Are links everything SEOs make them out to be?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo, for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix and I'm joined by our ever awesome, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, internet people. Welcome to the SERP's Up podcast.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hello.

I'm sorry I'm joking.

Crystal Carter:

Too much awesomeness. This was... and this when were doing the hello. It's like, "Let's get ready to optimize."

Mordy Oberstein:

So I don't know if you can hear this cause we were editing at or not, but I'm coughing because I'm still choking on a piece of cereal that I ate three hours ago.

Crystal Carter:

What?

Mordy Oberstein:

And you know... Yeah, and you know where you get a little tiny piece of like whatever stuck in the way, way back? It's like a piece of cereal dust that's stuck in the back of my throat and when I talk I feel like I'm like going to cough every time.

Crystal Carter:

Well, okay, what kind of cereal are you working with? Coco Puffs or

Mordy Oberstein:

I wish it's like this really high fiber, low taste.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, mate, mate, that's so grown up.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know, right?

Crystal Carter:

You need to optimize your breakfast for fun, too.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I buy, buy the sugar cereals for the kids and my mom's like, "Why are you buying?" Because it's so good. Everyone loves them.

Crystal Carter:

Everybody loves it. And it turns the milk pink.

Drink water.

Mordy Oberstein:

I've been drinking water. It's all gone. Not good.

Crystal Carter:

It's the Crystal podcast. Okay. SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can leverage your client's SEO budget to the max by taking advantage of our enterprise level security and reliability. So you don't spend as much time fixing things that are broken as much as you spend time creating and expanding the growing and maximizing your client's budget along the way.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much for doing that. I clearly can't... I don't know how we're going to get through this show because every time I start talking that piece of cereal comes right back up in my throat.

Crystal Carter:

It's a cereal...

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a cereal podcast killer.

Anyway, let's all join together today and talk about, not about cereal or killers. Let's talk about what's was probably killing your SEO strategy, an overabundance of conversation about links. I love them. You love them. I don't pay for them, but I love them. They're better than getting a free meal on your birthday at Taco Bell. It's links.

But how important are links really for SEO? How important will they be in the future? How do you build links the right way? It's link a'licious today on the SERP's Up podcast as we talk about the true SEO value of links with some tips from Debbie Chew who stops by to pass on her link lineage to you.

We'll also have a look at the top of the SERP to see what's up with a funky little SERP feature called "From sources around the web," and as always, a bit of snappy SEO news and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Episode 10 of the SERP's Up podcast is on.

Crystal Carter:

It's our 10th episode?

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, it's crazy. I didn't realize 10, the big 10, o.

Crystal Carter:

Yay, we're double digit.

Mordy Oberstein:

Happy birthday to us.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, my gosh. Yay. I should get us a present.

Mordy Oberstein:

We should have got a cake.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, we should get a cake.

Mordy Oberstein:

A whole wheat cereal cake.

Crystal Carter:

High fiber.

Mordy Oberstein:

High fiber.

Crystal Carter:

Very healthy, low sugar, whole wheat.

Mordy Oberstein:

No taste cake.

Crystal Carter:

No taste cake.

Mordy Oberstein:

Anyway, links, we're talking about links today.

Crystal Carter:

We are talking about links. So I'm going to give us just a little background on links. So when we say we're talking about links, in this particular episode, we're not going to be talking about internal links. We're going to be talking about external links. If you want to know more about internal links, if you go to the Wix SEO hub, we had a fantastic webinar with Cyrus Shepherd where he talked all about internal links. And internal links are essentially links on your website to pages within your website. And they're really, really great for lots of things, for navigation and for helping users to find what they need, and lots of great things like that. Cyrus Shepherd has some great resources and some great information about internal links. So do check out that webinar.

We're today going to be talking a little bit about external links, also known as backlinks, also known as inbound links. And those are links that go from one website to your website, so from an external website to your website. I sometimes like to think of these as if you were standing in line trying to get into Club Page One, the external link is somebody who's already in the club saying, "Oh, that person's with me," and they're pointing, they're saying, "That person's with me," and they're associating themselves with you to give you a bit more kudos and to maybe get you where you need to get.

