Negative Results Course: Leapfrogging – Finding Opportunities
Script from the lesson The Negative Results Course
Jason Barnard speaking: Drowning imperfect and negative results. Finding the opportunities. Now, what’s the situation? You have a negative or imperfect result on page one that you haven’t managed to improve or feel it’s too difficult to improve. Here’s a couple of examples. You’ve tried contacting them, talking to them, seeing their point of view, giving them convincing arguments as to why they really should change or remove the content, you’ve maybe even tried giving them a gift, they just won’t listen. And you want perfection on your Brand SERP. You want to make it so that what people see on page one, when they Google your name is 100% representative, 100% accurate, and 100% positive. We’re going to use a technique called leapfrogging to drown this suboptimal content.
Jason Barnard speaking: This is better than trying to drown by creating lots of spammy content. Hopefully, you’ve watched the lesson on the Fundamentals course covering why that’s such a bad idea. So, what is leapfrogging in Brand SERPs? It’s simply pushing one piece of content above another and thus pushing the other one down one position.
Jason Barnard speaking: Pushing a less good or bad result down means it’s less prominent, less visible, and less credible in the eyes of the user. And if you can leapfrog that lower quality content with enough better quality content, you can push it down to page two and it becomes invisible to most users. The trick to removing imperfect and negative content from your SERP is to find candidate content that you can help to rank and find enough candidates to push all the negative content off page one replacing it with positive, accurate, and relevant content that you choose.
Jason Barnard speaking: Remember that Google wants your Brand SERP to reflect fairly on you. So, if your brand really is as great as you think it is, then there’s no reason for Google to show anything other than great content on your Brand SERP. In this lesson, I’ll use the terms leapfrogger for the quality content that you’re optimising and trying to push up, and leapfroggy for the negative content you’re trying to push down. Throughout this, bear in mind that the best leapfrogger candidates will be those that bring the most value to Google’s users searching on your brand name. These people are looking for you specifically, either researching you or navigating to your site. These people are Google’s users and Google is trying to give them an honest balance view of your brand. The content it shows needs to bring value to that user. That means it needs to be representative and relevant. That’s Google’s focus. That means you must also focus there. Look for content that is representative of your brand and relevant to someone researching you. Make sure there is value for Google’s users, what you prefer is secondary.
Jason Barnard speaking: Now, leapfrogging on Brand SERPs in a nutshell. In order to leapfrog content, you need to convince Google that the leapfrogger content is more relevant and brings more value to its users than the leapfroggy. Simple. Now, before starting there’s an important consideration. Do you want to try to control all of your Brand SERP? Or do you want to have some third party content there?
Jason Barnard speaking: If you can push out third-party content you have no control over and your Brand SERP contains only content you have control or partial control over, then you have more control over what users see when they Google you, and control means safety and peace of mind. Leaving third party content on your Brand SERP is positive in the independent content that sings your praises is a very positive signal to your audience. It has the danger that you have no control and if that content changes for the worse because you’ve actively promoted it to push it up onto your SERP, it will be difficult for you to remove.
Jason Barnard speaking: At the end of this lesson, I’ll give you some typical examples of the type of third-party content you want to avoid using for leapfrogging. In the other leapfrogging lessons, I’ll flag more specific third-party content that is dangerous from this perspective. Now, what to do? Firstly, make a list of leapfrogger candidates. If you’ve done the first lesson on the Fundamentals course, then you will already have a list of the results that appear on your Brand SERP on desktop, on mobile, and perhaps across multiple countries.
Jason Barnard speaking: If you haven’t, then the screencast that shows how to do that is in the supplementary material of this lesson below. Please watch that now. Now, for leapfrogger content, you might need to look deeper. So, look at pages three through six in the same way you did pages one and two, and you should have about 60 or 70 results.
Jason Barnard speaking: Don’t worry about pushing content up from fifth or sixth page pushing content up from that low down is pretty easy up to page two, then it gets tough. You will find that the first leap from pages three to six up to two usually goes pretty smoothly. So, now you have a big list of all the content on the first few pages.
