The One Where We Discuss SERP Features With Diana Richardson

This week we chat with Diana Richardson, Social Media & Community Manager for the SEO division of Semrush, all about SERP features.

Where to find Diana:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DianaRich013

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%8D%B7-diana-richardson-8965a317/

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Resources:

https://www.semrush.com/blog/

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Episode Sponsor

This season is sponsored by NOVOS. NOVOS, the London-based eCommerce SEO agency, has won multiple awards for its eCommerce SEO campaigns including Best Global SEO Agency of The Year 2 years running working with brands like Bloom & Wild and Not On The High Street. They are running an exclusive Shopify SEO roundtable for eCommerce leaders on September 23rd with limited spaces available. If you're interested, reach out to them via thisisnovos.com or message their co-founder Antonio Wedral on LinkedIn.

Where to find Novos:

Website - https://thisisnovos.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisnovos

Twitter - https://twitter.com/thisisnovos

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thisisnovos/

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Episode Transcript:

Sarah: Hello and a very warm welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, I am Sarah McDowell, SEO Content Executive at Holland and Barrett, and I am your host for today. We have Diana Richardson joining us today, who is social media and community manager for the SEO unit at SEMRush. Hello, Diana.

Diana: Sarah. Oh, my gosh. I could just listen to you all day. I love your voice.

Sarah: Thank you. Maybe I need to think of ways to make money out of my voice. Maybe that's what I need to do?

Diana: Yeah, you definitely should.

Sarah:  I feel like we've already cleared something up. So, it is SEMRush rather than S-E-M-rush?

Diana: Yes, and we have a lot of fun with how you pronounce our name. But in December of 2020, we went through a rebrand and we revisited our logo, and you'll notice our name is not capitalised as much as it used to be. So, we definitively made it Semrush in December of 2020. But in my career of all these years, I've always called it SEM Rush. So, it was a big change for me too. I've just now kind of get it down.

Sarah: There you go. You've heard it here official. Well, let's start by getting to know you, Diana, so please would you be so kind and give us a brief overview of yourself? So, what you do and how you got into this wonderful world of SEO.

Diana: My SEO journey started in 2006 when I answered an ad in the paper. Yes, we did not have things like indeed at that time and neither was SEO as a career choice. So, the ad was actually for a marketing specialist. And so, I sat down for the interview and the woman who would become my manager described SEO and PPC to me, and it was with a company that was transitioning from print to digital. So, I learned this from the ground up, brand spanking new, no training in college, with my clients, hands-on for 15 years. It’s the best way to learn. I was with them for quite a long time, but then I wanted to branch out beyond SEO. And so, I found a job as a digital marketing director where I got to learn social media, email, branding, storytelling, all of those beautiful elements, and then actually networked my way to the job here at Semrush, which combines both of my loves, which is talking to people and SEO. So, it worked out great.

Sarah: Are you ready for me to do a quick-fire round of questions?

Diana: Yes.

[Quick Fire Questions]

Sarah: There are loads of ways that you can be creative. You don't have to draw. What empowers you to be the brilliant woman that you are today?

Diana: Besides my genes? I love this question because I think it has been a 38-year journey, right? We learn things every step of the way. And what has empowered me to be how I am, where I am, is finding that it was OK to be me. Many, many more doors have opened for me just being myself, including my job with Semrush and being part of the Women in Tech SEO community. And I've found such satisfaction and a lot more growth career and personally just being my regular self.

Sarah: I love that. What advice would you give women starting in the industry?

Diana: Fight for experience, put your nose in every possible scenario, task, project you possibly can. You're going to be tired, but that experience will create who knows what for you and your career is ever-evolving. And you never know what's going to lead you to something so satisfying for you, so experience as much as you possibly can digitally in the world of your job and life, but volunteer and things like that. And everything matters and everything counts towards your career. So, and if there's something you want to do like I fought for this, I like pushed myself into senior management my two jobs ago because I wanted to. And I was like, I'm just going to go to this meeting. And I just did it. And no one told me, no.

Sarah: Wonderful, wonderful advice there. I think we should now get stuck into the main topic of today's episode. And we are talking about SERP features.

Diana: Love SERP features. I can't wait to talk about them.

Sarah: Well, let's start with the basics. What are SERP features? What do we mean?

Diana: So SERP features are everything that shows up on the Google results page that are not paid ads or the organic listings. So SERP features are the maps that you see, those quick answers, the knowledge, the rectangle that you see on the side, the reviews. If an organic website has three or four links underneath them, those are all SERP features.

Sarah: And is there a type or category of keywords that tend to bring up SERP features?

Diana: Classic SEO answer here. It depends.

Sarah: I love it. I mean, you've got to get it, haven’t you?

