The best of 50 podcast episodes

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahala for joining the SERP's Up Podcast where we're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO.

I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the always on target, the always reliable, the always fantastic, the always on point, our own Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, fantastic people. We join you again for the 50th time.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, it is delicious.

Crystal Carter:

It's the 50th time! What's the 50th anniversary? Is that the golden one or a platinum or something?

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know, what stone is it? They have different stones, right?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. The big ones are nice. There's a diamond one and there's that sort of thing, but the in between is-

Mordy Oberstein:

It's our platinum. I'm making it up. It's our platinum episode.

Crystal Carter:

I can't remember. We should just Google it. But the thing that cracks me up about those things is that in-between, they're really random. They're like the paper, the styrofoam anniversary. And you're like, "What? This is not... Nobody wants a paper." They're very strange in between.

Mordy Oberstein:

Paper? Okay.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know it. The second one's a paper one. It's like what a comedown. What a comedown.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's terrible. Wow. Here's paper.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix where we not only have our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, which you can subscribe to on a monthly basis over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also check out all sorts of SEO content from articles to our SEO monthly webinar series to this very podcast and all of the podcasts that make up this episode as you soon shall see. So check out all the great stuff we have over at the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn.

We say that because today's a very special episode. As Crystal said, the SERP's Up Podcast is 50 episodes old, which in dog years means we're 350, right?

Crystal Carter:

Precisely.

Mordy Oberstein:

Good thing we don't go by dog years because-

Crystal Carter:

No, that is good.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'd be personally really old.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, let's not get into those maths. I think we can just-

Mordy Oberstein:

No, no. We don't do math on this show.

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't do math, for the record. I don't do math.

Crystal Carter:

Listen, marketers are always like, "Yeah, marketing!" And then they're like, "Statistics," and you're like, "Oh yeah, cool. Yes."

Mordy Oberstein:

"Oh, yeah, that." They do data studies. Anyway.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Before we go any further, I just want to say thank you for listening to 50 episodes. That's awesome.

Crystal Carter:

It's really amazing. We've had so many amazing guests. It's been such an adventure. And thank you, Mordy, for being the best podcast buddy ever.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh no, I'm not the best podcast buddy ever. You are the best podcast buddy ever.

Crystal Carter:

You are! Oh my gosh.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, no. You are.

Crystal Carter:

No!

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, stop.

Crystal Carter:

Now we've lost all the listeners. Everyone's done. They're done.

Mordy Oberstein:

I do want to shout out the listeners who are out there who listen every week or not every week or listen whenever they listen. I don't know how it works on a podcast. You can listen to 51. You can binge the podcast.

Crystal Carter:

The whole thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

But there have been people who have shouted out the podcast on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on social media. Folks have requested episodes and topics that we've included on the podcast. So really, thank you for interacting with us. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about the podcast and for being part of our little community.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. It's been really, really brilliant. It's really cool when people say, "Oh, I heard your podcast." I'm like, "Oh, shucks. Thanks." Thanks, guys. It's nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's really nice. It's legit a highlight for me when people do that.

I do also want to shout out the folks behind the scenes that make this podcast happen. I feel like Episode 50 would be a good time to do that. So first off, Barr, you are the man. Barr is what makes this podcast happen each and every week, so thank you. Also, big shout out to the tech design and the design teams over at Wix and the entire Wix SEO Marketing team and well beyond, and a big thanks to Edge Media who produces the podcast. So Aaron and Jacob, you're legends, thank you.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you to everyone behind the team. We can't get it done without you. So yeah, thank you for everything that you've done this whole time, this whole time we've been podcasting.

