Identifying and Filling Your SEO Skill Gaps — Whiteboard Friday

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Helen shows you how to find and address gaps in your SEO skills so you can continue evolving and developing your best SEO self.

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Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Helen, Head of SEO at Car & Classic, and I am here today to share some top tips on how to identify your SEO skills gaps and how to fill them. 

Now that sounds a bit rude, doesn't it, suggesting you have skills gaps? I don't know you. You might be an excellent SEO, and we're sure you are. But you know that thing that we tell our clients and our bosses that SEO is really difficult and it's always changing, and the algorithms, oh, no, they've developed again. Turns out that stuff that we tell our bosses and our clients to keep our jobs, it's actually true, and because of that, we have to keep our skill set evolving and developing to keep up with all the stuff that's changing in our industry and to make sure that we are our SEO best selves.

But SEO is kind of a broad subject, isn't it? I mean, we often loosely classify it into on-page SEO, digital PR, and technical SEO. But can you be an expert at all three, given that they've got such a wide and varied skill set? Is that not a bit reductionist anyway because what about local SEO or enterprise SEO or edge SEO?

Take technical SEO. Where do technical SEO skills end and developer skills, engineering skills begin? I'm going to take a step back from that heavy pile of confusion that I've just landed you with and talk about types of skills, namely hard skills and soft skills. Now, I'm loosely classifying hard skills as those kind of SEO skills you need specifically for SEO jobs, things like being able to do keyword analysis or a technical audit, those kind of things that you can learn, you tend to learn on the job, and you can develop and grow at over time.

Then there's also soft skills, but those are the kind of skills that are a bit more transferable, the kind of skills that would put you in a good stead no matter what kind of job you get, things like communication skills or stakeholder management. Those are really important to keep in mind because you're going to need a mix of hard skills and soft skills in different ways depending on which SEO job you're in.

So let's take a think then. Given that SEO is such a broad subject, how do you know which skills you need to be good at? For example, if you're a really good technical SEO, do you need to know lots about local SEO? Do you need to be really good at enterprise SEO? Do you actually need to know what edge SEO is, or can you just keep pretending?

1. What skills do I need? 

So step one really is identifying what skills you need for your role and your future career. So I would always start at looking at your current job. So what is it that you do on the day-to-day? I'd have a look over the course of a week, perhaps, and at the end of each day, just jot down the kinds of activities that you are doing.

So, for instance, you might have done a bit of a technical audit, or you might have had some meetings. Of course, you've had meetings. We all spend our lives in meetings. But jot them down and start to break them down into the skill sets that you need to be good at each of those activities. So let's take meetings, for example. You might have had a client pitch meeting. What are the kind of skills that you need to be really, really successful at client pitch meetings?

If you could max out, if you could turn your skill level up to 10, what would those skills be for you to be really successful in a pitch meeting? But then perhaps in the afternoon, you did some training for the developers in your team. That's still a meeting. There's a whole different set of skills. There's training. There's communication. It's a different skill set needed.

So just spend some time looking over the course of the week, breaking down all of the different activities you do in your current job, and try to analyze what sort of skills you need to do really well at those activities. But that's your job now. What about your future career? What kind of skills do you need for that? So now I would start looking at some job ads. So maybe fire up LinkedIn, ignore those 20 messages trying to sell you guest post opportunities, and have a look at some of the job ads that are there.

But don't look at the job ads that you could get at the moment. Look at the job ads that are a bit more aspirational. So if you're a technical SEO, look at senior technical SEO ads or head of technical SEO. Start looking at those job ads for jobs that are a couple of stages above where you are right now and look at the kind of skills that they are asking for, the ones that they think are absolutely essential and those that they think are a bit desirable, because that will give you an indication as to what skills you might need in your future career if you're going in the direction that you hope to go in.

And then, of course, you need to start breaking down some of those complex skills. I'm talking the kind of generic, nebulous kind of skills that we always seem to list on our job ads, things like stakeholder management. What does that actually mean in SEO? I mean, really, it means that you get your way, right, that that amazing SEO strategy that you've spent ages coming up with is bought in by the stakeholders that need to say yes to it.

