Friday, December 30, 2016

How to Craft a Remarkable SEO Strategy for 2017 - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

From understanding the big-picture search trends to making sure your SEO goals jive with your CEO's goals, there's a lot to consider when planning for 2017. Next year promises to be huge for our industry, and in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand outlines how to craft a truly remarkable SEO strategy to help you sail through 2017.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to this special New Year's edition of Whiteboard Friday. I hope you have all had a wonderful holiday season and are about to have a wonderful New Year's.

This week, we're going to chat about how you can have a remarkable, amazing SEO strategy in 2017. The first thing I'm actually going to start with is not the broad-spectrum, strategic picture, which we talked a little bit here on Whiteboard Friday about, and I'll reference some of those, but is actually understanding some of those big-picture search trends. What are the search engines doing? How is that affecting my strategy? How does that mean I should influence and affect my specific tactics for 2017? So I'll walk through a few of these big ones. There are others, but I think these encapsulate many of the big things we've been seeing.

I. Understand the big-picture search trends

  • A huge rise in SERP features, meaning that Google is showing many more types of data and types of markup in the search results. We have, I believe, 17 that we record for Keyword Explorer, but there are another 7 or 8 that we do not record, but that we see in between 1% and 2% of queries. So there's just a ton of different features that are going in there.
  • A rise in instant answers. This is especially true on mobile, but it's true on desktop as well. Google is trying to answer a lot of the queries themselves, and that can mean they're taking away traffic from you, or it can mean there's opportunity to get into those features or those answers.
  • Intent > keywords: We're also seeing this trend that started with Hummingbird and now, obviously, continued with RankBrain around intent, searcher intent being more important than keywords in how we target our content. This does not mean you can remove keywords from the equation. You have to understand what the searcher has typed into the engine before you can serve their intent, and very small variations in keyword structure can mean real changes in searcher intent. That's a critical part of how we craft content for people.
  • The value of comprehensiveness has clearly been on the rise. That's been true for a couple of years, but it definitely is a trend that continued in 2016 and we expect to continue into 2017. You can see a bunch of examples of research in that area, including some from Whiteboard Friday itself.
  • Multi-device speed and user experience, Google's been harping on this for several years now, and I think what we are observing is that speed is not the only user experience element. Google has taken action against overlays and pop-ups. They've taken action, clearly, that suggests that there are some engagement metrics that are going on there, and that sites that have better user experience and that garner better engagement are doing better in the search results.
  • We've seen a bunch of trends around unreliability of Google data. That includes search volume data. It includes data in AdWords, around Google showing you which keywords are in there. It includes inaccuracies in Google Search Console, formerly Webmaster Tools, around rankings. My colleague, Russ Jones, has just put out a big piece on that showing, essentially, that if Google says you got this many impressions and this many clicks, that may be totally wrong and false, so be cautious around that.
  • Voice search, clearly on the rise. Not yet a huge trend in terms of an addressable market that search marketers can go after, but we've talked a few ways here on Whiteboard Friday and at Moz about how you can think about voice search impacting your results in the future and what types of content you might want to produce to be in front of voice searchers.
  • Machine learning and deep learning, Google has clearly made a shift to that in the last 18 months, and we're seeing it affect the search results in terms of how they're considering links, how they're looking at keyword searches, and how they're looking at content.
  • Multi-visit buyer journeys have always been important, but I think we are now seeing the trend to where not just search marketers but marketers of all stripes recognize this, and a lot of us are optimizing for it, which means that the competitive landscape now demands that you optimize for a multi-visit buyer journey, that you don't just consider a single visit in your conversion path or in your optimization path, and that means, for SEOs, considering what are all the queries someone might perform as they come to and come back to my site.
  • Bias to brands, that is a continuing trend over the last few years. We're still seeing it, and we're seeing it even more so. I would say we're seeing it even when those brands have not necessarily earned tons of links, which used to be the big dominating factor in the world of is a brand stronger than a non-brand. A lot of times that was about links. Now it seems that those are decoupled.
  • That being said, we're kind of feeling an undiminished value of links. If you've built a brand, if you've done a lot of these things successfully, links are certainly how you can stand out in the search results. That's pretty much as true in 2016 and '17 as it was in 2011 and 2012. Only caveat there is that the quality of links matters a lot more.

So, knowing all those things, I think we can now craft some very smart SEO tactics. We can apply those to the SEO problems we face.

II. Map your organizations top-level goals to how your SEO efforts can best assist:

Step two is to map your organization's top-level goals to your SEO tactics, and that can look something like this.

Here's Zow Corporate, the opposite of Moz, which is hopefully not very corporate. Zow Corporate's big three for 2017, they want to grow revenue with new enterprise customers, they want to lower their costs to get more profitable, and they want to improve their upsell to existing customers. So SEO can help with these things by — and this is a really smart framework — you want to take the things that your organization wants to accomplish at its executive or board level, and you want to show that SEO is actually doing those things, not just that you're trying to rank for keywords or bring more traffic, but that you've mapped your priorities in this way.

So I could say SEO can help by identifying searchers that enterprise targets and influencers perform and then ranking for those. We can lower our costs to get more profitable by reducing the cost per acquisition. We'll drive more traffic with organic search, thus reducing our dependency on advertising and other forms of marketing that cost a lot more. Those types of things.

III. Build a keyword-to-content map

Step three is to build a keyword to content map. We talked about this here on Whiteboard Friday. I'd urge you to check that out if you haven't already. But the basic concept is to have a list of terms and phrases that come out of your tactics and your goals, that you build a map for and then show like, "All right, here's how we're ranking today. Here's the URL which we're ranking with," or, "We don't yet have a URL that's targeting this keyword phrase, and thus, we need to build it," and then the action required there and what the priority is.

IV. Break down the SEO efforts into discrete projects with ETAs and people assigned, ordered by expected ROI

You can also think about adding some additional things to your content-to-keyword map or to your project list by breaking down all the SEO efforts that you're going to do to hit all these goals into discrete projects with a few thingsan estimated time of delivery, the people who are assigned to it, and an ordering based on the expected return on investment. You can be wrong about this. It's okay to be, "Hey, we're taking our best guess, thumb in the air. We don't really know for sure, but we're going to try. Here's the project. It's link building for the home page. It's our number-one priority. The value estimate is high because we currently rank number two or three for our own brand name. It's assigned to this person, to Rand, and the ETA is March 30th." Great, terrific, and now I know. I've taken this from here and from my projects list. It's part of my goals. It's where I think I can have a big impact. Terrific.

V. Build a reporting/measurement system that shows progress and ties revenue/goals to clear metrics:

Then, step five, the last one here is to build a reporting and measurement system that's going to show progress, not just to you internally, but to your entire team, or to your client if you're a consultant or an agency, and that anyone can look at and say, "Ah! This is where they're going with this. This is how they've done so far."

So you want to take any tactic or any project and add the metrics by which you will measure yourself. So if we're trying to rank in the top three for our competitor comparison searches, Zow versus whatever companies Zow's competing with, and the metrics there are ranking first, then search volume, the traffic we get from it, the conversions, and the retention of those customers who've come through, now you've got a real picture of how your SEO efforts map up to these big-picture goals. It's a great way to frame your SEO.