Mordy Oberstein:

Big thanks to all the well-smart folks who have been a part of the podcast and contributed to it. And with that, what we'd like to do with this episode is to look back at some of the previous episodes. What we're going to do is take a look at the top 10 episodes by number of listens and explore some of the topics we took up there. But that isn't enough because there are some core SEO topics that are not in our top 10 of number of listens, so we're going to do a number of top 10 honorable mentions by topic that we thought we have to include in an SEO roundup podcast. Have to.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. What are we going to do without them? I don't know. I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know. But wait, I don't want to be accused of, "Oh, old, not new." So we brought on some of the folks from Moz who are going to be talking about some of their thoughts on the future of SEO and where things are headed and what they're excited about, so we have that for you as well. So join us as we look in the mirror of self-reflection with this, a very special 50th episode of the SERP's Up Podcast.

All right, let's just kick this off, shall we?

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Top 10. Again, this is by not top 10 we love, not our top 10 whatever. This is top 10 simply by the number of listens the episode has garnered, which by the way is completely biased just so you know because the longer the episode is out, the more listens it gets to, which is why, as I mentioned, we're also going to do the top 10 topics that we covered that we have to cover, that we have to show you and discuss in a clips episode.

There was no good way to do this is what we're trying to say.

Crystal Carter:

We've picked out all the podcasts and we hope you really enjoy them and we want to pick out some of the top highlights from around the podcast.

Mordy Oberstein:

So up number one is actually number one, our first episode ever about homepage SEO and what you need to know about homepage SEO, and we had Ryan Jones talk about some of his tips on homepage SEO. Here's Ryan on optimizing your homepage.

Ryan Jones:

So when it comes to homepage, SEO, there's definitely been some cases where I've had some major wins, but also where I've made some pretty rookie mistakes too. I mean, I remember when I first came into the industry nearly seven years ago, my main kind of thinking was getting everyone to the homepage and then all these users will sort of magically go where they need to go. In reality, that just isn't the case at all. If you're not serving what the user actually needs, you're not going to rank and you're not going to make any money.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you again, Ryan. It's a really good point. Yes, your home should be super optimized. You can have all the SEO ducks in a row, but if the experience of funneling users to the right places so that they can actually convert doesn't function well on your homepage, what good is all that?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think this was something that really stuck with me as a point is that with SEO, sometimes you're like, "Yeah, this is going to work," and then maybe it works differently from what you expect and that's absolutely something that you can learn from and as a good SEO, you'll be watching not just for the wins, but for the things that maybe didn't go as expected and how you can make that better for the next time. And he had some really nuanced opinions on that and shared some great experience around particularly the homepage, but I think also too your overall SEO approach.

Mordy Oberstein:

Up number two is from our Episode Number 18, all about eComm SEO. So we had Kristina Azarenko talking about internal linking and eComm, which is super important. Here is Kristina all about internal linking and eCommerce SEO.

Kristina Azarenko:

What I see that works really well is internal linking, and many people just focus on building external links only and they don't control them, but they forget about internal links that they have full control of. Internal links are super, super important. They help to show hierarchy of the website and also distribute authority properly. Plus, they help Google to faster discover and index or re-index internal pages of the website. And it's especially critical for eCommerce because especially if you have dynamic stock with products going in stock and going out of stock, you want Google to pick this up real quickly.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much again, Kristina. Internal linking is like the low-hanging fruit of all things SEO and particularly helpful for eComm where your pages are... You want to make sure that they're indexed because some of them are very, very similar.

Crystal Carter:

Internal linking can never be underrated. It helps with content clustering, it can help you get indented results. It can help Google to crawl and it also sends signals as to what's most important, and particularly if you're on a really large site, like an eCommerce site or an enterprise-level site, internal linking is such a good and straightforward win.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, from Episode Number 4, we had Cindy Krum talking on and keywords, please, passé. Coming in at number three on our top 10 was our episode on doing keyword research the right way, which included a focus on entities. Here's Cindy.

Cindy Krum:

I think to rank well in search, in some cases we may have to go a little bit beyond topics that our website has a financial benefit for. So for instance, let's say that we are a site that allows you to adopt labradoodles. When we only talk about adopting labradoodles, Google knows that people who want to adopt a pet have more questions than just where to adopt usually. And so they are thinking about the next step of someone saying, "Well, I think I want to adopt a labradoodle" because that's how the normal process goes. You don't go, "I think I want to adopt. Let's do it today."

