Learning how to
learn SEO

Mordy Oberstein:

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

Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERPs Up podcast. 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 our Illustrious head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, all you fantastic SEO people.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're back.

Crystal Carter:

I'm back. I was in California. I went to my homeland.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh really? How was Mars? Just kidding.

Crystal Carter:

Women are from Venus, Mordy, don't you remember?

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, sorry. I didn't read that.

Crystal Carter:

No. Yeah. I was in California, and I did some surfing while I was there, actually, which was quite exciting.

Mordy Oberstein:

So now I'm the odd person out.

Crystal Carter:

We got to get you on a board, Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Do I still fit in this podcast that now I have no surfing experience?

Crystal Carter:

You surfed the wild waves of the interwebs.

Mordy Oberstein:

Of the web. I can still be here?

Crystal Carter:

Sure. Of course. All are welcome.

Mordy Oberstein:

Awesome. Well, pleasure to have you back.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you. It's nice to be back. I really, really did enjoy it. It's good to be back doing the things that we do.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sweet. Well, the things that we do are SERPs Up podcast, which is brought to you by Wix, where you have the log. Server log reports, right in your own backyard, without you having to do anything to access them. Check out our bot log reports in the Wix analytics with full on prebuilt graphs and charts.

Crystal Carter:

Log, log, log.

Mordy Oberstein:

And log a logs.

Crystal Carter:

Do you remember that from Ren and Stimpy?

Mordy Oberstein:

I love Ren and... Right. The log song.

Crystal Carter:

Log rolls downstairs, rolls over your chairs, rolls over your neighbor's dog. It's good for your back and fits on a cat. I don't know what it says anyway. That's what I think of when I think-

Mordy Oberstein:

Such a lost relic of our past.

[00:01:58] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up?

Today's show is sponsored, not just by Wix, but by the letter L, as in learn, because we're learning how to learn about SEO today. We're going to get into what you should be doing to learn the ways of the SEO from mindset to matter. We'll help you create your SEO curriculum with a little help of our friends, cue Joe Cocker from 1969's Woodstock. Anyway, Luke Davis shares his approach for scaling up the SEO ladder. Plus we'll get meta by analyzing what does it even mean to know SEO? What does it mean?

Crystal Carter:

What does it mean? What does it mean?

Mordy Oberstein:

No one knows.

Crystal Carter:

Let's really get into it. Who am I? What are we even doing?

Mordy Oberstein:

What are we doing here?

Crystal Carter:

Who, where, what?

Mordy Oberstein:

The letter L.

Crystal Carter:

The letter L.

Mordy Oberstein:

And of course we have some snappy news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. It's rocking and rolling on this episode of the SERPs Up podcast. I'm saying rocket and rolling by the way, I'm not just being cliche. I just watched the Elvis movie. It was amazing.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, was it?

Mordy Oberstein:

I finally watched it, it was so good.

Crystal Carter:

Nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

So definitely check out Elvis, but we should definitely check out, by the way, if you're listening now, but didn't listen last week is last week's episode. Cause if you were with us last week, George Nguyen and I took up how to know good SEO advice from bad SEO advice. Well, now that we've helped you weed out the charlatans and all the snake oil out there in SEO, how should you actually approach SEO learning? What mindset should you have? What actions should you take? What should your SEO curriculum look like? Because SEO's kind of a bit unique, especially when it comes to learning the craft that is SEO.

[00:03:38] Focus Topic of the Week:  Learning to Learn About SEO

So today we are learning to learn. Well, we're learning to learn how to learn about SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Brought to you by the letter L.

Mordy Oberstein:

Brought to you by the letter L. By the letter L for all you Sesame Street folks. So Crystal, where do we start with this? Because SEO learning is really unique and it is really different than anything I ever learned before.

Crystal Carter:

The thing that I always think about when I'm thinking about learning how to learn is learning how you learn. And it's very important to think about your own personal process. It does not have to be the same as anyone else's. It does not have to be what someone recommended to you on a podcast or wherever. It needs to be something that's very unique to you.

