<p>A very good reason this URL definitely shouldn't rank for "disinfect a cut," even it does have the keywords on the page and get lots of links or anchor text and live on an authoritative website :-)</p> <p>We'll see if I can get it ranking for "searcher task accomplishment," though!</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out Whiteboard Friday this week everyone. This one's particularly important, IMO, because we've been seeing more and more searches where the results that win aren't those with the most links, the best anchor text, the best KW targeting, or the highest authority. Instead, we see sites and pages winning with content that does the best job answering the searcher's query -- completing that task!</p> <p>Some examples:</p> <ul><li><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=impressionist+art" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=impressionist+art</a> - ArtStory.org winning these results because they provide the most comprehensive, best content that clearly takes into account next steps in the searcher's potential process</li><li><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=invest+in+ethereum" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=invest+in+ethereum</a> - the three top results here are all recent think pieces on whether to invest, how to invest, and the risks vs. tradeoffs. They're also super fresh, because Google knows there's been a spike in activity and searchers need the very latest content.</li><li><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+isps" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=seattle+isps</a> - Reddit may have authority, but this thread ranks because, IMO, it's engaging searchers who want to see real peoples' opinions about the ISPs here</li><li><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+get+a+book+published" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+get+a+book+...</a> - Jane Friedman ranks because her advice is, quite simply the best and most comprehensive resource out there, despite other sites doing better on links, authority, and anchor text.</li></ul> <p>Would love to hear if you have more to share, and if you've seen this in your SEO work of late, too. I think it's a truly exciting development in the search rankings, because it suggests we might be able to win certain kinds of rankings without the insanely difficult process of outearning our competitors links, and instead winning on better searcher task accomplishment.</p>

<p>Hi Rob - if you put a rel=canonical to mydomainname.com on the URL, all those others should automatically canonicalize. You can choose which one you'd ideally like Google to show as the canonical URL in the snippet.</p>

<p>If you're seeing URLs in your analytics that are receiving visits with certain parameters attached that don't add any navigational value, that's a good start. You could also use log files, but that's more challenging.</p>

<p>Agreed! You can't block Google from crawling or indexing a page AND expect the benefits of canonicalization.</p>

<p>I haven't personally tested, so I wouldn't feel confident giving you an answer. I know some folks have done this on large sites and been fine (or at least, said they were fine), but I have also seen others (like a comment on this thread) noting that Google doesn't always perfectly react or respect the GSC settings.</p>

<p>+1 Josh! That's absolutely right and part of the intent here.</p>

<p>You can still compare content manually or with tools, even if there's a canonical tag. The tag simply tells search engines to canonicalize the ranking signals and the display of the URLs; it won't prevent other types of crawlers (like those from tools) or humans with browsers from visiting both versions.</p>

<p>Yeah - I think robots.txt can work to keep them out of Google's crawler's hands, but be aware that if Google sees links to those pages, there's still two problems: 1) they may not recognize/count that the link should go to a different URL and 2) those URLs might still rank in the SERPs, as robots.txt only blocks crawling/indexing of content, but not the appearance of URLs in Google's results (they'll show as something like "a description of this site is not available due to robots.txt).</p>

<p>Yup! I love using this with requests for content licensing, and with platforms <a href="https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/217991468-SEO-and-duplicate-content" rel="nofollow">like Medium.com</a> that allow for it.</p>

<p>Thank you for adding that addendum Gianluca! Very important one indeed.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, the only way right now is to track in your Moz Pro campaign. However, in the future, we'll be releasing that feature for all sites in the index on-demand. I know it's something folks want -- our engineers are working on it!</p>

<p>This is a great question Mohnseh - one I should have answered directly in the video.</p> <p>Basic story is that DA (and PA) care about what correlates highly with Google rankings. And, one of the elements of the PA/DA models that correlates most is count of linking domains. Thus, when you get more links from more diverse places, it often helps more than getting smaller numbers of links from higher DA sources. That said, there's a limit. If we're talking about 5 new links from DA &lt;20 sources, that might not be as valuable as 1 link from a DA 80+ source. But, if it's 50 low DA to 1 high DA, the 50 probably (but not always, especially if there's spammy stuff in there that Google discounts) wins in boosting your rankings (and your DA) more.</p>

<p>Well... Google still uses their internal version of PageRank, and they don't use Page Authority or Domain Authority (which are Moz's own crafted metrics). But, since PR is unavailable externally, PA/DA metrics can be helpful.</p> <p>re: Spam Score - I did a Whiteboard Friday on that here: <a href="https://moz.com/blog/understanding-and-applying-mozs-spam-score-metric-whiteboard-friday" rel="nofollow">https://moz.com/blog/understanding-and-applying-mo...</a></p>

