{"id":225284,"date":"2020-05-11T13:01:29","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T07:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qcsglobal.com\/?p=225284"},"modified":"2020-05-11T13:01:29","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T07:31:29","slug":"zero-click-seos-impact-on-mobile-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/zero-click-seos-impact-on-mobile-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"Zero Click SEO&#8217;s Impact on Mobile Analytics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div>\n<p><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px; border: 0 none;\" src=\"https:\/\/art19.com\/shows\/995c2b73-8f19-4a58-8c35-8ee81c7e8543\/episodes\/f81d1cd4-1297-468b-95c1-a8dbd45bbfc2\/embed?theme=light-green\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Episode Overview: <\/strong>Google\u2019s trend of transitioning toward zero-click SEO in its search ecosystem is changing the way SEOs acquire and interpret data. Join host Ben as he continues his conversation with MobileMoxie CEO Cindy Krum about the impact of zero click SEO on mobile analytics and how to best interpret data in the changing search landscape.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The emergence of zero-click SEO has made it more difficult to quantify brand reach, exposure, awareness and affinity.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aggregation causes loss of details in data, as language, location and device change the way results look and rank in mobile search.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ranking in the No. 1 spot isn\u2019t the most concrete data point as Google\u2019s featured snippets, Knowledge Graph or carousels often supersede your content, reducing your impact and visibility.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>GUESTS &amp; RESOURCES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Welcome to Mobile Marketing Week on the Voices of Search podcast. I\u2019m your host Benjamin Shapiro and this week we\u2019re going to publish an episode every day discussing what you need to know to optimize your mobile SEO efforts for max impact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Joining us for Mobile Marketing Week is Cindy Krum, who is the founder and CEO of MobileMoxie, which is a mobile centric set of tools and APIs that help SEOs gain better insights into their mobile experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So far this week we\u2019ve discussed Cindy\u2019s view about the overall mobile landscape, how the lifestyle changes related to coronavirus are impacting our mobile adoption. And we talked yesterday about what\u2019s a fraggle, and why Google\u2019s natural language processing is impacting how we search on mobile. And today we\u2019re going to continue that conversation, talk about the rise of the zero click and how that\u2019s impacting mobile analytics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here\u2019s the fourth installment of Mobile Marketing with Cindy Krum from MobileMoxie. Cindy, welcome back to the Voices of Search podcast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you. Happy to be here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We\u2019ve covered a lot of ground, always a pleasure to talk to you. Yesterday we were talking about what\u2019s a fraggle, a fragment of a handle, which is essentially a nice way to say Google is essentially creating their own anchor links, dropping their users onto specific passages of content when there is a click. If Google is able to understand what part of your page they\u2019re going to drop somebody off to, they\u2019re going to be able to understand what the answer to the question is shortly, if they don\u2019t already, which means they\u2019re probably going to be creating more zero click content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s a brand new world out there where SEO is not only being evaluated on the click and the conversion, but really visibility in more brand terms.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Talk to me about what you think the impact of the rise of zero click is having on mobile analytics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s making mobile analytics less accurate or less useful, I think, and that\u2019s unfortunate for a lot of the analytics companies because they want us to live and die by the numbers and the analytics. But the reality is that as SEOs we were originally, or ultimately maybe, marketers and marketers have to look at analytics, but also understand things that are harder to quantify, like brand reach and exposure and awareness and affinity. And those are much harder to quantify in a number. And so Google is counting on websites to want to be in a search result whether or not they get the click, and SEOs are not a fan of that mentality. Would you say that\u2019s true?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think what I paraphrase, what you\u2019re saying is that we can\u2019t only consider SEO to be a direct response channel. If we\u2019re not getting a click, you can\u2019t necessarily say impression, to click, to conversion, here\u2019s how I\u2019m attributing value. And so what that means is that to understand the true impact of SEO, we do need to start thinking about evaluating brand metrics, reach, impressions, affinity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So as we think about mobile, what are some of the data sources that we are able to capture? What would we like to be able to capture to understand some of the context around how people are searching if they\u2019re not actually clicking?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sure. So there are a lot more factors that go into a query than many people realize. And so <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">what I encourage people to do is to look at real search results that pass all the same information that a real user might. And most analytics platforms cannot do this. They\u2019re aggregating. In the aggregation, you\u2019re losing a lot of details that can clarify what\u2019s really going on. So things like language, location, and device, those can all change the way a result looks and even what ranks in a mobile search.