Why SEOs should watch content trends carefully

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us in the SERP's Up Podcast. Some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who loves content, no one enjoys content more than Crystal. She loves content in trends. She loves analyzing its emergingness-ness, and it's about all things content. She's the one, she's the only, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix, or as I like to call her, Captain Content.

Crystal Carter:

I'm a technical SEO. Let's just clarify that now.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm just trying to make you feel uncomfortable.

Crystal Carter:

Let's clarify that right now people of the internet, I'm a technical SEO. I like talking to the bots. I like structured data. I appreciate content, I appreciate good content. But yeah, I'm not the content marketer. So just to correct that content.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, sorry, my mistake. I was not aware of that at all. Other than times we're like, hey, we've got to write a post about something. They're like, all right, Mordy, you just write it because you'll spit out 30 pages in three minutes.

Crystal Carter:

So I was in a group chat with [inaudible 00:01:18], who is a content marketer. She writes content, she teaches people how to do content, and she was like, every time we're on a WhatsApp chat, all I can see is Crystal is typing, Crystal is typing, and I'll write three lines and it'll take me 20 minutes. It takes me a long time to decide on the words. I can say all kinds of stuff, listen to me saying things, but writing it takes a little longer for me.

Mordy Oberstein:

The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/newsletter, but where you can also spin up content even quicker with reusable templates across all the sites you manage with Wix Studio, look forward at wix.com/studio. It's a great way to scale the latest trends in content, assuming you don't hate those trends, because today we're talking about the emerging content trends of the web and why SEOs might need to pay a little bit more attention to why it would be certainly beneficial if you did, and why you should certainly pay close attention to them. Why emerging content trends are important for SEO. What are some emerging content trends to note and why SEO should be paying lots and lots and lots of attention to them.

Joining us in the digital flesh with the founder of BlackTruck Media and the founder of OGM, Nigel Stevens and Jason Dodge, not respectively. I got the order backwards there. Plus we'll have a look at how Google itself understands some of the emerging content trends out there. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news, who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social. So join us as we help you emerge from the ashes and emerge from the darkness as episode number 68 of the SERP's Up Podcast helps SEOs with the content trends emerging from the shadows. A little ominous there, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Ominous.

Mordy Oberstein:

Ominous.

Nigel Stevens:

And a great radio voice!

Jason Dodge:

It was really good.

Nigel Stevens:

Stronger.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but I can't say ominous, right. Ominous.

Jason Dodge:

Sounds great though. Sounds dark. It's dark.

Mordy Oberstein:

I would edit it out but now we've leaned into it so now we can't edit it out. By the way, welcome Jason and welcome Nigel. How are you guys?

Nigel Stevens:

Hello.

Jason Dodge:

Hello, good. Thank you for having me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Same.

Crystal Carter:

Very pleased to have you on the show.

Jason Dodge:

I don't know how to respond to that after the ominous.

Crystal Carter:

You have to respond in a Batman voice.

Mordy Oberstein:

You can respond by pitching who you are and what you do for our audience. Marketers got to market..

Jason Dodge:

Yes, I can do that. I can do that. And I'm going to jump in over top of Nigel, but we'll get it in the right order this time.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sorry.

Jason Dodge:

I'm Jason Dodge. I'm the founder and CEO of BlackTruck Media and Marketing, search marketing company based in the beautiful area of Grand Rapids, Michigan for my Upper Midwestern listeners.

Nigel Stevens:

I am Nigel Stevens. I run a company called Organic Growth Marketing, founder and CEO. And we are not based in one place, but highly distributed around the world, work with a lot of fast-growing SaaS companies.

Mordy Oberstein:

Like good content, highly distributed.

Nigel Stevens:

Ayo.

Crystal Carter:

And sassy. That's what we like. These are important things.

Jason Dodge:

Look at you, look at you.

Crystal Carter:

All the time.

Mordy Oberstein:

So to catch the audience up just a little bit, I believe that content is one of the most volatile and ever-changing things on the planet. It's constantly changing and the implications of it change our world. And the example I always give, and I'll give it again because it's a great example. I've probably done it on this podcast before, is I think of the night, is the 1960 or '61, whatever, it had to be '60, right? Presidential debate between Richard Nixon and JFK. It was the first one on TV. And for the audio audience, the people listening on the radio, they thought Richard Nixon won. And then when they surveyed people who watched it on TV, they thought that JFK won. And the reason for that is is that JFK looks like JFK and Richard Nixon looks like Richard Nixon. But it changed, that content shift changed everything because now presidential campaigns became about optics.

There's a lot more about optics because now you could see everything, literally, you could see everything. So when content changes, it literally changes the world. And Google has said, very recently actually, Danny Sullivan was talking, I think on Twitter, Danny Sullivan is Google's search liaison saying that, "We Google look at emerging content trends and try to align our algorithm to capitalize on them, to meet them because we know that's what users want. So don't hunt the algorithm, hunt what people actually want because that's what we're looking at." But I find, and this is where I would like to get both your guys' thoughts, and of course Crystal, there's not always so much chatter about content trends and emerging content trends and the value of content trends for SEO within the SEO sphere, and why not? And maybe that should change.

