Position Zero

Advanced Search Engine Optimization Discussion 

Position Zero and how it is impacting the SEO community and results.  

Jeff Stanislow, the CEO of Chief Internet Marketer explains why this change to Google may not be so good for the SEO players.

Topics Covered Include:

  • What is position Zero
  • Impact on SEO overall
  • Impact on SEO
  • Some data analysis from MOZ that is eye opening
  • Why SEO folks react!
  • The near future... 

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Transcript of Presentation:

[00:00:00] Hey, this is Jeff Stanislow, the chief at Chief internet marketer. Thanks for joining our conversation today about advanced search engine optimization, and we're going to talk about positions zero presented by myself. Just a manifold the chief a chief internet marketer.

[00:00:23] So just so quick about me. I am 20-year industry veteran or rookie as they call it with comes down to the web cuz it evolved so fast. I own Chief internet Mark a digital marketing certifications Consulting and services company been in Detroit Silicon Valley and now reside in Tampa who's who in technology package and creams Detroit. I have a radio show where I talk about business and marketing here in Tampa and am 820. I've been an event speaker at major events including Innovation a summit synapse Madcon New York City internet world and several more. So I've worked with fortune five hundred companies and solopreneurs. I am a board member at home health foundation and I also serve on the digital advisory boards for University of South, Florida.

[00:01:19] Hillsborough Community College and Florida State University. So anyways, what do we want to talk about today? So we're going to talk about search engine optimization and position 0 going to discuss. Why is it so popular? What does it do some results? It made me some best practices when you're thinking about position 0 and the future search and just in general. So what is position 0 it's the information gathered by Google at the very top of the search results page position 0 is also called the featured snippet and is exactly that it's a snippet of content that directly answers a search query or question position 0 is placed above the top of the ranking search results page and is displayed differently. So that's kind of extrude definition of Snippets have been around for a long time.

[00:02:19] Al um now they're actually moving up into what they call the featured snippet and that is the same thing as position 0 so it is the top search result that is not an actual web page or search results page position. It is integrated into almost any kind of think of it as home no content inside the search result with actually not having to load the web page that's relevant. It's an expanded search result.

[00:02:53] Why is it popular? Well, it's popular cuz it's the number one position above the search rank itself or the search engine ranking page or position. That's why it's so valuable is also valuable cuz somewhat new to the game in regards to having the featured snippet be above the first position ranking and it's kind of cool because it's flexible content. You can use copy bullets tables. It's smart using the latent semantic indexing. We'll talk a little bit about that in the in in a couple other slides and it's probably going to change again in the future. So we always know that about search engines and how they change and the whole dynamic they are based on what Google's algorithm is is thinking so

[00:03:52] But what does it do? Here's an example. It displays about the first result. It provides a preview of a page content. It gives enough to answer the request without any further, uh, click requirement. It works with different content formats as mentioned paragraphs of bullets in tables. So in this example that you see on the slide how to cook rice the answer and how to cook rice is right there says follow these steps 1 2 3 4 5 and if you need more information, you can go from there. Now this is before any of the search results Pages or the other content pages that typical link and little description that you normally see wage is showing so you can see how this is expandable format allows the user get the information that they're looking for without even having to go any further, which is very powerful but off

[00:04:52] Hombres has some challenges in regards to SEO and your strategies there.

[00:04:57] It's been getting mixed results from search engine optimization Specialists and people that you know, try to get their page ranked in the top ten positions or even uh, you know, or Beyond so on January 22nd. Google said that you don't give both this is where the big kind of can of worms got open. You can't get the first position search result of searching serve and the snippet so you don't get one because what they're saying is an Essence that's just get content. So you look at Danny Sullivan as industry expert regarding the matters as if a web page listing is elevated into a featured snippet position. We no longer repeat the song listing in search results.

[00:05:47] This declutter the results and helps users locate relevant information more easily featured Snippets count as one of the ten web page listings shown below volt. So it's technically the true position one, even though we call it position zero because the snippet is not the same as a result off, but what they're saying now is you don't get both. So it's two technically true the true position one. So a company called 97th floor offers in-depth analysis and regards to some of the results and some of the mix things that are saying and they reported it to Moe's or Mazda pending how you want to perhaps it which is a job search engine tool. So long time snippet winners actually see drops and CTR and traffic makes sense to me if you kind of take a look at it the girls

[00:06:47] Example if you learned what you needed to know from those six steps on how to cook rice. Why would you need to click on more information? So the user wins which in essence is what Google is all about? It's not really trying to Google's not there for the search engine optimization business office and it threw in there for the new user so therefore but just by seeing that search result of the rice example, there's no need to click on the page. You got what you need and you moved up. So it makes sense that you're going to see drop and click through rates and overall traffic to your website. Sometimes you'll see double Snippets where it pulls to Snippets in the area upon the results of the search query double Snips from particular reason, but the first one tanks

[00:07:46] On the click-through rates and usually it is because of the usability. So if you see two listings and you get some information back from you usually go with what's first or what second job in search your scroll down or you move down or your eyes moved down into the second position already got the information that you want. So and usually the course of action would be to click on that page as the user requirement to request. So CTR, I'm first snippet actually tanks compared to the second when you're young, you know, a double snippet result. So easy come easy go. It's still volatile. It's only been around for kind of a couple of months where the true position wage is featured snippet, and they're not actually giving you credit in D and and double basically position in a serp and a snippet so long