Now one of the reasons why we're talking about this is because SEOs talk about links all the time. Now why do SEOs talk about links all the time?

Mordy, I can see that you want to come in...

Mordy Oberstein:

Because of, because links have link juice.

Crystal Carter:

Links have link juice. Links have link juice. I'll get to that. Way back in the day in Google's infancy there was something called page rank algo. And this was a foundational algorithm for Google and it was essentially, the core of it, if you look it up, was about them sort of counting the number of quality links to a page to determine whether or not the page had value. And this was something that they used to estimate the value of the page, and this is something that worked really well for them in 1998 and in the first few years of Google when there were around two million websites in 1998, a few million websites going along there.

But by 2011 there were sort of content farms that were taking advantage of this algorithm and Google made their Panda update to try to address link farms and other issues associated with people sort of gaming the system. Today there are billions of websites and we have around 200 signals that tell Google the value of a website when they're looking at it. Links are still a part of it and they're tracked in Google's search console. You can see how many external links and how many internal links you have on your website, but they're not the only factor. However, there's something that can help give Google more signals about the quality of your website, more signals about the content of your website. And they also help Google to find your website through pulling the websites that are linking into you. So that's one of the reasons why we're talking about this today.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and no one's saying, "Links are not important or links are not valuable." I think our point of contention is this idea that links are the ultimate panacea to all things SEO, the ultimate thing you should be doing, you should be buying as many as possible. You should never buy links, by the way, please don't buy links. That's ridiculous nonsense.

But it's gotten overstated and I feel like we're in an era of Google and machine learning and natural language processing. They're trying very much to actually understand the content on the page. And what I think people don't realize is that links are a secondary signal. Links are a way, kind of like you said before. "Yeah. Oh yeah, I'm in the club, I'm going to bring you in with me, he's good. He's with me. We're all okay." Turns out I'm a giant nerd and I should never be in the club.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

But anyway.

Crystal Carter:

So, right, and I just say... But I'm not saying right that you're a giant nerd, but if you have a lot of links or if you have a lot of good quality links, it is a signal that says, "Okay, this person's got some backing from some solid folks." But at the end of the day you have to deliver, Google will get to your site and they will see what's on your site. And if the stuff that's on your site isn't relevant to the link that you got, or if the content of your site is a mess or doesn't make sense or is low value or if you have a lot of technical issues, then the value of that link isn't as effective as if it was something that was good and was relevant.

Mordy Oberstein:

Totally. And the whole point is that links are a secondary signal. Google can't use a link to actually understand your content, which is why Google's invested in natural language processing, machine learning so that it can actually understand the content. So we're talking about in the same breath, it's hard to say that Google is doubling down on getting a greater understanding of your actual content through natural language processing and machine learning and links are just as important as they used to be before.

It's a total contradiction in my mind conceptually because they do two very different things. Links were initially and still are kind of a way of getting around the fact that we can't fully understand content algorithmically, so let's use links. But if we're better understanding content, then why rely on the link the same way? Doesn't make sense to me.

Crystal Carter:

Right, and I think that also people overlook the functionality of a link. So Google has spiders that crawl websites and they will crawl via links. So they crawl from one link to another link to another link. So if you have lots of links around and if you have good quality links, then you will get crawled more often. Your website will get indexed more regularly. Google will get more information about your website. One of the reasons why people talk about high DA, "high DA websites..." And again DA is not a metric from Google. DA is essentially when a private company is calculating value of the website based on some linking signals that they're able to see. It's kind of a shorthand. It can be useful when you're trying to organize information, but it is not be all end all.

But if you think about something like Forbes for instance, that will have a high DA that gets crawled a lot because they're creating a lot of content. And so if you have a link on that website, you're more likely to have that page get crawled by Google than if you don't have a link on that website. Similarly, if you're a website that has no links at all, that's like a tree falls in the woods, nobody hears it. It's essentially you're one website standing alone all by yourself. It's like a house with no driveway, like a house with no road to it. How can anybody get to you? How can anyone find you if you have no links at all?

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, we're going, we don't need roads.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right.