Jason Dodge:

Can we just go on the record and like, Danny Sullivan coming out and, I think it's great, but I'm seeing a lot, I think any chatter that I've seen, certainly out of the last, I don't know, how many algorithm updates have we had in the last three months?

Mordy Oberstein:

4,000.

Jason Dodge:

Thank you. 4,000 every month now, and then pretty soon we're just not going to know about them. I think, just to kind of back it up, you're either an algorithm chaser or you're not. I am, self-admitted, not an algorithm chaser, have not been for 20 years of my career in the SEO space. But what I really find interesting when you talk about optics and you talk about perhaps somebody like Danny Sullivan talking about what Google is interested in and what they're doing, and then there's others in the industry that you can read tweets or X's or whatever we're calling that these days, that all of a sudden the focus is on the user and how we need to create content for the user, when in reality, my opinion has always been, shouldn't we be creating content for the user?

I guess some of this stuff, it's like, do we really need an algorithm update to do that and to slap everybody in the face that like, you should be writing for the human being and the individual, and I get it, we're SEOs, we're here to work to improve the rank and file of websites, but I just find it really interesting, here we are as the "mature industry" and we're talking about writing content for users and the people who are actually going to consume it. I find it really fascinating, mildly frustrating, but fascinating that we have a big tech company like Google that says, just write it for the people.

Crystal Carter:

So my question is, do you think that they're responding to a content trend from that? Like presumably they felt the need to say this, like sometimes I said to my kid, "Hey, put your shoes on," and he goes, "I am." And I'm like, "I can see you. You're not putting your shoes on. That's why I told you you should put your shoes on." Now, do we think that this, I can, Mordy you're laughing 'cause I know you feel my pain here.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the best analogy for what's going on.

Crystal Carter:

Right? So I wonder if you as a good SEO, like Nigel as a good SEO, I wonder maybe they're not talking to you, they know you've already put your shoes on or whatever, but they also know that there's a bunch of people or a bunch of other folks who are doing something else. And I wonder if they're not also highlighting a trend that they are seeing as well. Do you think that's the case?

Jason Dodge:

Yeah, I mean, Nigel, go for it. I certainly have some thoughts, but by all means jump in.

Nigel Stevens:

I mean, I feel like it's a rhetorical question. Of course, they're responding to people that are trying to game the algorithm. And I think a lot of the root cause here, when you really think about it, 'cause I think everyone, people tend to agree with these concepts in theory, like create content for the user, not just provide, but a lot of people's saying that also don't act that way. And I think a lot of it just comes back to incentives. At the end of the day, if you're doing SEO, you're either doing it for your own site, in which case all you care about is the bottom line, or you're doing it for someone else and you were therefore dependent on their idea of what success is. And I think the incentive structure of the SEO industry is behind the actual place we are in it.

Meaning that if companies say, okay, we need traffic, and you are getting gold against traffic, you are under a lot of pressure to do the things that you think will bring traffic even if you think they don't make sense. And I think even good SEO people have valid conversations with in-house content people whose heart's in the right place and they're like, "God, do we really have to add this in?" And the SEO person's like, "Look, we can not add it, but if we add it, we think there's an X percent higher chance that we're going to rank for this, therefore do it." So I actually would frame it as, it's not necessarily binary black and white where there's good SEO and bad SEO and kids putting on their shoes or not putting on their shoes, however you want to put it. There's also people that are like, look, my incentives are to drive traffic and if I do these things, then I will drive traffic.

And that means adding, what is this, how to do this, X best practice of this, how do I take every single possible section from all the top competitors, add them to this, I think that there's a higher chance I'm going to rank. At the end of the day, those incentives are in place because Google has, in a lot of ways, rewarded that. So to go back to your question Crystal, yes, I think Google is now trying to undo some of the incentives that they have put in place for all these years that have put the web to where they are. It's easy to say, oh, SEO people doing this or that, like SEO people are just following where the money goes and that's where it's taking them, that's my perspective.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and you still see that with links, right? Because back in the day it was links and that still lingers to this day. It's very hard to break that. It's an amazing thing because the incentive cycle has changed and it's been changing, I would say since around 2018 when Google released the Medic Update, which was the second update in this whole new series of core updates. The first one was the March, 2018 core update, but the Medic one, which was the August 2018 core update was the one that really sparked this. Where you saw Google doing something qualitatively different in the search results, or at least trying to, and slowly but surely they've been making headway for the last five years with this.

But it's taken SEOs a long time to realize that incentive cycle is changing because the incentive cycle is only as good as what Google can show on the SERP. If Google can only use, say, page rank to determine quality, then it's only going to be able to show X level of quality threshold on the SERP so I don't have to go very far. If Google can use machine learning to better understand whatever, whatever, now that threshold increases, but it doesn't happen overnight. It's a slow burn. So what ends up happening, I think, is the needle moves, but if you're chasing the algorithm, you're always behind it 'cause you're not going to see it until it's too late. Jason, thoughts?