So my personal general rule of thumb, I tend to fall down rabbit holes and then scrape my way back out of them having made a lot more sense of it. And I normally do this where sort of I'll jump straight into something until I get stuck. And then I'll figure out why I got stuck and figure out how to get back out. I tend to use a lot of YouTube and I tend to spend a lot of time in the technical documentation for whatever I'm doing because I spend a lot of time wrangling tech SEO, and wrangling website configurations and things like that. So that generally speaking is the way that I go. And when I say YouTube, I don't mean two minute videos. I mean find two hour tutorial that walks you through all of this something. Find a two hour conversation from a symposium somewhere or from a conference that talks you through all of those different things. And that's my personal methodology.

The second thing I would say, for anybody who particularly is interested in learning technical SEO is to learn your CMS. Whatever your CMS of choice is, learn your CMS. There are so many different tools and the people who make the CMS taking Wix as an example, will provide you with lots of different tools to help you to learn that CMS. And it's a bit like if you were trying to learn an instrument, you wouldn't just try to learn all the instruments. You would learn how to play the bassoon, or you would learn how to play the cello, or you would learn how to play the didgeridoo or whatever it is. You wouldn't seek to learn all of the different instruments at once, but in the process of learning the didgeridoo or the harmonica or whatever it is, you would learn how to learn an instrument and you would learn skills that are applicable to other instruments later on.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm so tempted to make the didgeridoo sound. I don't know how to do that, but I really want to make one.

Crystal Carter:

Something like that. But yeah, it's really important to think about that. So taking Wix as an example, we've got Facebook groups that can help you learn about the CMS. We've got documentation, there're forums, we've got our learning hub, for instance, where you can go and learn about that CMS. And another reason why this is really useful is because you need to be strategic about which things you're learning. So if you are working with clients who are all using the same CMS, it makes sense to learn that in CMS. If you're working with clients who are using lots of different CMSs, because you might be like, I work at an agency, I don't get to pick the CFS for my clients. They just show up and I just get whatever I'm given.

Well actually that's not entirely true. I've done this, working agency side I've said to my agency, "There's too many, I've got too many. I would like to specialize on all of the eCommerce clients. Or I would like to specialize on all of the ones that are using this particular CMS, or I would like to... Just give me everybody who's using that."

And the reason why is because it allows you to refine your methodology. So if you learned how to optimize for one particular SEO tactic on a given CMS, then you can roll that out across everybody who's using that CMS. And every time you roll it out, you can refine it and refine it and refine it and refine it further. So it allows you to grow, but it allows you to grow exponentially and to learn that much more. So let's say by the time you get down to the fifth one, you go, oh actually I should have done that better on the first one. So you can go back and do it again. And you can see the impact and see all of the efforts and to that point I would say, learn by doing, get involved, get your hands dirty. That's my advice for learning how to learn.

Mordy Oberstein:

And by the way, that could be very complicated. Could be very simple. You can just spin up a website and start playing around with it.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's usually my first advice to people is take a website, get a free... You don't have to pay for the full subscription. If you don't want to do that yet, just spin up a free website and start building.

Crystal Carter:

And there's lots of things that you can do. Basically your goal with SEO is to try to bend the internet to your will. That is what you want to do. You want-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's not sensible at all.

Crystal Carter:

No, but basically you want to be able to say, it's like calling a shot if you're playing pool or something. You're like, I'm going to put it right there. And people are like, no, you aren't. And you're like, yes, I am. Watch me work. And that's essentially what you want to do. So whatever goal you have. So let's say you want to get a bunch of people to come and look at your blog. See if you can do that, set a goal and see if you can do that. See if you want to get a bunch of people to come to your, I don't know, say you're having a clam bake or something and you're advertising it on Facebook or various other things. See if you can get a bunch of people to come and sign up and see how that works. Get involved. Do some.

