Handing SEO off to your clients

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights on what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix Center, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the spectacular, the unparalleled Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hey, internet people. I'm here on your podcast in your earbuds where you listen to podcast things. Probably on Spotify. Most people do, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

Or other, like iTunes.

Crystal Carter:

iTunes! That's true. People also do that sometimes, people in their cars?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I'm a weirdo. I like Google Podcasts.

Crystal Carter:

You like Google Podcasts? Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

I love Google. Yeah, but they're getting rid of it.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, are they? Oh, another one for the Google graveyard. Google Podcasts, Google Plus. I used to like Hangouts. I'm not going to lie, Hangouts was pretty good.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I liked Hangouts. I don't know what was wrong with that. But yeah, I like Google Podcasts. I like it because I Google it. I can Google a podcast and the carousel would show up. I would just click on the SERP. It was just easier than going to Spotify, finding the podcast. That's why, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

There's a lot of steps and you lose me at, "And then." People will be like, "You have to do this and then this and then this." It's like, "Nope, that's too many and thens." Somebody gives you just instructions on how to get from one place to another and they're like, "Oh yeah, you take this turn and then that turn and then that turn." I'm like, "I'm sorry. If there's a route where I can take one turn and ride on that street for 12 blocks, I'm doing that." That's what I'm doing because I don't want to get lost.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm the person where you ask me for directions, they say, "Oh, so turn left here," and after the second step I'm like, "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh," and then I ask somebody else because I didn't hear a word you said really.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I don't know now. I'm done. My brain.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'd rather get lost than pay attention to all those steps, to be honest.

Crystal Carter:

Right, honestly. And then there's people who live in the countryside and they're like, "Yeah. So then you get to a tree that looks a little bit..." And you're like, "That's not directions, sir."

Mordy Oberstein:

Does the tree have leaves? Yeah, that's the one. Like, whoa. Okay, thanks, bud.

Crystal Carter:

But if somebody's giving you those kind of directions to lead you to some place, it's really important. It's really important and you've got to pay attention.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And then the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, which comes out each and every month, over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also hand off sites to clients like a beast with Wix Studio, but more on that later as this show is about something else entirely. It's about how to hand off SEO work to clients, which, wait, that's kind of the exact same thing. What a coincidence.

That's why this week we're taking up how to make sure all the SEO work you did actually pays off by talking about how you hand off your work to clients, how client handoffs differ depending on the SEO project, what to think about when handing an SEO project back to a client, and why you actually might want to use the handoff as a way to challenge your clients.

Agency-side SEO phenom and Founder of Botpresso Nitin Manchanda will join us in just a bit as he stops by to share what works for him when he hands off his SEO work to the clients and what it looks like. Plus, we'll take a look at a new tool to help you hand off your work the clients like a pro as we go tool time, and of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news that you should be following for more SEO awesomeness over on social media.

So whether you prefer to spit and juke like Barry Sanders or just plow over everyone like "The Bus, Jerome Bettis, episode number 67 of the SERP's Up Podcast shows how you can help your clients take the handoff and run with the ball.

Crystal Carter:

It's a lot of sports references there.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're right. If you're wondering what that was, Barry Sanders and Jerome Bettis are running backs and they take the handoff from the quarterback. Get it? So handoff to the clients, handoff to the running back.

Crystal Carter:

I thought you were going to throw in something about The Fridge. That's my favorite football nickname.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, The Fridge is great. The Fridge did take a hand and yeah.

Crystal Carter:

We did good.

Mordy Oberstein:

Sorry for the sports ball. Sorry for the sports ball.

Crystal Carter:

It's okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

But handing off sites to your clients, doing it properly, handing off that SEO work properly, does a lot of things. It helps protect your work from being abused and destroyed and not lasting the test of time. It helps protect your reputation because if your clients then make a mistake and don't take what you said and handle that properly, they're not going to blame themselves. They're going to blame you.

Crystal Carter:

Right, this is true. And I think that it's important because sometimes the SEO projects roll in different ways. So sometimes you are somebody who is advising, and then again, you're handing off to the client. You're saying, "Okay, these are the recommendations that I have for you. Take this to your devs and do this, this, and this." And again, if you are not handing off well, if you're not able to connect with the devs, if you're not able to maintain lines of communications, then maybe they aren't able to implement it in the best way possible. And then maybe they go around, like you said, protecting your reputation, they go around and say, "Oh, we spoke with this SEO person and they actually weren't able to help us at all. This didn't work or we didn't see the good results." And that could be because of the handoff, because you weren't able to give them good instructions.