Jason Dodge:

No, Nigel, I think, summed it up really well. Mordy, you kind of helped pull that together. I think Google reacting the way that they do, right? 'Cause I mean that is what an algorithm change is, it's a reaction that the results or the web has been a disappointing place for a number of years. Search has been disappointing. But users, it's really been ingrained in us to trust it. We trust the results. It's an answer engine. I go there seeking solutions to my problems, answers to my questions. We see that with growing trends in featured snippets. We see the growing trends in PaaS and things of that nature. That's because it's the evolution of how people are using the tool, using the search engine. Who's being rewarded and incentivized, we could argue that left and right, but typically it is the more helpful content. But to Nigel's point, if you see that a competitor's answering certain questions a certain way and then as an SEO, why wouldn't I make that recommendation and why wouldn't I put that in my strategy?

But definitely I think there are course corrections absolutely based on the way in which, not so much even the results that are coming up, but going deeper and saying how people are interacting with those results. And oftentimes I think we just need to take a step back and really be cognizant of that and understand maybe the intent and also where is that person in their journey. And I'm thinking that over the last few years, Google with machine learning, with AI is starting to understand the intent and where those searchers might be at in their journey too, therefore adjusting.

Crystal Carter:

I think also they're guiding the journey. So like Google's tool as a tool is much, much more sophisticated than it was during the Medic Update than it was during the ones before it. They're guiding the journey. They're going, oh, would you like to see the shoes in different colors? And you're like, yeah, you know what? Actually, I would. I didn't even know that was an option, but okay. Or people are asking this question, I was like, are they now? That's some juicy gossip. I'd love to read the answer to that question. So I think you're both touching upon how the medium of Google itself kind of dictates the content trends. Nigel, would you say that that's something that you've seen?

Nigel Stevens:

Yeah, I mean, what you're basically saying is that it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where Google has trained people how to use Google and then therefore that impacts the results and that impacts the way people use it, and it's like a self-fulfilling cycle. Another thing I would add to this, and this is kind of, I can't know this for sure, it's more of a hypothesis, but I've heard other smarter people than me say it and I think it makes sense is that, I mean Google is also, as much as they innovate, they've also kind of been shown to be resting on their laurels a little bit, whereas, ChatGPT came out. That whole concept, as far as I know, was kind of invented at Google.

They kind of didn't do much with it other than backend improvements to search, and then they scrambled to put something out. And the whispers I've heard are that Google is viewing this as the first true existential threat that they have ever really seen. So I would wager for sure that a big part of all of this is they're leaning more into that user data and what do people find helpful, not find helpful, all that. But all of that is like, they had some of that data before and they weren't acting on it as much, and now they're like, oh, we actually need to get ahead of this before we wake up and we're in third place.

Mordy Oberstein:

So there's two great points in that. One is all the talk of SG, and we actually spoke about this at our session at brightonSEO in San Diego that, I think in our session and in the EDGE of the Web session that SG is a little bit of a red herring, right? Google saw that Bing had this fancy shiny thing, was part of the whole AI wave. Let's go get the fancy shiny thing. And I think that took their focus off what's good for the actual user. And I've always been surprised that there has been no talk or very little talk about MUM, because I think MUM is something that's fascinating that can actually do a lot of things to help Google parse out queries and parse out content to better understand content. Because better understanding, in this particular perspective, means being able to break things down to a smaller parse to show more specific search results for more and better more specifically understand queries.

But they haven't really talked a lot about that. And that's to your point, because they've gotten distracted. The other part of your answer I thought is fascinating is that Google does look at user behavior data. And Google recently came out as part of the whole DOJ trials that Google's looking at user behavior and SEO's like, ah, see, they're all looking at clicks. And my take and Crystal confirmed this, what Danny Sullivan said at brightonSEO was like, yeah, that's how RankBrain works. Their machine learning systems take a look at user behavior, process it and make general shifts and moves about what people want or are consuming, and then reflect that in the search results. Which brings me to my question to you both. Google has said, we're looking at what people are doing and what they want. The classic example I used for this is back in the day, you could have a recipe rank, and the recipe was just a recipe, there's no picture.

Good luck ranking a recipe without a picture today. Because Google realized, hey, if you're looking for a recipe, user behavior seems to indicate you're going to stick around if there's a picture of the food. So recipe queries must have pictures among the results. So we know they're looking at what people are doing in content trends and all these things, but as SEOs, we somehow, and I'm not saying this in a critical way, I'm saying this, let's diagnose the problem so we could fix it. If Google's saying that they're looking at content and content trends and how people are engaging with content, why are we not talking enough about this?

Jason Dodge:

We're scared? I mean, you know...

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm not scared.

Jason Dodge:

And are you saying we as SEOs or Google, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

The we, we, got it. That didn't come out right.

Jason Dodge:

No, that didn't, that didn't. That goes back to putting your shoes on kids. Think about it this way, the disruption with AI and SGE and things of that nature, okay, so one thing for certain is that we know that Google isn't going to turn off their moneymaking machine, right? At BlackTruck, we also run paid ads as well. So we kind of see both sides as integrated as possible to be able to share data amongst teams to be able to see what's what. And we've seen it over the last, I would say, four weeks with the latest algorithm changes to seeing sites that took a nose dive, but then all of a sudden their ads become much more valuable when we blend search console data and PPC data together. It's really kind of crazy to see this correlation happening. So Q4 is going to be great for them.