So, with that being said, I am looking very much forward to hearing how you're planning your 2017 SEO strategy. If you have recommendations and tips that you'd like to see here or questions, feel free to leave them in there, and despite the holiday break, I will be in there to answer your questions as best I can.

Look forward to joining you again next week and next year for a wonderful year of SEO and Whiteboard Fridays. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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Wednesday, December 28, 2016

IER Statement on Obama’s Latest National Monument Designations

WASHINGTON – The Institute for Energy Research (IER) opposes today’s decision by President Obama to block off 1.65 million acres of land from energy development for the Bear’s Ears National Monument in Utah and Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada. IER spokesman Chris Warren issued the following statement:

“If this decision were in the interest of the American people, and not part of the president’s political agenda, then he would’ve done this years ago instead of in the eleventh hour of his presidency. These lands belong to the American people and should be used to their benefit, whether it’s for recreation or responsible energy development. The Obama administration clearly doesn’t have faith in the American people to be good stewards of their own lands.

“Fortunately, there is a path for the Trump administration to reset the Obama administration’s keep-it-in-the-ground agenda. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, past presidents have reduced the size of national monuments. We encourage the Trump administration to take this first step and to ultimately work toward un-designating these areas altogether.”

 

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The post IER Statement on Obama’s Latest National Monument Designations appeared first on IER.

How the Oil Price War Made U.S. Producers Even Stronger

OPEC, the cartel of oil producing countries, for years has been able to manipulate oil prices on the world market by controlling its level of oil output and oil exports. In 2008, oil prices hit a high of over $150 a barrel, which quickly prompted increased development of U.S. shale oil deposits. The renaissance that ensued from the use of hydraulic fracturing to produce oil in the United States resulted in an oversupply of oil on the market and helped to bring oil prices crashing down in the summer of 2014. OPEC thought its best strategy was to maintain market share, keep the price of oil low, and force the U.S. shale oil producers into oblivion. But, that did not happen. U.S. producers used their ingenuity to reduce operating costs and increase productivity enabling them to produce at lower cost. Now, OPEC realizes it must cut production to raise oil prices—much needed to keep their economies flourishing and their debt contained. Whether the production cuts, which go into effect on January 1, 2017, will have a lasting impact is yet to be seen.

Falling Cost of U.S. Shale Oil Production

In shale oil fields from Texas to North Dakota, production costs have roughly halved since 2014, when Saudi Arabia turned toward maintaining OPEC’s market share in an attempt to drive higher-cost shale producers out of the market. But, instead of killing the U.S. shale oil industry, the price war that ensued made shale oil a stronger rival. For example, in Dunn County, North Dakota, there are about 2,000 square miles where the cost to produce Bakken shale oil is $15 a barrel, which is about the same as Iran’s cost, and a little higher than that of Iraq. Dunn County produces about a fifth of the daily production in the state—about 200,000 barrels of oil a day. Improved technology and drilling techniques have boosted efficiency for the entire state and U.S. oil industry. On average, the breakeven cost per barrel to produce Bakken shale oil at the wellhead has fallen to $29.44 a barrel in 2016 from $59.03 a barrel in 2014. (See chart below.)[i]

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-meeting-usa-shale-idUSKBN13P0C8

The production costs of producing oil from shale oil basins in the United States are becoming competitive with Middle Eastern oil field costs as the chart below shows.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-meeting-usa-shale-idUSKBN13P0C8

Bakken shale oil producers still need a substantially higher price than their breakeven cost to make a profit since they pay more to transport crude to market than producers in most other U.S. oil producing regions due to its distance from markets and the higher cost of rail shipments over pipeline shipments. International oil prices of $45 a barrel are enough for some Bakken producers to profit, while $55 a barrel would encourage production growth.

OPEC Agrees to Cut Production

OPEC has agreed to cut oil output by about 1.2 million barrels a day starting in January, reducing its combined production to 32.5 million barrels a day. The agreement exempted Nigeria and Libya, but gave Iraq its first quotas since the 1990s. Saudi Arabia will reduce output by 486,000 barrels a day to 10.058 million barrels a day and Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, will cut production by 210,000 barrels a day. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait will reduce output by 139,000 barrels a day and 131,000 a day, respectively. Non-OPEC members have agreed to cut production by 580,000 barrels per day, with Russia agreeing to cut by as much as 300,000 barrels a day “conditional on its technical abilities.”

The strength of the deal will depend on whether all parties adhere to their commitments. Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Kuwait, have traditionally implemented their cuts, but some other OPEC members have not.[ii] The last two years have been painful for OPEC, earning $341 billion from oil exports this year, down from a record $920 billion in 2012—a loss of over 60 percent in 4 years.

OPEC’s announcement of the pending cuts has increased the price of crude oil. Brent crude oil is averaging around $55 a barrel. The increased price of oil has increased gasoline prices, which are now averaging over $2.20 a gallon for regular. As a rule of thumb, an increase of $10 a barrel for oil will increase gasoline prices by about $0.25 per gallon.

Whether oil prices will increase further depends on whether the production cuts are adhered to. How long they remain at higher levels will depend on how quickly U.S. oil producers can increase their production spurred by higher prices. On average, U.S. oil production is down about 850,000 barrels per day from the same time last year. Hydraulic fracturing is used to produce about half of the oil currently produced in the United States as the chart below shows.

Source: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29252

OPEC Cuts Bring Opportunities to U.S. Producers

At the end of last year, the United States lifted a 40-year old ban on exporting U.S. crude oil. Since then, the U.S.’s non-Canadian oil exports have mainly gone to Europe. OPEC’s production cuts may open an opportunity for U.S. oil exports in Asia—a growing market. The more efficient drilling methods noted above may help U.S. producers to compete on price with OPEC producers.[iii] Some analysts believe the production cuts will lead to lower tanker rates and rising spreads between the U.S. benchmark crude and the Brent or Dubai crude prices. Estimates of tanker costs for next year show that a supertanker with capacity of 2 million barrels would earn an average of $25,000 a day–12 percent less than before OPEC pledged to cut production.[iv]

The U.S. is already exporting crude oil to Asian markets. Data from the Energy Information Administration show that U.S. crude oil exports reached a record-high in September of 692,000 barrels per day. In that month, exports to Singapore, for example, reached 99,000 barrels per day from 21,000 barrels per day in August and exports to South Korea were 59,000 barrels per day.

Conclusion

Oil markets have historically had their ups and downs. Despite many U.S. producers having to file for bankruptcy and many oil workers losing their jobs over the past two years as OPEC determined to maintain market share, U.S. producers used their ingenuity to slash production costs and improve productivity. Now, OPEC is planning to cut production, which has increased the price of crude oil and gasoline. Whether the production cuts will be maintained and prices will increase even more will likely be determined over the next six months.


