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NEWS / SEO

Never heard of SEO Fraggles? Okay, here’s one: “SEO Fraggles are concise fragments of content (text, image, video, even audio) used to present information directly on a search engine results page.”

Never heard of SEO Fraggles? Okay, here’s one:

“SEO Fraggles are concise fragments of content (text, image, video, even audio) used to present information directly on a search engine results page.”

How are they displayed differently?

The quote above may be defined as a text or definition Fraggle, and it could be the response to a user question, such as: “Almighty search engine, please tell me: What is an SEO Fraggle?” You needn’t click on a link to get your answer; when you search Google, you’ll see this definition first. Not only will you receive a satisfying answer – you’ll also see an increase in zero-click searches.

Fraggles are all about speed. No more clicking on links. Plus, they rank on their own, and they’re often presented completely decoupled from a URL or source. In times of Universal Search, these SEO Fraggles are shown directly at the top, middle, and even bottom of organic rankings in the form of Featured Snippets like Google OneBox (for mobile: AMP), or collected in the Knowledge Graph. Think of them as tiny pieces of information that can be isolated and separated by the search engine to be distributed across a broad range of technologies, platforms and devices.

What`s the advantage for marketeers?

There are three big trends to do with SEO Fraggles at the moment: Entity First Indexing, Zero-Click, and Mobile First. Obviously, something has clearly changed. Why are fragments of information so relevant now? Although they are “only” tiny little fragments of information, they can significantly impact your mobile marketing, the overall website construct, and your content strategy. It is no longer about your single favourite keyword. It is about organizing your content around entities and focusing your efforts even more towards Semantic SEO approaches, and that means in terms of SEO Fraggles as well.

What’s stopping us from using them?

It sounds like Fraggles would be easy to integrate – just add some information, right? But individually and isolated, they’re really just content fragments. So, how do they create a benefit, especially if people might not visit my website? Are they worth the hassle?

To answer this question, we need to think more holistically, strategically, and in an interlinked fashion. Your goal is to achieve a high level of E-A-T: Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness, in order for the search engine to recognize your site as worthy of being highly ranked. Next, think of all your other, more performance-driven pages that could benefit from those Fraggles. Those pages need to be aimed towards a higher strategic (content) goal within the context of your website.

How do we achieve that?

There are lots of plausible ideas and projects out there. However, I’d like to offer one example of how I conceptualized an interlinked set of SEO Fraggles to drive traffic towards a greater strategic goal. Let’s say you work for a company whose business purpose is to educate. Your company offers a leading Digital Marketing Course which has three learning modules: SEM, Content Marketing, and Social Media Marketing. We want to focus on the top level of the marketing funnel, which is Awareness and Consideration. What if you launched a glossary and short definitions in the form of SEO Fraggles to answer the questions of your potential customers? Imagine your Fraggles are read out loud by the search engine.

Don’t think too granularly in the beginning. Think big.

What are the main features of your company’s identity that you want to represent on the web? Think of the website as a digital identity. What are the traits, characteristics, or foundational content pillars from which you want to derive your SEO Fraggles? Every trait is an aggregated factor with an underlying set of manifold fragmented information relating to the higher-level factor. Your objective is to tactically align your SEO Fraggles to the semantic topologies of your products or services and their sub-categories to underline your E-A-T for the specific topics. In this case, they are your three learning modules. Don’t forget to interlink your content logically. For example, you could briefly explain SEM in an article entitled “What is Digital Marketing” and SEO in an article entitled “What is SEM?” and so forth.

What does all that look like?

Every one of these questions, at every level, has its own webpage. Every one of these questions has a short definition at the top of the page that could potentially be displayed as a snippet. What appears below the definition? Content that’s even more related and supportive describing the topic.

How might we use this information within the overall website context and the content strategy? Assume for a moment that this article is one of your blog posts that you use to drive qualified traffic. Imagine all the anchor tags you could build in to link to your glossary to explain phrases. Use your glossary more naturally. Let it grow organically. Whenever a link seems to fit into your blog post, use it. Consider your Fraggles as additional and supportive content to underline your content strategy.

Remember: you’ll need to link logically between the content clusters you’re about to build. Try to build ecosystems of semantically associated content clusters. Craft a mind map of related terms alongside your taxonomy of topics. But your set of Fraggles must have boundaries. There are other people out there fishing in the same seas as you are, casting “Fraggle nets” of different sizes and shapes. It’s vital for you to ensure that your individual net is (to some extent!) totally  exclusive and completely exhaustive. You’ll have to work hard on its quality and interconnectedness while keeping it constantly updated and fresh in order to “catch” the widest audience possible.

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