Show me the money with eCommerce SEO

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up.

Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, where we're pushing out 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 the fabulous, the wonderful, the incredible Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix.

Crystal Carter:

At Wix. Isn't that a coincidence?

Mordy Oberstein:

It is. I feel like I know you from somewhere.

Crystal Carter:

It's from ...

Mordy Oberstein:

Have I seen you? You look so familiar, it's from Wix.

Crystal Carter:

From Wix, yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

From Wix.

Crystal Carter:

That's very funny.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's funny. I've seen you in the hallway a couple of times.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. And strangely enough, not at the hallways at Wix.

Mordy Oberstein:

Because we don't physically work together.

Crystal Carter:

No, but that's a wonderful thing about the modern world. I literally see you every day.

Mordy Oberstein:

Which reminds us, since you're talking about Wix, that the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can now edit all of your SEO stuff. You know, robots, meta tags, title tags, meta-description, structure data and so forth, SEO stuff, with far greater ease than ever before. Check out the new Wix edit by page feature where you can get a look at all of the pages in the folder all at once and update all of the SEO stuff right there, without bouncing from page to page in the editor or dashboard. It's Wix SEO, where we make working on your larger sites easier than ever. All the SEO stuff.

Crystal Carter:

All the SEO stuff for all of y'all.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, I love the word y'all, by the way. So, I adopted that when I moved to Baltimore. My wife's in Baltimore. We lived there for a few years. I never knew what y'all was, because I'm from New York City. We don't have y'all, but y'all is amazing.

Crystal Carter:

It's a great word. And actually, actually people talk about it not being grammatically correct. However, it exists in lots of other languages. So, if you study Spanish for instance, [foreign language 00:02:03] is the plural you and that is what y'all is.

Mordy Oberstein:

Y'all.

Crystal Carter:

It's the plural you. It's also genderless, which is good. So, it's inclusive for everybody.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's wonderful. I love sending it out in email to people who are not from America. "Hey, y'all." As if they have any clue what I'm talking about. It's really a money word.

Crystal Carter:

Right, this is true.

Mordy Oberstein:

And you know what's money? This episode is going to be money. Not because there's any sort of cash transactions involved or anything… Yeah, it's disappointing, I know. But because talking eCommerce, SEO and-

Crystal Carter:

Cha-ching.

Mordy Oberstein:

I was going to make that sound effect, but you beat me to it. And the question is, how different is eCommerce SEO from regular SEO, really? Listen in as Crystal and I debate, go back and forth.

Crystal Carter:

Discuss.

Mordy Oberstein:

Maybe, we'll see. Between whether or not eComm SEO is really a separate discipline while we dive into the ins and out of eCommerce, SEO along the way, with tips to make sure that you get your eCommerce SEO, right. Kristina Azarenko also will stop by to share her tips around eCommerce, SEO and what moves the needle. Plus we'll dive into what's new on the eCommerce SERP. And of course, some snapping SEO news and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Are you bought in? Because episode number 18 of the SERP's Up podcast is open for business.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, I like that. That was good. That was good.

Mordy Oberstein:

So many.

Crystal Carter:

That was good. Have you brought lots of SEO receipts?

Mordy Oberstein:

Ooh, I like that. I like that we're getting cornier by the minute.

Crystal Carter:

There's no stopping us. There's no stopping until we have completed the transaction.

Mordy Oberstein:

Each week it's going to ... Oh, you got me, I didn't really ... take a second, like whoosh right over my head. That exchange didn't go the way I thought it would.

Crystal Carter:

Well, but maybe we should lay it away for another day.

Mordy Oberstein:

We're really shipping it out here. Anyway, in SEO, so let me introduce this, because in SEO there are all sorts of disciplines. There's tech SEO and the people in tech SEO, they focus on crawlability and indexability. There are link builders or outreach specialists and they spend a whole lot of time building links and doing all other sorts of spammy things.

Crystal Carter:

They do lots of nice things as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

They do lots of nice things too. I'm really being not the greatest with that. There's also local SEO. Now, that's probably the most famous segment of SEO, and that makes a great deal of sense why there's a separate discipline and separate group of people who are local SEOs because, well, the algorithm is different. It's a whole separate area specialization. There's Google Business Profile, you have to know the ins and outs of that. There's getting your profile, your business listing, suspended accidentally and then reinstated. That's a whole separate discipline of SEO. So, it makes a great deal of sense why there is a separate discipline called local SEO and local SEOs who do local SEO. Now, once such area of SEO that's emerged over the last few years is eComm SEO or eCommerce SEO.

