What SEO clients should you take on?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha and mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast where we're putting together some groovy to insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of our SEO brand here at Wix Central. The amazon, the fabulous, the incredible, the unequivocal Head of Risk and Communications here at Wix. The one, the only Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

It is me. Hello, internet people. Welcome to our podcast on the internet.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's on the internet? That's so cool.

Crystal Carter:

Yes. It's coming through fiber optic things.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's in the computer?

Crystal Carter:

Yes, we are in the computer or the phone or possibly the...

Mordy Oberstein:

Tablet?

Crystal Carter:

Do people listen to podcasts in their... I mean, a Tesla is essentially a tablet on wheels basically, so if you're listening to us in your Tesla, give us a little boop, boop. Thanks. But yeah, welcome.

Mordy Oberstein:

Welcome. Welcome back to us. This is our first recording after the holiday season.

Crystal Carter:

This is the first one of 2024, the first recording of 2024. If you were listening to this in whatever month it comes out...

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. Who knows?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. You'll know that we plan ahead in advance. We like to get ahead of ourselves.

Mordy Oberstein:

You got to plan. You got to produce it, you got to get guest clip. It's a lot that goes into it.

Crystal Carter:

Magic doesn't happen by itself.

Mordy Oberstein:

No. Even though if it could, that'd be amazing. Anyway, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Search Light, over at Wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also access a wide variety of SEO resources such as templates, checklists, and one-pagers that you can implement SEO the right way. Share them with designers, devs, et cetera, so that you can ensure you hand your clients the most well optimized site possible. Because this week, we're talking about SEO and clients and which SEO clients you should and shouldn't take.

When it does and doesn't make sense to take on an SEO client, spoiler alert, if you're listening and you are that client, here's what your SEO agency is probably thinking about you. We're diving into how to best assess client fit, red flags to watch for, when should outsider considerations factor in to taking on a client and when they shouldn't. Also, big client, small client, does it matter? The CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, talks how to qualify all sorts of potential clients. We'll also hear from Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell, about how qualifying leads is set to change going forward. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So the next time a client says, "Take on me, take me on, I'll be gone in a day or two," you might say goodbye right now as episode number 73 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you have an aha moment about which clients to take on and which will be stumbling away. I went 80s.

Crystal Carter:

You did. You did.

Mordy Oberstein:

I love Aha. My kids like Aha. They have one song, to be honest with you. So when I say they like Aha, they like that one song.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I mean, I think that that song is also, so there's the high note on it and there's also the video. The video is very good.

Mordy Oberstein:

The high note is very high.

Crystal Carter:

The high note, it's very...

Mordy Oberstein:

It's very, very high. But by the way, if a client ever came over to me and started singing Take On Me as a way to get me, I would just 100%, "Fine. I'll add you to my queue because that's incredible." Anyway, we're talking about which clients should you take, should you not take, and I think it's a very tricky topic because this is sort of like gut instinct. Take everyone. Especially when you're getting started, you want to make sure that you're... Maybe you're not as well established as you'd like to be yet because you've just gotten started. So, yeah, take whoever.

Crystal Carter:

Right. People think that but it doesn't work that way.

Mordy Oberstein:

It doesn't work that way and I believe very, very quickly you'll realize that's not the approach.

Crystal Carter:

No, no. I think that people will often find this, they'll learn this the hard way. Unfortunately, sometimes clients don't pay, sometimes people ask you for blood from a stone, but without giving you appropriate things, sometimes people can give you a lot of stress over it. Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful, fantastic, incredible client relationships and things. But sometimes SEO's, agency folks will sometimes discuss red flags sometimes that come up when choosing which clients. So just looking around my network for instance, Anthony Barone, who is the managing director of Studio Hawk, we had him on the podcast previously. He posted recently about an issue with a client and one of the red flags that he saw was they had two stars out of 200 reviews on Google, for instance.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. That's a great way to qualify that leave there.