Mordy Oberstein:

And don't be scared. Lean in. This is my advice to you. If you're trying to learn SEO, if you have a point or a topic or whatever it is that you're not exactly confident in lean into that. Don't run away from it. That's the thing you should be researching. I feel like everyone has gaps.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

And if you're learning SEO, whatever stage in the SEO world you're in, everyone has gaps. It's about being able to recognize, okay, right now this is a gap I don't fully understand. I need to now go research this. If you're creating a curriculum for yourself, I'm saying this as a former teacher, the biggest skill you can have is being self-aware of knowing when you don't know something and then having the proactive stance of going out there and being I am going to find the answer. It's frustrating because when you start out doing that, you might find the answer and understand 70% of it. And as you go along the next time, you'll understand another 10% more of that then another 10% more. So don't think you have to acquire all of that knowledge, what you don't have, in one sitting or one shot.

Crystal Carter:

No.

Mordy Oberstein:

Look for the answer, get the information, whatever you get out of it, great. Move on. Come back to it again another time it'll inevitably swing back around another time. You'll get it a little bit more refined the next time around.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. I saw a talk on greatness and they were talking about figure skaters, people who went on to be Olympian figure skaters and people who were very, very good figure skaters, but maybe didn't make it to Olympic gold medalist status or whatever. And they said the difference was the people who made it to be Olympic rockstar, Brian Boitano, shout out to Kristi Yamaguchi, my childhood hero.

Mordy Oberstein:

Scott Hamilton.

Crystal Carter:

So those folks, they practice the jumps they can't do. So they look at their self and they say, I can't do the triple lutz. I can't do the quadruple axle or whatever, I'm not even sure if that's a move. But they look at that and they say, I can't do that. And they practice that until they can. And then they move onto the next thing that they can't do. And they practice that until they can. And they fall over lots in between, but they keep practicing until they can do it.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's why mindset matters so much. And particularly in SEO learning, I'll quote field of dreams, "Go the distance."

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the mindset of going the distance, of taking it on on yourself, because what's weird about SEO is, and I know that there our courses out there, even if you're part of a college course, a digital marketing, they'll probably cover SEO to some degree. There are some not so great SEO courses out there, and we talked about this last week and there's some good SEO courses, but it doesn't matter whether it's a course or a podcast or a webinar or a blog or an SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. You're not going to get everything you need to get out of it. That's not possible. It's not how SEO was built. It's not the kind of thing where you take a course. I'm certified. I got it. We're good to go.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the kind of thing you have to take ownership of and put the extra effort. Nick Leroy, who was on our SEO advisory board one time said the difference between a good SEO and a great SEO is the great SEO will take the extra time to learn more on their own.

Crystal Carter:

Oh yeah. And as I said, falling down rabbit holes and going, what? You find something, someone asks you a question and you're like, I don't know. How come I don't know that. And you just keep picking at it until you know how to do it or something, or there's a new update or something and the client you have doesn't have that update or you get a new client in a new vertical that maybe you don't know about. We were just talking with a very prominent SEO just recently and I mentioned some company and he knew it right off the bat. I was like, I've never heard of this company and he knew all about it. I was like, you've worked in that vertical before.

Mordy Oberstein:

The only reason the other company you mentioned, I actually knew them, because I used to use them for my natural gas stove in New York. That was it.

Crystal Carter:

Ok. But yeah, these are the things. And then you end up learning lots of random things and suddenly you get really into forklifts. You didn't know that you were really into forklifts, but it turns out that you have this client that's into forklifts and you get really into learning forklifts because not only is it a question of learning about the actual tools and the techniques and the methodology that you need, you also need to learn, particularly with clients, you need to learn how to learn that vertical, very quickly.