Question is should eComm SEO be a separate area of SEO? I recall having a conversation with Tory Gray over at Gray Dot, and her take was, Well, eComm SEO, it's pretty much not that different from regular SEO, just more focused on the regular SEO tasks and greater concentration. So, I don't know, I guess you could slice ... I mean, you could break it down like this. Does eCommerce mean, eCommerce SEO, mean that you just need to be better at certain more common SEO tasks? Or is it a totally different mindset and a totally different outlook, with its own unique considerations? Crystal?

Crystal Carter:

I think it is. I think it's very unique. I think there's a reason why people look for SEOs who have eCommerce specialty. I think that it has to do with the type of content that you're dealing with. So, for instance, if you have an eCommerce website that is selling popcorn, like different varieties of popcorn, for instance, since we were talking about being corny, then I think that you're going to have lots of different products that are pretty much the same. So, a lot of your content is going to be very, very similar and you're going to need to differentiate them, but also make sure that they show in a sort of similar category of products at the same time.

And so, you have to deal with categorization in a different way. You have to deal with duplicate content in a different way. You also have the responsibility of managing lots of user transactions. So, users need to be able to complete a purchase on an eCommerce site. So, this is great for SEOs because it's really easy to show ROI. If you do something on the blog, then you can track it to a basket somewhere. You can say, "Right, well that blog had an assisted conversion for this campaign," et cetera, et cetera. And that's all great. But it also means that from a technical point of view, you have to think about making sure that all of those things are tracked correctly and are linking up and working through, in a way that you don't have to think about when you're, say working in a lead gen space, or working in a publishing space, where there are no transactions that are taking place on the website. There's also the security factor. So people don't think about it, but eCommerce sites are essentially YMYL sites, your money or your life, because people are putting in their credit card details on your website.

And if you have a loyalty scheme for instance, and they're also storing those details, people will have ... they'll store content and they'll store information about people and things like that. So, there's lots of things to consider. Lots of moving parts within an eCommerce website, which doesn't necessarily exist on a site that is purely more of brochure site where you're, say, publishing blogs about, I don't know, philosophy, or the stars, or whatever it may be. And you're essentially publishing content and you're looking at your traffic and that's it. That's all people are doing, people are looking at content or consuming content when people are actually carrying out a transaction. There's a whole different set of SEO responsibilities involved.

Mordy Oberstein:

So, this will be a good lesson for the SEO community as a whole. I respectfully disagree.

Crystal Carter:

What?

Mordy Oberstein:

That's okay. Well, I agree a lot. Wait, let me ... being hyperbolic, I agree with a lot of what you just said. I pretty much agree with everything you just said from a different point of view. Well, accept for one thing. I agree that there's a lot of different things that are going to come up because you're working on an eComm site. There's things you're going to have to deal with from anything from page fast and fast navigation to, as you mentioned, to tracking what's happening differently than you would say, with a blog. Although that's possible that a lot of those things also come up if you're working on a blog site, but probably not with the same frequency, or focus, or complexity. So, I agree with what you're saying, but I think, okay, to what extent is it really that different except for the YMYL thing, then I really disagree.

Yes, I agree, it's YMYL. I have to agree. Google said it's YMYL. However, if you look at the rank fluctuation data going way back from all the data providers, you have health, you have finance, and you have shopping. Shopping doesn't show the same level of fluctuations as let's say, health or finance. Because content-wise, it's not YMYL. I think Google, to throw a John Mueller at you, has actually said that, but I got to find that for you, otherwise I'm talking out of my ...

So, I agree with you. I think though that yes, if you're saying that in eComm, these things are way more in focus, but is that totally different than regular SEO?

Crystal Carter:

Yes, because of the moving parts. So, I agree that there's absolutely fundamentals that are transferrable. However, if you don't know how to manage product feeds, for instance, and if you don't know how to deal with Google Merchant and you don't know how to manage all of the images that are required for every single product and have to manage the schema markup for that.