You usually go through a research process and the more you can answer those questions and help users with their journey on the topic and not just try and sell them things, it seems like the more Google is going to count that as high-quality content, the more Google is going to understand the entity, the more Google is going to understand that you understand the entity, and you are going to have the requisite keywords clustered somewhat together or in a meaningful way that Google uses to determine if you are authoritative and an expert.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, thinking about the overall topic of authority and taking the user on a full journey and not just trying to sell to them is a great way to approach thinking about topics, entities, and keywords.

Crystal Carter:

Completely. There's so much more to just a keyword than the actual literal words. The context makes such a big difference and Cindy's has an ever-nuanced approach to that, and I think that as we move into a space that includes LLMs and a generative search, being more cognizant of entities is going to yield incredible results for SEOs that are taking this approach.

Mordy Oberstein:

Number four comes from Episode Number 29 where we spoke about a crazy little thing called ChatGPT and analyzed how it would impact not just SEO but the world, the worldwide web that is, with Ryan Laws. So here's Ryan Laws on AI as a force multiplier.

Ryan Lewis:

Who has the resources to vet billions of generated outputs almost every day at this point? You can't do it. So I can't say this is something I've solved at grand scale, not like programmatic SEO where you're publishing hundreds, thousands of articles at once, but we are working at a slightly smaller scale where we are basically having a human in the loop using generative AI as a force multiplier for their already great writing.

So we basically think to get the most out of this technology, you need a subject matter expert who can review, who can structure, who can critically evaluate what is being generated from the generative AI, and that process is still faster than it would otherwise be. I think sometimes it's a lot more fun for the writer because you get to outsource parts of your thinking and it can even be better in some instances because it can recommend ideas that you might not otherwise have. It doesn't have the same kind of mental ruts and creative bottlenecks that humans do.

But I think to your point exactly that having a person to evaluate, vet, and actually stand behind and be willing to put their name to a piece of generated content is absolutely crucial. Otherwise, yeah, we'll just very quickly descend into dystopian wild west if we're just all publishing the outputs of these models wholesale.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you again, Ryan. It's a great point, the idea of using AI writers to help you scale but not replacing people seems kind of obvious, but I think it's something that's worth saying concretely and consciously.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. You should totally be thinking of this as amplifying your intelligence or articulating your intelligence or demonstrating your actual intelligence, but really you need to have some kind of intelligence to begin with. You need to have some kind of knowledge to begin with, and that's really when it works really well when you absolutely know what you're doing and then you use the AI to help you take it to that next level.

Mordy Oberstein:

Coming in at number five... I feel like Casey Kasem. I know I just dated myself with that reference, but coming in at number five is our interview with Jill Quick about how to prepare for GA4, which is already here. So here's how to prepare for what's already actually here. Take it away, Jill.

Jill Quick:

I don't think Google expected it to be as popular as it became and it swelled and we wanted more, and then we had an upgrade with classic Analytics around about 2007, and that was getting rid of the bike and giving you a moped, a scooter. So we had a little bit more with our data, we got a new user interface. And I'm saying this because we have gone through multiple interface changes. We've just forgotten it was so long ago.

Now, universal Analytics where Mordy is super comfortable at the moment-

Mordy Oberstein:

Vert comfortable.

Jill Quick:

Yeah, this was 2011, 2012, and it is the equivalent of getting rid of the moped and the bike and giving us the keys to our very own universal analytics car.

Now, the majority of people, we've had this car for over 10 years and you've either been the driver, the passenger, the engineer. I have met people that don't even know where the car is parked or who has the key, but you like the car. We know the car, it's comfortable, and again, it was free and you just kind of started a job, they gave you access and you drove away and got what you needed from it.