That's kind of what stakeholder management is. But if you break it down into its component skills, it's about being able to communicate effectively and persuasively. It's about understanding business needs and blockers. It's about being able to understand development cycles and how your requests might fit into those. So stakeholder management, quite a broad skill, but start identifying what the component skills are of those complex ones.

And then finally, speak to your manager. Get them to give you a progression plan, set some goals for you. Help them to identify what skills you need for your current role, what they're expecting you to excel at, and that will help you to come up with a total list of all the skills that you might need in your current and future roles. Great.

2. What do I need to improve?

So you know what you need to know, but how do you know whether you're already really good at those skills or you need to improve at them? Well, I would suggest you start off by asking your colleagues. Ask them to tell you what you need to improve at. But you're going to need to be specific because if you just ask them what they think of your current skills, they'll say something like, "You're really nice and you bake great cakes for the office, and you're really friendly," and it's really edifying, but it's not particularly helpful in this context.

So perhaps put together a bit of a survey for them because everyone loves impromptu surveys when they're really busy at work. But ask them anonymously to feedback on the skills that you know you need to have for your role and ask them to mark you out of, say, 5 or 10 on how competent they think you are. Also do it yourself. This is your skills matrix. This is how you identify where you think you are in your competencies at these particular skills.

But I'd suggest you break it down further. So if you're looking at, say, website migrations, rank yourself in terms of your theoretical knowledge of website migrations, but also your practical experience of them, because it might be that you have read every single blog on the Moz blog about website migrations, but you've never actually carried one out. So your theoretical knowledge might be really high.

You might have a great understanding of what goes into a website migration, but practically you don't really have much experience of it. So you might give yourself a five for knowledge and a zero for practical experience. Get your colleagues to do that, do it yourself, and then you've got a really good idea of where you currently are in terms of your skill set. Also, ask your manager during your performance reviews to start ranking you themselves.

They might be a bit more objective. They might be able to give you an idea of the sorts of skills that they do think you need to develop in, that you've perhaps not identified yourself. They should really be able to help you measure that against the performance plans that they've put in place for you. And finally, go to conferences, read blogs, scroll through Twitter. Where do you feel out of your depth in those kind of conversations? Where is it that you think, "I have no idea what they're talking about. They're going on about edge SEO again."

3. How do I improve?

Where is it that you think you actually need to improve your knowledge and understanding and perhaps practical application? Okay, so you know what you need to know. You know what you're not so hot at. But how do you improve? Well, that's step three, and I would suggest you start by surrounding yourself with thought leaders. So go to Twitter, or Mastodon, or wherever else it is that you cool kids hang out these days and find yourself some thought leaders to follow.

Now, these might not be people in the SEO industry, but they might be experts in other fields. But try to find people who really excel at the kind of skills that you want to develop. So if you want to get better at persuasive communication, follow some politicians. If you want to get better at understanding how development cycles work and how you can get buy-in from engineers, follow some engineering managers.

But start to understand from the people who really excel at those kind of skills that you're looking to improve how they do things and how they develop and practice their skills. You can also find yourself a mentor. Now, this is great because you could have someone who really understands who you are and your direction of travel in your career. They can help you to identify where you're currently a little bit weak and also help you to see where you're improving.

Now, mentors can be quite expensive, or they can be entirely free. There are mentoring schemes out there, like the wonderful Women in Tech SEO one, and there's others that you might be able to take advantage of. But find yourself someone, and it might be a former colleague or a former boss, or it might be someone that you currently work with. But find someone who you know is a step or two ahead of you in terms of their career and the sorts of skills that you want to develop and ask them to help you.

Training, we've all been promised these amazing training budgets when we've sat in job interviews. Let's actually use them. So find yourself some training courses that are really specific to the skills that you're looking to develop. Don't just go on sort of generic SEO ones. But if it's stakeholder management, find a course that covers that, or if it's public speaking, find a course that covers that. Get feedback from your mentor, from your colleagues, from your boss.