Mordy Oberstein:

That was my next point. I was going to come around and say, I used to really disagree with this. I used to be like with Tory Gray, where like, eComm is the same, what are you talking about? Whatever. However, because you have things like Google Merchant Center and because the SERP itself is fundamentally changed on the eComm side, I am tending to move to your camp on this.

Crystal Carter:

Right, yeah. And I think that Google has-

Mordy Oberstein:

SERP is fundamentally different.

Crystal Carter:

Well, and also think the SERP is fundamentally different, there's an entirely different dedicated feed. Google treats it differently. So, they've created new shopping experiences online that have trends and all sorts of things. And also, the sites are configured differently. So, they're configured for distribution, with data feeds and things like that. And Google has an entirely separate, unique set of guidelines, specifically around eCommerce because of all of these different requirements. And with regards to the ranking fluctuations, I think probably most websites that are trading online, if you think about a big retailer, like a say, Zara, or Walmart, or Amazon, a lot of the baseline requirements for YMYL in place just in order to comply with legal requirements for selling online and locally as well. So, I think that that element of the YMYL part of it, is this an actually a safe place to put in your credit card details, I think should be fairly standard for most websites. I think that dodgy sellers will tend not to rank very well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah and that is the fundamental difference, where shopping and say health are both YMYL and from the shopping point of view, getting the YMYL is, as you mentioned, relatively not that difficult, but on a health site it is. And that's because on a health site, the content is the YMYL. Where in the eComm site, it's the shopping experience that's the YMYL. So, you need to get the content right on the health site at a way different level, more detailed level than you would want to say on the shopping site. Because the shopping site, there is a product description and the product header, it's the shopping experience and how that functions that's the YMYL part. But yeah, and just to go back to the SERP part, in case you're not familiar, if you search for, I don't know, buy a new laptop, the SERP for that looks fundamentally different than, I don't know, what are the stars in Orion's Belt?

And it looks very similar to a way the local SERP would look, where if you search for a pizza near me, where that SERP is very unique, the eComm SERP has become extremely unique. Whereas now, and in the past, by the way, you had PLAs, you had product listing ads and they're still there, but now you have organic carousels, even on desktop, it's Google pulling in, listing some Google's Merchant Center, Google Shopping onto the main SERP. So, if you're ranking 789 for buy new jeans, no one's seeing you because that shows underneath that massive carousel product listings.

Crystal Carter:

Right, exactly. And I think that this has to do with Google trying to make sure that the eCommerce experience on the SERP is very similar to an eCommerce experience for shopping, so that it's easy for people to see which things they can buy and so that the people think of it as a destination. I think with Google's appeal for this, has to do with some of the ways that people are searching.

People have done a lot of studies around this and people don't always go to Google first for eCommerce queries. People will sometimes go to other websites for eCommerce queries. And so, Google is looking to be competitive with those sites and they're trying to make their SERP more like those sites. And in order to do that, they have a lot of mechanics behind them, different feeds and different category classifications, and different information behind the content, in order to make sure that they can serve it locally, so they can serve it on Google Shopping. So they can serve it in lots of different ways. And you have to configure your website in a certain way in order to be eligible for those features. Google has specific requirements so that you can show in Google Shopping and so that you can show in local inventory ads as well, that sort of thing. And making your website eligible for that is a specific tactic that you have to do as an eCommerce SEO. And it's something that's almost essential for eCommerce websites, in order to perform.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, so that's why fundamentally, I think I'm moving more to your camp because the SERP is fundamentally shifted in a way where you have to have a specialization in eComm to really understand what's happening in that space and to understand how to utilize the SERP because, and to what you mentioned, I think it's important people to realize Google's probably biggest competitor at this point in my personal opinion is Amazon. The web is becoming more eComm-centric. Google realizes that people are going and bypassing Google, they're going to Amazon and Google's doing whatever it can to take away that dynamic and things are going to be ... We're going to be talking about this in a few moments in our what's ... is this new section? Because this SERP is fundamentally shifting very, very quickly because of this.

So honestly, if I had to offer you my top eComm SEO tip, if we watch what's happening on the results page itself, see what's there. If you're, I don't know, you're selling jeans, type in buy new jeans or whatever it is that you're selling, and actually look at what's showing up and how the SERP is formatted, because that's going to clue you in as to what you should be doing and if whether or not rankings are actually meaningful or not.