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So obviously we know location is important for location-oriented queries, but it can also change the query results even if it doesn\u2019t seem to have local intent and things that many people don\u2019t think about is the difference between an iOS and an Android device. That\u2019s especially prominent for apps. If you\u2019re searching to see does my app rank, is there an app pack, who is in the app pack? All of that, of course, changes between iOS and Android devices because the results are specific for the device, and I have also seen other kinds of differences between Android and iOS, as well as just between large phone screens and small phone screens.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that means you can really get bogged down in the weeds because you have so many differences. And so analytics in some ways try and do a good job of aggregating that, but if you really want to know the reality, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I do suggest people test real results and that means not just on your own cell phone. Lots of people are still just testing landing pages, testing searches on their phone and assuming that everyone else sees the same thing as they do, but that is false. It\u2019s false reality. Not everyone sees the same results on their phone as you see on yours.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so that\u2019s why we have tools like the MobileMoxie separator, so you can put in an actual address and put in a search language and choose from a bunch of different phones to see what does this look like. And that can be helpful in a general sense, just knowing that there are differences, or it can be helpful in a really specific sense, like your boss comes in and is pissed off because of something that you\u2019re not seeing in the search result. You can likely replicate their phone and their search settings and see and say, that wasn\u2019t showing up in my searches, but I see it\u2019s showing up in yours and now I understand why you\u2019re angry, or whatever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, it\u2019s interesting, I think in an ideal world, as we start moving towards more brand evaluation metrics, understanding the user\u2019s state, and a lot of that has to do with what device they\u2019re on, where in the world they are. It gives you a sense of what they\u2019re actually trying to accomplish. If I am Googling restaurants when I am at home, I\u2019m not necessarily on my way to go find the place. If I\u2019m Googling restaurants and I\u2019m on a street that has lots of restaurants, I\u2019m likely trying to find the location or actually make my selection, as opposed to doing research. So understanding that context is very important. From understanding the research versus buying versus customer retention phase.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Are there any other mobile specific metrics that you can think about that SEOs need to start taking more into consideration?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, so of course SEOs care a lot about ranking and ranking is often represented numerically, as is in position one, two, or three. But with the increase of no click searches, or what I call hosted inclusions, which is Google stuff jumping in the search result, often above you, but not counted in analytics and not counted especially in Search Console. That\u2019s things like Knowledge Graph. Now featured snippets are there, but they weren\u2019t for a long time, but also map packs. Anything that Google hosts that Google will put above you in position zero or just pepper in throughout the search result, those things are often more interactive than a regular blue link search result would be and they\u2019re usually more graphical, more pictures, and they steal attention span so they get more clicks, even if they\u2019re below you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But remember that if you are ranking number one for a search result and you\u2019re just using that numeric number one to tell yourself you\u2019ve done a good job or you\u2019ve done enough, it might be a false positive, because just because you\u2019re ranking number one anymore doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re above the fold, especially in a mobile scenario where Knowledge Graph is always pushed into position one instead of off to the side, like it is on desktop, and everything, including maps and whatever, it\u2019s all pushed above you in mobile. And so if you were ranking position one when it was more of a 10 blue links scenario, and you\u2019re still ranking position one now, but you\u2019ve lost a lot of traffic, it\u2019s likely because something has jumped ahead of you like featured snippets, Knowledge Graph, maps, and any kind of carousel that Google might want to show, disambiguation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s 27 different identified things that can show that are not blue links, that could be happening right above you that are taking your traffic, even though you\u2019ve maintained your top ranking. And so we\u2019re actually working on a new kind of proprietary score at MobileMoxie that\u2019s going to show you how much opportunity is actually on this search result versus how much is it really just owned by Google and there\u2019s not much you can do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s interesting. To me, one of the major metrics that I would be looking at is, even when I\u2019m ranking in position one, am I actually above the fold. Actual visibility, not necessarily just whether the impression is being served. But on a mobile device, is somebody actually going to see my ranking and I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s something that necessarily can be tracked at this point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Right. And a lot of people are maintaining position but losing traffic. And this is why.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So Cindy, here\u2019s the thing, when we come to analytics, yeah, sure SEOs can look at brand and wouldn\u2019t it be nice if we could actually start to understand whether, even if we are ranking in some of the top positions, whether we\u2019re actually being shown above the fold, that\u2019s obviously something that is more of a mobile concern than it is on a desktop. When you think about some of the other things that are impacting our ability to measure SEO, specifically in mobile, what are some of the things that you think about?