Mordy Oberstein:

You have to learn their niche.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Exactly. And how to recognize what's good and what will be of value to customers. And there are things that are transferable about that. But I sometimes think about in the matrix where he says, "Oh, I need to find a helicopter." And the guy goes, "Can you find a helicopter? Yes. Now I can." And it's sort of like that. Yeah, I know kung fu. Absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

I just want to make one last point for listening to this a great way to keep up with learning and learn about the ecosystem overall is follow the news religiously in SEO. One, it'll help you realize, Hey, I didn't know that. And helps you kickstart your own investigations. Oh, Barry Schwartz wrote an SEO round table that Google now said this, I don't even know what this is. Let me now go research this. And it helps you get a feel for what's happening in SEO. So even though there are small little stories, it kind of builds up through a kind of osmosis kind of process about learning SEO. So definitely do that.

Now, if you're looking to understand, SEO is constantly changing as I just mentioned, it's why you should follow the news, then

[00:13:16] Focus Topic Guest: Luke Davis

check out Luke Davis technical SEO consultant, extraordinaire out of the UK, as he's going to help you understand that SEO is constantly changing. How do you up skill when you need to learn something new for a client or goal? Here's 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 the subject and kind of 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. 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.

One of the biggest things I've upskilled over the last few years has to be Python. I saw a lot of other colleagues in the industry making these amazing things at the time. And FOMO really hit me hard so I decided to start learning October 2019 and then documented my journey in a Twitter thread. Since then, I've written countless scripts for work and leisure and improved my understanding of things such as automation and LP, machine learning, and then talked about in various podcasts and webinars. And people have even said that they've enjoyed the thread and inspired them to learn too. I'd recommend learning out loud if that's comfortable for you. I know it's not for everyone. I mean, I only started doing it to keep myself accountable, but eventually kind of became something like a mini beacon of learning for other people and realizing that it showed them that it doesn't have to be scary to learn after all.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you, Luke. Very much appreciative of that. Really cool insights.

Crystal Carter:

I'm so glad to hear from Luke because he has such an enthusiasm for learning. He is somebody who, if you go to his Twitter account, which is @LukeDavisSEO, you'll see that he has a pinned tweet that says, "Right, I'm going to learn Python next week. I'm going to do it. Yes I am." And then that pinned tweet is a thread that he's been updating for two or three years. And it shows his entire journey of going from complete Python newb to being a Pythonista all the way through and that mindset that you were talking about that, that determination to learn the thing and get to grips with it is something that he absolutely has. So it's great to hear from Luke about his approach and how he moves forward with learning.

Mordy Oberstein:

That is really cool. I didn't even know he had that thread. I got to check that out.

Crystal Carter:

It's really awesome. It's a beauty to behold. I walked through dust. So I was like, this is amazing. And he has times where he's like, oh, I didn't do it last week. Okay. I'm back on it now, that sort of thing. Or, oh, I just got this new-

Mordy Oberstein:

It's cool that he's recording that because you will fall and have to get back up.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

I find, maybe this is odd. And maybe we should have done this in reverse order, but this is not how this podcast works. Understanding how to learn about SEO, you kind of need to understand what does it mean to know SEO, which is a whole debate among SEOs, which we'll probably get to in a few seconds, but we're going to have to go deep on this one. We're going meta on this. We're going conceptual on this one. 

[00:16:32] Deep Thoughts with Mordy and Crystal

This is a deep thought with Crystal and Mordy. What does it mean to know SEO? Which sounds so weird. I know SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, of course.

Mordy Oberstein:

Because SEO's one of those weird things where there's not some sort of official course and there's an actual checklist and now I know it. I'm an astrophysicist, I know all the astrophysics.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. Absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

What does it actually mean to know SEO?

Crystal Carter:

I mean, well, does anyone know SEO?

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, if you go on Twitter, you're probably going to find people like I know SEO and you don't, which is why we're trying to dispel that myth right here right now.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things is SEO is super vast. The reason why I love SEO is it's incredibly vast and there are nooks and crannies and things. I mean, one of my favorite Twitter threads recently was from somebody who was talking about doing SEO for Amish folks who don't use the internet

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes, I saw that. Brandon Schmidt.