Oh by the way, another point of order before we wrap this up and just a mistake I see all the time, all, all, all the time, Google can't read your texts and images. Google can only read text, text. So, if you have a really nice image, that's got really fancy calligraphy or whatever, and it's all talking about your products. And I've seen this by the way, with shipping details, order specifications instead of having actual text, it's in an image that you just upload to the page. Google can't read any of that. So please, if you're operating an eComm site, you're ... Yeah, eComm SEO, I'm going to dive into that, get rid of all your images, use actual text.

Crystal Carter:

And PDFs. They can read PDFs but they don't call them in the same way. So absolutely, make sure that any of your things are available on there as well. I think that Google's definitely moving towards visual search, but certainly not for understanding texts, but certainly not for your Ts and Cs at all.

Mordy Oberstein:

You have to write it out. You can have the image there also fine, whatever, looks nice, but you have to have text. But who also knows a lot about what moves the needle for eCommerce SEO, Kristina Azarenko, which is why she's here to tell us what moves the needle for eCommerce SEO.

Kristina Azarenko:

Well, I'd say that when it comes to technical SEO for eCommerce, there are many things in play. But 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. So, implementing internal linking is one of the best technical SEO tactics that will bring online stores results.

Now, how do you do this at scale? Because we don't want to spend lots of time on implementing this manually on every single page. That's just not sustainable. So, we want to do this at scale. And when it comes to internal linking, what you can do, you can use link blocks depending on your page template.

For example, level one category links to other level one categories as well as to the level two categories that belong to it. Then the level two category links back to level one category it belongs to, plus to other level two categories under this umbrella. So, think about it as a spider web that links all relevant pages of the website. And let's take a product page as an example. Then on a product page, you can have breadcrumbs linking to the categories and subcategories this product belongs to. And it's super cool for user experience as well because people want to know where they are, when they land on a product page. Then you can have link blocks featuring upsells and related products and I don't know, other products in this category, the imagination is endless honestly.

So, it's a win-win situation here because it helps with internal linking on the one hand. And on the other hand, it helps to increase the average card value as well. So, use power of internal linking for sure. When it comes to eCommerce SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Kristina Azarenko, follow her on Twitter. Thank you so much, Kristina. She's at A-Z-A-R-C-H-I-C-K on Twitter. Will link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. She's a wonderful SEO, always putting out tons of insights and we really appreciate her taking the time to share her thoughts in eCommerce SEO with us.

Crystal Carter:

Thanks, Kristina.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thanks, Kristina. Well, speaking of eCommerce, SEO and the SERP, like we mentioned before, I know we hinted at what we're going to talk about now earlier. Well, here it is, everything ... Back in the day, when I used to really track SERP features very, very heavily as part of my job at the time, and a lot of what Google was changing back in the day, so we're saying, I don't know, circa 2016, 2017, even through 2018, was all about local SEO, local pack changes, local knowledge panel changes, local finder changes, a test over here, a test over there, hotel listings, testing that out and keeping track of all these things that Google was updating and changing, whether it was this button or this feature on the results page, was a way of understanding, hey, this is where Google's focused.

Well, that focus has changed because today the focus seems to be all in on eComm. Google keeps testing this and updating that, and announcing this. And it's all really ... Not all, but a very large majority, in my opinion, is about eCommerce. So, this is a very special or fun little version of a segment we call Is this new? Because none of it's new. I mean, right now, none of it is new.

Crystal Carter:

It's not new.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's all been around for a little bit, but it's all been reported on. But a lot of us might not be familiar, unless you're a ... I'll call it an SEO geek who's keeping up on this particular stuff regularly. And it's very particular type of SEO geek who's doing it, such as myself.

Crystal Carter:

His name is Mordy Oberstein.

Mordy Oberstein:

His name is Mordy. There are people out like Brian Fresberland, Brodie Clark, Glenn Gabe, Lily Ray, Marie Haynes. There are people out there-

Mordy Oberstein:

... who are really into this stuff. It's like SEO voyeurism. What's changing on the SERP? Aha!