The other thing that-

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, don't fumble. Don't fumble the handoff.

Crystal Carter:

Don't fumble, don't drop the ball. It's also important to think about making sure that the clients get the best out of it. So one of the things that's important, even before you do the handoff, is making sure who's on your team. So if you've got Barry Sanders on your team, then you know what he does. You know what he can do if you give him the ball, that he's got those tools.

If you've got a team that... If your recommendation involves a dev and they don't have access to a developer, then that's not going to be a great client handoff. If your recommendations involve people writing content and they don't have someone to write the content for them or they don't have the ability to write the content, then that's not going to be a great handoff. You need to understand who's on your team before you hand anything over to anyone.

So when you're thinking about your SEO projects or even web design projects, you need to understand who's on the team before you start making recommendations, what their capabilities are before you start making recommendations.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's simply like targeting an audience. You have to understand who your audience is. Are they very detail-oriented or do they just want a top-level summary or some main things to work on first, then send them a second round later? Do they want it all at one time? Whatever it is, you have to understand who the client is, what they want, and how they best handle information. And unless you do that, unless you're thinking about that, the handoff will get dropped. It will be a fumble and the other team will win for a recovery for a touchdown.

I don't know who the other team is by the way. I have no idea.

Crystal Carter:

Sports ball!

Mordy Oberstein:

Sports ball!

Crystal Carter:

So generally speaking, if I'm working on a project basis, let's say I've done an audit for someone, and I've done audits for folks. I worked on a project where we were doing some audits for smaller businesses and so I did a few of these all at once. And essentially what I did was I'd go through and I give them, because I knew it was very often the person who was the site owner who was going to be implementing it or one other person on their team, I'd give them 10 recommendations because I know for a fact that site owners will get distracted, confused, discouraged if you give them too many recommendations. So that's important to remember is how much you're handing over.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Because remember, they're not SEOs. It's very simple for you, as an SEO, but as a site owner, a business owner, you need to give that context and really walk people through it.

Crystal Carter:

Right, precisely. And bearing in mind that once they finish that list, they could come back and get another list, for instance.

And the other thing that you add that I would always include in this handover would be resources. So maybe I don't have the time to explain to them every single thing, especially if you're doing a charity project or a smaller project or something. So maybe I don't have the resources to explain to them exactly how to add their meta descriptions onto their website, for instance, etc. However, I can refer them to the support documentation for the CMS. For instance, Wix has fantastic support documentation for things like that. So you could say, "Okay, what you need to do is you need to update your meta descriptions. Here's the link to the support documentation. It shows you exactly how to do that." Or maybe I have a video that I've made and I can add them a link to that video that I made, that sort of thing.

And if you've written maybe more cerebral documentation or maybe more theoretical stuff, you can also link them to that. So every recommendation, particularly every recommendation should have a resource attached to it so that somebody can learn more, grow their skills base, and maybe not have to call you for every single thing that they need. That helps a lot in terms of client handoff.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I've done that a gazillion times. Not even just actual technical documentation. If I want to say, "Hey, I think you should do X, Y, and Z, and here's why," I'm not going to explain why right there. "Here's an article. If you want to learn more about this, why this concept in SEO, here's a link to it."

And also think about the other people that the site owner is going to have to work with to implement. So if there's a dev involved or if there's a designer involved, I've put it into my report saying, "Hey, if you're going to send this to a dev, here's some documentation from Google that they might need to consider."

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. Similarly, so speaking with devs, I worked on bigger projects, for instance, where they had a dev who was building the whole thing and they were building it from scratch, and they needed the SEO all the way through. And I did the strategy beforehand and they did all the things afterwards. And then we have the meeting with the devs. And that's really important.

The meeting is extremely important, and I highly recommend that when you're doing client handovers, and if you are getting somebody who's handing over and they're having a meeting, record the meeting. Record the meeting and use a tool that does the transcript for you. Zoom, I think, does transcripts for you. Google Meets I'm pretty sure it does transcripts for you. Both of those have recording facilities and both of those will allow you to record and save those things. And even if you don't reference it straight away, you might need it later. So absolutely record that for yourself. And if the person you're working with, the SEO or the advisor or the consultant or whatever, doesn't offer to record it, tell them you want to record it because that's super useful for everyone so that you can refer back to that and for any training purposes.