<p>Most likely two things: 1) Our crawler found more links from more good places and/or 2) our algorithm rewarded links more like the ones you already had.</p>

<p>Yeah - I'd still go for 1,000 less authoritative links. That quantity, assuming they're not spammy or manipulative, is just too compelling, and too valuable vs. only 5 high authority links. If the numbers were more like 5 and 50, I might be swayed to the 5 authority links.</p>

<p>Doh. We'll probably leave as is for now, but may try to fix in the future. Thanks John</p>

<p>Exactly Scott. There's no current metric or number that can capture how relevant a site or page is to the site or page it links to. Thus, this is either a manual process or you'd want to substitute a well-correlated metric like visits sent.</p>

<p>Yeah. At spam score 4, less than 10% of sites are penalized or banned, so I really wouldn't stress at all until 7/8+ and even then, it's more a flag that you should manually review vs a guaranteed problem. Plenty of spam score 7 sites are totally fine (but enough aren't that it's worth a review). </p>

<p>Spam score can be high even on well linked to sites. Most black hat efforts are on fact geared at getting lots of links, just to sketchy domains, so no surprise. </p>

<p>Different scoring methods and differ indices - we don't always crawl the same links or count them the same, so you should expect differences between the tools. </p>

<p>A) Google has a lot more money for web indexing</p> <p>B) Google will generally crawl everything, even though they don't count all of it. We try to bias to things we think Google's counting (though that certainly is an imperfect process) </p> <p>C) never seen it quite as bad as 10%, but agree we need to get way better. That's a work in progress I hope will be out before end of year. </p>

<p>Yeah, what DesignersDownSouth said is right, though I'd add a caveat that if the URL isnt relevant, Google may not credit as much of the link weight from the 301.</p>

<p>For link metrics or for Google's valuation of links? If the latter, I'd agree. I think Google cares more about the engagement with links and pages than they did in years past. </p>

<p>Sorry - I don't quite follow. What are you seeking more info about? </p>

<p>Good memory Brian! Yes. I absolutely still recommend this. PA and DA will flux a lot, especially in the lower score ranges (&lt;70 or so), so using a set of comparative domains is the way to go. </p>

<p>Thanks for posting this Russ, and for helping Moz to support net neutrality. As I noted in <a href="https://moz.com/blog/net-neutrality-seo-whiteboard-friday" rel="nofollow">my WB Friday on the topic</a> a couple months back, there's a real threat to all of us who build businesses on the web, and especially those who lack the resources of a big company.</p> <p>I do take issue with one thing you said -- while net neutrality's fate is in the hands of some politicians who currently have power in the US, it's barely a "political issue," in the classic sense. More than 80% of BOTH Republican and Democratic voters in the US support net neutrality. It's a bipartisan cause for voters, but because a few corporations can throw millions of lobbying and campaign dollars at it, Ajit Pai and the Trump administration are biasing against the political will of the country. Let's hope today's actions can help reverse that!</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out Whiteboard Friday this week all! Hopefully you enjoyed the immense amount of work we probably shouldn't have put into the thumbnail photo -- huge credit to Whiteboard Friday film genius, <a href="https://twitter.com/itsmikebird" rel="nofollow">Michael Bird</a>, who did all the heavy lifting (aka lots of Photoshop).</p> <p>Questions for this week:</p> <ul><li>Any favorite examples of individual brands outranking the comparison-style results on queries like this? (I've always been impressed by Freshbooks, who <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=freshbooks+vs+quickbooks" rel="nofollow">competes against Quickbooks in SERPs like these</a>, and manages to rank well with <a href="https://www.freshbooks.com/compare/quickbooks-alternative" rel="nofollow">their own page</a>)</li><li>Any tactics you've used that weren't mentioned in the video, or any riffs on those I did cover?</li></ul> <p>Look forward to your thoughts and feedback!</p>

<p>Thanks! Like I said in the video, be professional. Don't aim to "stir things up," just aim to stand up for what you believe, what the data shows, what you stand for, and frame it directly in opposition to what you/your perspective/your information is against. There's no need to be cruel or nasty, insulting or dismissive. Show respect, but be unafraid to make your points. That's how I'd recommend doing it.</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out this week's Whiteboard Friday! Granted, it's an unusual topic, but something I've been wanting to cover for a while. I worry that far too much content is bland and takes no position because companies are so afraid of making someone upset, they aim for the blandest common denominator. Big mistake.</p> <p>Content, products, companies, people, organizations, and services that takes sides, that have a position, that stand FOR something and also AGAINST something are doing something worth talking about, and that's how you earn amplification, links, coverage, rankings, and what's more, a memorable brand. Just think of all the best stuff you've seen--disruptive new companies or amazing new products, powerful discussions or shareworthy content, a great talk at a conference or a video that stayed with you--chances are each of these took a stand, and made some enemies in the process.</p> <p>Look forward to your thoughts on this week's WB Friday. Hopefully at least a few of you will strongly disagree with me :-)</p>