[i] Reuters, Leaner and Meaner: U.S. shale greater threat to OPEC after oil price war, November 30, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-opec-meeting-usa-shale-idUSKBN13P0C8

[ii] Bloomberg, OPEC Confounds Skeptics, Agrees to First Oil Cuts in 8 Years, November 30, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-30/opec-agrees-to-cut-output-by-1-2-million-barrels-a-day

[iii] CNBC, OPEC just created a big opportunity for US oil companies: Exports to Asia, December 9, 2016, http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/09/opec-output-cuts-make-us-exports-to-asia-possible.html

[iv] Oil Price, A Unique Opportunity: OPEC Cuts To Boost U.S. Shale Exports, December 14, 2016, http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/A-Unique-Opportunity-OPEC-Cuts-To-Boost-US-Shale-Exports.html

The post How the Oil Price War Made U.S. Producers Even Stronger appeared first on IER.

How to Improve Your Site's Performance When Using GIFs

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Did the Federal Government Give Americans Clean Air?

In a recent New York Times article, economics laureate Paul Krugman warned Americans that Donald Trump’s agenda would make the air unsafe to breathe. In particular, Krugman warned that Trump’s selection of Scott Pruitt for EPA chief would return air pollution to the levels of 1970, when the EPA was formed.

However, Krugman is wrong both in theory and practice. Yes, air quality is better now than in 1970, but even before the EPA existed, air quality had been steadily improving for decades. This steady trend of improvement was due to general economic development, nuisance suits, and regulation lower levels of government. It makes little sense for the federal government to impose air quality regulations on smaller jurisdictions, rather than letting the local inhabitants make their own decisions on the tradeoffs involved.

Krugman Thinks All Blessings Come From Washington

To show that I’m not strawmanning his position, here are some excerpts from Krugman’s column:

[I]n other ways Mr. Trump can indeed restore the world of the 1970s. He can, for example, bring us back to the days when, all too often, the air wasn’t safe to breathe. And he’s made a good start by selecting Scott Pruitt, a harsh foe of pollution regulation, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Make America gasp again!

Think about what America was like in 1970, the year the E.P.A. was founded. It was still an industrial nation…

It was also, however, a very polluted country. Choking smog was quite common in major cities; in the Los Angeles area, extreme pollution alerts, sometimes accompanied by warnings that even healthy adults should stay indoors and move as little as possible, were fairly common.

It’s far better now — not perfect, but much better. These days, to experience the kind of pollution crisis that used to be all too frequent in Los Angeles or Houston, you have to go to places like Beijing or New Delhi…

The key point is that better air didn’t happen by accident: It was a direct result of regulation — regulation that was bitterly opposed at every step by special interests…

So the looming degradation of environmental protection will be a bad thing on every level: bad for the economy as well as bad for our health.

The good news, sort of, is that some of the nasty environmental consequences of Trumpism will probably be visible — literally — quite soon. And when bad air days make a comeback, we’ll know exactly whom to blame. [Krugman, “Trump and Pruitt Will Make America Gasp Again,” NYT, Dec. 9. 2016, bold added.]

Krugman’s characteristically frank pose needs little explanation. His readers would understandably walk away thinking that we have Washington DC to thank for the improvement in air quality that has occurred since 1970. That is why—according to Krugman—if Trump and his Cabinet picks roll back federal regulations, then Americans can expect a return to the air pollution of prevailing in 1970.

History Lesson: Air Quality Steadily Improved During 20th Century

For those who know history, there’s just one awkward fact for Krugman’s narrative: On several metrics, air quality in the United States had been steadily improving for decades before the creation of the EPA.

The charts below were taken from the excellent 2007 book, Air Quality in America, by AEI scholars Joel Schwartz and Steven Hayward. (All charts are from the first chapter.) The figures illustrate that air quality was improving in the US well before the EPA came along in 1970.

 


 

 

As the four figures indicate, according to various metrics air quality in the United States had been improving well before the creation of the EPA and passage of the Clean Air Act. We have no reason to attribute the gains in air quality since 1970 exclusively to federal intervention, and Krugman is wrong to claim that a rollback of federal regulations would return us to the air quality prevailing in 1970.

Why Did Air Quality Improve Before the EPA?

We’ve seen that Krugman’s naïve history is wrong; Americans didn’t need saviors in Washington to give them cleaner air. But if Krugman’s history is wrong, what did spur the improvements of the 20th century?

Economic Growth

In their book, Schwartz and Hayward argue that general economic development played a crucial role, in which cleaner air was the byproduct even if it were not consciously planned. For example, “growing affluence allowed households to switch from coal to cleaner, more efficient natural gas for home heating and cooking,” while improvements in electrical transmission allowed power plants to be located near coal mines rather than cities. We could also mention that the shift away from horses to automobiles allowed for much cleaner roads in America’s densest cities.

More generally, as people grow richer they can afford the luxury of a cleaner environment. For any given level of technological know-how and capital equipment, there is a tradeoff between the material standard of living and the cleanliness of the environment. As conventionally measured real GDP increases, people can choose to “buy” cleaner air and water. Other trends of developing economies are the move trends shorter workweeks, the elimination of child labor, and increased workplace safety.

Yet all of these desirable improvements have a cost, in the sense that material output is lower than it otherwise would be. If a society starts out on the edge of starvation, then its people—even the children—will toil on farms and in factories, and they won’t waste money installing filters on smokestacks. But as they grow richer, they shift away from these methods of production. A rich, modern economy can afford to produce large quantities of food, electronics, energy, and houses without pumping soot into the air, and without requiring adults to work 80-hour weeks or kids to fill the factories.

The path to such progress is saving and capital accumulation, so that workers have better tools and equipment and thus a higher productivity per hour of labor. If we take a society on the verge of starvation and simply pass laws prohibiting the business practices certain observers find distasteful, we won’t magically make these people more productive. Instead we will condemn them to death.

Common Law Nuisance Suits

Besides general economic growth, Schwartz and Hayward also credit “common-law nuisance suits” against pollution. It turns out that Krugman’s narrative is, if anything, exactly backwards. It was not the pure laissez-faire free market that allowed businesses to dump chemicals in rivers, but on the contrary it was governments that (sometimes) overturned traditional property rights of homeowners in favor of “industrial development.” I don’t have space to develop the thesis here, but interested readers should look at libertarian economist Murray Rothbard’s perspective in which he argued that solving pollution was simply a matter of defining and enforcing property rights. Traditional forms of pollution were not a “market failure” but government failure.

Regulation in Lower Jurisdictions

Finally, Schwartz and Hayward cite “local regulation” as a source of the decline in pollution pre-EPA. This is intriguing because it shows that even if one wants to argue that some form of government regulation is necessary to ensure minimum standards of air and water quality, it by no means follows that these must be enacted at the federal level.

For example, Krugman in his column reminds us that “[c]hoking smog was quite common in major cities; in the Los Angeles area, extreme pollution alerts…were fairly common.” Now suppose it were true that a Trump Administration rolled back federal standards on air quality. Does that mean the people in LA would once again endure choking smog?

Well, if they did­—and assuming they longed for a return to regulation—why wouldn’t LA just pass a citywide regulation? Or why wouldn’t the state of California pass rules on vehicle and smokestack emissions?

Notice that Krugman is trying to have it both ways. Although room didn’t permit me to quote it, Krugman brought up global climate change as an area where (of course) he thought a Trump/Pruitt policy would be disastrous. But then he pivoted to focus on local issues of air quality, arguing that Americans would directly experience how bad a laissez-faire world would be.