Mordy Oberstein:

And to that pro tip, I like to send my report and client handoff before the meeting. This way, they can look at it, they can review it, they can assimilate it. It's going to be a... Because again, the site owner, the business owner are well smart, they're super smart, but they might not be SEOs, so it might take them a little bit of time to sort of assimilate the information that you're sharing. If they can have a look at it first, they can have questions for the meeting, but also when you're actually meeting with them, it won't feel overwhelming. They'll have some kind of a familiarity. They'll kind of understand what you're talking about, and then they'll walk away feeling like I really got something helpful out of that meeting.

Crystal Carter:

Right, precisely. And I think you can also add and in your documentation where you're handing over, so you hand it over beforehand and say, "So here's the things we're going to discuss on Tuesday," and you send it to them on the Thursday or the Friday, or maybe even well before that. And then they show up on Tuesday. And sometimes in the things that I'm sending over, I will also send smaller videos of what is included in there. So Loom, again, is another tool that's really, really useful for this. So you can do quick videos, a few minutes long. Try not to make your Looms too long unless it's something super technical. And I tend to make them sort of like, "Here's a three-minute video that explains what this is or shows you exactly the part that I'm talking about."

And those are useful, particularly if you're working with a site owner or you're working with an SEO, say, and they need to talk to their dev team. If you can do a video of whatever the technical issue is that you've identified, or the glitch or whatever it may be, or the bug that you found, if you can show them the video there, then you can give them the tools to talk to their devs.

Another thing that's useful is to try to get people as far as you possibly can before you hand over. So I very often am working with people who aren't super techie, but need to talk to techies. So very often I'll say, "This is the stuff that you need in the appendix." So I'll explain the value of, I don't know, structured data or the sitemap refit that we need to do, or whatever it may be, or the code that we need to update. And I'll say, "This is the value of this code. And in the appendix, here is the code. Here are the dev instructions that you probably won't understand, but the devs should understand. Okay? So you don't worry about what that says."

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, don't worry about it. Yes.

Crystal Carter:

Right. "Don't worry about that. Give this to those folks. Here's the video of me explaining it for them. If they would like to talk to me, I can talk to them and CC you and all of that sort of stuff."

But try to get people as far as you can, and especially with client handoff, don't assume that the client you're speaking with now is the only client that will ever be involved in this project because people within the team change, people will need to send whatever you send to them up to higher-ups, and they will need to hear information as well. But managing that handoff is so important because it's advertising how you work as a team, and it's demonstrating how you will work going forward. So let's say you get one project with a company. If you manage the handoff well, and they know they can come back to you if they need anything, or you give them enough where they can get going forward really, really well, then they'll come back to you the next time because you managed the handoff so well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. No, it's a lot of trust-building that goes on with the handoff. And I'll say two things by the way, one to that point in specific. If you're a business owner or a team leader or whatever listening to this podcast and not an SEO, push back. If you think that the reporting is not or the handoff is not being done rather in a way that works for you, push back because it's not always perfect. It's not always easy for the SEO team to really understand exactly what you need and how you want it and how you need it. So be communicative. It's a two-way street. Definitely give that feedback. As an SEO, I will love that feedback. If you're listening and you're not an SEO, do that.

The second thing I want to bring up is I think the client handoff is a good time for both sides, but particularly on the SEO side, to challenge the client. And I don't mean that in an aggressive way. I think a lot of times when I'm working with a site, there's things that I really want to do, and I'm not always sure the client's ready to do them, but they're not there yet. And I think as you hand off, I think it's a good opportunity to present those, "Hey, let's take this to the next level," next steps to the client in a natural way.

It's like you're not calling them and saying, "Hey, you know what? I think you're really botching this thing up. I think you really need to focus on X, Y, and Z, and you're not." Don't do that. What you should do though is in the handoff, it's a natural place to list next steps or discuss next steps or to talk about what the next stage of evolution of the website is, and there's a natural way to challenge the client to take things in a little bit of a different direction that you might want to see.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that those stretch goals, that ambition, the potential that you see for that website is absolutely, absolutely brilliant. So I think that for instance, you might have a client that has no content whatsoever, and maybe their initial goal is to get some content going, for instance. So we just need to start getting some content going, and then you can say, "Well, hey, you've got these other things or you've got these other topics. You could actually create a fantastic topic cluster around this whole thing, and then this would do this and this and this, and then you'd have that and that and that," and if they can see that, then that will help.