Jason Barnard speaking: Now, you want to make a leapfrogger list of all the content that ranks below the leapfroggy and order your leapfrogger content according to those seven factors. Number one, how relevant and valuable is it to your audience? This is the primary consideration. Number two, how high is it already ranking? Higher is better since it has less far to rise.
Jason Barnard speaking: Number three, whether the page brings something additional to the table for your audience that isn’t already available on page one of your Brand SERP. In particular, avoid content that repeats anything on your sitelinks, that’s a bad candidate. Number four, whether the meta title and description are actively positive, you want positive results on your SERP, not just neutral results.
Jason Barnard speaking: Number five, whether your audience trusts the publisher. Having a trusted, independent third-party singing your praises on your Brand SERP is a big plus for you. Number six, whether the domain is powerful. If it’s powerful, it makes it easier to rank the content. Number seven, the level of control you have. Do you want total control or do you want to leave some impartiality?
Jason Barnard speaking: Now, you’ve ranked your list. You need to choose the top candidates and get to work, pushing them up the SERP. How many do you need? Well, enough leapfrogger content to push the leapfroggy content down off page one, but choose more than you need so that if the first choice won’t rank for whatever reason, you have another couple of fallbacks that you’re also working on.
Jason Barnard speaking: If the leapfroggy content is right at the bottom of page one, you need at least three leapfrogger candidates to work on. If it’s second from bottom of the page, you need at least four candidates to work on and so on and so forth. This lesson is an overview to identify candidates. For a more detailed explanation and to learn what to do, please watch the other lessons on how to leapfrog with different types of content. And a quick note on the lower ranking pages, if you choose a page that ranks below page two, if it doesn’t hit page two after you’ve done some good optimisation work, you might want to consider leaving it and choosing another one to work on.
Jason Barnard speaking: Typically, if there isn’t an initial leap, then that page will probably never make it onto page one. Now, choosing the leapfrogger content. Firstly, opportunities you control. Leapfrogger content on your own site is great and very tempting to choose since you’ve got control, but it has the disadvantage that Google wants variety of sources on the SERP, so it will tend to avoid ranking multiple results from one single site.
Jason Barnard speaking: Another of your sites that isn’t your main domain is often a better candidate. You need to get the team to run them to see the bigger picture and work with you.
Jason Barnard speaking: Next, opportunities you partially control. Social accounts are very good candidates. They rank very easily because they’re naturally very pertinent for your audience. The four major platforms that rank most easily are YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but the other platforms can be pertinent and powerful depending on your audience. The key to pushing this type of leapfrogger content is sustained activity on the account with a special emphasis on engagement from your audience.
Jason Barnard speaking: Partner sites are a great option because you have a relationship with them already. You can talk to them directly and they have a good reason to help you. If you have an app, then app platforms rank easily. They’re very relevant and useful to your audience and the platforms have powerful sites. Just make sure that you have lots of reviews and that they are overwhelmingly positive.
Jason Barnard speaking: Review platforms with four stars or more, another great candidates. These bring perhaps less value to your audience than an app or a social account, but it’s still a great candidate. For specifics, watch the review platforms lesson. For both any content that collects reviews and displays aggregate scores, you only want to push those that have lots of reviews. Why? Because if you only have a handful, the review score, the great-looking result can flip on you quite easily and become negative for you. For example, if you have only three reviews, then just one one-star review will send your average score down a long way. It will show three stars on your Brand SERP and that looks bad.
Jason Barnard speaking: Next, opportunities where you have no control. There are a vast range of possibilities here. The types of content that make good leapfrogger candidates depends on many, many factors, including your industry, your brand, your geo location, and the language.
Jason Barnard speaking: Bear in mind that you’re looking for content that is relevant, is valuable to your audience, is positive about your brand, is from a publisher the audience trusts, and importantly not volatile and not likely to flip on you. A four or five-star journalist review is a great candidate. It’s a double opportunity. Not only can you improve your Brand SERP with an independent review from a respected journalist, but you can start or improve your relationship with the publisher or the journalist and that can be great for future content opportunities and cap collaboration. Any positive article from a blogger or journalist is also a double opportunity in the same way. Why such a short section on third-party content? Because the variety is so vast and also because I tend to play safety first and aim for mostly the leapfrogger content that I control or partially control. Prioritizing these gives me control of the SERP and that brings me security and peace of mind, but that isn’t an absolute rule, of course.