Yet as I’ve just shown, this makes no sense. If the people in LA or Pittsburgh are happy with the current level of government intervention when it comes to air quality, they can mimic current federal standards at the state and/or local level. This would solve most of the issue, except possibly for people in one state living next to factories located in another state with looser standards. Yet Krugman wasn’t making such a sophisticated, secondary argument; he was writing as if we either had the EPA or complete “anarchy” in air quality.

There is a huge benefit of leaving local conditions up to local jurisdictions: experimentation and choice. Perhaps some Americans would rather have slightly lower air standards in exchange for higher rates of wage growth. Under the current system, they don’t have this option; Washington imposes a one-size-fits-all standard. But under the federalist approach, different states and/or cities could enact different types of policies, and at least Americans would have the option of moving to jurisdictions that best suited their preferences. Furthermore, having 50 “laboratories” might shed light on more efficient ways to achieve cleaner air and water at lower cost.

Conclusion

When Krugman warns that a Trump EPA will make Americans gasp again, he is ignorant of both American history and political economy. Not everything has to be regulated from Washington. (After all, typical cases of homicide and robbery are not federal crimes, and are handled at the state level.) When it comes to air and water quality, if we want to invoke government regulation, they are clearly best handled by state and local authorities. Finally, we must always keep in mind that the only way we can “afford” cleaner air and water is to expand the capacity of the economy to produce more goods with our existing resources.

The post Did the Federal Government Give Americans Clean Air? appeared first on IER.

Hunting Down SERP Features to Understand Intent & Drive Traffic - Next Level

Posted by jocameron

Welcome to the seventh installment of our educational Next Level series! In our last episode, Jo showed us how to better optimize our sites when we think we've done it all (but still aren't ranking). This time around she's giving us the tools and the knowledge to finally capture ourselves a SERP feature. Read on and level up!

Are you within striking distance of traffic-bumping SERP features?

The content on your freakin' awesome site better be targeting the intent of the searcher.

People of the world want different types of content depending on what they search. If you get this right, your content will earn the engagement signals that tell search engines you’re fighting the good fight.

The stakes are even higher now. Not only are you battling it out in the organic results, but there are attention-grabbing features that draw clicks away from organic results.

But, hey now, chin up! You can use these features to focus on keywords with higher opportunity and win those bobby-dazzlers to drive even more traffic.

I’m going to show you how to use the ever-impressive SERP features to check whether you’re targeting intent and whether the entirety of your content satisfies searcher intent, putting you within striking distance of owning some of those queue-jumping features.

Follow along in your Moz Pro account or start a free trial, it’ll be fun, trust me.

What is searcher intent?

Intent is the nuanced language people use to search different things, and it drastically changes what they're really, truly seeking.

Every single time a human inputs their heart’s desire into that blank, judgement-free rectangle, they’re asking Google to satisfy their intent.

Show me your best “headphone reviews,” your most reliable “sewing machine repairs,” your funniest “cat vs printer gifs,” I command thee!

Headphone reviews – I want comparisons, specs, images, first-hand experiences. Maybe I’ll buy something, eventually.

Sewing machine repairs – I’m looking for a local business who I can call or visit. Or an instructional article or video.

Cat vs printer gifs – Desperately seeking images in the .gif format of a furry friend freaking out over a machine friend.

With a few simple clicks on my keyboard, my intention is revealed. As a marketer, if you’re targeting keywords with particular intent, then this needs to be reflected in your content. As a searcher, I haven’t got time to read a long article about cat gifs and printers. I want an array of images to choose from. Likewise, I don’t want to scroll through an image gallery when I’m looking for a service, or an in-depth guide when I’m on the precipice of entering that ever-so-tempting sales funnel.

Now let’s look more specifically at the headphone niche. If you sell headphones you might think, “If I can stuff my landing page with a bit of jazzy content and get it in front of every person who searches for ‘headphones’ in every weird and wonderful way, I’m bound to get a chunk of traffic and *bam*, I’ll sell a bunch of headphones.”

It doesn’t really work like that. If your content doesn’t satisfy the intent indicated by the searcher, they're likely to head back to search — and you just know Google is paying attention to this behavior. So you could end up sending signals to Google that your content isn’t all that good as it sends your visitors back to search. And because Google wants everyone to find what they’re after, your rankings could take a trip to page-two obscurity.

The different types of searcher intent

Intent for the purpose of marketing your content can be lumped into three different types that broadly encapsulate what warm bodies are looking for. This is explained in more detail in this post by Tom Anthony. Here is a brief recap that looks at how searches in the headphone niche can fit into vastly different intent types:

Informational: what were the first earbud headphones?*

Navigational: cnet headphone reviews

Transactional: cheap travel headphones

* I’m going to go all hipster on you and say it was the stethoscope, which morphed into it’s current shape around the 1850s according to Wiki.

Can you see how the implied intent varies depending on the phrasing around the search term? As you research your own target keywords, build up lists, and use those lists to formulate content, the implied intent of the searcher plays an important role in what form your awesome content will take.

It also goes hand-in-hand with your journey into long-tail keywords.

As the marketers of the world have been paying attention to the implied intent to guide their content creation, so indeed has the biggest website on the planet. The website that reduced internet usage by 40% when it went down for 2 minutes a few years ago. Yeah, you’ve heard of them, right? Well, they're taking a big, old, sloppy bite of the intent pie. In their quest to give the people what they want right in the results pages, Google unleashed The Glorious SERP Feature.

What the wicky-wack are SERP features?

The fancy-schmancy SERP feature is Google’s way of dazzling users with its more-than-a-result result.

It’s Google’s way of saying ‘I hear you’ with its finger guns out, blowing imaginary smoke and reholstering them back into its pockets whilst leaning over the back of your chair, all pleased with itself.

Features might pop up all over the results, like this:

The one with its paw in the air ready to swat? Argh, too cute.

Or they might shuffle into the results, like so:

Then again, they may hang out over here, all nonchalant but desperate to please at the same time:

With 16 different varieties currently documented, they’re like the chameleon of the SERP kingdom: taking relevant content and reinventing itself like a shapeshifting lizard queen (or Madonna).

What SERP features can I win?

There are a handful of features you can reasonably have a punt at without throwing cash at Google: Featured Snippets, Related Questions, Image Packs, Site Links, Tweets, Videos, and the News Box. I’m going to focus on Featured Snippets, Related Questions, and Image Packs.

The rest of the features are within the reach of larger sites, Google partners, or local businesses. I’m not going to dive into the local aspect in this post, as our Local Learning Center is a good place to start that journey.

For regular schmoes like us, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on all 16 features and their presence in the results for keywords you’re tracking. Even if you can’t win them they will elbow out organic results.

Featured Snippets: These are like having those fast-track passes at your local theme park. You can jump from somewhere else in the results to position ZERO, and then you’re pretty much owning that SERP.

Rob Bucci is my featured snippet guru and you’ll probably join the ranks after watching his talk at Brighton SEO.

Related Questions: If you’re tracking Featured Snippets, then you’ll want to familiarize yourself with their buddies, the Related Question.

Winning a Related Question will most likely get you a small bump in clicks through to your site; nothing wrong with that. However, the treat you don’t want to miss out on is grabbing those questions and adding them to your tracked keywords in Moz Pro. Often, this will help you sniff out a Featured Snippet you can target.