But I think if you look at trends in social as well, and the type of content that is being consumed in social and the moves that Meta has made in Facebook and the incentives to keep, you know, it's kind of almost like a cat and mouse. The incentive's to keep people on Meta, especially if you're an advertiser, is where you'll learn that the most, you'll get the most engagement out of it is if I keep people there. That's a playbook in my opinion, that's a chapter out of a playbook of Google. If I keep people here, they're more engaged with my site, I can give them answers. They don't need to come to your site. It's a visibility in the SERPs.

Then you start to see, Mordy, to your point, oh, interesting, we know that recipes that have a photo because it's what I'm going to make because as an individual, photos are a universal language. They transcend any language out there. I see it, that looks tasty, I want to make it. It's the same reason that you see Google Business profiles, 35 or 40% more click activity for GBP's that have photos because people want to see what they're getting into. It doesn't matter if it's a home services company or it's a restaurant, right? It's human behavior. So yeah, hell yeah, absolutely. I mean, if a user's going to engage with that, we need to have more of that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, but then we don't, we talk about user behavior, Nigel, we talk about and they're like, oh, Google's looking at clicks. We look at it very linearly without looking at, well, no, Google's looking at user behavior and like, for example, E for experience in EAT, Nigel, do they pull that out of their hat? Like a magical thing they pulled out? They saw, there's a greater propensity for people to be searching for, looking for and engaging with content that has actual personal experience. So Nigel, why isn't the conversation focused on content trends and what's emerging in the content world and why do you feel like we stick in this little SEO sphere without cracking the larger picture? Why is that happening?

Nigel Stevens:

Part of the answer is probably just inertia and human psychology. People don't like to change, and people's understanding of SEO, a lot of people unfortunately, is not about thinking deeply about this like, okay, Google is looking at the intent and trying to serve it. A lot of people equate search intent to what I see in the SERPs right now. I don't know, maybe this is a controversial statement, but I don't think that's necessarily true because going back to Crystal's point about the self-fulfilling cycle of Google, one thing I see in B2B SaaS is everyone knows the playbook.

It's like, create this long piece of content on everything and then everyone does it, and then everyone assumes that therefore, because that's all the content that's available, that is what people want. Therefore, that is search intent. Therefore, that is what good SEO looks like and not considering the possibility that, what if this is all a result of the incentives, back to that word, and people acting on it, and we're not thinking about, okay, if we wanted to provide something that is not like all these things but would better fulfill what Google is actually trying to move towards, what would that look like?

But that's a difficult conversation. So again, going back to the business model aspect of this, if you're doing SEO, what's easier to try to sell out to someone, look, I know that all these other people are ranking doing this and this and this. We think that that's not beneficial for these reasons and we want to do this. That's a lot harder of a conversation to sell than, hey look, we saw your competitors did this. Let's do that. Because anyone who's worked with companies knows that's the number one way to get anything sold is like, well, competitor X did this, don't you want to do it? And the answer is almost always yes.

Jason Dodge:

I think you're spot on with that. I think 100%, and maybe that's where Nigel, you and I can come at it from an agency ownership/leadership perspective, right? When you're creating buy-in to get things done, it doesn't matter the size of the business, the size of the client, if you will, the size of the brand you work with, a hundred percent, one of the best ways to do it is look at what your competitor's doing. Absolutely, because you want to crush that, right? The other one is talking more holistically about SEO and talking more holistically about things like SERP visibility is, A, much more difficult to report on, and B, it's just harder to explain, it takes a lot more education.

Crystal Carter:

I think what's interesting, and there's a couple of points that you've both touched on, about the competitive nature, but also about different channels as well, different trends across different channels. I think one of the things that's important to think about in terms of content perspective from Google's point of view is that they are looking at the whole of the web, not just websites. You mentioned Facebook for instance, Google's also looking at their competitor, right? So their competitors include Facebook, include TikTok, include Twitter, other, Amazon for instance. Those are their competitors, and I think they're also steered by those content trends.

So I think while it can be tricky to be a first mover within an internal, as a marketing person, you're making your pitch and you're like, hey, we're going to do something that's never been done before on this new content trend. I think sometimes it pays, and I think that probably the SEOs that do this the most are the SEOs who are looking across multiple channels where they can see there's a trend over here, there's a trend over there that's happening because Google can see that lots of people are engaging with TikTok. I spoke about it at MozCon and how Google increased the amount of videos that are on the SERP, they're like 45% year-on-year over the last year, partially in response to TikTok. And I think that we also need to be thinking about the trends that we see in other channels, not just in SEO in order to respond to what users are doing and where users are.

Mordy Oberstein:

So I literally put out a tweet, I don't know, September 28th. We're living in an emerging environment from AI to content trends, and I think it's going to pit SEOs against brand marketers. Brand marketers are looking to get ahead of the curve, whereas SEOs often don't want to get away from works now. As someone who does a lot of both, I feel this, I feel the conflict. And to highlight why I think it's so important that SEOs start thinking about content trends, I think we'll get into how you do that and what is emerging, is let alone the success of the site and the minutia of traffic and clicks or whatever, but if you're working with other stakeholders or other kinds of marketers who are looking at wider trends, are seeing what's happening now, I've never seen this on the web before. So many things are changing and it feels like something's about to break in a good way.