Crystal Carter:

Right. They had 3.2 on Trustpilot, and this was one of the mistakes that he said, he didn't look at them, at the reputation of them before signing with the company. Sometimes that can be things from reviews or sometimes it can be from around the agency network. Have they worked with other agency owners that you know? Or have they worked with other freelancers that you know? Have they worked with a lot of freelancers or a lot of agencies within a shorter period of time? Because that can sometimes be a sign that the client isn't necessarily ready to have an agency or an account manager from an external party. That's something that can be really tricky.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and it's not always like, oh, they're a bad client. To me, it's a lot of, they're not the right client for us or for me. I think a lot of it comes down to, I look at it almost as if it's a job application where you're trying to hire somebody. When you're taking on a client, you're in a way hiring somebody in a backwards way. You want to make sure that they align with what you're trying to achieve for yourself. There's many kinds of clients with many types of websites doing many different things. Is that what you do?

It sounds like a silly fundamental, like obviously you need to ask that, but a lot of times we don't. I made that mistake a gazillion times. I have very limited bandwidth. I like to say yes. I like to help people and I like to say, "Yes, I will help you with your website." But a lot of times, this really isn't for me, it's not what I like to focus on. It's not what I specialize in, it's not what I'm interested in, it's not what I really excel at because I don't have the bandwidth in general. Why would I take this on? That was silly. So, really just fundamentally making sure what the client is, who they are, what they do, what their business is, and what they need in terms of SEO aligns to what you do. It's such a fundamental thing but it's such a big payoff. Or not payoff.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah, precisely. No, precisely. If they're asking for the moon on a stick and you don't have that, then just don't get involved. Don't get involved.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's such a red flag. I will tell you a little trick that I do. You're having a conversation with the prospective client. You're going back and forth in emails. Don't reply a day or two and see what happens. Are they in your inbox again chirping, "Hey, just to follow up on our conversation," a day afterwards? That's a red flag to me.

Crystal Carter:

That's a red flag for you?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, because that's a client I feel like who's going to be... Some days I get to my emails in the morning, sometimes I get to my emails in the evening, sometimes I don't get to my emails that day. 24-hour turnaround time is normal. I think that's a normal turnaround time. If they're in your inbox in a 24-hour period asking for a follow-up right away, so that's a red flag. Because once we get started with the work and you feel more entitled because now you're actually paying me, we've agreed on the account, whatever, this is not going to end well for me.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. Here's another one that someone else was discussing. So, shout out to Aaron Redman Hawkins, who also works for another agency. He was saying that he was asking questions. The pitch was a big pitch, right? A six-figure pitch, but he was asking for questions and they got upset about the questions that he was asking. They were asking him like, "What's with all the probing questions?" they said. He says, "I was attempting to get a solid understanding of what the actual numbers were so I would have an accurate baseline to work from," and they didn't want to answer his questions.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a red flag.

Crystal Carter:

Right?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's an immediate red flag.

Crystal Carter:

He's like, "I need to know what I'm working with before I get involved," And that's something that's a red flag entirely, if people aren't able to answer your question. Either they don't know the answers, which is problematic because that means they don't know their business and therefore won't be able to recognize the value that you're giving to them, or they're hiding something which is worrisome. So, that's something to think about as well. That's pretty much the same with most relationships. If people don't want to answer questions or something, what's going on there?

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, it's like a relationship. You're getting involved in a relationship and in this case, and what makes it difficult is you want that other person to change. That's a very complicated, thinking about your personal life if, if men did that. But that's really what you're asking, because you're going to come in and you're going to make hopefully recommendations. Otherwise, what are you doing? If the other party is not receptive to changing, that's a problem and that's something you kind of need to figure out.

I'll say, I used to do a lot of hiring for an old, old, old job I used to have. I don't know, it's like 20 years. I'm old at this point. I'm talking about my job I had 15 years ago. I used to interview a lot of people and I knew within five minutes whether or not this person was a good fit. Now, we can talk about their qualifications and were they qualified or not? I had a sense in five minutes this person is going to be difficult to work with or easy to work with. And if you're taking on a client, and if you are a prospective client listening to this podcast, be mindful that, yes, it might be hard to take the advice of the SEO, but it's in your best interest. If you're going to be difficult or not receptive to that change, that's a red flag to the agency, to the consultant, because they need your buy-in. You're a team and if you don't come off as being willing to make changes and being receptive to changes, it's not going to end well for anybody.