Diana: We're 8 minutes in and we had to get it in there. I'll tell you this, though, the Semrush tool, multiple tools within our tool suite will help you determine which keywords trigger SERP features, what keywords you are ranking for that triggers SERP features that you're not showing up in. And we've got some tools in there that will show you where your competitors are not showing up in the SERP features. So, you can take advantage of that or kick them out of where they are showing. So, without having to do manual searches doing it yourself, which works too. But why not have a tool that will do it for you? So, a lot of the time SERP features are like we'll respond to questions. So, you know, you get the instant answers off the top. Or the people also ask a lot of the times there, the longer tail keywords you're looking for reviews, you're looking for information on a specific person, so personally branded or branded searches tend to trigger some of the SERP features. So really, it's the intent of the keyword, if there is a SERP feature that matches. I mean, if you type in your hotel reservation, your hotel thing pops up. So, it's based a lot on intent.

Sarah: Definitely. Definitely. And I think as Google carries on involving enhancing user experience, they're just going to introduce more and more SERP features, so just because setting keywords don't bring up SERP features now doesn't mean that they won't in the future.

Diana: But also, I think this is Google trying to be the resource, so think about Google's evolution, it was, hey, here's just 10 links to information off of Google that you might find interesting. But now the evolution of Google is, hey, you don't even have to leave Google to get the answers that you want. So, I think, yeah, we will see more and more SERP features. I think Bing will evolve their own as well, so they can be the source and not necessarily have to send people away, which is good and bad for SEO, because obviously, SEO is the art of bringing people to your website. But at the same time, that's why I want us to talk about SERP features today, because there are so many opportunities for you to still get that traffic outside of trying to rack your brain and your time and energy and trying to get number one, two or three.

Sarah: You have led me on to my next question beautifully. Why should we be going after SERP features then?

Diana: Yeah, for a couple of reasons. And it goes beyond SEO reasons, too. So, the SEO reasons are it's really difficult to get into position one, especially if you are in a competitive field, especially if you are competing against somebody that's already established and has a higher authority. Getting to those top three positions is excruciatingly slow and sometimes you don't get time for that. But no worries because you have SERP future opportunities. Think about your mobile experience. How far do you have to scroll on Google on your phone just to even get to the first two or three results? Right. It takes some hand scrolling there to like some wrist action to get you to those positions because it's taken up by the paid ads and the SERP features. So, you can rank above the organic listings in and of themselves by optimising for SERP features. The other benefit is that if you trigger a SERP feature, then that is showcasing to the audience and the searcher a lot of street cred, because we know as consumers, as searchers that Google doesn't show SERP features for everybody's website. That's why it's competition. If everybody, had it, you know, it wouldn't be beneficial. So, by you optimising and showing up in the SERP feature, you've got just this extra level of authority and street cred with your audience just by being present there. The other reason you should be aiming for a presence in the SERP features is for branding purposes, not even an SEO thing, just like a brand in front of more eyeballs. You know, you still look at those ads that show up. You might not click on them, but you're still aware that they are there. And that is a branding tactic. So, if there's even more motivation to start working on these SERP features, it's to get your brand in front of more eyes.

Sarah: I mean, those are loads of reasons that you should be aiming and going for these SERP features, isn't it? I don't know if this is an easy question to answer because I know that they are tricky things to master. But are there any tips and tricks that you can do to win these SERP feature spots?

Diana: Yeah, and a lot of the search features revolve around letting the search engines know what this content is. So clean structure like our site architecture, clean navigation. Clean code is really important, clean schema. And if you're not familiar with what schema markup is it is adding extra bits of ID code in your HTML that identify, this is a question, this is an address. I do think of it as h tags and things like that because you're telling the search engines, hey, this is a headline, the concept is the same. You're just identifying this piece of information, so the search engine doesn't have to connect the dots in and of itself or for itself. And then you want a lot of it is a question-based too. So, you want to be asking questions in your content and answering questions in your content. And that's just great for user experience anyway because someone's on your website, they got questions, so just help them out anyway by providing the answers. Be straightforward.

Sarah: That’s the ultimate goal here, isn't it? Is that you're helping your audience and your potential customers out there, you want to provide them with the most valuable answer. Oftentimes what I've seen is with the featured snippet where it's like a paragraph in the textbox in the top, position zero. When you go onto that page, you'll see that what Google has done is taken a sentence or two from one bit of the content and then you'll find the end of the paragraph somewhere else. So, is it important if you're going to feature snippets that these have to be at the top of your content or if you come across these sorts of examples if you make it easier by combining that in your content? If my question is making any sense at all, is that a thing that we can try?