With the transition to GA4, as Crystal mentioned, we had the very not necessarily best name of App and Web, and then they rebranded it to GA4 is the fourth version of that Analytics platform. And despite Google saying it's an upgrade, and it is an upgrade, but it's not an upgrade as in get rid of my crappy old car that could do with a wash and some reupholstering and give me a new one; they're taking away the car, setting it on fire this year so we can't have it anymore, and they've given us the keys to a helicopter. That is the equivalent shift that we have.

Mordy Oberstein:

The parable she uses about it being a different vehicle altogether, personally, was mind-blowing for me as a way of concretely understanding the difference between what I was working on and I loved so much and what I have now.

Crystal Carter:

Entirely. I saw her speak about this and was just like, "Yeah, I get that now."

Mordy Oberstein:

"That's it. I get it now."

Crystal Carter:

"I get it now."

Mordy Oberstein:

I've been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole this whole time.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And she's like, "Stop. Put it down. Try again." Just give it a complete different approach and it's absolutely what's required.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, what would be a clips episode and not talking about AI and AI writers twice? That's what we do now. We talk about AI all the time. This time, before ChatGPT was even a big buzzword, we talked to Danny Richman in Episode Number 9 in what is our sixth most popular episode all about using AI writers the right way, and Danny talked about using it in a little bit of a different way than you might've thought. Here's what Danny had to say.

Danny Richman:

I think one of the most common misconceptions with that technology is that it was never really designed for writing long-form content and that isn't what it's best at doing. The areas where I found it most useful and surprising was three different categories. One is around classification, then transformation, and then in translation.

So for example, let's imagine you're doing some keyword research for a criminal law firm and you are looking at all keywords that are searched for on Google that include the word conspiracy because you're interested in creating some content around the offensive conspiracy to murder or conspiracy to defraud, those kinds of offenses.

Now, if you go and put a term like that into a keyword research tool, you're going to get a whole load of keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with the area of criminal law and you're going to get UFO conspiracies, Princess Diana conspiracies. So one of the things you often have to do when you're doing keyword research is to filter out all the noise and just find the keywords that are relevant and applicable to the website you are working with.

And that's one of the areas where a tool like GPT-3 really excels because you can very easily upload a whole load of keyword research data into a Google Sheet, and then using a very simple script, you can then get GPT-3 to classify all those keywords in a matter of seconds according to whether they are in the context of a criminal law firm. So that's something that would've taken just hours or days of work for somebody to have to do.

Mordy Oberstein:

To me, using AI as a way of classifying information is the way to use AI, and I think Danny is so on point, even all these months later, about how he's thinking about using AI and SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Totally. There's so many tasks that you can use AI to help you with and help you simplify, like arguing with spreadsheets or clustering a list of keywords into themes or taking data that you've gotten and making it more simple or cleaning up data like, "Please remove all of the cases of this and that and that." All of those things are really, really great and help you to save time so that you can do some of the more nuanced work using human intelligence.

Mordy Oberstein:

Speaking of human and intelligence, we had Shelby Blackley and Jessie Willms over on Episode Number 2 talking all about good content and what is good content, and coming in at number seven on our most popular episodes of the SERP's Up Podcast is Jessie and Shelby's Episode Number 2, where they talked about, yeah, clicks are great, but if users aren't satisfied once they get there, what good is that?

So here's Shelby and Jessie on the experience of the user.

Shelby Blackey:

Well, I think that the big thing about having a quality piece of journalism or having a quality piece of content is really focusing on three pillars: search intent, keyword research, and the actual reader experience and how they're immersed in the piece.

When you think about search intent, it's very much like why people are searching these things, right? They're looking at what is the actual main purpose of the page. So to create a quality piece, you need to look at what's actually out there and what people are actually creating. If someone's looking up a specific keyword and they want an FAQ, how can you take that FAQ and take it an extra level? Is there a way to engage it? Can you add in schema? Is there an H2 subheading that you can add in? All of these will allow the readers to get what they need out of it.

Jessie Willms:

Right. So by aligning the search intent with the content that we end up creating, we can make sure that we really fulfill that request that people are making when they turn to a search algorithm or a search engine, I should say.