<p>Thanks Emil! I totally agree -- the blog posts that should be deleted are those that garner no engagement and no feedback at all (and there's far, far too many of those). The ones that deserve investment and replication and iteration are those that DO in fact create some controversy, that take a side, that show to the world who you are and what you stand for (and against). In my experience, those are the content pieces (and the companies/organizations/products) that tend to do well.</p>

<p>I really prefer higher-quality interviews (e.g. <a href="https://www.groovehq.com/blog/rand-fishkin-moz-interview" rel="nofollow">https://www.groovehq.com/blog/rand-fishkin-moz-int...</a> might have been egobait, but it was done so well, with such great questions and thoughtful curation, that I shared the heck out of it and have linked to it in several places) vs. the really basic and obvious egobait that doesn't provide value. </p> <p>I did a WB Friday on some alternatives to roundups that might also include some decent options: <a href="https://moz.com/blog/better-alternatives-expert-roundup-style-content-whiteboard-friday" rel="nofollow">https://moz.com/blog/better-alternatives-expert-ro...</a></p>

<p>+1! Followerwonk is definitely a good tool for this.</p>

<p>Yes! Good point. Sorry if that wasn't clear. My intention was to say "rank for stuff that's easier to rank for, but which journalists/bloggers/influencers search for." One great way to do this, for example, is to leverage an already powerful domain that can rank well, e.g. Quora or LinkedIn or Inc (all of which are relatively easy to contribute content to), targeting queries that include things like "xyz stats" or "trend of xyz" or "examples of xyz." Those pieces could then serve to get you contacted, which can in turn lead to links.</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out Whiteboard Friday this week all. Some discussion questions I'd love your input on:</p> <ol><li>Any other favorite methodologies for attracting influencers to content and inspiring them to amplify?</li><li>What tools and search methods are you/your team using to find influencers these days?</li></ol> <p>For me, outside of the three in the video, I'm also a big fan of content that's creates enemies (and thus, also creates allies)--more about that in a future WB Friday.</p> <p>As far as tools and search methodologies go, I've actually been frustrated with the power of Instagram influencers but the lack of any tools to help ID them. Thus, I've taken to using search queries in Google formulated like this: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=tech+blogger+%22k+followers%22+site%3Awww.instagram.com%2F+-inurl%3A%2Fp%2F" rel="nofollow">tech blogger "k followers" site:www.instagram.com/ -inurl:/p/</a> (it may look odd, but basically I'm using the "k followers" to find only accounts with 1k+ followers, then using the site commands to get only accounts, not individual posts)</p> <p>Look forward to your thoughts.</p>

<p>Yeah - totally makes sense for you to go where it's geographically feasible, and where budgets can work.</p>

<p>Totally fair points. I overreacted because (clearly!) I'm sensitive about this issue of "speakers just give the same talks over and over" when I think the evidence shows that's not the case.</p>

<p>It's one of the most beautiful cities I've ever visited. Can't wait to go back :-)</p>

<p>Number 3 is so important; I should have more explicitly included that one. Great list Himani</p>

<p>I have to disagree with this stereotype. Maybe it was true in years past, but let's look today at some of the "top" speakers. I'll pick just a handful:</p> <ul><li>Cindy Krum - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/MobileMoxie/presentations" rel="nofollow">8 unique presentations in the last 3 months</a></li><li>Lisa Meyers - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/lisadmyers/presentations" rel="nofollow">of 12 presentations in the last year, 9 are unique</a></li><li>Wil Reynolds - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/wilreynolds/presentations" rel="nofollow">10 unique presentations in the last year</a></li><li>Rand Fishkin - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/randfish/presentations" rel="nofollow">19 unique presentations in the last year</a></li><li>Lexi Mills - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/leximills1/presentations" rel="nofollow">5 unique presentations in the last 9 months</a></li><li>Dr. Pete - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/crumplezone/presentations" rel="nofollow">6 unique presentations in the last year</a></li><li>Dana DiTomaso - <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/ditomaso/presentations" rel="nofollow">12 of 14 presentations in the last year are unique</a></li></ul> <p>Yes, it's true that speakers sometimes re-use a presentation. I usually give a talk 2-3 times myself. But this idea that most big speakers just give the same talk over and over is bunk. And the concept that you can get 90%+ of the value from just seeing the slide deck after it goes up online is, too.</p>

