Ah, MozCon… a 3-day event where the coolest people in the world come together to talk about SEO, analytics, content marketing, and a little paid search. This year was especially exciting because I had the pleasure of going and representing Real Good Marketing, and got to meet my idol, Roger! 🙂

Yes I know folks, but this level of excitement is what happens when you work from home…

Anyway, in addition to hanging out with my industry friends and making a bunch of really bad search puns, I also learned a ton from some of the top talent in the digital marketing space. Since sharing is caring, I’m here to share my top 10 takeaways from MozCon 2019. 

Buckle your seat belts, because here we go.

1. People are still using Desktops

We’ve all heard about Google’s mobile-first index and heard the rumblings of how desktop is obsolete and mobile devices rule them all. However, according to the man Rand Fishkin himself (AKA the founder of Moz), actually… while mobile has overtaken desktop in terms of usage, desktop usage has…also stayed the same? Yes, that’s right. While we’re spending more time on our mobile devices because we’re constantly plugged into the matrix, we’re spending just as much time on desktops as we always have and browser-based usage is at an all-time high. 

So despite mobile devices and despite the ominous voice search, web search actually keeps growing. 

2. Zero-click searches are a big thing

In June 2019, for the first time the majority of searches resulted in zero clicks, meaning that folks are still searching just the same, but are leaving Google less often. 

In fact, according to Rand Fishkin (yes again, he was dropping knowledge bombs like whoa), Google has sent ~20% fewer organic clicks via browser searches since 2016. To put that a different way, in 2016 there were 26 organic clicks for every 1 paid click; today there are 11 organic clicks to every 1 paid click. So Google is indeed cannibalizing website’s clicks and traffic by presenting information within the app itself. 

This is why we’ve started focusing so much on SERP Feature optimization at RGM and are redefining what constitutes “success” for SEO, as appearing in SERP Features (like answer boxes, people also ask drop-downs, Knowledge Graph results, Google Maps local map pack, etc) and “position zero” is going to start becoming more and more impactful and may be the new metrics of success for organic search. 

3. E-A-T

Repeat after me, “E-A-T is not a ranking signal.” This is what Ruth Burr talked to us about and in her own charming way chided us for focusing too much on these (as I’m doing right now I suppose). 

If you’re not familiar, EAT means Expertise-Authority-Trust, and a couple years back became something that SEOs started paying a lot of attention to since it was said to be the key to winning the search game. Basically the idea is that if you can establish your business as an expert and authority in the field, and show Google that others trust you (through things like social followers and shares, backlinks, citations etc), you’d become an organic search god and make millions of dollars and retire by age 27. 

The thing Ruth brought up though, is that EAT is not a ranking signal! Instead, it’s something that’s made up of dozens of different signals that may or may not be an input to Google’s algorithm; they’re just qualities outlined in Google’s human reader guidelines. 

So to demonstrate EAT, you must continue to optimize your website and brand for both humans and machines using clear, concise, accurate content, focusing on web performance optimization (things we typically focus on here at RGM are page speed, crawlability, site architecture etc), and focus on what she calls “real company stuff” — just follow the basic rules of marketing, connect with your audience, create the best content out there, and you will inherently build up that quality. Now that’s some solid advice. 

4. Localized features are everywhere

Rob Bucci wow’d us when he said that a whopping 73% of the 1.2 million SERPs he analyzed had localized features on them like the map pack, local carousels, etc. I believe it! We’ve seen the number of “near me” and localized search terms skyrocket for our clients over the past couple of years and local SEO is becoming a bigger and more established practice. Interestingly though, Rob explained how 25% of these listings had variability between markets (i.e. locations), with 85% being the maximum variability seen across zip codes WITHIN A SINGLE MARKET.

That was mind-blowing because what that means is if you’re in Chicago and you search “dentist in chicago” or “dentist near me” you will likely see different results depending on exactly where you are in the city. But you’ll also see different results even if you’re not searching with local intent depending on which market you’re search from (like searching for “best advertising agencies” while in Chicago vs. sitting in NYC). 

So the era of personalized search continues, and yes it is possible to be ranking #1 from one marketing but if your boss searches the same term at 3am while sitting at a bar in Tokyo, no, you will probably not show up #1.

5. Keyword research is not the only way to generate content ideas

Ross Simmonds had some great tips about coming up with ideas for content that will resonate with your audience, and spoiler alert: it goes far beyond keyword research. 

He suggests expanding the content ideation process by tapping into communities and news sources to see what people are actually talking about, searching Quora or reddit to see real topics and questions, and searching for a big brand or site in your industry to see what articles they’re writing and/or people are sharing by them. This helps you understand what people are actually interested in, vs. just throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. 

I’d also add to this that we love using things like Answer the Public to generate ideas based on what people are curious about, using AutoSuggest drop-down on Google to see popular searches and topics you may not be thinking about, and interviewing customer service reps at your company to see what they’re constantly asked about or helping folks with. All great ideas for identifying power content!