Crystal Carter:

Right, right. I think it's really important for people to realize that collaborative element, because you'll get better results when you work together. You'll get better results when you're collaborative, and I think that that's really important. Just shout out to Amelia Fowler, who is also a fantastic SEO, fantastic person. One of her red flags is people asking for guaranteed results. Yeah. Yeah. She's saying, "Nobody, no single agency or freelancer can guarantee results. They can benchmark, they can illustrate potential, they can do math and estimate, they can give you similar results from campaigns in the industry, but can you guarantee results? No." I've had people come to me and they're like, "Oh, we'll pay you after you get these results for us."

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. No. No.

Crystal Carter:

I'm like, "No. I'm not in charge of your sales funnel." We can get you traffic, we can get you increased rankings, we can do that sort of stuff. But what happens after the lead comes in is up to you and that's how you close the sale. I can't be held accountable for that.

Mordy Oberstein:

That. Not even that. I just tweeted about this the other day. When I say the other day, the other day of recordings. You got to go way back in the amount of nonsense I tweet out to find this tweet. But you're coming in as an SEO, and let's say you're working on A, B, and C. You're just getting started. A, B, and C. Up comes an algorithm update and because of X, Y, and Z, which you haven't even gotten to, may not even be your scope of work, the website now gets slaughtered in the rankings. If you're going to be getting paid based on rankings and organic traffic and whatever, there's so much that's not even in your scope of work, especially initially. Or that's in your control or in your hands or that you've even gotten to yet. You're just going to end up in an impossible situation for yourself, because the work that you were brought on to do, you did.

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's not my fault that I didn't know or didn't get to yet, or wasn't even asked me about, or wasn't a part of the scope of work that you bought links 10 years ago from PBNs and Google finally realized, and now you're slaughtered in the rankings.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I think this is also one of the reasons why people should expect to be in SEO for a good amount of time. A lot of SEOs will say, "Give me six months. Give six months to do a good job." We could do some quick wins stuff in the first couple of months, and it's always good practice to do the quick wins quickly and things. If you see quick wins to do, sure, do them quickly and you can see. Move the needle a little bit and you can that show the value of your work fairly early on.

But to get real results, to get real value, you should expect to see some of that coming through after a few months. A lot of SEOs will do that and it's good practice. If you get an SEO that tells you that, that's because it's good practice. I think that it can sometimes be a red flag if somebody wants something to happen straight away, particularly with SEO. Because there's so many moving parts, there's so many algorithms things. Like you're saying, SERP features, lots of different stuff can happen. So, if somebody's expecting you to be able to turn on the SEO tomorrow and for them to get buckets of sales and all that sort of stuff, that can be really, really tricky. So, I think that's something to be wary of.

Mordy Oberstein:

It speaks to bad expectations. The expectations are just completely unrealistic, unaligned, otherworldly.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Anu Adegbola, the founder of PPC Live, she's talked about that for PPC. That people looking for PPC results straight away and things like that can be a little bit of a tricky thing, particularly with regards to sales. I think that it can be something that can be tricky depending on what type of product it is and all of that sort of stuff. You can get great results from PPC of course, but people should be realistic about the timeline, should be realistic about their expectations around that. Especially with PPC with budget sometimes. I found that when I've worked on PPC, people are like, "Oh, I want to see all this sort of stuff," and I'm like, "Yo, your budget's too small to see that return. It's just too small."

Mordy Oberstein:

I want to spend $1 and get a million back.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. I also want to shout out to Nick Leroy. Nick Leroy has a great video within the Wix. I think it's a Wix partners website.

Mordy Oberstein:

Partners, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

And so, there's a great YouTube video where he talks about qualifying clients and qualifying and that sort of stuff. He also has a great one about folks who are getting SEO and the red flags you should be thinking about if you're getting an SEO team involved. We also have an article in the SEO Hub about this as well, about how to find an SEO agency. But one of the things Nick Leroy talked about was who's fulfilling the SEO? So, one of the things that can be tricky sometimes is that sometimes SEOs will say, "Oh, I can do all this SEO," but you don't necessarily know who's actually going to implement it or who's actually going to do that work. So, it's worth having that discussion and understanding who's involved with that.