Crystal Carter:

What? He set up a podcast that people call into. His clients fax him information.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, they fax in their SEO needs.

Crystal Carter:

That is absolutely incredible. I had no idea. And I thought I knew SEO and I had no idea that that was even a thing. As SEOs it's constantly shifting and it's constantly changing. We're essentially working on shifting sand. You can be going about minding your fantastic SEO business and Google will change something completely different. And they'll be like, oh, we're not accepting that schema anymore. We're accepting this schema now. And the schema you had before, wasn't invalid. They just decided they wanted to change it from one thing to another. And so now you have to go back and do the thing. And so if you just left the SEO and thought that you knew the SEO, then you would not be as optimized as you would be if you were keeping up with it all the time.

Mordy Oberstein:

Like GA4.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, no one knows SEO. No one ever will ever again.

Crystal Carter:

It changes a lot. And also I think Google has so many different... People say, oh, it's a ranking factor. Oh, the Google algorithm. There are many, many, many, many algorithms working in tangent all the time...

Mordy Oberstein:

Sometimes cohesively, sometimes not cohesively together.

Crystal Carter:

Right, in lots of different ways. So the feature snippets are running on one thing, the plain blue links are running on another thing, shopping is running one thing. Yeah, exactly. So there's all different stuff. And Google doesn't even know all the time, which algorithm is doing what. So the idea that you could know SEO, that you could know, all of it...

Mordy Oberstein:

It's kind of silly. For lack of a better word.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I think it's the kind of thing that... I don't know. Erykah Badu once said "The man who knows something knows that he knows nothing at all." And I think that it's very important to think about that. It's okay to say that you don't know it's okay to say-

Mordy Oberstein:

I once said that in a webinar, they didn't like that. It was the truth. I didn't know the answer.

Crystal Carter:

I think it's better to say, I'm not sure. I don't know. You can say in my experience, that is a useful one, because you can say-

Mordy Oberstein:

In my experience, I don't know.

Crystal Carter:

But some of my favorite SEOs will say, that's not my area of expertise.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, it's not.

Crystal Carter:

Speak to this person.

Mordy Oberstein:

And those are the good SEOs, that they're honest. I feel like if you want to say, what does it mean to no SEO? I feel like it means that you have your little corner of the SEO universe and you own that. That's your thing. That's your jam. You've created identity around that. You deep dive into that. That area really speaks to you. You've done your research, you've done your own investigation. And not only that, you've conceptually thought about. And I feel like perhaps you don't talk enough about this, but there is a conceptual underpinning to SEO. And thinking about SEO at the conceptual level helps you to create new ideas, create new approaches, create new segues into doing SEO. And therefore it helps you kind of own that little corner of the SEO world.

So having innovation of your own about how you think about SEO and being into one little specific corner of the SEO world. Not saying you shouldn't have broader knowledge, but having some really souped up awesome uber knowledge about one particular, two particular kinds of verticals in SEO or SERP features or the algorithm or indexing, whatever your jam is. Being able to own that and being like, yes, this is me and I really have an expertise over this. That's what I feel like it means to know SEO. Because you're right, you're never going to know all of it. There is no knowing all of SEO, but there is having identity around, I really like this, I'm really exploring this and I have a really profound, and multi-layered understanding of this particular aspect of SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Hmm. And I think it makes you more efficient because it means that you can build on that. So you can build on the information you know and build on it more and build on it more. So if you've been following algorithms for years, so you have the context of what the algorithm was before and before that and before that, and this allows you to build on that knowledge. So you're not starting from fresh every single time you're writing an article or you're making a deck or you're doing whatever it allows you to build on that and to refine your knowledge and to get better with that. And it's not to say that you can't use some of those skills for some other projects. And it's not to say that it might not evolve at some point, but yeah, as you say, being able to hone in on something that is your particular perspective is absolutely valuable.