<p>Good point! I'm going to edit the post. Not sure how I forgot to do the $ conversion.</p>

<p>I haven't been, but hope to get there. Heard good things.</p>

<p>Yes! Here's an example of how to do it:</p> <p><a href="https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=blue+shoes&amp;gl=us&amp;gws_rd=ssl" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=blue+shoes&amp;gl=us...</a><br /></p> <p>Basically, you're using a Google TLD outside the country for which you want to see rankings, then adding back in that country via the &amp;GL=XX parameter (where XX is the country code, in this case US). A new incognito tab is a good idea, too.</p>

<p>Quick addendum - regarding those Jumpshot numbers showing nearly a third of Google searches are on image search... I have a theory that October, when the data was collected in our clickstream analysis, may be an unusually high month for image search in the US due to Halloween. We'll try to confirm that as we look at patterns over the last few and next couple months. </p>

<p>Thanks for jumping back on the Whiteboard Friday wagon Cyrus! Great to have you here as always.</p> <p>For my answers -- I love post titles that can be perceived as counterintuitive. I think those make for both very click-worthy search results AND can actually be really helpful and useful (as opposed to just clickbait), e.g. I'm ranking #4 for "<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=seo+is+dying" rel="nofollow">SEO is Dying</a>" with <a href="https://moz.com/rand/chart-show-seo-dying/" rel="nofollow">This Chart Does Not Show SEO is Dying</a> (a counter-intuitive approach to the topic, but one that I think is accurate, useful, and click-worthy).</p> <p>For meta descriptions, I like to answer more of the user's query than they'd expect, like showing prices or giving a partial response to the search, because I think those have the potential to help people faster and thus to become featured snippets, as well as to draw people in if they believe you're helping them out.<br /></p> <p>Rich snippets... I really miss the days when video rich snippets could appear for pages not on YouTube. Reviews are fairly effective, but also badly abused. My favorite nowadays might be tweets in results, but it's hard to get them to show for non-branded terms, and even harder to get the timing to line up right so the tweet you want appears. I think it's a weird one where Google could better optimize for the relevance of the tweets, but they default to the temporal timeline still.</p>

<p>To be clear - the government has been regulating this since the early 2000s (possibly before). This proposal is talking about scrapping the regulations that helped create a more even playing field on the web, not about adding any additional regulation.</p>

<p>Yup - the FCC under Obama had sent letters warning companies zero-rating was a violation of the "preferential treatment" policy, but under Trump, it's changed: <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/fcc-oks-streaming-free-net-neutrality-will-pay/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2017/02/fcc-oks-streaming-fr...</a></p> <p>From the piece: "The problem is that as appealing as free stuff might seem now, zero-rating could harm innovation long-term. Want to start a new video company to compete with Netflix? Good luck if, for example, your whole addressable market already gets to stream Netflix data-free."</p>

<p>Hi Angelica - that's not what net neturality means. It's not about creating a level playing field across the spectrum, but about a specific legal initiative that prevents ISPs from treating certain types of web traffic or web data differently than others.</p>

<p>Thanks for the feedback Nick. I appreciate your respectful and kind disagreement.</p> <p>I'd say that you are correct in that we're not on a level playing field. As we've talked about many, many times here on the Moz blog and WB Friday, big companies and rich players have vastly more advantages. That said, I don't believe the point of "the playing field isn't level now," is a counter-argument to the idea that we should make it less level. If anything, your observation should give greater weight to favoring net neutrality!</p> <p>On your second point, deregulation categorically does not universally create greater competition. There's loads of counterexamples - banking (which most economists agree caused the financial crisis of 2008), airlines (where some deregulation led to consolidation and less competition, though others did increase regulation), meat production (where deregulation led to widespread illness and unsafe practices), etc. Some of the top answers to this Quora question do a great job of explaining how regulation and deregulation have pros and cons. There's no one size fits all - deregulation isn't always good, regulation isn't always bad. It needs to be applied case by case. In net neutrality's case, the evidence is clear, IMO, that the light regulation we have has been very good for the field.</p> <p>Re: higher costs - I don't think that addresses the core of any arguments in favor of neutrality. I'd agree with you that higher costs aren't always bad, but I would not agree that this point somehow reduces the need for neutrality.</p>