Ask people to let you know whether they think you're developing those skills or not. Have a look at your skills matrix. Make sure that you're just not leaving it on your desktop to gather metaphorical dust, but actually brush it off and have a review. How have you developed over time against those skills that you listed out a while ago? If there's any skills that you're really, really hoping to get better at, you've got to try them out.

So whether that's a public speaking skill that you want to develop, and you've just got to make that leap to asking whether you can lead a client meeting or whether you can lead a training session or even applying to talk on stage, you've got to try it out. And, of course, it doesn't end there. It's a continual process. You've got to go back to stage one. I would suggest that you maybe set yourself a reminder once a year to have a look back over this, make sure you're still on track for the career that you want and you're still improving those skills that you want to improve.

Thanks very much.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Google Bard vs. the New Bing

This week I’ve been fortunate enough to get access to both Google Bard and the New Bing, so a day later, I’m here to share my first impressions.

What is the new Bing?

“The new Bing” is the product of Microsoft’s unholy alliance with OpenAI, makers of the now infamous ChatGPT. This development promises to have seismic effects on the search ecosystem, with Microsoft’s CEO saying they’re happy to accept “demonetization” of search in their pursuit of market share, and Google extremely concerned about the threat ChatGPT technology poses as an alternative to their core search business.

Of course, by now we’ve all also seen various viral posts and tweets showing just how dangerous it can be to use chat AI as a search engine, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, the point is that Bing is making moves.

When I perform a search on “old bing” now, I can see this box inviting me to try the new one. You’ll notice a key detail here: it’s only available in Microsoft Edge. Yikes. Big Microsoft Energy. Fortunately for you, the reader, I have dusted off everyone’s fourth-favorite browser so you don’t have to.

Performing the same search in the new Bing, I can see identical organic results, but rather different features:

The “mustelid masters” box above the organic results is new, and contains AI-generated text with a voice-to-speech capability. It’s a six-part story, with sometimes surprising accompanying imagery:

You can see here that a picture of wrestling has been sourced to accompany the text about badgers wrestling. These AI-generated boxes don’t appear for most queries — only clear and uncontroversial informational intents.

The phrase “Mustelid masters” itself seems to be original to this box.

Lastly, one of the tabs in the story cites the Wisconsin Badgers, and a page which is entirely unrelated to the content at hand, so perhaps Bing is also citing its sources for disambiguation here?

You’ll notice the addition of an “Open Website” button next to the top result on the SERP — perhaps a way of compensating a little for loss of organic click through rate?

The “chat” tab is also present on old Bing, but just shows you a message telling you to go to Microsoft Edge.

The phrase “conversational search” here is interesting, given this was a phrase Google introduced in 2013.

If we do use Microsoft Edge, we see a chatbot interface in this tab, but with some nice additions. Switching over to this from a regular search result pre-loads my previous query from organic search:

There’s a bunch of different modes available at the top, and also citations in the search results — both welcome improvements over the likes of ChatGPT.

Now, how about Bard?

What is Google Bard?

Well, not very self-confident, for one. But that’s probably a good thing.

Bard is also, right now, not anywhere near as integrated with search. In their announcement on February 6th, Google teased Bard in a way that made it look very much like a SERP feature, similar to Bing:

However, the version we have to play with now is more of a dedicated chatbot interface.

It was probably already the case that Google was pushed to move far sooner than they hoped with this technology, and of course they have much more to lose from messing with organic search than Bing does. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the slower and more cautious approach.

Now, it probably should be noted that chatbots are not really designed for me to just enter a one word keyword like “badgers”, like I might do in organic search. But, like Bing’s chat tab, I get something resembling an informational result. So, let’s compare side by side.