Shelby Blackey:

Exactly. And then you think about the keyword research behind it too, and we do so much around keyword research. Right, Jessie?

Jessie Willms:

Keyword research is the first thing that any news SEO will do when they are thinking about creating a new piece of content. We really want to first understand what it is people are looking for to understand the questions that we need to answer and the topics that we need to cover in whatever piece of content that we create.

The other thing about doing keyword research as your first step is it helps inform not just what you cover but how you cover it. Like Shelby said, if you are doing keyword research and you see that other publishers are creating FAQs to answer these reader questions, then you know that this is in line with how readers want to consume this content. So a series of questions and answers is a really effective tool for creating that engagement with readers because it allows them to answer specifically the question that they're after, but also scan and skim over other questions that they might find useful.

Mordy Oberstein:

Intent, research experience. If you don't ensure you're giving the user targeted content and you're not actually fulfilling their needs, nothing else matters.

Crystal Carter:

I think people think that ranking is an indicator of what Google thinks is good, but ranking is an indicator of what Google thinks users think is good. So obviously, you have to put the users first.

Mordy Oberstein:

Users? That's crazy.

Crystal Carter:

I know. What do they need? What matters to them? What's actually good for them? They've got some great insights on that.

Mordy Oberstein:

At number eight is an episode all about learning SEO. Here, Luke Davis shared how he goes down the rabbit hole to learn more about SEO and perfect his craft. From Episode Number Six, take it away, Luke.

Luke Davis:

So I start with a Google search of the topic and basically fall down a rabbit hole of articles, videos and documentation. I tend to focus on reliable sources as they're often backed up by other articles as well. Being able to immerse myself in a subject and get to know every detail has been crucial in my understanding of many things related to SEO.

If it's technical, I also like to test my skills on a demo site to see how things work, how things look, follow tutorials online or any courses that might be available. I did that recently when learning how to use a web framework called Astro, and that pushed me to pick up bits of JavaScript, which has always been my Achilles heel. It also involves breaking stuff and spending hours troubleshooting. So that kind of helps me learn what to do and what not to do and I like to think I'm much better for it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Using a demo site to test things out is an underrated practice in my opinion.

Crystal Carter:

There are so many people that I've talked to and said, "Oh, I haven't been able to practice SEO because I haven't got a job at an agency yet," or, "I don't have any clients yet." And I'm like, "Why are you waiting? Stop waiting. You can make a website right now. You can make a website right now. You can write content right now. You can distribute, you can do all of those sorts of things," that if you don't have your own site to do, I'm sure if you ask around to literally anyone, can I help someone with their website, a million people will give you an opportunity to try out some things.

But also, having your own site, all of the best SEOs that I know have test sites, have multiple test sites where they test and try again and try again. So if you're sitting on the fence, just do it. Just do it.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's why I have BarrySEOmemes.com so I can troll Barry and test things out, two birds, one stone.

Landing in at number nine is perhaps, I would say, our most important episode where we share how to know good SEO advice from bad SEO advice, and we had Himani Kanakria on to offer her take all about that. We're going back to Episode Number 5. Here's Himani.

Himani Kanakria:

It's not easy and advisable to trust any SEO advice that gets your way, especially today. These days, getting trapped into bad SEO advice is easier because any random post on any platform can get massive engagement. They talk about niche websites and then showcase how brilliantly they got great results without any solid proof of what strategy they use and how it was implemented.

What you can do is verify if Google has any documentation around that advice or even you can ask any Google Search employee. I mean, I have asked John Mueller a lot, many times, and he has helped me with a lot of great advice, and even you can ask any industry thought leader as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Verifying SEO advice with what Google actually says in their documentation?

Crystal Carter:

Woo!

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you. Amen to that.

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

Google documentation is incredibly invaluable and underused all at the same time.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, entirely. And so many times when people were like, "Wow, you're so insightful," I literally just told you what's in the documentation. Read the documentation. They spend a lot of time on it. Lizzie over at the Google Search Console team at the Google Search team, she spends a lot of time making sure that it's really knowable and accessible. So yeah, always find your source, always check your sources. There's a lot of rumors around in SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Rumours, it's not just a Fleetwood Mac album.