<p>Hi David - I think a more accurate analogy might run another way. In the UK (and the US), the TV airwaves in the 20th century were dominated by only a few channels. Here in the US, that was a handful of big corporations who could afford to pay and to lobby to keep any competition out. Even when cable TV did arrive, it still took an inordinate amount of dollars and effort to set up a new channel. As a result, very few channels, very few big winners, and those winners took all. The web was different -- anyone could create a website and be equally accessible to anyone with a connection. As a result, massive innovation, tons of value creation, much greater leveling of the playing field, and it wasn't just the early entrants or the richest entities that won the web. That's what net neutrality aims to preserve, rather than reverting us to a situation like that of 20th century television.</p>

<p>Nearly all the ones I've seen resemble those you'll see in the comments here on WB Friday, i.e. "keep government regulation out of it," "regulation is bad," and "regulation stifles the free market." That's most of the substance of the argument made by Ajit Pai, the FCC chair, at least in his public statements as well. I can find no logic to this reasoning, but clearly it resonates with some.</p>

<p>Couldn't agree more -- equal footing and an even playing ground for ideas and innovation has created something special in the web, and I'd hate to lose that because some rich companies succeeded in funding a few political campaigns.</p>

<p>Really good analogy, especially since the universality and neutrality of electricity enabled a massive amount of private innovation and public good over the last century and a half.</p>

<p>Stoney - I suspect you know this is false, but I'll detail it just in case:</p> <p>- As I noted in the video, just a few months ago, T-Mobile <a href="https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/08/21/t-mobile-one-eff-net-neutrality/#.tnw_y6ry9rlH" rel="nofollow">did</a> indeed try to create a non-neutral tier of access with their service<br />- TV and Radio worked like this for decades throughout the 20th century, enabling only the wealthiest corporations to start or fund new channels or broadcasting<br />- ISPs are not spending millions lobbying on this because they believe it's "government overreach." Those companies LOVE government overreach when it protects or bolsters their profits. They're investing those millions because they believe it will enable them to charge more and make more, and the only way it does that is at the expense of site owners, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and consumers.</p>

<p>Well, I think it would be far, far worse than the yellow pages - more like trying to start a new TV channel in the 1970s or early 1980s. Basically, you'd have to pay a ton of money, jump through many more hurdles, and only a select portion of higher-paying subscribers to cable/HBO/etc would be able to access you.</p>

<p>I'm not aware of any great resources on how to prepare marketers/SMBs for a non-neutral future, and I think a big part of that is no one knows for sure how the ISPs might abuse that regulation-less world. It could be fairly mild (e.g. a couple tiers, and some web load speed differences, but not horrible to most websites' UXs) or it could be truly rough, <a href="https://www.whizsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/n3.jpg" rel="nofollow">like this</a>. </p>

<p>Yes! Great point - I came here to add that comment as well, but you beat me to it as usual Adam :-)</p>

<p>Ha :-) I'm trying to keep it as apolitical as possible. As I noted, the vast majority of voters of both parties in the US support net neutrality, and I think an even greater number do once it's clearly explained. Other than ISPs, there's really no benefit to anyone (even the "free" T-mobile example I talked about has a secretly nefarious underbelly - it would mean websites/services could pay off T-Mobile to be part of the free program, thus creating a tiered Internet, and potentially killing equal access for all websites).</p>

<p>Excellent point Samuel -- thankfully, your country just adopted more protection for net neutrality: <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/canada-just-ruled-to-uphold-net-neutrality" rel="nofollow">https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/canada-...</a> Bravo!</p>

<p>Yeah, I'm not sure it would definitely be that bad, but it certainly creates a massive amount of risk that the open Internet that's created so much innovation the last two decades could serve to mostly create barriers to entry for new companies, small businesses, hobbyists, and others without the financial resources of a bigco.</p>

<p>Thanks Anja! The news about this issue has been really scary of late, and I think, despite some solid efforts, it could be in real jeopardy here in the US. Some examples:</p> <ul><li><a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business/21721245-new-head-fcc-will-roll-back-obama-era-rules-another-debate-about-net-neutrality" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/news/business/21721245-ne...</a></li><li><a href="https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now" rel="nofollow">https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-wha...</a></li><li><a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/canada-just-ruled-to-uphold-net-neutrality" rel="nofollow">https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/canada-...</a> (Way to go Canada! I'm jealous of their clear support for this throughout government and citizenry. Really smart move.)</li></ul>

<p>Thanks for checking out this week's Whiteboard Friday! Some questions I'd love to hear your answers on:</p> <ol><li>Have you seen any particularly well-executed overlays/interstitials you can share?</li><li>What inputs do you currently use to decide between an aggressive interruption tactic that harms engagement or SEO, but potentially helps bring signups/leads/conversions?</li><li>Any particular plugins or styles you love for this type of thing?</li></ol> <p>Look forward to your thoughts!</p>