Bard vs. new Bing, side-by-side

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

The most obvious difference, at least to an SEO’s eye, is the presence of citations in the Bing result. Not knowing where source information comes from is one of the biggest challenges for users when dealing with this kind of technology, so that’s a huge differentiator.

Bard does claim to include citations. My colleague Mike was able to trigger them, and captured it in this clip. It’s definitely far, far less ubiquitous than on Bing.

That said, I like that the framing of Google’s solution — with multiple draft answers presented and “enter a prompt here” — which makes it clearer I’m dealing with something that is not a source of unassailable truth.

I was also intrigued by the localization of Bing’s result. It mentions the UK in its response, which is where I’m searching from, and shows UK websites in the citations. So I asked them both a follow-up question about my location:

Bing repeats itself, but Bard just seems to assume I’m in the US. Unfortunate.

Slightly commercial query

Many SEOs will be more interested in how technology like this might fit into their marketing funnel. Let’s try a classic top-of-funnel query:

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

There isn’t really an objective answer here, but both results are broadly sensible. That said, the Bing answer is both a narrower list and far richer.

Interestingly, neither result seems deterministic.

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

Bing can produce different answers to the same question in different windows, and so can Google.

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison.

This may be a contentious point when SEOs start optimizing for these answers, and want to measure their results. Of course, regular organic rankings can vary massively between locales and even days of the week, but generally speaking, if you search twice from the same computer (in private browsing windows etc) you’ll get the same results. Not so here.

Conspiracy theories

Click here to see the full side-by-side comparison. 

Neither solution fell for some obvious conspiracy theory bait, which is encouraging to see. I actually don’t mind at all Google’s more cautious “I can’t assist with that” here. I wasn’t able to provoke a similar reaction out of Bing for any query, but I also wasn’t able to provoke it to say anything abhorrent - I’m sure others will, though.

What next for SEOs?

For both platforms there are major questions before SEOs can really engage and consider them an important part of their work.

For Bing, will this have adoption? Most SEOs have not made the habit of optimizing for Bing in recent years, but there is already talk of increased Bing market share.

For Bard, how, if at all, will this be integrated in search? The current platform is clearly marked as an experiment, and is more like ChatGPT than it is like the mock ups Google showed us in February. Or will users be encouraged to use it as its own thing?

For both platforms, there are big questions about how SEOs might go about optimizing to get their clients mentioned, and indeed favorably mentioned in results - there are lots of nefarious possibilities here, and Wikipedia is probably the most obvious. Once mentioned, how does one measure this? When I clicked through to my own site from Bing’s chat tab, it just appeared like any other Bing organic traffic. Rank tracking is an interesting problem too, and you can be sure that Moz and STAT will be posting in future about how we’re handling these features — watch this space!

13 Local Search Developments You Need to Know About from Q1 2023

Can you believe we’ve already sped through the first quarter of the new year? So much has happened, and on the strength of the warm reception this nascent local search quarterly review received in 2022, I’m going to continue the series this year. Thank you for being a reader. Let’s dive right into the most interesting new things we’ve seen in the first three months of 2023!

A new local search ranking factor!

Joy Hawkins and her Sterling Sky squad discovered something truly new this February: selecting pre-defined Google Business Profiles services from the list that Google offers some categories of business can have a tremendous positive impact on local pack rankings. Joy’s dream team is working to see whether custom-written services have a similar effect. For now, if Google shows you a choice of ready-made services (not to be confused with service areas) in your NMX interface and they relate to your business, definitely add them! By my count this brings us up to 5 GBP factors we strongly believe directly impact rank: title, URL, categories, reviews, and now, pre-defined services.

The ABCs of…ABC

In crunchy spherical fruit news, Apple launched Apple Business Connect to make it easier for local businesses to get on the map, because, of course, you want to reach those 137k iPhone users. Mike Blumenthal has the best write-up on the new ABC features, and Moz Local customers get a collective pat on the back because their info is already being distributed to Apple Maps hassle-free. I hope to have a column coming out soon on Apple’s launch, but in the meantime, local SEOs are seeing this as one more signal (amid all the AI chat buzz) that there could be a few cracks of competitive opportunity in the Google local monolith. It can be worth major money to win even a point away from Google’s market share, and this is an interesting time in search.