Image Packs: I looove image packs — there aren’t enough ways to display that in text form. I’m very visually motivated and I spend a fair bit of time searching for animated .gifs. If you watch Rob Bucci’s talk then you’ll know that they didn’t tend to find overlap with Featured Snippets. So these are a good opportunity to target the visually minded and increase your chances of getting traffic through features across more keywords.

How to use SERP Features to target intent

Back in the olden days, like 6 months ago, you would look at keyword modifiers and find transactional terms like ‘buy,’ ‘cheap,’ and so on, then bundle these into the ‘transactional’ pile, and so on and so forth and rinse and repeat.

Now, in the bright and shiny land-of-the-future, we can use the presence of particular features to understand the intent as Google sees it. You’re doing two very important things here: lumping your keywords into piles to understand intent that you will use to guide your content, AND identifying features you can win and those that may push you out of the results.

Identify the features present for your target keywords

As with every job there is a manual method and a tool-based method. Manual is totally fine for people with small sites, like a personal blog, and a handful of keywords. I hope that by explaining the basic manual method it will lay the foundation of understanding when we ramp up to the tool-based method.

Okey dokey spreadsheet fans, get ready for the keyboard + mouse dance we do when filling up a spreadsheet with lovely data. Start by searching your keywords one-by-one, use incognito mode to avoid personalised results, and add a mark to the sheet next to the features that are present.

Here's a sheet with all the features already added to get you started. I even added some gentle colors inspired by the first episode of Black Mirror Season 3. Lacie’s giving it 5 stars.

Don’t forget to check out the second tab with your handy-dandy SERP feature cheatsheet.

This is a good way to start understanding more about the different SERP features, identify what they look like, where they hang out, and how intrusive they are.

Identify and track SERP features with Moz Pro

Got more than a handful of keywords? Want all this data for your site and your competitors? Want a tool to do the heavy lifting for you? Don’t we all.

Did I mention before about the Moz Pro has a 30-day free trial? I’m pretty sure I did, but it was so far up the page and the follow-along-with-me part is starting right now! It will do all the SERP feature hunting, tracking, and cataloguing for you.

Moz Pro will identify the presence of all 16 SERP features and will also be able to show you if your site is present in Featured Snippets, Image Packs, In-depth Articles, Local Packs, Reviews, Site Links, and Videos.

First off, head to the SERP Features tab under Rankings.

You’ll see the percentage of features present for the keywords you’re tracking (in gray), along with the percentage of features your site is present in (in blue).

Find out how you are performing against your competitors

Underneath the Overview chart look for the filter icon, click it and scroll down to choose SERP Features and enter your desired feature. I’m going to start with Image Packs. It’s fairly easy to optimize some image — don’t forget to add informative file names, alt text, and correctly compress your images.

This little feature key will help you decipher the results:

blue Blue: Your site is in the feature.
orange Orange: You and one or more of your competitors are in the feature.
red Red: You are not in the feature, but one or more of your competitors are.
gray Gray: A SERP Feature exists but no one in your campaign is present.

Keep an eye out for features your competitor is dominating by clicking the SERP Features header to filter the results.

Identify keywords you're on page one for with features that you could win

If you’re on page one for your desired keyword, and there is a Feature Snippet present, then there is a gift there, just waiting for you. Kind of like when you had that Amazon parcel sitting on your front doorstep, getting chewed on by your neighbor's dog and piddled on by their cat and you’re in your house just meters away, blissfully unaware.

Become aware by heading to the SERP Features tab and filtering by Featured Snippets.

Hit that Rank header until the arrow is pointing up, then scroll down to peruse keywords with Feature Snippets present sorted by your rank. The tooltip Insights indicates I’m within striking distance of owning this snippet.

Ronell outlines a strategy for winning and keeping a Featured Snippet. At its heart, it’s about pure laser-focus on intent, find the question, answer said question, add value, and make it accessible to humans and bots.

Identify pages that are dropping in the rankings and check that the content matches intent

For this I’m going to head to my Rankings tab, containing all the keywords I’m tracking in my Moz Pro campaign.

Double click the little up/down icon header twice to filter all the down-arrow keywords to the top of the pile.

I’ve noticed that my rankings have dropped for my coveted keyword ”learn how to moz,” and I want to figure out if there are some SERP features present that could indicate whether my content could be targeting intent better. So I’ll click the keyword to open up the Keyword Analysis. Then scroll down to Your Performance and toggle to SERP Features from the drop-down menu.

You’ll see all the different types of features on the left-hand column and when they were present in the results for your keyword indicated by the light gray line.

I’m not seeing any Featured Snippets or Image Packs, but lookie here! A Related Question...

Remember what we said about Related Questions? Track those beauties down and add the questions to your bundle — you might just find a Featured Snippet hiding out there.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll snap up those questions and add them to my Moz Pro campaign.

Now the next time my campaign updates I can check for tasty little Featured Snippets to target.

Now back to analyzing intent. I’m going to look at that page and see what can be improved to better match the intent as implied by Google.

I can see that videos are present, so I’m going to pop a video into my content. It may not show up as a feature on the results page, but I’m responding to what the searchers of the world are seeking, and I’m also thinking this will keep people on the page whilst serving their needs.

Repeat, and sort your Tracked Keywords by Rank

You can also follow this same process by sorting by Rank to find keywords where you’re on the bottom of the first page or the top of the second page to suss out the intent as indicated by the presence of certain SERP Features.

Then zip back up to the last step and repeat the process of analyzing keywords for features to figure out intent and hunt down those tasty features.

Wrapping up

Here’s a quick recap: SERP features are your insight into what content Google thinks best serves the needs of searchers for any given keyword.

You can use the presence of features to quickly understand the implied intent for your target keywords and cross-reference this with a drop in rankings to improve how your content meets the needs of searchers.

By combining the feature power of Image Packs, Related Keywords, and Featured Snippets you’ll be covering the most effective organic features and potentially queue-jumping your way to position ZERO.

For the organic fanatics, you’ll also be able to track all 16 features and give more love to those with features you can win whilst artfully stepping around keywords with unobtainable features overcrowding the results and pushing your tasty URL into the lost land of page 2.

Happy hunting!


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Friday, December 23, 2016

Exchanging More Value with Contributors to Your Content and Community Efforts - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

At risk of sounding cliché, we're right smack in the middle of the season of giving. And when it comes to giving, there's no better example in our industry space than the topic of communities. Moz itself is a great example: You — the reader, the commenter, the Q&A inquisitor, the subscriber — are what sustains and inspires us. What kind of value does your community add to your site, and how can you provide incentive and value to your site contributors, social media fans, and influencers?

In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores ten fresh, actionable strategies you can use to encourage and promote an exchange of value with your contributors to feed your content and community efforts.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This is a special Whitebeard Friday edition of our show. We, of course, have the annual tradition where I wear the beard, but you know the beard gets in the way of a lot of me talking to you. So I'm just going to wear the hat for today. I hope that's all right. And I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season. Christmas and Hanukkah start the same day this year. New Year's, of course, Kwanzaa, whatever you're celebrating, a very happy holiday to you.

