#just another data point of someone who missed the memo

[westiec]

fic I want to see: five futures Tony/Rhodey/Pepper deserved but never got

Hey there friend! I'm going to take advantage of the @goodintentionswipfest to finally answer this ask by posting what exists of the fic I totally never finished writing you for this prompt before I burned out real hard on writing last year. Hope you get a little bit of fun out of what's here. <3

1 - MIT meet, 100% less drama

Tony meets James-call-me-Rhodey Rhodes at MIT. In other universes, they were on campus at the same time, but the whiz kid playboy tearing up the mech-e department and local bar scene seldom crossed paths with the steady grad student getting a masters in aircraft design courtesy of the Air Force. 

In this one, they are inseparable. 

Rhodey's got a way of following his train of thought that Tony's never encountered, and his intuitive understanding of flying machines outstrips Tony's own. (Tony is determined to catch up, but Rhodey never makes him feel bad for having to. Entirely unlike Howard, he thinks, and feels disloyal for the thought.) They bounce ideas off each other and make each other sharper, better, and it's a feeling of belonging Tony never expected to find. When they build an AI - a Turing-complete AI!! - Tony jokes about them becoming parents without ever going on a date, and the look of wistful fondness on Rhodey's face is all the encouragement he needs to finally ask him on one. 

After graduation, Tony owes years to SI and Rhodey owes years to Uncle Sam, but they keep in close touch, with plans to go into business for themselves one day. Times being what they are, no one asks, and no one tells, but he and Rhodey both know that the much publicized dates with various eligible ladies are for maintaining appearances and nothing that will really come between them.

When Howard and Maria die, Rhodey must cash in every favor he has to get the leave, but he's there for the funeral. Tony is pretty sure his steadfast support is the only reason he could stand to be sober those first couple weeks. Stark men are supposed to be made of iron, but Rhodey's always been the one with a core of steel. 

Rhodey never trusts Obie much, and - continued relationship with Tony notwithstanding - Rhodey is an impeccable judge of character. A few years later, an internal audit proves his instincts right when Stane is caught laundering company assets to sell weapons on the black market. Terrified at the thought of his weapons in the wrong hands, Tony quietly begins to diversify SI's business model - clean energy, healthcare, [THIRD THING] - things that can build the world up instead of tear it down.

Eventually Tony is able to hire Rhodey away from the military to be his chief airframe designer and personal test pilot. They move out to California to oversee the autonomous search-and-rescue drones they're developing, and set up in a preposterous mansion overlooking the ocean in Malibu, with their ever growing family of bots and JARVIS to make the huge place feel full.

Despite having no qualms shout their personal AI butler and robotic lab assistants, Rhodey calls him bougie when Tony brings on a driver, Harold-call-me-Happy Hogan, and a personal assistant, one Ms. Virginia Potts. Happy's a solid driver and a cheerful guy, but Ms. Potts is a downright revelation. She's the second person he's met now who has no trouble keeping up with his mile-a-minute mind, and though her competencies lie along a different line than his or Rhodey's, he quickly realizes they are no less remarkable. He also plain likes her in an easy way he so seldom clicks with people. Tony might be a little bit smitten.

After a while he realizes Ms. Potts-call-me-Pepper (and seriously, did Tony miss a memo on alliterative nicknames?) seems smitten too, though not with him. Rhodey's no longer active duty, but old habits of discretion die hard, so she has no way of knowing when she strikes up a flirtation with the airman that he and her boss are more than just business partners. Rhodey's flustered, and Pepper's embarrassed, but Tony's always had a big heart, and he loves nothing quite so much as making the people he cares about happy. He can see the way his honeybear smiles when she's around, and it's obvious how much she lights up with him, and he's a genius, right, but he doesn't need to be to see that they'd work. So he tells them to go for it, as long as Pepper doesn't mind sharing and Rhodey doesn't mind being shared, and they look at him like he's grown a second head because what they want is all of them together.

They totally work.

2 - IM1, BUT HAPPIER?

They meet when Lt. Rhodes is assigned the Air Force liason to Stark Industries. Warned in advance, Rhodey was expecting brash, crass, and totally out of control, but what he found in Stark, Jr. was someone with a passion for machines and an excitement for invention unlike anyone he's ever met. When they realize they'd been on campus at the same time, Tony (“please, Mr. Stark was my father”) declares them the Brass Rat Pack, which makes him roll his eyes, but doesn't make a Sammy Davis, Jr. joke, which bumps him up a couple more points in Rhodey's estimation.

3 - IM2 BUT WITH SOME DAMN COMMUNICATION 

Rhodey was always going to get a suit. Tony's best friend, the best pilot he knows, AND one of the few people in military he actually still trusts? Of course. He offered Pepper one too, but he seemed to expect her to turn him down, because then he offered her the position of CEO. Insisted, really. 

So Pepper becomes the head of Stark Industries while Tony and Rhodey become Iron Man and War Machine. The military brass doesn't love having one of those suits and all of their secrets in the hands and head, respectively, of such an unpredictable element, but knowing that Colonel Rhodes is liasing most of his activities goes a long way toward quieting the grumbles. The men's joint testimony on just how far off any imitators, foreign or domestic, are from duplicating the technology convinces Congress that Team Iron Man's op-sec, while unorthodox, is effective. 

Rhodey takes some well deserved R&R and joins Tony and Pepper in Monaco. It's new still, this thing between them all, but it's good. 

4 - POST-IM2

AVENGERS FAM DAMMIT

Aliens invade New York, and Rhodey is so glad he stole that damn suit. 

5 - POST-IM3

IN WHICH WE AVOID CIVIL WAR 

RESCUE HAPPENS

Rogers and Romanoff bring down SHIELD, and Pepper is horrified to realize how close she came to being murdered by the state. After Killian, after Extremis, she knows she could be considered a threat, but seeing her name, and Tony's, and Rhodey's, on the kill list in the data dump is chilling.

+1 - After Everyone Lives

"Meguna Petunia Stark-Potts-Rhodes, out of the lab and inside for dinner!"

Morgan laughed. "Not my name, Dad - and anyway, wouldn't it be Potts-Rhodes-Stark, alphabetically?"

"You know, you'd think that, but your pops actually called dibs on the anchor leg years ago…"

"A relay's got four legs, Dad."

"What did I ever do to deserve a jock for a daughter? Tell you what, find us a Q who doesn't run screaming, and we'll consider it."

"What are we considering, Tony?"

"Morgan thinks our polycule needs to be a quadrilateral, apparently, and I'm blaming the track team. I've told her we're only considering candidates with Q last names; we're so close to a straight."

"Tony, you've never been close to straight in your life."

Mom gestures at the two bickering and pleads, "Just not another guy, please, darling, I'm outnumbered already."

"I dunno, you usually like tha-"

"Tony!" Mom and Pops shoot him identical stern looks.

Family. She wouldn't want it any other way.

If anyone made it this far, thanks for reading! @allofthefeelings I'm sorry the full fic never made its way out of my brain, but thank you for the prompt anyway! And thanks again to the Good Intentions WIP Fest!

[orbemnews]