Also, he talks about not being able to get references for them. Are they able to tell you who their previous clients are? Do they have good accolades, good reputation and good reputation with evidence? Also, one of the things that he points out is a high employee turnover. That's also a good one as well because it is true. If you're seeing agencies where people are constantly circulating through, that's not a great sign of cohesion in the business at the moment. Great agencies will have folks working there for years and that are contributing to it and helping the agency to build in terms of skills and also in terms of abilities. So, that's something to definitely think about as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Fundamentally, you need to, both parties need to evaluate the relationship, boundaries need to be created, boundaries need to be respected by both parties. You don't want to be asking your SEO agency a gazillion questions a gazillion times a day. They shouldn't be sending you a million different things. Piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal, piecemeal. Boundaries, respect, expectations, alignment, all that needs to be considered if you're going to take a client on and if you're going to take an agency on or a consultant on. To help us qualify or better qualify taking on big clients and how they might differ from taking on smaller clients. We have the CEO of Smart Simple Marketing, Sydni Craig-Hart, to help us help you take on the right clients.

Sydni Craig-Hart:

One of the biggest differences between qualifying big clients versus small clients is that big clients often have more stakeholders involved in the decision-making process than small clients. For example, the person that you are speaking to, who is super excited to have met you, is really interested in your product or service and thinks you're so cool, may not actually be the final decision maker and may not be controlling the budget that will be needed to actually invest in what it is that you're offering.

So it's really, really important that when you're having these conversations that you are digging in and understanding who are all of the people involved in making this decision? Who needs to sit at the table? Who needs to be involved in the conversation and what's their perspective? What's their role? What is their impact in this particular project or initiative? Because if you don't involve those folks in the conversation, you might find yourself in a situation where the person that you're speaking to is then left with the task of trying to sell you to the person who is actually making the decision. And in no circumstance is that individual going to be able to sell you as well as you will be able to sell yourself.

Now, when you're selling to smaller clients, you don't really have this issue. Usually, the person you're speaking to is the decision maker. They are crystal clear on what they need, what their expectations are, what their budget is, and they can say yes or no pretty quickly to what it is that you are offering without jumping through any hoops or having to go through procurement or legal or what have you. They can just say yes and sign the contract and you can be on your way.

But with larger clients, there's usually a lot of other departments and steps that are involved. It's just really, really critical that you're digging in and asking a lot of questions, still respectfully of the person that you are speaking to because you want to honor their role and their contribution to this process, but you really need to understand what their position is and are they the final decision maker. And find out is there someone else whose opinion you would value or is there someone else who's going to weigh in on this decision? Is there someone else's viewpoint that we need to consider? Who is finally going to make the decision about whether this is initiative you're going to move forward with? When you ask those kinds of questions, you understand are there more people that you need to be inviting to these conversations as you and this individual are discussing whether or not this is an opportunity that you're going to pursue.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much for that Sydni. Crystal, kind of your point there about bigger organizations have different people you don't know who you're working with and who's going to do what and what's going to happen on the client side also.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. Yeah, I think you have some really great points there, particularly with larger clients. I think that what she talks about not expecting that the person that you're talking to is the last person that's going to see the document or your presentation or whatever. I think that is such an important tip and it's such an important part of leveling up.

I had a great conversation with Sydni about how she went from working with smaller clients to working with people like Facebook and other folks like that and stuff. I think that understanding that if you're making a pitch deck for instance, it should include enough information for anyone in the organization to understand so that the person you're speaking to, for instance, can pass it on to the CEO, the CMO, the whoever, operations, whoever it is, and that they can understand it. That your website is accessible for all of that sort of stuff and has enough information on it to make sure that you look legit. That you look like you know what you're doing and that you're ready for the job. She's got some great insights on that and, yeah, I think it's a great advice.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now, we could talk about grabbing leads forever, and we can talk about grabbing lots and lots of leads and qualifying, taking as many as you possibly can, but it's one thing to take all the leads and qualify them. It's something else to understand how to qualify them the best way. To help us with this and to make sure that you're spending your precious time getting as much value out of qualifying leads as much as possible, we decided to go a little bit deep into the weeds in terms of qualifying leads with Foxwell Digital's founder, Andrew Foxwell. So, here's a look at how will qualifying leads change in the future. We actually asked Andrew that very question, how will qualifying leads change in the future? Here's what Andrew Foxwell had to say about how qualifying leads will change in the future. Take it away, Andrew.