So let's chat about exchanging more value with the contributors to your content and community efforts. So basically, I think, in the holiday season, we talk a lot about exchange of value and exchange of gifts and of giving, and that's wonderful. We do this on our websites as well.

So you're watching Whiteboard Friday. You might leave a comment in our comments section. You might tweet about this. You might put it on Facebook. You might share it on LinkedIn. There's sort of a community of things going on here.

Most of the ideas that I have for Whiteboard Friday come from people like yourself in the community who have ideas and questions, concerns and issues, and that's a wonderful thing. But what I found is that 99% of the time we all follow exactly the same patterns in our content and our community efforts with how we basically use each other's value and exchange value with each other. So here's the challenge.

(The hat's just swinging around and hitting me. It's great.)


3 major groups make up your community exchangers of value

So you have kind of three groups, three major groups that I would consider community exchangers of value. Those are people like commenters and on-site contributors, your social media followers and fans and people who engage with you through social, and then influencers and experts and, broadly speaking, amplifiers, people who do this.

Look, lots of the people who might be commenters are also influencers. Lots of the people who are social media followers may also be on-site commenters. That's definitely the case.

1. Commenters and on-site contributors

But traditionally, the contributions look like this. For these folks, when they leave comments, they are seeking answers and visibility. So they want to show maybe something that they have done, and they also want an answer or a reply from you or from someone in the community. They have questions about it. And for you, you know they're creating — well, I promised myself I was going to do red and green so I'm a very Christmassy Jew this year — more content and SEO for you, which is great.

That's one of the big values of comments, absolutely speaking. That's one of the reasons we try and render comments on the page so that the engines can crawl them. It can help you rank for more long tail stuff. It can certainly help you with engagement metrics and all those kinds of things.

Now, for guest content, which a lot of folks do create and allow, Moz certainly has historically through YouMoz and soon we're going to be allowing that through the main blogs, so you might be seeing more guest contributions there, visibility for them and content and SEO for you. Same story there.

2. Social media followers and fans

Now, shares and replies on social, it's essentially you are helping to ... when you create content and when you, whether that's content on the social media platform or on your own website, that you're amplifying, when other people share that content or they like it, they reply to it, they amplify it, that's new fans and followers and content for them, hopefully, and it's more reach and visibility for you.

3. Influencers, experts, and amplifiers

With influencers, experts, and amplifiers, pretty much the story is like more influence for them through contributing to your content or promoting your content, and more reach for you through those influencers and experts' audiences. This is certainly powerful and useful too with roundups, which I think, unfortunately, have become the default style in which people use influencers and experts in many, many fields. It's more visibility for them, hopefully, because they appear in that roundup. They have their names cited and all that kind of thing. You're hoping that they're going to share it and amplify that content so that you get more reach to their audience. Maybe they'll even link to it, which will get you links.


How to exchange value by thinking broadly and daring to be different

I want us to think broader. What I believe is that being the exception to this rule can be hugely helpful. Essentially, if everyone else is doing something in one way, doing it another way, doing it a different way will fundamentally add more value to your content and SEO efforts.

Personal profiles

So if we're talking about these commenters and on-site contributors, I want you to think about profiles. This is something that most comment plug-ins don't allow by default. Disqus creates a profile, but that profile lives on Disqus' site, not on your site. Think about your Moz profile. Think about your LinkedIn profile. Think about the profile that you create on lots of community-focused websites, like an Inbound.org or a Hacker News or something. Like there's fundamental value to having that. You can own that content. You can now promote that page. You can rank in search engines with it. All those kinds of things.

Edit/citation suggestions and highlights

Edit and citation suggestions like places like Wikipedia have. Others have notable ones. Medium, obviously, has the highlighted section. It's a little more creative.

Featured comments

Featured comments, which places like The New York Times do, I think if you are an editorial content creator and you want to amplify the visibility of comments and encourage people to share great comments, a featured comment system is a valuable one. Here on Moz, we used to show comments ordered by the date in which they were left or the timestamp of when they were left, and now we order them based on thumbs, which encourages people to have a great comment because it will have the most visibility because it got the most thumbs up.
With social media folks, I would think about some of the content. You can create content that features social contributions, thus encouraging people to follow you and contribute and reply to and amplify your tweets or Facebook shares or LinkedIn because they will get additional visibility from that.

Data via polls and surveys

You can think about collection and amplification of data that you collect through polls and short surveys. Facebook and Twitter are great about allowing those.

Sharing others' social accounts

Promotion of other people's social accounts. One of the things that I think far too few social accounts do is actually call someone out by name and say, "Hey, this is another really valuable page on Facebook that you should check out." Or, "This person did this wonderful thing." I see too few Twitter accounts, including the Moz Twitter account doesn't call out as many people, in non-reply tweets, as we probably should or could, and I think that's another wonderful thing that we can do.

Using social for testimonials and promotional content

Use of social, of course, in testimonial and promotional content. We started doing that where we actually said, "Hey, someone said something really nice about us on Twitter or on Facebook or on LinkedIn. Let's reach out to them and say, 'Hey, could we use that on our website, on our product page, to help get you visibility and show that you're an expert in this field, but also to help us sell this product that you apparently love?'" Win-win there. Again, a wonderful way to creatively use that same type of content.

Smart influencer roundups, such as helpful email lists

And last, with influencers, with experts, with amplifiers, I think there's vastly more ways to do this in roundups. First off, I've seen some folks create some great email discussion, the help-each-other type of lists. I'm part of a few of those. I love them. There's great content on there. I think this is a wonderful way to get influencers and experts on your side in the long term and to help them help each other as well as you.

I've also, just recently, become part of a few BCC email lists, where a couple of content creators in the technology and entrepreneurship space, when they have new content to share, they share it first with this BCC email list before they even promote it to their regular audiences. That's awesome. That gives me a chance to be one of the first people to show it to everyone. I, of course, benefit from that through sharing with my audiences, and they benefit through the additional visibility that I give them.

Focus on data above quotations alone

Surveys and data gathering, I'm a much bigger believer in surveys and in showing data than in roundups. I think roundups that just are text only and have a bunch of text, rather than show data from a lot of influencers and saying, "Hey, you know, we interviewed 100 startup CEOs and we got these 5 data points from each of them, and here are the distributions." Vastly more interesting than, "Here are the two sentences of advice that every startup CEO gave about how to hire your first engineer." That kind of thing.

Featured commentary

Featured commentary and input on content is another way to do this. So, essentially, you share content with influencers. You say, "Hey, if you have some featured comments or some ideas around that, send that back and we will include it in the launch of that content." Lovely stuff there. I've been part of a few of those and I love those.

Discussion and debate as content

Discussion or debate as actual content. The FiveThirtyEight folks have been brilliant about this, where they invite on guest contributors and experts and then they feature that discussion. Some other political sites and places like The Stranger have done that. Wonderful stuff.


Getting creative with how you exchange value with your content and community contributors is an awesome way to go. I hope, in 2017, I see a lot more of this stuff and maybe even a little less of this stuff.