Diana: Well, you're bringing back an old school SEO tactic. Is the content at the top of the page more important than the content at the bottom of the page? And it is, I think, in traditional SEO. I mean, I've clicked on the featured snippet, paragraphs two, and it's been a bullet point in the middle of the page. And Google highlights it now for you. I don't know if you've noticed that, too. They highlight the content that is like the blurb that they have selected. So, I think content structure plays a big part as opposed to it being at the top. I think just structuring it. So, making clear H tags, clear bullet points, numbering those bullet points if that's applicable. 

Sarah: I was just going to ask that. If we're comparing bullet points to numbered bullet points, would you say you always try and use numbered ones?

Diana: Only if it makes sense. If it's step by step or a list, then yes, numbers make sense, but just use it as it makes sense. If you have three bullets pointed ideas, then you don't need to put them in order. Because I think, and this is just my opinion, don't take this for whatever you want. But I think Google would prioritise something that has a number one next to it because that's what it knows. So, if you don't need numbers by it, I wouldn't put them.

Sarah: Interesting.

Diana: I don't know. Google does that. Knowing how Google understands content and understands priority, you know, that's just something.

Sarah: I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it? One issue, I suppose, and you addressed it earlier is that with the featured snippets, what Google's doing there is trying for you not to leave the listing pages, the SERPs. And as SEOs, we want to get people onto our website. So, is there any sort of ways that you can make the most out of SERP features? So, is there any way that you can entice people to click?

Diana: So, I also think we need to shift our goals a little bit as an SEO because yes, traditionally it is driving traffic to our websites. But isn't marketing just being there for the audience when they need us? You know what? That's not even marketing. That's just being a good business or a good brand. And so, if you can be present when someone needs you and answer the question without them having to leave Google, you, the brand, or the business have still solidified that relationship. That person started doing that search for that question and you have the answer. They know Google isn't the answer. They know Google pulls the answer from other content. Google didn't write this piece of content. They pulled it from you. And so, you as the business have made that relationship with that person, regardless of if they have come to the website because you were there for them when they had a question.

Sarah: And it goes back to your branding point, I suppose, if you're present and you're owning everywhere, because ultimately, whatever space you're in, whatever business you in, whatever vertical you in, you want to aim to be like the Wikipedia of your industry. Like if someone has a question that they want to know anything regarding what you sell, you should be coming up and by you coming up more and they associate your name, who you are, they associate you with being like the authoritative people in the space who know what they're talking about then you're winning.

Diana: Yes and no because I think that it's about relationships. So, if you don't come up as often but someone, a loyal customer found you anyway, maybe you were positioned 11, maybe you are on the second page, but you had the solution for this person that now they don't need to search for you anymore. Now they're returning traffic. I think that is more important than being Wikipedia. Do you trust Wikipedia every single time? Is Amazon always the answer? You know you don't have to be the big boy, to be the big player, to be the solution for somebody and I think you build customer loyalty, which is the true, true thing we're seeking out, right, is that having this customer in this audience base, you can do that in a variety of ways. And you don't have to be expending the energy to be the Wikipedia or the Amazon, because that's exhausting, and it might bring in irrelevant traffic rather than your core audience.

Sarah: Yes. And I think relevancy is key. Going after subjects, keywords, topics that matter to you as a business?

Diana: I'd rather have 10 right audience members than 1000 wrong. You know, I'd rather my traffic be lower and retain those people than have all the traffic in the world and no one's converting.

Sarah: Exactly. It is the wrong metric, isn't it, that we're looking at.

Diana: We've got to start thinking about people which is tough for us because we're in a very data-centric industry and we base a lot of what we do on data. But we must keep in mind that there are actual people behind this data. I'm creating a presentation for a conference I'll be speaking out in September around this topic, like around using data to connect to your people, because these are humans that create this data. It's not arbitrary. So, we must remember that these metrics are a result of human beings connecting with us.

Sarah: Exactly. Exactly. And you don't want to end up focusing and getting stuck on the wrong metrics. You want to focus on the metrics that matter. How would you go about tracking and measuring success with SERP features?

Diana: Using Semrush. We have lots of fabulous tools. Our position tracking tool will track your SERP features. Because this is another conundrum, because if you're in position zero and you don't get that traffic, how do you know that that you were even seen? So, you can use position tracking in your Semrush tool suite to show you those results. It will show you not only where you're ranking and your change in organic position, but where you're showing up in SERP features. You can preview, you know, the Google results page for that just in case you wanted proof in the pudding or something. And you can also check on that, as I said earlier, for your competitors. So, there are great ways to track it in other tools outside of Google Analytics or whatever you're using for your website traffic.

Sarah: Can you point our listeners in the direction of any recommended resources, articles, content on this subject?

Diana: Yeah, I mean, our blog is great. We have a lot of fun talking about SERP features, and that's probably what's fuelled my passion for it too. But we've also done some cool studies recently, like actual studies around the power of SERP features. We had a great one a few months ago around the people also ask section. We've got one on featured...