Mordy Oberstein:

Totally. It totally will evolve. But once you build on one thing, you're like, oh, okay, now I really want to explore the next logical thing. And it kind of takes you in this weird little journey. Going back to what you said before and just going back to our point about how to learn about SEO or learning how to learn about SEO. The history point is a really good point that I think that you should definitely check out what's happened in the past. If you're new to the industry, go look at the past updates like Panda and Penguin and Caffeine and the Google dance and all that kind of stuff, because it helps you contextualize what's happening now.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Seeing what Google used to do, how they moved away from that helps you understand where they're trying to go now, which I guess, I'll say part of knowing SEO is understanding the ecosystem. Google is a living, breathing ecosystem and understanding that ecosystem is part of knowing SEO.

Crystal Carter:

And I think also something that people forget, we often have conversations about how you also want to know SEO, you need to use the internet. And consciously. If you follow people, some of the best SEOs online, they're constantly sharing screenshots from stuff that they were just doing. They were just looking at a website and they're like, oh, look at this faceted navigation or, oh, they're looking at this website and they're like, oh, your search function is awful or whatever. They're searching for this and they go, oh, look at this. I found this thing on the SERP.

Be conscious, keep your eyes open all the time. I look at websites all the time. And I remember looking at a gym website and I was like, wow, your copy's amazing. And I was just looking for a gym. But understand the craft and think about how you find stuff online. Think about the things that you value from the sites that you really appreciate. Think about how you experience things. Think about how your mom finds information online. I recently was talking to an older aunt and she doesn't even have Chrome on her phone. She just has the Google discover the Google app. She doesn't have Chrome. And I was like, how do you even find websites like this? But it's what came with the phone. The phone comes default.

Mordy Oberstein:

Google gives me the websites. They said, do this.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. So that's a completely different search experience from the search experience that I have. And these are very interesting things to think about. So to also think consciously about how SEO impacts-

Mordy Oberstein:

Your own experience.

Crystal Carter:

Your own experience, the experience of your friends,

Mordy Oberstein:

What's happening as you're surfing the web. Totally. You go to Google, I'm like, wow, that's new. Where did that come from? Right.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a wholly new feature Google threw on the SERP. And I found it by researching the Pittsburgh Steelers, because I wanted to research the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I recently did a talk on visual search and people were like, oh, that's really interesting. I've been using this for years because I have a kid who's really into wildlife stuff. And he's like, what's that caterpillar? And I'm like, I don't know. So I use Google lens. And so I started learning more about Google lens and how all those things work and using the knowledge that I have about other parts of the SEO to help me shape that as a concept. And that's something that you can do. So think about how you use search and think about how that can be applied to different scenarios and how that fits in with your current skill set. And yeah, it's really useful.

Mordy Oberstein:

We're going full circle.

[00:25:07] Snappy News

We've gone from learning about learning about SEO to what does it mean to know SEO back to learning about learning about SEO. If you're not confused already by that, now we're going to help you learn how to learn more about SEO by modeling the learning that we talked about by covering the news. And so here is the snappy news.

Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a lot of Google update news for you. Let's kick it off with Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google September, 2022 product review algorithm update rolling out now. If you remember when Google launched the helpful content update, they said they'll be offering a product review update soon after. What they didn't say, by the way, was that there would be a core update in between, but there was. We'll get to that shortly. Product review updates, target pages, reviewing products that may not really have the best info that are helpful to users. So if you have such a page, you want to make sure that you have actual firsthand experience with the products you are reviewing and can in detail discuss what sets each product apart from each other from the user's point of view and explain things like how different models of the product have evolved over time. Google has some great guidelines, read them. We will link to them in the show notes and the product review update generally takes a few weeks to roll out. So keep an eye on your ranking.