BBB as trusted source in troubleshooting

In other acronymic headlines, Stefan Somborac and Ben Fisher spotted Google requesting a link to your BBB listing in one of their assistive help forms. You may encounter this when reporting problems with your listings and need to go find yourself on the Better Business Bureau site. The Better Business Bureau has not always earned good press in local search circles, but this move from Google signals that they clearly trust the longstanding organization. Might be a good time to look at how you’re rated there.

GBP products in Google Shopping results

At first, there was uncertainty as to whether this was a new feature when Colan Nielsen spotted it, but on the strength of the “wows” from the local SEO community, Barry Schwartz did a write-up on this phenomenon of products that were manually added to Google Business Profiles showing up within the search engine’s large shopping interface. In the past, I had only seen products added via the Merchant Center appear this way. Communication of local inventory remains a major hurdle for independent businesses, and this change from Google is a good incentive to be sure you’re adding products to your Google Business Profiles with help, if you need it, from my handy tutorial.

Shelfies spotted in NYC

This March, when I wrote about the nifty idea of shelfies (photos of store shelves you upload to GBP to display the breadth of your inventory), I had yet to see Google altering 3-pack visuals to feature them based on my search language. Kudos to Mike Blumenthal for capturing a live instance of this behavior for “backpacks nyc” and note that the local pack images show many products instead of a single item. I’m still not seeing this in my west coast environs, but am even more convinced now that local businesses should be taking shelfies.

NMX Profile Strength leaves us feeling a bit weak

Darren Shaw’s tweet captures the real-time letdown of finding a novel New Merchant Experience feature…only to discover it seems like a sales tool for Google Ads. Apparently, in order to get a good Profile Strength score, you need to pay. Colan Nielsen perfectly summarizes the awkwardness that is happening for agencies as a result of this debut:

Google’s rollout of the NMX was not popular, and I don’t know how it is affecting local business owner engagement with the local product, but if this metric is meant to inspire more commitment from users to completing their free profiles, it’s odd to mix it up with a paid product. A red herring, a primrose path, a bait-and-switch, gammon and spinach? Hardly a brilliant success if agencies are telling their clients to ignore this “feature”. And speaking of things that were once free…

Local Service Ads: A whole lot going on

Matt Casady wrote an excellent article over at LocalU about dentists becoming eligible to “pay to play” via LSA. If you’re marketing a new practice or helping one compete in a dense market, you can purchase the visibility you need to fill the patient roster. This sounds like good news, at a glance, but it’s also part of the ongoing saga of local business visibility becoming less “free” at Google’s house. At last count, 70 categories have become eligible for LSA and Google just keeps adding to the list.

LSA isn’t just a budgetary woe for underfunded SMBs, but a hotbed of very concerning spam. As my friends at NearMedia point out in the foregoing article, LSA’s review requirements are a temptation to engage in review spam, and both fake businesses and fake review content are ending up getting recommended by Google in this program. If you’re thinking of paying Google for leads, please read Ben Fisher’s alarming piece on LSA arbitrage and spam, complete with real-world examples of some very deceptive ads. At this point, I don’t trust Google’s “guarantee” any more than I do the local packs…I’ve just seen too much fraud to pretend that such content is uniformly trustworthy. Not to say that Google isn’t making some efforts, including:

Emergency brakes during spam attacks

Another doff of the cap to Colan Nielsen for sharing a new Google doc explaining why and how they may suspend user generated content (UGC) including reviews, images, and videos during upticks in prohibited behavior. For example, if a business becomes major controversial news and begins to receive a large number of reviews from non-customers, Google can pull the emergency brake for a period of time to defend the brand (and the quality of the index).

