Applying Digital Ethology to Content Strategy

Rhea DrysdaleNovember 16, 2015 | #MozTalk @Rhea

Let’s start with a deep existential question.

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Do you feel valued?

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Let’s talk about how to drive value.

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Search has grown beyond tactical manipulation of a rudimentary algorithm into personalized, predictive technology

we carry with us to the bathroom.

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Google is starting to understand human behavior on a level that

even our partners don’t fully understand us.

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Human behavior is the key to:LEADERSHIP

DECISIONS

POINTS OF DIFFERENTIATION

BRAND POSITIONING

MARKETING STRATEGY

CONTENT STRATEGY

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

organizational success

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And, what is search if not a subset of human behavior?

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Human behavior is the key to:LEADERSHIP

DECISIONS

POINTS OF DIFFERENTIATION

BRAND POSITIONING

MARKETING STRATEGY

CONTENT STRATEGY

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

organizational success

Search^

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PSA:The recommendations in this presentation may go beyond your current pay grade, but understanding the behavior of our audience is critical to the success of our organization.

Search belongs in the board room.

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Before we move on, let’s take a quick detour.

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What did you want to be when you grew up?

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If you received a degree, what field was this in?

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Most of us didn’t become our childhood dreams.

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I wanted to save and/or understand the world.

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My path was set:

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Unfortunately…

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Except there are incredible adults who I discovered through the

wonder of movies.

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The evolution of my professional life looked something like this…

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Make a difference Reach and inspire others.

Understand human behavior (and make

money).

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Did this.

Burnt out by 14.

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Also did a lot of theater and stagecraft, but it felt limiting.

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Fortunately, SEO combined all of those passions.

(especially primate behavior)

Getting back to primate behavior…

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e·thol·o·gy:  the scientific and objective study of animal behavior especially under natural conditions

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Search engines try to identify resources relevant to a user’s needs and present information that is most

useful to the user.

(They study human behavior under natural conditions.)

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And we study search engines, studying human behavior.

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We used to track keywords.

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Now we’re only scratching the surface of SERP-level analysis, especially with the

latest innovations in SERPs such as predictive search, Hummingbird, and most recently, Google’s AI algorithm

addition, RankBrain.

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RankBrain performs relationship analysis between queries. It’s an attempt to interpret language, need states, and deliver something

useful to an individual user.

It’s now also the 3rd most important ranking signal in Google’s algorithm.

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“If we can read every English document on the web, and turn each sentence into a thought vector, you've got plenty of data

for training a system that can reason like people do.

Now, you might not want it to reason like people do, but at least we can see what they would think.

What I think is going to happen over the next few years is this ability to turn sentences into thought vectors is going to

rapidly change the level at which we can understand documents.”

~ Geoffrey Hinton, Google Distinguished Research (Cognitive Psychology and Computer Scientist)

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Everyone wants to build 10x content, but why?

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Is this just thinly veiled link building?

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You add value when you become the authority.

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Google likes authority.

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Authoritative Rank

“In general, innovative aspects of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods including the actions of receiving a search query from a searching user, in

response to the search query matching a trigger query, receiving a first set of authoritative users, processing the first set of

authoritative users to define a second set of authoritative users, and transmitting instructions to display data associated with

authoritative users of the second set of authoritative users with search results responsive to the search query.”

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You should already be investing in authoritative

content that anticipates and answers the needs of your

audience.#MozTalk @Rhea

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Google is.

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Your competitors probably are.

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Authoritative content doesn’t have to be big, but it does need to match the

intent of your audience during all phases of a “consumer journey:”

Awareness > Consideration > Decision > Retention

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You understand the mechanics of search, but have an advantage over

search engines because you can also bridge the gap between motivation

and action with a user (for now).

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We only have so time before machine learning catches up (limited currently by

the amount of technology needed to power it).

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In the meantime, how can we drive value with limited data?

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We start with query types and persona.

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What are common search query types?

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1. Navigational Because…

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2. Informational

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What’s the intent of this query?

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The majority of you probably don’t know, but Google does…

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2. InformationalBecause…

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3. TransactionalBecause…

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But that’s not the “why” that we should be interested in as content

strategists, digital marketers, business owners, etc.

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Search and social won’t tell us why someone wants to

purchase something and making assumptions will only

take us so far. #MozTalk @Rhea

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The real why looks like amazing content opportunities to connect with your audience, but you

won’t find this treasure trove of data in autocomplete, keyword research tools, competitive

analysis, or your own analytics.

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If you asked me why I need a toddler trampoline, I would have a complex thought process about the research and purchase process:

• Educated, working mom trying to plan for family’s needs• Expecting a new baby and worried about their interactions,

so I want to give him high-energy play space• Worried about high-energy interactions with the dog• Worried about filling the winter months with physical

activity• Concerned about normal sensory seeking behavior• Researching sensory diets

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CREATE AMAZING CONTENT ON:

• Introducing your toddler to your new baby• How-to on dog and toddler interactions• List of winter activities for toddlers (ideally, each

year and season, e.g. 2-yr-old activities for spring)• Sensory diet defined and how to make one for

your child

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When in doubt, type your subject into Pinterest to find poorly written and illustrated, but

wonderfully helpful content.