Now speaking of the aforementioned core update, the product review update rolling out, Google then said that the September 22 core update is coming to a close. I actually dove into the data from Semrush on this update and it was actually pretty interesting. So obviously specific sites and particular pages did get hit hard by this September 2022 core update, most definitely the case Glenn gave us some great examples on Twitter you can check out. But on average, the September, 2022 core update was about 50% less powerful than previous core updates. What exactly does that mean? Well, have a look at Search Engine Land's, article by Barry Schwartz, Google's September, 2022 core update hit fast, but was less significant than previous updates. Because Barry dives into the data that he analyzed in greater detail, along with other data from other data providers. If you want to get an understanding of how impactful the September 2022 core update was overall, have a look at Barry's article over on Search Engine Land. And with that, that is the snappy news.

Now, since we're going full meta on you about learning about learning SEO and how to learn about learning about SEO and what does it mean to know SEO. What it means to learn about SEO when no SEO is to follow the people who can help you learn about SEO so that you know the SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Did you follow that?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Oh, pun intended? Pun intended?

Crystal Carter:

Pun intended.

Mordy Oberstein:

Because it is, our follow or the week.

Crystal Carter:

Woohoo.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, speaking of SEO learning, this person has her own SEO mentorship, which is so appropriate for this episode. Who would've thunk.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, we put a lot of thought into this, Mordy. 

Mordy Oberstein:

We do, literally.

Crystal Carter:

It's how it all goes down.

Mordy Oberstein:

Meetings upon meetings about every episode.

Crystal Carter:

I always enjoy our meetings.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know, they're good. I'm saying it in a good way. So the follow of the week is Chima Mmeje. Who is Chima? I mean, I know Chima is, but Crystal who's Chima?

Crystal Carter:

Chima is a fantastic freelancer. She's got a course, she's got a few other things, but she also runs the freelance coalition for developing countries, which is an organization which provides learning resources and mentorship for black indigenous people of color freelancers who a need upscaling and learning. And one of the things that's great about her program is it's very holistic. So the people that become part of the freelance coalition will get direct mentorship. They also take courses. They also have access to talks where people will come and discuss their journey. So their tech SEO journey. So John Miller's gone on it. Alada was one of the mentors and they will also get certifications from things like Semrush. So Semrush will ask people to do that. We also for Wix gave people free access to websites so that they could build so that they could see-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's what learning about SEO means.

Crystal Carter:

So they can learn hands on. So it's very hands on, mentors, training, lots of different elements. And they're talking about lots of different parts of the freelance journey and it's just a great organization and she's doing some really interesting things. So do follow Chima to find out more about that and to find out more about her work. She's also a fantastic freelance or just generally.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And she does a lot around content marketing.

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

From the SEO point of view. So if you're looking to learn about content from an SEO point of view, she has a lot of threads she'll put out there. So definitely follow Chima. It's at C-H-I-M-A M-M-E-J-E. Of course, we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. But again, great follow. Especially if you're looking to follow some information about content and SEO and well beyond. That's our follow of the week, which means that's our show.

Crystal Carter:

That's it?

Mordy Oberstein:

That's it.

Crystal Carter:

Do you feel like you learned something?

Mordy Oberstein:

I do. I do. Every time I talk to you, I feel like I learned something.

Crystal Carter:

I feel like I've learned how to learn something about learning something.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know what learning is now.

Crystal Carter:

I'm helping.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm helping.

Crystal Carter:

Was it, wait. Mordy, Mordy. Helpful?

Mordy Oberstein:

Helpful.

Crystal Carter:

Great. Thanks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Helpful.

Crystal Carter:

Cool.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes.

Crystal Carter:

Thanks.

Mordy Oberstein:

I do get a helpful stamp for that. And that's a little inside joke.

Crystal Carter:

We can get you a stamp. We absolutely need to get you a stamp. Anyway.

Mordy Oberstein:

It was just now there is no helpful content update it seems based on the last statement that Google made. So...

Crystal Carter:

Oh my gosh.

Mordy Oberstein:

Someones got to do it now. Anyway, that's a whole other wormhole. Thanks for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week with a new episode, as we dive into managing multiple intents with your content. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars and so forth we have on the Wix SEO learning hub at you guest it wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. So thank you for listening and until next time, peace, love and SEO.

Crystal Carter:

SEO.