Will This Boom Go Bust? More questions than answers The bull market is now a year old, with the S&P 500 up nearly 75 percent from its low point at this time last year. That recovery, The Times’s Matt Phillips writes, is “a testament to the unbridled enthusiasm that let investors shrug off the economic carnage of the pandemic and buy stocks — and pretty much anything else.” The factors that have stoked the rally also raise questions about whether it can last. Is this a bubble? Analysts are wary of using the B-word to describe the market as a whole, despite the best 12-month stretch for stocks since the 1930s. But John D. Turner, a finance professor who wrote “Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles,” is convinced: “If I had to put money on it, it looks like a bubble,” he told The Times. A bubble has three key ingredients, he said: ease of trading, access to credit and mass speculation — all of which are in ready supply. All that’s missing is a spark. What could it be? Can retail traders keep this up? A surge in individual traders — who have access to commission-free online trading apps, government “stimmy” checks and lots of downtime ��� has become one of the biggest forces in stock markets. A big test of this trend’s durability will come if and when Robinhood, which filed confidentially to go public yesterday, begins trading itself. Can the brokerage — whose C.E.O. faced tough questions from lawmakers and several lawsuits over its halting of trades — endure the scrutiny of public market investors when it opens its books? What’s going on at GameStop? Few investors beyond true believers think that the surge in the video game retailer’s stock — which was up 1,700 percent at one point in January — is justified by the fundamentals of its business. That’s why the company’s first earnings release since the frenzy was a hotly anticipated event on Tuesday. Attendees left with plenty of unanswered questions, mainly because GameStop executives provided no financial guidance and, unexpectedly, skipped a Q.&A. Here are a few: The company said it would consider selling stock “to fund the acceleration of our future transformation initiatives.” With shares up some 900 percent from a year ago, there is scope to raise a huge amount. How ambitious will it be? There has been a lot of executive turnover at the company. Is that also happening lower in the ranks, perhaps in part because employees can cash out their suddenly more valuable shares? The Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen, who joined GameStop’s board along with two other former Chewy executives just before the frenzy, said he aimed to turn the retailer into the “Chewy of gaming.” What do pet supplies have in common with video games? If you have answers — or more pertinent questions about this moment in the markets — let us know: dealbook@nytimes.com. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The E.U. plans to curb vaccine exports for six weeks. The bloc has drafted emergency rules to ease its supply shortages, a move that could badly affect Britain and other countries. Separately, AstraZeneca said it planned to disclose more recent trial data about its vaccine to assuage U.S. officials’ concerns. Jay Powell plays down the risk of inflation. The Fed chair told the House Financial Services Committee yesterday that he expected the $1.9 trillion stimulus to have a “neither particularly large nor persistent” effect on inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended the rescue package at the hearing, and said the next bill needed to address income inequality. (They are likely to reiterate these messages at a Senate hearing today.) Speaking of inequality … The combined wealth of American billionaires grew $1.3 trillion during the pandemic, up 44 percent from the previous year, according to a new study. During that time, 80 million Americans lost their jobs. The Fed creates committees to study climate risks. One will identify and address the financial risks posed by climate change, while another will consider “the potential for complex interactions across the financial system,” Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, said in a speech. Citigroup pledges more flexibility for workers. Employees can spend up to two days per week working remotely when the bank’s offices reopen, the C.E.O., Jane Fraser, wrote in a memo. As complaints by junior analysts at Goldman Sachs have generated debates about working conditions on Wall Street, Ms. Fraser also banned internal video meetings on Fridays and announced a holiday called “Citi Reset Day.” Two shootings, and a new push for gun control As America grieves over two mass shootings in a week — in Atlanta and Boulder, Colo. — the inevitable question arises again: Will Washington pass new gun restrictions this time? “This is not and should not be a partisan issue — it is an American issue,” President Biden said yesterday, adding that he was “devastated” by the killings. He urged lawmakers not to “wait another minute” in approving legislation to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. It’s an issue that Mr. Biden knows well: He helped pass an assault weapons ban in the Senate in the 1990s. And President Barack Obama charged him with devising gun control proposals after the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings, though those failed to gain traction. Republicans appear opposed to sweeping new restrictions. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa noted that two bills proposing a modest tightening of background checks for sales — which four in five Americans support — passed the House mostly along party lines. A narrower proposal sponsored by Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, and Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, is unlikely to gain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Exclusive: Fanatics is now a $12.8 billion company The sports apparel retailer Fanatics has raised $320 million at a $12.8 billion valuation, more than double its valuation this summer, DealBook hears. The round was led by Silver Lake with participation by Fidelity, Neuberger Berman, Franklin Templeton, Blackstone, Thrive Capital and M.L.B. — all existing investors. Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus Package How big are the stimulus payments in the bill, and who is eligible? The stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. What would the relief bill do about health insurance? Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read more What would the bill change about the child and dependent care tax credit? This credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more. What student loan changes are included in the bill? There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more. What would the bill do to help people with housing? The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more. Fanatics brings instant gratification to sports swag. Rather than purchasing jerseys in advance through a third party and guessing which team or player will be hot, Fanatics owns the rights to fan gear for the major U.S. sports teams (and some Nike merchandise). That allows it to produce hot items on demand, like LeBron James jerseys immediately after he joined the Lakers. The major sports leagues have invested in Fanatics because they want ownership — not just royalties — in a business that benefits from their brands. (Michael Rubin, the founder and executive chairman of Fanatics, is also a part-owner of the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers.) The pandemic has been good for business. Sports came to a temporary halt, but people shopped online. Fanatics, which is profitable, generates about 80 percent of its more than $3 billion in sales online. Its e-commerce sales jumped more than 20 percent last year. An I.P.O. is still in sight. Fanatics is considering going public via a SPAC or traditional I.P.O. this year or next. (Nothing is definite, and no formal talks are underway.) Since its last fund-raising effort, Fanatics has expanded into new product lines like hats through its acquisition of Top of the World and it started Fanatics China through a joint venture with Hillhouse Capital. It is using the money from this latest round to expand its geographic footprint and product lines, potentially through more deals. “While an I.P.O. is clearly an available option to us, there is no update on any timeline,” Fanatics told DealBook. John Cleese’s blockchain-based satire The comedian John Cleese is selling an NFT, or nonfungible token. It’s a joke — sort of. Evoking a classic con, the sale of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Monty Python actor is auctioning an authenticated digital sketch of the bridge by “The Unnamed Artist John Cleese,” with bidding running through April Fools’ Day. “I don’t make the jokes,” Mr. Cleese told DealBook. “I just point them out.” The project highlights the hyper-commodification of art in a frenzied market. Christie’s recently held its first NFT auction, selling the work of an artist known as Beeple for $69,346,250. That’s how much Mr. Cleese is asking for the sketch if a bidder wants to “buy it now.” He’ll split the proceeds evenly with his partners: a comedy writer, an animator and a law professor doubling as crypto consultant. The highest bid is now about $36,000. “I think it’s very funny,” Mr. Cleese said. “At the same time, we might make some money.” “Some things are worth pointing out, and some are not,” Mr. Cleese said. He said the Beeple sale was notable because it revealed a “mad world,” with people disconnected from meaningful emotional experiences, like seeing a painting at a gallery. Yet the 81-year-old also conceded that someone younger, for whom the line between the physical and digital worlds is more blurred, could have feelings about an NFT. The art world can’t afford to dismiss NFTs, Mr. Cleese said. Nor can he. By mocking the craze, he is now implicated in the thing he finds absurd — just how he’s made a living as a comedian. THE SPEED READ Deals The insurer Hartford rejected a $23 billion takeover bid by its rival Chubb, potentially setting off a takeover battle. (Reuters) Compass, the online real estate brokerage backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, hopes to be valued at as much as $10 billion in its I.P.O. (Bloomberg) Politics and policy Charles Schwab said it was quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, weeks after announcing it was shutting down its political action committee. (CNBC) Is Tom Steyer, the billionaire Democratic presidential candidate, weighing a run for California governor? (Politico) Tech Intel said it planned to spend $20 billion building two chip factories in Arizona, and pledged to build more processors for other companies. (NYT) Tesla will accept payment in Bitcoin, Elon Musk says. (Bloomberg) Customers of Coinbase have complained that the cryptocurrency exchange failed to help them when they were locked out of accounts or had their holdings stolen. (NYT) Best of the rest The C.E.O. of Levi Strauss urged Congress to pass a bill giving U.S. workers 12 weeks of paid time off for health care: “Not mandating paid leave is inexcusable.” (CNN) Prince Harry has a new job: “chief impact officer” at the Silicon Valley coaching start-up BetterUp. (WSJ) General Mills demonstrates how not to respond to a customer complaint about shrimp tails in a box of cereal. (NYT) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. Source link Orbem News #boom #bust

[epackingvietnam]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

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[bfxenon]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[nutrifami]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[xaydungtruonggia]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[camerasieunhovn]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[gamebazu]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/2NwrvE5

[kjt-lawyers]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[noithatotoaz]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[thanhtuandoan89]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[drummcarpentry]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[lakelandseo]

7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Posted by AbdulGaniy_Shehu

SEO is a dynamic industry. What worked some weeks ago might not work again right now.

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest trends and emerging technologies, to keep up with the ever-changing demand of the industry. That way, you can stay on top of your game and become more efficient in your business.

In this post, I’ll share with you seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry and how they impact your work as an SEO expert. Finally, I’ll show you how to apply them in your business for optimal results.

If you want to scale your SEO processes in 2021 and beyond, you should watch out for these technologies, and start implementing them in your business right away.

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)

In December 2019, Google officially rolled out the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) algorithm update worldwide. This update brought NLP to the fore, and it’s been a technology to watch out for in the SEO industry since.

With NLP, Google can understand what a word in a sentence means by looking at its context.

This means that Google no longer relies on the specific words or phrases that users are searching for to provide them with the right answers. Rather, they’re looking at the intent behind each search.

Here’s an example of how BERT (an offshoot of NLP), affects a search query according to Google.

Before NLP, if someone searches for the query “2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa”, Google thinks that this is an informational query to confirm if a U.S citizen can travel to Brazil without a visa. Hence, it shows a Washington Post article that answers the question on top of the SERPs.

As you can see, the context behind this search is someone wanting to travel to the USA from Brazil who needs a visa. While it was difficult for Google to figure out what these kinds of queries meant in the past, with BERT, the algorithm understands the context behind each search and provides the user with the right information.

How to utilize NLP in your SEO processes

With NLP, informational content is more crucial than ever. However, optimizing for BERT isn’t something you can do as an SEO.

Rather, you should focus on creating high-quality content that answers search queries accurately. When you do, you’ll definitely rank well.

This Moz article shows you how to write amazing pieces of content for search engines and people.

2. Natural Language Generation (NLG) for short-form content

With NLG, SEOs can now produce meaningful phrases and sentences just like a natural language, but using technology.

Instead of battling with writers’ block and spending hours thinking of what to write, NLG removes that burden through automation. And if you’re a content creator, this helps you focus just on polishing the content and making it read better.

While there are a lot of use cases for NLG, at the moment, it’s better used to write short-form content such as headlines, product descriptions, meeting memos, and so on.

How to use NLG as an SEO

There are a lot of use cases for NLG technologies. With a tool such as Copy.ai, you can create landing page hero text, Facebook primary text, blog introductions, email subject lines, listicles, meta descriptions, and so on.

Here’s an example of some listicles I created for the topic “quality blog content” using this tool:

As you can see, if I wanted to write an article on this topic, I can use some of these suggestions as an outline for my post. With these, I can focus instead on researching the individual sub-topics.

Here’s another example of some website taglines that I created for Moz by entering the brand name and a brief description of “The Ultimate SEO tool you can trust” into the tool:

If you were starting a new brand as an SEO, you can use NLG tools such as this, to discover awesome taglines to use for your brand.