Andrew Foxwell:

First of all, I guess I think qualifying leads isn't going to change at all. It's going to be totally, exactly the same forever. Obviously, I'm making that up. Qualifying leads as an agency, how is this going to change over time? I think that it's going to change over time by, number one, having probably more AI being part of the game. Right? Having more automation being part of the game, and people not being sure whether something is automated or real is likely going to be true I think as leads get qualified over time.

I also think that going through and looking at the lead itself, and if you're really looking to qualify a lead, looking through and doing more research on that particular person is going to be more available. That's something that I think people have been doing a little bit more of. But if you're really qualifying lead, there's so much social media out there and where people are talking and presenting themselves. It's going to source all that together and allow you to see a more full picture of what's taking place with that person in their life and why they're submitting their information along to bring them through being an MQL as it stands. I think that would be a part of it, is knowing more about the person.

I think the other thing that's probably going to change as it relates to qualifying leads over time in the future is really looking at that whole person. I think that if you really want to do lead qualification properly, you can do all this automation and fancy stuff, but in order to win, you need to make sure that you're understanding the stages that the person has gone through. You're understanding what they've clicked on in all your properties, what they've read and why. And you're going to want to bring to them a conversation with vulnerability of, "Hey, we noticed you were looking here and that might be a thing you're struggling with. Here's something that we think could help." Leading with that empathetic, less salesy tactic, but knowing that you are the person that can help solve their problem. You're a person that potentially can help solve the problem. So, I think those are probably the ways that things are going to change.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you so much for that, Andrew. Make sure we check out Andrew on social media. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. Of course, Sydni as well. Meant to mention that before. I love, by the way, he went from AI to, yeah, use automation, but where you're really going to win is actually digging deep. I meant to bring this up earlier of going and looking at the social media accounts and really understanding who that person is. Such a great point. Forget just taking on the client and qualifying them, but understanding what the best way to work with them might be. What kind of personality they are and maybe where have some common ground so you can work better with them once you do qualify the lead, get them on board and now actually have to work with them for the long term.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think it's really important to know your clients. To actually know your clients. I used to spend a lot of time doing a lot of the what seems like nothing. The small talk stuff before the meeting starts where you say, "Oh, what'd you do this weekend?" and things like. All of that intel is really, really useful. Like, "Oh, well, you got any plans for the weekend or something?" "Oh yeah, I'm taking the kids." Note they have children. Right? "Oh, and I'm going to here and, oh, I just got back from this concert." Okay, they're a music person. There's things that are really, really useful for this.

For one, for instance if they have kids, then you know that wherever you live, there's going to be school vacation time. Right? So chances are during school vacation, they're going to be less available or at least slightly less focused maybe than they will be during the other times. So, you should plan your stuff accordingly. Right? If they've got a particular interest with music or sports or something or other or things like that, that's really useful for the kinds of metaphors and things that you can use to help them to understand what you're talking about.

Mordy Oberstein:

Touchdown. Touchdown.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Exactly. You can use things like that.

Mordy Oberstein:

A home run, Crystal.

Crystal Carter:

Right, just to make things more relatable to them and to build more trust with them. It's really, really useful. So, yeah. I think he discussed how things kind of change but they kind of stay the same. You still have to interact with people.

Mordy Oberstein:

People are people. That hasn't changed fundamentally ever. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist.

Crystal Carter:

Automation will help or whatever, but eventually you've got to get your hands dirty. You've got to get involved.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, you got to really get to know them. Take them for a picnic. I don't know. Go for a long walk together or something.

Crystal Carter:

Break some bread. Have a drink. Whatever you need to do.

Mordy Oberstein:

Go on vacation together. Something that's not...

Crystal Carter:

We're not going on vacation together.

Mordy Oberstein:

I was like, when were you going to catch? I'm like, go for a picnic, go for a long walk.

Crystal Carter:

Look, who's clients are these? Anyway.

Mordy Oberstein:

My favorite clients. I take them on a picnic. We play softball. I will say that if you're qualifying based on social media, be careful or be cautious because who people are on social media, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, are not who they are in real life to a certain extent. Or it's like a caricature of that person. Like I'm very sarcastic on social media. I am sarcastic in general but I'm not that sarcastic.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, what?