It's really important, I think, when people do that, and I'm sure that you do this as well because I've worked with you obviously, but it's also important to make sure that you get the need-to-haves covered, and they can see that you can get them from A to B because everybody's got ideas. If they come to you for one thing, yes, of course you might be able to see that they can get to the promised land, they can get all the way to this wonderful place, but they also need to get off the starting blocks first.

So make sure that you, as a consultant, are able to deliver on the initial request and complete those initial requests first. Don't forget those. I think I've seen that so many times where people are like, "Yeah, but you should be doing this and this and this," and it's like, "yeah, true, but let's do this one thing first." Because sometimes as a team, it's a question of making sure that you're handing over with a team that has the ability to complete digital tasks, digital projects, etc, etc. for growth.

And I think that one of the things that's really important for a client handoff, I'm going to give a shout-out to Dan White, who's someone who I've worked with directly and also somebody who's in charge of the Digital Marketing Collective, I think it is. He runs a group network for digital marketers. We'll link it to the show notes. I'm sorry, I mispronounced it there. But Dan White is fantastic at client handoff, and one of the things that's core to his client handoff is training. So we recently-

Mordy Oberstein:

We spoke about it with Colan.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, we spoke with Colan Nielsen at Sterling Sky about training an SEO team. And so have a listen to that podcast, but training is absolutely core to your handoffs. And so if your handoff doesn't include direct training, maybe you're not leading, maybe you're not like, "Oh, let's have a training session next week," maybe you might include videos, for instance, which can also work as training for now, for next week, for next year.

Mordy Oberstein:

So with that, let's help you get an actual look at what a handover of your SEO work might actually look like by asking Botpresso's own chief SEO consultant and Founder, Nitin Manchanda, what his handover kit looks like.

Nitin Manchanda:

Well, for me, ideally, a handover kit should be a good collection of documents, resources, and information that you provide to your client once your SEO collaboration ends with them. It should be a comprehensive guide for your client to understand where they are in terms of SEO and the open items, their status, reference documents, and the download of the tools that you're using to ensure their SEO works nice.

Talking about the ingredients for a good handover kit, I would definitely have the following:

An SEO tracker where we have all the identified opportunities with the current status. Each item in the list should have reference material, a summary of what has already been discussed and done with the team, and the next steps, if any. This list should also cover everything from on-page to off-page to technical SEO, whatever was the scope of the project. You should also have all the parameters which can help them prioritize these elements internally if they want to proceed with them.

And then the second one would be all the documents that are carrying details about the demand analysis, which is keyword research, and intent clustering, content calendar, and everything around that. So they can refer to these documents while continuing with the SEO efforts at their end.

Then if applicable, you would also be attaching more details about backlink profile analysis, so how the backlink profile looks, list of high-quality or toxic backlinks that you have identified. So you would also be adding that.

And then because technical SEO is usually very complex, so you would also be considering sharing documents about complicated projects like website speed optimization, mobile responsiveness, log analysis, structured data implementation, internal linking, and so on. So a good documentation on these topics would help them proceed further with these topics.

And then the fifth would be my list of SEO tools and resources. You might be using a lot of tools. At the time of handover, you also want to tell them which tools you are using and for what purposes. So a good list of tools which covers, let's say, keyword research tools, SEO plugins, analytics platforms you must be using, and even like SEO monitoring tools like the one we are building, which is Quicklink. Check it out. So you would want to cover these tools as well.

And then if the client is using any CMS, so the sixth thing in my handover list would be a detailed guide for them to understand how, for example, WordPress or Wix or these amazing platforms work, and how you can optimize content on these CMSs.

And then the seventh in the list would be a SEO best practices document. So you would also be linking some of the SEO best practices references and keep them in very simple, easy-to-understand language for them so that they can understand the meaning of the best practices you have there, and then they can make the most out of it even in your absence.

And then what we also do is we also provide, as I would say the last element in the handover kit, our contact information. So if they have any confusion about any of the topics, we offer ongoing support as well. So they can reach out to us and then we can help them with anything that was mentioned in the handover report or the project you were working with.