All right, everyone. Hope you have a great holiday season and a great year. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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Thursday, December 22, 2016

Solar Energy International (SEI) Welcomes Pía Day to the Spanish Solar Training Program

PiaSEI welcomes Pía Day to the team as the Marketing and Communication Assistant for the Spanish Program! With a degree in advertising and a background in social responsibility and innovation, she will help disseminate the mission of SEI across Latin America help increase the awareness of the Spanish Program within the Hispanic community.

Through her participation with various nonprofits, Pía learned that giving just a bit of our time can make a difference in other people’s lives. She decided then to focus her career toward organizations that are helping to leave this world better than they found it. Pía truly believes that a powerful message can motivate and empower people to improve the standard of living in their communities through renewable energy; developing a more sustainable world, improving education, health and security conditions and creating new job opportunities.

Pia lives in Salta, Argentina with her husband Joaquin.  Their home is far from the city as they enjoy being surrounded by nature. On her free time she likes to write, take jazz dance classes and go swimming.

The post Solar Energy International (SEI) Welcomes Pía Day to the Spanish Solar Training Program appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).

Her Solar Journey: The Sky’s the Limit

Kelly Larson

Kelly Larson – SEI Instructor

Shoot for the moon, and if you miss you’ll likely land in the sun. Although this variation of the saying is not typical, in the case of Solar Energy International (SEI) Instructor Kelly Larson, this version is more accurate in describing her journey into solar. As the industry grows so rapidly, stories like Kelly’s exemplify that there is no single path into solar, there are many opportunities available.

From the National Guard to NASA, Kelly’s professional repertoire radiates with the accomplishments of a woman determined to achieve her goals. She joined the National Guard in Nevada right after high school and continued serving for nine years. As a private, she started off as a radio operator for a helicopter unit. “What I wanted to do was fly,” she explained.

And after persistently applying to a male-dominated program, she did. Kelly made it into the combined officer/flight school program and completed a year-long training program before going on to work as a flying pilot for 7 years.

Through the GI Bill, Kelly pursued the opportunity to go to engineering school and further her technical education after her service. This path ultimately led to her exposure to the renewable energy industry.

Kelly ventured into the solar industry nearly 20 years ago when she took her first class at SEI. As an engineer, her employer at the time offered her an opportunity to branch into renewables through solar training at SEI. Just three years later, she was asked to come back and teach a women-only course in Tucson, AZ.

“Coming from the military and engineering worlds, the presence of other women in solar was most delightful and encouraging for me.  The first class I taught was a women’s PV 101, and I was hooked into a network of gals that offered advice and support that sustained me.  I strive to pass the inspiration I received on to my students,” Larson explained.

Kelly attributes her success in the solar industry, and in all aspects of her life, to steadfastly committing to her goals. “I wouldn’t be where I am without persistence,” Kelly explained. “Know you have a mission and just keep going.”

With the solar industry growing so rapidly, Kelly offered advice for others looking to make the leap into a new career path, “There are lots of possible positions in solar, including everything from technical, (like installing and designing systems), to business, (like marketing and sales), and beyond.  Whatever skills you have, solar can likely use them.  Cross-training is always important, since solar has different terms and it is essential to know the technology to be effective.” She added, “If you know what you want to do or who you want to work for, be persistent!  If you are presenting yourself when they need someone, you will likely get the job!”

The post Her Solar Journey: The Sky’s the Limit appeared first on Solar Training - Solar Installer Training - Solar PV Installation Training - Solar Energy Courses - Renewable Energy Education - NABCEP - Solar Energy International (SEI).

Obama Cancels Lease Sales and Withdraws Federal Lands from Oil and Gas Development

President Obama is trying to preserve his legacy by removing areas of federal lands from oil and gas development. He has modified his offshore lease plan for fiscal years 2017 to 2022 to remove areas offshore in the Atlantic and the Arctic and he has cancelled lease sales in Montana and Colorado. Further, he has “permanently” removed large areas in the Arctic and along the Atlantic Coast from oil and gas development. Despite these moves, a recent lease sale in Alaska achieved very large bids and a survey of Alaskans showed keen interest in oil and gas development.

Cancellation of Lease Sales in Montana and Colorado

Last month, the Interior Department canceled leases for oil and gas drilling in Montana and settled with Devon Energy, who owned them, because the lands are considered sacred by the Blackfoot Tribes of the United States and Canada. The leases covered parts of the Badger-Two Medicine area of the Lewis and Clark National Forest in northwest Montana–an area of 130,000 acres surrounded by Glacier National Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Blackfeet Indian reservation.[i]

Under the terms of the cancellation, Devon Energy will be refunded for all bids and other payments it made, totaling $206,058. Half of the payment will come from the federal government out of a Treasury account that receives royalties from onshore oil and gas development and the other half will come from Montana’s royalty payments. Devon Energy does not need to pay for reclamation because the land was not developed for drilling.

In March, the Interior Department cancelled a 6,200 acre lease held by Solonex LLC, a Louisiana company that sued for permission to drill for gas on the leases that date back to 1982.[ii] The Interior department argued that the lease was issued in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historical Preservation Act.

The Interior Department issued 47 oil and gas drilling leases in the Badger-Two Medicine area during the Reagan Administration. Later, nearly two thirds of the original leaseholders relinquished their leases in exchange for tax incentives established by Congress. Only 17 leases remained as of early this year, of which Devon Energy owned 15 on almost 23,000 acres issued in the early 1980s. Two leases remain.

Similar to the cancelled leases with Devon Energy, the Interior Department cancelled 25 oil and natural gas leases and put new conditions on 40 other leases at the Thompson Divide section of the White River National Forest in Colorado—a 220,000 acre tract. The leases were cancelled and conditions were changed due to a technicality in the environmental review, but one that is not a substantial issue.[iii] The region is not a pristine wilderness; it sits astride the energy-rich “Overthrust Belt.” Alongside the cancelled leases are other leases that are producing oil and natural gas.[iv] The Bureau of Land Management granted 65 leases in the area in 2005.[v]

The leases are located in the Mancos Shale in Colorado, which contains oil and natural gas that is being drilled using hydraulic fracturing–a drilling method that injects water and sand into shale deposits to release the oil and gas trapped in its seams. The Mancos Shale has the second-largest oil and gas potential that the U. S. Geological Survey has ever conducted.[vi] It contains an estimated mean of 66 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, 74 million barrels of shale oil and 45 million barrels of gas liquids.

Withdrawal of Atlantic and Arctic in Offshore Lease Plan

The Department of Interior modified its proposed offshore lease plan for oil and natural gas development for 2017 to 2022 and removed the Atlantic and the Arctic from the plan. In March, Obama’s Interior Department rescinded drilling rights in the Atlantic Ocean, where a small set of drilling rights sales had been offered off the coast between Virginia and Georgia.[vii] In November, the Obama Administration removed the planned sale of oil and gas drilling rights in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska.

The U.S. Arctic is estimated to hold 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.[viii] Allowing drilling in the Arctic would help to provide oil for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, whose flow is currently at dangerously low levels for keeping it operational.