Crystal Carter:

It's like a little scavenger hunt and yeah, it's like-

Mordy Oberstein:

Love it, so much fun. Is this new? Is this new? But in this case it's not. But unless you're really keeping up on it, you may not know about it, but it's really important to know about. So it's a special eComm version of is this new?

Speaker 4:

Oh, I'm sorry.

Mordy Oberstein:

So, as mentioned, none of it's new. However, I want to point out a few really cool things that have been announced or talked about in the relatively recent pass around eComm. For example, Brian Fresberland caught this one. If it's carousel of items that's pre-owned, check this out. Google was testing a little green icons like a leaf. With pre-owned next to it.

Crystal Carter:

Right, which I think is actually really good. And I think this is probably them looking at how to compete with say, Facebook Marketplace. And there's a lot of pre-owned marketplaces, like Vinted is another one that is an app that does that sort of thing. I think they've given a green leaf to encourage people from an environmental point of view, but it's also useful, so people can understand that it's a secondhand thing, but it's still great.

Mordy Oberstein:

And it's also good if you're somebody who's selling something secondhand, instead of going to whatever you were going to before, I don't know, I've never really selled stuff secondhand in a long time. I guess, Facebook would be the main place for this. Oh, maybe I'll go and put it on ... I'll think of Google as a way to bring in traffic to sell my product. So, it's a signal to people selling stuff at the same time.

Crystal Carter:

Right, absolutely. I think it's a great opportunity and I think it's something that should help with the SERP and should help people to filter as well. It's a nice option to have it to be able to filter. If you think on eBay for instance, you can see brand new or you can see secondhand and that sort of thing.

Mordy Oberstein:

And Google's done this before, they have the ... for example, in hotel listings, you can see a separate filter for rentals, like Airbnb rentals. So, it's not a new thing for Google as a concept. Another one, Google announces officially that they're going to have coupon codes and you can copy and paste within a Google Business profile. So, if you're Macy's and you have a coupon code, you can list it there you there'll be a special button. It's already been live in some markets, where you just click on it, put in the coupon. It's a way of advertising your coupons on Google.

Crystal Carter:

Love coupons. I am entirely-

Mordy Oberstein:

Do you remember going to the store and cutting them out?

Crystal Carter:

Yes, yes. You'd get the newspaper and they was always like ... Pillsbury was always like, "Oh yeah." Right, Pillsbury were like, "You want cinnamon muffins?" I'm like, "Yes, I would love a cinnamon roll." It's just like you can get that cinnamon roll for really cheap. You're like, "Okay, well thank you very ... "

Mordy Oberstein:

But it's again, it's another way. Oh, the coupon code's right there. I'm not going to go to Amazon. I'm going to go to Google, check out, see if there's a coupon there. I'll clip it, use it. Good to go.

Crystal Carter:

I think this is another example of how eCommerce SEO often includes an ad element. So for instance, Google Merchant Center, they change around the requirements, but for a while it was a case where if you wanted to get on Google Merchant and have free shopping listings, you'd have to essentially make your site compliant for ads. Even if you weren't serving ads, you'd have to make your site compliant for ads in order to be active on Google Merchant. I think that elements like this, the coupon codes, you said it would go through Google Business profile for instance, that is essentially something that's a bit advertisingy but is going to help you get clicks, help you get conversions. And it's something that eCommerce SEOs would need to think about.

I think it also is an example of some of the overlap between the disciplines. So in SEO, very often you won't stay in one lane as an SEO, you'll do a little bit of eComm, you'll do a little bit of local as well because I've done it before where I've worked with eComm clients and we were looking at both their local activity to drive in-store traffic, and also their online activity at the same time. And one supports the other.

And those coupons, for instance, if they're adding it to Google Business profile, that means that they, they'll have a bricks and mortar location and that's something that will give them some visibility. And so, that's something where you would see an overlap. And it's also a great example of some of the elements that you have to think about as an eCommerce SEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, so the last one I want to talk about is Google announced Price Insights. Price Insights are coming for products. I actually like this, I love this because I think this is where Google's going to beat Amazon. Not that I'm rooting for one over the other, but if I'm watching Google try to do this and they're not being as successful as I think they want to be yet, maybe this is where it's going to come from. And you've seen price insights all over the SERP before. For example, flights. You search for a flight, Google will tell you that this is generally cheaper than it usually is. Or for hotels, the same kind of thing. And that's going to be coming for products, where you'll be able to see, yep, it's usually a thousand dollars but now it's here on Walmart for 700. That's a deal.