So the goal of this handover kit is to empower your client to take ownership of the website's SEO and continue to improve its performance, and it's essential to communicate the importance of ongoing SEO efforts in monitoring to ensure long-term success.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much, Nitin. Some amazing points there. One of the points that resonated with me was sharing the tools. Clients always ask, what is this data? What is this? Where is this from? And you need to differentiate when it's third-party data and it's Google data. I think that'll help you advance your case. You say, "This is third-party data, and this case, this is actual Google data, so make sure that you are paying extra careful attention to this because that's actually the way Google's looking at you."

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think the data is really useful and making sure that people have access to things like Google Search Console and stuff like that. One of the things I think is, shout out to Wix, but one of the things that's great about the Wix CMS is that clients, everybody, anybody on the website can see Google Search Console data. And so one of the reasons why we built that was to make it a little bit less of a mystery for clients. I think sometimes clients think, "Oh, no, if I go in there, I might break it," and that's not the case. So if you're able to talk to people about which metrics mean what, that can make a really big difference.

And I think in terms of tools, one of the tools... I mention Kristina Azarenko's Chrome extension a lot. That's a great tool for helping people to understand things as well. And when people have tools, they can see the value of the work that you've done more clearly. So it's really, really useful. And yeah, Nitin's got some great insights there.

Mordy Oberstein:

Speaking of tools, by the way, so with all this talk of handing off and handing this off and handing that up, which makes me just want to watch a football game, you also need a good tool to help you with the handoff. I did not plan that. I did not plan going that well.

Oh, by the way, sorry. Make sure you follow Nitin over on X, Twitter, whatever, @_Nitman, N-I-T-M-A-N. He's fantastic. It's @_Nitman. Big shout out. Thank you, Nitin, again.

Now to the pivot, since we're talking about tools and now I totally botched a great pivot.

Crystal Carter:

This is how handovers can go.

Mordy Oberstein:

Serves me right.

Crystal Carter:

Sometimes you make the pass, sometimes it lands, sometimes it goes somewhere else. You never know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Well, okay, so we all agree you need a tool to help you with the handoff. So that's why in this week, we're going Tool Time to share with you a tool that puts all the handoff stuff, from SEO to design to whatever, in one place, which is super important. Here's a look at Wix Studio's own Client Kit as we go Tool Time.

So if you're handing things off to a client, the thing you don't want to do is overwhelm them. I think it's number one because you've lost a battle before it's even started. You have to put things in a format and in a way that the data can be digested, the information can be digested. And part of that is don't send them a million reports from a million different platforms. Try to consolidate as much as possible, which brings us to the Wix Studio Client Kit.

Crystal Carter:

I love the Client Kit so much.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know you actually use it.

Crystal Carter:

I love it so, so much. Basically, essentially, so in Wix Studio, there's lots of tools that help people who are helping clients to help them better. And there's that section called Client Success, and in the section called Client Success, there's a section called Client Kits. And what you can do is you can create a client kit, and what that is is all of your juicy, fantastic, wonderful resources per client, and you can add it onto inside of the CMS of the web page.

So for instance, I've made a test site, and in my test site, I have a kit, and it can include a PDF, say, of your keyword cluster structure. You can include a video, you can include a JPEG that maybe shows a diagram of who's on your team or wherever, whatever. You can include links to other things. You can include links to other videos maybe that aren't even the ones that you made, maybe that are videos that somebody else made. You can include all different things from all over to make sure that the clients can get the best out of their resource.

And one of the things that I think is so great about the Client Kit is that it lives on the website, so anybody going into the website can see the Client Kit.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's right there. You don't have to send them something separate. It's like they just access log in, it takes away... Before we were talking about podcasts and steps, it removes one of the steps.

Crystal Carter:

It removes a step. It also removes the like, "Did you get it? I don't know where it is. What's the file called? Oh, I don't have access to that email address anymore."

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, the running through the email to try to find a file.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. You don't have to do that. It's just there. And you can also continually edit it. So for instance, I used to have sometimes where a client would be like, "Oh, can you show me how to do this thing?" And I'd be like, "Look at here. You're not going to get it the first time. Me trying to explain it to you and trying to do it's going to take ages. How about this? I will do this for you the first time. I will record it while I do it, and then I will upload the video for you."