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But how do we get this information?

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If we have great content we can do segment analysis, but even if we have the data to track an individual on our site, we’re limited to 90 days worth of data.

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The answer is found in ethology.

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Observational data collection considerations:

Biggest concern is the observer’s presence on the observed subject.

We also have to determine how and what we will measure (event sampling or time sampling).

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When should we turn to observation?

When the nature of the research question to be answered is focused on answering a how- or what-type question

When the topic is relatively unexplored and little is known to explain the behavior of people in a particular setting

When understanding the meaning of a setting in a detailed way is valuable

When it is important to study a phenomenon in its natural setting When self-report data (asking people what they do) is likely to be

different from actual behavior (what people actually do)

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If I asked you how you would find an exterminator, what

would you say?

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Guess what?

You’re probably…

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WRONG!!!!!

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You would actually search for:

“scratching in my walls”“giant black bug, is it poisonous?”

“what kind of ant is this?”“little red bites on my son’s arms”

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I know this because, “omfg what is that sound in my attic?”

(It was bats. It will cost $3,500 for removal at least. They have a mating season and can’t be disturbed then.)

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We need to observe our subjects.

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Use fieldnotes

Record date, time, subject, environment, etc.

Then collect two-sided documentation:

Observations Comments(Time or event-based) Your inferences/questions

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Since people aren’t as easy to track as animals…

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We have to talk to people.

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Who can we talk to?

• Talk to customer service• Talk to the sales team• Conduct surveys • Hold focus groups• Interview your subjects

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Getting back to query types. Are we missing one?

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4. Question Queries

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Because…

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How do we optimize for questions?

The same way we optimize for anything else.

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Getting back to your purpose in life.

How do you drive value?

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The data you collect can help inform…

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Leadership decisions

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The Setup

Leadership wanted to rank better for long-tail terms, so the in-house team setup duplicated pages of the existing ecommerce pages with a different experience and more content. This dynamic solution generated millions and millions of pages.

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The Setup

Leadership also based navigation in personal experience versus data.

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Client

Findings

- Primary navigation accounted for only 10.1% of all homepage clicks

- We found 36 navigational areas received 0% of all clicks- Also discovered sub-nav below the fold buried two clicks

deep with 14% of clicks - Primary navigation was a jumble of types, brands, and

products

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Findings- Tens of millions of duplicated “SEO” URLs weren’t being indexed- Only 4.8 million indexed URLs- Only 144 backlinks to 32 URLs- We only wanted to reclaim 5 of those backlinks- Decided to keep 175 URLs- Decided to redirect 17,578 URLs- Got rid of everything else- Within the first 30 days of the change, we saw an 11.25% increase in priority keyword

rankings in the top 10 on Google - Small anticipated revenue decrease, but without execution of any of the planned

optimization of existing URLs - Increase in Domain Authority

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Points of differentiation

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“The two companies were indistinguishable in their

process and ability to help.”

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POD unclear in a highly regulated industry, but social listening and search analysis on

forums uncovered an answer that had eluded them for decades including in-depth market

research by third parties.

Woohoo!

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“…we liked the supervisor”

“…the supervisor was good, but the one before was more accessible, organized, and

knowledgeable, so I’d look at the other companies.”

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Great.

Create content about the supervisors!

Brand positioning

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Company based entire content strategy and external communication around a term that’s dying. Through competitive and industry analysis, social listening, and

autocomplete/suggested search we found the right descriptive terminology for them.

Marketing strategy

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Failure is also a significant source of information if your

audience simply doesn’t respond to your campaigns.

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Client A3% success rateOver 8 months

Client B16% success rate

Over 2 months

Who won?

Neither, because search couldn’t make up for reputation problems with client A and industry

disrupters with bigger marketing campaigns with Client B. These efforts helped provide data on where and how marketing dollars were best

spent.#MozTalk @Rhea

Content strategy

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Remember those pests in your attic?

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Library we created and optimized now accounts for:

62% of all ranking keywords81% of all ranking keyword search volume

43% of all ranking page 1 keywords64% of all ranking page 1 keyword search volume

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The Results

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Information architecture

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Client’s heavily regulated industry based solely on one

keyword and slight variations.

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This keyword generated a Google Definition before

organic results in the SERPs.

(There’s confusion about the service and Google understood this when the client did not.)

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Keyword research showed a significant amount of questions and SERP analysis

showed Google frequently displaying Answer Boxes with competitors featured above the

client’s 1st place organic listing.

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Content written for regulatory purposes, not audiences.

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Developed new primary navigation with supporting content to address the needs of

the audience and help achieve business objectives.

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Search technology is evolving to better understand and anticipate human behavior.

We’re no longer just webmasters, content creators, or SEO hats.

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Search holds the key to what organizations need to succeed.

We are the keepers of how humans want (or don’t want) to find and interact with our organizations.

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Tools Used

- pitchbox.com – outreach management- www.google.com/trends/ – query trends- ahrefs.com – backlink analysis- www.spyfu.com – competitive analysis- getstat.com – SERP analysis- www.google.com/analytics/ (In-Page Analytics)- www.searchmetrics.com – enterprise SEO platform

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