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, all right.

Crystal Carter:

What?

Mordy Oberstein:

I might be a bad example. I might be a very bad example.

Crystal Carter:

But I think that there's definitely tools you can get. For instance, one tactic I've seen is that people will take LinkedIn posts, for instance, and they'll analyze them for tone of voice and style and things like that. You can also figure out that this person is not somebody that likes a very, very long email, for instance. If lots of their posts are fairly concise and things like that, of course cover the details and things, but maybe put them in bullet points. Maybe put them in a little list.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. That's a great tip right there.

Crystal Carter:

Things like that. If somebody's writing longer ones, then they're probably somebody who likes to have more detail, more nuance, more et cetera in the email, for instance. So, there are tools that you can use like AI tools and other tools that can help you to understand, for instance, more about your client even before you get involved with them.

Mordy Oberstein:

You know where you can learn a lot about someone? By reading their news articles each and every week. I really feel like you really get to know them intimately and who they are and what they're about. Whoever your favorite journalist is. Mine is Barry Schwartz.

Crystal Carter:

We do love Barry. Shout out to Barry.

Mordy Oberstein:

So with that introduction and, well, let's get to know Barry a little bit better now as we get into some Snappy News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, an old friend has gone away. No, not referring to Carl Weathers, though that is really sad. Although on the same time, there's a new Billy Joel song that's really happy, because I'm a massive Billy Joel fan. I am off track on this. We're talking about the cash link on the SERP. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, Google search officially retires cash links. So when you went to the SERP, you could see the cash version of the page where you could until now. Now it's gone.

Is it a big deal? I don't know. I liked it. SEOs, we really liked it. I have used it a few times to look at what was going on on a page relatively recently. I've actually used it for some social media stuff before, to see how people related to their social media profiles. I found it really helpful at certain moments in time and I'm actually sad that it is gone. However, if you would like to see an old version of the page, you should check out the Wayback Machine. We'll link to that in the podcast show notes. We actually talked about it on a previous podcast episode. It's a great tool. Make sure to donate to it because they always need our support.

Okay. Next up, this from next week's guest, a little sneak peek there, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, and Google Bard Ads Image Generation. It is what it says. Google Bard now can create images. I love it. It's really, really, really, really good. I've basically been using a combination of the Wix image AI Generator within the image upload tool and Bing's version of it. Bard is really good. I'm adding Bard to my little AI image repertoire. I love AI images. It's way easier looking for stock images. I think it's a great use of AI technology as opposed to just creating blog posts, which I am not a big fan of. So, Bard offering great images is great for the web in my opinion. Just to have a quick look, head over to Bard, generate whatever you want. It is really good.

It does, interestingly, surprisingly to me, it will actually create images for entities like sports teams or sports stadiums or other sports stuff. Because I like sports. Besides Billy Joel, I like sports. You're really getting a little insight into what I prefer, but not that you actually care. But I was a little bit surprised that it does that. It won't do actual people. So for example, you could say, "Hey, create an image of the New York Yankees." But then if you said, "Hey, create an image of Lou Gehrig giving a speech at Yankee Stadium," it says, "No, I can't do that." If you try to fool into doing that, it knows what you're trying to do and it won't do it. So, check that out. It's really cool. I like it.

Next up, also from Barry Schwartz but now we're moving on to SERoundtable.com, but we're not moving away from AI. It's Barry, right? Google Maps has AI-generated answers for local questions with local guides. I actually also love this. I'm somewhat of an AI curmudgeon, and this is two AI things that I really like. Okay, let me explain what this is before I get overly excited about it because I think it's really cool.

So basically, you're on Google Maps and you want to, I don't know, I'll give you Google's example. They show a GIF and the article link to it in the show notes. You're looking for, I don't know, a restaurant or a cafe or whatever it is. You want a vintage vibe. So, you go into the AI little pop-up thing that a slider thing that it has there, and you say, "Hey, looking for a cafe with vintage vibe. Find me a place," and it shows you a bunch of places. "Find me a record store nearby," and that kind of thing. So, it's an interactive way of being able to move from one local query to the next local query and expand your local maps journey.