Now, if I add that onto the Client Kit, then that stays with the website forever. So let's say I started the website, I launched the website, I do the things, then later on we add in a new feature. Let's say we add in a podcast and they need to know how to optimize the podcast pages or how to update this or that or the other on the podcast page. Well, guess what? I can just add in a new resource in the Client Kit about the podcast pages.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, that's the greatest part. That's the part I like the most about it because again, as I mentioned before, you as a client should give feedback to the SEO and say, "I'm missing this. I really could use this." And now the SEO can say, "Okay, I won't get it right for next time. I'll get it right for this time," and just add it to the Client Kit.

Crystal Carter:

So you can add it to the Client Kit. The other thing about the Client Kits is that these are reusable resources. So for instance, if you have... And you can see all your client kits together. So if you have a great set of keyword research resources that you give to all your clients, you can just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and add them all in for everyone, and you can make sure that every single client has the same level of resources every time they join you or whatever. Let's say you have a beginner's SEO setup and you give them their beginner's SEO setup so that they can do the sort of little things while you can think of the more sort of top-level strategic SEO tasks, for instance. It's a great resource.

Mordy Oberstein:

It really kind of formalizes the entire handoff process, kind of centralizes it, puts it in one place, and really gives you a home for your client handoff, reporting, everything, communications, all of it in one place. And that's why it is a really powerful tool if you use it the right way, which now you know how to use it the right way because Crystal told you how to use it the right way.

Crystal Carter:

We love the Client Kit!

Mordy Oberstein:

We do. No, we also love Barry's. We spoke about Barry Sanders. From Barry to Barry, let's have a look at all the news from Barry and some other people, whoever, on this. This, by the way, not whoever, I'm just making a joke because we love Barry, but we love all the other people covering the SEO news as well. But we just love Barry special. Here's this week's version of the Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. This week's news really drives home the age-old adage that you need to know what side of the bread is buttered, or take it this way, what does your accountant and 7-Eleven now have in common? They're both about to be open 24/7. If you recall last week, we covered Barry Schwartz covering Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, saying local hours seemed to be a factor when the business listing does and doesn't appear in a local pack. So for example, if a business closes at seven o'clock in the evening and someone's searching for that type of business at eight o'clock in the evening, they won't appear and the business that is open at 8:00 PM will appear.

Well, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google has confirmed this with Danny Sullivan of Google saying, "We've long used openness as part of our local ranking systems, and it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries." Of course he said, "Don't change your hours to compensate," to which all SEOs said, "Hell we won't."

I'm dumbfounded. I don't usually rant here on this particular podcast, but color me confused because SEOs have been asking Google for clarification around quality content and how they can go about creating better experiences on their websites with their content for users and how that plays into the algorithm. And Google's like, "Well, we're not telling you. We don't want you to manipulate the algorithm, but we will tell you that openness is a very strong factor for the local pack." So it's a little bit inconsistent. I don't know what the right word is, but it's a little bit confusing to me.

Also, I understand how the openness being a strong signal might be useful for pizza. I search for pizza near me at 2:00 AM, I usually want pizza near me at 2:00 AM, so show me a place that's open. But if I Google lawyer near me at 3:00 AM, I'm going to give you some advice. Don't use the lawyer that's open right then at 3:00 AM. You do not want to use a lawyer that's open at 3:00 AM.

So I think that sometimes it doesn't make sense. For example, if I'm looking for something that, hey, it's 3:00 AM, I can't sleep, I need a lawyer for whatever reason, and I look for a lawyer near me and I get the lawyers, I'm not looking to call a lawyer in that moment most likely. I mean, maybe if I'm stuck in jail somewhere. Its a different case. Maybe for a criminal lawyer near me, that should be a lawyer that's open right now at 3:00 AM, but in general, I'm just doing some research for the next day. So I'm not sure how that helps. Currently, I need to get my computer fixed. I'm looking for a computer fix near me. I was looking for it at 11 o'clock last night. Actually I wasn't looking for a place that was open. I was looking for a place I can go to today during the daytime. So I'm not sure exactly how this helps in certain cases.

I'm going to be honest with you, from a pure ranking point of view, why wouldn't you list your locations being open 24/7 if it means that it'll now mean that you appear in the local pack 24/7? Don't do that. Don't do that because if you're not actually open and people do contact you, you will lose trust with your consumer base, which is far more vital than the rankings, per se. But I do think Google has to fix this, and I don't put my thumb on the scale very often, if ever, in this segment, but I'm putting my thumb on the scale here. I don't think this is good for the web. I think it needs to be fixed.