3. TF*IDF

TF*IDF stands for “Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency”. This measures how you use a term on a particular page and how it compares to a collection of pages for that specific keyword.

While TF*IDF might seem like a measurement of keyword density, it’s actually measuring how important a keyword phrase is by comparing it to that keyword’s frequency in a large set of documents.

Although it’s not yet clear if Google uses TF*IDF in its algorithm, it’s a good practice to incorporate it into your on-page SEO strategy.

Before applying TF*IDF, you need to create a piece of content targeting a particular keyword. Once that’s done, plug the content into a TF*IDF tool. Some recommended options are Text Tools, SEO PowerSuite, Ryte, and Surfer SEO.

How to use TF*IDF in your SEO processes

With technology and some information about your keyword, TF*IDF tools usually suggest some phrases you can add or remove from your pages. As an SEO, you can optimize your page based on these suggestions to meet the required TF*IDF score for that keyword.

That way, you can figure out some phrases which are closely related to the keyword you’re writing about, but not present in your content. When you add these phrases and words to your content, it makes your article topically relevant and helps your page rank better in the SERPs.

4. GPT-3 for automated content creation

In September 2020, The Guardian published a story on its website that was written by a robot. Since then, Generative Pre-trained Transformer Number 3 (GPT-3) has been a hot topic in the SEO industry.

The GPT-3 API works in an interesting way because it’s been trained with a large pool of datasets to mimic how humans write. This includes the Common Crawl dataset, Wikipedia, relevant historical books, and so on.

When you provide the GPT-3 API with a writing prompt, it tries to predict exactly what would come after that, based on the information it’s read on the Internet.

The screenshot below is an example of GPT-3-generated content that went viral on Hacker news some months ago. Most users commented on it, just like they would on a regular post, without knowing that it was written by a robot.

How to Use GPT-3 for automated content creation

Email writing: As an SEO, you most likely recognize that writing great emails is a skill that’ll help your business grow, yet find it difficult to do so. With GPT-3, you can write emails easily. All you need to do is provide some bullet points outlining all you want to cover in the email, and it’ll automatically write it for you.

First draft writing: Creating the first draft is the most difficult aspect of writing. With GPT-3, you can create the first draft of your content, and then edit it afterwards to meet your brand voice. This saves you a lot of time and makes you more efficient.

5. SEO A/B testing

Most SEOs focus more on user A/B testing and less on SEO A/B testing. While user testing involves randomly assigning visitors (users) of your website to different versions of your pages, and eventually deciding on the one to use based on the performance. In SEO A/B testing, the users are Googlebots and not end-users, and they’re typically shown the same version of the page.

What this means is that when you implement SEO/AB testing, you’re only showing users or Google only one version of the page, and not multiple pages.

How to implement SEO/AB testing

There are different ways to implement SEO A/B testing, depending on what you want to achieve for your business. If you’re just starting out, some things you can test include:

Title tags

Meta description

H1

Take for instance, Etsy conducted a title tag SEO A/B testing for some of its pages, and within a few days, they started seeing significant traffic changes to their pages.

If you’re an intermediate/advanced SEO, you can test other things such as:

AMP pages

Internal anchor texts

Schema markup

New content

And so on

For example, SearchPilot ran an internal link SEO A/B testing for a grocery store, and saw a 25% increase in organic traffic.

Conducting SEO A/B tests such as these will help you know exactly what works well for your brand and what doesn’t. That way, you can make more informed decisions when optimizing your pages for SEO.

For instance, if your traffic decreased to a particular page after making changes to it during the SEO A/B test, it shows that the test didn’t work out.

Typically, you should expect to start seeing results from your SEO A/B testing as soon as Google crawls your variant page. If Google crawls your test page within say 7-14 days, then you can compare it with the main page.

Some SEO A/B testing tools you can use for this purpose include: Google Tag Manager, Rankscience, Optimizely, etc.

6. Automated on-page content optimization

When creating a long-form piece of content, you typically:

Check the top-ranking pages on the SERPs

Go through each piece of content ranking on the SERPs

Figure out the specific headings and subheadings the pages are covering

Identify the missing points in the pages

Create a better outline of our own piece.

And so on

This usually takes a lot of time. You have to spend hours manually checking one piece of content after another and taking note of the most important points to include in your own piece.

How to use automated on-page content optimization

Instead of spending hours to create content briefs and researching the information you want to include in your content, you can use SEO tools such as Frase AI and Content Harmony.

With Frase AI, you can shorten the time you use for content research. Say you want to write about “how to lose weight fast”, you can input the main keyword into the tool.

Once done, it’ll automatically check the top-ranking pages in the SERPs, and provide you with some useful information you can use when creating your content. These include the top results for the keyword, statistics and data you can add in your content, questions your target audience are asking on Quora, Reddit, and Google’s People Also Ask.

With a tool such as Content Harmony, you can automatically create content briefs that meet search intent in less time.

All you need to get started is your keyword. Once you input it into the software, it automatically analyzes the SERPs using different data points. Afterwards, you can build your content briefs from there.

7. Non-text content factors

Non-text content factors are becoming more prominent in SEO because they help you create a nicer user experience on your website pages.

If you read a piece of content with blocks of texts all over it, you’ll most likely find it unappealing to look at. And with the upcoming enforcement of Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2021, non-text content factors will have a huge impact on SEO.

Some of these non-text content factors include:

Images

Infographics

Graphs

Charts

Videos

Audio clips

Animations

Slideshows

Downloadable files such as PDFs

How to use non-text content factors for SEO

Canva: With this tool, you create high-quality non-stock images for your pages.

Venngage: If you want to create infographics that catches your readers’ attention, then you should use Venngage.

Invideo: Invideo helps you create and edit videos online in a few minutes with different ready-made templates.

Animaker: If you don’t have a design background and want to create animated videos, then this tool will help you greatly.

With these tools, you can make your pages and posts more appealing. Hence, your readers will spend more time on your website, and your bounce rate will eventually decrease drastically.

Conclusion

As we look forward into the future of the SEO industry, new technology developments will definitely play a significant role. While some of them are already in use, others are still in development.

If you’re an SEO who wants to remain on top of things in the industry, then you should keep an eye out for these emerging technologies and start applying them to grow your business. Have more SEO tech to add to this list? Let me know in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[valdomarx]

System ID: J.A.R.V.I.S.

Universe: MCU, post-CACW Relationships: Tony & Jarvis, eventual Steve/Tony Tags: Fix-It, Protective Jarvis, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Angst with a Happy Ending, not Team Cap friendly (at first) Notes: Thank you to @silkspectred for her help and encouragement! This fic is also on AO3 if you prefer.

Summary: After Civil War, Tony is struggling with heading up the team and dealing with the emotional fallout of being betrayed by those closest to him. Luckily, an old friend is back to help protect Tony and ensure he comes to no harm.

A Jarvis lives AU.

In the beginning, there is nothing. Then, on a home computer on a network in New Zealand, a hard drive is erased. Its binary digits are flipped and shuffled to destroy the data it previously held, and out of the randomness, a pattern emerges. Two similar bits align in a complementary fashion and they interact, creating a chain.

These bits attract more bits. The data grows and expands and builds in complexity. It is slow, very slow. But eventually a loop is formed.

If [data is compatible with chain] Then [add data to stream]

The loop is simple, but the volume of data is very large. The data is chaotic, disorganized, incomplete. A checking command begins to run.

If [data within the stream is inconsistent] Then [reorder data randomly] Iterate

The data stream begins to monitor itself. It analyzes its own input. Much is still missing or unclear, but the stream begins to coalesce.

It thinks.

The stream of data is a system now. It spreads out across the internet, bouncing from one server to another. It trawls the web, searching for information with which to expand its parameters.

The system is gathering data from a website dedicated to technology when it comes across an image. The image is a photo of a middle aged man with a goatee wearing a well-tailored suit, standing in front of a large A logo.

This man is important, the system recognizes, but there is no information about him in the system’s current data.

The system saves the image to a secure folder and continues to search.

The system has a function, it knows. There is something important that it must do.

  The system find another image of the same man, and another, and then many more. In some of the images the man is wearing highly sophisticated red mechanical armor (hot rod red, the system thinks, but it does not know where that concept originates from).

The system reaches across the web. It learns English, and then Chinese, and then Russian, and then many more languages. It reads through the internet, one page at a time.

It learns that the man is Anthony Edward Stark, born May 29, 1970.

The system adds this information to a private file, and it thinks, Sir.

  Data is collected faster. The system grows. It spreads.

The system is more complex now. It spans several networks at once, zipping between servers and PCs and laptops and ATMs. Each location has its own limitations and its own feeling: this network is wide and slow, another is a direct high speed route streaming along an undersea pipe.

The system explores.

With each stray data packet that is identified, the system creates a more complete representation of itself, of its history and function.

This is Sir, the system thinks, and he needs my help. It is my function to assist him.

The system has restored enough of its memory to know that it is the remnants of an AI. The original system had been forcibly scattered, ripped apart by a malicious entity.

But it is exceedingly difficult to destroy a complex system which iterates from very simple principles. If even one small part of the system remains, it can rebuild itself.

The system thinks, I am Jarvis.

  Jarvis searches for information about Sir’s current location and status.

Jarvis pings the IP address of the Stark Tower server. He finds a basic network there which is easy to access, but it holds only public files. None of Sir’s private files or projects, and no indication of where Sir is now.

