progressive
Content
Optimization
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● SERPs volatility
● Algorithm changes
● Competitors’ actions
Audits on regular cadence
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● List your landing pages
● Prioritize them
● Divide into buckets
● Allocate your time for the project
● Assign hours of your time to each URL
Start with an outline
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● Getting aligned with current demand
● Finding new topics and expanding ranked keywords
● Ranking higher
Impact of the content audit
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● Keyword: пинтерест (Pinterest)
● Market: Russia
● Action: Single article optimization
Existing content optimization
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The Job
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● 90% keywords improved
● 150 of new keywords
● Ranked longtails without using them in the content
The Impact
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BONUS - 2 more pages
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● Google creates clusters by themselves
● Google ranks better content that match the whole cluster
● Benchmarking competitors multiply their efforts
● Single keyword/variations optimization is less effective
The Test Results
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● Go through your list or Google Search Console
● Plug main focus keyword into SERP ANALYZER
● Review competitors and generate report
Preparing the content audit
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● TRUE DENSITY report
● Length and structure
● Page’s performance
Performing the content audit
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Live Content Audit
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● Find your topical cluster
● Build topical relevancy to create snowball effect
● Optimize for the topical coverage than single keywords
● Audit pages on regular cadence
Wrap Up
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Data Driven
Optimization
that scales!
MICHAŁ SUSKI, SURFER
THANK
YOU