This capability is not new, but the documentation of the practice is noteworthy. The problem is, it’s no guarantee that Google will protect you from a spam attack. Remember that review spam may not always consist of a bunch of obviously negative reviews. There’s the erosion tactic of leaving a lot of 4-star reviews to downgrade the 5-star rating of a business, and another trick I only recently encountered of spammers initially leaving a high-star review and then sneakily changing it to a low-star one. All good reasons to continuously monitor your reviews, using software if you find this task too time-consuming. And be prepared to act quickly with this step-by-step Mike Blumenthal tutorial if your business is sabotaged

Two scoops of juicy justifications

Damian Rollison brings us some better news about UGC this quarter, in the form of double local business justifications (some of which stem from reviews) appearing on listings. Justifications are textual snippets embellishing local business listings, like the, “My whole family uses them for car repairs,” shown above.

In my 2021 column, Local Justifications are a Big Deal and You Can Influence Them, I documented the different types of justifications I saw, including reviews, websites, posts, services, menus, in-stock, and sold here. At that time, however, all justifications I encountered in my study were single. Damian’s find is exciting because of the large amount of screen space being given to a double justification, with its dual conversion pitches. Have you written a Google post lately (actually, they are confusingly called “updates” now, so have you updated your GBP with an update, lately?). Double justifications would be well worth the effort, if you’re lucky enough to get them.

Immersive views for big buildings

When I was a child, my family had a coffee table book called Above London which showcased aerial photography of the capitol. Now, everyone and their cousin can buy a drone to get these kinds of shots, but lovers of new things will appreciate this tweet from Punit of the 360 Map View that Google then talked about as “immersive view” at their memorable Paris announcement. Looking up the Getty Museum in LA on Google Maps showed me that many big buildings in the area have this treatment. If your local business is contained within a landmark edifice, you could get this eagle’s eye view of where you work.

In non-Google news

Yelp has really struggled of late to compete with Google for local mindshare, but the fellows at Near Media drew my attention to a new report from the National Bureau of Economic research finding that restaurants which get listed on Yelp see a 5% increase in sales. In fact, even if your first reviews aren’t great, you still get a bump in diners. The restaurant business is HARD and that 5% could mean a great deal.

Actually, success is always the great challenge for nearly any local business, and that brings me to my last tidbit: the new, must-read report from the Institute of Local Self Reliance on the impact of dollar stores in the US. I have read countless articles over the past few years from towns and cities where dollar stores replaced all local variety and residents are stuck with little fresh food, dismal wages, and a loss of community identity. In 2022, nearly half of the businesses that opened in the US were some type of dollar store - an unprecedented figure, and these exemplars of the race to the bottom are the exact opposite of what independent businesses are working so hard to build.

I said this was non-Google news, but I’ve come to see Google Business Profiles as some of the best armor an SMB owner can don in the fight against lowered standards of living across the country. Use your profiles, and your website, and your social media to get the word out that your business is unique, local, ethical, green, family-owned, and a key contributor to the economic localism that makes the difference between a good place to live and a difficult place to be. Keep going, and I’ll be rooting for you in Q2!

Identify Featured Snippet Opportunities – Next Level

Featured snippets offer a fantastic opportunity for increased traffic and visibility for your site. There is a lot to say about this SERP feature and a lot that has already been said:

• Crystal Carter covered how to optimize existing content for featured snippets in an episode of Whiteboard Friday (complete with a handy dandy flow chart!) which is incredibly informative. Seriously, check it out.

• Additionally, Britney Muller has done multiple episodes on what featured snippets are, how to target them, and more.

So what can I possibly add to the conversation? Well, let’s take a look at how Moz Pro can help with identifying opportunities to gain (or steal) featured snippets within your existing toolkit. Then you can take the infinite wisdom of folks like Crystal and Britney to elevate your content to new heights (and SERP features).

A Refresher on Featured Snippets

Before we dig in, let’s take a brief moment to talk about what featured snippets are, just to refresh our memories. Featured snippets are a type of SERP feature which seek to answer a query using a snippet from a webpage. When a searcher makes a query, Google may attempt to answer that query by pulling out a portion of a site’s content to display directly in the results.