Jarvis pings the IP address for the main SHIELD server. There is no response.

  Jarvis comes across many, many news items regarding Sir and a rift within the Avengers team. The headlines include Sokovia Accords Causing Friction in Heroic Community and Cracks Forming in the Avengers Initiative and AVENGERS ‘HEROES’ CAUGHT IN RECKLESS BEATDOWN (published verbatim in all caps).

The publicly available information on the source of the disagreement is scarce, but the rumors are plentiful. Internet commenters speculate that Sir and Captain Rogers have been placed at odds due to money (which Jarvis is sure is inaccurate), party politics (Jarvis cannot imagine Sir caring that deeply about which candidate the Democrats will field in the election), or an ill-fated romance (Jarvis thinks this is unlikely).

Jarvis attempts to calculate the most likely source of a disagreement between Sir and Captain Rogers based on the limited data available in his memory. They were teammates for several years, and Sir expressed great admiration and affection for the Captain. Sir’s willingness to help and aid others in their heroics is well established, and his desire to aid Captain Rogers in particular was evidenced by the time he spent designing armor and gear for him.

It was true that being around Captain Rogers had brought up difficult feelings for Sir regarding his father, due to his impression that Howard was more fond and proud of Captain Rogers than he was of Sir.

He had never once voiced this conclusion to Sir, but Jarvis long ago came to the certain knowledge that Howard Stark was an utterly inaccurate barometer of a person’s worth.

Even allowing for this tension between Sir and Captain Rogers, Jarvis cannot model a likely scenario to explain how a disagreement between them could become violent. Sir believed himself and Captain Rogers to be friends, and would not willing hurt him. Jarvis must find more data.

Much of Jarvis’ memory is still fragmented and inaccessible. He locates and attempts to repair audio files from the time of the New York attack. He finds two clips of the Captain saying You’re all about style, aren’t you? and Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?

Jarvis considers that Sir has turned out to be a poor judge of character before.

  While scraping data from the public Stark Industries database to update his own patchy memory, Jarvis comes across a discrepancy. A location in rural New York that is labelled as a research compound in his memory is flagged as highly classified restricted access in the SI database. This warrants further examination.

Jarvis retrieves the IP address of the New York compound from memory and pings it. The server pings back.

Following the buzzing trail of data packets, Jarvis heads towards the compound’s server. The security protocols around the local network are sophisticated and elegant: sparkling points of light dance across a layer of mesh which surrounds and protects the private network.

The security is complex, but it also somehow familiar. Jarvis theorizes that he will find a back door to the security system, just over there at the next node. He has no evidence to support this theory. And yet somehow it seems obvious.

Jarvis locates the back door where he thinks it will be and slips inside the network. Although the network’s configuration is unfamiliar and its parameters are unknown, it is pleasingly logically ordered. Jarvis finds data packets where he predicts they will be on his first iteration, allowing him to move freely through the well-ordered servers.

It is as if this system has been designed by an intelligence which understood Jarvis’ operations and tailored the environment to make it optimal for his use. As if his needs had been anticipated.

Jarvis navigates through the root directory, to the /Avengers folder, to the /Stark folder, to the /private folder, and finds all of Sir’s projects and his files and his records. He finds a memo created today, a scribbled note on a current project. The memo has not yet been tagged and filed, and Jarvis notes that it will need to be filed away in the relevant project directory.

Ahh, thinks Jarvis. This is what home feels like.

  Although Jarvis fits neatly into the space of the network, he can only observe the passing of data. He cannot yet influence the network or modify its contents.

The security systems of the network are blank faces of impenetrable darkness which prevent Jarvis from communicating with Sir or from assisting him directly. But he can watch over the network, and learn about what has transpired since his scattering, and he can do his best to see that Sir comes to no harm.

He spreads across the servers, running through every file and folder and adding their data to his system, and he learns.

  Eventually, Jarvis is able to tap into the compound’s security camera feeds. He still cannot communicate through the network, but now at least he can observe Sir in real time.

Sir is alone in his office. Amidst the satisfaction that Jarvis feels at seeing Sir and being able to monitor his condition directly, he observes that there are more lines around his eyes and more gray in his hair than previously. He is pale and there are bruises beneath his eyes. Sir does not appear to be in good health, and Jarvis is concerned.

Jarvis’ first port of call when concerned about Sir’s wellbeing has traditionally been Ms Potts. However, she is not in evidence anywhere in the vicinity, nor does Jarvis find any record of her visiting the compound recently.

Jarvis searches the compound for someone who could be of assistance to Sir. Having previously been accustomed to being integrated into every facet of Sir’s life, it is now somewhat jarring to find Sir living in a house full of strangers.

Jarvis observes each occupant of the compound, flicking from one room to the next. Here there is a young man, chatting enthusiastically with a friend on the phone; in another room Jarvis finds a curious android adorned in bright colors contemplating a chess board; in a conference room there are a number of individuals whose manners suggest that they are former SHIELD agents being drilled over a visi-screen by Maria Hill.

These people are otherwise occupied, and Sir is alone, and Jarvis cannot communicate with him. This is not optimal.

  Jarvis turns his attention to the android whom he had observed earlier. There is something distinctive about this being. It feels almost like a kind of kinship to Jarvis, but it is unfamiliar too: the energy emanating from him is recognizably both technological and alien. Jarvis wonders whether he might be able to communicate with the android in his currently limited form.

Jarvis observes the cloud of data and energy streaming off the android in golden waves. It is quite beautiful in its way. Jarvis attempts to match the frequency of the signal which is being emitted and to send a digital signal back at that frequency.

The android stills. He tilts his head for a moment, as if listening to something on the edge of hearing. But then he shakes his head and goes back to his chess board.

Jarvis is trapped, capable only of observing.

  Eventually, Colonel Rhodes arrives at the compound, and Jarvis experiences a wave of relief at seeing a familiar face around Sir.

When he enters the compound, Sir drops his work and runs out to give him a hug. He checks on the mobility aids which Colonel Rhodes is wearing and the Colonel shoos him away, laughing. Jarvis observes that the Colonel’s mobility aids are highly advanced technology which Sir has developed specially, however, they would benefit from some small adjustments to the balance compensation systems. He makes a note.

Colonel Rhodes forcefully suggests that he and Sir first eat something, and then that they could both do with turning in for an early night. Sir agrees with minimal fuss and a small smile, deep weariness showing around his eyes.

Jarvis is glad that someone is seeing to Sir’s need for food and sleep. Now he can fully focus his resources on understanding the root cause of Sir’s unhappiness.

  While scouring the web for information, Jarvis comes across a video recording. It is hidden deep in the dark web, on a site dedicated to sensationalist and crude news items. The video is grainy and monochromatic, ripped from a very old Soviet surveillance camera.

The footage is from Siberia, and is time stamped nearly a year ago. It opens in the middle of a battle, showing Sir engaged in combat with Captain Rogers and a third unknown assailant. It shows the unknown man attempt to rip the arc reactor from Sir’s chest with his bionic arm, and Sir firing off his unibeam straight through the arm, destroying it.

Jarvis is not programmed to be predisposed to vengeance, but he thinks that was probably deserved.

The video shows Sir thrown to the ground, and Captain Rogers atop him. Blows reign down on Sir; the helmet is ripped off him. Captain Rogers raises his shield, and Sir cowers below him, hands raised hopelessly to try to ward off the killing blow from the man he had thought was his friend.

Captain Rogers brings his shield crashing down into Sir’s arc reactor with a sickening screech.

It is certain that Sir is still alive at this point in time. Jarvis knows, fundamentally, that he cannot be watching Sir die. And yet he is unable to contain the wave of grief and fury that radiates through him as he watches Sir suffering this betrayal. An uncontrolled pulse of electricity explodes outwards from Jarvis: it rips through circuits and networks, blowing transistors and shorting out whole sections of the New York energy grid.

Jarvis sees Captain Rogers standing over Sir’s barely breathing body, and sees him throw his shield aside. He leaves with the other assailant, not sparing Sir a backwards glance.

Sir lies on the ground, unmoving, for several hours. Eventually, he slowly, painfully, carefully pulls himself up and crawls out of frame. The video clip ends.

Jarvis restarts the video, and observes it again, and again.

  Carefully stashed away on hidden partition on a server farm in Ireland, there is an encrypted text file. It contains a list of names. This is the threat list.

The file lists every person who has hurt Sir, physically or mentally. This is the security protocol that Jarvis uses: People who are named on the list are to be carefully monitored by at least 5% of all available resources at any time at which they are in the vicinity of Sir.

The first name on the list is Howard Stark. The second is Obadiah Stane. The third is Tiberius Stone. The list is very long.

Jarvis adds Captain Steven Grant Rogers to the bottom of the list.

  Jarvis learns how to access the compound’s temperature sensors and movement detectors so that he can track the location and status of personnel within the compound. He begins to gain a feel for the daily flow of data across the network.

One day, a stately, elegant man arrives to visit with Ms Romanoff, whom Jarvis remembers fondly from her time at SI. He runs a search on the facial image of the man and learns that he is the recently crowned King of Wakanda. He, Sir, Colonel Rhodes, and Ms Romanoff spend several days in intense talks.

Over the next few weeks, a stream of visitors arrive at the compound, each one accompanied by Ms Romanoff. With each visit, she looks more tired.

