Post of the Week
Content
How to get Fraggles – Using links to named anchors to improve your search result snippets
Another feature for Richard Baxter. This time, a great post on how to achieve 'jump to links' in search results using named anchors.
How To Write A Great Product Description Page
Let's face it, despite their obvious importance, product descriptions are often forgotten about, poorly written and boring. Ian Lurie from Portent has produced a handy guide which you can follow to produce product descriptions that will sell more, and SERP snippets which will increase CTR.
The Basics of Building an Intent-Based Keyword List
I've read a load of posts on building an intent-based keyword list recently, and this is another one from the Moz team which cropped up. There are definitely more advanced posts on the subject than this, but if you want to dip your toe in keyword intent, this is a cool guide.
Tech
Using Python to recover SEO site traffic (Part one)
Fascinating post this. Hamlet Batista uses Python and GA API to isolate sections of a website to gain a better understanding of the winners and losers following a migration.
Processes & Frameworks
How to Estimate the Total Available Organic Search Traffic for a Website
It's reasonable for a client to expect a response to the question 'how much traffic will we likely receive'. In SEO though, there are so many unknown variables which means our forecasts are usually basic estimates at best. In this post, Distilled describe their model for getting to a ballpark traffic figure, as well as some recommendations for a more rigorous approach.
Good morning Weekly SEOs. It's my favourite time of year, when AJ Kohn writes another awesome blog post. Whenever he puts pen to paper, I feel like I'm always learning something new.
As an industry, we've come along way from simple keyword research. This is because of how Google's algorithm has evolved over time to become more complex. Now, we need to understand the intent behind keywords, or clusters of keywords, to understand what it is a user really wants.
The issue here is that it's rather difficult to understand the intent behind keywords at scale. To do this, AJ Kohn describes looking at the patterns of words that make up queries to uncover query classes. These are generally made up of a root term and a modifier, something like 'holiday homes in Spain'.
He then uses rank indices to track the aggregate rank of a basket of keywords which make up the query class. This is such a neat way of understanding groups of queries which have the same intent - it can be done at scale, because they are repeatable.
If you don't read anything else this week, read this. He also features a fabulous presentation from MozCon on Search-Driven Content Strategies which I'd recommend you read.
The Weekly SEO