Sometimes, as seen in the example above, Google will even highlight the most relevant part of the blurb they’ve extracted.

Featured snippets can come in a variety of formats including paragraphs, numerical lists, bulleted lists, and more and can be identified by the inclusion of a source link at the bottom of the feature. These features are not to be confused with answer features which do not include a source link and typically have a slightly different format.

Now that we’ve refreshed our memories on what featured snippets are, let’s dive into how we can use Moz Pro to identify opportunities to snag them.

Moz Pro Campaigns

Moz Pro Campaigns offer a variety of data views and tools you can use to scope out featured snippet opportunities. To start, we’re going to take a look at the Rankings Overview section.

Rankings

Within the main Rankings tab, you can see and monitor your tracked site’s rankings for all your tracked keywords. Anywhere your site has acquired a featured snippet will be noted as a rank of #1, with a featured snippet icon beside it which looks like a pair of scissors.

Pro tip: In the above screenshot I’ve opted to label these keywords as “featured snippet” so I can keep an eye on them and identify if I lose a featured snippet due to a competitor overtaking me or by Google changing the SERP for those keywords to no longer include a snippet.

If we hop over to the Competition tab of our rankings section, we can start to spot opportunities to steal some of this prime real estate in the SERP. Just as we saw in the Rankings tab, any keyword where the #1 has earned a featured snippet will be indicated by that scissors icon. This means we can sort our tracked keywords by our tracked competitor’s rankings to identify where they are earning those SERP features and where I’m ranking in comparison. This can help me spot featured snippets within striking distance by showing me a side by side comparison.

Any keyword where we’re already ranking on the first page and there is a featured snippet present could be an opportunity for me to reformat and fine tune our content to scoop up that feature.

SERP Features

Now that we’ve identified opportunities related specifically to your competitors, let’s broaden our scope a bit. The SERP Features section of your Campaign can offer additional insight into opportunities for featured snippets outside of competitor rankings.

Within this section of your Campaign, the tool will note how many of your tracked keywords include a featured snippet in the SERP as well as how many of those your site has earned.

This can offer a great opportunity to investigate and identify featured snippet opportunities outside of your competitor rankings. We can filter by featured snippet to see which keywords include this SERP feature and then identify keywords where our site is not currently featured. This is indicated by a grey featured snippet icon. For keywords where our site is currently ranking but not included in the featured snippet, we may see an option to expand the Insights column.

By expanding this drawer we can see what site the current featured snippet is being pulled from along with the exact URL. We can then use this information to identify areas of opportunity for our own content. Can we possibly provide a better answer to the query? What kind of markup and formatting is the current snippet’s post using? What can we do to elevate my own content?

Pro tip: The SERP features section of your Campaign can be exported to CSV, as well. Within the export, any time a SERP feature is present but your site is not included, this will be indicated by TRUE. If your site is included in the SERP feature, it will be noted as Included.

Keyword Explorer

Now that we’ve taken a look at how we can use Moz Pro Campaigns to identify and monitor featured snippet opportunities, let’s look at a few ways we can use Keyword Explorer to supplement that information. Whether you’re doing keyword research for a new client, looking to identify featured snippet opportunities for your site, or you’re needing content ideas to build from, the Keyword Explorer tool is an invaluable addition to your tool kit.

First, let’s walk through a workflow to help identify existing opportunities for featured snippets. Britney Muller also touched on this workflow in her Whiteboard Friday episode “Featured Snippets: What to Know & How to Target.

1. In Keyword Explorer, enter your URL into Explore by Site

From within the Keyword Explorer > Explore by Site you have the option to enter a root domain, subdomain, subfolder, or exact page to see keywords you are already ranking for. The subdomain and subfolder options can be particularly helpful if you are doing research for a specific vertical of your business or section of your site. For example, you may be looking to capture featured snippets for your blog’s subfolder.