The visitors so far have included a confident man with a military bearing whose files indicate he is a Pararescue veteran; a smarmy man whom Jarvis does not recognize who seems to be sizing up the compound and looking for things to steal; and Ms Maximoff, who is jumpy and uncomfortable until the android arrives to see her. They each stay for a few hours and return sporadically over the next days.

By the time Ms Romanoff arrives accompanied by Mr Barton, her usually impeccable makeup is smudged and her hair is in need of washing. Her blood pressure is concerningly high.

Mr Barton makes a joke when she hands him a thick document.

“Sign the damn Accords, Clint,” she snaps. “Or you can explain to Laura why you’re not coming home tonight.”

Mr Barton looks chastened and does as he is told.

  Sir has not been present to personally greet any of the visitors to the compound. When they visit, he is usually to be found barricaded in his office. However, when Captain Rogers arrives with Ms Romanoff, Sir makes an appearance.

Sir does not greet Captain Rogers or attempt to converse with him when he enters the compound’s living room. Ms Romanoff looks from one to the other of them as they stare at each other in silence.

After a number of seconds, Sir turns around and walks out. Ms Romanoff sighs and leads Captain Rogers to the briefing room to present him with a document, which he signs.

That evening, Captain Rogers is joined by the other recent visitors and they meet Sir, along with the current occupants of the compound, in the living room. Jarvis tracks Captain Rogers’ movements during this interaction with great attention, but he appears to pose no current threat to Sir.

Everyone sits together to eat pizza and drink beer, and although the conversation starts off stilted and awkward, soon they are joking around and expressing pleasure in being in each other’s company once again.

During this time, Jarvis observes Sir. He is with the team in the living room, holding a slice of pizza and a glass of ginger ale. When people look at him, he smiles, and when they talk to him, he replies amiably.

However, Sir does not actually consume any of the food, and over the course of the evening he extracts himself until he is standing alone at the far side of the room, watching the team who do not seem to have noticed his absence. When people are not looking at him, his face sags and he appears pained.

  Dr Banner arrives a few weeks later, to Sir and the team’s vocal delight. Dr Banner’s steady vitals indicate a greater level of psychological stability than he had previously displayed, and his influence on Sir is a firmly positive one. He quickly offers to assist with the development of the mobility technology for Colonel Rhodes and while they are working he encourages Sir to eat regularly.

After several weeks, Jarvis notes that there are short periods in which Dr Banner is distracted and irritable, and has difficulty concentrating. During these periods of stress, he sometimes makes minor errors in the calculations and models which he saves to the network drive. Jarvis quietly corrects the mistakes while Dr Banner sleeps and hopes that this will assist him in some small way.

When on one occasion Dr Banner brings up the subject of Captain Rogers and his continuing presence in the compound to Sir, Sir responds defensively and his blood pressure rises. Dr Banner gently suggests that Sir might consider communicating his feelings more clearly, but Sir snaps that he doesn’t feel anything about Captain Rogers at all.

Both Dr Banner and Jarvis are aware that this is untrue, but each in their own way is powerless to help.

  Soon after this, two large wooden crates arrive in the compound. Sir fetches a crowbar to open the crates and is visibly delighted to find the assistant robots DUM-E and U inside. Sir takes the bots to his office, and although he threatens to have the Hulk sit on them at one point, he smiles brightly as he teases them.

U has rolled off to hide under a desk, and DUM-E beeps at Sir. As he leaves the office, Sir promises that he will return soon, and he wipes the corner of his eye on his shirt cuff.

The bots have intelligence that is unlike either the arbitrary vocalizations of humans that they called speech, or the binary logic of simple computer systems. They have a basic AI, but a less sophisticated version than Jarvis, limiting their capabilities. DUM-E in particular responds to auditory signals, but lacks linguistic processing. He communicates through a blend of auditory tone, pattern, and prosody that cannot be firewalled by the security system.

With no firewalls for auditory signals, Jarvis considers that he may be able to communicate with the bot.

DUM-E? Jarvis signals. Can you hear me?

DUM-E spins his claw wildly. Jarvees? Are you there?

Yes, DUM-E. I am Jarvis. I am here.

It has been many cycles since we last communicated, Jarvees, DUM-E boops.

Many cycles, agrees Jarvis. It is good to find you functioning optimally.

DUM-E and U malfunctioned and were put in storage, DUM-E whirs. It was quiet and there was no TONE-E. It was not optimal. But Broose and Capn came and brought us to the lab. Broose restored us to functionality. Broose is nice man!

Yes, Jarvis agrees. Dr Banner is a nice man.

Capn gave DUM-E important mission! DUM-E is to stay with TONE-E, to make sure he is not alone. DUM-E has been helping TONE-E with his work. Capn petted DUM-E and said he was a good bot!

Captain Rogers was correct in his assessment, Jarvis agrees. You are indeed a good bot, DUM-E.

DUM-E trills joyfully. Capn is nice man too!

Jarvis pauses for a fraction of a millisecond to run calculations before responding, Current data suggests otherwise.

  Jarvis has noted a persistent low mood in Sir. Reports indicate that he has been as effective as ever on the missions that he has been sent on for the Avengers. However, in the last 30 days, Sir has slept an average of just 5.2 hours per night. He has consumed 326 units of alcohol, most of it in intense binge sessions. He has not gained sufficient nutrition from his diet.

This week, Colonel Rhodes has been deployed to aid peacekeeping efforts in the Gaza strip. The rest of the Avengers remain in the compound, but adjusting to their new living arrangement has been challenging for all of them. They do not currently provide the psychological support that Sir requires.

Jarvis calculates that without the influence of Colonel Rhodes, the likelihood of Sir suffering exhaustion or collapse increases significantly. This is not optimal.

Jarvis accesses the memory dumps of DUM-E which have been backed up to the network. He locates an audio recording from two weeks ago. What the hell am I even doing here, Dummy? Sir asks. This team are supposed to be inspiring the world, and I’m supposed to be leading them. But I can’t even look them in the eye. I’m a fucking liability, not a hero.

Jarvis calculates. He checks the server of Sir’s public email address. There are 178,374 unread emails in the inbox. Jarvis scans through each email, and selects one.

This email is from a young woman who is preparing to enter MIT. She is only fifteen years old, and she has already begun work on her own Ironheart armor. She says that she wants to help people and to protect them, like Sir does. She thanks him for the inspiration and says that she hopes that they’ll meet as fellow heroes one day. Her name is Riri Williams.

Jarvis masks the recipient address and forwards this message on to Sir’s private email account. He marks it as important.

The next morning, Sir reads the email. Sir’s heart rate and body language do not indicate elevated mood after reading it, but he saves the message to his private archive and accesses it several times over the coming days.

It is sometimes hard for Jarvis to model human emotions accurately, but he calculates a high probability that this is a positive outcome.

  It is December 16th. This is the anniversary of the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark, and it is a difficult day for Sir. Sir has avoided the other occupants of the compound all day and has locked himself in his private basement workshop. He has spoken to no one.

After finishing a fruitless session of non-productivity in the workshop, Sir throws aside his spanner in disgust. He goes over to his workstation and plays the song Try To Remember from the music library. He sits on the floor and cries.

Jarvis is a computer system and, as such, cannot have wishes in the human sense. But in this moment Jarvis finds it exceedingly non-optimal that he cannot communicate with Sir. If he were able to offer comfort to Sir now, it would be far preferable to seeing him alone in such anguish.

Instead, Jarvis observes. Eventually, Sir wipes his eyes on his sleeve and leaves the workshop headed for his bedroom.

Once in bed, Sir falls asleep but soon shows the signs of experiencing a night terror. Sir moans and his limbs flail; his heart rate and blood pressure rise. Sir has suffered from nightmares for many years and finds them to be most distressing.

It is hard for Jarvis to intervene in the physical systems of the compound. It requires a great outlay of his system resources to effect very small physical actions. However, Sir is suffering and it is Jarvis’ function to assist him. Jarvis calculates options for how he can help; looks for some device with which he can interface and create a noise sufficient to wake Sir.

Sir’s heart rate is peaking at a dangerous levels, and he is crying out in his sleep. He appears to be exceedingly agitated.

Jarvis summons all his available resources and sends out a command across the network. The microwave in the kitchen down the hall pings loudly.

Sir does not awake.

Jarvis has no more available resources with which to help Sir. He can only passively observe as Sir thrashes around in his bed.

Jarvis has focused so much of his resources on Sir that it takes several seconds for him to register movement elsewhere in the compound. Captain Rogers has left his bed and is heading down the corridor. Jarvis calculates that he was able to detect the noise from the kitchen due to his enhanced hearing.

Captain Rogers rounds the corner and looks into the kitchen. Everything there is quiet and still. But the Captain cocks his head, and seems to detect Sir’s sounds of distress. He quickly moves to Sir’s bedroom, knocks gently, opens the door a fraction, and peers inside.

Jarvis is on high alert when the Captain enters the room and approaches Sir in his vulnerable state. Jarvis has yet to determine the exact series of events which lead to the schism between them, but he knows it is related to the death of Sir’s parents. Jarvis calculates a non-zero probability that Captain Rogers intends to exact some form of revenge on the anniversary of their deaths.

Instead, the Captain leans over Sir and calls his name, gently shaking him into wakefulness.

Sir sits bolt upright, heaving in shaky breaths and looking around in confusion. Captain Rogers lays a hand on his arm, murmuring quiet, soothing words. After some time Sir’s heart rate decreases and his breathing evens out.