<p>Yeah, pretty sure the snippet was already there. Gonna have to find a way to kick it out! We've seen other examples where, once you rank organic #1, you do have a chance to get that snippet too. Will keep slogging away at it.</p>

<p>This was a great case study Dmitry! Really appreciate your transparency. I've done this a few times with high value keywords, most recently with <a href="https://moz.com/blog/how-to-choose-a-domain-name-whiteboard-friday" rel="nofollow">How to Choose a Domain Name</a>. Sad part is that while I got the #1 ranking, GoDaddy has the featured snippet, which knocks me way down the SERP. Need to keep working on the formatting to see if I can gain that snippet spot.</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out Whiteboard Friday this week all! Some questions for discussion to kickstart thing:</p> <ol><li>Do you have any other styles of content (beyond those I mentioned) that substitute well for the goals of "roundup" posts?</li><li>Any favorite examples of either A) truly great roundups that stand out from the crowd OR B) content of the types noted in the video that you think are terrific?</li></ol> <p>BTW - I have contributed to roundups, and plan to keep doing a small number when I have some confidence the creator's doing good work... But I think, like Andrew Chen's "<a href="http://andrewchen.co/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/" rel="nofollow">law of shitty clickthrough rates</a>," the tactic is going to be less and less effective over time.</p>

<p>Great topic Pete. It's unfortunate we still have to address this in 2017, but I think some of Google's statements have been really misleading and caused a lot of poor decisions and uncertainty of late.</p> <p>The only truly tough cases I've had were around content that had expired but may still hold interest from a historical analysis perspective (e.g. our older "ranking factors" surveys, which no longer applied, but some marketers or SEO folks might want to compare them out of interest or to see what's changed). Most of me wanted to 301 them to combine the ranking signals and to make sure visitors and engines got to the most recent version, but then there was the historical analysis value, and so we moved each old one to new URLs and kept the most recent version at the same URL. We haven't had to use rel=canonical on the old versions, but if there were ranking/traffic conflicts, that might be an issue, too.</p>

<p>Thanks for the great post Kerry! Much needed topic, for sure.</p> <p>My favorite, long-time, continual link earner is iFixIt's Guides: <a href="https://www.ifixit.com/Guide" rel="nofollow">https://www.ifixit.com/Guide</a> - it helps people, it's succinct, it's easy to use, it loads fast, and it doesn't try to be fancy when pragmatic is what searchers need. As a result, it's continually earning links from places that talk about devices and products, and it ranks for a boatload of search terms, too.</p>

<p>Thanks Britney! Given that your first WB Friday was better than my first 100, I'll take your compliment as high praise indeed :-)</p> <p>Re: spammy links - for a site like Moz, with so much authority and link equity, we can mostly ignore. But if we were smaller/starting out, I'd probably be doing a lot more disavowing (maybe monthly).</p> <p>Re: Using this sheet for contact info - totally doable, or you could maintain that separately in a tool like Buzzstream (if you're using that). Depends on how complex and large scale your link outreach/link building efforts are, and what processes suite you best.</p> <p>As for relationships - I think it's great to start building them and invest for a long time. Relationships with other sites and influencers in your niche provide a lot more than just links, so my goal is always to make them genuine, and if the link comes or doesn't, no worries.</p>

<p>DA fluctuates a lot based on the index and crawl. I'd worry about it less in absolute terms, and more as a relative metric. More here: <a href="https://moz.com/community/q/is-everybody-seeing-da-pa-drops-after-last-moz-api-update#reply_359883" rel="nofollow">https://moz.com/community/q/is-everybody-seeing-da...</a></p>

<p>Ha! And here I thought the mustache was distracting the last 3 years :-)</p>

<p>Just remember - if you're starting with your competitors' links, you'll never be able to beat them, you'll only ever be playing catch-up.</p>

<p>The most important technique is the one that works well for you based on your unique strengths. There's no one tactic that works for everyone or in every sector, and if you're trying to find a shortcut, you'll usually end up with spam links that Google discounts or penalizes.</p> <p>As far as ranking without links... It's possible, but very difficult, and nearly impossible in competitive sectors.</p>

<p>When I say "risk" I really mean "risk of being considered spam/manipulation by Google." If you're getting links from sources that are paid or that try to game Google, you can expect that over time, the value of those links will decrease and potentially even be negative (if you do lots of it and Google penalizes you for the link profile/activity).</p>

<p>I think competitors' links are a good starting point because they're often "get-able", but I wouldn't overly focus on them. Unique links that you can acquire are can give you a competitive advantage long term, especially if you know the competition can't get 'em.</p>