[00:08:46] Um, they come in and out pretty quickly. The impacts are are pretty volatile. You could be positioned three or four or five and then all sudden get a featured snippet and then you go up and then the future slip goes away and you back down to your position, you know or five six or whatever happens to be so now what you're seeing is click-through rate kind of below the fold actually increase and what I attribute that to is a person who is looking at the page the Google page and its normalcy same for years. This is how it's looked for me. So what is this featured snippet? I don't know what to do with it really and is I don't know if the trusted I don't know really what it's about. I'm not going to you know, look into it too much because it's different. I'm just going to go with what I know for all the years that I've been conditioned to do a search and find a result and click on the result Thursday.

[00:09:45] Think matches best. So naturally they ctr's below a folder actually increasing so there's actually some strategy that people are talking about now is how do you say you do your search engine optimization for position two and three and four versus getting your page ranked with Snippets home. But you know, it's a little early to tell how this will all pan out. So I was going to talk about p a which is people always ask folks are people also asked I'm sorry and how that influences the page discussion, but we'll talk about that and in other subject matter for another another time another day because it does Merit its own, you know, fifteen twenty minutes half an hour worth of content discussion itself and how it impacts, you know, the search search engine optimization wage.

[00:10:45] So again part of this being a mixed bag right now is it's new again. The other part I think is user adoption, you know, it's different than what they used to see trusted Skippack what to do with it. Um, so the users used to just the traditional link model. So that's part of the reason why it's such a mixed results, but if you want to some best practices as to try to get your snippet to position 0 or the true position one good content always wins clickability matters more often than it ever has and that is for search engine marketers and search engine optimization people who clickability of it and then we're seeing that with some of the stuff that we talked about before where position to actually the service or all the fold is producing better results for clicks than the Snippets identify the opportunities, you know, analyze the key words and which they've been resolved.

[00:11:45] Sorry, if you're seeing keywords and keyword phrases that you have good content on that don't have Snippets start optimizing for Snippets back in by you got to go back then go in-depth with your content to get sips Snippets. They're backed by deep and wide content. If it's Evergreen content that you're trying to get Snippets, you know, probably move on off not going to get the breadth and depth that you need to get a snippet when it comes down to something that's topical focus on Evergreen unpack the topic. Like I mentioned previous go deep and wide understand that it's not all about keywords and the same key word being used and being very vertical with the content go deep and wide with references relationships Dynamics and cinnamon cinnamon and more remember the context dog.

[00:12:45] King when you're thinking about unpacking the topic and going wide as you don't need to really about worry about stuffing as l s i really is the focus of birth and handles that for you. So um and snippet bait concentrate the best of your content to create that rich feature-length try content. Try bullets. Try tables tables of work extremely. Well, if you had data sets that you can show, you know, I'm cooking times of the example for Rice now the right thing said how to boil rice. Well, that's great. But now you might want to have no cooking times and if you use a table, you can put a temperatures that I think will boil at, you know could be rice could be chicken and could be whatever, you know, each thing that you're boiling impacts that temperature slip table is dead.

[00:13:45] Rich of content kind of referring back to the example about the rice cooking snippet integrate with other good SEO practices both on Page in off I'll make sure tags title descriptions links Etc off page, you know, use use your your network or your earned me. Keep an own media capabilities to try to get that page linked and indexed properly and connected all the other good traditional SEO practices can apply to helping you get your position 0 or featured snippet ranked. Then you have to wait and watch the rankings, you know, see if it starts getting up there above position five your keyword keyword phrase then you're going to have to start monitoring to see if it comes featured snippet and bounces up and down out of there. So, yep.

[00:14:45] Is always remember the best practices that Google is not built for search engine folks like us, uh, it is not built for search engine optimization. It is built for users. Um and to find the most relevant results the fastest possible way. So anyways, what you put into the effort is what you'll get out of the effort. Well, so the future to search I mean obviously it's going to continue to grow especially when it comes down to this snippet action. We know that queries are going to be more complex you're going to have them or uh machine learning and Artificial Intelligence being added to search and we know the search queries are more complex than ever used to be more Dynamic more situational more so it continues to push the envelope off.

[00:15:45] Regards to the search results as how abusers search, you know, we're we're becoming more accustomed to have our search engine or queries no matter the application off, um, understand us more as humans than ever before us thinking about how we you know, use search queries for the computer game is kind of moving away at the fine. Our best results. It is naturalization is come on Leaps and Bounds in the last few years to where the point is. We don't have that think how we structure our search query. We just type in go. So user two experiences always relevance in speed and the content for that search key will always win. So thanks for your time. Again. This is just a brief overview on search advanced search engine optimization talking about

[00:16:45] Position 0 in relative the true position one and featured Snippets. If you'd like to contact me Jeff Stanislow. You can email me Jeff at Chief internet, Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn just search Jeff status quo. Thanks for your time. And again, this is Jeff Stanislow the CEO of Chief internet marketer, and remember to always be the chief. Thank you and have a great day.