6. Build your brand, win local search

Mary Bowling enlightened us about how “Brand is king” and that if you want to win at the local search game, you’ve got to have a great brand that Google will reward. This is because she believes that Google ranks entities now (i.e. brands) not just websites. 

So how do you build your brand for local search? Well, first of all you need to make sure that your core brand elements (like your main CTA, phone number and services) are all over your meta data and your brand listings. 

You should also think about how you want to portray your brand and company on Google My Business and optimize as such, especially when it comes to your photos (i.e. do you want potential customers seeing Randy from Accounting winning the hot dog eating championship? Or do you want them to see pictures of your product or cool office space?). When choosing photos, think about what searchers actually want to see. Another spoiler alert: these are the photos that are relevant to your core business offerings, not Randy from Accounting.

7. Say hello to Fraggles.

To be honest, this was my favorite talk of the entire conference. Cindy Krum came up on stage and just killed it with her uniquely refreshing take on mobile-first indexing and rankings, and a concept she coined called “Fraggles” (fragment + handle — more on this in a minute). 

So the first thing to mention here is that much like Mary Bowling’s talk, Cindy also backed up the idea that Google is indexing and ranking entities, not just websites — and that’s the name of the game when it comes to mobile-first indexing as Google is serving answers not websites. This includes the SERP Features listed above like People Also Ask accordions, featured snippets, Knowledge Graph results, etc. Cindy says that people want answers more than they want websites. So, we have to find a way to make ourselves show up for answers, and not just try to only rank for keywords and build website traffic. People’s behaviors are clearly changing as Google increases their in-SERP offerings, so we as marketers have to adapt.

So how do we do this? Well, she recommends taking advantage of “fraggles,” which are basically fragments of information held together by similar language and meaning. We have to create relationships between our content, our online properties, and our information that’s contained across various listings on the web. 

Overall Google wants to index more than just websites; they’re organizing the information of the world. So we have to organize our fraggles and keep up!

8. Amazing content is the only way to see benefit

Andy Crestodina is a brilliant business owner and an even more brilliant content marketer. He puts it simply by saying that digital marketing today is about building a bridge between Google and your thank-you page, and I couldn’t agree more. But how do we do this? 

Andy says that we can do this by producing killer content that’s original (like original research, original concepts and ideas, original data and diagrams, etc), and creating the best page on the internet for your topic. Ahh! So simple, yet so overlooked.

Along this line, he says that while good content is AMAZING, bad content is essentially worthless. Ouch. I guess that’s the point of having a great content strategy to guide your efforts vs. just posting to post. 

Another way to catch people’s eye is by producing collaborative content, which could include contributor quotes, expert round-ups of deep dive interviews. The great thing about this is by including others, you’re more likely to get your content shared and linked to. Genius. 

9. Simple SEO truths

Rob Ousbey brought some simple yet effective truths bombs to the table such as: 

• Google has changed but our processes (of optimizing sites) haven’t
• every now and then you have to re-challenge your beliefs about what works
• the effects of changes are reversible so don’t be afraid to test things
• Google is not the most reliable source of information so don’t be afraid to challenge them
• The only thing that will work for your website is the thing that will work for YOUR website. No change has the same impact on two sites. 

Man, what a gem. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be out testing all the things and questioning The Google.

10.SERP Features are king

If you couldn’t tell, a common theme throughout the entire conference was talking about the prominence and importance of SERP Features. If you’re not familiar with SERP Features, here’s a screenshot (not from the conference) to give you an idea of what I’m talking about: 

And these are just to name a few! There’s actually (at the time of writing this post) about 15 or 16 available featured snippets which now show up in Google’s search results, ranging from the items shown in the screenshot above, to images and videos, sitelinks, reviews, map packs, tweets, shopping results, and more. 

So it’s no surprise that MozCon host and SEO aficionado Britney Muller ended the conference on a high note as she shared some pretty eye-opening statistics about SERP Features. Here’s a few of them: 

• Neraly 24% of all SERPs have a featured snippet now. This is up 165% since 2016
• Paragraphs and lists are the most popular by far, but 93% of featured snippet SERPs contain a PAA box
• Featured Snippet boxes have approximately a 115-character limit. So if you want that “position zero” featured answer box spot, keep your answers short, sweet, and to the point!
• Monitor which keywords you rank for in featured snippets because traffic and rankings may not matter as much as things like branding, messaging and share of voice (sound familiar?).

Whew — we made it, folks: my 10 biggest takeaways from MozCon. I hope you took something away from this post as well. 

If you want to discuss any of these changes or nerd out about SEO in general, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter @mhankins12, or shoot me an email. I’m always happy to strike up a conversation and talk digital marketing, or meet up at MozCon in years to come.