All right, again, from the great Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable this time, "Google Video is not the main content of the page error spike." Let me translate that to English. Folks are seeing tons of videos no longer in Google's Index with the error in Search Console saying, "A video is not the main content of the page." This goes back to Google saying earlier in December that pages where the video is not the main content, maybe you have a whole blog post and you insert a little video, it's very ancillary, it's accentual, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that those pages are not going to appear in the video SERP.

So you know you go search for something and it's a little filter or a bubble filter for videos. Those aren't going to appear there. The video has to be the main content of the page, which goes back to Google saying even earlier that on the regular main SERP, that if the video is not the main content of the page, you will no longer get a video thumbnail. But now we're seeing huge spikes in all sorts of pages with videos on them where the video is no longer being indexed with the error saying that the reason why it's not in the Index is that video is not the main content of the page.

This is a way bigger deal than it seems and that it's being talked about unless you're like in the nitty-gritty and nooks and crannies of SEO social media. Essentially here's why. Now only YouTube videos themselves appear on the video SERP. And I'm talking about cases where I would say personally, the main content is a video. I'm talking about, let's say, you hosted a webinar and you put that video, the YouTube video where the webinar was on a blog post, and you have a little summary there. But really, the main thing is the video. It's a previous webinar that you hosted, and now you want to have it there forever on your website, and people can search and find it. Even those pages are not showing up in the video results on the SERP. The YouTube video itself might be, so this is a win for YouTube creators theoretically, but if you want to get folks coming to watch your videos on your website, now they're most likely going to go to your YouTube channel instead.

I'll say it's a little bit peculiar. And before I say anything else, I'm just going to end it here. This is week's Snappy News.

Thanks again for all of the great news coverage, everyone, and Barry, I guess. Provides for us each and every week. Check out all of the news resources that are out there for you because covering, watching rather, not covering, watching, listening, watching the SEO? You don't watch the SEO news. Reading, that's the word I'm looking for. Reading. Although wouldn't it be fascinating if every night at six o'clock, you turn on the TV and got the SEO news?

Crystal Carter:

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hey, Sue. Did you hear what Google updated today? No, Bob. I love that.

Crystal Carter:

Over here to the weather tools.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well done, Crystal! Well done. The Doppler 500 says it's going to be stormy tonight on the SERP.

Crystal Carter:

We're here on the SERP, and it's very, very windy!

Mordy Oberstein:

And the wind's blowing in the background. Ugh. We should totally do this, by the way. Barry, if you're down...

Crystal Carter:

It's flying everywhere!

Mordy Oberstein:

On a serious note before we wind this down, here's who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness as Andrew Shotland is our follow of the week.

Andrew Shotland's @LocalSEOGuide, Local SEO Guide over on Twitter, X, whatever we're calling it these days. Andrew is an SEO OG. He's the founder of Local SEO Guide, which is a SEO entity focused on local SEO, and he puts out some really great tidbits of information about SEO, not just on Twitter/X, but also on LinkedIn. You can get some great tidbits around whatever he's thinking about around SEO, which is a lot. He's one of the few people who really shares SEO stuff on a consistent basis on their feeds. Not like me, who's sharing shenanigans.

Crystal Carter:

He's super outspoken. I've been on a couple of podcasts, webinars, etc. So I've done a webinar with him with BrightLocal that was really interesting, and I also recently did the Local SEO Guide Podcast as well. And yeah, he's got so much experience working with clients big and small and working across the local space. So he really is a fountain of knowledge and he also has a very cheeky sense of humor, as they say in England. So yeah, he's a great follow and super knowledgeable and a good guy.

Mordy Oberstein:

So that's Andrew Shotland over at Local SEO Guide over on Twitter/X. And that's it for us. Hope we didn't fumble anything along the way here. Let me hand it off, the information to you, with precision.

Crystal Carter:

I feel like it was nothing but no-look passes over here. I feel like we were just going over full AI, Alan Iverson, Magic Johnson, all of the... We're only doing good passes. I did different sports ball. Can I do that? Can I just more sports balls?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No we're calling all sports ball a sports ball.

Crystal Carter:

Okay, there we go.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. So thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into emerging content trends and why SEOs resist. By the way, resistance is futile.

Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars we have over 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.