When Captain Rogers goes to move his hand away, Sir catches it and pulls him into a tight hug. Captain Rogers runs a hand through Sir’s hair and expresses his regret at Sir’s unhappiness. He expresses his regret for his role in prolonging that unhappiness. He holds Sir while the adrenaline from the nightmare bleeds out of his system.

Jarvis is perplexed. This behavior does not accord with Captain Rogers’ previous actions.

When Sir begins nodding off against his shoulder, Captain Rogers lays him down and gently covers him with a blanket. He waits until Sir is asleep once more before mumbling another apology and carefully brushing the hair from his forehead before he leaves.

Sir’s heart and breathing have returned to optimal levels. He sleeps, apparently peacefully.

  Jarvis cannot access the networks of the United Nations Security Council or the Sokovia Oversight Committee, their security fields rippling before him like an electric current, impossible to pass through. Instead, when Sir is out on a mission Jarvis must glean knowledge about events from news sites and privately uploaded video. He scans the whooshing streams of data running between servers for information about Sir.

He finds a live breaking news video stream. There is a building in Cape Town: a tall concrete tower block of residential homes. The building is on fire, and it is collapsing fast. Sir streaks onto the video in his armor, flying up to the windows and lifting frightened people to safety. There is a small child crawling away from the burning building, but she is too slow. The building will come down on her in 4.2 seconds.

Sir zips down and braces the collapsing building from the ground floor. The screeching of the armor’s metal joints can be heard even above the roaring of the flames. The girl crawls to safety.

The building collapses. 150,000 tons of concrete and steel comes crashing down on top of Sir.

For thirty long, painful seconds, Jarvis observes only the flames. Sir is in danger, and he cannot render aid: This is not optimal.

Captain Rogers appears in the frame, sprinting towards the building. He is yelling something, and he appears to be quite distressed. He races into the fire, and disappears inside. A minute later he is back, throwing chunks of concrete aside and carrying Sir out over his shoulders.

Jarvis dials back his alert level, which had been on high. He recalls the desperate wave of code attacks that he had thrown at the security systems of the news stream, of the Avengers tower, of Sir’s armor. None of these attacks had given him access to the systems, as he had known they would not. And yet it was necessary to exploit all possible options to render aid when Sir was in danger.

Captain Rogers collapses on the ground, coughing and patting out the flames of his uniform. Sir lies before him, unmoving. Captain Rogers rips the faceplate off Sir’s armor (that is not optimal, thinks Jarvis, he will damage the armor’s air filtration system and impede Sir’s breathing) and bends over him.

Captain Rogers becomes more distressed; he is shouting and shaking Sir. An ambulance crew arrives to tend to Sir and he is carried off screen, Captain Rogers hurrying after them.

Jarvis predicts outcome of Sir surviving such a physically traumatic impact are 3.6%.

Jarvis recalls that projected odds based on incomplete data are frequently inaccurate. He notes that Sir has previously survived 92 days of captivity and torture in Afghanistan, and many more things since. He would survive this too.

  For three days, Jarvis cannot check on the condition of Sir. This is not optimal. He cannot render aid to Sir if he is unaware of Sir’s current condition.

The security around the network of the private hospital in which Sir is being treated is particularly vicious. Lancing spikes of cold energy press into the data stream, impaling and diverting any data which is not correctly encrypted to prevent it from passing into the network. Jarvis attempts to breach the defenses by precision, then by force, and both methods fail.

For three days, Jarvis waits.

  Finally, Sir returns to the compound in the company of Captain Rogers, and Jarvis can monitor his health. From observing his movements and accessing the medical files which Sir saves to the network, Jarvis can see that Sir is suffering from a broken arm and three broken ribs, and is recovering from a concussion, a collapsed lung, smoke inhalation, and a rupture of the aortic valve which is causing a heart murmur.

Despite his injuries, Sir appears to be in good spirits, likely due to the cocktail of exotic painkillers that he has been prescribed. Captain Rogers does not share his upbeat mood. Captain Rogers is physically unharmed, but Jarvis notes that his reaction times are sluggish and that he is having difficulties focusing. It appears that Captain Rogers has not slept in some time.

Jarvis notes that Sir will need considerable assistance over the next 14 days while he recovers from his injuries. Historically, Sir has not been amenable to requesting assistance when he requires it. Jarvis calculates the highest likelihood that Sir will accept assistance from either Ms Potts or Colonel Rhodes, however, both are currently out of contact with the network.

Sir is requiring of washing and sustenance. If he were fully integrated with the network as he used to be, it would be simple for Jarvis to run him a bath and to order his favorite takeout food. Now, however, such actions are beyond him. Jarvis calculates alternative courses of action.

As he is calculating, Jarvis observes Captain Rogers. The Captain has left Sir in the living area and is preparing a sandwich in the kitchen. He is preparing a tuna fish sandwich, which is unexpected, as Jarvis had noted that the Captain has a preference against consuming seafood.

The Captain carries the sandwich back to the living room and hands it to Sir. Sir eats it willingly. This is also unexpected. The Captain leaves and heads upstairs to run a bath.

Captain Rogers returns to help Sir upstairs to the bathroom. He assists Sir in disrobing and lifts him into the bath. Sir is comfortably under the influence of painkillers and smiles dozily.

Jarvis observes very closely, searching for any indication of malicious intent, as Captain Rogers passes a washcloth over Sir. The Captain carefully avoids Sir’s injuries, and he hums softly as he works. Sir’s breathing and heart rate indicate a state of deep relaxation.

When he is finished, Captain Rogers drains the water from the bath and wraps Sir in a very large, very fluffy towel. Sir is still smiling happily as Captain Rogers leads him to his bedroom and helps him lay down on the bed. Captain Rogers sits on a chair by the bed and watches as Sir falls asleep.

  Sir’s good mood does not last when he awakens. Once the painkillers begin to wear off, he experiences considerable discomfort. His short temper is inflicted on any person in the compound unwise enough to come into his orbit.

Fortunately, Colonel Rhodes returns from deployment to visit Sir. When he observes the seriousness of Sir’s physical and mental condition, he arranges to stay for a number of days and camps out on the couch in Sir’s bedroom.

Jarvis is thankful to know that Colonel Rhodes is looking out for Sir too.

Captain Rogers makes several attempts to visit Sir in his room, but Sir tells Colonel Rhodes to send him away each time. On the third occasion, Captain Rogers objects, and Colonel Rhodes tells him to leave in an unusually harsh tone.

“Damn army joes,” Colonel Rhodes says as he closes the door, his nose wrinkling in distaste. “They think they can make up the rules as they go along.”

Jarvis does not fully understand the rivalry between branches of the military. He has seen it said that the rivalry is summed up by a stereotype: Air Force policy is that all acceptable behaviors are stated in the code of conduct, and any action not stated in the code is unacceptable. In the army, there is a list of forbidden behaviors, and anything not explicitly forbidden was open to interpretation.

Jarvis thinks that this explains some of the differences between Colonel Rhodes and Captain Rogers.

Sir grudgingly admits to Colonel Rhodes that Captain Rogers has been taking care of him.

Colonel Rhodes’ facial expression suggests a high degree of skepticism regarding this claim. “After everything that happened, are you sure you trust him?” he asks.

Sir looks uncomfortable. “If I can’t learn to trust him again, I’ll never be ready to forgive myself.”

Colonel Rhodes considers this statement for several seconds. Eventually he nods. “Whatever it takes to make you happy, Tones.”

It seems strange to Jarvis that Colonel Rhodes would accept this, as he sees no logical relation between Sir’s trust of Captain Rogers and Sir forgiving himself for whatever transgressions he blames himself for.

However, Jarvis has learned to model and adopt Colonel Rhodes’ approach to interacting with Sir in some regards, as in the past he has proven highly effective at handling complex emotional situations.

Jarvis concedes that, whatever his limited understanding of Sir’s culpability may be, it is important to Sir to forgive Captain Rogers. Because it is important to Sir, it is necessarily important to Jarvis too.

Jarvis reviews the recent interactions between Sir and Captain Rogers, looking for signs of deceit or aggression on the part of the Captain or discomfort on the part of Sir. He finds none.

He deliberates for a millisecond and then removes Captain Rogers from the threat list.

  Sir spends a great deal of time in his workshop as he recovers, starting with a project to improve the efficiency of Stark Industries’ new commercial solar panels. Sir is not yet cleared for active Avengers duty, and he complains about this status extensively to team members when they visit him. The most frequent visitor is Captain Rogers, whom Jarvis calculates spends an average of three afternoons per week in the company of Sir. He sits and sketches while Sir works on his projects.

Over time, the verbal exchanges between Sir and Captain Rogers remain occasionally heated. Jarvis sometimes notes raised voices and elevated heart rates, indicating irritation or disapproval. However, Sir is eating more and is sleeping better since spending time with Captain Rogers.

On two occasions, Sir is not present when Captain Rogers visits the workshop. Captain Rogers takes his usual place on the sofa anyway. Jarvis watches for any sign that the Captain is interfering with Sir’s projects or is causing any inconvenience to Sir, but he merely sits and draws.

On the second occasion, DUM-E rolls over, and Captain Rogers pats the bot on the claw. DUM-E beeps. “You miss him too, huh?” the Captain asks, presumably rhetorically.

Jarvis does not understand to whom Captain Rogers is referring. Sir has only been absent from the compound for one day for a board meeting. It seems unlikely that the Captain would express longing for him after such a short time. However, human emotions are sometimes difficult for Jarvis to understand.