Mordy Oberstein:

We have links.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So it can help a website, but you do, you have to have the quality of website and the quality of the content when people get to it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, for sure. Especially, in my mind... I hate to say this... I don't think links are about SEO. I think links are about traffic, fundamentally, having a great link from a great relevant website. Let's say you get you a, you like... I don't know, you sell lawnmowers and there's like this ultimate lawnmower website. It's like the ultimate Wikipedia of lawnmowers and you get a link from them to your website and all the lawnmower people who love lawnmowers are going to go to that website, see your link theoretically, and click on... That brings you traffic, that brings you revenue. Good links, meaning links on pages that are relevant from strong high-traffic websites that are not buried 500 clicks deep into their website can bring you more traffic and can bring you more revenue, leaving those aside the SEO value for a minute.

Crystal Carter:

And I think it's the audience value as well. So I think a lot of times, certainly in the days like pre-Panda and back in the day, SEO people would post on lots of forums and stuff. They put links on there and that, one of the reasons why is because organically speaking, if you have a genuine forum that's lots of people that are interested in lawnmowers or whatever it is, and someone says, "Oh, my gosh, how do I solve this problem?" And someone says, "Oh, I read this great article that was really good, you should check it out. It has all the details. I followed these instructions and it works really well," then that is fantastic for a number of reasons.

One, because you've got a link there and other people can see it. It's crawlable, it's searchable. Two, you have someone vouching for your content there. Number three, you also have it in a space where Google understands that people talk about this content regularly and so you're getting information from that website and taking it to your website. So there's lots of different things there. I had a client that used to have a piece of content around equestrian law.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay.

Crystal Carter:

And they did remarkably well, but they had one site, one piece of content that always did really, really well because it was referenced in a forum in a magazine like an equestrian magazine, where someone's like, "Oh, how do I sort out this litigation issue about my horse?" And they were like, "Yeah, this article's great." And they always ranked really, really well for it. And it was for years, for years and years and years. Because you're saying it's not just about SEO, it's also about customer value. Those are people, are customers, like potential customers who are really interested in that topic and who could really do with some help on that topic. And they're finding somebody who can find them the solution. And that should be what links are about.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and by the way, even in that case, maybe it's a Nofollow link, but someone reads it, so this is a great piece of content and they link to it on their website."

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. And the Dofollow, Nofollow things. So a Dofollow link is what essentially where it's like if we're going back to the Club Page One thing. It's like if someone goes, "Oh, I don't know them," "But they're in your group," "Yeah, but I don't know them."

Mordy Oberstein:

Exactly. So Nofollow means that the surgeon is not going to go follow that link through.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

So it doesn't count for "your link juice."

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Or SEO value, per se.

Crystal Carter:

Right, I'm pretty sure John Mueller said that they use it as a hint. If you have lots and lots of Nofollow links that are all around the same topic, Google can still understand the information there. They just might not put the same weight on it when they're trying to understand it. So for Dofollow it's saying like, "Oh, yeah, they're with me. Absolutely, this is my best friend."

Mordy Oberstein:

And then Google goes from that page to your page and says, "Oh, I found this new page. Great, and now maybe we'll index it where we didn't index it before."

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

But I think the overall problem that I think people get, just to bring it all back, that people get kind of messed up with is really the mindset as opposed to this particular link practice versus that particular link practice. I think the core root of it all is this mindset that there's some kind of way to hack the system or there's some kind of way to really quickly without having to create quality user experience or a quality content and a quality whatever, whatever,

whatever, "I can just build links. If I could just get someone to link to me that will improve my SEO." And it's created this environment where there's almost an over-emphasis on links and it's really, really easy to get caught up in that, especially if you're newer to SEO for some reason. That's where this sort of link panacea kind of content exists. But the overall point I think we want to get across is that, yes, links are really important for a variety of reasons, but they're not the be all, end all part. They are one part of your SEO strategy.

Crystal Carter:

And I think that some of the best people that are really, really good at link building, people like Debbie Chew, people like Patty Mugin, people like Amanda Milligan...

Mordy Oberstein:

Judith Lewis.

