Resident Moz search scientist Dr. Pete Meyers[1] returns to the MozCon stage this year, and we're so excited for his presentation: Rule Your Rivals: From Data to Action. In our last interview before the show, we talked with Dr. Pete about 2020, the trends he's seeing in the SERPs, and what makes competitive analysis effective.
Read the full interview below, and don't forget to grab your ticket to see Dr. Pete and our other amazing speakers at MozCon Virtual 2021 (ticket sales end Friday, July 9!):
Question: 2020 was quite a year, how was this year for you? Did you have any favorite projects?
Dr. Pete: Honestly, there were a lot of days this past year when it felt like just staying alive and sane were our main project (and I’m not sure I completed the sane part). Here at Moz, the Product team and I have been hard at work on an upcoming suite of competitive analysis tools, and I’m excited to finally get the first part of that out to the world. We should have news at MozCon and a limited beta going out in the next couple of months.
Question: What key trends are you noticing in the SERP right now? What should brands pay attention to when competing for features?
Dr. Pete: It’s been a challenging year in SEO, as the volatility of the SERPs in many ways matches the volatility of the world. It’s been a big year for e-commerce and a bad year for brick-and-mortar, for obvious reasons, and as we return to a new normal, we really need to stay on top of things and monitor how changing consumer behavior is impacting SERPs, both because Google is changing to adapt and because search behavior itself is changing. SERP