Crystal Carter:

There you go again.

Mordy Oberstein:

Referencing myself. Oh, I'm doing the whole Casey Kasem thing. I might as well reference a musical album since we're here.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right, and wrapping up the top 10 of most-listened to episodes of the SERP's Up Podcast thus far because we've done 50 but there's 50 more coming, is our episode about duplicate content where we had Barry Adams share what he does and doesn't worry about when it comes to duplicate content. We're going back to Episode Number 17. Here's Barry.

Barry Adams:

There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, so just make sure all the pages on your own website are unique, are properly structured, well-targeted for specific topics and specific rankings. And don't worry too much about what other websites are doing with taking your content or scraping your content. Just focus on making sure your website is as good as it can be and that you have all the tools at your disposal to make sure your own content ranks and performs in Google Search results to its maximum potential.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yep, there is no such thing as duplicate content penalty and don't worry about sites. And scraping your content, definitely agree with that. Sites, they're going to scrape your content. These sites are so low-quality, so ridiculous. Don't worry about it.

Crystal Carter:

It's also one of the reasons why it's so important to make sure that you got your biographical entity sorted, that people know who you are, that you're confirming that who you are with EEAT signals across your website and that you've got good canonicalization set up and all of that sort of stuff. There's lots of signals that you can give Google that you are the authority for whatever topic you've created, that you are the authoritative voice for that piece, and Barry's got a really nuanced approach to that.

And speaking of duplicate content, I've definitely said nuanced a few times in this episode, but it's at the top of my mind so there we go.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, as I mentioned before, those are our top 10 episodes in order of number of listens, but we didn't talk about SEO reporting, we didn't even talk about SERP features, we didn't talk about Google updates. How could we not talk about these things if we're recapping SEO?

So here's 10 more honorable episodes that we need to include that hit on some really core SEO topics. So it's, I guess, our personal topical list of episodes to include when doing a clip episode.

Here we go from Barry to Barry. Barry Schwarz joined us for Episode Number 3 to talk about Google updates. So if we're doing a clip episode about SEO, we must talk about Google updates. So here's Barry Schwartz talking about which updates you should look up and know about.

Barry Schwartz:

So there's a bunch of Google updates that have happened over the course of, I don't know, two decades or so. Probably the most significant one that really sets the tone was the Florida update probably 20 years ago, like 2002, 2003. It really shook the SEO community. It was the first time where Google did an update where it basically said, "Hey, SEOs, stop trying to manipulate us. We know about you and our algorithms will detect what you're doing and you're no longer going to be able to fool us with easy SEO." And that really shook the industry a lot and it really set a tone for what was going to come next.

Mordy Oberstein:

The Florida update, little fun fact for you here. Thank you, Barry by the way. Fun fact about the Florida update, when the medic update came out, which was the August 2018 core update, the first of those really prolific core updates or the first was really the March 2018 core update, whatever, it doesn't matter, they wanted to call it Florida 2 because Pubcon was happening at the same time in Florida and that's where the first Florida update came about because it was at Pubcon when it came out in Florida.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. A little fun and history fact for you about updates that doesn't matter at all for SEO.

Crystal Carter:

I think it's really important to learn all the updates. I was at an SMX event and Barry Schwartz literally went through every single update and it was fantastic. Also, there were lots of slides with giant owls behind Barry, which was also amazing, but it's really important to... I'm a big fan of history and it's really important to learn history and study history because you don't know where you are if you don't know where you've been.

Mordy Oberstein:

Very true for SEO. Super true. If you don't understand what Google used to be able to do and what they're now able to do and what they're trying to do, it's really hard to contextualize what works and what doesn't work for SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Right. They're building on everything and building on everything, so pay attention, people.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, no SEO conversation is complete until you talk about international SEO, which is exactly what we did on Episode Number 40 with the Aleyda Solis. So honorable clip number two, I'm calling them honorable clips, I don't know why. Honorable clip number two comes from Episode Number 40 and it's all about international SEO with the Aleyda Solis.