The five year drilling plan for 2017 to 2022 now only has 11 proposed lease sales: one in Alaska’s Cook Inlet southwest of Anchorage and ten lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico–mostly off the coasts of Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama.[ix]

Undoing the drilling plan will take time if a Trump Administration chooses to do so. It is not clear if the Congressional Review Act could be used to overturn the drilling plan. Under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a “rule” has a more expansive definition than under the Administrative Procedures Act (the act that controls how the federal government makes regulations). A difficult consideration is that if Congress rejects a rule under the CRA, then the agency cannot re-propose something “substantially the same.” Would a leasing program that contains all of these lease sales and more be “substantially the same?” That isn’t clear. To be on the safe side, the Trump administration will likely produce a new Offshore Leasing Plan, but it will take a couple years to go through the reviews that are required.

Obama Blocks Bering Sea Area from Drilling

On December 9, 2016, President Obama issued Executive Order 13689 that creates the Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience area, spanning from the Kuskokwim Bay to northeast of Shishmaref, to the maritime boundary with Russia.[x] (See map below.) The order withdraws 40,300 square miles from oil and natural gas leasing in this area using the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. This order was supposedly to protect the environment for the Alaska Native tribes that live there. However, the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Rob Bishop, issued the following statement:

This administration has obeyed every directive from environmentalists to starve the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and block responsible development. Today’s action will make the Bering Strait a choke point for any vessel seeking to reach Alaska Natives on the North Slope who want to see economic development on their lands. Alaskans want a brighter future with growing jobs, rising incomes and a healthy economy. Unfortunately, that doesn’t fit with President Obama’s dubious legacy.[xi]


Source:
http://usa.oceana.org/northern-bering-sea-climate-resilience-area&utm_medium=email

Obama “Permanently” Bans Drilling in Atlantic and Arctic

President Obama has “permanently” banned future oil and gas drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, using a provision in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), similar to the withdrawal of the portion of the Bering Sea noted above. Mr. Obama banned oil and gas drilling from Virginia to Maine on the Atlantic and along much of Alaska’s coast—an action not undertaken by any previous President in either the length or scope of the ban. He has banned drilling in about 98 percent of federally owned Arctic waters, or about 115 million acres, and in 3.8 million acres stretching from Norfolk, Virginia, to the Canadian border. The declaration’s fate may be decided by the federal courts.[xii]

By using Section 12(a) of the OCSLA, Obama would make it difficult for President-elect Trump to open the area back up to drilling because that law allows presidents only to withdraw waters; it does not include language allowing presidents to reverse such withdrawals. Congress could pass legislation to open the area back up to drilling activity. But it is uncertain whether President-Elect Trump could undo the withdrawals unilaterally.[xiii]

Source: http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2016/12/20/stories/1060047502

The withdrawal is not expected to affect drilling or production under existing leases, including 42 parcels in the Beaufort Sea. The action also does not affect waters under state jurisdiction, including part of the Beaufort Sea where a potential 6 billion barrel discovery was made.[xiv]

As with the Bering Sea move, President Obama is taking away jobs and prosperity from Alaskans. The Arctic Energy Center released a poll conducted by FTI Consulting of 511 Alaskans that showed 76 percent support offshore oil and gas resource development. (The poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.)

Alaska Lease Sales Show Overwhelming Interest

Recently, in Alaska, exploration companies bid heavily in state and federal lease sales that were the largest in years. High bids in state lease sales totaled $17.8 million on tracts covering 633,000 acres on the North Slope and in the coastal Beaufort Sea. In the federal lease sale, the Bureau of Land Management received bids totaling $54 million–the largest annual lease sale since 2004. In the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the Bureau of Land Management received 92 bids on 67 tracts, generating $18.8 million for 614,000 acres. The state receives half the revenue from the sale ($9.4 million). This 2016 lease sale was in contrast to the 2015 lease sale, where the Bureau of land Management received just six bids worth $789,000.[xv]

Conclusion

A recent lease sale in Alaska showed a high level of interest with federal lease sales more than 68 times greater than the previous year. Much of the interest may well be that President Elect Trump is very much in favor of oil, natural gas, and coal and is expected to open federal lands to their development. However, President Obama is not sitting idle and is continuing his war against fossil fuels by cancelling oil and gas lease sales in Montana and Colorado and by withdrawing the Atlantic and the Arctic from his five year offshore lease plan for 2017 to 2022. Even worse, he has evoked a 1953 law removing parts of the Bering Sea, the Arctic and the Atlantic Ocean from oil and gas drilling indefinitely.


[i] The Washington Post, Obama administration cancels oil and gas leases on Blackfeet tribe’s sacred grounds, November 16, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/16/obama-administration-reaches-deal-to-cancel-oil-leases-on-lands-tied-to-tribe/?postshare=8211479384972306&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.b0966552aa18

[ii] Fox News, US cancels energy leases in Montana area sacred to Blackfeet, November 17, 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/17/us-cancels-energy-leases-in-montana-area-sacred-to-blackfeet.html?refresh=true

[iii] Platts, Obama administration cancels 25 Colorado oil, gas leases, November 17, 2016, http://www.platts.com/latest-news/oil/washington/obama-administration-cancels-25-colorado-oil-27712187

[iv] Washington Examiner, Obama’s War on Energy from Federal Lands, December 1, 2016, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-war-on-energy-from-federal-lands/article/2608608

[v] CBS Denver, 25 Oil and Gas Leases Canceled in Western Colorado, November 17, 2016, http://denver.cbslocal.com/2016/11/17/25-oil-gas-leases-canceled-in-western-colorado/

[vi] Washington Examiner, GOP opposes Obama’s 11th-hour ploy to shut down fracking, November 17, 2016, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/gop-opposes-obamas-11th-hour-ploy-to-shut-down-fracking/article/2607699

[vii] The Hill, Obama rescinds Arctic offshore drilling proposal, November 18, 2016, http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/306764-obama-takes-new-arctic-offshore-drilling-off-the-table

[viii] Bloomberg, Obama’s Offshore Oil Plan Forces Drillers to Focus on Gulf, November 18, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/obama-s-offshore-oil-plan-forces-drillers-to-focus-on-u-s-gulf

[ix] Fox News, Obama blocks new oil, gas drilling in Arctic Ocean, November 18, 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/18/obama-blocks-new-oil-gas-drilling-in-arctic-ocean.html?refresh=true

[x] White House, Executive Order — Northern Bering Sea Climate Resilience, December 9, 2016, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/09/executive-order-northern-bering-sea-climate-resilience

[xi] House Committee on Natural Resources, Press Release, December 9, 2016, http://naturalresources.house.gov/newsroom/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=401433

[xii] New York Times, Obama Bans Drilling in Parts of the Atlantic and the Arctic, December 20, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/us/obama-drilling-ban-arctic-atlantic.html?emc=edit_na_20161220&nlid=63692790&ref=cta&_r=0

[xiii] Greenwire, Obama likely to ban Arctic, Atlantic oil activity, December 20, 2016, http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2016/12/20/stories/1060047484

[xiv] Bloomberg, Obama Said to Use 1953 Law to Restrict Offshore Drilling, December 19, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-12-19/obama-said-to-use-1953-law-to-block-drilling-in-arctic-atlantic

[xv] ‘Surprising’ Alaska oil-lease sale draws big bids, December 14, 2016, https://www.adn.com/business-economy/energy/2016/12/14/surprising-alaska-oil-lease-sale-draws-big-bids/

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