Crystal Carter:

Right, and Bryce at Seven as another good team that does a lot of good actual link building. What they do is they make interesting content, they make really interesting content that people want to link to. So for instance, like reports or information that is really, really interesting, that people really want to actually link to. And also they tend to get people involved. So they'll get people involved as partners in creating the content so that they share it. So if you think about a family photo, if you get everybody in the family photo, they're all going to want to share it and you can tag them all and they'll share it all across their different thing, for instance.

Whereas if it's just you, like just a selfie of yourself and you're like, "Isn't my selfie great?" People may or may not share that. You know what I mean? So when you're trying to think of link building, think of it, campaigns tend to work really well and actually giving people information that people actually want to link to rather than going, "Please can I have a link?"

Mordy Oberstein:

That's like the fundamental point about link building, which we're going to get in some great tips from Debbie Chew in a second. If there's no substance to the thing that you want them to link to, it doesn't work. So that's what I mean. Link building is really part of the whole process. It really should naturally flow with your content creation. It's really like the flip side of it in a lot of ways. And with that, let's get some tips from Debbie Chew on some legitimate link-building tactics. So what are some legit link-building tactics at work? Turning it over to you, Debbie Chew.

Debbie Chew:

So there are a number of white hat ways to get links. Let me share my top three.

So first is guest posting. I think this is quite a common tactic to get links where you publish a blog post on someone else's blog and then within that blog post you'll link to relevant pages on your site. So what's great about guest posting is that you have some control over where that backlink goes to, the anchor text. And if the guest post is genuinely helpful to the blog that you're posting it on, you can raise awareness about your brand and bring in valuable traffic to your site.

So most guides out there tell you to google some combination of niche that you want to guest post in and the word guest post or contributor guidelines, things like that. And that'll help uncover some opportunities to get links, but you'll eventually exhaust that list. So what I like to do instead is try to find those needles in the haystack, try to find the industry blogs that are relevant to you and then send them personalized outreach even if they are not advertising that they do guest posts.

The second is stats posts. So this is where you choose a topic related to your product and then you find and create a list of stats. So this type of content helps you get links because you're making someone else's life easier. So let's say I have a product that I sell, which is like a social media scheduler tool. So for that I could write a blog post for Twitter stats and someone who is writing a blog post about how to write viral Twitter threads might come across my Twitter stats blog posts. And then they might mention one of the stats that I found and link to my page.

And then now the third tactic is to create research reports. So instead of the tactic that I just mentioned earlier about compiling stats from potentially other sources, for this tactic, you're going to create your own. I think it's really overlooked way of getting backlinks. But if we think about what journalists and other writers link to, you'll notice that they tend to link to a recent study, an interesting finding that they came across. So they usually use this to add context to their story or strengthen whatever argument they're making.

So doing a research report is all about creating a study that uncovers interesting data on a certain topic, then doing outreach to the right people to link to your findings. What I really like about this tactic of creating a research report is that you, number one, position your business as a thought leader on the topic. Number two, you can get a large number of links and press from just creating one single research report. And then number three, because it takes a lot of effort to do, it's much harder for your competitors to replicate.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much for that, Debbie, and that kind of feeds into what we were talking about before, creating that quality content that really makes sense to be linked to is paramount to everything. It's fundamental to everything.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. And then she talked about guest posting, she talked about creating big banks of stats and things like that. Where you're doing guest posting, where you're creating banks of stats, statistics, in both cases you will be doing the best for your brand and the best for your customers if you're creating something that's interesting, that is of value to that audience. So if you are guest posting on someone else's blog and you're actually bringing good quality content for that audience, then great, they will link to you. They will link to the resources that you share and that's fantastic.

You can also, those links are put there, but also you might get more links off of that if it's of good quality content. And again, the people who you're guest posting with may very well ask you to post again because you're doing something good quality, making the resources, not only do you get more links off of that with people referencing your research, but also people will regularly return to it. So from a traffic point of view, like you were talking about before, there's a couple of big studies. We mentioned Cyrus Shepherd, he did a great study on internal links for instance, which talks about lots of statistics and has lots of different information about the value of links. Lots of people reference that and lots of people go back to it regularly to see...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, yeah, it is a great way, [inaudible 00:20:08] that is a great way because you do go back and referencing and it's just so, but especially when it's ever greenish kind of data.