Aleyda Solis:

If you do really have the capacity and the resources, and if it is an important market for you, you should totally go ahead. And if it's a minimum effort too, you should definitely go ahead and do the extra mile and personalize because that can make a complete difference for it.

So for example, back in the day, I am originally from Nicaragua, when I was living still in Nicaragua, and Nicaragua is such a small country, it's also a poor country so we were so very used to getting all of this marketing actions in TV even or in billboards or whatever that were so obviously not targeted at Nicaraguans because we actually speak... The way that we word things in Spanish, it's like in Argentina with the boss. So we put an accent at the end of each pretty much conjugation and the verbs, right? And we don't say, "Two," we say, "Boss."

So we had a lot of these billboards and TV ads and whatever with the two, the two, and we were like, "Oh, this was just a generic ad for all Latin American people. Whatever, it's not for us." But then little by little, you could tell that they were making more efforts toward things to change things, and it was a minimum thing really pretty much to change up a couple of wordings, the rest was exactly the same, but at least they took care and this is actually really for us, right? The engagement and I think the connection with the brand or the offering increased.

Mordy Oberstein:

If you don't personalize content from market to market so that it actually speaks to those people, you are never going to come off... I hate, I don't know, stale, to use a word. I don't know, not good.

Crystal Carter:

See, and you've definitely read those websites where you've gone to them and you were like, "This is not..." I was on a website for somebody who manufactured rackets for tennis and their website, I was just like, "These categories don't make any sense. I don't know who translated this but I can't find anything on this because it doesn't make any sense."

Mordy Oberstein:

It's so obvious when that happens. So obvious.

Crystal Carter:

It's so obvious.

Mordy Oberstein:

Don't be that person. Don't be that person.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think you have a little bit of forgiveness if you've actually just clicked the Google Translate thing and you want to see if you can book this restaurant in Paris or something even though you're not in Paris, that sort of thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Obviously.

Crystal Carter:

But yeah, if you're making the site and you actually want to appeal to the audience, show them that you care.

Mordy Oberstein:

Topic number three that we felt we had to include are SERP features because they're everywhere and they're all the time and they're dominated by them. So we must talk about SERP features, which is what we did Episode Number 11 with our friend, Kevin Indig.

Here's Kevin Indig all about SERP features.

Kevin Indig:

For certain SERP features, absolutely. So there's some SERP features that you can "rank" in or be visible in, like image carousels, video carousels, featured snippets. People also ask about those kinds of things, but then there are others where you just, as a brand, sometimes you can bid, you can pay for being visible. In the case of the Google Flights search module for example, you can literally bid to be visible, but there are also some where you just can't do anything at all, like a Google knowledge card for example.

And that's when the only thing you can do is just be aware that this happens in the search results and understand what the impact on your traffic could be.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a really interesting point. Sometimes there's nothing to do. Sometimes there's a SERP feature there. There's no URL, there's no way you could show up. It's a direct answer and there's nothing you can do about it and the best thing you can do is just know that that's what's happening, and that's probably why you don't have as many clicks as you would've otherwise.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. And you can make a call. You can say, "Do we try it for the SERP feature or do we just let go or whatever?" But these are things you have to think of, but it's also the reason why it's really important to check the SERP all the time.

Mordy Oberstein:

Al the time. If we're talking about SERP features and we're talking about checking the SERP, then we must talk about how you stay updated and looking and tracking changes on the SERP, which is what we did in Episode Number 20 with Lily Ray. So here's Lily Ray on what's been going on in the SERP and the changes she's seeing on the SERP.

Take it away, Lily.