We're going to shift. A major shift is currently happening, and if the other marketers that you're working with who are on your team or as part of your organization or part of the site stakeholder structure, are looking at things like, we need to jump on something to get ahead of the curve, and you're still thinking about SEO in a very, let's keep up with the algorithm kind of thing. You're going to be having a disconnect between the way you're approaching marketing and the way the other marketers are approaching marketing. And that's a bad thing and you don't want to be in that spot. So with that, Nigel, if I'm trying to get ahead of content, trying to look at merging content trends, how do I do that? Where do I look? What am I trying to find? How do I keep my finger on the pulse kind of thing?

Nigel Stevens:

Yeah, so to answer that question and address, I agree with everything that both of you just said. One thing I would point out is we keep talking about marketers and marketing disciplines. One thing that I think marketers, including myself have an amazing ability to do is go to work, view the world that way, and then close your work computer and do stuff, interact with the web in a totally different way and not connect those trends. Even thinking about it as channels is a very marketer first way to think about it, which you're not wrong, it's a hundred percent. But one epiphany I had was thinking about the way I interact with the web, whatever, watching YouTube videos and YouTube shorts and little things, and then I flip open my work computer and I'm looking at some of the work that's being done in the broader industry.

I'm like, I'm not necessarily saying that SaaS companies need to be making six second dance videos, but the gap between what I'm doing in my personal life and what everyone else is doing in their lives and what we're doing in work, again, it's not that it has to be nothing there, but I think they're world's apart. And that sort of goes back to the point of running a playbook for this industry versus thinking about, okay, what do human beings who interact with the web now, that have no attention span, that have podcasts, YouTube videos, a million different things to do, and one of the things that I'm telling my team and we're talking about is we have to shift away from thinking about getting traffic to capturing attention because again, this again goes back to the incentives thing, at the beginning of my career I was, okay, you rank for this stuff, you get the traffic, that's good.

Somebody figures out how to turn it into money. And I think over time the amount of traffic went up as far as when you combine Google, all the platforms, people are looking at a bazillion things. So someone looking at something doesn't really matter anymore. And that's why I think a lot of it is incentives and it's also just looking at your personal life and saying, what are things that capture my attention? What are things that I think are interesting? And they don't have to be applied directly based on the vertical or industry you're working in, but what are principles that I can learn from that? One simple example is, it seems like a lot of these platforms are using types of opt-in where even on LinkedIn, what appears to work as slideshows, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in. Short videos, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in. But then big ass article, there's a big gap between those two things, which doesn't mean you can't create really good content rich articles, but how do you make them more navigable versus just this gigantic block of text?

Jason Dodge:

The actual content experience is really something, Nigel, that you touched on. The opt-in is an interesting one too. And I think the opt-in is one of those, not to sidetrack us, I think that's one of those, somebody had mentioned before, it's a reaction to the idea that third party cookies are going to go away. So first party data is going to be gold, which it's always been gold anyways, so what's the best way to do it? Opt-in to my stuff. So now again, the focus is on that, but I couldn't agree with you more. I think the idea that the content has to be experiential, it has to be a positive content experience, long form content is great, but like TLDR, if I don't want to read it, the recipe is a great example. There's enough internet memes out there for it. I don't need to read about the trauma that you had baking cookies with grandma. Let's just get to the recipe.

Mordy Oberstein:

I would love to actually read recipes of trauma. The first part is all about the trauma.

Jason Dodge:

That domain's probably available. I'm going to go get that domain right now.

Crystal Carter:

And I think, just to pick up on what Nigel was saying about some of the, pay attention to the things that actually capture you, I think that we as web users, we are inundated with so much content and we can see trends. We can see that there are dance trends online and things like that. So I mean, Duolingo is a classic example. Duolingo has a very silly mascot that dances all over TikTok and does all sorts of silly things on TikTok, and they get great exposure for that. I'm talking about it right now. And they're a language app and their Duolingo mascot guy who runs around TikTok doesn't necessarily talk about languages all that often, but their brand is front and center really, really regularly.

Another good example that I've heard from is Amanda Natividad. She shared how her exterminator has a newsletter and it's really, really useful. And she actually shared a screenshot from the newsletter, and I was like, that's really useful advice. I followed that advice. It was great advice. Now, the thing that's interesting about that is that I remember that, I don't even know his name necessarily, but if I was in her area, I would go and look that person up. So I think it's really important to pay attention to the things that you pay attention to, what's made you stop and where are the trends that you're seeing when you're going around online?