And this is how Google took down, by the way, sites like Expedia, they didn't take them down. This is how Google won that battle. Sites like Expedia, Travelocity, or whatever, they're all about getting you to convert, get that flight in, book the ticket through us, we're going to get the money. And Google's like, "You know what we should do? Let's offer tons of insights around travel." And Expedia must have data about this, but they don't show it and Google are like, "We're just going to show it. We're going to use that." And they fill the need that no one was doing. And I think with products, it's the same thing.

You go to Amazon, I don't know how much this normally costs. I don't know if it's a good price. I mean, I kind of know because I've been looking for a while, if I'm tracking it mentally, intuitively. But here's Google's going to do it and they're already doing it a little bit. So if you Google something, I don't know, Dell Inspiron 15, Google will list a model there and it'll have a whole ... a mobile, a whole bunch of listings where you can get it Amazon, Office Depot, Walmart, and it'll put in green the lowest price and it'll say usually X. So in this case it's saying in green on Amazon, it's $466 and it's usually $479. Those insights, the more they do, it's going to get people to go, "You know what, maybe I will buy it from Amazon, but first I'm going to go to Google and check out what the price insights are."

Crystal Carter:

Right, and I think that this is them using the data that they have. So, they'll be able to see what's going on across the web overall in a way that other folks will not be able to see. And they'll also have the information about the RRP from the SEO markup, because this is the other thing, within eCommerce for certain products, they'll have certain specifications. So, for instance, if you have apparel, if you're selling clothes, you have to categorize things in a certain way. You have to tag things in a certain way. You have to have certain attributes present on your page and they'll make those standard, so that they can enable these kinds of features.

So they'll have that information available. And it's something that consumers love that saves you so much time of having to go back and forth to 17 different, sites rather than just being able to see it all in one place. That's going to save me a lot of time. I'm totally the kind of person who would shop around for three hours before making that decision. And so, if I can see it on one tab, that's really, really useful.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm looking at it right here. My Apple MacBook Pro 16. Google's telling me typically is $2,099 to $2,699. And it lists a bunch of places where I can get it and the prices.

Crystal Carter:

Right, and it looks like you can sort it, move things up and down as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, you could dive in deeper. So here I'm clicking on Best Buy it's telling me what the normal ... there's free shipping from December 5th through December 7th and what the taxes are and there's whatever. And yeah, you can expand each one of these and get more information. It looks like it's an up down, so it's an expansion. There we go. Really, it's only going to get deeper and it's only going to get more prolific is one of my favorite words.

Crystal Carter:

It's a good word.

Mordy Oberstein:

Is a good word. It's a money word.

Crystal Carter:

It's a money word. It's a $5 word.

Mordy Oberstein:

Cha-ching. So is it new? None of this is new. It's going to be new with the Price Insights, it's going to be more and more and more. We're just seeing the very, very beginning of this, so I would keep a ... If you're in the eComm space, I would keep an eye on that. So it's new, but it's not new. But you may not have known about it. So for you, it's new.

Crystal Carter:

New to you, which is true.

Mordy Oberstein:

So this is new.

Speaker 5:

Yay.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know what else is new? News. News is always new. Otherwise, it wouldn't be news? It'd be old news, not news.

Crystal Carter:

Olds. It would be olds not news.

Mordy Oberstein:

Olds, Not new. So, here is a very new, it is new. The snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. I don't know where to start. There's so much news this week. Or in pop culture terms you might say, "Holy abundance of SEO news, Batman." Where do I even start? Well, let's start with this from Barry Schwartz over his search engine Roundtable. Google gives official names, some of SERP features with visual elements gallery.

I love this thing. It's basically a visual breakdown of the Google results page, thereby introducing official and new terminology. For example, what we've always called an organic result, is now being called a text result. I have been screaming about this since literally 2019 when I interviewed Barry Schwartz on another SEO podcast. There needs to be formal names for these things because what I call it and what you call it, what that person calls it may actually be different. But now there are official names for these things. Check out the link of the show notes so you can see the visual gallery and understand what Google is calling all of the things.