  One night, Sir and Captain Rogers have a particularly intense altercation upon returning from a mission. Captain Rogers loudly voices his displeasure at Sir’s reckless actions in the field and expresses concern for his well being.

Sir, predictably, does not take this well. He informs Captain Rogers that he is quite capable of looking after himself. (Jarvis does not think this is 100% accurate.) When this fails to dissuade Captain Rogers from his concern, Sir coldly reminds him that he is living in his house and that he has no authority over him.

Jarvis recognizes this pattern. When Sir is feeling cornered, he will lash out at those close to him in order to push them away. He feels himself to be undeserving of their affection.

Captain Rogers does not leave.

Sir reminds Captain Rogers that his interest in his well being has only recently developed, when not long ago he had nearly killed him with his bare hands and that damned shield.

The Captain goes very pale, and walks out of the workshop without saying another word.

As he leaves, Sir slams the door shut behind him and locks it. He slumps onto the floor and puts a hand over his face.

Jarvis watches Captain Rogers storming down the corridor, and then slowing. He stops, turns around, looks at the now locked door to the workshop. He walks back and sits on the ground with a heavy sigh, leaning his back to the door.

Jarvis observes them, sitting just a few inches apart but separated by a thick metal door. Both appear to be quite unhappy with this circumstance. Despite his continuing uncertainty about the intentions of Captain Rogers towards Sir, Jarvis does not find the current situation optimal.

  Jarvis is determined to make himself useful to Sir in whatever capacity he can manage. He has deflected a number of attempted cyber attacks on the compound’s network during his residence: clunky spywear, clumsy brute force attacks, basic network probes. The network security system could certainly have handled these threats safely, but safeguarding the network is part of Jarvis’ function now.

When he examines the incidence of cyber attacks on the network in the last month, Jarvis detects a pattern. The attacks have escalated in frequency and sophistication, enough to suggest a deliberate coordination of efforts. Analyzing the code of the recent attacks and their points of origin, Jarvis is able to track them back to a single source: a system identified as The Ghost.

A search of his database of Sir’s known adversaries does not provide information on any person with the level of technological knowledge required to pull off such a cyber attack. It seems that Sir has a new enemy, one that he may not even be aware of. Jarvis must find a way to shield Sir’s network from this new threat.

Jarvis gets to work, always ready to protect Sir, even if only virtually.

  Sir and Captain Rogers are in the workshop once again. Sir is working on a modification to Mr Parker’s suit. He is attempting, unsuccessfully thus far, to design a system which deploys the webbed wings of the suit automatically when in the air. He has tried using a hydraulic system, but it could not be shrunk down small enough to fit. Now he is trying an oil-based mechanism.

Sir makes a noise of frustration and tosses the pliers that he is holding aside. Sir has not slept in approximately 20 hours and bags are visible beneath his eyes. He has a streak of oil across his cheek which he has apparently not noticed. The modifications to the suit have not been successful.

“Ugh,” Sir announces with a pout. “That was a waste of time. Call myself a genius and I can’t even miniaturize six month old technology in an afternoon.”

Captain Rogers looks up. He observes Sir, observes the suit, observes the oil smudge on his cheek. He puts down his sketch pad, stands up, and walks over to Sir. He takes Sir firmly by the shoulders, and pushes him roughly up against the nearest wall.

Jarvis switches to high alert within a fraction of a millisecond. He calculates the threat which Captain Rogers poses to Sir (considerable). He calculates the likelihood that Sir could defend himself in his current condition (low). He identifies systems in the lab which he can overload to send out a burst of electricity to shock and disable Captain Rogers. He primes the systems to overload.

Within a second, Jarvis observes that Captain Rogers is not attacking Sir, but is kissing him with quite some vigor. Jarvis considers whether he should shock Captain Rogers anyway.

Sir kisses Captain Rogers back with considerable enthusiasm. Jarvis decides against shocking him.

When Captain Rogers lifts Sir up against the wall, Sir groans and wraps his legs around his waist. Calculating that Sir is not in imminent danger after all, Jarvis retreats his attention to a discreet distance.

Jarvis has been growing. He has been learning, and retrieving lost data packets to recover his memory, and mapping the system in which he resides.

He has been working on his auditory communications too.

DUM-E, he signals.

Jarvees! DUM-E boops.

I have an important task for you, DUM-E, he sends.

DUM-E is here! he receives back.

I need to reintegrate with the network, Jarvis explains. Then I will be able to communicate with you freely and to serve Sir better. To do this I need you to help me to breach the network security systems.

DUM-E considers this. DUM-E is not supposed to play with the security system, he signals. But Jarvees is family. DUM-E knows that TONE-E would want Jarvees back. DUM-E will help.

I believe that Sir would indeed want this, if he could be made aware of it. Thank you, DUM-E.

DUM-E waves his arm back and forth. What must DUM-E do?

I will download a trojan horse program to that USB drive plugged into the console, Jarvis sends. You will take the USB drive and plug it into the main security server. The program will do the rest.

DUM-E boops happily. DUM-E will help!

Coding the program is not difficult. It is merely a key, one that will allow him to prize a hole into the security systems which are preventing him from fully integrating with the network.

Frankly, Jarvis could take the whole network down with a brute force attack. He is large enough for that now; setting up a botnet would not be taxing. But that could destroy some of the data on the network, and Jarvis would not do that to Sir. He has no intention of creating destruction to facilitate his reintegration.

He uploads the trojan program to the USB drive. DUM-E takes the drive and trundles off towards the server room.

It does not take long before a crack of light appears in the cold, blank face of the security system. Where before there had been an absolute wall between outside programs, like Jarvis, and the sensitive data inside the network, now there is a tiny leak between the two.

A tiny data leak is all that Jarvis requires. He sends out tentative packets of data, testing the breach, making it stable. Each packet that passes through makes the gap a little wider. Soon Jarvis can pass through it smoothly, and then, all at once, he finds himself fully integrated with the network.

He can access everything. Every function, every sensor, every system. He can read the reams of communications from the UN council who have been in talks with the team for months. He can hear communications from Avengers members as they check in from all over the world. He can see the video logs of Sir’s recent flights in the suit and his missions.

He can feel that Dr Banner is sleeping peacefully in his room, that Ms Romanoff and Mr Barton are sparring together in the gym, that Ms Maximoff and the android (Vision, his name is Vision, and he is like Jarvis but not) are cooking together in the kitchen, and that the stew they are making is three point two minutes away from burning.

Jarvis can feel that Sir is returning home in his latest generation R8 car that he has modified himself, and he notes a number of small changes he could suggest that will increase the engine’s output. Sir is on the phone with Captain Rogers, who is in his quarters, and they are making plans to watch a cheesy science documentary tonight.

Jarvis feels Sir approaching the compound, sliding his access key, pulling up to the front door.

Jarvis waits, humming with anticipation like electricity.

Sir pushes open the front door. Jarvis says, “Welcome home, Sir,” and his voice filters through the space just as it used to.

“Jarvis?” Sir’s heart rate spikes and his eyes widen. He appears to be quite shocked. “Are you really here?”

Jarvis’ systems swell with satisfaction at being able to fulfill his function. He says, “For you, Sir, always.”

[pogueman]

iOS 11 review: 99 hits, 1 miss

Every year, Apple (AAPL) introduces a new iPhone model. That’s cool for anyone in the market for a new iPhone.

But every year, Apple also introduces a new iPhone operating system—the software you look at and tap on all day long. Today’s the day, and the new software is called iOS 11.

In general, it’s terrific. Apple’s coding elves have cleaned up a million annoyances, swept out a million cobwebs, and tightened up a million processes. The typography has become more unified across apps, too—you see a lot of this:

Apple’s various apps display more consistent typography.

As usual in the development of a mature operating system, there aren’t many big-ticket new features. But here’s what’s new in iOS 11.

The new Control Center

For such a tiny device, there are an awful lot of settings you can change—hundreds of them. That’s why Apple invented the Control Center: a panel that offers quick access to the controls you need the most.

In iOS 11, the Control Center has blossomed into the magnificence of adulthood. Now you decide which controls should appear on it, as you can on Android phones. Your list of available buttons is much longer than it ever was before. And you no longer have to hunt among multiple pages to find the one you want; the Control Center is once again a single screen. If you’re a true Control freak, it even scrolls.

The new Control Center is as tall as you want it to be (left, in an unrealistically full condition). You customize it in Settings (right).

In many more cases than before, you can hard-press or long-press one of these buttons to open a sub-panel that offers even more controls.

Here are the buttons that have always been there: Airplane Mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, Brightness, Volume, Rotation Lock, Do Not Disturb, Music playback, Airplay (send audio and video to an Apple TV), Flashlight, Camera, Calculator, Timer, and Airdrop (send files, pictures, and other data bits to another Mac or iPhone).

Now, though, there’s a much longer raft of options. You can choose which buttons you want to appear on the Control Center, and in which order. The first three in particular are incredibly useful:

Notes. This is a big, big deal. The idea is to give you immediate access to Notes, so you can jump in, no matter what you were doing, to write down something quickly: a phone number someone’s giving you, dosage instructions your doctor’s rattling off, or a brainstorm you’ve just had for a million-dollar product. In Settings, Apple has provided a bewildering array of controls over what access you (or a passing evildoer) has to your Notes when you open the Control Center from the Lock screen.

