Justin, Author at Briggsby

Core Principles of SEO for JavaScript

July 17, 2018October 11, 2016 by Justin

The shift to JavaScript crawling is one of the more significant changes in technical SEO in the last few years, but the conversation around it historically has been limited. When it is explored in-depth, it’s typically platform-specific or jargon-heavy. Many SEOs have a lot of confusion when managing requests from developers about JavaScript. However, the days …

How Do Users Interact with Predictive (Queryless) Search?

February 1, 2016 by Justin

The growth of mobile and the prevalence of personalization data has empowered the growth of proactive search systems, which push out information in a predictive fashion. While reactive search (user enters a query) remains the dominant aspect of search, platforms like Google Now and Microsoft Cortana are increasing the sophistication and frequency in which users interact with …

How to Use Internal Search for SEO

August 9, 2018August 10, 2015 by Justin

Internal search data provides useful insights on how your customers search. Basically, your customers are giving you free keyword research.

1. Information Architecture

Look at how your customers are searching and compare that to the information architecture. Does your category system match how customers search?

2. Indexable Search Pages

Don’t limit your landing pages to your defined category pages. Create indexable search pages. You’ve probably heard Google doesn’t like to index search pages, but they do.

Really, the difference between a category page and a search page is design and content. You can fix this. This means design, a heading, maybe get rid of some of those facets. That’s all you really have to do.

We’re just making it look more curated than automated. This also means adding a title and meta description that make sense. And if a search page returns only a few results, make sure to go ahead and noindex it. This will help you avoid Panda and duplicate content problems.

3. Related Search on Search & Category Pages

It can also power related search, think “people who searched for this also search for that.” There are a lot of ways to do this, so just pick one that works. Now you have an internal search driven linking system that will expose these indexable search pages.

4. Related Search on Product Pages

Don’t limit this to your category and search pages. Think “people who found this product also searched for this.” Practically, it’s a search-driven tagging system.

5. International Keyword Research

Do this for international sites. Internal search is basically keyword research in its targeted language. This is invaluable for sites that don’t have resources to translate content for all their international domains.

6. Trending Searches

Make sure you’re using search deltas. Top search terms are great, but trending is better. This modifies your internal linking structure based on seasonality and events. By doing this, you can drive internal link value to pages while their demand is the highest.

7. Search Pages in XML Sitemaps

Include your dynamic search pages in your XML sitemap. Concatenate your top search terms into your URL pattern for your new indexable landing pages. I highly recommend filtering this list by adult terms, search volume, and grammar.

Now just submit them to Google. Depending on your domain authority, you can get a significant number of pages indexed this way.

So if you’re currently not using your internal search data, find a way to get your hands on it.

Is App Indexing Coming to iOS?

February 4, 2015 by Justin

App indexing has the ability to dramatically change the way we engage with search, but, unfortunately, it has been limited to Android apps since launch. However, it looks like that may be changing soon. Annotations for iOS App Indexing Appearing on The Web Today I’m seeing examples of possible iOS app indexing annotations appearing up …

How do users interact with SERPs on mobile devices?

December 16, 2014 by Justin

As search becomes increasingly mobile, getting closer to being the majority of search visits every month, how we think about user engagement on search results needs to be updated from the old desktop paradigms of the Golden Triangle (which suggest attention sticks to the upper left and decays down and to the right). Mobile search use …

Talking Back To Conversational Search

November 17, 2014 by Justin

Search is becoming increasingly conversational in nature, and the growth of mobile in search is only perpetuating this trend (and the technology that powers it). This shift in search is fundamentally changing how content is discovered, crawled, indexed, understood, and ranked. To understand where SEO is going next, it’s important to understand some of the …

A Better Understanding of Personalized Search

June 24, 2013 by Justin

Over the years, search results have become increasingly complex and that trend is likely to continue. The traditional model of 10 blue links and rank checking is no longer accurate as users are receiving results that are increasingly customized to them. As results are becoming more personalized, it’s valuable to better understand how personalized search results are being presented to users.

How Does Google Authorship Impact CTR?

June 3, 2013 by Justin

At the end of last week, some discussion on Hacker News started after a post claimed that Authorship created a 90% drop in traffic. Later, Matt Cutts jumped in to note that it was Penguin and not Authorship that caused the drop. I thought it would be useful to talk about how social annotation is …

Google Domain Clustering Update?

August 7, 2018May 21, 2013 by Justin

A week ago, Matt Cutts posted a video discussing what SEOs could expect in the coming months. One of the mentioned updates was around host or domain clustering / crowding. I think some type of domain crowding update went out, starting last night. Hat tip to Jason Mun for noticing. Specifically what Matt Cutts said about …

A Disconnect in App Store SEO: Going Beyond ASO

May 14, 2013 by Justin

There is an enormous ecosystem of search activity happening around mobile app discovery, but there appears to be a disconnect in marketing strategy when it comes to using Inbound Marketing channels to drive mobile app installs. When it comes to search, a lot of attention has been given to App Store Optimization (ASO) to optimize apps for search inside of an app store. In all fairness, this channel has presented significant opportunity, but too often, major players in the mobile space are treating mobile and web as independent of lines business, instead of leveraging search demand on the web (a traditional Google search) to drive traffic to a mobile application. More often, they’re using paid channels to drive discovery.