<p>Great addition. I do think having a "unique link" vs. "competitor link" column could be handy to help illustrate how much relative progress you're making.</p>

<p>Thanks! My upper lip is a little cold this February, but I'm very glad that Moz is back to profitable :-)</p> <p>As far as traffic-sending links go... I do think there's some correlation with value, but many links that send great traffic (e.g. Reddit, ProductHunt, Hacker News, Twitter, Facebook, etc) are nofollowed, and thus don't pass search ranking value directly. Conversely, many links from resource pages or high quality sites or news articles may send only a tiny trickle of traffic, but pass a lot of ranking value.</p>

<p>Yeah - I certainly didn't mean to suggest that this very simple structure was a stopping point, just a starting one! Agree there's lots of ways to enhance the functionality of one's checklist to make it more useful/better for you or your team.</p>

<p>Interesting... Yeah, I could totally see that making sense. Same thing works in sectors with "upcoming launches," e.g. upcoming games, upcoming movies, etc.</p>

<p>You can go either way - in some cases, there's value in having archives of years past if searchers are querying those prior years. In others, replacing or updating the content on the same URL each year makes more sense (when there's little value to maintaining the old content and few searches for prior years).</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out WB Friday this week all! Just a few notes to kick off the conversation:</p> <ul><li>You don't always need the query to include the year for this tactic to work. If searchers show a bias to recency/freshness in their query/click/search satisfaction habits, Google's likely to favor the newer content anyway, e.g. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=best+mobile+phones" rel="nofollow">best mobile phones</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=web%20design%20trends" rel="nofollow">web design trends</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=new+tv+shows" rel="nofollow">new TV shows</a>, etc.</li><li>If you're using Google Trends to do research, careful about being thrown off by lists and topics. You're usually going to want just the search keywords, e.g. <a href="https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=seo" rel="nofollow">SEO (the search term)</a> vs. <a href="https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F019qb_" rel="nofollow">Search Engine Optimization (the list)</a></li><li><strong>Q for y'all: </strong>in addition to using the keyword+year, and to making the content relevant and targeted to recency, what others tactics have you used to help show Google + searchers that it's a better choice for trend/temporal-focused queries?</li></ul> <p>p.s. Yes, I did <a href="https://twitter.com/Moz/status/829846335683702784" rel="nofollow">shave off my mustache today</a> (almost exactly 3 years after growing it out) following three profitable months in a row for Moz. But, since I have a lot of travel upcoming, we've still got a store of 4-5 more Whiteboard Fridays where you'll still see it :-})</p> <p>p.p.s. Akash from KeywordKeg <a href="https://keywordkeg.com/top-keywords-2017.html" rel="nofollow">created a great resource</a> with all the terms/phrases that used "2016" (and thus, will likely be good opportunities in 2017).</p>

<p>Interesting tactic on the SERP: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=pro%20tools%20keyboard%20shortcuts" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=pro%20tools%20keyb...</a>. It's getting multiple top results, but I wonder if having 10, 11, and 12 keyboard shortcut pages is the best UX or best long-term bet with Google. Working for now I suppose!</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out my latest post all. A few questions to kick us off:</p> <ul><li><strong>A)</strong> Any favorite examples you want to share of content that, despite worse-than-the-competition's links, ranks like a boss? (I always find there's stuff to be learned from these)</li><li><strong>B)</strong> Other than related topics in the Mozbar (which, to be honest, I've started using as a cheat code for higher rankings), any tools or data sources you like for discovering smart related keywords? I know some folks are big fans of <a href="https://marketmuse.com" rel="nofollow">MarketMuse</a> for this.</li><li><strong>C) </strong>With regards to Google associating certain domains with topics and broad swaths of keywords, any notable exceptions? Wikipedia is an obvious one, but I've been impressed to see Medium, Quora, Buzzfeed, Reddit, a number of mainstream big media publishers (NYT, NPR, Guardian, etc), and others flout this rule; curious if there's others you've seen.</li></ul>

<p>Dang. Shoulda known you'd come back at me with all the data! Very cool to see Britney, and certainly makes a strong case for investing in these other traffic and amplification channels that republishing/refurbishing can provide.</p>

<p>So great to have you here on Whiteboard Friday Britney! I appreciate the backup and the break :-) Plus, you did a better job on this one that I do on most of mine; it's like WBF got an upgrade!</p> <p>My question: do you have a few examples of sites that have done this? I was trying to think about whether I've seen other folks to maybe highlight in a future presentation. I did one a year ago on <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/the-remarkable-seo-power-of-republishing" rel="nofollow">republishing/repurposing</a>, but you showed off even more tactics here!</p> <p>p.s. One example I realized I do have -- <a href="https://moz.com/rand/what-id-change-keep-the-same-dont-yet-know/" rel="nofollow">this post</a> (originally on personal blog), then <a href="https://medium.com/@randfish/what-id-change-keep-the-same-don-t-yet-know-c56953979e24#.56rbbfd9j" rel="nofollow">on medium</a> (which brought in tons of extra traffic), then as a <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/presentations" rel="nofollow">slideshare presentation</a> (which has gone quite well, too).</p>