Crystal Carter:

Right, and it takes time, it takes effort. But a lot of times if you're working in marketing, if you're working in search, a lot of times you're creating a lot of that information anyway. A lot of times you're doing a lot of that research for yourself anyway. So if you can possibly spin that out into something that's public facing. So maybe that one, don't want to share all of the family silver or whatever, if you can spin that into something that's public facing, then that can be something that's beneficial to everyone. And also it positions you as somebody who has expertise and authority in that niche, which is really, really valuable. Not just for links but for your brand.

Mordy Oberstein:

Theoretically, I've seen this a million times before, as my own data. People will take that data and feature it at conferences when they're doing their talks and so forth. There are really a lot of really good ways to build links. You should definitely do some research around that. I know Ethan [inaudible 00:21:00] has a really cool technique. I'll link to it in the show notes, called the Teammate Technique. I think it's very interesting. I'll again, I'll link to it, have a look at it. So do some research.

There are a lot of really creative white hat legit ways of building links that make sense for you and your business. We'd love to dive into this more, but we have a little twist on our little segment that we have called From the Top of the Server. We've done in the past was to take sites that rank well and sites that don't rank well. And we compare the two to pull out some good old SEO lessons. Today though, we want to look at one SERP feature that Google shows at the top of the SERP, to discuss what it might mean for you. Welcome to From the Sources Across the Web version From the Top of the SERP.

So when you Google things, I don't know, 50 Books to Read Before You Die or Fruits with Omega Three in them, depending on your geolocation, Google may show a feature at the top of the SERP called Sources from Across the Web, typically more on mobile. And basically it's a list to answer your question. So for Fruits with Omega Three, you get a list that says avocado, mangoes, berries. And you can expand each answer, or in this case each fruit to see a carousel of different pages with different information about the topic or subtopic. Again, in this case fruit. And of course those are all more URLs, more organic exposure theoretically for you. But it's a really, I'm going to say complicated SERP feature.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think it's really interesting. So I first came across this with the 50 Books to Read Before You Die list and you also see it with some other things around, around things like locations, Wonders of the World and stuff like that, and it's a tricky...

Mordy Oberstein:

It's really weird ones, by the way.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Like Best Companies to Work For brings it up, at least for me.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. It's interesting because they're essentially aggregating the information here. They're aggregating what they've seen across the web in lots of different ways. But one of the things that's tricky about it is there aren't as many clear sources as to where it comes from, where they're getting that list. And also it's tricky from a rankings point of view because for instance, with the 50 Books to Read Before You Die, I've got it so that I'm able to see nine of the entries of the 50.

Now I know there's 50 because it's 50 Books to Read Before You Die and I can, I'm able to see nine, then it says 15 more and then there's 15 more. So which one's ranking number one there and then underneath 1984, which is the one that shows top, there's another four or five links there, and then there's an opportunity to click through to 1984 and learn more about that and et cetera, et cetera. So when you're trying to understand the positioning of that content, of where your content fits in, when this kind of features at the top of the SERP, it can be a little bit tricky to understand where you fit, what ranks where, what that means. And also I think from a sources point of view, it's interesting to understand where they're getting this content from. Because if I said, "Oh, where'd you hear that from?" And someone said, "Oh, around the web," I'd be like, "Huh, I need more information than that. Like where did you, who told you that?"

Mordy Oberstein:

It would be good to get more information about it. And what's interesting about it is like, for example, I search for Omega Three Rich Vegetarian Food. So the first thing I get is walnuts, and then I get chia seeds. So first of all, why is walnut first and not chia seed? That's really interesting in its own, right? And it happens to be on mobile this shows up more often, which means that it takes up a lot of space above the fold and you have option to see 12 more of these things.

But what I found, check this out, because you might be like, "Okay, you know what, there's actually organic opportunity here." And Google, just so you know, is doing this more and more with Carousel. So for example, if you Google a Best SEO podcast and you click on SERP's Up, it will theoretically show you articles that include the SERP's Up podcast as one of the best SEO podcasts out there, whatever it is.