Jason Dodge:

I think, yeah, spot on. And if you think about it too, a couple different items to build on that, if you don't have relationships with PR folks, I think as an SEO right now or moving into 2024, I think you've missed the boat. If you have attended any search marketing conference in the last 10 years, the best people who have been on the stage to talk about link building are PR people. They're PR professionals. That's their background. Their background is the pitch and how do I get that brand? How do I get the brand? They're not even talking about the site, they're not talking about links, it's how do I get the brand out there as much as possible? That's all PR, right? And so having a, I know a lot of our team have communications background and PR background. It's less about the dollars and cents and it's more about how do we communicate with people and where they're at in the channel and in the journey, et cetera. I mean, I think to your point of why aren't we doing it is just we've always done what we've always done, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. But it's fun to watch. One of the things that I like to do is watch what people are doing and how it's changing when they're doing their content. But one thing I know as an example is Search Engine Land. They started to push their newsletter subscription in a different way. They have a couple of lines from the article, then they have a short little paragraph pushing their newsletter highlighted in light blue, and there's no CTA. To sign up for the news, it's an in link. I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. It's far less intrusive. It's very subtle. It looks like it's part of the article. And you know what? I kind of like that better. I gauge how I'm feeling when I'm looking at what people are trying out and experimenting with their content. And if it resonates with me, I'm like, okay, that's interesting, pause.

And it resonated with me that they're not pushing the CTA the same way. I'm like, you know what? That's really interesting. And then I look for other corroborations. Google started running ads in between the organic results. I wonder if that's very similar. They're seeing that top of the SERP ads or bottom of the page ads. Everyone knows that those are, everyone knows that their ads, no matter how subtle the ad label is, I don't want to be sold to forget it.

But if it's much more subtle, so in the middle of an organic result, then suddenly I feel it's less intrusive. You're less trying to pitch me and I'm more happy to click on that. So I wonder if Google is seeing and doing the same thing as Search Engine Land is doing. And at that point, I realized I'm feeling a certain way. I'm seeing two things that might be related, might not be, just a theory, that's something to investigate and research and then talk to other people about like, do you think the age of the CTA is dead? Put out a tweet, put out a LinkedIn post and see what the comments say about that.

Crystal Carter:

I think there's a lot of ways to respond to emerging content. And I think that, yeah, we should be talking about it more. So here's a controversial theory. Do you think the SEOs don't talk to other SEOs about emerging content trends? Because we like to keep our cards close to our chest because it's a question of know when to hold them, know when to fold them. It's tough out here in these SERPs.

Nigel Stevens:

The reason, I think that's a good theory about a lot of things, the reason I'm going to say, I don't buy it is that I'm not seeing very much evidence of that out in the universe of anything that's breaking the pattern. And to kind of riff on what you were both talking about, like Crystal, you mentioned, I think about the exterminator thing, it made me stop what I was doing. Something I've been thinking a lot about is what are the first principles? We're out here talking about algorithms, what Google is doing, what are the first principles here? It's like, what is marketing? It's connect with someone, get their attention and get them to do something.

And I feel like this is kind of corny to say, but if you think about those first principles, then you don't get locked into all of these best practices. How does Google render JavaScript? All this, which they're like, are the important questions that you have to answer, but the core first principle that's never going to change is how do you get someone's attention and get them to do something? And as the internet, the barrier to entry is getting lower for producing certain types of stuff. The premium is going to go on. How do you actually capture attention and show credibility and show someone that this was not just an automatically generated page that's trying to trick you into doing something?

Mordy Oberstein:

And as time runs out on us, find out by following both Nigel and Jason. Where can people find you folks?

Nigel Stevens:

On LinkedIn? I'm not a very good internet marketer. I'm not on the X and the Twitters.

Jason Dodge:

Oh, man, you can follow me. Yeah, certainly, I'm with Nigel. LinkedIn is a good place. I'm still active on Twitter/X, @dodgejd, pretty much everywhere. And obviously blacktruckmedia.com.

Mordy Oberstein:

Awesome, we'll link to your show notes. Fellas, it was so nice talking to you. It's such a needed topic. And if you're listening to this, take what we're saying to heart. Open your mind, open your minds. Content is like LSD. Open your minds to wider experiences. Is that good?

Jason Dodge:

I think that's great.

Nigel Stevens:

What a better note to end on.

Crystal Carter:

Does content make the walls move?

Jason Dodge:

Yeah, that's great. Please include that in the show notes. It's wonderful.

Nigel Stevens:

Nigel, how was the podcast? Well, it ended with LSD, but I'll tell you later.

Mordy Oberstein:

As all great things do.

Jason Dodge:

I think that you're spot on. And Nigel, you hit the nail on the head. And Crystal, you made a good suggestion too. Just start to pay attention to what's going on around you. Don't be so myopic and stuck and actually look at these landing pages in your own personal experiences. I think 100%, because there are reasons that Google is making these changes. So pay attention.

Mordy Oberstein:

And good luck to us all.

Jason Dodge:

Good luck.

Mordy Oberstein:

And good luck to you guys. Thanks again for coming on.

Nigel Stevens:

Thank you.

Jason Dodge:

Thank you as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, well, with all this talk about emerging content trends, we're curious. I'm curious at least, how does Google understand some of the emerging topics or emerging trends related to content? And to do that, we have a fun little segment. We look at Google's People Also Ask box where we have those four questions that you can open up a tab and see an answer and that it loads more questions every time you click on one of them. Anyway, with the PAA box, we search for some terms related to emerging content trends, which can only mean one thing, it's time for Fun with People Also Ask.