The reason why I like this, I was just having this problem the other day. It's my anniversary coming up soon. Wow, you're really getting a look into my life with this little news segment here. I was looking for a cafe. The cafe that my wife wanted to go to does not have great desserts, but I really wanted dessert. So I'm like, "Okay, show me a cafe." I went to Google, I found the cafe that she wanted, and I went to look for a dessert place and it was really annoying because when you look for the dessert place, you lose the pin. So now, how far away is the dessert place from the cafe? I don't know. It got really confusing and really annoying. But if you can use an AI assistant within Google Maps and say, "Okay, show me cafe whatever it is on the map. Great. Now, show me a great dessert place that serves fudge, whatever, whatever, within a two-minute walk." That would be really, really helpful and really, really useful.

So I think with Maps, the way that Maps works, it can be very, very difficult to go from one search to the next search while keeping the context of the original search. If this SGE kind of experiment that Google is showing within the local maps can help solve that problem, that is a great place. A fabulous place to use that sort of SGE-ish experience within the Google results. With that, and now knowing about all of my life and life preferences, that is this week's Snappy News.

The best part wasn't the news. The best part was getting to know Barry better and doing the news.

Crystal Carter:

Precisely, and I hope that wherever he is, whether it's sunny or not sunny, that he's enjoying himself.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yes.

Crystal Carter:

I hope he's having so much fun.

Mordy Oberstein:

And enjoying a nice butter sandwich. Which brings us to our follow of the week. What the butter sandwich has to do with the follow of the week, I don't know, but we're just going to run with it.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Our follow of the week this week is Chase Freezman, who maybe he enjoys a good butter sandwich. Chase, do you? Let us know on social media. Chase is a fabulous person. He's a great SEO, worked at Seer. You could follow him on, which is a great SEO agency by the way, Digital Marketing Agency, you can follow him on X@ChaseFreezman, that's F-R-E-E-Z-M-A-N. Of course, we'll link to Chase in the show notes.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, he's a great SEO. Super friendly, super nice and super clever. So yeah, do follow him to find out lots more great information and also what's happening at Seer.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, and ask him. Maybe he likes butter sandwiches.

Crystal Carter:

Does he ever run with a butter sandwich? This is the question.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh. Well, you would run and... Would you just be running and holding it or running and eating the butter sandwich?

Crystal Carter:

I've definitely walked around eating a butter sandwich. Well, I'm not sure if I've eaten a butter sandwich. I think I just had bread with butter on it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Right, right. I know. Who makes a sandwich out of it? I'll be honest with you, I don't really know the last time I've ever ate butter and bread. It's got to be years.

Crystal Carter:

I like carbs.

Mordy Oberstein:

You like the butter and the bread?

Crystal Carter:

So, I will regularly. I mean, if it's good bread, I don't need anything else.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right. No, it's true. No, I enjoy it. I love bread and butter. I just don't think I've sat down and ate bread and butter in the years. Is that weird?

Crystal Carter:

You've never been to Olive Garden? Cheesecake Factory?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's not Kosher.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, okay. Okay. I see.

Mordy Oberstein:

No, but first off, okay, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

We could go to my whole history of eating and bread and butter and restaurant visits and so forth.

Crystal Carter:

You don't have it all with butter? Is that not... Do you do that?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, no, people do. My kids, my 12-year-old twins, I have 12-year-old twins, loves bread and butter. He makes a little toast, he puts the butter on. I don't.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm almost surprised at myself.

Crystal Carter:

You should get involved.

Crystal Carter:

You should get involved with it. Gary loves it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. He loves chunks, rips the bread right up, makes a mean butter sandwich. But you know what it's like now? You ever, you think about yourself and you're really like, "Wow, what a blind spot I've had"?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, man.

Mordy Oberstein:

What a blind spot. I've never had bread and butter for years? I feel disappointed in myself.

Crystal Carter:

This is the real deep thought.

Mordy Oberstein:

This is the real deep thought.

Crystal Carter:

What have I been doing with my life? It's like, yeah ...

Mordy Oberstein:

What have I been eating? What's wrong with me?

Crystal Carter:

Who am I?

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know who I am anymore. Wow. I have to go make a butter sandwich now. With that, thanks 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 Google's Gemini and what it means possibly, maybe, who knows, for SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.