Jason Barnard speaking: Great content from third parties your audience trusts can bring a lot to the table.
Jason Barnard speaking: Here’s some content you should not use as leapfrogger content. Don’t push third party comparison pages. They can flip really easily. Offers change, opinions change, competitors offer gifts. If it flips, you have no control and it will be tough to beat since you have made it very strong. Don’t push forums. Once they’re up there.
Jason Barnard speaking: They’re one of the toughest types of content to push down your Brand SERP.
Jason Barnard speaking: They’re very sticky because they’re fresh and relevant to your audience. And that’s two good reasons for Google to like them. If you use a forum post as a leapfrogger content, you create a potential monster. It can flip and since you don’t control it, you will have created a really thorny problem for yourself. As a general rule, forum threads that rank on Brand SERPs are very, very hard to drown.
Jason Barnard speaking: Don’t push negative, positive copywriting. An example of this is getting round spam blacklists isn’t so hard with poppy mailer. It’s tempting to push a great piece of content despite the positive, negative meta title or description because you can see that it’s good content underneath. But any negative words in your Brand SERP damage your brand image and negative word on your Brand SERP plants a seed of doubt. So, negative words in the metas are a no even if the content is positive, unless you can get the publisher to change the metas. Don’t choose review platforms with few reviews. Review platforms are great candidates if they have over four random five stars and they have a lot of reviews. If they show a low rating, obviously you don’t want them on your Brand SERP, but you don’t want them on your Brand SERP if they don’t have many reviews. When you have few reviews, any one new review can change the score dramatically. I gave you an example earlier on, here’s another one to really hammer home the point. If you have two reviews that give you full star rating and one person gives you a one-star review, your rating drops to three out of five and you suddenly look very bad.
Jason Barnard speaking: Next, employee review platforms. Using these as leapfrogger content is a very, very bad idea. They very rarely have good scores on them. And even if you have one that does, they have low numbers of reviews, so they are volatile. Plus, employee reviews are very delicate to manage. Whether ex employees or current employees, it’s always a delicate topic. All of that makes employee review platforms very dangerous ground. Now, you have enough information to make informed decisions about the candidate leapfrogger content and make a prioritized list of results you will work on. But before making your final list, have a think about Rich Elements.
Jason Barnard speaking: You might want to replace one or more of your list of candidates with a strategy to trigger a Rich Element. Relatively easy candidates here includes sitelinks, Video Boxes, and Image Boxes. Obtaining these doesn’t seem like leapfrogging, but it is kind of, they appear from nowhere or you created a result from a SERP that didn’t exist before. So, not technically leapfrogging, but it has the same effect and they have an additional advantage. They take two spots on the Brand SERP and they kill a blue link and that’s double drowning. How cool is that? So, Rich Elements are doubly effective for leapfrogging. They replace a blue link. They reduce the number of blue links on your SERP. And beyond those two great wins better still the work you do to get them will improve your content strategy and they’ll make your Brand SERP more multimedia and that makes you look more credible to your audience.
Jason Barnard speaking: Here are two of the easiest to trigger. Sitelinks are content you control directly because they come from your own site. They aren’t difficult to get and they often kill a blue link. Video Boxes look great and probably aren’t going to be difficult to trigger.
Jason Barnard speaking: They also usually kill a blue link. If you see any videos in your leapfrogger candidates list, even from third parties, that’s a sign that Google is almost ready to give you the Video Boxes. It just needs a friendly nudge, either some nice fresh video content or extra engagement on the existing content or both.
Jason Barnard speaking: So, finalize your list and then you can get to work. But first you need to watch the relevant episodes either in this course or in the Rich Elements course to learn exactly what you need to do.
Jason Barnard speaking: Thank you.