<p>I hear you. My issue is that with dozens or even hundreds of websites competing for the same keywords, only a handful can be successful. You might say there's more opportunity in the long tail, and I agree, but still, at some point, in many fields, a few winners (maybe only 5-10, maybe 10-50, but probably not many 100s) will rise to the top and own a significant portion of the SERPs. Given that, if you or your company aren't willing to be in the top echelon and do the work required to get there, you might consider other paths for your web marketing. Content marketing, social media, press, paid channels, email, offline advertising, etc. are all opportunities for business generation (along with many others). No one can be great at all of them, so you have to choose what matches your strengths, your audience's preferences, and your company's ROI.</p>

<p>Agreed. There's a pernicious problem in implementation that often stops many great SEO projects and advice from having the impact it could.</p>

<p>Fascinating - wish you luck with the dissertation. If it's available publicly, there might be lots of folks who'd be interested in seeing it from the Moz community.</p>

<p>Great addition. I've been seeing less of that than in years past, but it's still an issue for sure.</p>

<p>Thanks for the detail John - much appreciated!</p>

<p>That's a good point, and I should have included it. The companies I know who are best at SEO often leverage agencies in addition to their in-house staff, and benefit from the collaboration.</p>

<p>Yikes. Any links that can be removed are probably links you shouldn't acquire in the first place (at least, not in markets like the US where Google webspam is hyper-capable of detection and devaluation/penalization).</p>

<p>Hi Sergio - sure, feel free to share it and we'll check it out. I agree that blogger lists are probably the best we'll do, as most of the SEO company/consultant lists have some pay-to-play component.</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out this week's WB Friday all. My questions for the week:</p> <ol><li>What additional recommendations do you have for folks choosing an SEO vendor?</li><li>What questions (beyond those I described) would you suggest companies ask their potential SEO consultants or agencies before making a choice?</li><li>If you provide SEO services yourself, any tips for potential clients that will set them up for success?</li></ol> <p>p.s. One other item -- I struggled to find any other great lists of SEOs that aren't biased or influenced in some fashion beyond Moz's own. Does anyone else maintain a non-pay-to-play, non-affiliate list of good SEO firms?</p>

<p>This is possibly the best comment ever. All the thumbs to you Ben!</p>

<p>The link itself isn't a bad thing, but linking out with the anchor text of the keyword you're trying to rank for does send some authority and inherently creates harder competition for you on that keyword. I'd probably still link, but change the anchor text up.</p>

<p>If the anchor text is descriptive and sounds/seems natural to visitors, you're probably safe. If, however, that anchor text appears manipulative -- designed more to enable search rankings than to help visitors figure out your content, you're probably in trouble. I realize that's subjective, but it's the reality and Google's good at detecting it.</p>

<p>I believe it should, but will double-check with the team.</p>

<p>A: Ha!<br />B: Convenient :-)<br />Tools: Good ones. I also like <a href="https://moz.com/researchtools/fwe/" rel="nofollow">https://moz.com/researchtools/fwe/</a> (the alerts in there work so much better than G alerts for me, and aren't quite as noisy, for me, as Mention's b/c they don't include social)</p>

<p>Yeah - social has actually kinda cleared the way for more comment visibility, and spam filters have helped, too. I'm consistently surprised when I look at the referrers of active commenters' sites and see how much traffic the top few comments on popular posts/threads can send.</p>

<p>Thanks for checking out WB Friday this week all -- my questions:</p> <ol><li>Any success stories you'd like to share of comments that have earned you great opportunities or results?</li><li>What tactics have been most successful for you in comment threads?</li><li>Any places you strongly recommending participating, or where you've seen outsized value?</li></ol> <p>For me, Reddit and Hacker News have both held real value, as has Inbound.org (though, as a cofounder, that might be cheating). Earlier in my career, I got tons of value (and traffic) participating across the SEO blogosphere, but my schedule's made that a bit harder of late.</p> <p>BTW - one pro tip - if there's no comments on a post, even if it's an older one, it can still pay to be the first/only comment. I've seen a surprising amount of traffic flow through those "only comments" (even if it takes a couple clicks to profile page and then to the commenter's site).</p>