2. Filter your results by rank

After entering in your URL and clicking Analyze, you’ll have the option to view the Ranking Keywords. From this list, filter by Ranking to see only the keywords for which you’re ranking on the first page (positions 1-10).

3. Add keywords to a Keyword List

Now we have a list of keywords that could have the potential for a featured snippet opportunity. Let’s dig a little deeper. While it can be incredibly helpful to know what keywords you’re ranking #1 for (and it may be worth adding those to a Campaign to track and monitor over time) these may not present many new opportunities for your site. Google’s deduplication of featured snippet results in the SERP - meaning that if a site has earned the featured snippet, that same URL will not be listed in the remaining SERP results - means that if your site is included in the featured snippet, it is identified as position #1 in the SERP. So let’s find and select the keywords for which our site is ranking 2 to 10 and add them to a Keyword List in Keyword Explorer.

Pro tip: If your site is ranking for a large number of keywords it can be helpful to export your Ranking Keywords to CSV. You can then filter and sort by rank and search volume to identify your strongest opportunities and add them to a Keyword List via copy & paste.

4. Find keywords with Featured Snippet opportunities

Now that we have a list of potential keywords, let’s narrow it down further. Within our Keyword List, we can filter by SERP Feature to see only the keywords which have a featured snippet in the SERP.

We can then take these keywords and add them to a Campaign, do further research on them, or see what content is currently featured in the SERP and identify ways to improve our own content.

Pro tip: You can use the Rank Check feature to see what page on your site is currently ranking on the first page of the SERP for these keywords and export that data to CSV.

Explore by Keyword

Up next is a workflow to help us identify new opportunities and possible content ideas for featured snippet inclusion. We’ll be using Keyword Explorer again but we’ll be switching to the Explore by Keyword section.

1. In Keyword Explorer, enter your seed keyword into Explore by Keyword

Within Keyword Explorer > Explore by Keyword we have the ability to enter in a seed keyword or term and explore the SERP, keyword metrics, and Keyword Suggestions. In this example we’ll be scouting content ideas and featured snippets for a blog post all about homemade ice cream.

2. Click on Keyword suggestions

After entering “homemade ice cream” into the tool and clicking Analyze, we can click into Keyword Suggestions to see additional keyword ideas along with their relevancy and monthly volume.

3. Filter to see keyword suggestions that “are questions”

Considering that featured snippets are typically added to SERPs when Google is attempting to directly answer a query means that when writing a blog about homemade ice cream, we will want to know what people are asking about homemade ice cream. Within Keyword Suggestions, we can filter to display keyword suggestions which are specifically questions.

Filtering this way will allow us to see what people are asking, and how often they are asking it, in an attempt to nail down content ideas.

4. Select keywords and add to a Keyword List

Once we’ve identified some topics and questions that may be relevant to our new blog, we can select them using the checkboxes on the left and add them to a Keyword List for further analysis.

5. Find keywords with Featured Snippet opportunities

Finally, we’re going to revisit the last step from our previous workflow and filter our Keyword List by SERP Feature to see only the keywords which have a featured snippet in the SERP.

We now have a list of topic ideas and questions to consider answering in our new post all about homemade ice cream. This can help to inform our content along with the structure and markup for our posts. For example, we may decide to write a step-by-step process for how to make ice cream at home. Or we may publish a recipe for vanilla ice cream. Or we could even write a post all about the best ingredients to use when making an ice cream case to elevate our flavors. Regardless of what we decide to publish, we can now apply the tactics and strategies outlined by Crystal Carter and Britney Muller for featured snippet optimization to our shiny new list of topics.

Conclusion

Featured snippets aren’t going anywhere anytime soon — if anything, we seem to be seeing more and more varieties of them as time goes on. Identifying opportunities to optimize existing content or create new content for inclusion in them can lead to increased visibility (and possibly traffic) for your site. I hope you now feel prepared to go use the Moz Tools to scope out those prospects. With these actionable workflows in your toolkit, you’ll be able to rise to the top!