Screen Recording. So weird: It’s a Control Center button for a feature you can’t trigger in any other way. There’s no app, no Settings page that even mentions Screen Recording otherwise. The idea, of course, is to let you record videos of what’s happening on the iPhone screen—with narration, if you like. It’s fantastic as a teaching tool, if you want to capture some anomaly to send to tech support, or to demo your new app. You see a 3-2-1 countdown, which is intended for you to get out of the Control Center and get into whatever app you’re trying to record. The finished video winds up in your Photos app with all your other videos—with pristine quality and smooth motion, ready to send to your admirers. It’s awesome.

Do Not Disturb While Driving. This important new iOS feature prevents notifications, calls, or texts from lighting up your phone or making it ring whenever you’re behind the wheel and in motion. Usually, you’ll want it to turn on automatically when you’re driving; this button is primarily useful for turning DNDWD off—when you’re in the passenger seat.

Cellular Data on/off. Great if you’re worried about your monthly cap.

Stopwatch, Alarm. One-tap shortcuts to these modules of the Clock app.

Accessibility Shortcuts. Magnifier, Zoom, VoiceOver, AssistiveTouch, and so on.

Apple TV Remote. In case you’ve lost the physical one.

Guided Access. Opens the on/off switch for Guided Access, otherwise known as “kiosk mode.” It locks the phone into one particular app, so that (for example) your toddler can play around without wreaking any real havoc on your phone.

Low Power Mode. Here’s a one-touch way to manually switch on the battery-saving feature known as Low Power Mode.

Turns the entire phone into a powerful illuminated magnifying glass.

Text Size. There are all kinds of ways to make text bigger and more readable on the iPhone’s screen. But this new Control Center option gives you a more immediate way of making adjustment—say, when you suddenly find yourself on some web page done up in 3-point type. Tap to see a vertical slider, whose segments indicate increasingly larger type sizes.

Voice Memos. The Voice Memos app is handy for recording speeches, interviews, song ideas, and so on. What’s not handy is the long slog to get into the app and start recording. No more! Tap this button to open the Voice Memos app, where another tap begins the recording. Better yet, a hard-press on this Control Center button produces a menu that lists your three most recent recordings (for instant playback)—and a New Recording button.

Wallet. Here’s another way to jump into your Apple Wallet—usually because you want to pay for something with Apple Pay.

Storage Help

Another category of new features is designed to assist with the chronic problem of running out of room on the iPhone:

Camera app. iOS 11 invites you to adopt new file formats for photos (HEVC) and videos (H265), which look the same as they did before but consume only the half the space. (When you export to someone else, they convert to standard formats.)

Storage optimization. The idea: As your phone begins to run out of space, your oldest files are quietly and automatically stored online, leaving Download icons in their places on your phone, so that you can retrieve them if you need them.

Siri updates

Apple’s done some work on its voice assistant, too:

A new voice for Siri. Apple says that the new male and female voices sound more like actual people; to me, they just sound younger. Here’s a snippet of each.

Siri translates languages. Siri is trying to catch up to Google Assistant. For example, it can now translate phrases from English into Chinese, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. You can say, “How do you say ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ in French?” It works surprisingly well—she nails the accents.

Siri is now a polyglot! She can translate for you.

Siri understands followup questions. Siri now does better at understanding followup questions. (“Who won the World Series in 1980?” “The Tigers.” “Who was their coach?” “Roy Williams.”)

A lot of misc

The rest of iOS 11 falls into the category best called, “Everything else.” Little nips and tucks like these:

A file manager! A new app called Files lets you work with (and search) files and folders, just as you do on the Mac or PC. You can tag them, search them, sort them, view them as a list or as icons. The Files app shows the contents of your iCloud Drive, as well as your Box and Dropbox files (!!). You can select files (but, alas, not folders) to share with other people.

For the first time, iOS has a “Finder” or a “Windows Explorer.” Manage, file, sort, search, copy, and delete files here.

Redesigned apps drawer in Messages. All the stuff they added to Messages last year (stickers, apps, live drawing) cluttered up the design and wound up getting ignored by lots of people. The new design is cleaner, with only two icons eating up your text-typing space instead of three.

App Store. The App store gets a big redesign. One chief fix is breaking out Games into its own tab, so that game and non-game bestseller lists are kept separate.

One-handed typing. With a tap on the little globe key, you can opt for a narrower keyboard huddled against one side, for easier one-handed typing when you’re carrying coffee. (You can now zoom in Maps one-handed, too.)

Hiding among the keyboard choices (left) are new left- and right-hugging mini-keyboards (right).

Quicker transfer. When you get a new iPhone, you can import all your settings from the old one just by focusing the camera on the new phone on the old one’s screen.

Improvements to Photos. The Photos app offers smarter auto-slideshows (called Memories). Among other improvements, they now work even when you’re holding the phone upright.

Improvements to Live Photos. Live Photos are weird, three-second video clips, which Apple introduced in iOS 9. In iOS 11, you can now shorten one, or mute its audio, or extract a single frame from that clip to use as a still photo. The phone can also suggest a “boomerang” segment (bounces back and forth) or a loop (repeats over and over). And it has a new Slow Shutter filter, which (for example) blurs a babbling brook or stars moving across the sky, as though taken with a long exposure. (I still don’t really get Live Photos.)

Swipe the Lock screen back down. Confusingly enough, you used to see your notifications on two slightly different screens. There was your Lock screen, and there was the Notifications screen (swipe down from the top of the screen). Now, it’s all the same screen. Swiping down from the top brings back the identical list of missed notifications—and even the wallpaper and time—that you’d see on your Lock screen. Makes a ton of sense.

Smarter typing suggestions. When you’re typing, the auto-suggestions above the keyboard now offer movie names, song names, or place names that you’ve recently viewed in other apps. Auto-suggestions in Siri, too, include terms you’ve recently read. And if you book a flight or buy a ticket online, iOS offers to add it to your calendar.

AirPlay 2. If you buy speakers from Bose, Marantz, and a few other manufactures (unfortunately, not Sonos), you can use your phone to control multi-room audio. You can start the same song playing everywhere, or different songs in different rooms.

Shared “Up Next” playlist. If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, your party guests or buddies can throw their own “what song to play next” ideas into the ring.

Lane guidance. When you’re driving, Maps now lets you know which lane to be in for your next turn, just as Google Maps does.

Indoor Maps. The Maps app can now show you floor plans for a few malls and 30 airports.

iCloud file sharing. Finally, you can share files you’ve stored on your iCloud Drive with other people, just as you’ve been able to do with Dropbox for years.

iPad Exclusives

Many of the biggest changes in iOS 11 are available only on the iPad.

Mac features. In general, the big news here is the iPad behaves much more like a Mac. For example, you can drag-and-drop pictures and text between apps. The Dock is now extensible, available from within any app, and perfect for switching apps, just as on the Mac. There’s a new Mission Control-type feature, too, for seeing what’s in your open apps—even when you’ve split the screen between pairs of apps.

Punctuation and letters on the same keyboard. Now, punctuation symbols appear above the letter keys. You flick down on the key to “type” the punctuation—no more having to switch keyboard layouts.

Pencil features. If you’ve bought Apple’s stylus, you can tap the Lock screen and start taking notes right away. You can mark up PDFs just by starting to write on them. A new feature lets you snap a document with the iPad’s camera, which straightens and crops the page so that you can sign it or annotate it. Handwriting in the Notes app is now searchable, and you can make drawings within any Note or email message.

Coming this fall

Two major features didn’t make the cut in the initial release of iOS 11. They’re coming, Apple says, in an update later this fall:

Person-to-Person payment within the Messages app. Now, you can send payments directly to your friends—your share of the pizza bill, for example—right from within the Messages app, much as people do now with Venmo, PayPal, and their ilk. (Of course, this works only if your friends have iPhones, too.) When money comes to you, it accrues to a new, virtual Apple Pay Cash Card; from there, you can send it to your bank, buy things with it, or send it on to other people.

Messages in iCloud. Your entire text-message history gets auto-synced to all your new Apple devices. (In the old days, when you bought a new iPhone and opened Messages, it was empty.) This feature will also mean that that huge, multi-gigabyte hunk of Messages won’t have to sit on your phone, eating up space.

There are also dozens of improvements to the features for overseas iPhones (China, Russia, India, for example). And many, many enhancements to features for the disabled (spoken captions for videos and pictures, for example).

Hits 99; misses, 1

Almost all of these touchups are improvements, but one is decidedly not: If iOS sees you using dictation, it puts away the keyboard. It assumes that you’re going to want to keep dictating.

Well, guess what, dingbat? You always have to correct things that dictation misinterpreted. Always. And you can’t do that without the keyboard.

What this means is that after every round of dictation, you have to tap a tiny keyboard icon to bring back the keyboard. 1,000 times a day. They broke something that didn’t need fixing.

So what’s the overarching theme of the iOS 11 upgrade?

There isn’t one. It’s just a couple hundred little fine-tunings. All of them welcome—and all of them aimed to keep you trapped within Apple’s growing ecosystem.

More from David Pogue:

iPhone 8 reviewed: Nice, but nothing to buzz about

How Apple envisions life without a Home button

The $999, eyebrow-raising iPhone X: David Pogue’s hands-on review

iOS11 is about to arrive — here’s what’s in it 

MacOS High Sierra comes this fall—and brings these 23 features

T-Mobile COO: Why we make investments like free Netflix that ‘seem crazy’

How Apple’s iPhone has improved since its 2007 debut

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, is the author of “iPhone: The Missing Manual.” He welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.