Okay, onwards on our path towards SEO news glory, this one from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google December 2022 link spam update rolling out now. I mean, it might be complete by the time you hear this, but time of the recording it's rolling out now. Yes, another spam update. No, you're not wrong. Google did release one in October and this however, is really interesting because this time Google says quote, "SpamBrain is our AI-based spam prevention system. Besides using it to detect spam directly, it can now detect both sites buying links and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links."

Does this have teeth? I don't know. I really hope so. The tracking tools have been pretty quiet, but with the spam update, that makes a lot of sense. So, the jury is still out. I would love to see this have some teeth. Either way, don't buy links.

Last up. An update to the quality reader's guidelines, the guidelines given to manual evaluators so that Google can use it to check its algo against some real human input. This time Google has added another E to E-A-T. So E-A-T is expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. But now it's not E-A-T, it's E-E-A-T. So it's not eat, it's eeat. I'm sorry for that. From the Lily Ray over Search Engine Land, E-E-A-T. Oh, it's a mouthful. E-E-A-T. And major updates to Google's quality radar guidelines. The new E here, by the way, is for experience, as in having some. Google has already added having firsthand experience to the guidelines around its product review update, the algorithm guidelines around the product review update, which makes me personally feel that Google is looking to see how well some of its algorithmic abilities are as compared to real human input. That's just my theory. That's just my theory.

Anyway, have a look over the show notes. See what Lily wrote up. She really compares the old guidelines to the new guidelines. Take away some insights, create your own theories, and that'll do it for this week's snappy news. And we're back from the snappiest of snappiest news, wasn't that snappy?

Crystal Carter:

It's so snappy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Absolutely snappy.

Crystal Carter:

That's literally the snappiest news I've ever heard.

Mordy Oberstein:

Other than last week's snappy news.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, which was also snappy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Also snappy.

Crystal Carter:

And it might be snappy next week, I'm guessing?

Mordy Oberstein:

I love snapping.

Crystal Carter:

Snap, like the Jets and the Sharks. (singing)

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, the teachers ... I used to applaud the other teachers when they said something at school-wide meetings, you do the little snap thing.

Crystal Carter:

Did you go to a school for poetry?

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I was teaching at a public school in Baltimore.

Crystal Carter:

Well, was everyone poets? Because that's how poets clap, with snaps.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know. I don't know, it was a thing. Teachers are weird, we're just weird to be honest with you. Anyway, before we wrap it all up, and because we're talking about eCommerce and when it comes to talking about eCommerce and SEO. This week's follow of the week, so you can learn more about SEO awesomeness would be, the one, the only member of Wix's own SEO advisory board, Luke Carthy, @MrLukeCarthy over on Twitter.

Crystal Carter:

And Luke is fantastic. He's a great person to follow. He does talks, he does podcasts, he does these great deep dives into things that he would like to see from big retailers around eCommerce. And he's a fount of knowledge with regards to eCommerce. And yeah, he's a fantastic follow on Twitter and all of the other social media channels as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

And what I like about Luke is he talks about SEO and we'll talk about eComm at the same time. So, if you go to his website, which will link to his show notes obviously, he'll talk about SEO stuff but also talk about general eComm stuff. It's a nice follow-up because you're getting the best of both worlds. For example, on the actual Wix SEO Hub, he wrote about product descriptions, not from SEO point of view per se, but in general, about writing the best product description. So, that's why I think he's a great follow.

Crystal Carter:

He's a great follow.

Mordy Oberstein:

He's a great follow. So follow Luke @ MrLukeCarthy, M-R-L-U-K-E-C-A-R-T-H-Y. We'll link to another show notes, over on Twitter. And that's going to do it for this week's SERP's Up podcast.

Crystal Carter:

Thanks for joining us.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, that was money, right?

Crystal Carter:

That was money. I think we secured the bag.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's in the bag.

Crystal Carter:

It's in the bag.

Mordy Oberstein:

This episode is in the bag.

Crystal Carter:

Oh.

Mordy Oberstein:

More jokes, all the time. It never stops. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with new episode. We dive into the deep dive, or not deep dive depending on how you look at it, that are site audits. How far down the wormhole do you need to go when auditing your next site? We'll talk about next week.

Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts. Or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinars on the Wix SEO 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, and SEO. Ka-ching.