So I did a little query, and it's nothing too complicated. I searched for content trends 2024. Now, keep in mind, we're recording this on November 14th, 2023. And what I got back was four questions. One was, what are the biggest content trends in 2023? What is the future of content? Okay, that kind of makes sense. What are the B2B marketing trends for 2024? And what are the five marketing trends and predictions for 2023? Now, first question I had was, 2023, is that Google getting it wrong? I asked for 2024 or is Google saying, I don't think you know what you're really asking for. It's still 2023 right now. Why are you asking about 2024?

Crystal Carter:

Very interesting.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

So what's interesting is that I'm looking at the SERP and there's tons of content there that's showing for 2024.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and we're still a good month and a half out, which just goes to show you our earlier point about what SEOs sometimes do.

Crystal Carter:

So it's not to say that they don't have anything to pull from, but they're definitely like, yeah, let's talk about 2023. And it's like, guys, we're not...

Mordy Oberstein:

Wait, maybe Google, it's a little shot at what sometimes SEOs do. Google's like, oh, you asked for 2024 but to tell you that 2024 is really the same as 2023, you just changed the year and the title tag. It was like, here's a bunch of results for 2023. We know what you're doing.

Crystal Carter:

No, this is new content. It's completely different.

Mordy Oberstein:

But the title tag is new, it says 2024.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Also, you pointed this out, was that there was the switch to the B2B marketing trends, which I thought was in. If I'm asking for content trends...

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

But then Google switches to marketing trends.

Crystal Carter:

Right. So they're switching to B2B marketing there, and they're also switching to marketing trends, predictions. Now, marketing trends might not be entirely to do with content specifically, and certainly marketing trends and predictions might not be to do with content particularly as well. They could be like billboards are going to make a big comeback. I mean, look, just what happened with the Barbie movie. And actually I think it's interesting the way people are using billboards. But yeah, I think it's very interesting that they've pivoted to that. Sometimes when you look up something around on a PAA, sometimes they will hedge. We found this when we were looking at migration, for instance. They were like, oh, you're talking about data migration? You're talking about human migration? You're talking about like, which kind of migration are you talking about? What migration, which kind of thing are you talking about? So I think if you're trying to rank for a PAA, for instance, it's important to know that when it's a less specific search, you're more likely to have half of the PAA's.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's always that outlier intent or the multiple intent built into the PAA box. I once did a study about this in, I don't know, 2018, where I went through manually, went through hundreds of PAA boxes, and subjectively decided, very scientific, although after a while you get good at it, how many different intents there are. And they're pretty clear, you could see it here, Google switches from the content to the marketing trends thing, it's pretty self-evident. And there was a good number percentage of boxes that have this. It's a regular pattern. I don't remember the exact number because the platform that I wrote that content for, deleted it. So that information has been lost from the web.

Crystal Carter:

It was time well spent, Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, really? As someone used it in the Rest MX deck back in the day, and I was in the room like, oh, that's my study. That's my study. So I was pretty proud about that, but now it's gone from the internet. Unless you found the URL and use the Wayback Machine.

Crystal Carter:

You're not better though. It's fine. It's not a big deal.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I'm very happy about it. Why would I not be happy about this? But anyway, it's a normal thing. We digress, there's a normal thing for Google to throw a little punt and like, oh, maybe you mean this. Maybe that's your intent.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think it's interesting. So similarly, and we know that AI content writing is a content trend for 2023, and for 2024, I'm sure as well. And so I entered in AI content writing as the key term and the People Also Ask for that was, can I use AI for content writing? What is the best content AI writer? That's fun, PAA's don't always make grammatical sense. Is there an AI that writes content for free? Is AI content writing worth it? And I think that that, again, when you read all of those, you see the sort of flow of worry and concern and interest around a particular topic. Is it free? Is it worth it? Should I invest my time in this? Is this something I should do? How people are thinking about a particular topic.

Mordy Oberstein:

I could dive into this or have the perfect pivot. Speaking of headlines that sometimes also don't always make sense, here's this week's version of The Snappy News.

Crystal Carter:

Or Barry.

Mordy Oberstein:

Or Barry. I'm sorry. It was such a good pivot, wasn't it? Come on. That was great. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, three for the price of two this week. First up, from Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, 94% of Google SGE links are different from organic results, study finds. So Danny does a whole summary of a study done by Authoritas who did a study called Research Study: The Impact of Google Search Generative Experience on Organic Rankings. We'll link to both in the show notes. If you want a summary, check out Danny's Search Engine Land piece. If you want to dive into all the nitty-gritty details, check out the actual story from Authoritas. But essentially what they did was, among many and many other things, was look at the number of links within Google's SGE and to see if they matched the organic results themselves. What they found was that on average there are 10 links within Google's SGE, but only four domains, meaning those 10 links only come from four websites.

They also found that around 94% of the URLs within the SGE do not match the organic results. Now, what I'm curious to see is the number of links that match within the summary itself versus the three or four whatever organic result cards Google shows in the top right-hand corner of the SGE box. What do I mean? Some of the links are additive. Google is citing along as it's generating its summary within the SGE box. So you ask Google, I don't know, who is the best baseball player ever? And it tells you, well Babe Ruth played for the Yankees and blah, blah, and it offers a citation to the New York Yankees. It's a link to the New York Yankees, let's say. It wouldn't make sense that that link would be found within the organic result itself, but basically Google's doing is annotating the subtopics that reflect the wider topic that's reflected in the query.