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sure, so I think a lot about what would I do if I were Google and what is in my best interest versus what is in Google\u2019s best interest, and as SEOs, a lot of us think of Search Console as maybe the single source of truth. That\u2019s where Google is actually reporting on themselves and giving us what they know in terms of ranking and clicks and traffic and stuff like that. And so we use that heavily as a place for getting Google\u2019s assessment of how we\u2019re doing. But the thing is there\u2019s so much happening in the search result that\u2019s not being shown in Search Console and I think it\u2019s probably just not important for Google to give us that kind of information. I think to them they\u2019ve probably deprioritized showing us in Search Console, when Knowledge Graph is available for a query or when a map pack shows or things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Number one, it\u2019s harder for them, or it\u2019s potentially extra work for them. But number two, it\u2019s not in their best interest to tell us when they\u2019re stealing our traffic. And so they have a disincentive to do it. And I have a talk that I love that\u2019s all mapped themed, and what I say is the map is not the terrain, and so if we think of an analytics platform as a map, which is to say that it\u2019s an abstraction of reality, it\u2019s not actual reality. It\u2019s an aggregate and it glosses over the details. And in a lot of cases, the details are what\u2019s really important to us as SEOs because it\u2019s the details that we\u2019re fighting against that we have to overcome, or it\u2019s the details that are keeping us from getting the traffic that we want.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And so for instance, one of my favorite stories is related to this map talk is Exxon, which used to be Esso, when people first started getting personal cars, they weren\u2019t buying enough gas, and so Esso started publishing maps. And the maps would show all of the destinations that you could drive to in a location and all of the Esso stations where you could get more gas, so you would feel confident that you could get all the way where you were going without running out of gas.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Cindy:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And these were free and they were helpful, but they were marketing material and because they didn\u2019t show the competitors gas stations, they only showed theirs, and so what\u2019s included in the map, or what\u2019s included in Search Console, is not an accident, and what\u2019s excluded is not an accident. That\u2019s how I like to think about it and I do think that it\u2019s not in Google\u2019s best interest to give us some of these things that smart SEOs feel like they desperately need.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Little Cindy Krum mobile analytics conspiracy theory that Google is really going to hide the data that they don\u2019t want you to know, which is, hey, of the places where you\u2019re ranking, here\u2019s how much stuff we\u2019re packing above the page. Probably not a metric SEOs really would appreciate seeing, so why bother the reporting it? Interesting theory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don\u2019t necessarily disagree. I also think that Google heavily favors their own content and that probably impacts your mobile analytics as well. #YouTube #top ranking website on the planet. And that wraps up this episode of the Voices of Search Podcast. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Cindy Krum, CEO of MobileMoxie. We\u2019d love to continue the conversation with you, so if you\u2019re interested in contacting Cindy, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes. You can contact her on Twitter, where her handle is MobileMoxie, M-O-B-I-L-E-M-O-X-I-E, or you can visit her company\u2019s website, which is MobileMoxie.com.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just one more link on our show notes I\u2019d like to tell you about, if you didn\u2019t have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast head over to voicesofsearch.com, where we have summaries of all of our episodes, contact information for our guests. You can send us your topic suggestions or your SEO questions. You can even apply to be a guest speaker on the Voices of Search podcast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course you can always reach out on social media, our handle is VoicesOfSearch on Twitter and my personal handle is BenJShap, B-E-N-J-S-H-A-P. If you haven\u2019t subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, in addition to part two of our conversation with Cindy Krum, CEO of MobileMoxie, we\u2019re going to publish an episode every day during the work week. So hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we\u2019ll be back in your feed tomorrow morning when we discuss why language settings matter for mobile optimization.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ben:<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All right, that\u2019s it for today, but until next time, remember, the answers are always in the data.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.searchmetrics.com\/us\/zero-click-seos-impact-on-mobile-analytics-cindy-krum-mobilemoxie\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Episode Overview: Google\u2019s trend of transitioning toward zero-click SEO in its search ecosystem is changing the way SEOs acquire and interpret data. Join host Ben as he continues his conversation with MobileMoxie CEO Cindy Krum about the impact of zero click SEO on mobile analytics and how to best interpret data in the changing search [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225352,"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225284\/revisions\/225352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qcsglobal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}