Lily Ray:

There's a lot of new accordions that they've been rolling out in the last year or two, so of course we see people also ask across the board for most queries these days. I know sometimes the tools show that it comes and goes, but really there's definitely been a big rise and people also asked in the last few years. But beyond that, Google's using that same kind of functionality to roll out across different types of accordions, so things like buy-in guides and things to know, for example. If you'd Google specific medical conditions or products that you might be reviewing, Google can show something like things to know or buying guides, and that's actually information taken from various different websites and kind of integrated into this accordion where you can learn about specifications about the product or different symptoms and treatments for medical conditions and things like that.

Mordy Oberstein:

All sorts of new accordions, it's one thing I see. There's all sorts of filters on the SERP, but the point is checking, looking and seeing, as Crystal mentioned before, what's happening and seeing, hey, not just what new feature there is, but what's the trend? What's happening trends-wise with the SERP features, very valuable in checking and seeing.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it changes all the time, it changes every day, changes by device, changes by geo. So these are definitely important things to check regularly and know which SERPs are the most important ones for you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, here's a topic that doesn't belong on the list: enterprise SEO. We can talk about SEO and not talk about enterprise SEO, I feel like. However, when we talked to Eli Schwartz in Episode Number 20 about enterprise SEO, he gave a well-smart tip about how to stay hands on when you're not in a hands-on role, which is very important to talk about when we're talking about SEO.

So here's Eli Schwartz from not Episode Number 20, sorry, Episode Number 33. I'll get it right. Episode Number 33 about how to stay hands on.

Eli Schwartz:

The other things I'll do is I'll do things that are out of my typical role as a consultant. So I'll coach new SEOs or I'll coach enterprise SEOs and help them understand and help work with them, really for my own learning, to understand how to navigate the challenges that they're working on as a part of their roles. So if they have a challenge with how do they get an engineer to do something, how do they understand the reporting they have? These aren't things that I get to do in my regular consulting, but these are things that I get to really learn and do from coaching.

Mordy Oberstein:

Interesting way, I never thought about it before, but the way that Eli's talking about it, but coaching other SEOs to stay hands-on. Really interesting.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, mentoring is incredibly important, and also people who don't know will ask you questions and they'll be like, "But what is that?" And you're like, "It's a thing." And sometimes you realize that you actually don't know how to explain it. You've just internalized it. So the questions that you get from folks is really, really important and can be really helpful to helping you to just keep your toe in the water.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, since we're talking about coaching and other people and the softer side of SEO, the softer skill side of SEO, we have to talk about communicating and building teams and how to build strong relationships with your SEO team and other teams in your organization, which is what we did in Episode Number 31 when John Mueller came on and talked about building a strong SEO team. So here's John talking about that.

John Mueller:

I think for SEO folks, this means you need to be able to communicate with a wide variety of people. You can't just be geeks that speak in canonicals amongst yourselves. You need to have at least one person who can converse fluently in pagination, developer, marketing, and manager talk.

Mordy Oberstein:

I mean, yeah, he's right. Sometimes I feel like we get lost in our little SEO bubble and we geek out on all the cool SEO stuff that we care about that no one else actually cares about, but we have to be able to break out of that SEO geekiness, for lack of a better way of putting it, to be able to communicate with other stakeholders and other teams.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, because your team is wide. Of course, it's your core SEO team, but social folks are also to do with your team. The people who sign the checks are also the people in your team. The people who own the business are also in your team, and they need to know what's going on, and you need to have actionable, accessible information for them.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, if you're talking about other stakeholders and other teams, that naturally speaks to SEO reporting, which is our next topic that we could not leave off of this list. If we're going to do a clip show, we're going to talk about SEO reporting because it's a major part of doing SEO.

So we had Joe Hall come on during Episode Number 14 to share his thoughts about SEO reporting and KPIs. Here's Joe.

Joe Hall:

When trying to decide which is the right KPI for a client or project, I like to set it up in three different ways. I like to think about KPIs as either communication KPIs, strategic KPIs, or business KPIs. Communication KPIs are measurements. They communicate an idea and educate the client every time we talk about them. They're used to educate and inform about bigger ideas and things they need to focus on.

I usually find these KPIs by talking to the client and asking the