So those links as you go along in the SGE text itself kind of makes sense that they don't match. What would be interesting to see is that if the organic cards within the top right hand quarter of the SGE box, which do align to the overall query, which do basically serve as organic results, if those match the organic results or not. Now the fact that they wouldn't match might not be a problem, 'cause Google's saying, hey, just like a feature snippet, we're not going to show the URL within the feature snippet and then again, within the organic results. They might just be showing the URLs within the SGE as part of those organic cards, and then again not, in the actual organic results again. So it might not necessarily be a problem if they don't match, you know what I mean? Anyway, check out the full study within the show notes. We'll link to learn there.

Second article from he who is Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, the newly designed Search Engine Roundtable, oh, Wharton professor, Ethan Mollick, on the decay of internet search. It's very dramatic, Barry. So basically a professor from Wharton, associate professor from the Wharton School of Business was searching for, it looks like queries about upcoming shows. I don't know, when is Stranger Things, season five coming out? That kind of query. Instead, the organic results kind of stink here. It's interesting, there's been a lot of sentiments. One of the things I really, I wouldn't say enjoy talking about, I find fascinating. That's how I would, I find it fascinating. The whole idea of the decay of the organic results because from my point of view, as someone who's looked very, very carefully at what Google has been doing with the algorithm updates for the better part of 10 years, I only see the results getting better.

Obviously there are peaks and valleys. Google makes an update, sometimes they get everything right, exactly. And you have controversy within the SEO community about how good the results are. I'm talking since 2018, the advent of the modern day core updates, Google's only gotten better. However, sentiment has gotten worse. I don't want to get into why exactly that is, here, I've talked a lot about this in the past. I think we've probably covered on the podcast at some point. If we haven't, we will. It's one of my talking points. It's interesting here in this case, 'cause it happens to be, I search for these queries a lot. Like, I don't know, when is the final season of The Crown coming out? It came out already and a lot of the results here are less than spectacular. But, first off, I do find that for the most part, even though the results are not particularly spectacular and they're a little bit clickbaity, they kind of serve their purpose.

It's not meant to be Faulkner. On the other hand, I do get where the professor, the group professor is coming from because they are a little bit, nah, not stellar in quality. I think though the main issue is that what these websites are doing is that they're paying attention to what say, the statements that Netflix is making or researching various sources, kind of putting it all together for you so you know what the storyline might be, when the show might be coming out? Where is it in production? How far along is it in that? And the reason why the result may not be great is because there's just not a lot of great content out there. So what else is Google going to rank? Netflix isn't putting out a full article of where the show is in production, when they expect it to come out, what some of the rumored storylines are.

They're not doing that. So you have these other websites who are not the source themselves, or not these super authorities like Netflix itself or Hulu or Disney Plus, I can go on with all the other streaming websites that are out there. My God, how many streaming websites are there? There is no content like that. So what else is Google going to rank? So is it, the content stinks and Google should be ranking something else? Or is it that somebody else should be writing better content so that Google can rank it? The chicken and the egg. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. We love you Barry. You are our best friend. We love you more than words could ever say.

Crystal Carter:

Honestly, like yeah, you're that dude.

Mordy Oberstein:

I feel you in the heart.

Crystal Carter:

Big love, Barry.

Mordy Oberstein:

Big love Barry. Which brings to another big love that we have, which is telling you about people that you could be following on social media for more SEO content and marketing awesomes, and this week we have Kelsey Jones, who's @wonderwall7, W-O-N-D-E-R-W-A-L-L seven, if you're not typing that in really quickly as I'm spelling it, we'll link to it in the show notes. But Kelsey is a fabulous content marketing person and she's one of these content marketing people that really overlaps in SEO, kind of like Ross Hudgens out there, who's another follow we had a couple of weeks ago. So definitely give her a follow and a shoutout over on X/Twitter, again, I don't know what we call it anymore, but she actually recently hosted SEOChat and that was also fabulous. So give her a big follow.

Crystal Carter:

Give her a big follow because today is going to be the day that you're going to find out about some of the cool stuff that Kelsey Jones is doing.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wow, what an oasis. An oasis of social media awesomeness.

Crystal Carter:

Precisely. So yeah, do check her out. But yeah, I think it's great to be thinking about, particularly if you are an SEO SEO, I think it's really good to be speaking to and checking out folks who are looking at the activity from a different perspective and who are all trying to get this...

Mordy Oberstein:

A wider content world.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. And who are all trying to get great results for users and customers and clients and to broaden your mind.

Mordy Oberstein:

From the wider content world.

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

No?

Crystal Carter:

The whole internet. Mordy has been very demonstrative of late. So ever since his dance routine at BrightonSEO, Mordy's given me full jazz hands right now.

Mordy Oberstein:

We'll dance for good content. Unfortunately, I never have to dance because there's no good content. Anyway, with that snarky remark, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, look for wherever you consume your podcast or the SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all of the great content and webinars we have over at 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 and love and SEO.