They're doing this more and more and more across the board with these Carousel kind of things. And you might think, "Great, that's more opportunity to get my URL from my website into these things." Just so you know, most SEO, I don't think any SEO rank trackers will be able to track this for you. So that makes it kind of complicated. I think your biggest clue in will be if all of a sudden you see a spike in your search console day, "Where did this come from? Oh, I'm the first URL in one of these sub-expandable tabs in the sources around the web."

But let's take Walnut, right? Omega Three Rich Vegetarian Foods, again, I get walnut, I get chia seed, I get flaxseed and I get industrial hemp.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right? Whatever. And then I expand the Carousel and add a tab and I get a Carousel of articles related to walnut and I open up chia seed, I get a bunch of articles related to chia seed. Guess what? The first URL on the first Carousel card for walnut comes from Medical News Today. The first one for chia seed, Medical News Today. The first one from flax seed, Medical News Today. The first one from industrial hemp, not Medical News Today. By the way, I looked at this for multiple versions of this.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm not like just spitting off. There is enormous amount of overlap between the cards and the URLs that they're showing.

Crystal Carter:

Right, so on the 50 Books to Read Before...

Mordy Oberstein:

So if you get in one, you're in a bunch.

Crystal Carter:

So in 50 Books to Read Before You Die, it's greatestbooks.org, the greatestbooks.org is showing 1984 as the first one. So there's Wikipedia and then there's this one, and then it's showing for to Kill a Mockingbird, showing for Pride and Prejudice. And then also they're the first plain blue link on it as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

So it's very interesting in that regard. But it's interesting if they're using that as a main source. It's interesting that it's not referenced in the top part. Instead of it just saying "Sources from around the web," it's interesting that they don't reference from that because if you go to Bing and you look up Omega Three Foods, it says, "Your Omega Three Shopping List" and it has a similar list and then it says, "Data from web.md and earth. this or eatthis.com." So it's interesting that they're able to do it and Google has not done it yet, but maybe they will, going forward.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and again, it makes it difficult if you're trying to rank for one of these kind of keywords and you're not one of these websites that are showing up in the Carousel, what do you do? Because Google seems to, again, I looked it up for Best Companies to Work For, the first URL was in all four of the initial cards that Google showed.

One thing I did see that might give you hope, if you're not this dominant URL, because again, it's kind of one of these super authority situations where Google's kind of just pulling in the super authority and showing that URL over and over and over again throughout the different subtopics in the SERP feature. But every once in a while Google throws a YouTube video in there.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, there's a lot of YouTube. So yeah, there's a good amount of YouTube in there. So for instance, on the 50 Books Read Before You Die, there's a few of them that include YouTube. They have [inaudible 00:27:42] in there...

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, so some of these cards use a lot of YouTube.

Crystal Carter:

So for this one, they've got links to Google Books, as well. So yeah, there's a lot of different elements. It's not just websites that are showing in it. And I think that this is about them creating it... It's kind of rich content. It's not schema enabled, but it's essentially working the same way as a sort of rich content feature would work. But yeah, I think it's an interesting thing and it's interesting to see how they are doing this across the web and how many different topics and ways of repackaging content or displaying content are showing up.

Mordy Oberstein:

So if you're looking at your data and you're like, "Hey, I'm ranking number one for something or number two for something and I don't get any clicks, what's going on?" Always go to the actual SERP, very helpful. And if you see one of these from Sources Across the Web that's dominating on mobile, the above the fold space on the SERP, and you're not in one of these cards, and you're... "I don't know how I'm going to get into one of these cards." Maybe the best way is a YouTube video. You never know.

Crystal Carter:

And this is a really good opportunity to sort of make sure that you don't have all your eggs in one basket with regards to your content. So making sure that you're thinking about your content in lots of different ways.

Mordy Oberstein:

Absolutely. And speaking of not putting all of your eggs in one basket, we need to talk about the news. What does that have to do with eggs in one basket? I have absolutely no idea. But anyway, here is The Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News.

Who said you could ever have too many Google updates? Because if it was you take it back. Take it back now. Anyway, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google releases October 2022, Spam update. The update actually completed in less than 42 hours. This is Google releasing improvements to the AI that catches a web spam. So if you're doing things like creating helpful, decent content and not engaging in any sort of deceptive practices, you should be fine. If you see your rankings got clobbered, well, then two things. One, have a look at Google's documentation on Web Spam and, two, search your soul.

Next item of business from Matt Southern over Search Engine Journal, Google Shopping Searches on Desktop Get more Visual. This is part of the changes Google announced at Search on 2022 about a more visual shopping experience. Well, it hit desktop and now that makes a desktop experience, when it comes to shopping, very similar to mobile. Essentially when you add the word shop to the beginning of a search query, like for example, "Shop kids' toys" and so forth, you're getting mobile like experience with multiple series of cards representing products along with multiple sites where you can buy these products.

So it mean there are multiple sites where you could buy a particular product. Anyway, there are more image thumbnails. The SERP seems to be expanded, meaning it's longer, which means more ads by the way. It also means more results I guess to make up for all the space, the multiple series of cards take up. If you sell stuff on the internet and you rely on organic search to sell desktop, you need to check out what the SERP now looks like on desktop and perhaps adjust accordingly. And with that, that is today's Snappy News.

Boy, was that newsy and snappy.

Crystal Carter:

That was news. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

That was news, eggs in the basket.

Crystal Carter:

Those were some new things. And I mean, I was surprised at how egg-based the news was.

Mordy Oberstein:

It was egg all over my face.

Now, before we wrap up, as we always have to do, we love sharing people for you to follow on social media so you can get some more SEO information and some more fun people to follow on Twitter. This week we're talking one of SEO's, premier link building experts. She's been doing SEO for a very long time and is one of the predominant experts on link building. She's the one, she is the only one of my favorites, Judith Lewis.

Crystal Carter:

Judith Lewis. Yes, absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

We love, we love Judith. She's hilarious, first off. So she's a great follow in general, such a great sense of humor.

Crystal Carter:

She has absolute great sense of humor and she's very active in the SEO community. She's a judge for lots of different...

Mordy Oberstein:

Search awards, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Search awards, and she's very much on top of everything. So she shares a lot of great content and she's somebody who is worth following. So yeah, I would absolutely have a look at what she's doing. She speaks at lot of conferences as well. So she just recently spoke at, I think it was the SEO Octoberfest and she's doing some really great work there.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, if you Google her around link building, there's a lot of great stuff that she has out there. I've interviewed her on another podcast about link building myself, to have firsthand conversations with her about this. She is phenomenal. Definitely keep an eye out for Judith Lewis. You could follow her on Twitter @JudithLewis, amazingly enough. Right? But that's J-U-D-I-T-H, L-E-W-I-S, Judith Lewis, we'll link to that in the show notes. So you can have her Twitter profile and follow her on Twitter. We're basically trying to tell you follow her on Twitter.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, do that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Do that.

Crystal Carter:

You'll thank us later.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which brings us to the end of our podcast. We're done.

Crystal Carter:

And to Mordy's lunchtime. He's so excited.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know. So where we schedule this podcast, you don't really care about this, dear audience, but the way this goes, they have to schedule this weekly right before my lunch. I'm a very particular person about when I eat lunch, I need to eat lunch.

Crystal Carter:

Mordy gets hangry. We need to make sure that he gets lunch.

Mordy Oberstein:

I do, I get hangry.

Crystal Carter:

He needs his lunch.

Mordy Oberstein:

We just taught my 11 year old that word. "Hey, you're hangry." He's like, "What?" "Let me explain this to you. This is why you're upset right now."

Crystal Carter:

There we go. So he's going to make some links, but... Link between some sandwich events...

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm going to grab some link juice for lunch.

Crystal Carter:

No link juice.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yep. Anyway, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new podcast as we dive into our favorite SERP features. Got a bit of a surprise for you with this one.

Anyway, look for wherever you could consume your podcast or on our SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check on all of the great content, webinars or resources on the Wix Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify.

Until next time, peace, love at SEO.