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Miriam Ellis is a local SEO columnist and consultant. She has been cited as one of the top five most prolific women writers in the SEO industry. Miriam is also an award-winning fine artist and her work can be seen at MiriamEllis.com. Miriam Ellis Local SEO Subject Matter Expert, Moz Miriam Ellis is a local SEO columnist and consultant. She has been cited as one of the top five most prolific women writers in the SEO industry. Miriam is also an award-winning fine artist and her work can be seen at MiriamEllis.com . Articles & Resources 16 Jun 2025 Your About page: Why it isn’t converting customers & how to fix it 13 Feb 2025 Your local SEO career kit: How to develop expertise, decide where to work, and develop your professional profile 5 Dec 2024 Passive vs. Active search marketing: Embrace Google’s modern SERP with old-school strategies 30 Nov 2023 Local SEO for COVID-consciousness 14 Sept 2023 Multi-location local SEO: A framework for organizational success 18 Apr 2023 How local businesses can use low-code solutions for SEO success Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Rejoice has worked in SEO as a content specialist and account manager. Her passion for diversity in the workplace inspired her to co-found the B-DigitalUK network for Black marketers. As an award-winning diversity and inclusion advocate, she is a frequent speaker about all things D&I, as well as SEO content. Rejoice Ojiaku Co-founder at B-DigitalUK Rejoice has worked in SEO as a content specialist and account manager. Her passion for diversity in the workplace inspired her to co-found the B-DigitalUK network for Black marketers . As an award-winning diversity and inclusion advocate, she is a frequent speaker about all things D&I, as well as SEO content. Articles & Resources 25 Jul 2023 Website accessibility and SEO: How they’re related and why it matters Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Back Your resource is ready Use this SEO cheat sheet for web designers for a smoother SEO process. We’ve emailed you a link so it’s easy to access. Download Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Back SEO blog writing Google Doc template Craft blog articles that give search engines and users what they’re looking for with this SEO template. Get resource Full name* Agency name Business email* I want to receive news and updates from the Wix SEO team. * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix’s Privacy Policy . Get resource Use this collaborative Google Doc to: Format blog articles that contain on-page SEO elements like meta data, URLs and headings Understand how to create a targeted brief for content writers See how to apply keyword research to blog content Learn how to summarize instructions about brand tone of voice, audience specifics and messaging Condense and apply research to a specific blog article Adriana Stein CEO & Founder, AS Marketing LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram Originally from the US and now living in Germany, Adriana Stein is the CEO and Founder of the marketing agency AS Marketing. She leads a team of multi-language SEO experts who develop holistic international marketing strategies in 30+ languages for global companies. More about this topic Watch this webinar on outranking the biggest brands with blogging , and read this article on using a blog template to streamline your content creation process for more information. Share this resource Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Should SEOs target “head terms” (aka short tail keywords) or focus more on longtail keyword phrases? Is there actual value in head terms? If so, when and how should you implement short tail keywords into your SEO strategy? Join hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein as they dive into head terms and SEO strategy. Daniel Cheung also joins the show to share his passion for search-related insights by exploring the potential value of head terms and their poor conversion performance. It’s everything about short tail keywords on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Back Is the chase for "head terms" doomed to fail? Should SEOs target “head terms” (aka short tail keywords) or focus more on longtail keyword phrases? Is there actual value in head terms? If so, when and how should you implement short tail keywords into your SEO strategy? Join hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein as they dive into head terms and SEO strategy. Daniel Cheung also joins the show to share his passion for search-related insights by exploring the potential value of head terms and their poor conversion performance. It’s everything about short tail keywords on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 26 | February 22, 2023 | 34 MIN 00:00 / 33:44 This week’s guests Daniel Cheung Based in Sydney, Australia, Daniel K Cheung helps in-house SEO managers and marketing directors make the right decisions by making the complex simple when it comes to organic growth. He is passionate about sharing search-related insights and learnings. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the incredible, the fantastic, the "I'm going to Beyonce" head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am indeed. I got Beyonce tickets and I think I could cry. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my God. Crystal Carter: I mean it's pretty amazing. I've never thought that I would be there, but there I am. I'm going to be there. Mordy Oberstein: I'm so happy for you. When is the concert? Crystal Carter: I'll be going to the concert in the spring. I can't remember exactly the date, but I'm basically dropping everything so you won't be hearing from me on that day. I will- Mordy Oberstein: This is your Super Bowl. Crystal Carter: Yeah, this is my Super Bowl, although, but to be honest, for people who are fans of Beyonce, Rihanna, this is a pretty mega year. So Rihanna's performing at the Super Bowl. Beyonce is on tour. Taylor Swift is on tour. This is a big year for big shows, doing cool things. Also, it's my understanding that Rihanna's about to drop a Ventee kids fashion line, which is amazing as well. So- Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking forward to that. Crystal Carter: I know, but I'm just saying there's a whole... For my beehive SEO crew, of which I know there are many, because I did a Beyonce themed deck at Brighton in April, and literally everyone from the beehive amongst the SEO crew was like, "I loved it. It was amazing." And I was like, I knew there were some people like that here. I was chatting with Joy Sejaku about this. I'm chatting with them... And Brittany Muller was talking about this online and also there's a few other folks. I'm just saying there's overlap. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Crystal Carter: Shout out to the whole beehive. Mordy Oberstein: Shout out to all the Beyonce people. Well, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can now move on past head terms and get a keyword that will actually help your site grow by using Sam Rush's keyword integration inside of Wix. It's a free keyword research tool right inside of Wix, which brings us to today's show, is the Chase for Head Terms Doomed to Fail? Alternatively, we can call us episode, It's a Trap as going after short tell keywords, aka head terms, aka keywords like "best vacation" or "pizza" might not be the best idea if you want to drive not just traffic, but actual revenue to the website. We'll dive into why do clients and even some SEOs find head terms so attractive? When is it and when is it not worth it to go after a head term? And how does Google treat head terms and what does that mean for you and your clients' websites? Also, Daniel K Chung stops by to share the value of head terms within a very specific context. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO News for you and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness, go now, listen podcast as episode number 26 of the SERP's Up podcast is here to get into your head all about SEO and head terms. Get it? I said, "Go now, listen podcast." Get it? Head terms. Crystal Carter: I feel like we're heading in the right direction, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Mordy Oberstein: Go direction podcast. Also, when you speak in head terms it is the weirdest language. Dr. P has this thing to go into... He doesn't actually do this, but Dr. Pirmaz would like to do this, to go into a store like Best Buy or whatever electronics store and start yelling, "Buy laptop," as if you're searching on Google. Leaving Dr. Pete and his shenanigans aside. What exactly are head keywords? Let's dive into that quickly before we dive into whether or not you should be using them or not. So there are all sorts of keywords. There are things called long tail keywords and short tail keywords. We can get into why they are called long tail or short tail keywords, not because of the number of words in them by the way, that's a mess. But essentially a head keyword is something very, very top level. As opposed to "Shoe inserts for children between ages five and 11," it's, "Shoe inserts." Crystal Carter: And generally speaking you know you're looking at a head term if it falls into a few criteria. It doesn't always have to be one or two words, but they tend to be one or two words. Another one is that they have a large search volume, so something like over 10,000, and depending on the niche, but something like over 10,000 with search volume. I've seen some that'll just reference one shortly, but they can be hundreds of thousands of search volume per month. They also tend to have a very large number of search results. Something like in the billions. If you're looking at a keyword and it says that there are billions of search results, that's probably a head term. And the other thing you'll notice is that they have a large number of keyword variations and some of the tools will explain that for you. A good example, for instance is hats. That's a head term. If we think about, that one's got a keyword search volume globally of something like 500,000 for instance. Mordy Oberstein: That's a lot. Crystal Carter: It's got 7 billion search results and the people ranking for that are people like Lids and Amazon. Mordy Oberstein: Hats.com, Crystal Carter: Hats.com, precisely. Then when we drill down a little bit into something like straw hats, that's still kind of a head term. It's better than hats, but that's coming in at 41 million keywords. And then if you get down further into something like, straw hats for women, that's giving you fewer on the search volume. But also we've gone down from a hundred thousand search volume down to sort of 13,000 search volume, and that's more niche. So that's the difference between a head term and as you get further into it. Mordy Oberstein: And usually the SERP tends to open up as you refine down. So again, a head term is very, very categorical and everyone is trying to arrange for those, we'll call them categories. Crystal Carter: Precisely. And clients love these because they are big and shiny. We were talking about Beyonce, but head terms are kind of the Beyonce of keywords. They're out in front and it looks really shiny and everybody's really interested in it, but sometimes clients are like, "Yeah, I want to rank for hats." And you're like, "You're not going to rank for hats because you're not Amazon, and I hate to break it to you, but you're not going to rank for hats, especially not with one piece of content and 15 pages or something." And Beyonce wasn't built in a day. Beyonce started off in a group and then she ended... And then she moved out in front. And no disrespect to Kelly and Michelle and the other people before, but she built up to that. And I think that that's something that clients don't always understand is that you don't dive straight in on the head terms. You use it, like you were saying, like a category, use it as sort of a topic and build your content around that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I always compare it to when you're recording somebody, it takes a long time for that person to feel comfortable with you to share their deepest, darkest, inner secrets with you. The same thing with rankings. It takes a while for Google to understand who you are, what you're all about, and blah blah, blah. So it's not going to rank you for hats, the one thing everybody's looking for right away. Crystal Carter: And I think also you have to remember that Google also steers people away from that. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So Google has lots of ways that they sort of say, "Hats isn't enough guys, I need you to drill down. Are you talking fedoras? Are you talking baseball caps? Are you talking a top hat?" They manage this in lots of ways. So they give auto complete. There's those topic bubbles, there's disambiguation boxes, there's lots of those things. So one of the ways that people think about head terms is thinking about ways that they can connect with people on all of those different slits that come off of the head terms. And it's another reason why we always tell people to look at the SERP to better understand how Google's managing those head terms and other pieces of content. Mordy Oberstein: So they are these very shiny objects. First off, they're very simple. If I own a pizza store, so I will go after pizza, what else would I go after? Right? And so either it's really a lack of understanding of how search works. And you think, "Okay, I sell pizza, I'll go over after pizza." That's one part of the other is the, I know what's happening, I know what pizza represents on Google, I'm going to go after that. And it's almost like this shiny object that's not exactly... Not always relevant and to the point by the way, of the Google results themselves. If you search for hats, you get a carousel up top, unisex, kids, boys, cap, truckers, snapback, bucket, a door nearby, craft blank. I don't know what that means. New era, Nike, I can go on. Crystal Carter: They're giving you more options to filter your results to drill down. Mordy Oberstein: Which is Google telling you that when somebody searches for hats, they really don't just want hats. What they really want is either a trucker hat or they want a Nike hat or they want a kids hat. Crystal Carter: Whatever, boy hat, bucket hat. Mordy Oberstein: Yankees hat, all the things, except for Red Sox hats. Nobody wants those, don't even bother going after it. But you see how Google treats head terms as if you didn't really mean to search for that, which means that you as a content creator should take a lesson away from that, that your audience didn't really want... They wanted something much more specific. So give them that. Crystal Carter: We've had some really good articles on the Wix SEO Hub talking about this a little bit more. So we have someone talking about long tail keywords and they were explaining a few things around that. And they were saying that with that, that we should be thinking about them as part of creating your long tail keyword strategy. And Jon Stickler talks about how when you do a content cluster, that the head term should be the core of the content cluster. So for instance, if you were to talk about hats, you would say the core would be hats, that you make sure that there a cluster around the word hats and then it broke down into those things so it meant hats for men, summer hats, small hats, big hats, church hats, all the different sort of hats, breaking them down from that so that they all feed into that content. And it's something that we talked to Adam and Rebecca from the Wix blog a few episodes ago, and she talked about a sheet. That's something that they think about when they think about their content, but it also helps you to appeal to lots of different parts of the SERP, including featured snippets and other things like that as well. Mordy Oberstein: So yeah, usually head terms come about because let's say you go... Let's go through the pillar page again, pillars and clusters. So you have a pillar page that's sort of like the cornerstone page. Out of that, you have subpages that talk about all the subtopics. So hats. So you have a page about hats, great. And then you have a page about baseball hats, page about trucker hats, page about... Don't know, summer hats, winter hats, kids hats, all these other pages that come out of that. You get the head term not by targeting the head term, you get the head term by over time building up all these other subpages where Google goes, "Hey, you know what? You're really good at hats." And then one day you wake up and you're ranking for hat. Crystal Carter: Precisely. So then this is an example of Lids, right? So Lids is a business that is entirely hats. That is what they do. All they do is hats. And so Google wants to be able to satisfy the query of hats and they know that chances are Lids is probably going to have a hat for this person because that's all they do and they've been doing it for years. And so all of information they have around that, and all the content is in some way a little bit optimized for a hat. So yeah, it's something that you build up over time and keep it in the back of your mind in everything you do. But you probably won't use the hats at the front. I had a client who was trying to rank for ballet shoes and they sold ballet shoes, but they needed to add more content to their site in order to rank for just ballet shoes because mostly they just have product pages. So one of the things that SEOs will advise you is to add different kinds of content around those terms in order to give Google more rich information about those terms in order for you to rank for... To give signals to Google that you have good content around those head terms in lots of different ways. Treat it more as a topic than as a sort of explicit term that you're going for. Mordy Oberstein: It's the way we all learn. When I always... I used to teach fourth grade, and one of the ways you teach kids new words is that you, they're called context clues. We have a sentence and there's a very big word in the sentence. And you ask based on the context of the sentence, you have the kids figure out, "What does that word mean?" People learn through context. Search engines learn the same way. And if they're trying to figure out, do you talk about hats? They're going to contextualize all the other content on the website. And if you sell ballet shoes and not hats, you'll be like, wait a second, you don't have anything to do with hats, even though you say you're a hat's website because you're selling ballet, you're talking about a whole blog of ballet shoes. So contextualization is what helps you get that head term and it's contextualization across the board. It's Google understanding from other websites linking to you as an entity to say on Wikipedia or a LinkedIn or Crunch Base, whatever it is. All these things where Google understands about you as a company, it's very holistic for Google to... Google goes about it very holistically looking at determining who you are and what you're relevant for so that you can rank for those super duper head terms. By the way, totally separate thing, aren't always the best thing to rank for anyway, because those aren't always the terms that bring in the money. They might bring in traffic. And unless you're selling, you're running ads and the traffic is super important to you, the long tail keywords, meaning the very specific keyword might actually earn you more money. Crystal Carter: It can do. And also I think there's some challenges that you get around some of those head terms, because we were talking about some of the different search features that you see when you look up something like hats. And what we find over time, there's an article from Dr. Pete, I think you mentioned him earlier in the thing, but he talks a lot about featured snippets and he talks a lot about what's happening in the SERP. And I remember there's an article that I referenced a few times where he's talking about featured snippets dropping to historical lows. It's from a few years ago. But one of the things he does in that article is he breaks down how long the query is, for instance. So when he saw on this particular example, he was saying that for queries that were one word long, which again tend to be head terms. If you look up in the dictionary, if you look up, "Run," in the dictionary, the entry for run, it's going to be very, very long. Whereas if you look up the entry for... I don't know, hippopotamus, it's going to be shorter for instance. But for instance, they were saying in this particular thing that there was a 73% drop in featured snippets for keywords with one word. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Crystal Carter: That for keywords where there were nine words, there was a 6% drop. For keywords with 10 words, there was a 0% drop. So what I'm saying is that Google works on the head terms because head terms aren't great for Google, really. They give you those auto completes because they don't even want you to just search for hats. They want you to tell them exactly what you need. Do you want that hat that you saw somebody wear in a movie? Are you looking for promotional hats? Are you looking for... Whatever it is. They want you to give them more information so that they can give you better information. And so if you're just going for head terms, sometimes it means that your rankings can be a little bit more volatile if you're not working on making sure that you're building that out across lots of different related terms across your site. Mordy Oberstein: Which brings up a good point that the entire ecosystem is steering away from head terms, which I... When you ask me who do I think is going to win an election? I always look at the momentum. Where's the momentum? Forget the poll, whatever. I always go by momentum. It's the same thing with strategy around these things. Where's the momentum? Momentum is very much away from head terms. I've seen multiple cases where Google, you would write an ultimate guide to whatever, you're trying to rank with these really short tail, very much head terms and a whole bunch of them at one time. And Google's like, "You're too broad. We want something way more specific instead." So something to definitely think about. Not to say, by the way, that there aren't cases where using head terms could make sense or going after head terms could make sense, which is why our dear friend Daniel K Chung is here to tell you how to get the most value out of head term keywords. Daniel Cheung: I guess there's no polite way to say this, but head term keywords are useless. And I know that's supposed to sound like a controversial take, but it's not. So bear with me. So a head term keyword, yes, it gets a lot of search volume, but they convert really poorly. In fact, I'll be surprised to find a head term keyword across any vertical that converts better than 1%. Usually it's a lot less than 1%. However, again, it comes down to demand and volume. If you have 50,000 monthly searches that come from that one keyword, then even at a half a percent conversion rate, that's still a lot of conversions and that's why head terms are so lucrative and so sought after. But let's be honest here, ranking for a head term keyword is difficult and it'll take a long time. And unless you are working on a website that has a very established link profile, is very well known, then yeah, it's going to be almost impossible for you to rank for a head term keyword unless you're doing a lot of high quality PBN links. Otherwise, if you do the usual route of having clean tech SEO, having really good content that's interlinked with each other, even doing semantic SEO, ranking for a head term keyword, yeah, it's going to take a long time. But here's the thing, when it does come to head term keywords, they're useful for brands who do a lot of advertising, brands who invest in television, in radio, in let's say Super Bowl commercials, things that are traditionally offline and very difficult to measure and track, but yet they bring in the eyeballs. Because when you Google something or search any search engine for that matter, a head term keyword, and you look at the first 10 results. In any tool, let's say Ahrefs or Semrush or SE Ranking, and you look at the estimated traffic that those pages, the ranking pages get, there's no linear correlation between page one to page 10 or result one to result 10. And the difference between these clicks and estimated traffic is brand, it's brand awareness. So even if you were to rank for a head term, ranking for it doesn't automatically guarantee you the lion's share of that estimated monthly search volume. It's actually the above the line, below the line and all the other paid activities that is considered within marketing that contributes to the success of that head term. And so that's why I have this love-hate relationship because yes, you should have a particular page that targets a head term, but it doesn't really bring in any tangible business benefit until you start doing a lot of other marketing activities. That's how you really leverage ranking or getting that coveted position on SERP one. And my recommendation is, instead of the head term, is break it down into long tail keywords, break it down into individual queries or concerns that people have about the overarching umbrella head term. And when you get really specific and you have a target audience in mind and you produce content that is really, really, really targeted and helpful for that person and is different to what already exists on the internet... And by different, I also mean better, but what is better? That's subjective. I mean giving something to the reader that isn't covered as in detail or in depth or providing a different perspective on that same subject matter that no other ranking webpage has bothered to do. And that's how you start ranking for those long-term queries. And when you again do that tech SEO, when you do that internal linking and you connect these interrelated subtopics together and then ensure that they pass a link juice via internal links to that head term target page, then that's how you will eventually rank for a head term keyword. But again, without other marketing activities, it's really difficult to actualize any real world benefit in terms of a business, in terms of revenue from just ranking for a head term keyword. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like great minds think alike, hearing that. Crystal Carter: Honestly, and I... But I think one thing that he brought up that was a really good point, the correlation to brand and the correlation to the brand understanding. And you touched on this a bit where Google understanding your entity overall and Google understanding the core of your business. And I think that the relationship between the head terms and the chances that Google put you in front of people for a head term around a large, broad-reaching topic does correlate particularly to brand and I think that that's a good point. So again, on the hats thing, as I was saying, Lids is all about hats. That's all they do and that's all they've ever done. So that's something that Google knows, that that's what they do and they'll also know the kinds of traffic that they get and that sort of thing. So I think that the brand correlation is really important. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I love this overlap between brand and SEO. It's a whole separate topic for another time. Rhode Island, neither a road nor an island, discuss. Anyway, since we're talking about head terms, wouldn't it be cool to see how different searches engines handle different head terms? You know it would be. Crystal Carter: It would. Mordy Oberstein: It would definitely be. So that's why we're going to look at how different search engines handle the head term, "Long tail," because it's not a long tail keyword. It's a short tail keyword. But how do they handle long tail? Oh my gosh, so many walls have been broken with that. Crystal Carter: Who loves long tail? Long tail... No, it's short insurance, isn't it? Mordy Oberstein: It's short. It's all good. So we're breaking the fourth wall with this one as we explore so many search engines. Speaker 5: Google's latest update. Popular search engine Bing. Duck Duck Go. Yahoo. Alta Vista. Mordy Oberstein: There's so many of them. They're all beautiful. It's like the stars in the sky. There's so many. Crystal Carter: So many. Mordy Oberstein: But most of them don't burn bright. Crystal Carter: No, I'm not sure. I think I missed that reference. I'm not sure about that. Mordy Oberstein: We got another meeting after this, we don't have time to understand my references. So we took the keyword, "Long tail," and we plugged into a whole bunch of search news like Neva, like Google, TikTok, like Bing. And they're very, very, very, very different. For example, TikTok. TikTok shows you videos about animals with long tails. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Which is pretty... Makes sense. Whereas Google does, there's nothing about actual long tail. It's all about long tail data, long tail keywords. There are no animals involved on Google. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that makes sense for TikTok though, because I mainly spend my time on TikTok looking at animal videos. It's one of my favorite pastimes on TikTok. And I think also for media, for visual media, particularly for video, that's a perfect space for it. You want to see... I don't know, someone doing something cool with that. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder how much content there is about long tail keywords. Again, if I don't want to Google the whole, why are they called long tail keywords? You could Google, "Why are they call long tail keywords?" You'll see a nice little chart there. It looks like a long tail. It'll explain all of it for you. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: But I don't think anyone's even going to TikTok for something like that. It's not what you go to TikTok for. So TikTok is matching up their intent, whereas Google's matching up the intent to their users. For most people typing in long tail, they're probably not looking for animals. They're looking for the long tail, "The future of business is selling," whatever, whatever. Or, "Should you invest in the long tail?" It's all these things about investment in data and all those more mature topics, not animal tails. Crystal Carter: I'll tell you what's also interesting on YouTube, and this is another one. So the first result I'm getting on YouTube is around knitting and crochet, actually. So it's around, knitting help. There's a video about long tail cast for beginners. It's got 2 million views and that's showing up as the main thing there. So this is something that... So long tail is a head term here in this case, but there's a lot of different users who are thinking about that particular topic in lots of different ways. You've got people who are interested in animals with long tails, people who are interested in data, long tail, people who are interested in knitting as well. So it's very important to understand. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really, really great point. Because you take a term like pizza or shoes or hats. So you think there's no way not to understand what you mean. But a lot of times when you go with a head term, it's very unclear what you mean. So for example, Bing has a whole bunch of mixed results. Something about data and keywords and long tail whatever, whatever. And some results about animals with long tails. Crystal Carter: They're just throwing everything at it. They're like, "What do you want? Which thing do you want?" Mordy Oberstein: We don't know what you want. So here, what do you mean? What kind of keyword is long tail, buddy? Why don't you be a little more specific here? We don't know what the hell to show you. Crystal Carter: And they've also got some knitting stuff there as well. I think it's very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: One interesting thing that Neva did, by the way, when you type in long tail into Neva.com, everything is all about long tail key... "What is Longtail marketing? The best long tail keyword planner tool." And so forth. But they have a little box about pulling in... What do they call your Reddit, Quora, what are those things called? Crystal Carter: Forum. Mordy Oberstein: Forums, thank you. I should've known the F word forums. They have a box showing information from all the different forums and in there everything is about animals. So they have discussions. Reddit, "My kitten has an extremely long tail," or Reddit, "Fat tail versus short... Long tail." That's actually a data thing. Actually anyone else's rabbit have an extra long tail? Crystal Carter: Right. This is very interesting. I think also it's really important, so you mentioned about the different sort of variations. We didn't talk about this in the other section, but one of the other tricky things with head terms, this is sort of identifying this, you said, "People don't think about the other." I've done PPC stuff with, we're going after a head term, we went after, "Goggles," and we were using some machine learning to help the ads. And the places where the ads were showing were all sorts of stuff. We were spending loads of money on things that were not relevant because goggles is a head term. And when I said goggles, I was thinking swimming goggles. But the results that it was showing on was beer goggles, safety goggles, steam goggles, all these different things. And I was like, I had what? So you have to remember that there's lots of different variations on all of these things. Mordy Oberstein: Because I think beer goggles, automatically. Who doesn't? Crystal Carter: Steampunk goggles. There were all sorts. So yeah, it's important. Mordy Oberstein: But that's the point. They're very shiny. All these head terms, short tail keywords, top level keyword, we're going to call them very, very, very shiny. Not very effective. But you know what else is shiny? Crystal Carter: What's shiny? Mordy Oberstein: And is effective, is the SEO news. So here's the shiniest and snappiest SEO news. Crystal Carter: And now let's discuss some snappy news for this week in search. This week, I saw Google make an announcement on the Google Search Central blog explaining that you should not use 403s or 404s for rate limiting or to reduce Google's crawl rate in any way. So they've said they've seen an uptick in site owners and some CDNs trying to use 404s and other 400 client errors to reduce Google's crawl rate. And they're saying that that's not a good idea. So in a blog from Gary Elish, he explained that this is not the best thing to do and actually there are other ways that you can manage this crawl rate. So there are some extensive documentation on how to reduce Google's crawl rate if you need to. And they link to that in the blog. They explain that there are other ways that you can temporarily reduce the crawl rate with 500 or 429 status codes in order to help Google crawl at the rate that's most useful for you. So this is quite a useful piece of documentation for those with larger sites who need to manage their crawl rate. This week also saw Google update their best practices for how you can make your links most crawlable by Google's spiders and bots. And they've said, in case you want a TLDR, that the best way is to use an HREF link in your HTML. And they've also explained and laid out a few really good details and examples of how you can format other links and which other links are more challenging for Google. So this is really, really useful for everyone who's using links on Google. And if you are interested, there was some great conversation on Twitter that was also talking about some of the information that they shared around external links. There was some discussion with John Mueller about a cheese example, for instance, with the anchor text for a cheese example. But they were saying in particular, one of the things that they pointed out was that linking to other sites isn't something to be scared of. And that using internal links can help establish trustworthiness, for example, by citing your sources. So this is something that's useful. And there was a little bit of discussion around the no follow update that they said. So they said, "Use no follow only when you don't trust the source and not for every external link on your site." For example, if you're a cheese enthusiast and someone published a story badmouthing your favorite cheese, so you want to write an article to the response, however you don't want to give some of your reputation to that link, then you would use a no follow. And that's the example they gave. So this is something that people are very particularly interested in with regards to link equity and passing on link value and page rank. And this is something that you might want to check out on the Google search central documentation. Local SEOs will be interested to know that Google has also announced that they will be deprecating the Google My Business Insights API as of Monday the 20th of February, 2023. So this is something that a lot of people will have been prepared for, but if you have not prepared for it, then you should know that it will be completely offline as of Monday the 20th of February. So if you want to get some more insights, then you should probably switch over to the Google business profile performance API, where there is more support for Google Business profile users and you can monitor your site accordingly. And finally, in newsroom Bing, lots of people are continuing to try out the new Bing AI beta. So Barry Schwartz, Glenn Gabe and Brody Clark in particular have been demonstrating some of the capabilities of this new feature. So it's worth following along with them. But also lots of people are now starting to pay a lot more attention to some of the difference search features on Bing. So one of the things that they noticed this week, as reported on Search Engine Roundtable, was that Bing is now using a featured snippet expansion button, which means that they are showing a lot of the content from a particular article. So this is something that people find interesting. So there's been a lot of discussion around that particular feature and whether or not this is something that gives too much away with regards to a publisher's page or whether or not this is all fair play. So this is something that you might want to check out on Twitter and also on Search Engine Roundtable. Speaker 6: And that's it for the snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Lord, that was shiny and snappy, wasn't it? Crystal Carter: Star shining, I'm blinded by the light. Mordy Oberstein: All the stars are so shiny. I don't want to keep going back to stars. I have no idea what that reference is either. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: No clue. But you know who is a shining star in SEO? As we get into our follow of the week. Suganthan Mohanadasan is a shining star in the SEO community. Crystal Carter: He is fantastic. He's a cornerstone of the SEO community, super clever, super giving with his knowledge and also with his ability to just build cool stuff for SEOs. So he's got- Mordy Oberstein: Around keywords. Crystal Carter: Around keywords. So he's got a fantastic tool that he's built and I think it's got a free name model where you can sort of get some tokens and have a go and see how it works. And his tool helps you to manage some of those head terms and break them down into more manageable terms, like Daniel was talking about, like we were talking about, like they talk about in the Pillar Post Clusters article on the Wix SEO Hub. And so it's a really great tool and Suganthan is a fantastic fount of knowledge in regards to SEO. So he's a great person to follow. He's also a big fan of lots of tech so he's got a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Lot of cool posts, good food posts. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's got some good food posts. This is true. Mordy Oberstein: He's a good follow. He has a solid follow right there, Suganthan who you can find on Twitter at S-U-G-A-N-T-H-A-N. And if you don't want to have to remember how to spell that just by listening to this, head over to the show notes and we'll have a link to his Twitter profile right there for you. How convenient is that? So thoughtful. So thoughtful. Crystal Carter: It's just the kind kind of service we like to give our listeners. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Speedy, convenient service for you all the time. We rank for best service, head term. Crystal Carter: Best SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Best SEO service. That's a great head term because that means something totally different the way we're phrasing it, right? There we go. Well, that's it for us this week. 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 C-Suite SEO or Does SEO Belong in the Boardroom? Check it out wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO or check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guess wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, folks, peace, love at SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Daniel K. Cheung Dr. Pete Meyers Suganthan Mohanadasan Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Daniel K Cheung SEO Consulting Featured Snippets Drop to Historic Lows Keyword Insights News: Google: Don't use 403s or 404s for rate limiting Google: Link best practices for Google Google: Deprecating the legacy Google My Business Insights API on February 20, 2023 Microsoft Bing's New AI Features Are Really Impressive & Thought Out Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Daniel K. Cheung Dr. Pete Meyers Suganthan Mohanadasan Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Daniel K Cheung SEO Consulting Featured Snippets Drop to Historic Lows Keyword Insights News: Google: Don't use 403s or 404s for rate limiting Google: Link best practices for Google Google: Deprecating the legacy Google My Business Insights API on February 20, 2023 Microsoft Bing's New AI Features Are Really Impressive & Thought Out Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the incredible, the fantastic, the "I'm going to Beyonce" head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am indeed. I got Beyonce tickets and I think I could cry. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my God. Crystal Carter: I mean it's pretty amazing. I've never thought that I would be there, but there I am. I'm going to be there. Mordy Oberstein: I'm so happy for you. When is the concert? Crystal Carter: I'll be going to the concert in the spring. I can't remember exactly the date, but I'm basically dropping everything so you won't be hearing from me on that day. I will- Mordy Oberstein: This is your Super Bowl. Crystal Carter: Yeah, this is my Super Bowl, although, but to be honest, for people who are fans of Beyonce, Rihanna, this is a pretty mega year. So Rihanna's performing at the Super Bowl. Beyonce is on tour. Taylor Swift is on tour. This is a big year for big shows, doing cool things. Also, it's my understanding that Rihanna's about to drop a Ventee kids fashion line, which is amazing as well. So- Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking forward to that. Crystal Carter: I know, but I'm just saying there's a whole... For my beehive SEO crew, of which I know there are many, because I did a Beyonce themed deck at Brighton in April, and literally everyone from the beehive amongst the SEO crew was like, "I loved it. It was amazing." And I was like, I knew there were some people like that here. I was chatting with Joy Sejaku about this. I'm chatting with them... And Brittany Muller was talking about this online and also there's a few other folks. I'm just saying there's overlap. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Crystal Carter: Shout out to the whole beehive. Mordy Oberstein: Shout out to all the Beyonce people. Well, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can now move on past head terms and get a keyword that will actually help your site grow by using Sam Rush's keyword integration inside of Wix. It's a free keyword research tool right inside of Wix, which brings us to today's show, is the Chase for Head Terms Doomed to Fail? Alternatively, we can call us episode, It's a Trap as going after short tell keywords, aka head terms, aka keywords like "best vacation" or "pizza" might not be the best idea if you want to drive not just traffic, but actual revenue to the website. We'll dive into why do clients and even some SEOs find head terms so attractive? When is it and when is it not worth it to go after a head term? And how does Google treat head terms and what does that mean for you and your clients' websites? Also, Daniel K Chung stops by to share the value of head terms within a very specific context. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO News for you and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness, go now, listen podcast as episode number 26 of the SERP's Up podcast is here to get into your head all about SEO and head terms. Get it? I said, "Go now, listen podcast." Get it? Head terms. Crystal Carter: I feel like we're heading in the right direction, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Mordy Oberstein: Go direction podcast. Also, when you speak in head terms it is the weirdest language. Dr. P has this thing to go into... He doesn't actually do this, but Dr. Pirmaz would like to do this, to go into a store like Best Buy or whatever electronics store and start yelling, "Buy laptop," as if you're searching on Google. Leaving Dr. Pete and his shenanigans aside. What exactly are head keywords? Let's dive into that quickly before we dive into whether or not you should be using them or not. So there are all sorts of keywords. There are things called long tail keywords and short tail keywords. We can get into why they are called long tail or short tail keywords, not because of the number of words in them by the way, that's a mess. But essentially a head keyword is something very, very top level. As opposed to "Shoe inserts for children between ages five and 11," it's, "Shoe inserts." Crystal Carter: And generally speaking you know you're looking at a head term if it falls into a few criteria. It doesn't always have to be one or two words, but they tend to be one or two words. Another one is that they have a large search volume, so something like over 10,000, and depending on the niche, but something like over 10,000 with search volume. I've seen some that'll just reference one shortly, but they can be hundreds of thousands of search volume per month. They also tend to have a very large number of search results. Something like in the billions. If you're looking at a keyword and it says that there are billions of search results, that's probably a head term. And the other thing you'll notice is that they have a large number of keyword variations and some of the tools will explain that for you. A good example, for instance is hats. That's a head term. If we think about, that one's got a keyword search volume globally of something like 500,000 for instance. Mordy Oberstein: That's a lot. Crystal Carter: It's got 7 billion search results and the people ranking for that are people like Lids and Amazon. Mordy Oberstein: Hats.com, Crystal Carter: Hats.com, precisely. Then when we drill down a little bit into something like straw hats, that's still kind of a head term. It's better than hats, but that's coming in at 41 million keywords. And then if you get down further into something like, straw hats for women, that's giving you fewer on the search volume. But also we've gone down from a hundred thousand search volume down to sort of 13,000 search volume, and that's more niche. So that's the difference between a head term and as you get further into it. Mordy Oberstein: And usually the SERP tends to open up as you refine down. So again, a head term is very, very categorical and everyone is trying to arrange for those, we'll call them categories. Crystal Carter: Precisely. And clients love these because they are big and shiny. We were talking about Beyonce, but head terms are kind of the Beyonce of keywords. They're out in front and it looks really shiny and everybody's really interested in it, but sometimes clients are like, "Yeah, I want to rank for hats." And you're like, "You're not going to rank for hats because you're not Amazon, and I hate to break it to you, but you're not going to rank for hats, especially not with one piece of content and 15 pages or something." And Beyonce wasn't built in a day. Beyonce started off in a group and then she ended... And then she moved out in front. And no disrespect to Kelly and Michelle and the other people before, but she built up to that. And I think that that's something that clients don't always understand is that you don't dive straight in on the head terms. You use it, like you were saying, like a category, use it as sort of a topic and build your content around that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I always compare it to when you're recording somebody, it takes a long time for that person to feel comfortable with you to share their deepest, darkest, inner secrets with you. The same thing with rankings. It takes a while for Google to understand who you are, what you're all about, and blah blah, blah. So it's not going to rank you for hats, the one thing everybody's looking for right away. Crystal Carter: And I think also you have to remember that Google also steers people away from that. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So Google has lots of ways that they sort of say, "Hats isn't enough guys, I need you to drill down. Are you talking fedoras? Are you talking baseball caps? Are you talking a top hat?" They manage this in lots of ways. So they give auto complete. There's those topic bubbles, there's disambiguation boxes, there's lots of those things. So one of the ways that people think about head terms is thinking about ways that they can connect with people on all of those different slits that come off of the head terms. And it's another reason why we always tell people to look at the SERP to better understand how Google's managing those head terms and other pieces of content. Mordy Oberstein: So they are these very shiny objects. First off, they're very simple. If I own a pizza store, so I will go after pizza, what else would I go after? Right? And so either it's really a lack of understanding of how search works. And you think, "Okay, I sell pizza, I'll go over after pizza." That's one part of the other is the, I know what's happening, I know what pizza represents on Google, I'm going to go after that. And it's almost like this shiny object that's not exactly... Not always relevant and to the point by the way, of the Google results themselves. If you search for hats, you get a carousel up top, unisex, kids, boys, cap, truckers, snapback, bucket, a door nearby, craft blank. I don't know what that means. New era, Nike, I can go on. Crystal Carter: They're giving you more options to filter your results to drill down. Mordy Oberstein: Which is Google telling you that when somebody searches for hats, they really don't just want hats. What they really want is either a trucker hat or they want a Nike hat or they want a kids hat. Crystal Carter: Whatever, boy hat, bucket hat. Mordy Oberstein: Yankees hat, all the things, except for Red Sox hats. Nobody wants those, don't even bother going after it. But you see how Google treats head terms as if you didn't really mean to search for that, which means that you as a content creator should take a lesson away from that, that your audience didn't really want... They wanted something much more specific. So give them that. Crystal Carter: We've had some really good articles on the Wix SEO Hub talking about this a little bit more. So we have someone talking about long tail keywords and they were explaining a few things around that. And they were saying that with that, that we should be thinking about them as part of creating your long tail keyword strategy. And Jon Stickler talks about how when you do a content cluster, that the head term should be the core of the content cluster. So for instance, if you were to talk about hats, you would say the core would be hats, that you make sure that there a cluster around the word hats and then it broke down into those things so it meant hats for men, summer hats, small hats, big hats, church hats, all the different sort of hats, breaking them down from that so that they all feed into that content. And it's something that we talked to Adam and Rebecca from the Wix blog a few episodes ago, and she talked about a sheet. That's something that they think about when they think about their content, but it also helps you to appeal to lots of different parts of the SERP, including featured snippets and other things like that as well. Mordy Oberstein: So yeah, usually head terms come about because let's say you go... Let's go through the pillar page again, pillars and clusters. So you have a pillar page that's sort of like the cornerstone page. Out of that, you have subpages that talk about all the subtopics. So hats. So you have a page about hats, great. And then you have a page about baseball hats, page about trucker hats, page about... Don't know, summer hats, winter hats, kids hats, all these other pages that come out of that. You get the head term not by targeting the head term, you get the head term by over time building up all these other subpages where Google goes, "Hey, you know what? You're really good at hats." And then one day you wake up and you're ranking for hat. Crystal Carter: Precisely. So then this is an example of Lids, right? So Lids is a business that is entirely hats. That is what they do. All they do is hats. And so Google wants to be able to satisfy the query of hats and they know that chances are Lids is probably going to have a hat for this person because that's all they do and they've been doing it for years. And so all of information they have around that, and all the content is in some way a little bit optimized for a hat. So yeah, it's something that you build up over time and keep it in the back of your mind in everything you do. But you probably won't use the hats at the front. I had a client who was trying to rank for ballet shoes and they sold ballet shoes, but they needed to add more content to their site in order to rank for just ballet shoes because mostly they just have product pages. So one of the things that SEOs will advise you is to add different kinds of content around those terms in order to give Google more rich information about those terms in order for you to rank for... To give signals to Google that you have good content around those head terms in lots of different ways. Treat it more as a topic than as a sort of explicit term that you're going for. Mordy Oberstein: It's the way we all learn. When I always... I used to teach fourth grade, and one of the ways you teach kids new words is that you, they're called context clues. We have a sentence and there's a very big word in the sentence. And you ask based on the context of the sentence, you have the kids figure out, "What does that word mean?" People learn through context. Search engines learn the same way. And if they're trying to figure out, do you talk about hats? They're going to contextualize all the other content on the website. And if you sell ballet shoes and not hats, you'll be like, wait a second, you don't have anything to do with hats, even though you say you're a hat's website because you're selling ballet, you're talking about a whole blog of ballet shoes. So contextualization is what helps you get that head term and it's contextualization across the board. It's Google understanding from other websites linking to you as an entity to say on Wikipedia or a LinkedIn or Crunch Base, whatever it is. All these things where Google understands about you as a company, it's very holistic for Google to... Google goes about it very holistically looking at determining who you are and what you're relevant for so that you can rank for those super duper head terms. By the way, totally separate thing, aren't always the best thing to rank for anyway, because those aren't always the terms that bring in the money. They might bring in traffic. And unless you're selling, you're running ads and the traffic is super important to you, the long tail keywords, meaning the very specific keyword might actually earn you more money. Crystal Carter: It can do. And also I think there's some challenges that you get around some of those head terms, because we were talking about some of the different search features that you see when you look up something like hats. And what we find over time, there's an article from Dr. Pete, I think you mentioned him earlier in the thing, but he talks a lot about featured snippets and he talks a lot about what's happening in the SERP. And I remember there's an article that I referenced a few times where he's talking about featured snippets dropping to historical lows. It's from a few years ago. But one of the things he does in that article is he breaks down how long the query is, for instance. So when he saw on this particular example, he was saying that for queries that were one word long, which again tend to be head terms. If you look up in the dictionary, if you look up, "Run," in the dictionary, the entry for run, it's going to be very, very long. Whereas if you look up the entry for... I don't know, hippopotamus, it's going to be shorter for instance. But for instance, they were saying in this particular thing that there was a 73% drop in featured snippets for keywords with one word. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Crystal Carter: That for keywords where there were nine words, there was a 6% drop. For keywords with 10 words, there was a 0% drop. So what I'm saying is that Google works on the head terms because head terms aren't great for Google, really. They give you those auto completes because they don't even want you to just search for hats. They want you to tell them exactly what you need. Do you want that hat that you saw somebody wear in a movie? Are you looking for promotional hats? Are you looking for... Whatever it is. They want you to give them more information so that they can give you better information. And so if you're just going for head terms, sometimes it means that your rankings can be a little bit more volatile if you're not working on making sure that you're building that out across lots of different related terms across your site. Mordy Oberstein: Which brings up a good point that the entire ecosystem is steering away from head terms, which I... When you ask me who do I think is going to win an election? I always look at the momentum. Where's the momentum? Forget the poll, whatever. I always go by momentum. It's the same thing with strategy around these things. Where's the momentum? Momentum is very much away from head terms. I've seen multiple cases where Google, you would write an ultimate guide to whatever, you're trying to rank with these really short tail, very much head terms and a whole bunch of them at one time. And Google's like, "You're too broad. We want something way more specific instead." So something to definitely think about. Not to say, by the way, that there aren't cases where using head terms could make sense or going after head terms could make sense, which is why our dear friend Daniel K Chung is here to tell you how to get the most value out of head term keywords. Daniel Cheung: I guess there's no polite way to say this, but head term keywords are useless. And I know that's supposed to sound like a controversial take, but it's not. So bear with me. So a head term keyword, yes, it gets a lot of search volume, but they convert really poorly. In fact, I'll be surprised to find a head term keyword across any vertical that converts better than 1%. Usually it's a lot less than 1%. However, again, it comes down to demand and volume. If you have 50,000 monthly searches that come from that one keyword, then even at a half a percent conversion rate, that's still a lot of conversions and that's why head terms are so lucrative and so sought after. But let's be honest here, ranking for a head term keyword is difficult and it'll take a long time. And unless you are working on a website that has a very established link profile, is very well known, then yeah, it's going to be almost impossible for you to rank for a head term keyword unless you're doing a lot of high quality PBN links. Otherwise, if you do the usual route of having clean tech SEO, having really good content that's interlinked with each other, even doing semantic SEO, ranking for a head term keyword, yeah, it's going to take a long time. But here's the thing, when it does come to head term keywords, they're useful for brands who do a lot of advertising, brands who invest in television, in radio, in let's say Super Bowl commercials, things that are traditionally offline and very difficult to measure and track, but yet they bring in the eyeballs. Because when you Google something or search any search engine for that matter, a head term keyword, and you look at the first 10 results. In any tool, let's say Ahrefs or Semrush or SE Ranking, and you look at the estimated traffic that those pages, the ranking pages get, there's no linear correlation between page one to page 10 or result one to result 10. And the difference between these clicks and estimated traffic is brand, it's brand awareness. So even if you were to rank for a head term, ranking for it doesn't automatically guarantee you the lion's share of that estimated monthly search volume. It's actually the above the line, below the line and all the other paid activities that is considered within marketing that contributes to the success of that head term. And so that's why I have this love-hate relationship because yes, you should have a particular page that targets a head term, but it doesn't really bring in any tangible business benefit until you start doing a lot of other marketing activities. That's how you really leverage ranking or getting that coveted position on SERP one. And my recommendation is, instead of the head term, is break it down into long tail keywords, break it down into individual queries or concerns that people have about the overarching umbrella head term. And when you get really specific and you have a target audience in mind and you produce content that is really, really, really targeted and helpful for that person and is different to what already exists on the internet... And by different, I also mean better, but what is better? That's subjective. I mean giving something to the reader that isn't covered as in detail or in depth or providing a different perspective on that same subject matter that no other ranking webpage has bothered to do. And that's how you start ranking for those long-term queries. And when you again do that tech SEO, when you do that internal linking and you connect these interrelated subtopics together and then ensure that they pass a link juice via internal links to that head term target page, then that's how you will eventually rank for a head term keyword. But again, without other marketing activities, it's really difficult to actualize any real world benefit in terms of a business, in terms of revenue from just ranking for a head term keyword. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like great minds think alike, hearing that. Crystal Carter: Honestly, and I... But I think one thing that he brought up that was a really good point, the correlation to brand and the correlation to the brand understanding. And you touched on this a bit where Google understanding your entity overall and Google understanding the core of your business. And I think that the relationship between the head terms and the chances that Google put you in front of people for a head term around a large, broad-reaching topic does correlate particularly to brand and I think that that's a good point. So again, on the hats thing, as I was saying, Lids is all about hats. That's all they do and that's all they've ever done. So that's something that Google knows, that that's what they do and they'll also know the kinds of traffic that they get and that sort of thing. So I think that the brand correlation is really important. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I love this overlap between brand and SEO. It's a whole separate topic for another time. Rhode Island, neither a road nor an island, discuss. Anyway, since we're talking about head terms, wouldn't it be cool to see how different searches engines handle different head terms? You know it would be. Crystal Carter: It would. Mordy Oberstein: It would definitely be. So that's why we're going to look at how different search engines handle the head term, "Long tail," because it's not a long tail keyword. It's a short tail keyword. But how do they handle long tail? Oh my gosh, so many walls have been broken with that. Crystal Carter: Who loves long tail? Long tail... No, it's short insurance, isn't it? Mordy Oberstein: It's short. It's all good. So we're breaking the fourth wall with this one as we explore so many search engines. Speaker 5: Google's latest update. Popular search engine Bing. Duck Duck Go. Yahoo. Alta Vista. Mordy Oberstein: There's so many of them. They're all beautiful. It's like the stars in the sky. There's so many. Crystal Carter: So many. Mordy Oberstein: But most of them don't burn bright. Crystal Carter: No, I'm not sure. I think I missed that reference. I'm not sure about that. Mordy Oberstein: We got another meeting after this, we don't have time to understand my references. So we took the keyword, "Long tail," and we plugged into a whole bunch of search news like Neva, like Google, TikTok, like Bing. And they're very, very, very, very different. For example, TikTok. TikTok shows you videos about animals with long tails. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Which is pretty... Makes sense. Whereas Google does, there's nothing about actual long tail. It's all about long tail data, long tail keywords. There are no animals involved on Google. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that makes sense for TikTok though, because I mainly spend my time on TikTok looking at animal videos. It's one of my favorite pastimes on TikTok. And I think also for media, for visual media, particularly for video, that's a perfect space for it. You want to see... I don't know, someone doing something cool with that. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder how much content there is about long tail keywords. Again, if I don't want to Google the whole, why are they called long tail keywords? You could Google, "Why are they call long tail keywords?" You'll see a nice little chart there. It looks like a long tail. It'll explain all of it for you. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: But I don't think anyone's even going to TikTok for something like that. It's not what you go to TikTok for. So TikTok is matching up their intent, whereas Google's matching up the intent to their users. For most people typing in long tail, they're probably not looking for animals. They're looking for the long tail, "The future of business is selling," whatever, whatever. Or, "Should you invest in the long tail?" It's all these things about investment in data and all those more mature topics, not animal tails. Crystal Carter: I'll tell you what's also interesting on YouTube, and this is another one. So the first result I'm getting on YouTube is around knitting and crochet, actually. So it's around, knitting help. There's a video about long tail cast for beginners. It's got 2 million views and that's showing up as the main thing there. So this is something that... So long tail is a head term here in this case, but there's a lot of different users who are thinking about that particular topic in lots of different ways. You've got people who are interested in animals with long tails, people who are interested in data, long tail, people who are interested in knitting as well. So it's very important to understand. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really, really great point. Because you take a term like pizza or shoes or hats. So you think there's no way not to understand what you mean. But a lot of times when you go with a head term, it's very unclear what you mean. So for example, Bing has a whole bunch of mixed results. Something about data and keywords and long tail whatever, whatever. And some results about animals with long tails. Crystal Carter: They're just throwing everything at it. They're like, "What do you want? Which thing do you want?" Mordy Oberstein: We don't know what you want. So here, what do you mean? What kind of keyword is long tail, buddy? Why don't you be a little more specific here? We don't know what the hell to show you. Crystal Carter: And they've also got some knitting stuff there as well. I think it's very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: One interesting thing that Neva did, by the way, when you type in long tail into Neva.com, everything is all about long tail key... "What is Longtail marketing? The best long tail keyword planner tool." And so forth. But they have a little box about pulling in... What do they call your Reddit, Quora, what are those things called? Crystal Carter: Forum. Mordy Oberstein: Forums, thank you. I should've known the F word forums. They have a box showing information from all the different forums and in there everything is about animals. So they have discussions. Reddit, "My kitten has an extremely long tail," or Reddit, "Fat tail versus short... Long tail." That's actually a data thing. Actually anyone else's rabbit have an extra long tail? Crystal Carter: Right. This is very interesting. I think also it's really important, so you mentioned about the different sort of variations. We didn't talk about this in the other section, but one of the other tricky things with head terms, this is sort of identifying this, you said, "People don't think about the other." I've done PPC stuff with, we're going after a head term, we went after, "Goggles," and we were using some machine learning to help the ads. And the places where the ads were showing were all sorts of stuff. We were spending loads of money on things that were not relevant because goggles is a head term. And when I said goggles, I was thinking swimming goggles. But the results that it was showing on was beer goggles, safety goggles, steam goggles, all these different things. And I was like, I had what? So you have to remember that there's lots of different variations on all of these things. Mordy Oberstein: Because I think beer goggles, automatically. Who doesn't? Crystal Carter: Steampunk goggles. There were all sorts. So yeah, it's important. Mordy Oberstein: But that's the point. They're very shiny. All these head terms, short tail keywords, top level keyword, we're going to call them very, very, very shiny. Not very effective. But you know what else is shiny? Crystal Carter: What's shiny? Mordy Oberstein: And is effective, is the SEO news. So here's the shiniest and snappiest SEO news. Crystal Carter: And now let's discuss some snappy news for this week in search. This week, I saw Google make an announcement on the Google Search Central blog explaining that you should not use 403s or 404s for rate limiting or to reduce Google's crawl rate in any way. So they've said they've seen an uptick in site owners and some CDNs trying to use 404s and other 400 client errors to reduce Google's crawl rate. And they're saying that that's not a good idea. So in a blog from Gary Elish, he explained that this is not the best thing to do and actually there are other ways that you can manage this crawl rate. So there are some extensive documentation on how to reduce Google's crawl rate if you need to. And they link to that in the blog. They explain that there are other ways that you can temporarily reduce the crawl rate with 500 or 429 status codes in order to help Google crawl at the rate that's most useful for you. So this is quite a useful piece of documentation for those with larger sites who need to manage their crawl rate. This week also saw Google update their best practices for how you can make your links most crawlable by Google's spiders and bots. And they've said, in case you want a TLDR, that the best way is to use an HREF link in your HTML. And they've also explained and laid out a few really good details and examples of how you can format other links and which other links are more challenging for Google. So this is really, really useful for everyone who's using links on Google. And if you are interested, there was some great conversation on Twitter that was also talking about some of the information that they shared around external links. There was some discussion with John Mueller about a cheese example, for instance, with the anchor text for a cheese example. But they were saying in particular, one of the things that they pointed out was that linking to other sites isn't something to be scared of. And that using internal links can help establish trustworthiness, for example, by citing your sources. So this is something that's useful. And there was a little bit of discussion around the no follow update that they said. So they said, "Use no follow only when you don't trust the source and not for every external link on your site." For example, if you're a cheese enthusiast and someone published a story badmouthing your favorite cheese, so you want to write an article to the response, however you don't want to give some of your reputation to that link, then you would use a no follow. And that's the example they gave. So this is something that people are very particularly interested in with regards to link equity and passing on link value and page rank. And this is something that you might want to check out on the Google search central documentation. Local SEOs will be interested to know that Google has also announced that they will be deprecating the Google My Business Insights API as of Monday the 20th of February, 2023. So this is something that a lot of people will have been prepared for, but if you have not prepared for it, then you should know that it will be completely offline as of Monday the 20th of February. So if you want to get some more insights, then you should probably switch over to the Google business profile performance API, where there is more support for Google Business profile users and you can monitor your site accordingly. And finally, in newsroom Bing, lots of people are continuing to try out the new Bing AI beta. So Barry Schwartz, Glenn Gabe and Brody Clark in particular have been demonstrating some of the capabilities of this new feature. So it's worth following along with them. But also lots of people are now starting to pay a lot more attention to some of the difference search features on Bing. So one of the things that they noticed this week, as reported on Search Engine Roundtable, was that Bing is now using a featured snippet expansion button, which means that they are showing a lot of the content from a particular article. So this is something that people find interesting. So there's been a lot of discussion around that particular feature and whether or not this is something that gives too much away with regards to a publisher's page or whether or not this is all fair play. So this is something that you might want to check out on Twitter and also on Search Engine Roundtable. Speaker 6: And that's it for the snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Lord, that was shiny and snappy, wasn't it? Crystal Carter: Star shining, I'm blinded by the light. Mordy Oberstein: All the stars are so shiny. I don't want to keep going back to stars. I have no idea what that reference is either. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: No clue. But you know who is a shining star in SEO? As we get into our follow of the week. Suganthan Mohanadasan is a shining star in the SEO community. Crystal Carter: He is fantastic. He's a cornerstone of the SEO community, super clever, super giving with his knowledge and also with his ability to just build cool stuff for SEOs. So he's got- Mordy Oberstein: Around keywords. Crystal Carter: Around keywords. So he's got a fantastic tool that he's built and I think it's got a free name model where you can sort of get some tokens and have a go and see how it works. And his tool helps you to manage some of those head terms and break them down into more manageable terms, like Daniel was talking about, like we were talking about, like they talk about in the Pillar Post Clusters article on the Wix SEO Hub. And so it's a really great tool and Suganthan is a fantastic fount of knowledge in regards to SEO. So he's a great person to follow. He's also a big fan of lots of tech so he's got a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Lot of cool posts, good food posts. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's got some good food posts. This is true. Mordy Oberstein: He's a good follow. He has a solid follow right there, Suganthan who you can find on Twitter at S-U-G-A-N-T-H-A-N. And if you don't want to have to remember how to spell that just by listening to this, head over to the show notes and we'll have a link to his Twitter profile right there for you. How convenient is that? So thoughtful. So thoughtful. Crystal Carter: It's just the kind kind of service we like to give our listeners. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Speedy, convenient service for you all the time. We rank for best service, head term. Crystal Carter: Best SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Best SEO service. That's a great head term because that means something totally different the way we're phrasing it, right? There we go. Well, that's it for us this week. 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 C-Suite SEO or Does SEO Belong in the Boardroom? Check it out wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO or check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guess wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, folks, peace, love at SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

How do you balance multiple sub-brands while ensuring your parent brand stays at the top of the SEO leaderboard? When do you actually create a sub-brand? Hint—it comes from the people, not the C-level! You have to be thoughtful when deciding whether to create a sub-brand and when to extend the parent brand. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Claudio Cabrera from The Athletic to dissect the art of managing SEO for sub-brands. Plus, brand experts Matt Davies and Steven Picanza join the conversation to explore the nitty-gritty of balancing a sub-brand, bringing their unique perspectives to the forefront! Join us for this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as we “sub”merge ourselves into the art of managing sub-brands and all the SEO implications it brings. Back How to do SEO & marketing for sub-brands How do you balance multiple sub-brands while ensuring your parent brand stays at the top of the SEO leaderboard? When do you actually create a sub-brand? Hint—it comes from the people, not the C-level! You have to be thoughtful when deciding whether to create a sub-brand and when to extend the parent brand. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Claudio Cabrera from The Athletic to dissect the art of managing SEO for sub-brands. Plus, brand experts Matt Davies and Steven Picanza join the conversation to explore the nitty-gritty of balancing a sub-brand, bringing their unique perspectives to the forefront! Join us for this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as we “sub”merge ourselves into the art of managing sub-brands and all the SEO implications it brings. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 110 | November 13, 2024 | 1 HR 00:00 / 1:01:07 This week’s guests Steven Picanza As a brand strategist and fractional CMO, Steven has spent more than a decade helping brands and executives identify and bring their purpose to life through evocative ideas, award-winning campaigns, and compelling consumer experiences. While he specializes in building, repositioning, and marketing brands, his background is diverse (by design!) with roles in creative brand strategy, brand planning, and experience design. This range has enabled him to bring thoughtful, comprehensive strategic plans to his clients and be an empathetic thought leader. Steven has helped brands realize their potential and resonate across categories that include: financial, cpg, hospitality, retail, health and wellness, food and beverage, travel and tourism, and non-profit/education. Steven is also the Branders Magazine 'Talking w/ Branders' Podcast host, co-founder of NJ Content Studio, and an Adjunct Professor of Branding at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Notable clients include: Dude Wipes, Holland America Line, WaFd Bank, Dr Teal's, IDG Media, Pieology Pizza, MGM International, Academy Sports and Outdoors, and many more. Matt Davies Matt Davies is an executive strategy consultant. He helps business leaders all over the world develop and align around powerful ideas which build brands and inspire more meaningful customer and employee experiences. As well as being an entrepreneur himself, he has over twenty years experience working with businesses of all shapes and sizes from start-ups through to household names like Microsoft, Nestlé, Capital One, Boots, Experian, Nikon and Specsavers. Matt was recently listed as a ‘Top 50 UK Advisor’ by Enterprize Nation. He is a certified Level-C Brand Architect. He runs the award winning Podcast “Just Branding” which has had over half a million downloads. Matt is an author, a frequent public speaker, writer and thought-leader in areas on leadership, branding, creativity, design thinking, innovation, storytelling and marketing. Claudio Cabrera Claudio E. Cabrera is an award-winning journalist and audience development expert, speciailizing in SEO. Cabrera began his journalism career in 2004 while in his second year at Brooklyn College. He landed an internship at the historic black newspaper, the New York Amsterdam News. At the Amsterdam News, he covered the 2005 mayoral campaign between Michael Bloomberg and Fernando Ferrer and the likes of former President Barack Obama, Rev. Al Sharpton and Shaquille O'Neal to name a few. In 2016, he joined the New York Times as a Senior Digital Strategist and is now their Deputy Off-Platform Director of News SEO. In his 4 years at the Times, he's been able to grow the company's traffic by over 100% and lead them to record years on search and in total audience. Since, he’s joined The Athletic where he leads a team of over 30 globally on audience and has led the brand to record growth on audience. " Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is 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 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 is a fanatic of all things SEO, because fan is really short for fanatic, the head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Let's go team. Mordy Oberstein: No. Team? Crystal Carter: Give me a D. Give me an A. Give me a link. Can I get a link? Is that possible? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no problem. How much are you willing to pay for them? I have many high DA. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Lots, I guess. Mordy Oberstein: I would sell you Forbes, but they kind of got hit. So there goes that. I'm being that spicy that early on the show. Crystal Carter: Is that too soon? Too soon? Mordy Oberstein: No, by the time... We're recording weeks in advance. Crystal Carter: Got to keep it above the belt, Mordy. That's also a sports thing. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: That is, yeah. But look, the real winners bite other people's ears off, in sports. Crystal Carter: I remember watching that live and I was like, "What is that? Did he ju... Oh my God." Mordy Oberstein: You want to hit a home run, you take steroids. That's my idea of sports. Cork the bat, deflate the ball. There's so much, I can endlessly go on about cheating in sports. Crystal Carter: No, we don't have to. We will triumph. We will win. If you build it, they will come. Mordy Oberstein: Ease my pain. When we talk sports on the podcast, usually it's me just going off on a tangent. This week, it actually makes sense. But we'll get to that in a minute. As the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter. But where you can also take our SEO course, and where you can also set up and monitor sub users, so that you can collaborate in real time with advanced sub user permissions, all on Wix Studio. As this week, we explore the Cs that are SEO for sub brands, the unique characteristics of SEO for a sub brand, how to prevent overlap when doing SEO for a sub brand, what universal truths you could take away when doing, you guessed it, SEO for a sub brand. Full steam ahead is SEO sub brand supreme, Claudio Cabrera of The Athletic, now the sports thing makes sense, will join us in just a few minutes to chat about his experiences. Plus, we'll get into the thick of it, as Matt Davies and Steven Picanza chat how to best market a sub brand, as things get a little bit complicated pretty quickly. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO News, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So it's one ping only, as we batten up the hatches and down periscope, and dive, dive, dive into SEO for sub brands, on this the 110th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. If you can tell me where the one ping only is from, I'll give you, I don't know, a chocolate bar. Crystal Carter: Hunt For Red October. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. I owe you a chocolate bar. Crystal Carter: And he's like, he's drinking his tea and Sean Connery is just cool as a cucumber, and the missile's coming right at him and he's like, "I need to finish this Earl Gray." I can't remember what tea it was- Mordy Oberstein: One ping only. But the best part, he's playing a Russian commander and he doesn't bother to change his accent. "One ping only." Crystal Carter: Sean Connery plays Sean Connery, whatever he's doing, and nobody's mad at it. I mean lots of people do that. Like Jason Statham, he's Jason Statham wherever he goes. But it's fine. It's fine. That's what he does. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: I got to find a way to use that line on my wife, like, "One ping only." Crystal Carter: You can play ping pong, I guess. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, one of my kids plays ping pong. There we go. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: So before we blink Claudio on, let me just explain really quick, enterprise level SEO is complicated. And one of the areas that complicates it the most, maybe not the most, but one of the ways that it gets complicated a lot is because there's often brands within brands, and it gets really complicated when trying to do SEO. And the problem only compounds itself a gazillion percent over, if there's overlap between what the sub brand is doing and the actual brand is doing, and then becomes a giant mess. So with that, we have a well-smart person who knows how to handle all of us. He's a Lions fan and a Padres fan, and he's from New York. Make sense of that. Welcome to the show, Claudio Cabrera. Claudio Cabrera: Hey, Mordy. Hey, Crystal. Thanks so much for having me. I'm super, super happy to be here. Super happy that my Padres are in the playoffs, the Lions are doing well, and my Spurs are coming to play in the NBA season soon. Mordy Oberstein: It's Wembee time. Claudio Cabrera: Crystal, you're just going to hear a bunch of sports references throughout this whole part. Crystal Carter: It's fine. I went to high school in San Diego, in the days of Tony Gwynn, so I'm very familiar with the Padres when they were at Qualcomm Stadium. Now they've moved on. So I know some sports. I know. I'm familiar. Mordy Oberstein: Hold on. If we're going to do sport, there has to be... I know people with sportsmanship and whatever. But hey, Claudio, how do you feel about 1998? Claudio Cabrera: Oh, that was a bad year. It was a good year, but a bad maybe week and a half within that year, when the Yankees beat the Padres- Mordy Oberstein: How do you like Scott Brochus? No name, third baseman. Claudio Cabrera: Look what I have right next to me. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice, nice. Mike came for my birthday one year, drew me like a Yogi Berra card. Claudio Cabrera: That's super cool. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, super cool. Sports is fun. I enjoy all of it. But you know what's better than sports? SEO for some brands. Claudio Cabrera: I know a little bit about that. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Where did we get started? Because we had this problem, like break the fourth wall, pull the curtain back. We had this problem also, because there's the Wix blog, then there's a Wix SEO hub and then there's Wix Studio, it's all these other entities. There's a lot of overlap. You're at The Athletic. Does that mean the New York Times doesn't cover sports anymore? Claudio Cabrera: Yes. So essentially when The Times bought The Athletic, they bought them in 2022. The thought there was that, number one, I guess the alignment between the two brands is that The Athletic does a lot of original journalism across local markets in the US. And some local markets that The Times may not necessarily have deep penetration into right. The Times has huge audiences on the coast, but also in the middle of the country, but not everywhere. Whereas The Athletic has fans pretty much in every single market. Additionally, the main thing that I would say is that they were really, really focused on the original journalism aspect. There's not a lot of brands in the sports space now that are still creating original journalism at scale. So it seemed like a really, really natural fit. Right? Now, when the brand was acquired in 2022, there was obviously still The New York Times sports page, and it was still operating and it's obviously a very historic sports page that's been around for... I don't even know, 150, 200 years at this point. And I think the overall goal was really to, throughout those first few years, really acclimate The Athletic to The New York Times audience. As you can see us now, we're like the sub folder, we have a presence on the page, we have a module, so many different things. And last year at some point, The New York Times sports page pretty much closed down, which was a big deal, just because of the historic nature of it. And now how we kind of view each other is, The Athletic is the home of that real time, day-to-day coverage for sports. But if you look at the Olympics, if you look at the World Cup in the last few years, when both brands were covering it, The Athletic was the real time. The Times kind of leaned into the cultural aspect of these events. Like, what was the scene in Paris? What was the scene in Qatar when the World Cup was there? So many different things. So it feels like we continue balancing ourselves out. But what you see continuously is The Athletic just increasing their presence on The Times platform, and familiarity with their audiences overall. Crystal Carter: I think you brought up some great points there. First of all, I'm not sure if we cleared up, and I think you kind of did in your description anyway, but in any case, if anyone isn't entirely sure, when we mean sub brand, we don't mean... It's not a question of hierarchy in terms of quality or anything like that. It tends to be like you have a parent brand, say The New York Times, and then within that parent brand, they'll have a brand like The Athletic that we're describing now. And what you're talking about, that process, acquisition is very often a way that sub brands emerge, like you're talking about with The Athletic. Or sometimes it's a case that a team might think, "We need to have a dedicated entity for this particular topic or whichever." And a couple of things that stood out in the way you described The Athletic and how you've been negotiating developing that identity within The New York Times family, as it were, is the USP. You were very clear on the USP of The Athletic and what The Athletic brings to the table, that's unique to the core offering of the brand. Are you able to share how you articulate that or how you make that more clear to your users? Claudio Cabrera: Yeah. I mean, I think overall, when you look at The Times, they have, I don't know, I think four or five sub brands at this point. They have cooking, they have wire cutter, they have sports and they have games, Wordle and those other games that we have. I think in terms of articulation, I'm sure The Times has done a ton of work when it comes to really communicating to the audiences what The Athletic is. But what I would say overall that's been really clear, and the synergy between both brands is that, The Athletic is... When you look at a brand like ESPN, there are ties to the networks. I mean there are ties to the leagues. So there is this belief that organizations like those may not necessarily be able to really report out everything they want to. Right? Now, The Athletic, similar to The Times, is independent of any entities in that sense. So what we really try to communicate to the audiences when we introduce them to The Athletic is really that this is a brand that's independent of any sports leagues. Therefore, we can report anything and everything. So we can hold the brands to account, we can hold TV networks to account, pretty much anything associated with sports. So that allows us to gain the trust of the audience overall, versus there being this feeling like, whether it's ESPN, NBC or any of these other networks that have lead ties, a viewer kind of saying like, "Oh, are they not criticizing them because of this reason or that reason?" And we try to really just keep that independence, in the same way that The Times does, if that makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to point out by how unique and how important that is in particular in the sports world. Let's say for example, I watch Rich Eisen. Rich Eisen is an old, ESPN Sports Center, newscaster, whatever you want to call him. He also works for the NFL network. So when he is on his own show, you can almost see he's got to be a little bit careful of what he says about the NFL, because he actually works for the NFL. Or Mike Floria who covers NFL and NBC, will literally say, "I don't know if my boss is going to like this or not." Or you see what ESPN did, they brought Pat... I'm really going down the sports wormhole now. They brought Pat McAfee on to make it look like, "Oh, we're offering honest takes. Pat's going to say whatever he wants to say." As if Pat's not playing the game. But it's also nonsense. So The Athletic coming in and offering that USP like, "We're the honest broker," is huge, to me at least, in the sports world. Claudio Cabrera: And what I would also say to that, Mordy and Crystal, one of the things that's happened a lot in sports journalism overall, is newspapers locally downsizing, obviously downsizing in different areas and in different sports. I think the NFL and the NBA seem to be those sports that they don't necessarily downsize in, just because of the popularity of them both. But when you look at baseball, when you look at NHL specifically, there's been a lot of downsizing from a local market perspective. So the thought is, all right, at the same time, we have either the first or the second or the third ranked beat reporter in each specific market. So you have someone that you've developed a relationship with throughout time, and someone that's trustworthy at the same juncture. So it's really multiple value adds. The independence, but also, hey, you could come to The New York Times, but you can also go to The Athletic, if, let's say you don't have the breadth and the depth of sports coverage for your local team in Minnesota, Phoenix, wherever it may be, and kind of follow your team in that way as well. So it's really centered around the fan. Everything about the product is really centered around the fan, and just making sure that the fan feels like we're speaking to them in a way that feels original and doesn't feel like we're just producing content for audience scale. Crystal Carter: And I think that's really interesting, the way that you described. Because most website folks, most people who are producing content, et cetera, would say, "Oh, the users. The users." And you're like, "The fans, the fans that come to our website, because they're fans and we are providing a service for the fans." And I think that perspective is really valuable and it clearly, clearly resonates with your fans, and with the fans of sports who come through. And also, I think that from a sub-brand, parent-brand sort of relationship, it helps bring new audiences to both the parent brand and the sub-brand. And I think also, you were talking about filling gaps, essentially what you're talking about is a content gap. Your team noticed a content gap on the sort of local level of say local NHL teams. The only one I know is the Kings, the Oilers. Those are teams, right? Claudio Cabrera: Yes. Yeah, those are teams. Crystal Carter: Danly Cup. Go Mighty Ducks. Just naming sports things. Anyway, but you notice a gap, and then your team is able to fill that gap. And therefore, both support the fans, but also build your audience. I think, as somebody who works in, like we were saying, a similar brand, we are part of the Wix SEO team, we are part of the Wix SEO hub, one of the things that's great is that you have some of the resources that the parent brand has, in order to fill some of those gaps. How do you manage your resources? How do you get resources for some of the content projects? Let's say you're like, "Hey, there was some..." Mordy, you'll pick me up. Is it like banana ball or something? Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Claudio Cabrera: Pickle ball? Crystal Carter: No, it's like a banana- Mordy Oberstein: No, it's the banana baseball league. Where they- Claudio Cabrera: Oh yeah, yeah. The Savannah something. I don't know what they're called. Mordy Oberstein: Savannah Bananas. Crystal Carter: Right. So let's say your team finds the Savannah Bananas and you're like, "We want to make a whole section about this completely new league." Or something. How do you negotiate getting resources for that, so that you can build something that works for those fans, and helps to support both your brand and the parent brand? Claudio Cabrera: That's a great question. I mean, I think when it comes to sports that aren't necessarily top of mind but are sort of gaining interest, I think a lot of times, in newsrooms, which most newsrooms are pretty strapped when it comes to resources overall, it really comes down to, is there someone from an advertising perspective that's so interested in this particular product or the particular league, that's willing to really say, "Hey, we would love to buy advertising space on your website for F1 or for, let's say Savannah Bananas." Now at that point, you can either do one of two things. You can say, "All right, we're going to have this huge advertising buy from this company and maybe we can build out a vertical for this." Or you can actually say, which we do a lot of, is we say, "Well, we don't necessarily have enough research at this point to say whether pickle ball or that league that you mentioned, or let's say even F1, at the interest level that we need to really dedicate a full team of resourcing to it." So maybe we take one writer and really test out content consistently, to see, one, really less so from... I think from an external perspective, you're obviously able to see day-to-day, like, "Oh, wow. We're getting a lot of audience interest on F1." But I think because we're one of the few only subscription products in the sports space specifically, it allows us to understand, all right, the people that are on our website, do they actually like F1? Right? So we have the EPO in the UK, which is a huge market for us. And in the UK, F1 is more popular than it is in the US. So we started really kind of connecting the dots there and saying, "All right, is F1 something that even our EPO subscribers are really interested in?" We started seeing that interest, and we said, "All right, let's launch F1 vertical." Much smaller than EPL and NFL and all those others, but sort of building it out. So I think multiple things occur, right? I think there has to be interest from an external level on that specific sport. And then I think internally, you just have to do a ton of research, like user segmentation, and so many different things, to really understand, all right, internally, the people that we have as subscribers, do they like this? But also externally, do we have enough that we can provide from an editorial level, to really reach a large scale audience? Crystal Carter: I was just going to say that testing point, the proof of concept thing, and testing and monitoring, is super important. People should definitely pay attention to that as a tactic. Mordy Oberstein: As you're doing the whole F1 thing, in your opinion, how concerned should you be... And abstract because I don't know if you can get into the details of what you do on The Athletic side. I don't want to put you in an uncomfortable position. But as a concept, how closely do you feel the sub-brand should be working with the main brand? Or how concerned should the sub-brand be about keyword targeting, considering what the main brand or the other sub-brands are also doing? Or should it be as independent thing, like do what it does and that's it? Should there be connection? How strong should that connection be? Claudio Cabrera: Yeah, it'll be fully transparent. I think what's been really good about the relationship with The Athletic and The Times, is that it's been pretty independent, for the most part. So there hasn't been like, "You need to do this or you need to do that." We are like two separate newsrooms, one is remote, one is in-person remote. When it comes to keyword targeting, those types of things too, there hasn't been any clashes or anything of the sorts. I think the main thing that we've been really collaborative on is the understanding that our audience is much smaller than theirs. And what The Times is trying to do is really make sure that they get as much visibility to The Athletic as possible. And that takes a lot of things. That takes homepage visibility with a module, that takes email targeting, that takes push notifications. So on their part, it's been, how do we present The Athletic on a day-to-day level when it's just a regular sports cycle? And how do we present The Athletic when it's the Olympics, a World Cup, the NFL trade bill and the NFL draft, and more? So overall, what I would say is that I think there needs to be a relationship, unless the brands are so alike, then I think you're going to run into those issues around keywords and topic pages, and tagging and so many different things. But because we're so different, I think the parent brand, in a lot of respects, unless it's totally disassociated from what the other brand is, probably has the opportunity to really just build up the profile of that specific brand over time, if that makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Makes a ton of sense. And I love the fact that you guys are taking it from an audience-first point of view. It's so refreshing to hear. Claudio Cabrera: Yeah. And I think one of the things that was really great about... And we obviously migrated, so we did a migration. But even before that migration, we were just getting all this link equity, right? Because we were getting links from The Times every single day. And The Athletic was already kind of growing its authority over the six years since it launched. But just kind of having that presence overall is really important. And what you find is this. Right? I came from The Times, I was leading SEO there for about six or seven years, and I never really looked at The Times audience as this sports audience. I looked at them as more of a casual sports audience that's not into the day-to-day, but is more into the moments. And what ended up happening when The Athletic was acquired, is that we had that module, and we would find sports like baseball, Mordy and Crystal, were the sports that were most popular. And it was like, "Wait, MLB is more popular with this audience than NFL or NBA." And then you would see it kind of fluctuate by season. But it really kind of gave us an idea of what types of stories Times users like, how we program for that specific homepage. So how our homepage looks is very different from how we program for them. Because our audience is very intense. Their audience is more like, "Give me the really, really cool story around sports. Or the things I need to talk about near the water cooler with my coworkers." I think- Crystal Carter: Was that break dancing or not? Claudio Cabrera: Exactly. Exactly. So it's two different audiences. And what I would say is that, we don't tailor our content for The Times audience, but we have the ability to frame headlines for The Times audience. So I'll give you a great example. Wembanyama last year, when he entered the league, we could easily say, "Victor Wembanyama is taking over the league." Right? We could say that on The Athletic, but no one at The Times knew who he was. So we said, "The 7'7" unicorn that's taking over the NBA." Right? So the framing is different, but it connects with that audience as well. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's awesome. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that's so important. And I think that it's a question of warm leads or general leads. So you have the resources of the NYT audience, but it's going to be so many people coming through there. And like you said, you're competing with all of the other headlines of everything else that's going on there. So yeah, I think it's absolutely important to filter your content for the main part of the brand's audience, as opposed to your core audience. But the differentiation I think is key there. I think it's great that you're focusing on differentiation for your core audience and the mainstream audience. I think that's a great tactic. They're highly effective. Mordy Oberstein: And yeah, it is highly effective, because as someone who consumes way too much sports media, you'll always hear, whether it's a New York radio talk show or the national guys, "So-and-so reported on The Athletic more than any other source." So kudos. Crystal Carter: I was literally going to say, and then there's some of us who just... I only know the Super Bowl by who did the halftime show. Mordy Oberstein: You're The New York Times audience. Crystal Carter: That me. I'm like, "Is it the Rihanna Super Bowl or the Shakira Super Bowl?" I'm not sure. I don't know- Claudio Cabrera: The Rihanna Super Bowl was huge. It was like biggest audience. It was huge. Crystal Carter: Massive. Mordy Oberstein: As we ebb away here, first off, this was an amazingly enlightening conversation. It really resonated with me, just want to say on a personal level. But I have two questions for you. One is, do you know Ken Rosenthal? Claudio Cabrera: I met Ken Rosenthal, yeah. I met Ken Rosenthal. Loved the bow tie. Fantastic. Really, really good guy. Really warm, really collaborative. I think the interesting part about... And there's a misconception about star reporters. Some star reporters can be a little tricky, but Ken is the guy that, with every MLB reporter and editor literally at The Athletic, if the beat reporter for the Padres is like, "Hey, I don't really know this, but Ken, can I give you a call to see if you have any more information on this?" Happy to collaborate. So Ken is a baseball legend, as you know, and a reporting legend, and really, really warm and nice guy. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm mad jealous. That was a follow-up to that. And the second question is, who do you have winning the Super Bowl? No, no, not just winning. Who's in it? And who wins it? Claudio Cabrera: I think it's going to be the Lions and the Chiefs. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Lions win? Claudio Cabrera: Yeah, I'm a Lions fan, Crystal. So yeah, the Lions are going to win. I think the Lions will make it happen. But I mean if I remove myself from everything and all my biases in the situation, I would say probably the Chiefs. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But the Lions still in it? Claudio Cabrera: The Lions still in it. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Even with the bias. Okay, I'm with you on this, by the way. I can't stand the Chiefs. I can't deal with another dynasty in the AFC. I had enough. Claudio Cabrera: Oh yeah, I had enough of it. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going Texans-Lions, knowing full well the Chiefs are going to be there, but I will not verbalize it. And I have Lions either way. Crystal Carter: I'm looking forward to Kendrick Lamar. Claudio Cabrera: Kendrick Lamar is this year. That's right, it is Kendrick. Mordy Oberstein: My kids always ask, it's like, "Who's playing the Super Bowl halftime show?" I'm like, "I don't know. I don't care." Claudio Cabrera: It's like the highest rated 20 minutes of the year for... I don't know. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I don't care about the halftime show. I want to see some- Crystal Carter: That's the sub brand of the Super Bowl. The halftime show is the sub brand of the Super Bowl. It's its own thing. And sometimes it eclipses it. Claudio Cabrera: It's so interesting that you say that because it's spot on. We've gotten to a point even here, where most sports brands at this point, do a separate live blog for the halftime show. Crystal Carter: Oh wow, okay. Claudio Cabrera: Yeah. So you have your Super Bowl live blog, which is full of all the stuff. Right? Some people have a commercial live blog, which is with an expert on just commercial. Crystal Carter: Oh, right. That's also another sub brand. Claudio Cabrera: And then you have the halftime live blog, which is like Rihanna, Usher, et cetera. And I think the interesting part about it is that, before it was like, "Oh, we could get millions of views for this. Let's just put whoever on it." And now you actually have people who are experts about specific artists and things, handling that live blog. Which is pretty cool. Mordy Oberstein: You have experts about people who know about Doritos handling the commercial. Crystal Carter: Also people who've been reporting on it for years. So people who will be comparing it to all of the other Super Bowl shows, or comparing it to all of the other things. Claudio Cabrera: Yes, ranking them and, how good was this one versus the other? All that stuff. Yep. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, fine. So now I have a question for Crystal. Favorite halftime show? Crystal Carter: Favorite halftime show, it's got to be Beyonce. I'm just going to say that, just because I'm biased. Katy Perry, you cannot knock Katy Perry for effort. She did everything. She did all of the things. You can't knock Katy Perry for effort. And I liked Rihanna, but I liked the lady who was doing the sign language better, in terms of dance moves. So there we go. But Usher was fantastic. Usher was brilliant. It was brilliant to see all of that. And I really enjoyed the roller skating. Claudio Cabrera: Oh yeah, the roller skating was pretty cool too. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to go old school, I'm into the Chili Peppers, but my favorite one was when it had Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and, was it Dr. Dre also? Crystal Carter: That was very good. Mordy Oberstein: That was really good. I really enjoyed that- Crystal Carter: I don’t know why 50 Cent was upside down. Claudio Cabrera: That one made me feel so old. Mordy Oberstein: Everybody felt like, "Oh my God." Claudio Cabrera: Yeah, I was like, "Oh, man, I'm old." Mordy Oberstein: We are old. On that note, Claudio, where can people find your old self? Claudio Cabrera: Where can people find my old... In terms of socials? Mordy Oberstein: Well, I wanted to hand out your address on the podcast, just giving some advice. Claudio Cabrera: I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter. I'm always kind of lurking on Twitter, and hanging out there and reading stuff. I'm actually mostly on LinkedIn, but not from a posting perspective, but just talking to people in messages and things like that. That's mainly where I kind of hang out. And my email is always like... I always tell people I'm always open and willing to answer any questions if they have any. So I'm pretty open on that front. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much for being open and sharing all of your insights today. Claudio Cabrera: Of course. Thank you for having me. This was great. And I'm glad we finally made it happen. Mordy Oberstein: So glad. It was really, really great. Look for Claudio on social media. We'll put the links in the show notes, or just read The Athletic. Support Claudio, subscribe to The Athletic. Claudio Cabrera: Please. Mordy Oberstein: Check out Ken Rosenthal. All right. Thanks, Claudio. Claudio Cabrera: Thank you guys. Mordy Oberstein: So as I mentioned before, sub-brands are hard because you have multiple brands to work with, consider, dance around and whatnot. How to deal with a sub-brand is really one of my favorite topics, because literally what I spend almost my entire day doing, managing a sub-brand. Like the Wix Studio, Wix SEO, sub-brandish thing, that's what we do. That's our jam. So we're stoked to have two great brand marketers join us in just a second, Matt Davies of the Just Branding podcast, and Steven Picanza of Branders Magazine, are going to join us as we go into a deep thought. Welcome to the show, Steven and Matt. How are you? Steven Picanza: All right. Mordy, good to see you. Matt Davies: Great to be here. Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: Super stoked. The pre-Paul part of this recording was epic. We should have recorded and that should have been the whole thing. Matt Davies: It was wild. Steven Picanza: Well, Matt and I have a history, so I think, get us in a room together... Matt Davies: It's going to be a problem. Steven Picanza: Yeah, there's a lot of magical problems. Mordy Oberstein: I love magical problems. Like my finances, magical problems. Steven Picanza: Right. Beautiful chaos, whatever. Dynamic tension, you keep going with these. Mordy Oberstein: So before we get dragged down this whole wormhole, pitch away and plug away whatever you got. Marketers are going to market, that's what we do on our show. Steven Picanza: Well, Steven Picanza. I am the host of the Talking With Branders podcast, which is part of Branders Magazine. I also am a consultant, brand consultant for startups and a lot of nonprofits recently, a lot of associations. And I also run a content studio here in New Jersey, where as I was telling the gang, we're going to have five sets open right outside Philadelphia. We are changing the game on how small businesses can create and scale content, because it should not be a Herculean task. Also, just go to my website, Stevenpicanza.com. I got a cool newsletter, I do content, and I just want to be the voice of the Branders community. There are a lot of smart MFers out there, like Mr. Matt Davies, that actually know what they're doing. I'm just a mouthpiece and a talking head, and I just want to bring people together. Mordy Oberstein: What do you say to that, Matt? Matt Davies: I mean, wow, how do you follow that? I shouldn't have let him go first, should I? Mordy Oberstein: No, that was your first mistake, for sure. Matt Davies: I'm Matt Davis. As Mordy has kindly said, I am the co-host of the Just Branding podcast with Jacob Cass. But more than that, I also am a consultant, and I tend to work with leadership teams all over the world, who basically need to align around their strategy for the future, and to position their brands powerfully in their marketplaces. So I won't bore you with all of that. I guess a couple of accolades. I've written a book called Storyategy, and I also sit on the editorial team at Branders Magazine, alongside Steven. So that's probably enough for now. Bore you with more stuff another time. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I'm just going to double down on that and say that, your website and the Branders Magazine website are on Wix. Which is not why you're here, it just happened to be a nice little find. Matt Davies: I like that you've done your homework Mordy. I'm a huge fan of Wix. No one is paying me to say that, by the way, folks, but I am. I find it super easy. I'll tell you a very quick, little story. I used to run an agency about... Well, many moons ago, maybe 20 years ago or something. And we used to do a lot of hand coded websites. As time went on, I could see that the potential of high-end CMSs was coming in. And I've actually pivoted completely, over many, many years now, completely away from execution because I just think technology is catching us up. And Wix is a great example of that. And I use it all the time, and I find it fantastic for my project. So thank you. Steven Picanza: I'm all for Clint after that. Crystal Carter: Great. Thank you for coming on our podcast. It was great talking to you. Bye. Steven Picanza: Matt, you definitely got a nice paycheck coming in the mail now. Mordy Oberstein: One giant IOU coming your way. Steven Picanza: You just can't cash it for 180 days plus. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So branding for a sub brand, marketing for a sub brand. We talked about the SEO side with Claudio Cabrera from The Athletic. Let's get into the actual marketing side. At what point does one say, "You know what? We can really go, and should go, with a sub brand here"? Matt Davies: Can I take that one? I would just pause for one second and just take a quick step back. I just think it's super helpful. Then I'll dive in and attack your question, but I always like to kind of get definitions out of the way. Because when we are talking about brands, sometimes there's huge confusion. Because the average person, when you talk about a brand, they think of a logo, a name, some fonts, maybe some colors or whatever. And that might be part of it, but I don't think that's the best definition. So my definition of a brand is the meaning that people attach to you and your audience. And the game that Steven and I are in, and those brand marketeers out there, we are in the game of managing that meaning. So it's not about us, it should be about them. It should be about, how do people perceive us? How do people understand us? And our strategy should be all about doing that in a way that gives the best impact, gives them the best choice, makes sure that they make the right decisions. And hopefully, the right people choose our product, service offering, or wherever it might be. So that's kind of a bit of a segue to then attack what you've just asked, which is, okay, when do you actually create a sub-brand? So my answer to that is, well, we create a sub-brand when it's necessary for the meaning we want people to attach to us, to ensure that it's easily understood and digestible by them. They can understand this is maybe a new offering or a sub-offering, from a main category offering. And so we offer something like a sub-brand when we're targeting perhaps a new audience. So we've got a new offer that might relate to our overarching offer, but needs definition. It needs distinction, it needs signposting in a way that is relevant and meaningful for the people we're trying to speak to. So that's when you decide to maybe branch out of an overarching portfolio and dive into a sub-brand kind of offering. Steven Picanza: Matt, brilliantly said. And you set the pace, you paved that road with that definition. So definitely appreciate that. To Matt's point, I think as we drill down more specifically, when your product or service diversifies, and the parent brand can't stretch without dilution, that's when you need to look at a sub-brand. Perfect example, you got Coca-Cola, but then maybe you have more health conscious people and they wanted Diet Coke. And so, it was a perfect opportunity to create these sub-brands. And I think we see a lot of this within food and beverage, as people's tastes get more narrow, as people's dietary restrictions get more narrow, it gives the opportunity to create these sub-brands. But some caution, there's got to be the opportunity there, and the opportunity has to come from the people, as Matt was saying. It can't just be a bunch of board directors and CEOs saying, "We should branch out and do extensions, because I like this idea and I think it'll work." That'll never work. Matt Davies: Yeah, that's the number one mistake I see, is people making decisions like this because it makes sense from the business's perspective, but it doesn't make sense from the customer's perspective. And- Steven Picanza: Perfect case. No, sorry, Matt. No, perfect point. I did a lot of work with Dude Wipes on launching their latest campaign. And Dude Wipes Shark Tank brand, they do male, flushable wipes. Well six years ago, more or less, they decided to come out to try to attack Dr. Sasquatch or Dr. Swatch, or whatever they're called, and some of these other male care brands. So they introduced a deodorant, they introduced a bath bomb, they introduced all these other male care products. It wasn't until Cuban called up the founders and said, "Stay in your lane, own your category. You do not need to be branching out now because you're going to lose focus." And thankfully they did, because when COVID hit and the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 happened in America, Dude Wipes cleaned up literally and figuratively, and they saw sales skyrocket because of that laser focus. So you have to be really careful on when to branch, and create extensions or sub brands, and when to kind of hold yourself back. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I mean that's something that actually we deal with all the time, because how we sort of evolve into being... I want to call us a sub brand, but we're like almost a sub brand. We function like a sub brand. Within Wix is, there was a reputation issue around SEO for a long, long, long, long, long, long time. And then once that issue started to get dealt with in an active way, it's a whole different story for a whole different time. And SEO started to come around like, "Wait a second, Wix is actually great for SEO." There started to become an audience interest and an audience shift, and a particular focus on that vertical, different, let's say like Wix and social media, or Wix and analytics, or Wix or whatever it is, around SEO. And the audience determined, "Wait a second, there should be a unique focus for this segment, almost that it operates like that sub brand." And then audience need comes in and says to you, "You need something a little bit more focused and a little bit more defined around that topic or around that category, around whatever that is," that's exactly when you should come in and start doing a sub brand. My go-to category with this when I go to product rather with this, is Blue Moon, which is really Coors. When Coors saw, and all the big companies saw that, wait a second, people are stopping to drink crap beer, and craft beer becoming a thing, they dealt with it two ways. One is, they dealt with it by trying to control the distribution. And when that didn't work the way that it was supposed to work, some of the smarter brands, like Coors, said, "You know what? Let's just create our own craft beer." And distanced itself from the actual... No one's going to know that it's really Coors unless you're reading the very, very, very back of the label that says, "Coors." But it's Blue Moon and it's craft, and you love craft beer. And it tastes different, I think, than actual Coors. I haven't drunk actual Coors in forever, so I wouldn't know. Matt Davies: So it's interesting, because when you start diving into this rabbit hole, there's various strategies brands can take. So let's just imagine we've got a brand and we decide, there's an offering here that feels like it needs its own sub brand. You've kind of got two choices in the management of the meaning. And there's the two main kind of structures, are what we call branded house and house of brands. So let me just briefly, if I may, just quickly reiterate what those are. The branded house is like you are going into a house, and it's all the same house. You feel like you're in the front room, you're in the lounge, you're in the kitchen, you feel like you're in the same house, the same branded house. So for example, if I was in Virgin, I'll be in Virgin Media, I'll be in Virgin Atlantic, I'll be in whatever, all the Virgins. Virgin Galactica, whatever the things are. So it feels very Virgin. There's the core mother brand essence that runs through everything. The customer understands the connection between everything like that. So that's one. The other one is the house of brands, which is a very different approach, which I think you were talking about there, Mordy, with Coors. which is where basically, you're in the house. So let's say we're in Unilever. But I'm in all the different rooms and I don't really know that they connect to each other, or even to Unilever. So I might be in the Dove room, which is all about the Dove products, but that might be very different to some of the other products that they're offering. So you might ask, "Well, why would I choose one over the other? What's the difference?" And again, this comes down to the management of meaning, and you have to be quite strategic in how you think about this. Because if you go down the branded house model, there are some pros and cons. The pros are that, if I have a great experience in one room, in one brand, it might encourage me as a customer to move to also experience another brand. So this works really well for example, for Virgin, because I might be buying my broadband from Virgin. And I have a great experience and I think, "Do you know what? That was really fun. I'll go on holiday with Virgin as well." And so there's a plus. The negative is the same, right? Because if I've had terrible experience with my broadband, it'll put me off completely going on holiday with Virgin. So you've got to think about that. But in the house of brands model, that's very segmented. So you can kind of distance yourself, almost like zone off all your brands, positively or negatively, so that customers don't really know that they're buying from the same company. Again, that can have pros. For example, if your model, your business model is to sell bits off, then it doesn't really matter if you sell off Dove or another brand that you've got, because it doesn't impact the rest of your business. So these are kind of big strategic questions, and there isn't a wrong or a right I would suggest. It just depends on really your end game and what you are really trying to do. But my number one bit of advice is, think of the poor customer. If you're trying to segment it too much, and connect it and not connect, it's just confusing. Steven Picanza: Think of the customer. Indeed. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that that definitely comes into it, and I think that that will really be the deciding factor between whether or not you want to go with the house of brands model or the branded house sort of element. If you think about Ben and Jerry's for instance, Ben and Jerry's was a very beloved brand for a very long time, with a very distinct audience and very distinct USPs, and things like that. When they became part of Unilever, I think people in the industry knew what was going on, but they don't shout about it. It's not shouted about. The branding still is very, very similar, even though it's Unilever. However, because it's part of the Unilever family, there are certain benefits to it. There's scalability, there's distribution. There's also the fact that, because they're part of Unilever, they get a lot of the tooling that you get from Swedish Glass, which is a vegan ice cream thing. Which means that Ben and Jerry's is able to do vegan ice cream really, really quickly and really, really easily. So there's a lot of backend elements for that. And a website, this is also similar, we were talking to Claudio from The Athletic. They are able to benefit from a lot of the legacy content, a lot of the infrastructure, a lot of the links from the parent brand of The New York Times. But they're also able to maintain their identity. So there can be benefits to that. In terms of Virgin, their airlines are fantastic, their broadband I was not impressed with overall, if I'm completely honest. Matt Davies: Crystal, you make a really great point about infrastructure, connections, all of that side of things. I also think there's another area that's probably worthy of note, and that is culture. So I've got a client at the moment, they're in the B2B space. They are a massive brand in the energy sector, and they're going through a lot of M&As at the moment. So they're buying up smaller competitors. And that causes tension with culture. But what I'm doing with their leadership team is we're saying, "This is actually a really amazing thing. Because now, you might've been in a team of 40 to 100 people, now you've got access to a much bigger company, with more support, with more rigorous training, with more opportunity." So it can be great internally as well, depending on how you handle the messaging and how you build that culture. But that all connects in my view, to the brand and the sub-brand strategy that you employ. Crystal Carter: Going back to the people thing, you have to communicate that really, really well between your people. And if you're talking about from an internal point of view, that communication piece is really key. If you're talking about that from a customer point of view, that's also really key. So recently, Brighton SEO, which is a big conference in the SEO industry, they recently merged with PPC... What is it? Matt Davies: Hero Con. Crystal Carter: Hero Con. And they bought that. And when they joined, they were like, "Hi, everyone who loves Hero Con. We now own Hero Con. We're Brighton SEO. If you don't know us, this is who we are. Hi. Hello. If you'd like to leave our mailing list, then good luck to you. But hi, hello." And they had to go through that process. And that's really, really important, both from a client retention, user retention sort of element. And also as you're thinking about other web assets and things like that. Mordy Oberstein: That internal thing is super huge. I want to ask Steve a question also, but the internal thing is huge. I don't know if you're Blue Moon or if you're Hero Con, or if you're Wix, whatever it is, if you don't give that team the autonomy to do their thing as a sub-brand, the way they're meant to do their thing, it does not work. Because by the way, I think it doesn't work so well with Blue Moon sometimes. But for example, with Hero Con, PPC is different than SEO. Right? Or with us, we're talking to SEOs and marketers, as SEOs and marketers. We do not tie our hands together and say, "Well, we have to only talk about it this way because we're Wix and because we're Wix Studio." We have full range. Because the internal teams understand, if you're going to target this audience and act almost like a sub brand, in our case, you have to have full range to speak about SEO and speak about marketing, the way that SEOs and marketers speak about marketing. If you're going after the craft brew audience, you need to speak about craft brewery, brewing, drinking craft beer, the way that someone who drinks craft beer would normally go about. If you tie their hands together, and try to put a square peg into a round hole a little bit, this is not going to work. Steven Picanza: I'm shaking my head in agreement with everything, you've all said it so brilliantly. It is such an opportunity, as Matt was saying, and Crystal, you too, use it as an opportunity to be proactive with your messaging. I think too many brands oftentimes are reactive because they don't think about it, or they don't think the implications, or they don't think strongly enough about how to communicate this merge or this acquisition, or how it's going to impact culture, how it's going to impact your livelihood. Are you out of a job? Is it fear mongering in a way? Which, in this job market, everyone's eyes just popped up. It's fucking tough out there. Excuse me for dropping an F bomb. But use it as an opportunity. Because if you nurture your employees, you nurture your staff, you nurture your customers, and you listen to them and you give them the tools to succeed, they will reward you with their patronage, with their longevity. They'll just reward you by staying with part of your tribe. Mordy Oberstein: Pivot. I want to ask you about the tools to do that, because you mentioned tools, so now we're going to talk about tools. Look at that pivot. Okay. What are some tools that you can use in order to either distance or marry the sub-brand together? I'll give you an example, like a podcast. I think a podcast is a great tool because you can decide, I want to keep the podcast super away from the main brand, or I want to tie it super closely. It's the whatever podcast. Where's the branding from the parent? It's not there. Or it could be the whatever podcast, by parent brand. So that's something that you can either decide to pull in really close or something you can decide to keep really far away. And you can move that along as you decide to. Just an example of a tool. What are some of the tools, or things that you can do or use, to either disconnect the sub-brand from the main brand, if that's what you're trying to do, or to marry them together? Matt Davies: I mean the basic... Oh, sorry. You go, Steven. We're just super excited. We just can't help it. Steven Picanza: Biting and we're chopping at- Matt Davies: You go, I'll give way to you, sir, again. Just putting it out there, that's two now. Steven Picanza: I think that, and going back to what Matt was saying, it depends on what your strategy is. Are your branded house or house of brands? The nomenclature, which is so subjective on your business and your business strategy and your brand strategy, is going to dictate if you say, "From Unilever. A Unilever brand, et cetera, et cetera. Powered by whatever." But I think a tool that should be used is, how do you incorporate those stories together? As Matt was saying, how do you create meaning with these two organizations together? There is a shared story. Whether or not it's a shared legacy, but it's a shared future. So how do we make sure that we're storytelling before that shared future, always with, not the stakeholders or the shareholders thought in mind, but with the audience in mind? So I think that that is such an under leveraged tool that can be used to marry or to tie these brands together. Now of course you can go down the road and you can say, "Oh. Well, visual identity is an easy one." Look at FedEx and all the different FedEx properties, and they all share the same look and feel. But I think when you start to think about brands that want to operate with autonomy, and brands that want to operate as their own but are part of a parent company, it's about those shared values, that shared story and that shared meaning, to go back to what Matt was saying. Matt Davies: So I've got a few ideas on tools. I predominantly work in strategy, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask about tools in the sense of execution. But in terms of strategy, what I would do as a strategist is, first of all, set about trying to understand what the value of this new entity is to customers. So I love surveys. There's tons of survey tools out there. I would actually ask my clients to give me access to say their top 10, top 20 customers, if that's possible. I would literally speak to them. That sounds ridiculously simple, but do you know how many people do not actually speak to their top customers? It's bananas to me. Particularly leadership teams. Speak to them, or get someone like me or Steven to go and speak to them. Because you get an insight then, that's not based on your hunch or your personal view. It's based on something that you've been told by your audience. And if the brand is the meaning that they attach to you, that's got to be the primary source of your thinking. So go speak to people, get surveys, get interviews with them. You can do obviously hardcore market research if you like, and there's lots of tools out there that would enable you to do that as well. And then I think the other thing is really, I'm a massive fan of workshops. I just love a good workshop. So armed with good insight from customers, from how the competitors are positioning themselves, from the category itself, armed with that in mind, get the right decision makers in a room and say, "Okay, look. We need to craft this. We need to align around a strategy for this new entity, this new sub brand. We need to understand..." I mean, I've got four big brand questions I like to ask of any brand, and that is, why do we exist beyond making money? Who do we exist to serve? How should we show up for them? And perhaps the most important, what is the unique value that we're offering? In other words, what is it that people can get from us, that they cannot get from anywhere else? Do we know the answer to that? And if you can answer those four questions, you're on your way to crafting then a focus for the internal teams, which is super powerful. Because they get to focus on the important things, the value that we're offering to the market, in a way that we can communicate it that people would really love. If you don't answer those, then you've got 50 people working on the project, absolute chaos. Because everybody can have their own view of what might be going on here or not, and you end up splintering your brand very swiftly. Crystal Carter: To follow that up, my question is, are your brand guidelines a tool? Matt Davies: Yes, they should be. They should be. And to my mind, there's the visual guidelines, but that is not what I'm talking about. That is important. There's the strategic guidelines, the narrative, the high level stuff, the answer of those four questions. And both of those relate obviously, but start- Steven Picanza: And they live together. Matt Davies: For sure. Steven Picanza: I might even go as far to say that the day of guidelines is almost passing us, and we need to start living in this idea of an operating system. It needs to live and breathe with us. And those four questions that Matt... And Matt and I come from the same school, mentored by Marty Neumeyer and the level C, and that way of brand thinking. But the greater the foundation that we can build on the brand, I always like to say, theoretically, the less money we're going to waste on marketing at the end. Right? Because we're focused. We know who the hell we're talking to. We know what message to say. We have all the answers. And just to Matt's point about talking to your customers, I tell brands this all the time. There was a famous philosopher 2000 years ago, Zeno of Centium. He said, "We all have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Act accordingly." Right? Listen more than you talk. Well, if we put that in the lens of brands, today, brands have two ears and one mouth for a reason, and we should listen to our customers more. They're going to tell us things that we would never have seen. And they're going to tell an outside consultant, like Matt or myself, something perhaps vastly different than the CEO or the CFO, who they have perhaps an intimate relationship with, or there's a monetary relationship there. So there's so much that we could pull out, whether it's data, insight or just insider trading knowledge, to get to where we need to go. Matt Davies: One really big tip that I just want to share is the concept, if you've not come across it yet, of social listening, and having a look... On the most basic level, you can just see how many times your brand is mentioned in a month, for example, versus your competitor set. So that gives you a bit of a sense of share, in terms of how much voice or how much people are talking about you. But if you want to go a little bit more nuanced, you then need to dive into that. Okay, what are they saying about us? Are they complaining? And if they're complaining, what are they complaining about? And if they're loving- Steven Picanza: Is it a positive or negative sentiment? Matt Davies: For sure. So you can go really deep into that, and I always recommend that to any marketing team. Because it's not expensive to start. Obviously if you want to get really in-depth and you've got a lot of data to get through, you might need to pay a bit more to start. Steven Picanza: And a tool that I've used in the past for social listening, that's a great point, Matt, is NetBase. NetBase is a brilliant tool, and it gives you the opportunity to start to attach positive, negative emotions to what's being said, mentioned. We did that a lot for Dude Wipes, and we came up with a crazy insight, and this is a tip for brands. Dude Wipes, oftentimes their comments would have a more positive sentiment than the actual comment that they were responding to. So for example, Chipotle might say, "Free Burrito today." And Dude Wipes would come out and say, "You're going to need us tomorrow." And oftentimes we would see the insight of, "Holy shit, that comment got more engagement than the actual post." And that was their trick. It's incredible. Mordy Oberstein: It's not the amount of engagement, it's the type of engagement. On that happy note, speaking of sharing and listening, could you share where people can find you, so they can listen to you more? Matt Davies: Okay, I'll go first on this one. So you can check out my website, mrmattdavies.me. Spelled M-R-M-A-T-T-D-A-V-I-E-S.M-E. And that's a Wix website. If somebody hasn't mentioned that already, just popping that in there. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. Say it again. It's fine. Matt Davies: Side point. But also, perhaps more importantly, I love LinkedIn. I'm a massive LinkedIn dweller, so please connect with me if you're interested in anything I have to say. I'm often posting content on all this stuff and more. So see you there. Love to connect. Steven Picanza: For me, go to Stevenpicanza.com. I unfortunately am on one of your competitor websites. Mordy Oberstein: Squarespace, I saw. I know. You'll get there. Steven Picanza: But I'm open. Free Agency's coming up. I'm on a month-to-month plan, just saying. So Stevenpicanza.com. You can check me out there. And then like Matt, I am a LinkedIn dweller, if you type in Steven Picanza. But I think more importantly, just look for the peace sign and the pizza slice. We all want a piece of pizza, don't we? Always. Just saying, right? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, truer words were never spoken, unless you're talking about what you just said before about branding. And with that, thanks guys for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it very much. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Matt Davies: Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: So again, thank you Matt and Steven for joining us. Make sure you give them a follow on LinkedIn. Links again, in the show. You know who's a sub-brand? Barry's a sub-brand. No, he is. Because he's got Search Engine Land and then he's got Search Engine Round Table. It's a brand within a brand of SEO news coverage. Crystal Carter: It's because he's part-time Barry, part-time Rusty Brick. Mordy Oberstein: That should be his tagline, part-time Barry, full-time Rusty Brick. Or full-time Barry. Crystal Carter: I feel like it's his superhero persona. I feel like he needs an action hero outfit that's- Mordy Oberstein: Full on cape, underwear on the outside. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And then when he sees the bad guys who are causing volatility in the algorithm or something- Mordy Oberstein: Like Danny Sullivan? Crystal Carter: No, no. Danny's not a bad guy. He throws bricks at them. That's his thing. So Spider-Man has webs, Batman has batarangs, Barry throws internet bricks at them. You see? Mordy Oberstein: It's like the mafia, like throwing bricks through your window. Crystal Carter: No, those are just ex-girlfriends. That is a tried and tested ex-girlfriend move. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we're throwing the news through a window now, as we pivot into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, 2:40 from Barry Shortz. And both from Suroundtable.com. First up, report, 22% of sites hit by Google's helpful content update are up 20% plus. This was from originally Glenn Gabe. Glenn Gabe is, call it an index of 400 sites that he's tracking around these official updates. And he said that 88 out of these 400, or 22% of them, saw a 20% increase, at least 20% increase, since the August 2024 core update. Barry says that some had full recoveries, but most did not. And most saw no lifts at all. It's 22%, right? It's just an interesting, I call it a status check on where we are with these updates. Rather these sites getting recoveries from some of these updates. Really interesting to see a link to them within the show notes. You can check out all the great charts that Barry has from Glenn there. Also, from Barry again, Google AI overview displayed within People Also Ask. So there was a test where you opened up the People Also Ask expandable cards. And normally what you see is a featured snippet sort of thing, where you get a little summary answering the question that reflects the card, and then a URL to the website. Again, feature snippet basically. But in this instance, there was a test where when you opened up the expandable card, you were getting the AI overview instead. Same kind of format as you would normally see with the AI overview in general, with just more cards at the bottom it looks like. Anyway, I'll link to the article in the show and you can take a look at what it looks like there. But it is interesting to take note of just Google really doubling down and trying to expand out the AI overview. I don't know, I don't think it'll stick here necessarily. But just again, keeping tabs on where Google is not shying away from pushing AI overviews out there to other places on the SERP, so it clearly seems. And that is this week's Snappy News. Crash. That's the sound of this pivot. Crystal Carter: Bang. Boom. Kapow. Mordy Oberstein: Coming back. Crystal Carter: Is Robin a sub-brand of Batman? Mordy Oberstein: Coming out of the news, is Robin a sub-brand of... Does Robin exist outside of Batman? Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, better. Better. The villains, right? You have Joker, right? Joker is definitely- Mordy Oberstein: Well, they made that into its own brand, until they killed it with the second movie I heard. I didn't even watch it. And I won't watch it now that I heard it's terrible. Crystal Carter: Then there's also Catwoman. Catwoman had a movie, which also didn't... That was kind of okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right. I don't know. Kind of. Mordy Oberstein: Great. Yeah. Perfect. Which brings us to our follow of the week, which is Sarah Press over at Dragon Metrics, and she does a great job marketing her brand, Dragon Metrics. Why we thought she'd be a great follow of the week. She speaks at Brighton SEO. So I met her at Brighton SEO, a few years back. That's how I got introduced to her. So follow her on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's super great. We saw the Dragon Metrics team again at Brighton SEO this year, and they're super lovely. And they've got some great tools, and a great way to track your brand, your sub brand, everything you need. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. So big old follow to Sarah, and shout out the Dragon Metrics. And link in the show notes where you can follow her. I don't know. Sub me out. Done with the episode. Trying to put the subs in. Crystal Carter: Right. I could go for a Subway sandwich. Mordy Oberstein: Subs, not scrubs. Crystal Carter: We don't want no scrubs. Mordy Oberstein: Scrub is a... Not going to even go there. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Don't worry, we're back next week with a new episode, as we dive into, is it time to stop relying on algorithms? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix Studio SEO learning over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content on webinars on the Wix Studio Learning hub, 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. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Claudio Cabrera Steven Picanza Matt Davies Sarah Presch Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center The Athletic Just Branding Podcast Talking with Branders Branding Magazine Matt Davies Brand and Culture Strategy Consultancy Steven Picanza Creative Brand Stragist News: Report: 22% Of Sites Hit By Google's Helpful Content Update Are Up 20%+ Google AI Overview Displayed Within People Also Ask Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Claudio Cabrera Steven Picanza Matt Davies Sarah Presch Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center The Athletic Just Branding Podcast Talking with Branders Branding Magazine Matt Davies Brand and Culture Strategy Consultancy Steven Picanza Creative Brand Stragist News: Report: 22% Of Sites Hit By Google's Helpful Content Update Are Up 20%+ Google AI Overview Displayed Within People Also Ask Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is 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 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 is a fanatic of all things SEO, because fan is really short for fanatic, the head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Let's go team. Mordy Oberstein: No. Team? Crystal Carter: Give me a D. Give me an A. Give me a link. Can I get a link? Is that possible? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no problem. How much are you willing to pay for them? I have many high DA. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Lots, I guess. Mordy Oberstein: I would sell you Forbes, but they kind of got hit. So there goes that. I'm being that spicy that early on the show. Crystal Carter: Is that too soon? Too soon? Mordy Oberstein: No, by the time... We're recording weeks in advance. Crystal Carter: Got to keep it above the belt, Mordy. That's also a sports thing. There you go. Mordy Oberstein: That is, yeah. But look, the real winners bite other people's ears off, in sports. Crystal Carter: I remember watching that live and I was like, "What is that? Did he ju... Oh my God." Mordy Oberstein: You want to hit a home run, you take steroids. That's my idea of sports. Cork the bat, deflate the ball. There's so much, I can endlessly go on about cheating in sports. Crystal Carter: No, we don't have to. We will triumph. We will win. If you build it, they will come. Mordy Oberstein: Ease my pain. When we talk sports on the podcast, usually it's me just going off on a tangent. This week, it actually makes sense. But we'll get to that in a minute. As the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter. But where you can also take our SEO course, and where you can also set up and monitor sub users, so that you can collaborate in real time with advanced sub user permissions, all on Wix Studio. As this week, we explore the Cs that are SEO for sub brands, the unique characteristics of SEO for a sub brand, how to prevent overlap when doing SEO for a sub brand, what universal truths you could take away when doing, you guessed it, SEO for a sub brand. Full steam ahead is SEO sub brand supreme, Claudio Cabrera of The Athletic, now the sports thing makes sense, will join us in just a few minutes to chat about his experiences. Plus, we'll get into the thick of it, as Matt Davies and Steven Picanza chat how to best market a sub brand, as things get a little bit complicated pretty quickly. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO News, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So it's one ping only, as we batten up the hatches and down periscope, and dive, dive, dive into SEO for sub brands, on this the 110th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. If you can tell me where the one ping only is from, I'll give you, I don't know, a chocolate bar. Crystal Carter: Hunt For Red October. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. I owe you a chocolate bar. Crystal Carter: And he's like, he's drinking his tea and Sean Connery is just cool as a cucumber, and the missile's coming right at him and he's like, "I need to finish this Earl Gray." I can't remember what tea it was- Mordy Oberstein: One ping only. But the best part, he's playing a Russian commander and he doesn't bother to change his accent. "One ping only." Crystal Carter: Sean Connery plays Sean Connery, whatever he's doing, and nobody's mad at it. I mean lots of people do that. Like Jason Statham, he's Jason Statham wherever he goes. But it's fine. It's fine. That's what he does. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: I got to find a way to use that line on my wife, like, "One ping only." Crystal Carter: You can play ping pong, I guess. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, one of my kids plays ping pong. There we go. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: So before we blink Claudio on, let me just explain really quick, enterprise level SEO is complicated. And one of the areas that complicates it the most, maybe not the most, but one of the ways that it gets complicated a lot is because there's often brands within brands, and it gets really complicated when trying to do SEO. And the problem only compounds itself a gazillion percent over, if there's overlap between what the sub brand is doing and the actual brand is doing, and then becomes a giant mess. So with that, we have a well-smart person who knows how to handle all of us. He's a Lions fan and a Padres fan, and he's from New York. Make sense of that. Welcome to the show, Claudio Cabrera. Claudio Cabrera: Hey, Mordy. Hey, Crystal. Thanks so much for having me. I'm super, super happy to be here. Super happy that my Padres are in the playoffs, the Lions are doing well, and my Spurs are coming to play in the NBA season soon. Mordy Oberstein: It's Wembee time. Claudio Cabrera: Crystal, you're just going to hear a bunch of sports references throughout this whole part. Crystal Carter: It's fine. I went to high school in San Diego, in the days of Tony Gwynn, so I'm very familiar with the Padres when they were at Qualcomm Stadium. Now they've moved on. So I know some sports. I know. I'm familiar. Mordy Oberstein: Hold on. If we're going to do sport, there has to be... I know people with sportsmanship and whatever. But hey, Claudio, how do you feel about 1998? Claudio Cabrera: Oh, that was a bad year. It was a good year, but a bad maybe week and a half within that year, when the Yankees beat the Padres- Mordy Oberstein: How do you like Scott Brochus? No name, third baseman. Claudio Cabrera: Look what I have right next to me. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice, nice. Mike came for my birthday one year, drew me like a Yogi Berra card. Claudio Cabrera: That's super cool. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, super cool. Sports is fun. I enjoy all of it. But you know what's better than sports? SEO for some brands. Claudio Cabrera: I know a little bit about that. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Where did we get started? Because we had this problem, like break the fourth wall, pull the curtain back. We had this problem also, because there's the Wix blog, then there's a Wix SEO hub and then there's Wix Studio, it's all these other entities. There's a lot of overlap. You're at The Athletic. Does that mean the New York Times doesn't cover sports anymore? Claudio Cabrera: Yes. So essentially when The Times bought The Athletic, they bought them in 2022. The thought there was that, number one, I guess the alignment between the two brands is that The Athletic does a lot of original journalism across local markets in the US. And some local markets that The Times may not necessarily have deep penetration into right. The Times has huge audiences on the coast, but also in the middle of the country, but not everywhere. Whereas The Athletic has fans pretty much in every single market. Additionally, the main thing that I would say is that they were really, really focused on the original journalism aspect. There's not a lot of brands in the sports space now that are still creating original journalism at scale. So it seemed like a really, really natural fit. Right? Now, when the brand was acquired in 2022, there was obviously still The New York Times sports page, and it was still operating and it's obviously a very historic sports page that's been around for... I don't even know, 150, 200 years at this point. And I think the overall goal was really to, throughout those first few years, really acclimate The Athletic to The New York Times audience. As you can see us now, we're like the sub folder, we have a presence on the page, we have a module, so many different things. And last year at some point, The New York Times sports page pretty much closed down, which was a big deal, just because of the historic nature of it. And now how we kind of view each other is, The Athletic is the home of that real time, day-to-day coverage for sports. But if you look at the Olympics, if you look at the World Cup in the last few years, when both brands were covering it, The Athletic was the real time. The Times kind of leaned into the cultural aspect of these events. Like, what was the scene in Paris? What was the scene in Qatar when the World Cup was there? So many different things. So it feels like we continue balancing ourselves out. But what you see continuously is The Athletic just increasing their presence on The Times platform, and familiarity with their audiences overall. Crystal Carter: I think you brought up some great points there. First of all, I'm not sure if we cleared up, and I think you kind of did in your description anyway, but in any case, if anyone isn't entirely sure, when we mean sub brand, we don't mean... It's not a question of hierarchy in terms of quality or anything like that. It tends to be like you have a parent brand, say The New York Times, and then within that parent brand, they'll have a brand like The Athletic that we're describing now. And what you're talking about, that process, acquisition is very often a way that sub brands emerge, like you're talking about with The Athletic. Or sometimes it's a case that a team might think, "We need to have a dedicated entity for this particular topic or whichever." And a couple of things that stood out in the way you described The Athletic and how you've been negotiating developing that identity within The New York Times family, as it were, is the USP. You were very clear on the USP of The Athletic and what The Athletic brings to the table, that's unique to the core offering of the brand. Are you able to share how you articulate that or how you make that more clear to your users? Claudio Cabrera: Yeah. I mean, I think overall, when you look at The Times, they have, I don't know, I think four or five sub brands at this point. They have cooking, they have wire cutter, they have sports and they have games, Wordle and those other games that we have. I think in terms of articulation, I'm sure The Times has done a ton of work when it comes to really communicating to the audiences what The Athletic is. But what I would say overall that's been really clear, and the synergy between both brands is that, The Athletic is... When you look at a brand like ESPN, there are ties to the networks. I mean there are ties to the leagues. So there is this belief that organizations like those may not necessarily be able to really report out everything they want to. Right? Now, The Athletic, similar to The Times, is independent of any entities in that sense. So what we really try to communicate to the audiences when we introduce them to The Athletic is really that this is a brand that's independent of any sports leagues. Therefore, we can report anything and everything. So we can hold the brands to account, we can hold TV networks to account, pretty much anything associated with sports. So that allows us to gain the trust of the audience overall, versus there being this feeling like, whether it's ESPN, NBC or any of these other networks that have lead ties, a viewer kind of saying like, "Oh, are they not criticizing them because of this reason or that reason?" And we try to really just keep that independence, in the same way that The Times does, if that makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to point out by how unique and how important that is in particular in the sports world. Let's say for example, I watch Rich Eisen. Rich Eisen is an old, ESPN Sports Center, newscaster, whatever you want to call him. He also works for the NFL network. So when he is on his own show, you can almost see he's got to be a little bit careful of what he says about the NFL, because he actually works for the NFL. Or Mike Floria who covers NFL and NBC, will literally say, "I don't know if my boss is going to like this or not." Or you see what ESPN did, they brought Pat... I'm really going down the sports wormhole now. They brought Pat McAfee on to make it look like, "Oh, we're offering honest takes. Pat's going to say whatever he wants to say." As if Pat's not playing the game. But it's also nonsense. So The Athletic coming in and offering that USP like, "We're the honest broker," is huge, to me at least, in the sports world. Claudio Cabrera: And what I would also say to that, Mordy and Crystal, one of the things that's happened a lot in sports journalism overall, is newspapers locally downsizing, obviously downsizing in different areas and in different sports. I think the NFL and the NBA seem to be those sports that they don't necessarily downsize in, just because of the popularity of them both. But when you look at baseball, when you look at NHL specifically, there's been a lot of downsizing from a local market perspective. So the thought is, all right, at the same time, we have either the first or the second or the third ranked beat reporter in each specific market. So you have someone that you've developed a relationship with throughout time, and someone that's trustworthy at the same juncture. So it's really multiple value adds. The independence, but also, hey, you could come to The New York Times, but you can also go to The Athletic, if, let's say you don't have the breadth and the depth of sports coverage for your local team in Minnesota, Phoenix, wherever it may be, and kind of follow your team in that way as well. So it's really centered around the fan. Everything about the product is really centered around the fan, and just making sure that the fan feels like we're speaking to them in a way that feels original and doesn't feel like we're just producing content for audience scale. Crystal Carter: And I think that's really interesting, the way that you described. Because most website folks, most people who are producing content, et cetera, would say, "Oh, the users. The users." And you're like, "The fans, the fans that come to our website, because they're fans and we are providing a service for the fans." And I think that perspective is really valuable and it clearly, clearly resonates with your fans, and with the fans of sports who come through. And also, I think that from a sub-brand, parent-brand sort of relationship, it helps bring new audiences to both the parent brand and the sub-brand. And I think also, you were talking about filling gaps, essentially what you're talking about is a content gap. Your team noticed a content gap on the sort of local level of say local NHL teams. The only one I know is the Kings, the Oilers. Those are teams, right? Claudio Cabrera: Yes. Yeah, those are teams. Crystal Carter: Danly Cup. Go Mighty Ducks. Just naming sports things. Anyway, but you notice a gap, and then your team is able to fill that gap. And therefore, both support the fans, but also build your audience. I think, as somebody who works in, like we were saying, a similar brand, we are part of the Wix SEO team, we are part of the Wix SEO hub, one of the things that's great is that you have some of the resources that the parent brand has, in order to fill some of those gaps. How do you manage your resources? How do you get resources for some of the content projects? Let's say you're like, "Hey, there was some..." Mordy, you'll pick me up. Is it like banana ball or something? Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Claudio Cabrera: Pickle ball? Crystal Carter: No, it's like a banana- Mordy Oberstein: No, it's the banana baseball league. Where they- Claudio Cabrera: Oh yeah, yeah. The Savannah something. I don't know what they're called. Mordy Oberstein: Savannah Bananas. Crystal Carter: Right. So let's say your team finds the Savannah Bananas and you're like, "We want to make a whole section about this completely new league." Or something. How do you negotiate getting resources for that, so that you can build something that works for those fans, and helps to support both your brand and the parent brand? Claudio Cabrera: That's a great question. I mean, I think when it comes to sports that aren't necessarily top of mind but are sort of gaining interest, I think a lot of times, in newsrooms, which most newsrooms are pretty strapped when it comes to resources overall, it really comes down to, is there someone from an advertising perspective that's so interested in this particular product or the particular league, that's willing to really say, "Hey, we would love to buy advertising space on your website for F1 or for, let's say Savannah Bananas." Now at that point, you can either do one of two things. You can say, "All right, we're going to have this huge advertising buy from this company and maybe we can build out a vertical for this." Or you can actually say, which we do a lot of, is we say, "Well, we don't necessarily have enough research at this point to say whether pickle ball or that league that you mentioned, or let's say even F1, at the interest level that we need to really dedicate a full team of resourcing to it." So maybe we take one writer and really test out content consistently, to see, one, really less so from... I think from an external perspective, you're obviously able to see day-to-day, like, "Oh, wow. We're getting a lot of audience interest on F1." But I think because we're one of the few only subscription products in the sports space specifically, it allows us to understand, all right, the people that are on our website, do they actually like F1? Right? So we have the EPO in the UK, which is a huge market for us. And in the UK, F1 is more popular than it is in the US. So we started really kind of connecting the dots there and saying, "All right, is F1 something that even our EPO subscribers are really interested in?" We started seeing that interest, and we said, "All right, let's launch F1 vertical." Much smaller than EPL and NFL and all those others, but sort of building it out. So I think multiple things occur, right? I think there has to be interest from an external level on that specific sport. And then I think internally, you just have to do a ton of research, like user segmentation, and so many different things, to really understand, all right, internally, the people that we have as subscribers, do they like this? But also externally, do we have enough that we can provide from an editorial level, to really reach a large scale audience? Crystal Carter: I was just going to say that testing point, the proof of concept thing, and testing and monitoring, is super important. People should definitely pay attention to that as a tactic. Mordy Oberstein: As you're doing the whole F1 thing, in your opinion, how concerned should you be... And abstract because I don't know if you can get into the details of what you do on The Athletic side. I don't want to put you in an uncomfortable position. But as a concept, how closely do you feel the sub-brand should be working with the main brand? Or how concerned should the sub-brand be about keyword targeting, considering what the main brand or the other sub-brands are also doing? Or should it be as independent thing, like do what it does and that's it? Should there be connection? How strong should that connection be? Claudio Cabrera: Yeah, it'll be fully transparent. I think what's been really good about the relationship with The Athletic and The Times, is that it's been pretty independent, for the most part. So there hasn't been like, "You need to do this or you need to do that." We are like two separate newsrooms, one is remote, one is in-person remote. When it comes to keyword targeting, those types of things too, there hasn't been any clashes or anything of the sorts. I think the main thing that we've been really collaborative on is the understanding that our audience is much smaller than theirs. And what The Times is trying to do is really make sure that they get as much visibility to The Athletic as possible. And that takes a lot of things. That takes homepage visibility with a module, that takes email targeting, that takes push notifications. So on their part, it's been, how do we present The Athletic on a day-to-day level when it's just a regular sports cycle? And how do we present The Athletic when it's the Olympics, a World Cup, the NFL trade bill and the NFL draft, and more? So overall, what I would say is that I think there needs to be a relationship, unless the brands are so alike, then I think you're going to run into those issues around keywords and topic pages, and tagging and so many different things. But because we're so different, I think the parent brand, in a lot of respects, unless it's totally disassociated from what the other brand is, probably has the opportunity to really just build up the profile of that specific brand over time, if that makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Makes a ton of sense. And I love the fact that you guys are taking it from an audience-first point of view. It's so refreshing to hear. Claudio Cabrera: Yeah. And I think one of the things that was really great about... And we obviously migrated, so we did a migration. But even before that migration, we were just getting all this link equity, right? Because we were getting links from The Times every single day. And The Athletic was already kind of growing its authority over the six years since it launched. But just kind of having that presence overall is really important. And what you find is this. Right? I came from The Times, I was leading SEO there for about six or seven years, and I never really looked at The Times audience as this sports audience. I looked at them as more of a casual sports audience that's not into the day-to-day, but is more into the moments. And what ended up happening when The Athletic was acquired, is that we had that module, and we would find sports like baseball, Mordy and Crystal, were the sports that were most popular. And it was like, "Wait, MLB is more popular with this audience than NFL or NBA." And then you would see it kind of fluctuate by season. But it really kind of gave us an idea of what types of stories Times users like, how we program for that specific homepage. So how our homepage looks is very different from how we program for them. Because our audience is very intense. Their audience is more like, "Give me the really, really cool story around sports. Or the things I need to talk about near the water cooler with my coworkers." I think- Crystal Carter: Was that break dancing or not? Claudio Cabrera: Exactly. Exactly. So it's two different audiences. And what I would say is that, we don't tailor our content for The Times audience, but we have the ability to frame headlines for The Times audience. So I'll give you a great example. Wembanyama last year, when he entered the league, we could easily say, "Victor Wembanyama is taking over the league." Right? We could say that on The Athletic, but no one at The Times knew who he was. So we said, "The 7'7" unicorn that's taking over the NBA." Right? So the framing is different, but it connects with that audience as well. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's awesome. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that's so important. And I think that it's a question of warm leads or general leads. So you have the resources of the NYT audience, but it's going to be so many people coming through there. And like you said, you're competing with all of the other headlines of everything else that's going on there. So yeah, I think it's absolutely important to filter your content for the main part of the brand's audience, as opposed to your core audience. But the differentiation I think is key there. I think it's great that you're focusing on differentiation for your core audience and the mainstream audience. I think that's a great tactic. They're highly effective. Mordy Oberstein: And yeah, it is highly effective, because as someone who consumes way too much sports media, you'll always hear, whether it's a New York radio talk show or the national guys, "So-and-so reported on The Athletic more than any other source." So kudos. Crystal Carter: I was literally going to say, and then there's some of us who just... I only know the Super Bowl by who did the halftime show. Mordy Oberstein: You're The New York Times audience. Crystal Carter: That me. I'm like, "Is it the Rihanna Super Bowl or the Shakira Super Bowl?" I'm not sure. I don't know- Claudio Cabrera: The Rihanna Super Bowl was huge. It was like biggest audience. It was huge. Crystal Carter: Massive. Mordy Oberstein: As we ebb away here, first off, this was an amazingly enlightening conversation. It really resonated with me, just want to say on a personal level. But I have two questions for you. One is, do you know Ken Rosenthal? Claudio Cabrera: I met Ken Rosenthal, yeah. I met Ken Rosenthal. Loved the bow tie. Fantastic. Really, really good guy. Really warm, really collaborative. I think the interesting part about... And there's a misconception about star reporters. Some star reporters can be a little tricky, but Ken is the guy that, with every MLB reporter and editor literally at The Athletic, if the beat reporter for the Padres is like, "Hey, I don't really know this, but Ken, can I give you a call to see if you have any more information on this?" Happy to collaborate. So Ken is a baseball legend, as you know, and a reporting legend, and really, really warm and nice guy. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm mad jealous. That was a follow-up to that. And the second question is, who do you have winning the Super Bowl? No, no, not just winning. Who's in it? And who wins it? Claudio Cabrera: I think it's going to be the Lions and the Chiefs. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Lions win? Claudio Cabrera: Yeah, I'm a Lions fan, Crystal. So yeah, the Lions are going to win. I think the Lions will make it happen. But I mean if I remove myself from everything and all my biases in the situation, I would say probably the Chiefs. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But the Lions still in it? Claudio Cabrera: The Lions still in it. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Even with the bias. Okay, I'm with you on this, by the way. I can't stand the Chiefs. I can't deal with another dynasty in the AFC. I had enough. Claudio Cabrera: Oh yeah, I had enough of it. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going Texans-Lions, knowing full well the Chiefs are going to be there, but I will not verbalize it. And I have Lions either way. Crystal Carter: I'm looking forward to Kendrick Lamar. Claudio Cabrera: Kendrick Lamar is this year. That's right, it is Kendrick. Mordy Oberstein: My kids always ask, it's like, "Who's playing the Super Bowl halftime show?" I'm like, "I don't know. I don't care." Claudio Cabrera: It's like the highest rated 20 minutes of the year for... I don't know. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I don't care about the halftime show. I want to see some- Crystal Carter: That's the sub brand of the Super Bowl. The halftime show is the sub brand of the Super Bowl. It's its own thing. And sometimes it eclipses it. Claudio Cabrera: It's so interesting that you say that because it's spot on. We've gotten to a point even here, where most sports brands at this point, do a separate live blog for the halftime show. Crystal Carter: Oh wow, okay. Claudio Cabrera: Yeah. So you have your Super Bowl live blog, which is full of all the stuff. Right? Some people have a commercial live blog, which is with an expert on just commercial. Crystal Carter: Oh, right. That's also another sub brand. Claudio Cabrera: And then you have the halftime live blog, which is like Rihanna, Usher, et cetera. And I think the interesting part about it is that, before it was like, "Oh, we could get millions of views for this. Let's just put whoever on it." And now you actually have people who are experts about specific artists and things, handling that live blog. Which is pretty cool. Mordy Oberstein: You have experts about people who know about Doritos handling the commercial. Crystal Carter: Also people who've been reporting on it for years. So people who will be comparing it to all of the other Super Bowl shows, or comparing it to all of the other things. Claudio Cabrera: Yes, ranking them and, how good was this one versus the other? All that stuff. Yep. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, fine. So now I have a question for Crystal. Favorite halftime show? Crystal Carter: Favorite halftime show, it's got to be Beyonce. I'm just going to say that, just because I'm biased. Katy Perry, you cannot knock Katy Perry for effort. She did everything. She did all of the things. You can't knock Katy Perry for effort. And I liked Rihanna, but I liked the lady who was doing the sign language better, in terms of dance moves. So there we go. But Usher was fantastic. Usher was brilliant. It was brilliant to see all of that. And I really enjoyed the roller skating. Claudio Cabrera: Oh yeah, the roller skating was pretty cool too. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to go old school, I'm into the Chili Peppers, but my favorite one was when it had Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent and, was it Dr. Dre also? Crystal Carter: That was very good. Mordy Oberstein: That was really good. I really enjoyed that- Crystal Carter: I don’t know why 50 Cent was upside down. Claudio Cabrera: That one made me feel so old. Mordy Oberstein: Everybody felt like, "Oh my God." Claudio Cabrera: Yeah, I was like, "Oh, man, I'm old." Mordy Oberstein: We are old. On that note, Claudio, where can people find your old self? Claudio Cabrera: Where can people find my old... In terms of socials? Mordy Oberstein: Well, I wanted to hand out your address on the podcast, just giving some advice. Claudio Cabrera: I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter. I'm always kind of lurking on Twitter, and hanging out there and reading stuff. I'm actually mostly on LinkedIn, but not from a posting perspective, but just talking to people in messages and things like that. That's mainly where I kind of hang out. And my email is always like... I always tell people I'm always open and willing to answer any questions if they have any. So I'm pretty open on that front. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much for being open and sharing all of your insights today. Claudio Cabrera: Of course. Thank you for having me. This was great. And I'm glad we finally made it happen. Mordy Oberstein: So glad. It was really, really great. Look for Claudio on social media. We'll put the links in the show notes, or just read The Athletic. Support Claudio, subscribe to The Athletic. Claudio Cabrera: Please. Mordy Oberstein: Check out Ken Rosenthal. All right. Thanks, Claudio. Claudio Cabrera: Thank you guys. Mordy Oberstein: So as I mentioned before, sub-brands are hard because you have multiple brands to work with, consider, dance around and whatnot. How to deal with a sub-brand is really one of my favorite topics, because literally what I spend almost my entire day doing, managing a sub-brand. Like the Wix Studio, Wix SEO, sub-brandish thing, that's what we do. That's our jam. So we're stoked to have two great brand marketers join us in just a second, Matt Davies of the Just Branding podcast, and Steven Picanza of Branders Magazine, are going to join us as we go into a deep thought. Welcome to the show, Steven and Matt. How are you? Steven Picanza: All right. Mordy, good to see you. Matt Davies: Great to be here. Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: Super stoked. The pre-Paul part of this recording was epic. We should have recorded and that should have been the whole thing. Matt Davies: It was wild. Steven Picanza: Well, Matt and I have a history, so I think, get us in a room together... Matt Davies: It's going to be a problem. Steven Picanza: Yeah, there's a lot of magical problems. Mordy Oberstein: I love magical problems. Like my finances, magical problems. Steven Picanza: Right. Beautiful chaos, whatever. Dynamic tension, you keep going with these. Mordy Oberstein: So before we get dragged down this whole wormhole, pitch away and plug away whatever you got. Marketers are going to market, that's what we do on our show. Steven Picanza: Well, Steven Picanza. I am the host of the Talking With Branders podcast, which is part of Branders Magazine. I also am a consultant, brand consultant for startups and a lot of nonprofits recently, a lot of associations. And I also run a content studio here in New Jersey, where as I was telling the gang, we're going to have five sets open right outside Philadelphia. We are changing the game on how small businesses can create and scale content, because it should not be a Herculean task. Also, just go to my website, Stevenpicanza.com. I got a cool newsletter, I do content, and I just want to be the voice of the Branders community. There are a lot of smart MFers out there, like Mr. Matt Davies, that actually know what they're doing. I'm just a mouthpiece and a talking head, and I just want to bring people together. Mordy Oberstein: What do you say to that, Matt? Matt Davies: I mean, wow, how do you follow that? I shouldn't have let him go first, should I? Mordy Oberstein: No, that was your first mistake, for sure. Matt Davies: I'm Matt Davis. As Mordy has kindly said, I am the co-host of the Just Branding podcast with Jacob Cass. But more than that, I also am a consultant, and I tend to work with leadership teams all over the world, who basically need to align around their strategy for the future, and to position their brands powerfully in their marketplaces. So I won't bore you with all of that. I guess a couple of accolades. I've written a book called Storyategy, and I also sit on the editorial team at Branders Magazine, alongside Steven. So that's probably enough for now. Bore you with more stuff another time. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I'm just going to double down on that and say that, your website and the Branders Magazine website are on Wix. Which is not why you're here, it just happened to be a nice little find. Matt Davies: I like that you've done your homework Mordy. I'm a huge fan of Wix. No one is paying me to say that, by the way, folks, but I am. I find it super easy. I'll tell you a very quick, little story. I used to run an agency about... Well, many moons ago, maybe 20 years ago or something. And we used to do a lot of hand coded websites. As time went on, I could see that the potential of high-end CMSs was coming in. And I've actually pivoted completely, over many, many years now, completely away from execution because I just think technology is catching us up. And Wix is a great example of that. And I use it all the time, and I find it fantastic for my project. So thank you. Steven Picanza: I'm all for Clint after that. Crystal Carter: Great. Thank you for coming on our podcast. It was great talking to you. Bye. Steven Picanza: Matt, you definitely got a nice paycheck coming in the mail now. Mordy Oberstein: One giant IOU coming your way. Steven Picanza: You just can't cash it for 180 days plus. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So branding for a sub brand, marketing for a sub brand. We talked about the SEO side with Claudio Cabrera from The Athletic. Let's get into the actual marketing side. At what point does one say, "You know what? We can really go, and should go, with a sub brand here"? Matt Davies: Can I take that one? I would just pause for one second and just take a quick step back. I just think it's super helpful. Then I'll dive in and attack your question, but I always like to kind of get definitions out of the way. Because when we are talking about brands, sometimes there's huge confusion. Because the average person, when you talk about a brand, they think of a logo, a name, some fonts, maybe some colors or whatever. And that might be part of it, but I don't think that's the best definition. So my definition of a brand is the meaning that people attach to you and your audience. And the game that Steven and I are in, and those brand marketeers out there, we are in the game of managing that meaning. So it's not about us, it should be about them. It should be about, how do people perceive us? How do people understand us? And our strategy should be all about doing that in a way that gives the best impact, gives them the best choice, makes sure that they make the right decisions. And hopefully, the right people choose our product, service offering, or wherever it might be. So that's kind of a bit of a segue to then attack what you've just asked, which is, okay, when do you actually create a sub-brand? So my answer to that is, well, we create a sub-brand when it's necessary for the meaning we want people to attach to us, to ensure that it's easily understood and digestible by them. They can understand this is maybe a new offering or a sub-offering, from a main category offering. And so we offer something like a sub-brand when we're targeting perhaps a new audience. So we've got a new offer that might relate to our overarching offer, but needs definition. It needs distinction, it needs signposting in a way that is relevant and meaningful for the people we're trying to speak to. So that's when you decide to maybe branch out of an overarching portfolio and dive into a sub-brand kind of offering. Steven Picanza: Matt, brilliantly said. And you set the pace, you paved that road with that definition. So definitely appreciate that. To Matt's point, I think as we drill down more specifically, when your product or service diversifies, and the parent brand can't stretch without dilution, that's when you need to look at a sub-brand. Perfect example, you got Coca-Cola, but then maybe you have more health conscious people and they wanted Diet Coke. And so, it was a perfect opportunity to create these sub-brands. And I think we see a lot of this within food and beverage, as people's tastes get more narrow, as people's dietary restrictions get more narrow, it gives the opportunity to create these sub-brands. But some caution, there's got to be the opportunity there, and the opportunity has to come from the people, as Matt was saying. It can't just be a bunch of board directors and CEOs saying, "We should branch out and do extensions, because I like this idea and I think it'll work." That'll never work. Matt Davies: Yeah, that's the number one mistake I see, is people making decisions like this because it makes sense from the business's perspective, but it doesn't make sense from the customer's perspective. And- Steven Picanza: Perfect case. No, sorry, Matt. No, perfect point. I did a lot of work with Dude Wipes on launching their latest campaign. And Dude Wipes Shark Tank brand, they do male, flushable wipes. Well six years ago, more or less, they decided to come out to try to attack Dr. Sasquatch or Dr. Swatch, or whatever they're called, and some of these other male care brands. So they introduced a deodorant, they introduced a bath bomb, they introduced all these other male care products. It wasn't until Cuban called up the founders and said, "Stay in your lane, own your category. You do not need to be branching out now because you're going to lose focus." And thankfully they did, because when COVID hit and the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 happened in America, Dude Wipes cleaned up literally and figuratively, and they saw sales skyrocket because of that laser focus. So you have to be really careful on when to branch, and create extensions or sub brands, and when to kind of hold yourself back. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I mean that's something that actually we deal with all the time, because how we sort of evolve into being... I want to call us a sub brand, but we're like almost a sub brand. We function like a sub brand. Within Wix is, there was a reputation issue around SEO for a long, long, long, long, long, long time. And then once that issue started to get dealt with in an active way, it's a whole different story for a whole different time. And SEO started to come around like, "Wait a second, Wix is actually great for SEO." There started to become an audience interest and an audience shift, and a particular focus on that vertical, different, let's say like Wix and social media, or Wix and analytics, or Wix or whatever it is, around SEO. And the audience determined, "Wait a second, there should be a unique focus for this segment, almost that it operates like that sub brand." And then audience need comes in and says to you, "You need something a little bit more focused and a little bit more defined around that topic or around that category, around whatever that is," that's exactly when you should come in and start doing a sub brand. My go-to category with this when I go to product rather with this, is Blue Moon, which is really Coors. When Coors saw, and all the big companies saw that, wait a second, people are stopping to drink crap beer, and craft beer becoming a thing, they dealt with it two ways. One is, they dealt with it by trying to control the distribution. And when that didn't work the way that it was supposed to work, some of the smarter brands, like Coors, said, "You know what? Let's just create our own craft beer." And distanced itself from the actual... No one's going to know that it's really Coors unless you're reading the very, very, very back of the label that says, "Coors." But it's Blue Moon and it's craft, and you love craft beer. And it tastes different, I think, than actual Coors. I haven't drunk actual Coors in forever, so I wouldn't know. Matt Davies: So it's interesting, because when you start diving into this rabbit hole, there's various strategies brands can take. So let's just imagine we've got a brand and we decide, there's an offering here that feels like it needs its own sub brand. You've kind of got two choices in the management of the meaning. And there's the two main kind of structures, are what we call branded house and house of brands. So let me just briefly, if I may, just quickly reiterate what those are. The branded house is like you are going into a house, and it's all the same house. You feel like you're in the front room, you're in the lounge, you're in the kitchen, you feel like you're in the same house, the same branded house. So for example, if I was in Virgin, I'll be in Virgin Media, I'll be in Virgin Atlantic, I'll be in whatever, all the Virgins. Virgin Galactica, whatever the things are. So it feels very Virgin. There's the core mother brand essence that runs through everything. The customer understands the connection between everything like that. So that's one. The other one is the house of brands, which is a very different approach, which I think you were talking about there, Mordy, with Coors. which is where basically, you're in the house. So let's say we're in Unilever. But I'm in all the different rooms and I don't really know that they connect to each other, or even to Unilever. So I might be in the Dove room, which is all about the Dove products, but that might be very different to some of the other products that they're offering. So you might ask, "Well, why would I choose one over the other? What's the difference?" And again, this comes down to the management of meaning, and you have to be quite strategic in how you think about this. Because if you go down the branded house model, there are some pros and cons. The pros are that, if I have a great experience in one room, in one brand, it might encourage me as a customer to move to also experience another brand. So this works really well for example, for Virgin, because I might be buying my broadband from Virgin. And I have a great experience and I think, "Do you know what? That was really fun. I'll go on holiday with Virgin as well." And so there's a plus. The negative is the same, right? Because if I've had terrible experience with my broadband, it'll put me off completely going on holiday with Virgin. So you've got to think about that. But in the house of brands model, that's very segmented. So you can kind of distance yourself, almost like zone off all your brands, positively or negatively, so that customers don't really know that they're buying from the same company. Again, that can have pros. For example, if your model, your business model is to sell bits off, then it doesn't really matter if you sell off Dove or another brand that you've got, because it doesn't impact the rest of your business. So these are kind of big strategic questions, and there isn't a wrong or a right I would suggest. It just depends on really your end game and what you are really trying to do. But my number one bit of advice is, think of the poor customer. If you're trying to segment it too much, and connect it and not connect, it's just confusing. Steven Picanza: Think of the customer. Indeed. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that that definitely comes into it, and I think that that will really be the deciding factor between whether or not you want to go with the house of brands model or the branded house sort of element. If you think about Ben and Jerry's for instance, Ben and Jerry's was a very beloved brand for a very long time, with a very distinct audience and very distinct USPs, and things like that. When they became part of Unilever, I think people in the industry knew what was going on, but they don't shout about it. It's not shouted about. The branding still is very, very similar, even though it's Unilever. However, because it's part of the Unilever family, there are certain benefits to it. There's scalability, there's distribution. There's also the fact that, because they're part of Unilever, they get a lot of the tooling that you get from Swedish Glass, which is a vegan ice cream thing. Which means that Ben and Jerry's is able to do vegan ice cream really, really quickly and really, really easily. So there's a lot of backend elements for that. And a website, this is also similar, we were talking to Claudio from The Athletic. They are able to benefit from a lot of the legacy content, a lot of the infrastructure, a lot of the links from the parent brand of The New York Times. But they're also able to maintain their identity. So there can be benefits to that. In terms of Virgin, their airlines are fantastic, their broadband I was not impressed with overall, if I'm completely honest. Matt Davies: Crystal, you make a really great point about infrastructure, connections, all of that side of things. I also think there's another area that's probably worthy of note, and that is culture. So I've got a client at the moment, they're in the B2B space. They are a massive brand in the energy sector, and they're going through a lot of M&As at the moment. So they're buying up smaller competitors. And that causes tension with culture. But what I'm doing with their leadership team is we're saying, "This is actually a really amazing thing. Because now, you might've been in a team of 40 to 100 people, now you've got access to a much bigger company, with more support, with more rigorous training, with more opportunity." So it can be great internally as well, depending on how you handle the messaging and how you build that culture. But that all connects in my view, to the brand and the sub-brand strategy that you employ. Crystal Carter: Going back to the people thing, you have to communicate that really, really well between your people. And if you're talking about from an internal point of view, that communication piece is really key. If you're talking about that from a customer point of view, that's also really key. So recently, Brighton SEO, which is a big conference in the SEO industry, they recently merged with PPC... What is it? Matt Davies: Hero Con. Crystal Carter: Hero Con. And they bought that. And when they joined, they were like, "Hi, everyone who loves Hero Con. We now own Hero Con. We're Brighton SEO. If you don't know us, this is who we are. Hi. Hello. If you'd like to leave our mailing list, then good luck to you. But hi, hello." And they had to go through that process. And that's really, really important, both from a client retention, user retention sort of element. And also as you're thinking about other web assets and things like that. Mordy Oberstein: That internal thing is super huge. I want to ask Steve a question also, but the internal thing is huge. I don't know if you're Blue Moon or if you're Hero Con, or if you're Wix, whatever it is, if you don't give that team the autonomy to do their thing as a sub-brand, the way they're meant to do their thing, it does not work. Because by the way, I think it doesn't work so well with Blue Moon sometimes. But for example, with Hero Con, PPC is different than SEO. Right? Or with us, we're talking to SEOs and marketers, as SEOs and marketers. We do not tie our hands together and say, "Well, we have to only talk about it this way because we're Wix and because we're Wix Studio." We have full range. Because the internal teams understand, if you're going to target this audience and act almost like a sub brand, in our case, you have to have full range to speak about SEO and speak about marketing, the way that SEOs and marketers speak about marketing. If you're going after the craft brew audience, you need to speak about craft brewery, brewing, drinking craft beer, the way that someone who drinks craft beer would normally go about. If you tie their hands together, and try to put a square peg into a round hole a little bit, this is not going to work. Steven Picanza: I'm shaking my head in agreement with everything, you've all said it so brilliantly. It is such an opportunity, as Matt was saying, and Crystal, you too, use it as an opportunity to be proactive with your messaging. I think too many brands oftentimes are reactive because they don't think about it, or they don't think the implications, or they don't think strongly enough about how to communicate this merge or this acquisition, or how it's going to impact culture, how it's going to impact your livelihood. Are you out of a job? Is it fear mongering in a way? Which, in this job market, everyone's eyes just popped up. It's fucking tough out there. Excuse me for dropping an F bomb. But use it as an opportunity. Because if you nurture your employees, you nurture your staff, you nurture your customers, and you listen to them and you give them the tools to succeed, they will reward you with their patronage, with their longevity. They'll just reward you by staying with part of your tribe. Mordy Oberstein: Pivot. I want to ask you about the tools to do that, because you mentioned tools, so now we're going to talk about tools. Look at that pivot. Okay. What are some tools that you can use in order to either distance or marry the sub-brand together? I'll give you an example, like a podcast. I think a podcast is a great tool because you can decide, I want to keep the podcast super away from the main brand, or I want to tie it super closely. It's the whatever podcast. Where's the branding from the parent? It's not there. Or it could be the whatever podcast, by parent brand. So that's something that you can either decide to pull in really close or something you can decide to keep really far away. And you can move that along as you decide to. Just an example of a tool. What are some of the tools, or things that you can do or use, to either disconnect the sub-brand from the main brand, if that's what you're trying to do, or to marry them together? Matt Davies: I mean the basic... Oh, sorry. You go, Steven. We're just super excited. We just can't help it. Steven Picanza: Biting and we're chopping at- Matt Davies: You go, I'll give way to you, sir, again. Just putting it out there, that's two now. Steven Picanza: I think that, and going back to what Matt was saying, it depends on what your strategy is. Are your branded house or house of brands? The nomenclature, which is so subjective on your business and your business strategy and your brand strategy, is going to dictate if you say, "From Unilever. A Unilever brand, et cetera, et cetera. Powered by whatever." But I think a tool that should be used is, how do you incorporate those stories together? As Matt was saying, how do you create meaning with these two organizations together? There is a shared story. Whether or not it's a shared legacy, but it's a shared future. So how do we make sure that we're storytelling before that shared future, always with, not the stakeholders or the shareholders thought in mind, but with the audience in mind? So I think that that is such an under leveraged tool that can be used to marry or to tie these brands together. Now of course you can go down the road and you can say, "Oh. Well, visual identity is an easy one." Look at FedEx and all the different FedEx properties, and they all share the same look and feel. But I think when you start to think about brands that want to operate with autonomy, and brands that want to operate as their own but are part of a parent company, it's about those shared values, that shared story and that shared meaning, to go back to what Matt was saying. Matt Davies: So I've got a few ideas on tools. I predominantly work in strategy, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask about tools in the sense of execution. But in terms of strategy, what I would do as a strategist is, first of all, set about trying to understand what the value of this new entity is to customers. So I love surveys. There's tons of survey tools out there. I would actually ask my clients to give me access to say their top 10, top 20 customers, if that's possible. I would literally speak to them. That sounds ridiculously simple, but do you know how many people do not actually speak to their top customers? It's bananas to me. Particularly leadership teams. Speak to them, or get someone like me or Steven to go and speak to them. Because you get an insight then, that's not based on your hunch or your personal view. It's based on something that you've been told by your audience. And if the brand is the meaning that they attach to you, that's got to be the primary source of your thinking. So go speak to people, get surveys, get interviews with them. You can do obviously hardcore market research if you like, and there's lots of tools out there that would enable you to do that as well. And then I think the other thing is really, I'm a massive fan of workshops. I just love a good workshop. So armed with good insight from customers, from how the competitors are positioning themselves, from the category itself, armed with that in mind, get the right decision makers in a room and say, "Okay, look. We need to craft this. We need to align around a strategy for this new entity, this new sub brand. We need to understand..." I mean, I've got four big brand questions I like to ask of any brand, and that is, why do we exist beyond making money? Who do we exist to serve? How should we show up for them? And perhaps the most important, what is the unique value that we're offering? In other words, what is it that people can get from us, that they cannot get from anywhere else? Do we know the answer to that? And if you can answer those four questions, you're on your way to crafting then a focus for the internal teams, which is super powerful. Because they get to focus on the important things, the value that we're offering to the market, in a way that we can communicate it that people would really love. If you don't answer those, then you've got 50 people working on the project, absolute chaos. Because everybody can have their own view of what might be going on here or not, and you end up splintering your brand very swiftly. Crystal Carter: To follow that up, my question is, are your brand guidelines a tool? Matt Davies: Yes, they should be. They should be. And to my mind, there's the visual guidelines, but that is not what I'm talking about. That is important. There's the strategic guidelines, the narrative, the high level stuff, the answer of those four questions. And both of those relate obviously, but start- Steven Picanza: And they live together. Matt Davies: For sure. Steven Picanza: I might even go as far to say that the day of guidelines is almost passing us, and we need to start living in this idea of an operating system. It needs to live and breathe with us. And those four questions that Matt... And Matt and I come from the same school, mentored by Marty Neumeyer and the level C, and that way of brand thinking. But the greater the foundation that we can build on the brand, I always like to say, theoretically, the less money we're going to waste on marketing at the end. Right? Because we're focused. We know who the hell we're talking to. We know what message to say. We have all the answers. And just to Matt's point about talking to your customers, I tell brands this all the time. There was a famous philosopher 2000 years ago, Zeno of Centium. He said, "We all have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Act accordingly." Right? Listen more than you talk. Well, if we put that in the lens of brands, today, brands have two ears and one mouth for a reason, and we should listen to our customers more. They're going to tell us things that we would never have seen. And they're going to tell an outside consultant, like Matt or myself, something perhaps vastly different than the CEO or the CFO, who they have perhaps an intimate relationship with, or there's a monetary relationship there. So there's so much that we could pull out, whether it's data, insight or just insider trading knowledge, to get to where we need to go. Matt Davies: One really big tip that I just want to share is the concept, if you've not come across it yet, of social listening, and having a look... On the most basic level, you can just see how many times your brand is mentioned in a month, for example, versus your competitor set. So that gives you a bit of a sense of share, in terms of how much voice or how much people are talking about you. But if you want to go a little bit more nuanced, you then need to dive into that. Okay, what are they saying about us? Are they complaining? And if they're complaining, what are they complaining about? And if they're loving- Steven Picanza: Is it a positive or negative sentiment? Matt Davies: For sure. So you can go really deep into that, and I always recommend that to any marketing team. Because it's not expensive to start. Obviously if you want to get really in-depth and you've got a lot of data to get through, you might need to pay a bit more to start. Steven Picanza: And a tool that I've used in the past for social listening, that's a great point, Matt, is NetBase. NetBase is a brilliant tool, and it gives you the opportunity to start to attach positive, negative emotions to what's being said, mentioned. We did that a lot for Dude Wipes, and we came up with a crazy insight, and this is a tip for brands. Dude Wipes, oftentimes their comments would have a more positive sentiment than the actual comment that they were responding to. So for example, Chipotle might say, "Free Burrito today." And Dude Wipes would come out and say, "You're going to need us tomorrow." And oftentimes we would see the insight of, "Holy shit, that comment got more engagement than the actual post." And that was their trick. It's incredible. Mordy Oberstein: It's not the amount of engagement, it's the type of engagement. On that happy note, speaking of sharing and listening, could you share where people can find you, so they can listen to you more? Matt Davies: Okay, I'll go first on this one. So you can check out my website, mrmattdavies.me. Spelled M-R-M-A-T-T-D-A-V-I-E-S.M-E. And that's a Wix website. If somebody hasn't mentioned that already, just popping that in there. Mordy Oberstein: No, no. Say it again. It's fine. Matt Davies: Side point. But also, perhaps more importantly, I love LinkedIn. I'm a massive LinkedIn dweller, so please connect with me if you're interested in anything I have to say. I'm often posting content on all this stuff and more. So see you there. Love to connect. Steven Picanza: For me, go to Stevenpicanza.com. I unfortunately am on one of your competitor websites. Mordy Oberstein: Squarespace, I saw. I know. You'll get there. Steven Picanza: But I'm open. Free Agency's coming up. I'm on a month-to-month plan, just saying. So Stevenpicanza.com. You can check me out there. And then like Matt, I am a LinkedIn dweller, if you type in Steven Picanza. But I think more importantly, just look for the peace sign and the pizza slice. We all want a piece of pizza, don't we? Always. Just saying, right? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, truer words were never spoken, unless you're talking about what you just said before about branding. And with that, thanks guys for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it very much. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Matt Davies: Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: So again, thank you Matt and Steven for joining us. Make sure you give them a follow on LinkedIn. Links again, in the show. You know who's a sub-brand? Barry's a sub-brand. No, he is. Because he's got Search Engine Land and then he's got Search Engine Round Table. It's a brand within a brand of SEO news coverage. Crystal Carter: It's because he's part-time Barry, part-time Rusty Brick. Mordy Oberstein: That should be his tagline, part-time Barry, full-time Rusty Brick. Or full-time Barry. Crystal Carter: I feel like it's his superhero persona. I feel like he needs an action hero outfit that's- Mordy Oberstein: Full on cape, underwear on the outside. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And then when he sees the bad guys who are causing volatility in the algorithm or something- Mordy Oberstein: Like Danny Sullivan? Crystal Carter: No, no. Danny's not a bad guy. He throws bricks at them. That's his thing. So Spider-Man has webs, Batman has batarangs, Barry throws internet bricks at them. You see? Mordy Oberstein: It's like the mafia, like throwing bricks through your window. Crystal Carter: No, those are just ex-girlfriends. That is a tried and tested ex-girlfriend move. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we're throwing the news through a window now, as we pivot into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, 2:40 from Barry Shortz. And both from Suroundtable.com. First up, report, 22% of sites hit by Google's helpful content update are up 20% plus. This was from originally Glenn Gabe. Glenn Gabe is, call it an index of 400 sites that he's tracking around these official updates. And he said that 88 out of these 400, or 22% of them, saw a 20% increase, at least 20% increase, since the August 2024 core update. Barry says that some had full recoveries, but most did not. And most saw no lifts at all. It's 22%, right? It's just an interesting, I call it a status check on where we are with these updates. Rather these sites getting recoveries from some of these updates. Really interesting to see a link to them within the show notes. You can check out all the great charts that Barry has from Glenn there. Also, from Barry again, Google AI overview displayed within People Also Ask. So there was a test where you opened up the People Also Ask expandable cards. And normally what you see is a featured snippet sort of thing, where you get a little summary answering the question that reflects the card, and then a URL to the website. Again, feature snippet basically. But in this instance, there was a test where when you opened up the expandable card, you were getting the AI overview instead. Same kind of format as you would normally see with the AI overview in general, with just more cards at the bottom it looks like. Anyway, I'll link to the article in the show and you can take a look at what it looks like there. But it is interesting to take note of just Google really doubling down and trying to expand out the AI overview. I don't know, I don't think it'll stick here necessarily. But just again, keeping tabs on where Google is not shying away from pushing AI overviews out there to other places on the SERP, so it clearly seems. And that is this week's Snappy News. Crash. That's the sound of this pivot. Crystal Carter: Bang. Boom. Kapow. Mordy Oberstein: Coming back. Crystal Carter: Is Robin a sub-brand of Batman? Mordy Oberstein: Coming out of the news, is Robin a sub-brand of... Does Robin exist outside of Batman? Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, better. Better. The villains, right? You have Joker, right? Joker is definitely- Mordy Oberstein: Well, they made that into its own brand, until they killed it with the second movie I heard. I didn't even watch it. And I won't watch it now that I heard it's terrible. Crystal Carter: Then there's also Catwoman. Catwoman had a movie, which also didn't... That was kind of okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah. All right. I don't know. Kind of. Mordy Oberstein: Great. Yeah. Perfect. Which brings us to our follow of the week, which is Sarah Press over at Dragon Metrics, and she does a great job marketing her brand, Dragon Metrics. Why we thought she'd be a great follow of the week. She speaks at Brighton SEO. So I met her at Brighton SEO, a few years back. That's how I got introduced to her. So follow her on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's super great. We saw the Dragon Metrics team again at Brighton SEO this year, and they're super lovely. And they've got some great tools, and a great way to track your brand, your sub brand, everything you need. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. So big old follow to Sarah, and shout out the Dragon Metrics. And link in the show notes where you can follow her. I don't know. Sub me out. Done with the episode. Trying to put the subs in. Crystal Carter: Right. I could go for a Subway sandwich. Mordy Oberstein: Subs, not scrubs. Crystal Carter: We don't want no scrubs. Mordy Oberstein: Scrub is a... Not going to even go there. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Don't worry, we're back next week with a new episode, as we dive into, is it time to stop relying on algorithms? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix Studio SEO learning over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content on webinars on the Wix Studio Learning hub, 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. 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Don’t gloss over the basics, they yield much SEO power! What SEO basics are you overlooking? What SEO fundamentals can have a huge impact? Can overcomplicating SEO hurt your performance? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter get into easy ways to add additional value to your pages with the often overlooked fundamentals of SEO. SEO Consultant extraordinaire Joshua George chimes in on why the biggest SEO hack is that there IS NO hack… there’s no need to overcomplicate your SEO. Plus, we share some real-life scenarios where handling fundamentals heavily changed SEO performance. Don’t get in over your head; we dive down to the basics on how to achieve fundamentally sound pages on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Behold! The power of SEO fundamentals Don’t gloss over the basics, they yield much SEO power! What SEO basics are you overlooking? What SEO fundamentals can have a huge impact? Can overcomplicating SEO hurt your performance? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter get into easy ways to add additional value to your pages with the often overlooked fundamentals of SEO. SEO Consultant extraordinaire Joshua George chimes in on why the biggest SEO hack is that there IS NO hack… there’s no need to overcomplicate your SEO. Plus, we share some real-life scenarios where handling fundamentals heavily changed SEO performance. Don’t get in over your head; we dive down to the basics on how to achieve fundamentally sound pages on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 54 | September 6, 2023 | 32 MIN 00:00 / 32:09 This week’s guests Joshua George Joshua is the founder of ClickSlice, a results driven SEO agency in London. He has almost a decade of experience as an SEO consultant and has provided SEO training for the British government. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the Surf's Up podcast where we've got some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding at Wix joined by the amazing, fantastic, the incredible, the bonafide SEO expert guru person, our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter, guru. Crystal Carter: I did go on TikTok at some point and say I was, I'm an SEO expert, which I think is always such a strange term because SEO is changing all the time and so sometimes I feel like I know things and sometimes I feel like a complete newb, but I think that that's one of the beauties of the industry personally. Mordy Oberstein: I kind of feel like when someone writes Guru, I always think of Goro from Mortal Kombat. I'm an SEO Goro and I think of them having six arms and fighting other players. Crystal Carter: Was that Jocelyn? Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. That's Goro. Mortal Kombat. Crystal Carter: I'm thinking Street Fighter. Mordy Oberstein: You're thinking of Street Fighter. Crystal Carter: I'm thinking of Street Fighter. Mordy Oberstein: Very similar. Crystal Carter: Very similar. I was much better as Street Fighter though. I was a big fan of E. Honda because he was really good. I'm a bit of a one move Barry and E. Honda has a big arm. I'd just be like, wall of arm, just eat this fist. Mordy Oberstein: I was a Vega person in Street Fighter and a Scorpion person in Mortal Kombat and I was terrible at both. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, searchlight over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can optimize all your metadata just the way you want to. Oh, but Mordy, metatags, that's so fundamental, but behold the power of SEO fundamentals. Yep. We're talking about the unexpected power of getting the SEO basics right. Sometimes little SEO things can do big SEO things or all big SEO things are built on the shoulders of smaller SEO things or getting the basics right says a lot about your site to search engines and to prove it all Joshua George chimes in with how focusing on the SEO fundamentals has actually paid off in real scenarios. Since we're talking about fundamentals, we'll share some sites and scenarios with you, who are handling the basics right and how that changed the course of their SEO performance and of course we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness, so buckle up because even though those Deloreans aren't going back in time, it is going back to basics. It's episode number 54 of the SERP's Up podcast. I want to hop in a DeLorean and go back to basics. 88 miles per hour Marty, 88 miles per hour. Crystal Carter: Wait, we need another flux capacitor or something. I feel like that will help us to do that. Mordy Oberstein: I recently rescheduled a meeting with somebody and I put it back to the previous week instead of ahead to the previous week and they're like oh, Mordy, I think you scheduled for last week. I'm like, 88 miles per hour. Flux capacitors, DeLoreans and time machines aside, if you're new to SEO and you see all sorts of SEO scoff at the basics of SEO, ignore that because if you've been in SEO for a long time, then you should know how impactful some of the most basic SEO tasks can be and why you shouldn't ignore them or gloss over them for the fancier shinier SEO things. I've had so many cases where nailing down things like basic pay structure, help pay to stay in the index or changing a title tag, made a ranking difference. They might seem like small things, but their impact can be big. Leaving all that aside, you never know what will make the difference. Let me just harp on that for a second. You never really do know what will actually make the difference and Glenn Davis talked about where you throw the kitchen sink at it because you never know what's going to pay off and what's actually going to make the difference between you ranking versus a competitor ranking. As much as SEOs may not want to omit it, sometimes it actually is a crapshoot. You want to be one of the three to five pages, let's say, in the world, who rank for a keyword. A top three or top five, let's say top three. Three pages in the whole world who rank in those positions. That can kind of be a crapshoot sometimes and you never know what's actually going to pay off for you, what's actually going to be the needle mover. More than that, getting the fundamentals right is being aligned with best practices and that is a statement to users, it's a statement to your potential clients and consumers and it is a statement to search engines that you understand what it means to create healthy web content, healthy functioning web content on the web and that's seriously important. Whether it's tweaking an H1 or H2 or formatting a text into a table or a list or update a title tag or adding all text to an image or even adding a caption, don't underestimate the power behind those simple SEO actions and if anyone tells you otherwise, you send them to me. Mic drop. End broadcast. Crystal Carter: I mean, I agree. This goes back to something my mom always said, which was, common sense ain't that common. I think that people will scoff at the basics like, oh, we did some internal linking, we did some this and it's tricky because the clients they were like, "I heard about this and I heard about that and I want to do this and I want to do that" and we're like, but you haven't done title tax, you haven't done your H1s. You haven't added any pictures to this. You have a wall of text my friend. Clients will be like, "I wanted to do something super exciting." It's like, you'll get that stuff after you do the basic stuff and I think that it's something that as an SEO, you have to hold your nerve and go, yeah, we're going to do this. It's going to be a little bit boring for a minute. Hang in there because we'll see some good results. I think again because it's not super exciting, like I said, common sense ain't that common. A lot of people ain't doing it, so a lot of people aren't hitting their basic SEO things. A lot of people aren't hitting those things. If you are covering those bases then you are going to see some benefit because you are going to be doing more than most people are doing because most people are cutting corners. Most people are trying to jump the queue and if you are actually covering those bases, then it's really, really important. It's like, you have to learn- Mordy Oberstein: You have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk. Crystal Carter: Everybody wants to be Michael Jordan or whatever, but Michael Jordan spent a lot of time doing layups, doing regular layups just like everybody else and there's going to be a lot of people... If you look at great musicians, they spend a lot of time practicing scales over and over and over and over and over again. You'll see people, I think I've seen footage of Jimi Hendrix or whatever, just practicing scales for hours, just always with a guitar in his hand practicing scales. Scales might seem basic. You're like, I've learned how to do scales. It's like, do it again. Do it again. I think with the basics, not only is it just to hit it the first time, but also to just go back over it and make sure that people aren't slipping, that your team isn't slipping on those things because it might be that you trained up everybody on the basic things and then maybe you got some new folks or maybe you go to new CMS or maybe you got other things that came through that have changed how you approach things and it's really easy to slack on some of the things that seem core, but they're core for a reason because they're effective. Mordy Oberstein: So many times I've seen a well optimized page, but the headers are just not explicit and it's not good for readers either when it happens, by the way. Half of these things are beneficial for SEO, also beneficial for users and they're really simple and really ignored. I've had a case where on a podcast website that I have, where a bunch of my pages weren't indexed. I'm like, you know what? The headers are not very explicit. I wrote this months ago. I don't know what I'm talking about here. Let me go back and let me change that and it's a basic thing and now the pages are indexed. Going back to the music example or going back to the Michael Jordan, there'd be no Michael Jordan if there wasn't a Dr. J. Right? Things build upon themselves. You don't just have a Michael Jordan. You have an entire history of basketball that leads to a Michael Jordan and a history of basketball because everything afterwards doesn't matter, but leaving that aside, that's a hot take. Music is the same thing, right? You don't have a Nirvana, unless you have a Buddy Holly. Those things don't happen. The same thing with your website. If you're not getting the basic structure of your pages down, the basic format of your pages down, the basic elements of your pages down, even the basic content that you need on your website, an about page or whatever it is. You're not going to be able to do things like advanced keyword content clusters. That's not happening. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. I saw this thing and it really stuck with me. It was just a little thing on TikTok and they were saying, I'm high maintenance so I can be low maintenance. It's like, you spend loads of time on your keyword research. You spend a lot of time on your keyword research. You spend a lot of time on your site architecture. You spend a lot of time making sure that your URLs are optimized, that you got title tags, meta descriptions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All your H1s, your H2s... Crystal Carter: ... descriptions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All your H1s or H2s et cetera, really hitting the marks on those. You spend a lot of time on that so that you just need to tweak a little bit as you go forward. You spend a lot of time on the fundamentals. You spend a lot of time on the things that will set you up for success down the line. So for instance, in the Wix SEO tools, we have the SEO settings that allows you to set the syntax for lots of parts of some of your SEO tags and even your structured data and things like that. Spending the time, making sure that that works, making sure that that's good for you, that you've covered those bases, will allow you to grow and it will allow you to grow quickly if you need to, because you will have the syntax set up for all of that sort of stuff going forward. People are like, "Oh, I don't want to do the SEO set of checklists." I'm like, "But you should, because it covers lots of things that it's really easy to forget, and it's a checklist that covers this, this, this, this, and this." And people are like, "Oh, it's really simple." I'm like, "Is it? Because not everybody's- Mordy Oberstein: You gloss over it all the time. Crystal Carter: People gloss over it, and there's lots of times where people just don't do the things, and you should do them because it will help you. It will fundamentally help you. Mordy Oberstein: Same thing with, let's say a blog post. We have the SEO Assistant. It helps you optimize title tag, header, body, whatever. The basic SEO task you should be doing for a blog post. And I'll tell you something, there's been many, many times where you optimize a title tag or the headers or whatever foundational element that we're talking about, and you see us say a ranking boost. So Google sees you a little bit more relevant for a certain keyword and you're like, "You know what?" Let's take a title tag. Let's go with a particular example. I wrote a good title tag. I see there's a ranking for whatever, whatever I see that I'm also ranking for, say, another ancillary keyword. Maybe now refine my title tag to try to target that secondary keyword at the same time. And I go up from, let's say, 20 to 10. Now I say, "You know what? Now I can refine that. I can refine the headers. I can refine all these small things," and now I've gone from 10 to eight. You can't get to that point of refining and refining it, refining it from zero to 60 in three seconds. I've literally done this a gazillion times. It's months. I create the title tag, I have the headers, I have this. I see that there's room for improvement. I tweak. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I see this data says something different now. Great. I tweak again. Crystal Carter: I had a client who was doing e-commerce stuff and they had the same H1. My favorite thing is when you do an audit on a site, and particularly the blog post and the H1 will be unique, and the H2 will be, "Read these related blogs," or something, and you're just like, "That's not-" Mordy Oberstein: Stacks? Crystal Carter: Right. No, it'll just be the thing that's the recommended box. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I got you. All the way at the bottom of the page, H2 articles. Crystal Carter: Yeah, exactly. And if I see that, I'm just like, "Y'all need H2. You'll need H2." And the thing is, people are like, "oh, does that really matter?" I'm like, "Yes." I've done it a million times where you add that in. And what it is it's giving Google priority. It's giving Google information about the priority of the page, and it's telling them which things are important. It's giving them more context to what is on your page, and it is important. And I know that it's maybe takes a little bit of time, but it's super important and really valuable. Mordy Oberstein: There's no way in my mind... Imagine you had a scenario like that. You have a hundred blog posts, and the H1 is great. The content, everything is great. The title tag, everything is great. And the H2 in all of them, the second H2 is related articles. There's no way in my mind that Google looks at that website and says, "In terms of quality and helpfulness, this site gets a great score." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Because those basic things mean that you are dealing with your site in a quality way. Crystal Carter: Right. If you go to a hotel or something like that, everyone's going to have towels, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: I love towels. They're always itchy and scratchy though with the- Crystal Carter: I love hotel towels. I just love- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, they're stiff. No. Crystal Carter: No, they're my favorite. I love them. They've just been bleached. I just love it. I just love them. Anyway, so everybody's got towels, and that's basic. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, have you ever stolen a towel before from a hotel? Crystal Carter: No, I've never done that. I'm a good person. Mordy Oberstein: They once asked Yogi Berra, "Do you ever stay at a fine hotel on the road?" Yogi was a baseball player in the 1950s. And he said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah. We once stayed at this fancy hotel in Chicago. It was great. There was only one problem." They said, "Oh, what, Yogi?" He's like, "The towels were so thick." "What's the problem with that, Yogi?" "I couldn't close the suitcase." Sorry. But a great story, right? Crystal Carter: That's a great story. So yeah, so every place is going to have a towel or every hotel is going to have a towel, and you expect that. And there's ways that you can add care to that experience. You can be like, "Oh, well, we also have some lovely soaps to go with it," or, "We also have a bathrobe or something to go with that experience as well." And you're like, "Oh, okay, so this is somebody who's more than just the normal thing," but you expect every hotel to have towels. Mordy Oberstein: Imagine they only had a bathrobe and they had no towel. Crystal Carter: What? Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: I'm out of here. Crystal Carter: What is this? Mordy Oberstein: There's a mint on the pillow, but there's no blanket. Crystal Carter: But there's no towel? What am I doing here? So it's very important, but these are signals, and you see these signals when you're in a nice restaurant, there are signals. They'll have cloth tablecloths and you're like, "Oh, okay, this is a nice restaurant," as opposed to one where people eat out of buckets. Mordy Oberstein: Wendy's. Crystal Carter: I like Wendy's, but whatever. Anyway, I'm just saying there are signs, there are signals that you give. And similarly, Google will see signals that somebody spent some time on this content and somebody has invested time making this content good and it doesn't need to cost the earth. Making H1s and H2s doesn't cost a lot of money. Fixing your links so that you don't have a bunch of redirects all over your page, a broken link so that you don't have pages that have no links on them. One of my bugbears is when I'm reading content and they're like, "Oh, there's this great thing. It's so great. You should learn really about..." And there's no link. And I'm like, "Where's the link? Where's the link? You're telling me all about it. I want to see it. Where's the link?" So, those sorts of things don't cost a lot of money. You don't need an extra tool to do that. You can just get in there and you can update that stuff, but it shows care. So even if we're talking about the fancy restaurant, for instance, they're the people who have beautiful silverware and fancy table settings and all of that sort of stuff. And maybe you're a smaller restaurant or whatever, and maybe you do have little baskets and stuff like that, but there's ways that you can show care with it. There's ways that you can show care and ways that you can add value. You might have a really nice playlist or maybe you made the things by hand. Maybe they're homemade things, maybe they're whatever, but use the tools that you have to make the most out of what you have. Mordy Oberstein: It'd be like serving a great dish at a restaurant with no cutlery. Where's the spoon? You don't want to put out a great dish without the cutlery. And speaking of people who put out great dishes and also put out the cutlery, let's talk to Joshua George about how focusing on the SEO fundamentals has actually paid off for him. Joshua George: Hey, so I'm a big believer of focusing on the SEO fundamentals and really not trying to over-complicate things. It's quite interesting because whenever you speak to someone who is new in the SEO space, they always have this false misconception that to rank number one on Google, you need to be doing some SEO mystery tactics behind the scenes, or there must be some sort of SEO hack that no one speaks about in public. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the biggest SEO hack is that there is no SEO hack. And the sooner you understand that and focus on the core SEO fundamentals, the sooner you're going to rank your website and rank your client sites too. I'm a big believer of fancy fails and simple scales, and if you take it one step back and just look at what is Google's core goal when it comes to Google search, well, Google's goal is to return the best search results to the users so the users are happy with what they see, and come back and use Google again in the future. If you focus on the fundamentals, which is increasing your site's relevancy and increasing your site's authority, you are going to rank number one. To increase your relevancy, you need to publish as many publicly relevant blogs on your website as possible. For example, if you are a plumber, then you should be publishing blogs on your website, such as the pros and cons of hiring a plumber, how much does a plumber charge? The evolution of the plumbing industry. All things to do with the service you offer plumbing. That's how you increase your relevancy. You increase your authority by acquiring high quality backlinks. We follow these two processes on ClickSlice, and ClickSlice actually ranks number one for the keyword, "SEO agency London," and we also ranked number one for, "SEO consultant London." There were two very, very, very competitive terms, and we've done it by focusing on the core SSEO fundamentals and not overcomplicating things. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Joshua. It's a great point. You don't want to overcomplicate SEO when you don't have to overcomplicate SEO. You don't win a medal for overcomplicating SEO for the sake of overcomplicating SEO. Now make sure you give Joshua follow over on Twitter at _Josh- Mordy Oberstein: Now, make sure you give Joshua follow over on Twitter at _JoshuaSEO. That's under J-O-S-H-U-A, SEO over on Twitter. Super valuable follow. Super nice guy. Actually, really, really appreciate Joshua, and thank you again for sharing your insights with us. And again, we'll link to Joshua's Twitter bio in the show notes. Now, let's put our money where our mouths are and have a look at some real cases where getting the basics right does actually, or did actually have an impact as we justify the focus on fundamentals by going to the top of the SERP. So what I did here is I basically crowdsourced. I'm like, hey y'all, I have my own example as well, but hey, y'all give me some cases where you did some basic thing that was not shiny or sexy at all, but it paid off big for you. And I got a flood of responses. But let's start off, Crystal, with one that we actually worked on together with Fox Fudge. They're a great Wix website. They sell fudge online. It looks delicious. I will not lie to you, it looks fabulous. So check out foxfudge.com, little plug for them. They go to a lot of local events and they sell their fudge at these local events as well as they should. And one of the things that we noticed was, "Hey, wait a second. In many cases or some cases, they're actually outranking the event itself." Because what they do on the Fox Fudge website at the direction of Crystal, if I'm not mistaken, was... And by the way, big shout out to James Core, great Wix partner designing their website. Fabulous guy. So big shout out to him and the all work he's doing with Fox Fudge. But what they're doing is they're putting in the title tag, the name of the event. So for example, the keyword 2023 hot town summer salute, Fox Fudge is ranking over basically everything but the Facebook page for the event itself because it's in the title tag. Crystal Carter: Right, they're adding in that information. And this is a prime example as well. Again, high maintenance, so you can be low maintenance. This particular page is also using a Wix event page, which has a lot of technical things built into it. So for instance, it's also got the event schema built into it. And this is something that you can think about when you're thinking about which basics you need to cover, is that if you have a lot of bases that are covered within your CMS, within your build and things like that, then you can add onto them really simply, really simply, really easily, and it will make sure that it looks good. For instance, if you got a really good lead on a place where you can get potato salads and whenever there's a potluck or something like that, you can go and purchase your potato salad from your favorite delicatessen, and then you just need to put a little bit of parsley on top and you can showcase to all your friends about how great you're doing. So they're able to get some of these great things by doing some of these seemingly basic implementation on their side because they got a good technical foundation from the Wix product. And I think that that's something that you should also think about when you're thinking about where you can get the most impact from fairly simple, fairly straightforward SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: So let's run through a bunch of cases. They've got a bunch of cases or a bunch of different people all about the things that they've done and small little things here. And then what they've done in terms of impact, let's start with our own Rebecca Tomasis who manages a lot of the SEO on the Wix blog. She said one of the things that they've done is a couple of cases was when trying to get traffic from images is they're using the keyword in the alt text anyway, so it's not like they're going to just stuff a keyword in, but when they're using it anyway, try to put the keyword earlier on in the alt text to sort of give Google the content like this is what we're focusing on, this is the intent here. And they saw a bunch of more traffic coming from images from the SERP just because of that small little change. So that's a nice little one. Let's take this one from Jack Chambers-Ward. He's got a whole thing on how they changed a title. So Google had the title tag for a page as home, brand name. That was a title tag. So let's say your brand name is Bob's Furniture, it was homepage Bob's Furniture. And what they did was they changed the title to Wholesale Dried Flowers and Preserved Flowers UK, plus the brand name, and boom, all of a sudden tons more clicks and went to ranking from nothing for 554 keywords. Crystal Carter: That's what I'm saying. This is unbelievable. Mordy Oberstein: It's insane. Crystal Carter: Honestly, people overlook the homepage and think, "Oh yeah, we did that. It's done." But between your homepage page being - Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we talked about this. Crystal Carter: We talked about the homepage a few different times. We did a podcast on it, we've done a webinar on it. I wrote an article on it. Y'all pay attention to your homepage because there are so many good wins that you can make on that. It gets linked to almost more than any other page, and you can see incredible, incredible gains from some pretty simple implementations on that. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So in that case, since the homepage is like the representative of the entire website, so now the entire website became relevant and they started ranking for 500 keywords because of that one simple change. This one comes from Jessica Maloney, who's a digital strategy lead over at Rise at Seven. She writes, "The simple example I've got is changing mass anchor tax on a site for an old client who did tax refunds. They had loads of mix-match anchors saying tax refund or tax rebate. We changed it all to tax refunds. So not tax rebate and tax refund, but just tax refund and the ranking for that term jumped to position three and maintained, whereas previously it was extremely volatile on page two." So a simple change of the anchor text. Crystal Carter: This is what I'm saying. This is what- Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. Let's take another one. Crystal Carter: Okay, I can see one from Anajitay Amari who's saying, "Submitting your site map to Google Search Console, major boom." And I cannot say that I've not seen that happen. Normally it's for websites that don't have a site map. Sometimes self-builds don't have a site map, but the people who are on Wix, anybody who's listening who is a Wix user, you have a site map, you're welcome. But people who don't have their site map there. But also for instance, on Wix, we allow you to submit your site map to Google Search Console when you connect to Wix. And the reason why is because it's really useful. It means that Google can see that the information that they need, and they can see which pages are the best, and they don't have to guess or try to figure it out based on traffic that they see in other places, and they can get exactly what they need in exactly the way that you want them to see it. So I absolutely agree that spending some time on your site map and getting it to Google the way that best suits you is super important and can be really straightforward and simple. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's crazy to hear. This one is from Ryan Jones over SEO Testing. He goes, "We took a blog post that had been finished, and all we did was create a video on the same topic using the blog post as the base. It uploaded the video to YouTube. We then embedded the YouTube video to the blog post and requested Google the index the page again." They saw 106% increase in clicks per day, a 21% increase in impressions per day, and the average position jump up to 57, just by adding the video into the page. Crystal Carter: So much, so much. Mordy Oberstein: It's crazy. All in a video. The point is, I think we could take away that sometimes really simple things have a really big impact. Crystal Carter: You just need to find the thing that is the core change and build on it. Like you said, build on your skills and build on the work that you're doing to make sure that yeah, you're getting the best results. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why, by the way, I like to read seroundtable.com by Barry Schwartz. Sometimes the articles are about little small changes that Google's making. You think, "Oh, this is so basic. Google changed the favicon to be this instead of that." But sometimes when you put it all together, you get a real directional understanding of where Google's going just by tracking the small things that Barry's covering over at SE Roundtable. Which brings us to this week's Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. More opportunity on the search for all of y'all authoritative sites as spotted by our very own Crystal Carter and as covered by our very beloved Battery Schwarz over on search engine land. Google Search testing mentioned in Search Snippet. It's basically a carousel that appears within certain organic results that gives you other websites that mentioned the site shown in the organic result. So for example, Crystal's search for car advice and the website Car Talk appears on the results page and underneath it, or within it is a little carousel that says mentioned in that also shows the page from the New York Times that mentions the Car Talk website. All of the results that I've seen have a link back to the website shown in the organic results, but I don't think it's just links. I mean, for one, the feature is called mentioned in not linked in. Well, that wouldn't work anyway now that I say that, but it's called mentioned in and in some cases the set is mentioned very prominently in the headers, the title and so forth. So I think it's a little bit more than just the link. I think it's actually that they can tell, Google can tell if there's an actual mention there. Anyway, onto AI business, Barry Schwarz over at Search Engine Roundtable this time, official Google's search generative experience gets links. So aside from the cards that show in the... I call it the AI box, but it's called the Search Generative Experience, Google now has links within- Mordy Oberstein: ... with experience Google now has links within the actual text summary itself. So it's a little dropdown icon that brings up a little carousel of results or a little couple of cards of results depending upon where Google got the information from. So it could be a combination of Google's own knowledge panel or knowledge graph rather, or it could be from a website or a combination of the two and so forth. It's a great addition to the search generative experience and it helps you really see where the information comes from and it could help you get more clicks to your website. Okay. Also on SGE and also again from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google shares early feedback on SGE expands to Japan and India. There's a whole heap of information here. Barry links to the actual Google page that talks about this, and I do recommend that you go read that and we will link to that in the show notes. But one thing that stuck out to me and to quote the article itself, "The highest satisfaction scores among younger users, 18 and 24 year olds who say they enjoy being able to ask follow-up questions conversationally." My take, it's not just the interactive ability to ask a follow-up question. I think younger people in general, as a general content preference and as a general content trend prefer more conversational type of content, both in tone, both in format, and both in the actual way that the functionality is structured. In this case, you can ask a follow-up question because it's SGE. But I do think it speaks to a wider trend of younger people looking for more conversational type of content. And that's not just a specific SGE AI thing. That's just a content thing. And with that, that's this week's snappy news. You know, I regret not basking in the glory of what that pivot was before the onset of it. So now that we're back from the news, I just want to bask in the glory of that pivot. That was ... You didn't know it was even coming, it was so good. Crystal Carter: It was very pivotalicious. Mordy Oberstein: Pivotalicious. How do you like your sandwich? Pivotalicious, that's how I like my sandwiches. Crystal Carter: Swirling around. Mordy Oberstein: Swirling around. You know what's always swirling around with some great SEO insights? Ola King. Ola King is our follow of the week is at @justolaking on Twitter. That's J-U-S-T-O-L-A-K-I-N-G over on Twitter. He's an SEO nerd. Previously the product person over at Moz. Super nice. I've never met a nicer fellow before. He's incredibly nice. Crystal Carter: And you guys have matching dress then. You guys, I got a picture of the two of you at MozCon in a matching cream-colored turtleneck. Mordy Oberstein: Oh nice. I totally forgot about that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. It was good. Mordy Oberstein: Well, if anybody's got style inclinations like myself, I mean clearly they're ... Crystal Carter: Obviously, but I think also he's got some really good ... So he's a Notion ambassador and I'm such a big fan of Notion in my days. So he's also got some really good Notion toolkits that he offers to help people learn the basics and to help people get to use some of their sort of new products. And he's behind this sort of SEO growth kit, which talks about how to get going with your SEO goals. So setting goals, SEO checklists and link building checklists, all of that sort of stuff. And there's tons of different guides in there that are helping you to cover the basics. I think somebody was saying that the thing about SEO is that it's a lot of small things that add up to a big thing, and you just sort of have to be able to organize them and he's got some great tools for helping people to organize them and to use some of the tasks that individually aren't that complicated. But if you put them together just strategically, can help you get some really complex but great results. Mordy Oberstein: So follow Ola King over on Twitter. We'll link to his profile in the show notes, but also on LinkedIn I believe, so you can look for him there as well. Give Ola a follow and tell him that we sent you. And that's it. That's all I got. And no pivot. I almost made it through the entire show with awesome pivots until I just blew it. It's so me. Crystal Carter: Maybe we could go back in time with the DeLorean. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just going to run in place 88 miles per hour. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'll try right now. Crystal Carter: Right. We'll play some Chuck Berry and it will be fine. Mordy Oberstein: Well, yeah. And also, if you want to go back in time and check out some previous episodes that you missed, head over to the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. So a little pivot there. 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 as we dive into a audience request in debunking SEO myths. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning 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 guest 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. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Joshua George Rebecca Tomasis Jack Chambers-Ward Ryan Jones Ola King Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter ClickSlice SEO Agency News: Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Official: Google Search Generative Experience Gets Links Google Shares Early Feedback On SGE, Expands To Japan & India Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Joshua George Rebecca Tomasis Jack Chambers-Ward Ryan Jones Ola King Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter ClickSlice SEO Agency News: Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Official: Google Search Generative Experience Gets Links Google Shares Early Feedback On SGE, Expands To Japan & India Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the Surf's Up podcast where we've got some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding at Wix joined by the amazing, fantastic, the incredible, the bonafide SEO expert guru person, our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter, guru. Crystal Carter: I did go on TikTok at some point and say I was, I'm an SEO expert, which I think is always such a strange term because SEO is changing all the time and so sometimes I feel like I know things and sometimes I feel like a complete newb, but I think that that's one of the beauties of the industry personally. Mordy Oberstein: I kind of feel like when someone writes Guru, I always think of Goro from Mortal Kombat. I'm an SEO Goro and I think of them having six arms and fighting other players. Crystal Carter: Was that Jocelyn? Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. That's Goro. Mortal Kombat. Crystal Carter: I'm thinking Street Fighter. Mordy Oberstein: You're thinking of Street Fighter. Crystal Carter: I'm thinking of Street Fighter. Mordy Oberstein: Very similar. Crystal Carter: Very similar. I was much better as Street Fighter though. I was a big fan of E. Honda because he was really good. I'm a bit of a one move Barry and E. Honda has a big arm. I'd just be like, wall of arm, just eat this fist. Mordy Oberstein: I was a Vega person in Street Fighter and a Scorpion person in Mortal Kombat and I was terrible at both. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, searchlight over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can optimize all your metadata just the way you want to. Oh, but Mordy, metatags, that's so fundamental, but behold the power of SEO fundamentals. Yep. We're talking about the unexpected power of getting the SEO basics right. Sometimes little SEO things can do big SEO things or all big SEO things are built on the shoulders of smaller SEO things or getting the basics right says a lot about your site to search engines and to prove it all Joshua George chimes in with how focusing on the SEO fundamentals has actually paid off in real scenarios. Since we're talking about fundamentals, we'll share some sites and scenarios with you, who are handling the basics right and how that changed the course of their SEO performance and of course we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness, so buckle up because even though those Deloreans aren't going back in time, it is going back to basics. It's episode number 54 of the SERP's Up podcast. I want to hop in a DeLorean and go back to basics. 88 miles per hour Marty, 88 miles per hour. Crystal Carter: Wait, we need another flux capacitor or something. I feel like that will help us to do that. Mordy Oberstein: I recently rescheduled a meeting with somebody and I put it back to the previous week instead of ahead to the previous week and they're like oh, Mordy, I think you scheduled for last week. I'm like, 88 miles per hour. Flux capacitors, DeLoreans and time machines aside, if you're new to SEO and you see all sorts of SEO scoff at the basics of SEO, ignore that because if you've been in SEO for a long time, then you should know how impactful some of the most basic SEO tasks can be and why you shouldn't ignore them or gloss over them for the fancier shinier SEO things. I've had so many cases where nailing down things like basic pay structure, help pay to stay in the index or changing a title tag, made a ranking difference. They might seem like small things, but their impact can be big. Leaving all that aside, you never know what will make the difference. Let me just harp on that for a second. You never really do know what will actually make the difference and Glenn Davis talked about where you throw the kitchen sink at it because you never know what's going to pay off and what's actually going to make the difference between you ranking versus a competitor ranking. As much as SEOs may not want to omit it, sometimes it actually is a crapshoot. You want to be one of the three to five pages, let's say, in the world, who rank for a keyword. A top three or top five, let's say top three. Three pages in the whole world who rank in those positions. That can kind of be a crapshoot sometimes and you never know what's actually going to pay off for you, what's actually going to be the needle mover. More than that, getting the fundamentals right is being aligned with best practices and that is a statement to users, it's a statement to your potential clients and consumers and it is a statement to search engines that you understand what it means to create healthy web content, healthy functioning web content on the web and that's seriously important. Whether it's tweaking an H1 or H2 or formatting a text into a table or a list or update a title tag or adding all text to an image or even adding a caption, don't underestimate the power behind those simple SEO actions and if anyone tells you otherwise, you send them to me. Mic drop. End broadcast. Crystal Carter: I mean, I agree. This goes back to something my mom always said, which was, common sense ain't that common. I think that people will scoff at the basics like, oh, we did some internal linking, we did some this and it's tricky because the clients they were like, "I heard about this and I heard about that and I want to do this and I want to do that" and we're like, but you haven't done title tax, you haven't done your H1s. You haven't added any pictures to this. You have a wall of text my friend. Clients will be like, "I wanted to do something super exciting." It's like, you'll get that stuff after you do the basic stuff and I think that it's something that as an SEO, you have to hold your nerve and go, yeah, we're going to do this. It's going to be a little bit boring for a minute. Hang in there because we'll see some good results. I think again because it's not super exciting, like I said, common sense ain't that common. A lot of people ain't doing it, so a lot of people aren't hitting their basic SEO things. A lot of people aren't hitting those things. If you are covering those bases then you are going to see some benefit because you are going to be doing more than most people are doing because most people are cutting corners. Most people are trying to jump the queue and if you are actually covering those bases, then it's really, really important. It's like, you have to learn- Mordy Oberstein: You have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk. Crystal Carter: Everybody wants to be Michael Jordan or whatever, but Michael Jordan spent a lot of time doing layups, doing regular layups just like everybody else and there's going to be a lot of people... If you look at great musicians, they spend a lot of time practicing scales over and over and over and over and over again. You'll see people, I think I've seen footage of Jimi Hendrix or whatever, just practicing scales for hours, just always with a guitar in his hand practicing scales. Scales might seem basic. You're like, I've learned how to do scales. It's like, do it again. Do it again. I think with the basics, not only is it just to hit it the first time, but also to just go back over it and make sure that people aren't slipping, that your team isn't slipping on those things because it might be that you trained up everybody on the basic things and then maybe you got some new folks or maybe you go to new CMS or maybe you got other things that came through that have changed how you approach things and it's really easy to slack on some of the things that seem core, but they're core for a reason because they're effective. Mordy Oberstein: So many times I've seen a well optimized page, but the headers are just not explicit and it's not good for readers either when it happens, by the way. Half of these things are beneficial for SEO, also beneficial for users and they're really simple and really ignored. I've had a case where on a podcast website that I have, where a bunch of my pages weren't indexed. I'm like, you know what? The headers are not very explicit. I wrote this months ago. I don't know what I'm talking about here. Let me go back and let me change that and it's a basic thing and now the pages are indexed. Going back to the music example or going back to the Michael Jordan, there'd be no Michael Jordan if there wasn't a Dr. J. Right? Things build upon themselves. You don't just have a Michael Jordan. You have an entire history of basketball that leads to a Michael Jordan and a history of basketball because everything afterwards doesn't matter, but leaving that aside, that's a hot take. Music is the same thing, right? You don't have a Nirvana, unless you have a Buddy Holly. Those things don't happen. The same thing with your website. If you're not getting the basic structure of your pages down, the basic format of your pages down, the basic elements of your pages down, even the basic content that you need on your website, an about page or whatever it is. You're not going to be able to do things like advanced keyword content clusters. That's not happening. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. I saw this thing and it really stuck with me. It was just a little thing on TikTok and they were saying, I'm high maintenance so I can be low maintenance. It's like, you spend loads of time on your keyword research. You spend a lot of time on your keyword research. You spend a lot of time on your site architecture. You spend a lot of time making sure that your URLs are optimized, that you got title tags, meta descriptions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All your H1s, your H2s... Crystal Carter: ... descriptions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All your H1s or H2s et cetera, really hitting the marks on those. You spend a lot of time on that so that you just need to tweak a little bit as you go forward. You spend a lot of time on the fundamentals. You spend a lot of time on the things that will set you up for success down the line. So for instance, in the Wix SEO tools, we have the SEO settings that allows you to set the syntax for lots of parts of some of your SEO tags and even your structured data and things like that. Spending the time, making sure that that works, making sure that that's good for you, that you've covered those bases, will allow you to grow and it will allow you to grow quickly if you need to, because you will have the syntax set up for all of that sort of stuff going forward. People are like, "Oh, I don't want to do the SEO set of checklists." I'm like, "But you should, because it covers lots of things that it's really easy to forget, and it's a checklist that covers this, this, this, this, and this." And people are like, "Oh, it's really simple." I'm like, "Is it? Because not everybody's- Mordy Oberstein: You gloss over it all the time. Crystal Carter: People gloss over it, and there's lots of times where people just don't do the things, and you should do them because it will help you. It will fundamentally help you. Mordy Oberstein: Same thing with, let's say a blog post. We have the SEO Assistant. It helps you optimize title tag, header, body, whatever. The basic SEO task you should be doing for a blog post. And I'll tell you something, there's been many, many times where you optimize a title tag or the headers or whatever foundational element that we're talking about, and you see us say a ranking boost. So Google sees you a little bit more relevant for a certain keyword and you're like, "You know what?" Let's take a title tag. Let's go with a particular example. I wrote a good title tag. I see there's a ranking for whatever, whatever I see that I'm also ranking for, say, another ancillary keyword. Maybe now refine my title tag to try to target that secondary keyword at the same time. And I go up from, let's say, 20 to 10. Now I say, "You know what? Now I can refine that. I can refine the headers. I can refine all these small things," and now I've gone from 10 to eight. You can't get to that point of refining and refining it, refining it from zero to 60 in three seconds. I've literally done this a gazillion times. It's months. I create the title tag, I have the headers, I have this. I see that there's room for improvement. I tweak. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I see this data says something different now. Great. I tweak again. Crystal Carter: I had a client who was doing e-commerce stuff and they had the same H1. My favorite thing is when you do an audit on a site, and particularly the blog post and the H1 will be unique, and the H2 will be, "Read these related blogs," or something, and you're just like, "That's not-" Mordy Oberstein: Stacks? Crystal Carter: Right. No, it'll just be the thing that's the recommended box. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I got you. All the way at the bottom of the page, H2 articles. Crystal Carter: Yeah, exactly. And if I see that, I'm just like, "Y'all need H2. You'll need H2." And the thing is, people are like, "oh, does that really matter?" I'm like, "Yes." I've done it a million times where you add that in. And what it is it's giving Google priority. It's giving Google information about the priority of the page, and it's telling them which things are important. It's giving them more context to what is on your page, and it is important. And I know that it's maybe takes a little bit of time, but it's super important and really valuable. Mordy Oberstein: There's no way in my mind... Imagine you had a scenario like that. You have a hundred blog posts, and the H1 is great. The content, everything is great. The title tag, everything is great. And the H2 in all of them, the second H2 is related articles. There's no way in my mind that Google looks at that website and says, "In terms of quality and helpfulness, this site gets a great score." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Because those basic things mean that you are dealing with your site in a quality way. Crystal Carter: Right. If you go to a hotel or something like that, everyone's going to have towels, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: I love towels. They're always itchy and scratchy though with the- Crystal Carter: I love hotel towels. I just love- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, they're stiff. No. Crystal Carter: No, they're my favorite. I love them. They've just been bleached. I just love it. I just love them. Anyway, so everybody's got towels, and that's basic. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, have you ever stolen a towel before from a hotel? Crystal Carter: No, I've never done that. I'm a good person. Mordy Oberstein: They once asked Yogi Berra, "Do you ever stay at a fine hotel on the road?" Yogi was a baseball player in the 1950s. And he said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah. We once stayed at this fancy hotel in Chicago. It was great. There was only one problem." They said, "Oh, what, Yogi?" He's like, "The towels were so thick." "What's the problem with that, Yogi?" "I couldn't close the suitcase." Sorry. But a great story, right? Crystal Carter: That's a great story. So yeah, so every place is going to have a towel or every hotel is going to have a towel, and you expect that. And there's ways that you can add care to that experience. You can be like, "Oh, well, we also have some lovely soaps to go with it," or, "We also have a bathrobe or something to go with that experience as well." And you're like, "Oh, okay, so this is somebody who's more than just the normal thing," but you expect every hotel to have towels. Mordy Oberstein: Imagine they only had a bathrobe and they had no towel. Crystal Carter: What? Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: I'm out of here. Crystal Carter: What is this? Mordy Oberstein: There's a mint on the pillow, but there's no blanket. Crystal Carter: But there's no towel? What am I doing here? So it's very important, but these are signals, and you see these signals when you're in a nice restaurant, there are signals. They'll have cloth tablecloths and you're like, "Oh, okay, this is a nice restaurant," as opposed to one where people eat out of buckets. Mordy Oberstein: Wendy's. Crystal Carter: I like Wendy's, but whatever. Anyway, I'm just saying there are signs, there are signals that you give. And similarly, Google will see signals that somebody spent some time on this content and somebody has invested time making this content good and it doesn't need to cost the earth. Making H1s and H2s doesn't cost a lot of money. Fixing your links so that you don't have a bunch of redirects all over your page, a broken link so that you don't have pages that have no links on them. One of my bugbears is when I'm reading content and they're like, "Oh, there's this great thing. It's so great. You should learn really about..." And there's no link. And I'm like, "Where's the link? Where's the link? You're telling me all about it. I want to see it. Where's the link?" So, those sorts of things don't cost a lot of money. You don't need an extra tool to do that. You can just get in there and you can update that stuff, but it shows care. So even if we're talking about the fancy restaurant, for instance, they're the people who have beautiful silverware and fancy table settings and all of that sort of stuff. And maybe you're a smaller restaurant or whatever, and maybe you do have little baskets and stuff like that, but there's ways that you can show care with it. There's ways that you can show care and ways that you can add value. You might have a really nice playlist or maybe you made the things by hand. Maybe they're homemade things, maybe they're whatever, but use the tools that you have to make the most out of what you have. Mordy Oberstein: It'd be like serving a great dish at a restaurant with no cutlery. Where's the spoon? You don't want to put out a great dish without the cutlery. And speaking of people who put out great dishes and also put out the cutlery, let's talk to Joshua George about how focusing on the SEO fundamentals has actually paid off for him. Joshua George: Hey, so I'm a big believer of focusing on the SEO fundamentals and really not trying to over-complicate things. It's quite interesting because whenever you speak to someone who is new in the SEO space, they always have this false misconception that to rank number one on Google, you need to be doing some SEO mystery tactics behind the scenes, or there must be some sort of SEO hack that no one speaks about in public. Well, I hate to break it to you, but the biggest SEO hack is that there is no SEO hack. And the sooner you understand that and focus on the core SEO fundamentals, the sooner you're going to rank your website and rank your client sites too. I'm a big believer of fancy fails and simple scales, and if you take it one step back and just look at what is Google's core goal when it comes to Google search, well, Google's goal is to return the best search results to the users so the users are happy with what they see, and come back and use Google again in the future. If you focus on the fundamentals, which is increasing your site's relevancy and increasing your site's authority, you are going to rank number one. To increase your relevancy, you need to publish as many publicly relevant blogs on your website as possible. For example, if you are a plumber, then you should be publishing blogs on your website, such as the pros and cons of hiring a plumber, how much does a plumber charge? The evolution of the plumbing industry. All things to do with the service you offer plumbing. That's how you increase your relevancy. You increase your authority by acquiring high quality backlinks. We follow these two processes on ClickSlice, and ClickSlice actually ranks number one for the keyword, "SEO agency London," and we also ranked number one for, "SEO consultant London." There were two very, very, very competitive terms, and we've done it by focusing on the core SSEO fundamentals and not overcomplicating things. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Joshua. It's a great point. You don't want to overcomplicate SEO when you don't have to overcomplicate SEO. You don't win a medal for overcomplicating SEO for the sake of overcomplicating SEO. Now make sure you give Joshua follow over on Twitter at _Josh- Mordy Oberstein: Now, make sure you give Joshua follow over on Twitter at _JoshuaSEO. That's under J-O-S-H-U-A, SEO over on Twitter. Super valuable follow. Super nice guy. Actually, really, really appreciate Joshua, and thank you again for sharing your insights with us. And again, we'll link to Joshua's Twitter bio in the show notes. Now, let's put our money where our mouths are and have a look at some real cases where getting the basics right does actually, or did actually have an impact as we justify the focus on fundamentals by going to the top of the SERP. So what I did here is I basically crowdsourced. I'm like, hey y'all, I have my own example as well, but hey, y'all give me some cases where you did some basic thing that was not shiny or sexy at all, but it paid off big for you. And I got a flood of responses. But let's start off, Crystal, with one that we actually worked on together with Fox Fudge. They're a great Wix website. They sell fudge online. It looks delicious. I will not lie to you, it looks fabulous. So check out foxfudge.com, little plug for them. They go to a lot of local events and they sell their fudge at these local events as well as they should. And one of the things that we noticed was, "Hey, wait a second. In many cases or some cases, they're actually outranking the event itself." Because what they do on the Fox Fudge website at the direction of Crystal, if I'm not mistaken, was... And by the way, big shout out to James Core, great Wix partner designing their website. Fabulous guy. So big shout out to him and the all work he's doing with Fox Fudge. But what they're doing is they're putting in the title tag, the name of the event. So for example, the keyword 2023 hot town summer salute, Fox Fudge is ranking over basically everything but the Facebook page for the event itself because it's in the title tag. Crystal Carter: Right, they're adding in that information. And this is a prime example as well. Again, high maintenance, so you can be low maintenance. This particular page is also using a Wix event page, which has a lot of technical things built into it. So for instance, it's also got the event schema built into it. And this is something that you can think about when you're thinking about which basics you need to cover, is that if you have a lot of bases that are covered within your CMS, within your build and things like that, then you can add onto them really simply, really simply, really easily, and it will make sure that it looks good. For instance, if you got a really good lead on a place where you can get potato salads and whenever there's a potluck or something like that, you can go and purchase your potato salad from your favorite delicatessen, and then you just need to put a little bit of parsley on top and you can showcase to all your friends about how great you're doing. So they're able to get some of these great things by doing some of these seemingly basic implementation on their side because they got a good technical foundation from the Wix product. And I think that that's something that you should also think about when you're thinking about where you can get the most impact from fairly simple, fairly straightforward SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: So let's run through a bunch of cases. They've got a bunch of cases or a bunch of different people all about the things that they've done and small little things here. And then what they've done in terms of impact, let's start with our own Rebecca Tomasis who manages a lot of the SEO on the Wix blog. She said one of the things that they've done is a couple of cases was when trying to get traffic from images is they're using the keyword in the alt text anyway, so it's not like they're going to just stuff a keyword in, but when they're using it anyway, try to put the keyword earlier on in the alt text to sort of give Google the content like this is what we're focusing on, this is the intent here. And they saw a bunch of more traffic coming from images from the SERP just because of that small little change. So that's a nice little one. Let's take this one from Jack Chambers-Ward. He's got a whole thing on how they changed a title. So Google had the title tag for a page as home, brand name. That was a title tag. So let's say your brand name is Bob's Furniture, it was homepage Bob's Furniture. And what they did was they changed the title to Wholesale Dried Flowers and Preserved Flowers UK, plus the brand name, and boom, all of a sudden tons more clicks and went to ranking from nothing for 554 keywords. Crystal Carter: That's what I'm saying. This is unbelievable. Mordy Oberstein: It's insane. Crystal Carter: Honestly, people overlook the homepage and think, "Oh yeah, we did that. It's done." But between your homepage page being - Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we talked about this. Crystal Carter: We talked about the homepage a few different times. We did a podcast on it, we've done a webinar on it. I wrote an article on it. Y'all pay attention to your homepage because there are so many good wins that you can make on that. It gets linked to almost more than any other page, and you can see incredible, incredible gains from some pretty simple implementations on that. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So in that case, since the homepage is like the representative of the entire website, so now the entire website became relevant and they started ranking for 500 keywords because of that one simple change. This one comes from Jessica Maloney, who's a digital strategy lead over at Rise at Seven. She writes, "The simple example I've got is changing mass anchor tax on a site for an old client who did tax refunds. They had loads of mix-match anchors saying tax refund or tax rebate. We changed it all to tax refunds. So not tax rebate and tax refund, but just tax refund and the ranking for that term jumped to position three and maintained, whereas previously it was extremely volatile on page two." So a simple change of the anchor text. Crystal Carter: This is what I'm saying. This is what- Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. Let's take another one. Crystal Carter: Okay, I can see one from Anajitay Amari who's saying, "Submitting your site map to Google Search Console, major boom." And I cannot say that I've not seen that happen. Normally it's for websites that don't have a site map. Sometimes self-builds don't have a site map, but the people who are on Wix, anybody who's listening who is a Wix user, you have a site map, you're welcome. But people who don't have their site map there. But also for instance, on Wix, we allow you to submit your site map to Google Search Console when you connect to Wix. And the reason why is because it's really useful. It means that Google can see that the information that they need, and they can see which pages are the best, and they don't have to guess or try to figure it out based on traffic that they see in other places, and they can get exactly what they need in exactly the way that you want them to see it. So I absolutely agree that spending some time on your site map and getting it to Google the way that best suits you is super important and can be really straightforward and simple. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's crazy to hear. This one is from Ryan Jones over SEO Testing. He goes, "We took a blog post that had been finished, and all we did was create a video on the same topic using the blog post as the base. It uploaded the video to YouTube. We then embedded the YouTube video to the blog post and requested Google the index the page again." They saw 106% increase in clicks per day, a 21% increase in impressions per day, and the average position jump up to 57, just by adding the video into the page. Crystal Carter: So much, so much. Mordy Oberstein: It's crazy. All in a video. The point is, I think we could take away that sometimes really simple things have a really big impact. Crystal Carter: You just need to find the thing that is the core change and build on it. Like you said, build on your skills and build on the work that you're doing to make sure that yeah, you're getting the best results. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why, by the way, I like to read seroundtable.com by Barry Schwartz. Sometimes the articles are about little small changes that Google's making. You think, "Oh, this is so basic. Google changed the favicon to be this instead of that." But sometimes when you put it all together, you get a real directional understanding of where Google's going just by tracking the small things that Barry's covering over at SE Roundtable. Which brings us to this week's Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. More opportunity on the search for all of y'all authoritative sites as spotted by our very own Crystal Carter and as covered by our very beloved Battery Schwarz over on search engine land. Google Search testing mentioned in Search Snippet. It's basically a carousel that appears within certain organic results that gives you other websites that mentioned the site shown in the organic result. So for example, Crystal's search for car advice and the website Car Talk appears on the results page and underneath it, or within it is a little carousel that says mentioned in that also shows the page from the New York Times that mentions the Car Talk website. All of the results that I've seen have a link back to the website shown in the organic results, but I don't think it's just links. I mean, for one, the feature is called mentioned in not linked in. Well, that wouldn't work anyway now that I say that, but it's called mentioned in and in some cases the set is mentioned very prominently in the headers, the title and so forth. So I think it's a little bit more than just the link. I think it's actually that they can tell, Google can tell if there's an actual mention there. Anyway, onto AI business, Barry Schwarz over at Search Engine Roundtable this time, official Google's search generative experience gets links. So aside from the cards that show in the... I call it the AI box, but it's called the Search Generative Experience, Google now has links within- Mordy Oberstein: ... with experience Google now has links within the actual text summary itself. So it's a little dropdown icon that brings up a little carousel of results or a little couple of cards of results depending upon where Google got the information from. So it could be a combination of Google's own knowledge panel or knowledge graph rather, or it could be from a website or a combination of the two and so forth. It's a great addition to the search generative experience and it helps you really see where the information comes from and it could help you get more clicks to your website. Okay. Also on SGE and also again from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google shares early feedback on SGE expands to Japan and India. There's a whole heap of information here. Barry links to the actual Google page that talks about this, and I do recommend that you go read that and we will link to that in the show notes. But one thing that stuck out to me and to quote the article itself, "The highest satisfaction scores among younger users, 18 and 24 year olds who say they enjoy being able to ask follow-up questions conversationally." My take, it's not just the interactive ability to ask a follow-up question. I think younger people in general, as a general content preference and as a general content trend prefer more conversational type of content, both in tone, both in format, and both in the actual way that the functionality is structured. In this case, you can ask a follow-up question because it's SGE. But I do think it speaks to a wider trend of younger people looking for more conversational type of content. And that's not just a specific SGE AI thing. That's just a content thing. And with that, that's this week's snappy news. You know, I regret not basking in the glory of what that pivot was before the onset of it. So now that we're back from the news, I just want to bask in the glory of that pivot. That was ... You didn't know it was even coming, it was so good. Crystal Carter: It was very pivotalicious. Mordy Oberstein: Pivotalicious. How do you like your sandwich? Pivotalicious, that's how I like my sandwiches. Crystal Carter: Swirling around. Mordy Oberstein: Swirling around. You know what's always swirling around with some great SEO insights? Ola King. Ola King is our follow of the week is at @justolaking on Twitter. That's J-U-S-T-O-L-A-K-I-N-G over on Twitter. He's an SEO nerd. Previously the product person over at Moz. Super nice. I've never met a nicer fellow before. He's incredibly nice. Crystal Carter: And you guys have matching dress then. You guys, I got a picture of the two of you at MozCon in a matching cream-colored turtleneck. Mordy Oberstein: Oh nice. I totally forgot about that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. It was good. Mordy Oberstein: Well, if anybody's got style inclinations like myself, I mean clearly they're ... Crystal Carter: Obviously, but I think also he's got some really good ... So he's a Notion ambassador and I'm such a big fan of Notion in my days. So he's also got some really good Notion toolkits that he offers to help people learn the basics and to help people get to use some of their sort of new products. And he's behind this sort of SEO growth kit, which talks about how to get going with your SEO goals. So setting goals, SEO checklists and link building checklists, all of that sort of stuff. And there's tons of different guides in there that are helping you to cover the basics. I think somebody was saying that the thing about SEO is that it's a lot of small things that add up to a big thing, and you just sort of have to be able to organize them and he's got some great tools for helping people to organize them and to use some of the tasks that individually aren't that complicated. But if you put them together just strategically, can help you get some really complex but great results. Mordy Oberstein: So follow Ola King over on Twitter. We'll link to his profile in the show notes, but also on LinkedIn I believe, so you can look for him there as well. Give Ola a follow and tell him that we sent you. And that's it. That's all I got. And no pivot. I almost made it through the entire show with awesome pivots until I just blew it. It's so me. Crystal Carter: Maybe we could go back in time with the DeLorean. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just going to run in place 88 miles per hour. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'll try right now. Crystal Carter: Right. We'll play some Chuck Berry and it will be fine. Mordy Oberstein: Well, yeah. And also, if you want to go back in time and check out some previous episodes that you missed, head over to the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. So a little pivot there. 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 as we dive into a audience request in debunking SEO myths. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning 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 guest 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. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Is eCommerce SEO really a separate discipline? If so, how does it differ from “regular SEO?” Yes, no, maybe? The answer may surprise you. Over the past few years, Google has gotten better and better at delivering custom SERP features for eCommerce, with new elements being released and tested consistently. These features alone are differential factors between eCommerce SEO and regular website SEO. Navigating the requirements of these features is a skill on its own. Mordy and Crystal dive into some of the latest eCommerce changes to the SERP and what they mean for your SEO strategy and outlook. Kristina Azarenko of MarketingSyrup SEO Academy stops by to explore the importance of internal linking and possible permutations for eCommerce SEO. This and more as you “check out” the latest episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Show me the money with eCommerce SEO Is eCommerce SEO really a separate discipline? If so, how does it differ from “regular SEO?” Yes, no, maybe? The answer may surprise you. Over the past few years, Google has gotten better and better at delivering custom SERP features for eCommerce, with new elements being released and tested consistently. These features alone are differential factors between eCommerce SEO and regular website SEO. Navigating the requirements of these features is a skill on its own. Mordy and Crystal dive into some of the latest eCommerce changes to the SERP and what they mean for your SEO strategy and outlook. Kristina Azarenko of MarketingSyrup SEO Academy stops by to explore the importance of internal linking and possible permutations for eCommerce SEO. This and more as you “check out” the latest episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 18 | December 21, 2022 | 35 MIN 00:00 / 35:03 This week’s guests Kristina Azarenko Kristina has over a decade of hands-on SEO experience. She is the founder of MarketingSyrup Academy which trains smart SEOs. Over 1200+ people have gone through her courses, including Tech SEO Pro and eCommerce SEO Mastery. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, where we're pushing out groovy, new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the fabulous, the wonderful, the incredible Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: At Wix. Isn't that a coincidence? Mordy Oberstein: It is. I feel like I know you from somewhere. Crystal Carter: It's from ... Mordy Oberstein: Have I seen you? You look so familiar, it's from Wix. Crystal Carter: From Wix, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: From Wix. Crystal Carter: That's very funny. Mordy Oberstein: That's funny. I've seen you in the hallway a couple of times. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And strangely enough, not at the hallways at Wix. Mordy Oberstein: Because we don't physically work together. Crystal Carter: No, but that's a wonderful thing about the modern world. I literally see you every day. Mordy Oberstein: Which reminds us, since you're talking about Wix, that the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can now edit all of your SEO stuff. You know, robots, meta tags, title tags, meta-description, structure data and so forth, SEO stuff, with far greater ease than ever before. Check out the new Wix edit by page feature where you can get a look at all of the pages in the folder all at once and update all of the SEO stuff right there, without bouncing from page to page in the editor or dashboard. It's Wix SEO, where we make working on your larger sites easier than ever. All the SEO stuff. Crystal Carter: All the SEO stuff for all of y'all. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I love the word y'all, by the way. So, I adopted that when I moved to Baltimore. My wife's in Baltimore. We lived there for a few years. I never knew what y'all was, because I'm from New York City. We don't have y'all, but y'all is amazing. Crystal Carter: It's a great word. And actually, actually people talk about it not being grammatically correct. However, it exists in lots of other languages. So, if you study Spanish for instance, [foreign language 00:02:03] is the plural you and that is what y'all is. Mordy Oberstein: Y'all. Crystal Carter: It's the plural you. It's also genderless, which is good. So, it's inclusive for everybody. Mordy Oberstein: It's wonderful. I love sending it out in email to people who are not from America. "Hey, y'all." As if they have any clue what I'm talking about. It's really a money word. Crystal Carter: Right, this is true. Mordy Oberstein: And you know what's money? This episode is going to be money. Not because there's any sort of cash transactions involved or anything… Yeah, it's disappointing, I know. But because talking eCommerce, SEO and- Crystal Carter: Cha-ching. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to make that sound effect, but you beat me to it. And the question is, how different is eCommerce SEO from regular SEO, really? Listen in as Crystal and I debate, go back and forth. Crystal Carter: Discuss. Mordy Oberstein: Maybe, we'll see. Between whether or not eComm SEO is really a separate discipline while we dive into the ins and out of eCommerce, SEO along the way, with tips to make sure that you get your eCommerce SEO, right. Kristina Azarenko also will stop by to share her tips around eCommerce, SEO and what moves the needle. Plus we'll dive into what's new on the eCommerce SERP. And of course, some snapping SEO news and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Are you bought in? Because episode number 18 of the SERP's Up podcast is open for business. Crystal Carter: Oh, I like that. That was good. That was good. Mordy Oberstein: So many. Crystal Carter: That was good. Have you brought lots of SEO receipts? Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, I like that. I like that we're getting cornier by the minute. Crystal Carter: There's no stopping us. There's no stopping until we have completed the transaction. Mordy Oberstein: Each week it's going to ... Oh, you got me, I didn't really ... take a second, like whoosh right over my head. That exchange didn't go the way I thought it would. Crystal Carter: Well, but maybe we should lay it away for another day. Mordy Oberstein: We're really shipping it out here. Anyway, in SEO, so let me introduce this, because in SEO there are all sorts of disciplines. There's tech SEO and the people in tech SEO, they focus on crawlability and indexability. There are link builders or outreach specialists and they spend a whole lot of time building links and doing all other sorts of spammy things. Crystal Carter: They do lots of nice things as well. Mordy Oberstein: They do lots of nice things too. I'm really being not the greatest with that. There's also local SEO. Now, that's probably the most famous segment of SEO, and that makes a great deal of sense why there's a separate discipline and separate group of people who are local SEOs because, well, the algorithm is different. It's a whole separate area specialization. There's Google Business Profile, you have to know the ins and outs of that. There's getting your profile, your business listing, suspended accidentally and then reinstated. That's a whole separate discipline of SEO. So, it makes a great deal of sense why there is a separate discipline called local SEO and local SEOs who do local SEO. Now, once such area of SEO that's emerged over the last few years is eComm SEO or eCommerce SEO. Question is should eComm SEO be a separate area of SEO? I recall having a conversation with Tory Gray over at Gray Dot, and her take was, Well, eComm SEO, it's pretty much not that different from regular SEO, just more focused on the regular SEO tasks and greater concentration. So, I don't know, I guess you could slice ... I mean, you could break it down like this. Does eCommerce mean, eCommerce SEO, mean that you just need to be better at certain more common SEO tasks? Or is it a totally different mindset and a totally different outlook, with its own unique considerations? Crystal? Crystal Carter: I think it is. I think it's very unique. I think there's a reason why people look for SEOs who have eCommerce specialty. I think that it has to do with the type of content that you're dealing with. So, for instance, if you have an eCommerce website that is selling popcorn, like different varieties of popcorn, for instance, since we were talking about being corny, then I think that you're going to have lots of different products that are pretty much the same. So, a lot of your content is going to be very, very similar and you're going to need to differentiate them, but also make sure that they show in a sort of similar category of products at the same time. And so, you have to deal with categorization in a different way. You have to deal with duplicate content in a different way. You also have the responsibility of managing lots of user transactions. So, users need to be able to complete a purchase on an eCommerce site. So, this is great for SEOs because it's really easy to show ROI. If you do something on the blog, then you can track it to a basket somewhere. You can say, "Right, well that blog had an assisted conversion for this campaign," et cetera, et cetera. And that's all great. But it also means that from a technical point of view, you have to think about making sure that all of those things are tracked correctly and are linking up and working through, in a way that you don't have to think about when you're, say working in a lead gen space, or working in a publishing space, where there are no transactions that are taking place on the website. There's also the security factor. So people don't think about it, but eCommerce sites are essentially YMYL sites, your money or your life, because people are putting in their credit card details on your website. And if you have a loyalty scheme for instance, and they're also storing those details, people will have ... they'll store content and they'll store information about people and things like that. So, there's lots of things to consider. Lots of moving parts within an eCommerce website, which doesn't necessarily exist on a site that is purely more of brochure site where you're, say, publishing blogs about, I don't know, philosophy, or the stars, or whatever it may be. And you're essentially publishing content and you're looking at your traffic and that's it. That's all people are doing, people are looking at content or consuming content when people are actually carrying out a transaction. There's a whole different set of SEO responsibilities involved. Mordy Oberstein: So, this will be a good lesson for the SEO community as a whole. I respectfully disagree. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: That's okay. Well, I agree a lot. Wait, let me ... being hyperbolic, I agree with a lot of what you just said. I pretty much agree with everything you just said from a different point of view. Well, accept for one thing. I agree that there's a lot of different things that are going to come up because you're working on an eComm site. There's things you're going to have to deal with from anything from page fast and fast navigation to, as you mentioned, to tracking what's happening differently than you would say, with a blog. Although that's possible that a lot of those things also come up if you're working on a blog site, but probably not with the same frequency, or focus, or complexity. So, I agree with what you're saying, but I think, okay, to what extent is it really that different except for the YMYL thing, then I really disagree. Yes, I agree, it's YMYL. I have to agree. Google said it's YMYL. However, if you look at the rank fluctuation data going way back from all the data providers, you have health, you have finance, and you have shopping. Shopping doesn't show the same level of fluctuations as let's say, health or finance. Because content-wise, it's not YMYL. I think Google, to throw a John Mueller at you, has actually said that, but I got to find that for you, otherwise I'm talking out of my ... So, I agree with you. I think though that yes, if you're saying that in eComm, these things are way more in focus, but is that totally different than regular SEO? Crystal Carter: Yes, because of the moving parts. So, I agree that there's absolutely fundamentals that are transferrable. However, if you don't know how to manage product feeds, for instance, and if you don't know how to deal with Google Merchant and you don't know how to manage all of the images that are required for every single product and have to manage the schema markup for that. Mordy Oberstein: That was my next point. I was going to come around and say, I used to really disagree with this. I used to be like with Tory Gray, where like, eComm is the same, what are you talking about? Whatever. However, because you have things like Google Merchant Center and because the SERP itself is fundamentally changed on the eComm side, I am tending to move to your camp on this. Crystal Carter: Right, yeah. And I think that Google has- Mordy Oberstein: SERP is fundamentally different. Crystal Carter: Well, and also think the SERP is fundamentally different, there's an entirely different dedicated feed. Google treats it differently. So, they've created new shopping experiences online that have trends and all sorts of things. And also, the sites are configured differently. So, they're configured for distribution, with data feeds and things like that. And Google has an entirely separate, unique set of guidelines, specifically around eCommerce because of all of these different requirements. And with regards to the ranking fluctuations, I think probably most websites that are trading online, if you think about a big retailer, like a say, Zara, or Walmart, or Amazon, a lot of the baseline requirements for YMYL in place just in order to comply with legal requirements for selling online and locally as well. So, I think that that element of the YMYL part of it, is this an actually a safe place to put in your credit card details, I think should be fairly standard for most websites. I think that dodgy sellers will tend not to rank very well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and that is the fundamental difference, where shopping and say health are both YMYL and from the shopping point of view, getting the YMYL is, as you mentioned, relatively not that difficult, but on a health site it is. And that's because on a health site, the content is the YMYL. Where in the eComm site, it's the shopping experience that's the YMYL. So, you need to get the content right on the health site at a way different level, more detailed level than you would want to say on the shopping site. Because the shopping site, there is a product description and the product header, it's the shopping experience and how that functions that's the YMYL part. But yeah, and just to go back to the SERP part, in case you're not familiar, if you search for, I don't know, buy a new laptop, the SERP for that looks fundamentally different than, I don't know, what are the stars in Orion's Belt? And it looks very similar to a way the local SERP would look, where if you search for a pizza near me, where that SERP is very unique, the eComm SERP has become extremely unique. Whereas now, and in the past, by the way, you had PLAs, you had product listing ads and they're still there, but now you have organic carousels, even on desktop, it's Google pulling in, listing some Google's Merchant Center, Google Shopping onto the main SERP. So, if you're ranking 789 for buy new jeans, no one's seeing you because that shows underneath that massive carousel product listings. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And I think that this has to do with Google trying to make sure that the eCommerce experience on the SERP is very similar to an eCommerce experience for shopping, so that it's easy for people to see which things they can buy and so that the people think of it as a destination. I think with Google's appeal for this, has to do with some of the ways that people are searching. People have done a lot of studies around this and people don't always go to Google first for eCommerce queries. People will sometimes go to other websites for eCommerce queries. And so, Google is looking to be competitive with those sites and they're trying to make their SERP more like those sites. And in order to do that, they have a lot of mechanics behind them, different feeds and different category classifications, and different information behind the content, in order to make sure that they can serve it locally, so they can serve it on Google Shopping. So they can serve it in lots of different ways. And you have to configure your website in a certain way in order to be eligible for those features. Google has specific requirements so that you can show in Google Shopping and so that you can show in local inventory ads as well, that sort of thing. And making your website eligible for that is a specific tactic that you have to do as an eCommerce SEO. And it's something that's almost essential for eCommerce websites, in order to perform. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so that's why fundamentally, I think I'm moving more to your camp because the SERP is fundamentally shifted in a way where you have to have a specialization in eComm to really understand what's happening in that space and to understand how to utilize the SERP because, and to what you mentioned, I think it's important people to realize Google's probably biggest competitor at this point in my personal opinion is Amazon. The web is becoming more eComm-centric. Google realizes that people are going and bypassing Google, they're going to Amazon and Google's doing whatever it can to take away that dynamic and things are going to be ... We're going to be talking about this in a few moments in our what's ... is this new section? Because this SERP is fundamentally shifting very, very quickly because of this. So honestly, if I had to offer you my top eComm SEO tip, if we watch what's happening on the results page itself, see what's there. If you're, I don't know, you're selling jeans, type in buy new jeans or whatever it is that you're selling, and actually look at what's showing up and how the SERP is formatted, because that's going to clue you in as to what you should be doing and if whether or not rankings are actually meaningful or not. Oh by the way, another point of order before we wrap this up and just a mistake I see all the time, all, all, all the time, Google can't read your texts and images. Google can only read text, text. So, if you have a really nice image, that's got really fancy calligraphy or whatever, and it's all talking about your products. And I've seen this by the way, with shipping details, order specifications instead of having actual text, it's in an image that you just upload to the page. Google can't read any of that. So please, if you're operating an eComm site, you're ... Yeah, eComm SEO, I'm going to dive into that, get rid of all your images, use actual text. Crystal Carter: And PDFs. They can read PDFs but they don't call them in the same way. So absolutely, make sure that any of your things are available on there as well. I think that Google's definitely moving towards visual search, but certainly not for understanding texts, but certainly not for your Ts and Cs at all. Mordy Oberstein: You have to write it out. You can have the image there also fine, whatever, looks nice, but you have to have text. But who also knows a lot about what moves the needle for eCommerce SEO, Kristina Azarenko, which is why she's here to tell us what moves the needle for eCommerce SEO. Kristina Azarenko: Well, I'd say that when it comes to technical SEO for eCommerce, there are many things in play. But what I see that works really well is internal linking. And many people just focus on building external links only and they don't control them, but they forget about internal links that they have full control of. Internal links are super, super important. They help to show hierarchy of the website and also distribute authority properly. Plus, they help Google to faster discover and index or re-index internal pages of the website. And it's especially critical for eCommerce because especially if you have dynamic stock with products going in stock and going out of stock, you want Google to pick this up real quickly. So, implementing internal linking is one of the best technical SEO tactics that will bring online stores results. Now, how do you do this at scale? Because we don't want to spend lots of time on implementing this manually on every single page. That's just not sustainable. So, we want to do this at scale. And when it comes to internal linking, what you can do, you can use link blocks depending on your page template. For example, level one category links to other level one categories as well as to the level two categories that belong to it. Then the level two category links back to level one category it belongs to, plus to other level two categories under this umbrella. So, think about it as a spider web that links all relevant pages of the website. And let's take a product page as an example. Then on a product page, you can have breadcrumbs linking to the categories and subcategories this product belongs to. And it's super cool for user experience as well because people want to know where they are, when they land on a product page. Then you can have link blocks featuring upsells and related products and I don't know, other products in this category, the imagination is endless honestly. So, it's a win-win situation here because it helps with internal linking on the one hand. And on the other hand, it helps to increase the average card value as well. So, use power of internal linking for sure. When it comes to eCommerce SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Kristina Azarenko, follow her on Twitter. Thank you so much, Kristina. She's at A-Z-A-R-C-H-I-C-K on Twitter. Will link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. She's a wonderful SEO, always putting out tons of insights and we really appreciate her taking the time to share her thoughts in eCommerce SEO with us. Crystal Carter: Thanks, Kristina. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Kristina. Well, speaking of eCommerce, SEO and the SERP, like we mentioned before, I know we hinted at what we're going to talk about now earlier. Well, here it is, everything ... Back in the day, when I used to really track SERP features very, very heavily as part of my job at the time, and a lot of what Google was changing back in the day, so we're saying, I don't know, circa 2016, 2017, even through 2018, was all about local SEO, local pack changes, local knowledge panel changes, local finder changes, a test over here, a test over there, hotel listings, testing that out and keeping track of all these things that Google was updating and changing, whether it was this button or this feature on the results page, was a way of understanding, hey, this is where Google's focused. Well, that focus has changed because today the focus seems to be all in on eComm. Google keeps testing this and updating that, and announcing this. And it's all really ... Not all, but a very large majority, in my opinion, is about eCommerce. So, this is a very special or fun little version of a segment we call Is this new? Because none of it's new. I mean, right now, none of it is new. Crystal Carter: It's not new. Mordy Oberstein: It's all been around for a little bit, but it's all been reported on. But a lot of us might not be familiar, unless you're a ... I'll call it an SEO geek who's keeping up on this particular stuff regularly. And it's very particular type of SEO geek who's doing it, such as myself. Crystal Carter: His name is Mordy Oberstein. Mordy Oberstein: His name is Mordy. There are people out like Brian Fresberland, Brodie Clark, Glenn Gabe, Lily Ray, Marie Haynes. There are people out there- Mordy Oberstein: ... who are really into this stuff. It's like SEO voyeurism. What's changing on the SERP? Aha! Crystal Carter: It's like a little scavenger hunt and yeah, it's like- Mordy Oberstein: Love it, so much fun. Is this new? Is this new? But in this case it's not. But unless you're really keeping up on it, you may not know about it, but it's really important to know about. So it's a special eComm version of is this new? Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: So, as mentioned, none of it's new. However, I want to point out a few really cool things that have been announced or talked about in the relatively recent pass around eComm. For example, Brian Fresberland caught this one. If it's carousel of items that's pre-owned, check this out. Google was testing a little green icons like a leaf. With pre-owned next to it. Crystal Carter: Right, which I think is actually really good. And I think this is probably them looking at how to compete with say, Facebook Marketplace. And there's a lot of pre-owned marketplaces, like Vinted is another one that is an app that does that sort of thing. I think they've given a green leaf to encourage people from an environmental point of view, but it's also useful, so people can understand that it's a secondhand thing, but it's still great. Mordy Oberstein: And it's also good if you're somebody who's selling something secondhand, instead of going to whatever you were going to before, I don't know, I've never really selled stuff secondhand in a long time. I guess, Facebook would be the main place for this. Oh, maybe I'll go and put it on ... I'll think of Google as a way to bring in traffic to sell my product. So, it's a signal to people selling stuff at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. I think it's a great opportunity and I think it's something that should help with the SERP and should help people to filter as well. It's a nice option to have it to be able to filter. If you think on eBay for instance, you can see brand new or you can see secondhand and that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: And Google's done this before, they have the ... for example, in hotel listings, you can see a separate filter for rentals, like Airbnb rentals. So, it's not a new thing for Google as a concept. Another one, Google announces officially that they're going to have coupon codes and you can copy and paste within a Google Business profile. So, if you're Macy's and you have a coupon code, you can list it there you there'll be a special button. It's already been live in some markets, where you just click on it, put in the coupon. It's a way of advertising your coupons on Google. Crystal Carter: Love coupons. I am entirely- Mordy Oberstein: Do you remember going to the store and cutting them out? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. You'd get the newspaper and they was always like ... Pillsbury was always like, "Oh yeah." Right, Pillsbury were like, "You want cinnamon muffins?" I'm like, "Yes, I would love a cinnamon roll." It's just like you can get that cinnamon roll for really cheap. You're like, "Okay, well thank you very ... " Mordy Oberstein: But it's again, it's another way. Oh, the coupon code's right there. I'm not going to go to Amazon. I'm going to go to Google, check out, see if there's a coupon there. I'll clip it, use it. Good to go. Crystal Carter: I think this is another example of how eCommerce SEO often includes an ad element. So for instance, Google Merchant Center, they change around the requirements, but for a while it was a case where if you wanted to get on Google Merchant and have free shopping listings, you'd have to essentially make your site compliant for ads. Even if you weren't serving ads, you'd have to make your site compliant for ads in order to be active on Google Merchant. I think that elements like this, the coupon codes, you said it would go through Google Business profile for instance, that is essentially something that's a bit advertisingy but is going to help you get clicks, help you get conversions. And it's something that eCommerce SEOs would need to think about. I think it also is an example of some of the overlap between the disciplines. So in SEO, very often you won't stay in one lane as an SEO, you'll do a little bit of eComm, you'll do a little bit of local as well because I've done it before where I've worked with eComm clients and we were looking at both their local activity to drive in-store traffic, and also their online activity at the same time. And one supports the other. And those coupons, for instance, if they're adding it to Google Business profile, that means that they, they'll have a bricks and mortar location and that's something that will give them some visibility. And so, that's something where you would see an overlap. And it's also a great example of some of the elements that you have to think about as an eCommerce SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so the last one I want to talk about is Google announced Price Insights. Price Insights are coming for products. I actually like this, I love this because I think this is where Google's going to beat Amazon. Not that I'm rooting for one over the other, but if I'm watching Google try to do this and they're not being as successful as I think they want to be yet, maybe this is where it's going to come from. And you've seen price insights all over the SERP before. For example, flights. You search for a flight, Google will tell you that this is generally cheaper than it usually is. Or for hotels, the same kind of thing. And that's going to be coming for products, where you'll be able to see, yep, it's usually a thousand dollars but now it's here on Walmart for 700. That's a deal. And this is how Google took down, by the way, sites like Expedia, they didn't take them down. This is how Google won that battle. Sites like Expedia, Travelocity, or whatever, they're all about getting you to convert, get that flight in, book the ticket through us, we're going to get the money. And Google's like, "You know what we should do? Let's offer tons of insights around travel." And Expedia must have data about this, but they don't show it and Google are like, "We're just going to show it. We're going to use that." And they fill the need that no one was doing. And I think with products, it's the same thing. You go to Amazon, I don't know how much this normally costs. I don't know if it's a good price. I mean, I kind of know because I've been looking for a while, if I'm tracking it mentally, intuitively. But here's Google's going to do it and they're already doing it a little bit. So if you Google something, I don't know, Dell Inspiron 15, Google will list a model there and it'll have a whole ... a mobile, a whole bunch of listings where you can get it Amazon, Office Depot, Walmart, and it'll put in green the lowest price and it'll say usually X. So in this case it's saying in green on Amazon, it's $466 and it's usually $479. Those insights, the more they do, it's going to get people to go, "You know what, maybe I will buy it from Amazon, but first I'm going to go to Google and check out what the price insights are." Crystal Carter: Right, and I think that this is them using the data that they have. So, they'll be able to see what's going on across the web overall in a way that other folks will not be able to see. And they'll also have the information about the RRP from the SEO markup, because this is the other thing, within eCommerce for certain products, they'll have certain specifications. So, for instance, if you have apparel, if you're selling clothes, you have to categorize things in a certain way. You have to tag things in a certain way. You have to have certain attributes present on your page and they'll make those standard, so that they can enable these kinds of features. So they'll have that information available. And it's something that consumers love that saves you so much time of having to go back and forth to 17 different, sites rather than just being able to see it all in one place. That's going to save me a lot of time. I'm totally the kind of person who would shop around for three hours before making that decision. And so, if I can see it on one tab, that's really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking at it right here. My Apple MacBook Pro 16. Google's telling me typically is $2,099 to $2,699. And it lists a bunch of places where I can get it and the prices. Crystal Carter: Right, and it looks like you can sort it, move things up and down as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you could dive in deeper. So here I'm clicking on Best Buy it's telling me what the normal ... there's free shipping from December 5th through December 7th and what the taxes are and there's whatever. And yeah, you can expand each one of these and get more information. It looks like it's an up down, so it's an expansion. There we go. Really, it's only going to get deeper and it's only going to get more prolific is one of my favorite words. Crystal Carter: It's a good word. Mordy Oberstein: Is a good word. It's a money word. Crystal Carter: It's a money word. It's a $5 word. Mordy Oberstein: Cha-ching. So is it new? None of this is new. It's going to be new with the Price Insights, it's going to be more and more and more. We're just seeing the very, very beginning of this, so I would keep a ... If you're in the eComm space, I would keep an eye on that. So it's new, but it's not new. But you may not have known about it. So for you, it's new. Crystal Carter: New to you, which is true. Mordy Oberstein: So this is new. Speaker 5: Yay. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else is new? News. News is always new. Otherwise, it wouldn't be news? It'd be old news, not news. Crystal Carter: Olds. It would be olds not news. Mordy Oberstein: Olds, Not new. So, here is a very new, it is new. The snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. I don't know where to start. There's so much news this week. Or in pop culture terms you might say, "Holy abundance of SEO news, Batman." Where do I even start? Well, let's start with this from Barry Schwartz over his search engine Roundtable. Google gives official names, some of SERP features with visual elements gallery. I love this thing. It's basically a visual breakdown of the Google results page, thereby introducing official and new terminology. For example, what we've always called an organic result, is now being called a text result. I have been screaming about this since literally 2019 when I interviewed Barry Schwartz on another SEO podcast. There needs to be formal names for these things because what I call it and what you call it, what that person calls it may actually be different. But now there are official names for these things. Check out the link of the show notes so you can see the visual gallery and understand what Google is calling all of the things. Okay, onwards on our path towards SEO news glory, this one from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google December 2022 link spam update rolling out now. I mean, it might be complete by the time you hear this, but time of the recording it's rolling out now. Yes, another spam update. No, you're not wrong. Google did release one in October and this however, is really interesting because this time Google says quote, "SpamBrain is our AI-based spam prevention system. Besides using it to detect spam directly, it can now detect both sites buying links and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links." Does this have teeth? I don't know. I really hope so. The tracking tools have been pretty quiet, but with the spam update, that makes a lot of sense. So, the jury is still out. I would love to see this have some teeth. Either way, don't buy links. Last up. An update to the quality reader's guidelines, the guidelines given to manual evaluators so that Google can use it to check its algo against some real human input. This time Google has added another E to E-A-T. So E-A-T is expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. But now it's not E-A-T, it's E-E-A-T. So it's not eat, it's eeat. I'm sorry for that. From the Lily Ray over Search Engine Land, E-E-A-T. Oh, it's a mouthful. E-E-A-T. And major updates to Google's quality radar guidelines. The new E here, by the way, is for experience, as in having some. Google has already added having firsthand experience to the guidelines around its product review update, the algorithm guidelines around the product review update, which makes me personally feel that Google is looking to see how well some of its algorithmic abilities are as compared to real human input. That's just my theory. That's just my theory. Anyway, have a look over the show notes. See what Lily wrote up. She really compares the old guidelines to the new guidelines. Take away some insights, create your own theories, and that'll do it for this week's snappy news. And we're back from the snappiest of snappiest news, wasn't that snappy? Crystal Carter: It's so snappy. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely snappy. Crystal Carter: That's literally the snappiest news I've ever heard. Mordy Oberstein: Other than last week's snappy news. Crystal Carter: Yes, which was also snappy. Mordy Oberstein: Also snappy. Crystal Carter: And it might be snappy next week, I'm guessing? Mordy Oberstein: I love snapping. Crystal Carter: Snap, like the Jets and the Sharks. (singing) Mordy Oberstein: Right, the teachers ... I used to applaud the other teachers when they said something at school-wide meetings, you do the little snap thing. Crystal Carter: Did you go to a school for poetry? Mordy Oberstein: No, I was teaching at a public school in Baltimore. Crystal Carter: Well, was everyone poets? Because that's how poets clap, with snaps. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I don't know, it was a thing. Teachers are weird, we're just weird to be honest with you. Anyway, before we wrap it all up, and because we're talking about eCommerce and when it comes to talking about eCommerce and SEO. This week's follow of the week, so you can learn more about SEO awesomeness would be, the one, the only member of Wix's own SEO advisory board, Luke Carthy, @MrLukeCarthy over on Twitter. Crystal Carter: And Luke is fantastic. He's a great person to follow. He does talks, he does podcasts, he does these great deep dives into things that he would like to see from big retailers around eCommerce. And he's a fount of knowledge with regards to eCommerce. And yeah, he's a fantastic follow on Twitter and all of the other social media channels as well. Mordy Oberstein: And what I like about Luke is he talks about SEO and we'll talk about eComm at the same time. So, if you go to his website, which will link to his show notes obviously, he'll talk about SEO stuff but also talk about general eComm stuff. It's a nice follow-up because you're getting the best of both worlds. For example, on the actual Wix SEO Hub, he wrote about product descriptions, not from SEO point of view per se, but in general, about writing the best product description. So, that's why I think he's a great follow. Crystal Carter: He's a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: He's a great follow. So follow Luke @ MrLukeCarthy, M-R-L-U-K-E-C-A-R-T-H-Y. We'll link to another show notes, over on Twitter. And that's going to do it for this week's SERP's Up podcast. Crystal Carter: Thanks for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that was money, right? Crystal Carter: That was money. I think we secured the bag. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the bag. Crystal Carter: It's in the bag. Mordy Oberstein: This episode is in the bag. Crystal Carter: Oh. Mordy Oberstein: More jokes, all the time. It never stops. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with new episode. We dive into the deep dive, or not deep dive depending on how you look at it, that are site audits. How far down the wormhole do you need to go when auditing your next site? We'll talk about next week. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts. Or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes, or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Ka-ching. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Kristina Azarenko Luke Carthy Tory Gray of Gray Dot Company Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Marketing Syrup News: Google Gives Official Names Of Some Search Features With Visual Elements Gallery Google December 2022 Link Spam Update Rolling Out Now E-E-A-T and major updates to Google’s quality rater guidelines Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Kristina Azarenko Luke Carthy Tory Gray of Gray Dot Company Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Marketing Syrup News: Google Gives Official Names Of Some Search Features With Visual Elements Gallery Google December 2022 Link Spam Update Rolling Out Now E-E-A-T and major updates to Google’s quality rater guidelines Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, where we're pushing out groovy, new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the fabulous, the wonderful, the incredible Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: At Wix. Isn't that a coincidence? Mordy Oberstein: It is. I feel like I know you from somewhere. Crystal Carter: It's from ... Mordy Oberstein: Have I seen you? You look so familiar, it's from Wix. Crystal Carter: From Wix, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: From Wix. Crystal Carter: That's very funny. Mordy Oberstein: That's funny. I've seen you in the hallway a couple of times. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And strangely enough, not at the hallways at Wix. Mordy Oberstein: Because we don't physically work together. Crystal Carter: No, but that's a wonderful thing about the modern world. I literally see you every day. Mordy Oberstein: Which reminds us, since you're talking about Wix, that the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can now edit all of your SEO stuff. You know, robots, meta tags, title tags, meta-description, structure data and so forth, SEO stuff, with far greater ease than ever before. Check out the new Wix edit by page feature where you can get a look at all of the pages in the folder all at once and update all of the SEO stuff right there, without bouncing from page to page in the editor or dashboard. It's Wix SEO, where we make working on your larger sites easier than ever. All the SEO stuff. Crystal Carter: All the SEO stuff for all of y'all. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I love the word y'all, by the way. So, I adopted that when I moved to Baltimore. My wife's in Baltimore. We lived there for a few years. I never knew what y'all was, because I'm from New York City. We don't have y'all, but y'all is amazing. Crystal Carter: It's a great word. And actually, actually people talk about it not being grammatically correct. However, it exists in lots of other languages. So, if you study Spanish for instance, [foreign language 00:02:03] is the plural you and that is what y'all is. Mordy Oberstein: Y'all. Crystal Carter: It's the plural you. It's also genderless, which is good. So, it's inclusive for everybody. Mordy Oberstein: It's wonderful. I love sending it out in email to people who are not from America. "Hey, y'all." As if they have any clue what I'm talking about. It's really a money word. Crystal Carter: Right, this is true. Mordy Oberstein: And you know what's money? This episode is going to be money. Not because there's any sort of cash transactions involved or anything… Yeah, it's disappointing, I know. But because talking eCommerce, SEO and- Crystal Carter: Cha-ching. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to make that sound effect, but you beat me to it. And the question is, how different is eCommerce SEO from regular SEO, really? Listen in as Crystal and I debate, go back and forth. Crystal Carter: Discuss. Mordy Oberstein: Maybe, we'll see. Between whether or not eComm SEO is really a separate discipline while we dive into the ins and out of eCommerce, SEO along the way, with tips to make sure that you get your eCommerce SEO, right. Kristina Azarenko also will stop by to share her tips around eCommerce, SEO and what moves the needle. Plus we'll dive into what's new on the eCommerce SERP. And of course, some snapping SEO news and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Are you bought in? Because episode number 18 of the SERP's Up podcast is open for business. Crystal Carter: Oh, I like that. That was good. That was good. Mordy Oberstein: So many. Crystal Carter: That was good. Have you brought lots of SEO receipts? Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, I like that. I like that we're getting cornier by the minute. Crystal Carter: There's no stopping us. There's no stopping until we have completed the transaction. Mordy Oberstein: Each week it's going to ... Oh, you got me, I didn't really ... take a second, like whoosh right over my head. That exchange didn't go the way I thought it would. Crystal Carter: Well, but maybe we should lay it away for another day. Mordy Oberstein: We're really shipping it out here. Anyway, in SEO, so let me introduce this, because in SEO there are all sorts of disciplines. There's tech SEO and the people in tech SEO, they focus on crawlability and indexability. There are link builders or outreach specialists and they spend a whole lot of time building links and doing all other sorts of spammy things. Crystal Carter: They do lots of nice things as well. Mordy Oberstein: They do lots of nice things too. I'm really being not the greatest with that. There's also local SEO. Now, that's probably the most famous segment of SEO, and that makes a great deal of sense why there's a separate discipline and separate group of people who are local SEOs because, well, the algorithm is different. It's a whole separate area specialization. There's Google Business Profile, you have to know the ins and outs of that. There's getting your profile, your business listing, suspended accidentally and then reinstated. That's a whole separate discipline of SEO. So, it makes a great deal of sense why there is a separate discipline called local SEO and local SEOs who do local SEO. Now, once such area of SEO that's emerged over the last few years is eComm SEO or eCommerce SEO. Question is should eComm SEO be a separate area of SEO? I recall having a conversation with Tory Gray over at Gray Dot, and her take was, Well, eComm SEO, it's pretty much not that different from regular SEO, just more focused on the regular SEO tasks and greater concentration. So, I don't know, I guess you could slice ... I mean, you could break it down like this. Does eCommerce mean, eCommerce SEO, mean that you just need to be better at certain more common SEO tasks? Or is it a totally different mindset and a totally different outlook, with its own unique considerations? Crystal? Crystal Carter: I think it is. I think it's very unique. I think there's a reason why people look for SEOs who have eCommerce specialty. I think that it has to do with the type of content that you're dealing with. So, for instance, if you have an eCommerce website that is selling popcorn, like different varieties of popcorn, for instance, since we were talking about being corny, then I think that you're going to have lots of different products that are pretty much the same. So, a lot of your content is going to be very, very similar and you're going to need to differentiate them, but also make sure that they show in a sort of similar category of products at the same time. And so, you have to deal with categorization in a different way. You have to deal with duplicate content in a different way. You also have the responsibility of managing lots of user transactions. So, users need to be able to complete a purchase on an eCommerce site. So, this is great for SEOs because it's really easy to show ROI. If you do something on the blog, then you can track it to a basket somewhere. You can say, "Right, well that blog had an assisted conversion for this campaign," et cetera, et cetera. And that's all great. But it also means that from a technical point of view, you have to think about making sure that all of those things are tracked correctly and are linking up and working through, in a way that you don't have to think about when you're, say working in a lead gen space, or working in a publishing space, where there are no transactions that are taking place on the website. There's also the security factor. So people don't think about it, but eCommerce sites are essentially YMYL sites, your money or your life, because people are putting in their credit card details on your website. And if you have a loyalty scheme for instance, and they're also storing those details, people will have ... they'll store content and they'll store information about people and things like that. So, there's lots of things to consider. Lots of moving parts within an eCommerce website, which doesn't necessarily exist on a site that is purely more of brochure site where you're, say, publishing blogs about, I don't know, philosophy, or the stars, or whatever it may be. And you're essentially publishing content and you're looking at your traffic and that's it. That's all people are doing, people are looking at content or consuming content when people are actually carrying out a transaction. There's a whole different set of SEO responsibilities involved. Mordy Oberstein: So, this will be a good lesson for the SEO community as a whole. I respectfully disagree. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: That's okay. Well, I agree a lot. Wait, let me ... being hyperbolic, I agree with a lot of what you just said. I pretty much agree with everything you just said from a different point of view. Well, accept for one thing. I agree that there's a lot of different things that are going to come up because you're working on an eComm site. There's things you're going to have to deal with from anything from page fast and fast navigation to, as you mentioned, to tracking what's happening differently than you would say, with a blog. Although that's possible that a lot of those things also come up if you're working on a blog site, but probably not with the same frequency, or focus, or complexity. So, I agree with what you're saying, but I think, okay, to what extent is it really that different except for the YMYL thing, then I really disagree. Yes, I agree, it's YMYL. I have to agree. Google said it's YMYL. However, if you look at the rank fluctuation data going way back from all the data providers, you have health, you have finance, and you have shopping. Shopping doesn't show the same level of fluctuations as let's say, health or finance. Because content-wise, it's not YMYL. I think Google, to throw a John Mueller at you, has actually said that, but I got to find that for you, otherwise I'm talking out of my ... So, I agree with you. I think though that yes, if you're saying that in eComm, these things are way more in focus, but is that totally different than regular SEO? Crystal Carter: Yes, because of the moving parts. So, I agree that there's absolutely fundamentals that are transferrable. However, if you don't know how to manage product feeds, for instance, and if you don't know how to deal with Google Merchant and you don't know how to manage all of the images that are required for every single product and have to manage the schema markup for that. Mordy Oberstein: That was my next point. I was going to come around and say, I used to really disagree with this. I used to be like with Tory Gray, where like, eComm is the same, what are you talking about? Whatever. However, because you have things like Google Merchant Center and because the SERP itself is fundamentally changed on the eComm side, I am tending to move to your camp on this. Crystal Carter: Right, yeah. And I think that Google has- Mordy Oberstein: SERP is fundamentally different. Crystal Carter: Well, and also think the SERP is fundamentally different, there's an entirely different dedicated feed. Google treats it differently. So, they've created new shopping experiences online that have trends and all sorts of things. And also, the sites are configured differently. So, they're configured for distribution, with data feeds and things like that. And Google has an entirely separate, unique set of guidelines, specifically around eCommerce because of all of these different requirements. And with regards to the ranking fluctuations, I think probably most websites that are trading online, if you think about a big retailer, like a say, Zara, or Walmart, or Amazon, a lot of the baseline requirements for YMYL in place just in order to comply with legal requirements for selling online and locally as well. So, I think that that element of the YMYL part of it, is this an actually a safe place to put in your credit card details, I think should be fairly standard for most websites. I think that dodgy sellers will tend not to rank very well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and that is the fundamental difference, where shopping and say health are both YMYL and from the shopping point of view, getting the YMYL is, as you mentioned, relatively not that difficult, but on a health site it is. And that's because on a health site, the content is the YMYL. Where in the eComm site, it's the shopping experience that's the YMYL. So, you need to get the content right on the health site at a way different level, more detailed level than you would want to say on the shopping site. Because the shopping site, there is a product description and the product header, it's the shopping experience and how that functions that's the YMYL part. But yeah, and just to go back to the SERP part, in case you're not familiar, if you search for, I don't know, buy a new laptop, the SERP for that looks fundamentally different than, I don't know, what are the stars in Orion's Belt? And it looks very similar to a way the local SERP would look, where if you search for a pizza near me, where that SERP is very unique, the eComm SERP has become extremely unique. Whereas now, and in the past, by the way, you had PLAs, you had product listing ads and they're still there, but now you have organic carousels, even on desktop, it's Google pulling in, listing some Google's Merchant Center, Google Shopping onto the main SERP. So, if you're ranking 789 for buy new jeans, no one's seeing you because that shows underneath that massive carousel product listings. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And I think that this has to do with Google trying to make sure that the eCommerce experience on the SERP is very similar to an eCommerce experience for shopping, so that it's easy for people to see which things they can buy and so that the people think of it as a destination. I think with Google's appeal for this, has to do with some of the ways that people are searching. People have done a lot of studies around this and people don't always go to Google first for eCommerce queries. People will sometimes go to other websites for eCommerce queries. And so, Google is looking to be competitive with those sites and they're trying to make their SERP more like those sites. And in order to do that, they have a lot of mechanics behind them, different feeds and different category classifications, and different information behind the content, in order to make sure that they can serve it locally, so they can serve it on Google Shopping. So they can serve it in lots of different ways. And you have to configure your website in a certain way in order to be eligible for those features. Google has specific requirements so that you can show in Google Shopping and so that you can show in local inventory ads as well, that sort of thing. And making your website eligible for that is a specific tactic that you have to do as an eCommerce SEO. And it's something that's almost essential for eCommerce websites, in order to perform. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so that's why fundamentally, I think I'm moving more to your camp because the SERP is fundamentally shifted in a way where you have to have a specialization in eComm to really understand what's happening in that space and to understand how to utilize the SERP because, and to what you mentioned, I think it's important people to realize Google's probably biggest competitor at this point in my personal opinion is Amazon. The web is becoming more eComm-centric. Google realizes that people are going and bypassing Google, they're going to Amazon and Google's doing whatever it can to take away that dynamic and things are going to be ... We're going to be talking about this in a few moments in our what's ... is this new section? Because this SERP is fundamentally shifting very, very quickly because of this. So honestly, if I had to offer you my top eComm SEO tip, if we watch what's happening on the results page itself, see what's there. If you're, I don't know, you're selling jeans, type in buy new jeans or whatever it is that you're selling, and actually look at what's showing up and how the SERP is formatted, because that's going to clue you in as to what you should be doing and if whether or not rankings are actually meaningful or not. Oh by the way, another point of order before we wrap this up and just a mistake I see all the time, all, all, all the time, Google can't read your texts and images. Google can only read text, text. So, if you have a really nice image, that's got really fancy calligraphy or whatever, and it's all talking about your products. And I've seen this by the way, with shipping details, order specifications instead of having actual text, it's in an image that you just upload to the page. Google can't read any of that. So please, if you're operating an eComm site, you're ... Yeah, eComm SEO, I'm going to dive into that, get rid of all your images, use actual text. Crystal Carter: And PDFs. They can read PDFs but they don't call them in the same way. So absolutely, make sure that any of your things are available on there as well. I think that Google's definitely moving towards visual search, but certainly not for understanding texts, but certainly not for your Ts and Cs at all. Mordy Oberstein: You have to write it out. You can have the image there also fine, whatever, looks nice, but you have to have text. But who also knows a lot about what moves the needle for eCommerce SEO, Kristina Azarenko, which is why she's here to tell us what moves the needle for eCommerce SEO. Kristina Azarenko: Well, I'd say that when it comes to technical SEO for eCommerce, there are many things in play. But what I see that works really well is internal linking. And many people just focus on building external links only and they don't control them, but they forget about internal links that they have full control of. Internal links are super, super important. They help to show hierarchy of the website and also distribute authority properly. Plus, they help Google to faster discover and index or re-index internal pages of the website. And it's especially critical for eCommerce because especially if you have dynamic stock with products going in stock and going out of stock, you want Google to pick this up real quickly. So, implementing internal linking is one of the best technical SEO tactics that will bring online stores results. Now, how do you do this at scale? Because we don't want to spend lots of time on implementing this manually on every single page. That's just not sustainable. So, we want to do this at scale. And when it comes to internal linking, what you can do, you can use link blocks depending on your page template. For example, level one category links to other level one categories as well as to the level two categories that belong to it. Then the level two category links back to level one category it belongs to, plus to other level two categories under this umbrella. So, think about it as a spider web that links all relevant pages of the website. And let's take a product page as an example. Then on a product page, you can have breadcrumbs linking to the categories and subcategories this product belongs to. And it's super cool for user experience as well because people want to know where they are, when they land on a product page. Then you can have link blocks featuring upsells and related products and I don't know, other products in this category, the imagination is endless honestly. So, it's a win-win situation here because it helps with internal linking on the one hand. And on the other hand, it helps to increase the average card value as well. So, use power of internal linking for sure. When it comes to eCommerce SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Kristina Azarenko, follow her on Twitter. Thank you so much, Kristina. She's at A-Z-A-R-C-H-I-C-K on Twitter. Will link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. She's a wonderful SEO, always putting out tons of insights and we really appreciate her taking the time to share her thoughts in eCommerce SEO with us. Crystal Carter: Thanks, Kristina. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Kristina. Well, speaking of eCommerce, SEO and the SERP, like we mentioned before, I know we hinted at what we're going to talk about now earlier. Well, here it is, everything ... Back in the day, when I used to really track SERP features very, very heavily as part of my job at the time, and a lot of what Google was changing back in the day, so we're saying, I don't know, circa 2016, 2017, even through 2018, was all about local SEO, local pack changes, local knowledge panel changes, local finder changes, a test over here, a test over there, hotel listings, testing that out and keeping track of all these things that Google was updating and changing, whether it was this button or this feature on the results page, was a way of understanding, hey, this is where Google's focused. Well, that focus has changed because today the focus seems to be all in on eComm. Google keeps testing this and updating that, and announcing this. And it's all really ... Not all, but a very large majority, in my opinion, is about eCommerce. So, this is a very special or fun little version of a segment we call Is this new? Because none of it's new. I mean, right now, none of it is new. Crystal Carter: It's not new. Mordy Oberstein: It's all been around for a little bit, but it's all been reported on. But a lot of us might not be familiar, unless you're a ... I'll call it an SEO geek who's keeping up on this particular stuff regularly. And it's very particular type of SEO geek who's doing it, such as myself. Crystal Carter: His name is Mordy Oberstein. Mordy Oberstein: His name is Mordy. There are people out like Brian Fresberland, Brodie Clark, Glenn Gabe, Lily Ray, Marie Haynes. There are people out there- Mordy Oberstein: ... who are really into this stuff. It's like SEO voyeurism. What's changing on the SERP? Aha! Crystal Carter: It's like a little scavenger hunt and yeah, it's like- Mordy Oberstein: Love it, so much fun. Is this new? Is this new? But in this case it's not. But unless you're really keeping up on it, you may not know about it, but it's really important to know about. So it's a special eComm version of is this new? Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: So, as mentioned, none of it's new. However, I want to point out a few really cool things that have been announced or talked about in the relatively recent pass around eComm. For example, Brian Fresberland caught this one. If it's carousel of items that's pre-owned, check this out. Google was testing a little green icons like a leaf. With pre-owned next to it. Crystal Carter: Right, which I think is actually really good. And I think this is probably them looking at how to compete with say, Facebook Marketplace. And there's a lot of pre-owned marketplaces, like Vinted is another one that is an app that does that sort of thing. I think they've given a green leaf to encourage people from an environmental point of view, but it's also useful, so people can understand that it's a secondhand thing, but it's still great. Mordy Oberstein: And it's also good if you're somebody who's selling something secondhand, instead of going to whatever you were going to before, I don't know, I've never really selled stuff secondhand in a long time. I guess, Facebook would be the main place for this. Oh, maybe I'll go and put it on ... I'll think of Google as a way to bring in traffic to sell my product. So, it's a signal to people selling stuff at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. I think it's a great opportunity and I think it's something that should help with the SERP and should help people to filter as well. It's a nice option to have it to be able to filter. If you think on eBay for instance, you can see brand new or you can see secondhand and that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: And Google's done this before, they have the ... for example, in hotel listings, you can see a separate filter for rentals, like Airbnb rentals. So, it's not a new thing for Google as a concept. Another one, Google announces officially that they're going to have coupon codes and you can copy and paste within a Google Business profile. So, if you're Macy's and you have a coupon code, you can list it there you there'll be a special button. It's already been live in some markets, where you just click on it, put in the coupon. It's a way of advertising your coupons on Google. Crystal Carter: Love coupons. I am entirely- Mordy Oberstein: Do you remember going to the store and cutting them out? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. You'd get the newspaper and they was always like ... Pillsbury was always like, "Oh yeah." Right, Pillsbury were like, "You want cinnamon muffins?" I'm like, "Yes, I would love a cinnamon roll." It's just like you can get that cinnamon roll for really cheap. You're like, "Okay, well thank you very ... " Mordy Oberstein: But it's again, it's another way. Oh, the coupon code's right there. I'm not going to go to Amazon. I'm going to go to Google, check out, see if there's a coupon there. I'll clip it, use it. Good to go. Crystal Carter: I think this is another example of how eCommerce SEO often includes an ad element. So for instance, Google Merchant Center, they change around the requirements, but for a while it was a case where if you wanted to get on Google Merchant and have free shopping listings, you'd have to essentially make your site compliant for ads. Even if you weren't serving ads, you'd have to make your site compliant for ads in order to be active on Google Merchant. I think that elements like this, the coupon codes, you said it would go through Google Business profile for instance, that is essentially something that's a bit advertisingy but is going to help you get clicks, help you get conversions. And it's something that eCommerce SEOs would need to think about. I think it also is an example of some of the overlap between the disciplines. So in SEO, very often you won't stay in one lane as an SEO, you'll do a little bit of eComm, you'll do a little bit of local as well because I've done it before where I've worked with eComm clients and we were looking at both their local activity to drive in-store traffic, and also their online activity at the same time. And one supports the other. And those coupons, for instance, if they're adding it to Google Business profile, that means that they, they'll have a bricks and mortar location and that's something that will give them some visibility. And so, that's something where you would see an overlap. And it's also a great example of some of the elements that you have to think about as an eCommerce SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so the last one I want to talk about is Google announced Price Insights. Price Insights are coming for products. I actually like this, I love this because I think this is where Google's going to beat Amazon. Not that I'm rooting for one over the other, but if I'm watching Google try to do this and they're not being as successful as I think they want to be yet, maybe this is where it's going to come from. And you've seen price insights all over the SERP before. For example, flights. You search for a flight, Google will tell you that this is generally cheaper than it usually is. Or for hotels, the same kind of thing. And that's going to be coming for products, where you'll be able to see, yep, it's usually a thousand dollars but now it's here on Walmart for 700. That's a deal. And this is how Google took down, by the way, sites like Expedia, they didn't take them down. This is how Google won that battle. Sites like Expedia, Travelocity, or whatever, they're all about getting you to convert, get that flight in, book the ticket through us, we're going to get the money. And Google's like, "You know what we should do? Let's offer tons of insights around travel." And Expedia must have data about this, but they don't show it and Google are like, "We're just going to show it. We're going to use that." And they fill the need that no one was doing. And I think with products, it's the same thing. You go to Amazon, I don't know how much this normally costs. I don't know if it's a good price. I mean, I kind of know because I've been looking for a while, if I'm tracking it mentally, intuitively. But here's Google's going to do it and they're already doing it a little bit. So if you Google something, I don't know, Dell Inspiron 15, Google will list a model there and it'll have a whole ... a mobile, a whole bunch of listings where you can get it Amazon, Office Depot, Walmart, and it'll put in green the lowest price and it'll say usually X. So in this case it's saying in green on Amazon, it's $466 and it's usually $479. Those insights, the more they do, it's going to get people to go, "You know what, maybe I will buy it from Amazon, but first I'm going to go to Google and check out what the price insights are." Crystal Carter: Right, and I think that this is them using the data that they have. So, they'll be able to see what's going on across the web overall in a way that other folks will not be able to see. And they'll also have the information about the RRP from the SEO markup, because this is the other thing, within eCommerce for certain products, they'll have certain specifications. So, for instance, if you have apparel, if you're selling clothes, you have to categorize things in a certain way. You have to tag things in a certain way. You have to have certain attributes present on your page and they'll make those standard, so that they can enable these kinds of features. So they'll have that information available. And it's something that consumers love that saves you so much time of having to go back and forth to 17 different, sites rather than just being able to see it all in one place. That's going to save me a lot of time. I'm totally the kind of person who would shop around for three hours before making that decision. And so, if I can see it on one tab, that's really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking at it right here. My Apple MacBook Pro 16. Google's telling me typically is $2,099 to $2,699. And it lists a bunch of places where I can get it and the prices. Crystal Carter: Right, and it looks like you can sort it, move things up and down as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you could dive in deeper. So here I'm clicking on Best Buy it's telling me what the normal ... there's free shipping from December 5th through December 7th and what the taxes are and there's whatever. And yeah, you can expand each one of these and get more information. It looks like it's an up down, so it's an expansion. There we go. Really, it's only going to get deeper and it's only going to get more prolific is one of my favorite words. Crystal Carter: It's a good word. Mordy Oberstein: Is a good word. It's a money word. Crystal Carter: It's a money word. It's a $5 word. Mordy Oberstein: Cha-ching. So is it new? None of this is new. It's going to be new with the Price Insights, it's going to be more and more and more. We're just seeing the very, very beginning of this, so I would keep a ... If you're in the eComm space, I would keep an eye on that. So it's new, but it's not new. But you may not have known about it. So for you, it's new. Crystal Carter: New to you, which is true. Mordy Oberstein: So this is new. Speaker 5: Yay. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else is new? News. News is always new. Otherwise, it wouldn't be news? It'd be old news, not news. Crystal Carter: Olds. It would be olds not news. Mordy Oberstein: Olds, Not new. So, here is a very new, it is new. The snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. I don't know where to start. There's so much news this week. Or in pop culture terms you might say, "Holy abundance of SEO news, Batman." Where do I even start? Well, let's start with this from Barry Schwartz over his search engine Roundtable. Google gives official names, some of SERP features with visual elements gallery. I love this thing. It's basically a visual breakdown of the Google results page, thereby introducing official and new terminology. For example, what we've always called an organic result, is now being called a text result. I have been screaming about this since literally 2019 when I interviewed Barry Schwartz on another SEO podcast. There needs to be formal names for these things because what I call it and what you call it, what that person calls it may actually be different. But now there are official names for these things. Check out the link of the show notes so you can see the visual gallery and understand what Google is calling all of the things. Okay, onwards on our path towards SEO news glory, this one from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google December 2022 link spam update rolling out now. I mean, it might be complete by the time you hear this, but time of the recording it's rolling out now. Yes, another spam update. No, you're not wrong. Google did release one in October and this however, is really interesting because this time Google says quote, "SpamBrain is our AI-based spam prevention system. Besides using it to detect spam directly, it can now detect both sites buying links and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links." Does this have teeth? I don't know. I really hope so. The tracking tools have been pretty quiet, but with the spam update, that makes a lot of sense. So, the jury is still out. I would love to see this have some teeth. Either way, don't buy links. Last up. An update to the quality reader's guidelines, the guidelines given to manual evaluators so that Google can use it to check its algo against some real human input. This time Google has added another E to E-A-T. So E-A-T is expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. But now it's not E-A-T, it's E-E-A-T. So it's not eat, it's eeat. I'm sorry for that. From the Lily Ray over Search Engine Land, E-E-A-T. Oh, it's a mouthful. E-E-A-T. And major updates to Google's quality radar guidelines. The new E here, by the way, is for experience, as in having some. Google has already added having firsthand experience to the guidelines around its product review update, the algorithm guidelines around the product review update, which makes me personally feel that Google is looking to see how well some of its algorithmic abilities are as compared to real human input. That's just my theory. That's just my theory. Anyway, have a look over the show notes. See what Lily wrote up. She really compares the old guidelines to the new guidelines. Take away some insights, create your own theories, and that'll do it for this week's snappy news. And we're back from the snappiest of snappiest news, wasn't that snappy? Crystal Carter: It's so snappy. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely snappy. Crystal Carter: That's literally the snappiest news I've ever heard. Mordy Oberstein: Other than last week's snappy news. Crystal Carter: Yes, which was also snappy. Mordy Oberstein: Also snappy. Crystal Carter: And it might be snappy next week, I'm guessing? Mordy Oberstein: I love snapping. Crystal Carter: Snap, like the Jets and the Sharks. (singing) Mordy Oberstein: Right, the teachers ... I used to applaud the other teachers when they said something at school-wide meetings, you do the little snap thing. Crystal Carter: Did you go to a school for poetry? Mordy Oberstein: No, I was teaching at a public school in Baltimore. Crystal Carter: Well, was everyone poets? Because that's how poets clap, with snaps. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I don't know, it was a thing. Teachers are weird, we're just weird to be honest with you. Anyway, before we wrap it all up, and because we're talking about eCommerce and when it comes to talking about eCommerce and SEO. This week's follow of the week, so you can learn more about SEO awesomeness would be, the one, the only member of Wix's own SEO advisory board, Luke Carthy, @MrLukeCarthy over on Twitter. Crystal Carter: And Luke is fantastic. He's a great person to follow. He does talks, he does podcasts, he does these great deep dives into things that he would like to see from big retailers around eCommerce. And he's a fount of knowledge with regards to eCommerce. And yeah, he's a fantastic follow on Twitter and all of the other social media channels as well. Mordy Oberstein: And what I like about Luke is he talks about SEO and we'll talk about eComm at the same time. So, if you go to his website, which will link to his show notes obviously, he'll talk about SEO stuff but also talk about general eComm stuff. It's a nice follow-up because you're getting the best of both worlds. For example, on the actual Wix SEO Hub, he wrote about product descriptions, not from SEO point of view per se, but in general, about writing the best product description. So, that's why I think he's a great follow. Crystal Carter: He's a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: He's a great follow. So follow Luke @ MrLukeCarthy, M-R-L-U-K-E-C-A-R-T-H-Y. We'll link to another show notes, over on Twitter. And that's going to do it for this week's SERP's Up podcast. Crystal Carter: Thanks for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that was money, right? Crystal Carter: That was money. I think we secured the bag. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the bag. Crystal Carter: It's in the bag. Mordy Oberstein: This episode is in the bag. Crystal Carter: Oh. Mordy Oberstein: More jokes, all the time. It never stops. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with new episode. We dive into the deep dive, or not deep dive depending on how you look at it, that are site audits. How far down the wormhole do you need to go when auditing your next site? We'll talk about next week. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts. Or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes, or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Ka-ching. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Blog-turned-business ranks for thousands of keywords “Thanks to Wix’s intuitive SEO tools, I’ve been able to focus my time on writing quality content that helps me drive organic traffic.” 30K Organic monthly traffic 7,863 Keywords ranked 64 Featured snippets Adriane Campos has dedicated her life’s work to researching sugar alternatives, all with the goal of empowering people to make informed decisions and ultimately lead healthier lives. After years of intensive knowledge gathering, she was finally ready to share her findings with the world. Only one question remained: How would the world find her website? The business A guide to the plethora of sweeteners sold across the United States, WhatSugar.com is a goldmine of information for anyone looking to consume less sugar in their diet. Pioneered by Adriane Campos, who describes herself as a chemical engineer, food technologist, mom and wife, the blog’s unique value is that it translates “science-speak" into digestible tips that can help home cooks make sense of the sweetener aisle. Adriane added to her chemical engineering expertise by earning a graduate degree in food technology in Curitiba, Brazil, before moving to Los Angeles to conduct research at Caltech under the mentoring of a Nobel Prize winner. However, it was when she took a hiatus to raise her family that the idea for WhatSugar.com was born. “I was often asked what I did in my previous life before becoming a mom to two kids,” she recalls. “Without fail, whenever I would tell people that I did years of research on sweeteners, I always got the very same question: “What’s the best sweetener?” And so, I launched the WhatSugar website to finally answer it.” To get those answers, Adriane went down what she calls “the sweetener rabbit hole”: “I gathered information from different sweetener websites. I deconstructed the front and back of sweetener packages—ingredients, nutrition facts, label claims. And I personally contacted countless manufacturers and sellers to find all the details about their products,” she lists. This meticulous research formed the basis for her blog-turned-business. She now offers three main digital products: a free resource which is the Sugar Alternative Shopping Guide, the entry-point product Sugar Swap Starter Kit, and her core offering which is Sugar Alternative School. She has also recently pivoted into selling physical sweeteners directly to customers. The SEO challenge While Adriane was clearly an authority on sweeteners, she was new to the world of SEO. What would the point of all her years of research be if her findings never reached the very people who were searching for it? There was no two ways about it: SEO had to become a key focus for her business. The solution Wix proved to be the perfect platform for an expert blogger like Adriane. With built-in tools to help her take care of SEO, the food technologist and author is free to focus on what she does best: creating quality content that resonates with her target audience. This has played an essential role in allowing her to build up authority for search engines, and in turn, this helps her site reel in impressive amounts of organic traffic. Adriane also followed the Wix SEO Setup Checklist, customizing her site’s meta tags, URL structure, canonical tags, structured data markup, and more. “ I never hired anyone to do the SEO part of my website, I just followed Wix guidelines: I named images with ranking keywords, filled out all the SEO Basics and entered the keywords in the Advanced SEO section,” she describes. Wix’s SEO tools work out-of-the-box, giving Adriane the ability to spend less time on SEO and more time on content optimization. “With the feedback from my WhatSugar readers, I’m constantly discovering things I don’t know,” she enthuses. “And that has been a huge help for me in refining my content and making my products crystal clear for newbies. I’ve now launched my core offer twice and I’m currently working on making it evergreen.” The results Adriane officially launched WhatSugar.com in 2019. Within weeks, impressions and site visits were soaring. With time, she was ranking for thousands of keywords and had dozens of featured snippets. As of Q1 2023, WhatSugar.com : Experienced a 400% increase in users Gained 5.49M impressions in the previous 90 days Ranked for 7.8K keywords Earned 64 featured snippets One particular win for Adriane is ranking for the keyword “erythritol” (a natural sugar substitute), which Semrush classifies as a difficult keyword to rank for. WhatSugar drives around 7K visitors every month from this one keyword. “I didn’t know much about SEO but Wix turned out to be exactly the launchpad I needed to help get my content seen.” Want to spend less time on SEO and more time crafting quality content? Check out Wix’s intuitive SEO tools and explore our SEO Learning Hub for more insights from industry experts. Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Is your content random and haphazard? How do you create a formal content strategy to drive efficient growth? Already have a content strategy? How do you adjust your content strategy to continue to get the best results? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, look into building a content strategy for SEO and beyond with special guest host Adriana Stein, CEO of AS Marketing. It’s 2023, so what’s a content and SEO strategy without AI! Crystal and Mordy explore how Bing AI has changed — or maybe not so much. Full steam ahead as Episode 41 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast gets all up in your content strategy! Back How to build a content strategy: SEO and beyond Is your content random and haphazard? How do you create a formal content strategy to drive efficient growth? Already have a content strategy? How do you adjust your content strategy to continue to get the best results? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, look into building a content strategy for SEO and beyond with special guest host Adriana Stein, CEO of AS Marketing. It’s 2023, so what’s a content and SEO strategy without AI! Crystal and Mordy explore how Bing AI has changed — or maybe not so much. Full steam ahead as Episode 41 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast gets all up in your content strategy! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 41 | June 7, 2023 | 36 MIN 00:00 / 36:25 This week’s guests Adrian Stein Originally from the US and now living in Germany, Adriana Stein is the CEO and founder of the marketing agency AS Marketing. She leads a team of multi-language SEO experts who develop holistic international marketing strategies for global companies. Notes Transcript Transcript 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 around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix. I'm joined by the adjective laden, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. A good adjective laden. Good adjective laden. Crystal Carter: That is the laziest one I've ever heard. It's like when I'm saying like, oh, this is a... And I just do like seven fire emojis. Because I'm like, insert fantastic adjective, whatever it may be that you choose based on the fire emoji, it's fire. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just out of adjectives. I don't know what to say anymore because each week it's the incredible, fantastic... The adjective laden. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you for a fantastic, stupendous, incredible, marvelous, Mordy-licious introduction. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: It's not easy. The last one you got stuck like, where do I go now? And you say, is it time to stop? Crystal Carter: Yeah, this is true. Although to be fair though, your name starts with the name an M, so there's like marvelous, marvelous Mordy, magnificent Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Mania. Crystal Carter: Mordy Mania. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: This 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/learn/newsletter, but it's also where you can manage your content all in one place connected to datasets and more with the Wix content manager, so that you can dutifully execute both your SEO and content strategies. As today we're talking about both. Your SEO and content strategies. See the connection? Crystal Carter: Yes, I do see the connection. They're connected very, very well. Mordy Oberstein: Quite explicitly. I don't say so myself. Crystal Carter: It's almost like you wrote it. Mordy Oberstein: It's almost like we wrote that part of the... Yes, that's right. Today we're diving into the overlap between SEO and content marketing at the strategic level as we look at building a content strategy for SEO and beyond things like our SEO content and content marketing strategy, the same different, kind of the same, kind of different kind of not the same. Where do you start including your content and SEO content strategies, and how do you refine your strategy along the way to help us dive into that, we have a very special guest, hope stopping by in just a few minutes. And Adriana Stein, the CEO and founder of AS Marketing. Plus we're talking content, and if it's 2023 and we're talking content, we're talking about AI and AI and content. So we're going to explore how AI content produced or rather content produced by AI content generators in search engines as changed. And of course, the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So while the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, that doesn't apply to us because we're fricking SEOs and marketers. So hey, we're marketers here. These rules don't apply to us. So full steam ahead and full planning ahead as episode number 41 of the SERP's Up SEO Podcast gets all up in your strategy. Crystal Carter: Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: Let's go. So content strategies, in my opinion, are Jackson Pollock paintings. It seems kind of like chaos, but underneath I think there's some semblance of... Or should it be some semblance of order and planning that goes underneath it. Crystal Carter: That's true. This is sounds like somebody who's seen a Jackson painting in real life. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, real? Crystal Carter: I have. They're actually gigantic. And actually when you see them, you do see that actually it isn't just chaos. Mordy Oberstein: It does make sense. My first association to him was watching the movie with Ed Harris, but I was think like 10 or 11 when it came out. I am not sure that was appropriate for me to be watching, but either way kind of explains a few things. Chaos or planning rather, can easily become chaos, which means that the execution of the planning gets a hard thing to get. It also means that plans change, and I'm a firm believer that if your plan doesn't change, you're not doing it right. If you start with a content plan and you go through without any adjustment, you're probably doing something wrong. But what do these plans look like? Where does an SEO content plan fit in with the overall content plan? And for you pure content folks, where does a general content plan kind of play yourself out within the SEO strategy? So basically, what does a planning thing look like and how do you not just wing it? And to help us tackle all of this, put your hands together for the founder of AS marketing. Adriana Stein, welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast. Adriana Stein: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Crystal Carter: Yay, we're so pleased to have you along, big fan of your work. Adriana Stein. Adriana and I are both members of the Women in Tech SEO group. Adriana Stein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And we've both attended the Women in Tech SEO conferences and mutual appreciation here on the podcast for the work that Adriana is doing, particularly on content but also on some amazing things, and also being the founder and director of your own agency there. Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Tell us about that. Adriana Stein: Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so AS Marketing, we specialize in multi-language marketing, so we're a full service agency. Our projects tend to actually split between PPC and SEO. It started out being a lot more SEO focused, but now it's kind of interesting. There's a pretty widespread demand for multi-language international marketing, and that's where we basically come in and help our clients expand into new markets with localization. So it can be Germany to the US or the UK to the EU, or some sort of combination of madness like this. And we work with native speakers to help localize all of the strategy, implement, optimize everything and ensure there's conversions of some sort. So leads or sales, whether you're B2C or B2B, then that's where we're able to help. So a lot of content goes into that. Crystal Carter: And a lot of planning- Adriana Stein: And a lot of different places. A lot of planning. Crystal Carter: A lot of planning. And I think you've contributed a really great article on localization and content localization. And one of the things that comes up with that is that when you're planning that content, you're planning to make it in whatever is your X default language, but also planning to roll it out to other languages and also to maintain it across all of that. Do you have any sort of insights or experience that you can share on that? Adriana Stein: Yeah, so I think the first thing I would start off by saying is be really cautious with mass translations. That's one of the things that we first talk through with all of our clients. I will say talk through, because sometimes it's a top-down decision that they're like, okay, we're just going to copy paste everything we've been doing in the US and then we're just going to do that in Germany and then we will just work like that. And we don't have a say in anything, but ideally there is some sort of separate strategy per each market, and it doesn't have to be in incredibly minute detail. If you have the budget, the resources for that, great. I mean, you're probably going to get a better return on investment that way. But starting off at least try to have a little bit of separate understanding for each market and how it performs because every culture is different, every language is different. People phrase things in different ways. The buying cycle is very different in different markets. And so in terms of planning, really it's one, having an understanding of, okay, how am I going to go into this market effectively? And making sure you have the mindset, the operational mindset as a business to do that, and then that you also find the right strategic support, the right type of people to help you do that. So whether that's an agency or whether you do that in-house, it's really ideal that you work with someone who understands that market. It can really help you localize the strategy for that. And that's regardless of the channel. So whether that's SEO, whether that's Google Ads, LinkedIn, whatever the case may be, the more localized you can make everything, then the stronger the strategy is going to be because it's more personalized. The reason I always will say that this is going to be more efficient in the end is because think about the local competitors that you have in that country or in that market. They're already doing that anyways. So if you go in with that reduced sort of customer experience in comparison with the local markets, with the local competitors, they're not going to get very far. So you've basically got to outperform them from the get-go if you want to make an impact. Mordy Oberstein: To sort of zoom out on this. How much of that is... When you're creating all this content, whether it's in this market or that market or multiple markets all at one time, how much overlap is there in the strategy itself overall between the different... I'll call them verticals, whether it's content marketing, SEO, PPC, whatever it is? Adriana Stein: Yeah, there's a ton. I mean, ideally there should be a ton and no silo. In some companies there is unfortunately a silo if you have a lot of different teams that have different goals. But the best case scenario is when all of the content strategy holistically performs together. So I think it's important to kind of zoom out on content, and a lot of us perceive content purely for SEO purposes, but content is also for landing pages, for PPC case studies. White papers especially for B2B are important as well. Videos, music, I don't know anything that people produce in relation to a brand or even the customers or the users talk about that brand that is all content. So all of that can really come together to form what is the content strategy for a brand. Crystal Carter: I absolutely agree. I had a client who used to get a lot of traffic from some of their offsite assets from some of their IRL assets. They had a particular product and it needed instructions, and the way that you could get instructions was, there was a QR code or something that was in the back of the package and we used to get tons of traffic from that. So yeah, it's important to think about keeping the content strategy and the content strategy consistent, the content consistent across all of those different touch points. Can you give any insight for how to make sure you've got a common thread going through your content strategy? Adriana Stein: I think there are two things there. One is communication. Communication is going to be easier in a smaller company than in a bigger company. But if you can in a bigger company and you have separate departments, like a separate maybe advertising team, even a separate brand team, separate SEO team, just communicate all the time about here's what we're doing, here's how we're using this, because then you can repurpose all of that content that's produced too. It shouldn't just be used on one channel. And then the other thing really is the KPIs. It should be that everyone is working together on the same goal. So that really is a reason to then communicate, here's how our work is performing here. Here's how your work is performing here. How is that helping our overarching goal? And then involving sales and that as well is really ideal, especially in B2B, and to get everyone working toward that same goal because then you find that the content you produce can be used in all facets of every part of everyone's work. And that really helps keep everything very consistent too. Mordy Oberstein: I always say content is your brand, whatever medium it is, whether it's video, image or actual words, that is your brand, that's how you're commuting yourself to the public. There's like no other way. There's no audio language or anything like that. It has to be content. Do you find that your pure content strategy and your SEO content strategy are sort of converging together? I'll give you a good example of what I mean by this. I find that what users want and what search engines want both in terms of stylistically, I think users or people, I hate that people are looking for more conversational types of content from brands opposed to marketing schlock, and I think that ties into things around experience and expertise that Google's looking for. At the same time, they kind of very much align. Do you find that's happening more and more in 2023 than it did in years past? Adriana Stein: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you've heard this concept of analysis paralysis because it just means that there's so much information out there and so many options to choose that people do a lot of research, a lot of research before they buy something, even a lower price type product. You're looking at reviews, you're looking at prices, you're probably looking at multiple brands to try to understand what's best for you and trying to find a way through a bit of all of the madness. And I think the best way that brands can really do that with content is trying to help them rather than just pushing people towards a sale, but just try to help them make an informed decision because the less that you push, then the more they're likely to trust you and they're going to purchase from you anyways. Sometimes even if the pricing is higher, then the trust factor plays a much bigger role than that. Mordy Oberstein: Good point. Crystal Carter: So I was thinking when you were saying about the analysis paralysis, it made me think of the reason why I shop at Little. So I shop at Little because they don't have 3 million different types of peanut butter. They have chunky and they have smooth, and I know that they have generally decent quality stuff. So whether it's chunky or smooth, whichever one I pick, it's probably going to be fine, but what I want is peanut butter. But at the end of the day, I know that there's a general sort of quality level for them. How do you deliver that sort of quality, maintain that sort of quality with the demands of quantity for content? So to be competitive online at the moment, you know, have to keep feeding the algorithm and keep feeding the algorithm, whether you're on social, whether you're on your website, et cetera, et cetera. How do you maintain that quality while you're rolling out the quantity of content that you need to make a splash? Adriana Stein: Yeah, I mean that's honestly like a million-dollar question today I must say. But I think to answer it simply, it really comes down to processes. So if you have very streamlined processes, everyone knows what they're supposed to do, at which stage, by which date, how much you're trying to produce over a certain timeframe, who needs to have input on something? Ideally the less people the better, because if you have six people editing, this is one of the biggest roadblocks that I've seen to installing content is when you just have too many brains and they're trying to make sense of everything and it just takes way too long. So really processes is what it comes down to, and that will help you get that quality because there will be someone like a content strategist of some sort depending on the channel who's kind of overseeing quality, maybe some sort of project manager who's assigning things, telling people which part of the project they're supposed to do, which sort of task they're supposed to do, and just really aligning everyone on all of that. That's really the biggest thing. So if you don't have some sort of really clear checklist, here's our one to 10 steps, here's doing what, it just gets so random chaos and then you end up not producing a lot of content, the process is key. Mordy Oberstein: So to that process though, I think one of the things that's interesting to me is that when you're dealing with multiple teams and multiple pieces of content and multiple strategies, and what I inevitably find, and we talked about this on a previous podcast, there's a certain momentum at a certain cadence that you get. And then as that happens, new opportunities arise, new ways of thinking come about, new pain points are unearth, all of a sudden the brain starts flowing and you start thinking differently as things evolve. How do you refine along the way? How do you make sure you're open to refining along the way? Then how do you actually steer that because you're working with assets you've been planning on for so long that now you might have to reshift though with multiple teams and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It all seems like trying to make a giant U-turn and you're the Titanic. Adriana Stein: Oh yeah, I can relate to that- Mordy Oberstein: Iceberg. Adriana Stein: I would say really it still comes down to processes because it's about also adding that part in the process. So when is there a regular optimization happening or how often are content topics created and how? Is it one brainstorming session a month? Everyone's got to come there with their ideas and that's it, really stick to that. Or is it every three months we're doing an audit on this sort of thing, or every six months we're doing an audit on this sort of thing, or I don't know, maybe there's a new service offering. And so we need to understand, okay, how do we implement this with the rest of the content so that the messaging is consistent? We're still talking about both things, but there's different pain points that still is part of the optimization process. So I would say really just add space for that in this content production checklist. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Do you ever find though that there's parts of the strategy that are at odds with each other? So let's go back to the example of things are getting more conversational out there with brands. That's great. And you may say, you know what? We need to pivot. We need to become more conversational. And I can imagine an SEO saying, wait, wait, but the age two needs to have the keyword. You don't have the keyword now. Now what do we do? Adriana Stein: Well, yeah, I think that's the bane of every SEO's existence is like, how do we create really great content but that's still adheres to SEO formatting? Which is so strict in particular. It's very, very difficult to find a balance of both. But I think if you can try to focus, for example, content ideation, even if it's something conversational based on, okay, how from the beginning can we apply this to SEO? So not that SEO is a later stage in the content strategy, but it's really at the forefront. And I think that's one of the biggest channels that needs to be at the forefront because if you can think of, okay, this content group, content cluster or something like this, this can work really well for SEO and then here's how we're going to do the rest of the content in relation to that. We're going to link to some conversion mining pages. Maybe we're going to link to a lead magnet off of this page, and then that can be used for email marketing later to capture some emails like this. So put it directly within your content strategy, your content planning, and that will help that a little bit be a bit more natural. Because if SEO comes so much later down, you've got a content strategy and then three months later you're like, okay, let's do SEO and let's try to shove the SEO into this content strategy, then you're going to have some difficulties putting those keywords properly. Crystal Carter: And I think that it can be a challenge to build that in. What role do you consider education to play in making sure that your wider team are able to do some of that SEO as they go along or so are able to keep SEO in the forefront of their minds as they're creating even that more sort of conversational or reactionary content? Adriana Stein: Yeah, that's a good question. So what we use on our team is briefs. We use really, really detailed briefs for our content writers. I would say even a lot of the content is kind of half written. It's not elegantly written. That's what the writer is there to kind of help us refine, maybe dig in with some of the research a bit further. But what we provide the content writer, which comes from the strategist who knows the overarching business strategy, how this fits into the content strategy at hand, then they're creating a very, very detailed brief for the writer. So the writer really knows, okay, here's how this fits into SEO. Here's what I'm supposed to write in relation to the structure of the content. So what goes into each section focuses of the keywords so they know, and it comes off very naturally when you do it this way because then it's not asking the content writer to just add, I don't know like, say this keyword, write this keyword 20 times into this content. That doesn't work. That sort of way of doing SEO I think is really outdated. It's a lot about coming from the top down, putting SEO into the business strategy and then creating content topics based on that, and then briefing the writer based on that. And then all of the processes is a lot more natural. And it's not a struggle for the writer to do that. Mordy Oberstein: If there's like one consistent theme. It's the planning all the way throughout. Adriana Stein: Yes, it is. Mordy Oberstein: And it's such a good point because if the overlap between content and SEO was that much stronger, you really need to loop in the SEO into the full content process all the way down. It just makes so much sense. We could probably dive into way more of this, but I know that your time is short and extremely valuable, so we'll let you get back to creating all of that great content. But where can people find you first? Adriana Stein: Best place would be on LinkedIn probably. So feel free to send me a message. You can just type in my name, Adrian Stein, you'll find me there. I'm also on Twitter too if you're really keen on still using that Wild Wild West platform these days. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I guess it beat Mastodon. Adriana Stein: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry Simon. Crystal Carter: But thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure. And yes, I'm getting the hint that process... It's all about the process. Adriana Stein: Yep. It's all about the process. Mordy Oberstein: Trust the process, trust the process with- Adriana Stein: I will probably be saying this from my grave, look at your process- Crystal Carter: It was the process. Mordy Oberstein: He trusted the process. Well, thank you so much Adriana, showed a link to your social profiles in the show notes for this episode, so you can keep getting awesomeness from Adriana out there on social media. Thank you, Adriana. Adriana Stein: Thanks so much for having me. Super pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Adriana Stein: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: So speaking of plans and content plans and content plans, changing and planning and the planning and the planning, one thing that's constantly changing and I think where people are pivoting or platforms are pivoting with their content would be AI content generators. By the way, we're talking about content, does any other content even exist other than content written by AI generators? The answer was, I hope so. Crystal Carter: I hope so. Mordy Oberstein: I hope so Crystal Carter: Yes, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: But be that as it may and your stance on AI aside, it is super interesting what the search engines are doing with integrating AI chat experiences and how changing they are. And Bing actually has made some really interesting changes to their AI chat experience. So while we usually go Google this time, we're going Bing. Speaker 5: And it's going. Google. It's outta here. Mordy Oberstein: Recently, relatively recently, Bing made an update. It was covered by Search Engine Land & Search Engine Roundtable, both by Barry Schwartz back on April 21st, where Bing wrote quote, we've taken steps to help Bing give better answers if you're asking questions about news. And the pain point there is obviously, news is changing very quickly. You got to be really good at understanding what's happening out there in the ecosystem for an AI chat experience to offer back an answer of something that's relevant because it's news, it's constantly changing. So I thought we should take a look and see how good being has gotten with this. One of the things that I've done is, so I'm a big sports nut, as you all know at this point. And I thought, you know what I'll do? I'll ask Bing chat a bunch of questions about players and injury status because that's very current and let's see how well Bing can do it. And the answer is kind of okay. There's a player, his name is Giancarlo Stanton. He's a center fielder for the New York Yankees. He gets hurt a lot, all the time, at least- Crystal Carter: Unlucky. Mordy Oberstein: He's a big dude. He's very muscular in baseball. The traditional player was more stringy. Crystal Carter: I mean, Babe Ruth, come on, Babe Ruth was like... I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Well, Babe Ruth, this is a different... An aberration unto itself. He was eating a thousand hotdog before a game. Shows up, hits a couple home runs, goes back to eating the hotdog. That dude was different. Crystal Carter: Okay, built differently. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, built differently. Back in the day though, the player were just... They were more athletic than they were muscular. 'Cause muscular, you get hurt. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And John Carlo is a very muscular man and he gets hurt a lot. So I asked Bing chat, what is John Carlo Stanton's status? This, by the way, was after I asked Bing chat, what team has Aaron Rogers played for. Crystal Carter: Sure. Mordy Oberstein: And he's a football player. He recently got traded and Bing got it wrong. He said he played for his old team. So I'm like, all right, let's give Bing another chance. Give it another chance. And I asked, what is Giancarlo Stanton? And Bing chat wrote back, Giancarlo Stan has missed most of the 2022 season. We're in 2023. With various injuries, including left achilles tendon, white quadricep and foot ankle. He told you he gets injured all the freaking time. Dude's a walking injury. He has not played the game since July 24th. That has not run the basis or gone on a rehab assignment. He hopes to return in September and October, but his status is alone unclear. He underwent x-rays on his foot ankle that came back negative, very prolific answer, very out of date. Crystal Carter: Foot ankle? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Foot slash ankle, sorry. Okay, that's my fault. That's the Mordy. That's not the AI. But then it said most recently he suffered a hamstring strain and will miss six weeks and that's accurate as hell. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. So it's got a little bit of a mixed bag there. Mordy Oberstein: It's a little bit of both. And I just thought, it's so interesting how the content that these AI chat experiences are spitting out is changing and how far we've come because I think it's awesome that being is making that update. And I think what they've done is awesome and they've clearly gotten it right, but they've also clearly gotten it wrong. And I think there's two ways to look at this from a technology point of view. This is amazing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: From a user point of view for the correct information, this is eh, sort of kind of. Crystal Carter: Yeah. If you said, if I jump off this bridge, will I live, and the answer was like 50% accurate, I wouldn't trust that information. So I think that that's the case. I mean, in my experiments with Bing Chat and I've used it a bit and I've kicked the tires a little bit, pushing on some more sensitive topics. What I sometimes find is that with sensitive topics, it'll just shut down. It'll say, "I don't want to talk about that. I think we should change the subject." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes. Crystal Carter: And I'm like, "What?" So then I open up a new chat with the same question and then it'll say something and I say, "Well, why did you say that?" And says, "I don't want to talk about that." And then so I'm like, "Stop being so fragile Bing." Mordy Oberstein: I did the same thing. So when I asked Bing Chat, "Hey, you know what team has Aaron Rogers played for? He is a quarterback, he used to play for the Green Bay Packers and now he plays for the New York Jets." It came back. Aaron Rodgers, American football quarterback who currently plays for the Green Bay Packers, I wrote back, wasn't he traded to the Jets. And Bing Chat wrote back, according to recent reports, Aaron Rodgers has been traded to the New York Jets. And then I wrote being my snarky self. So why did you say he was on the Packers? Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: I then, "I apologize for the confusion. We must have missed the recent news." Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Precisely. And this is the thing, it gets a little bit sensitive, but I think that one of the other things that I find is that because it can be a bit sensitive, it sometimes hedges. So I think sometimes it will hedge itself on things on fairly safe information. So I asked it recently, what is the latest news in SEO? And the information that came back was sourced from Forbes past company and business Lancaster shouting out to Mark A. Preston. Actually, I'm talking about SEO. And the things that it said were pretty generic answers. They're not really news, they're just general sort of SEO trends. It was saying that Forbes says businesses must adapt their SEO strategies to ensure their content stays relevant. I mean, that could be the news from this week or from last month or from two years ago or from wherever it is. And I'm really surprised that those sources for SEO news, because there are a number of news publications for SEO that are notable. Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz, SEJ, SEL there's tons of them that are very specifically dedicated to SEO. So I think it's interesting that they're hedging on some of these particular sources that are sort of seen as sort of maybe safe or maybe vanilla. Because I think Bing gets a little bit... It gets a little bit sensitive. It gets feelings get hurt. Mordy Oberstein: Well, oh, my feelings get hurt really easily too. So I can't blame Bing. Crystal Carter: We all have feelings. Mordy Oberstein: We all have feelings. Something really interesting about that point. Rich Tatum posted something on Twitter where I think what he posted was he was asking Chat GPT to basically fudge experience, write up a prompt about what it's like to drive a Ford Mustang or something similar to that. And it tried to fudge that experience of driving a Ford Mustang. And it gave pretty generic experiences. It was superfast and fun to drive that Mustang with those 220 ….. That level of nuance, you can't actually fudge actual experience and actual expertise. And it's a really good point. 'Cause I was thinking, you know what? I never thought of that hack. If I got... I'm trying to play the review update, right? I'm going to show experience, I'll just go ask the AI, right? As if I had experience. But you can't fudge it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's very difficult. 'Cause I think also there's sometimes where... I think this is where actual reviews are really interesting is because... And I've seen this before where you see some sites are ranking for reviews and others are not, because the particular reviews that they have on their site are more unique than the other ones. So if the other reviews are like, oh, it's great, or oh, it's nice, then that's going to be different from a review that's very detailed. And they're very often the ones that are on the edges, they're either the one star or the five star who are getting into the sort of like, oh actually when I tried to assemble this chair, it didn't come with enough bolts. Or when I tried to... I recently bought an office chair and someone said, I do not like this chair. I would not wish this cursed chair on my worst enemies. And I was like, cursed. Did you really put cursed in there? But that is a unique review full of some unique feelings. And those sorts of things are not... Being Bing are very sensitive about how it feels about its results. It's not going to put that kind of content in what it's saying. Chat GPT probably wouldn't as well. I mean, I don't know if you could ask Chat GPT add to, I never asked Chat GPT to write a salty review about it- Mordy Oberstein: But it probably wouldn't had that level of nuance. I just wouldn't be there. So end of the day, 'cause we're talking about refining content strategies and refining content plans on the pivoting and refining the strategy when Bing saw the need to get news more accurate, A plus. Good job on you Bing, that's what you should be doing. In the execution, I think we're at a C. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think they can A for effort, and I did actually test this. So after the Oscars, there was an image AI image of Zendaya at the Oscars that was making the rounds on Twitter, and it was retweeted by a few major news publications. And I asked Bing, "Was Zendaya at the Oscars." And they were like, "No, she wasn't. She was in London with her boyfriend." And I was like, okay, Bing. All right, I see you good. That's good information. Good sorting out that information there. So I think also they were fighting it a lot, so they'll get there- Mordy Oberstein: It's a work in project. It's not a critique at all. This whole technology really is in its infancy, but as a user, if you're going to be asking you questions about like Giancarlo Stanton injury status, take the answer with a grain of salt. You have to really be careful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it might be worth them putting a little label on there that's like, do check. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But be that as it may anyway. Well, this was kind of new. What was definitely new is the news. Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: So here's our owed, our weekly owed to Barry Schwartz. As we get into the Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Get a whole bunch of things for you from Barry Schwartz over at SearchEngineRoundtable.com. They're all from Barry this week, and they're all from SearchEngineRoundtable.com. First up, Google rolling out multiple feature snippets on desktop search. Reports are coming in showing that Google is using multiple featured snippets. Three to be exact on desktop. So you search on desktop and you would get three snippets of texts with three URLs crammed into the same space at the top of the SERP. I'm not sure how widespread this is. I don't see it on desktop. I do see it on mobile, which goes back to a previous Google release. Again, I don't see it on desktop in the US or not in the US. I don't see it, but maybe you do. By the way, the idea of Google going more diverse with feature snippets is something I've been clamoring about for a long time. Did whole article about it on the Wix DEO hub. So I will link to that in the show notes. Okay, AI, Google search, generative experience results are not really personalized. Thank you, Barry. Good to know. Google Bard can now provide more precise local results if you allow Bard to access your location. Thank you, Mary. Good to know, Microsoft, Bing chat to work on all browsers soon. Once again, Barry, thank you very much. Great to know. And that's this week's snappy news. Thanks for listening to our little news section. I hope you enjoyed it. Crystal Carter: Thank you. We have some listeners who say that the news is their favorite part of the SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. We have one listener who says that. His name rhymes with Mary Borts. Crystal Carter: No, there was somebody else who said that they absolutely love the Snappy News. And shout out to all of our listeners. Hello, listeners out there in Radioland... Not Radioland. Podcast Land. Mordy Oberstein: Podcast Land. Crystal Carter: Thank you for joining us and thank you for enjoying the Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it was quite snappy. But before we do the part for this week, we have to go through our follow of the week and we have... 'Cause we're talking about content and content strategies. We have somebody who's all about content, contributor to the Wix SEO Hub herself, Maddy Osman over at Maddy Osman on Twitter, that's M-A-D-D-Y O-S-M-A-N. And Maddy is a content strategist execution. She wrote a book. She has a book about writing content that you can buy. Crystal Carter: She's really into her content. She's contributed some fantastic articles on the Wix SEO Hub. And she has, again, yeah, written the book and she's got a really good community that she runs that talks about content as well. So yeah, do you check out Maddy at Blocksmiths, she also runs courses on content as well. Super, super friendly. Super, super clever. A great follow if you're looking to increase your content quality and quantity. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, she's definitely little more prominent SEOs on the content side, thinking about content from an SEO point of view and just from a pure content point of view. So give a follow to Maddy and tell her we sent you. Nut you can't do when you follow someone, I wish you could... There should be a referral of some kind. Like I followed you because the SERP's Up Podcast editor follow you. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that'd be good. Ride the wave. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Ride the Wave because the SERP's Up Podcast, it's a whole surfing thing. Get it? Thanks. Anyway, thank you for joining us on this SERP's Up Podcast. Already going to miss us not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into what the heck is helpful content, actually? Crystal Carter: What is helpful, what is unhelpful? What's going on with helpful content? Let's talk about it. Mordy Oberstein: What does it all mean? What does it all mean? Crystal Carter: Can we get some help? Mordy Oberstein: Yes- Crystal Carter: I need somebody. Mordy Oberstein: It would be very helpful. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO learning them over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Checkout all of the great content and webinars and newsletter on the Wix SEO Learning, however 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. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Adriana Stein Maddy Osman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter AS Marketing Agency Google SERP Content Diversity News: Google Rolling Out Multiple Featured Snippets On Desktop Search Google Search Generative Experience Results Are Not Really Personalized Google Bard Can Now Provide More Precise Local Results Microsoft: Bing Chat To Work On All Browsers Soon Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Adriana Stein Maddy Osman Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter AS Marketing Agency Google SERP Content Diversity News: Google Rolling Out Multiple Featured Snippets On Desktop Search Google Search Generative Experience Results Are Not Really Personalized Google Bard Can Now Provide More Precise Local Results Microsoft: Bing Chat To Work On All Browsers Soon Transcript 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 around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix. I'm joined by the adjective laden, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. A good adjective laden. Good adjective laden. Crystal Carter: That is the laziest one I've ever heard. It's like when I'm saying like, oh, this is a... And I just do like seven fire emojis. Because I'm like, insert fantastic adjective, whatever it may be that you choose based on the fire emoji, it's fire. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just out of adjectives. I don't know what to say anymore because each week it's the incredible, fantastic... The adjective laden. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you for a fantastic, stupendous, incredible, marvelous, Mordy-licious introduction. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: It's not easy. The last one you got stuck like, where do I go now? And you say, is it time to stop? Crystal Carter: Yeah, this is true. Although to be fair though, your name starts with the name an M, so there's like marvelous, marvelous Mordy, magnificent Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Mania. Crystal Carter: Mordy Mania. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: This 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/learn/newsletter, but it's also where you can manage your content all in one place connected to datasets and more with the Wix content manager, so that you can dutifully execute both your SEO and content strategies. As today we're talking about both. Your SEO and content strategies. See the connection? Crystal Carter: Yes, I do see the connection. They're connected very, very well. Mordy Oberstein: Quite explicitly. I don't say so myself. Crystal Carter: It's almost like you wrote it. Mordy Oberstein: It's almost like we wrote that part of the... Yes, that's right. Today we're diving into the overlap between SEO and content marketing at the strategic level as we look at building a content strategy for SEO and beyond things like our SEO content and content marketing strategy, the same different, kind of the same, kind of different kind of not the same. Where do you start including your content and SEO content strategies, and how do you refine your strategy along the way to help us dive into that, we have a very special guest, hope stopping by in just a few minutes. And Adriana Stein, the CEO and founder of AS Marketing. Plus we're talking content, and if it's 2023 and we're talking content, we're talking about AI and AI and content. So we're going to explore how AI content produced or rather content produced by AI content generators in search engines as changed. And of course, the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So while the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, that doesn't apply to us because we're fricking SEOs and marketers. So hey, we're marketers here. These rules don't apply to us. So full steam ahead and full planning ahead as episode number 41 of the SERP's Up SEO Podcast gets all up in your strategy. Crystal Carter: Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: Let's go. So content strategies, in my opinion, are Jackson Pollock paintings. It seems kind of like chaos, but underneath I think there's some semblance of... Or should it be some semblance of order and planning that goes underneath it. Crystal Carter: That's true. This is sounds like somebody who's seen a Jackson painting in real life. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, real? Crystal Carter: I have. They're actually gigantic. And actually when you see them, you do see that actually it isn't just chaos. Mordy Oberstein: It does make sense. My first association to him was watching the movie with Ed Harris, but I was think like 10 or 11 when it came out. I am not sure that was appropriate for me to be watching, but either way kind of explains a few things. Chaos or planning rather, can easily become chaos, which means that the execution of the planning gets a hard thing to get. It also means that plans change, and I'm a firm believer that if your plan doesn't change, you're not doing it right. If you start with a content plan and you go through without any adjustment, you're probably doing something wrong. But what do these plans look like? Where does an SEO content plan fit in with the overall content plan? And for you pure content folks, where does a general content plan kind of play yourself out within the SEO strategy? So basically, what does a planning thing look like and how do you not just wing it? And to help us tackle all of this, put your hands together for the founder of AS marketing. Adriana Stein, welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast. Adriana Stein: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Crystal Carter: Yay, we're so pleased to have you along, big fan of your work. Adriana Stein. Adriana and I are both members of the Women in Tech SEO group. Adriana Stein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And we've both attended the Women in Tech SEO conferences and mutual appreciation here on the podcast for the work that Adriana is doing, particularly on content but also on some amazing things, and also being the founder and director of your own agency there. Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Tell us about that. Adriana Stein: Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so AS Marketing, we specialize in multi-language marketing, so we're a full service agency. Our projects tend to actually split between PPC and SEO. It started out being a lot more SEO focused, but now it's kind of interesting. There's a pretty widespread demand for multi-language international marketing, and that's where we basically come in and help our clients expand into new markets with localization. So it can be Germany to the US or the UK to the EU, or some sort of combination of madness like this. And we work with native speakers to help localize all of the strategy, implement, optimize everything and ensure there's conversions of some sort. So leads or sales, whether you're B2C or B2B, then that's where we're able to help. So a lot of content goes into that. Crystal Carter: And a lot of planning- Adriana Stein: And a lot of different places. A lot of planning. Crystal Carter: A lot of planning. And I think you've contributed a really great article on localization and content localization. And one of the things that comes up with that is that when you're planning that content, you're planning to make it in whatever is your X default language, but also planning to roll it out to other languages and also to maintain it across all of that. Do you have any sort of insights or experience that you can share on that? Adriana Stein: Yeah, so I think the first thing I would start off by saying is be really cautious with mass translations. That's one of the things that we first talk through with all of our clients. I will say talk through, because sometimes it's a top-down decision that they're like, okay, we're just going to copy paste everything we've been doing in the US and then we're just going to do that in Germany and then we will just work like that. And we don't have a say in anything, but ideally there is some sort of separate strategy per each market, and it doesn't have to be in incredibly minute detail. If you have the budget, the resources for that, great. I mean, you're probably going to get a better return on investment that way. But starting off at least try to have a little bit of separate understanding for each market and how it performs because every culture is different, every language is different. People phrase things in different ways. The buying cycle is very different in different markets. And so in terms of planning, really it's one, having an understanding of, okay, how am I going to go into this market effectively? And making sure you have the mindset, the operational mindset as a business to do that, and then that you also find the right strategic support, the right type of people to help you do that. So whether that's an agency or whether you do that in-house, it's really ideal that you work with someone who understands that market. It can really help you localize the strategy for that. And that's regardless of the channel. So whether that's SEO, whether that's Google Ads, LinkedIn, whatever the case may be, the more localized you can make everything, then the stronger the strategy is going to be because it's more personalized. The reason I always will say that this is going to be more efficient in the end is because think about the local competitors that you have in that country or in that market. They're already doing that anyways. So if you go in with that reduced sort of customer experience in comparison with the local markets, with the local competitors, they're not going to get very far. So you've basically got to outperform them from the get-go if you want to make an impact. Mordy Oberstein: To sort of zoom out on this. How much of that is... When you're creating all this content, whether it's in this market or that market or multiple markets all at one time, how much overlap is there in the strategy itself overall between the different... I'll call them verticals, whether it's content marketing, SEO, PPC, whatever it is? Adriana Stein: Yeah, there's a ton. I mean, ideally there should be a ton and no silo. In some companies there is unfortunately a silo if you have a lot of different teams that have different goals. But the best case scenario is when all of the content strategy holistically performs together. So I think it's important to kind of zoom out on content, and a lot of us perceive content purely for SEO purposes, but content is also for landing pages, for PPC case studies. White papers especially for B2B are important as well. Videos, music, I don't know anything that people produce in relation to a brand or even the customers or the users talk about that brand that is all content. So all of that can really come together to form what is the content strategy for a brand. Crystal Carter: I absolutely agree. I had a client who used to get a lot of traffic from some of their offsite assets from some of their IRL assets. They had a particular product and it needed instructions, and the way that you could get instructions was, there was a QR code or something that was in the back of the package and we used to get tons of traffic from that. So yeah, it's important to think about keeping the content strategy and the content strategy consistent, the content consistent across all of those different touch points. Can you give any insight for how to make sure you've got a common thread going through your content strategy? Adriana Stein: I think there are two things there. One is communication. Communication is going to be easier in a smaller company than in a bigger company. But if you can in a bigger company and you have separate departments, like a separate maybe advertising team, even a separate brand team, separate SEO team, just communicate all the time about here's what we're doing, here's how we're using this, because then you can repurpose all of that content that's produced too. It shouldn't just be used on one channel. And then the other thing really is the KPIs. It should be that everyone is working together on the same goal. So that really is a reason to then communicate, here's how our work is performing here. Here's how your work is performing here. How is that helping our overarching goal? And then involving sales and that as well is really ideal, especially in B2B, and to get everyone working toward that same goal because then you find that the content you produce can be used in all facets of every part of everyone's work. And that really helps keep everything very consistent too. Mordy Oberstein: I always say content is your brand, whatever medium it is, whether it's video, image or actual words, that is your brand, that's how you're commuting yourself to the public. There's like no other way. There's no audio language or anything like that. It has to be content. Do you find that your pure content strategy and your SEO content strategy are sort of converging together? I'll give you a good example of what I mean by this. I find that what users want and what search engines want both in terms of stylistically, I think users or people, I hate that people are looking for more conversational types of content from brands opposed to marketing schlock, and I think that ties into things around experience and expertise that Google's looking for. At the same time, they kind of very much align. Do you find that's happening more and more in 2023 than it did in years past? Adriana Stein: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you've heard this concept of analysis paralysis because it just means that there's so much information out there and so many options to choose that people do a lot of research, a lot of research before they buy something, even a lower price type product. You're looking at reviews, you're looking at prices, you're probably looking at multiple brands to try to understand what's best for you and trying to find a way through a bit of all of the madness. And I think the best way that brands can really do that with content is trying to help them rather than just pushing people towards a sale, but just try to help them make an informed decision because the less that you push, then the more they're likely to trust you and they're going to purchase from you anyways. Sometimes even if the pricing is higher, then the trust factor plays a much bigger role than that. Mordy Oberstein: Good point. Crystal Carter: So I was thinking when you were saying about the analysis paralysis, it made me think of the reason why I shop at Little. So I shop at Little because they don't have 3 million different types of peanut butter. They have chunky and they have smooth, and I know that they have generally decent quality stuff. So whether it's chunky or smooth, whichever one I pick, it's probably going to be fine, but what I want is peanut butter. But at the end of the day, I know that there's a general sort of quality level for them. How do you deliver that sort of quality, maintain that sort of quality with the demands of quantity for content? So to be competitive online at the moment, you know, have to keep feeding the algorithm and keep feeding the algorithm, whether you're on social, whether you're on your website, et cetera, et cetera. How do you maintain that quality while you're rolling out the quantity of content that you need to make a splash? Adriana Stein: Yeah, I mean that's honestly like a million-dollar question today I must say. But I think to answer it simply, it really comes down to processes. So if you have very streamlined processes, everyone knows what they're supposed to do, at which stage, by which date, how much you're trying to produce over a certain timeframe, who needs to have input on something? Ideally the less people the better, because if you have six people editing, this is one of the biggest roadblocks that I've seen to installing content is when you just have too many brains and they're trying to make sense of everything and it just takes way too long. So really processes is what it comes down to, and that will help you get that quality because there will be someone like a content strategist of some sort depending on the channel who's kind of overseeing quality, maybe some sort of project manager who's assigning things, telling people which part of the project they're supposed to do, which sort of task they're supposed to do, and just really aligning everyone on all of that. That's really the biggest thing. So if you don't have some sort of really clear checklist, here's our one to 10 steps, here's doing what, it just gets so random chaos and then you end up not producing a lot of content, the process is key. Mordy Oberstein: So to that process though, I think one of the things that's interesting to me is that when you're dealing with multiple teams and multiple pieces of content and multiple strategies, and what I inevitably find, and we talked about this on a previous podcast, there's a certain momentum at a certain cadence that you get. And then as that happens, new opportunities arise, new ways of thinking come about, new pain points are unearth, all of a sudden the brain starts flowing and you start thinking differently as things evolve. How do you refine along the way? How do you make sure you're open to refining along the way? Then how do you actually steer that because you're working with assets you've been planning on for so long that now you might have to reshift though with multiple teams and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It all seems like trying to make a giant U-turn and you're the Titanic. Adriana Stein: Oh yeah, I can relate to that- Mordy Oberstein: Iceberg. Adriana Stein: I would say really it still comes down to processes because it's about also adding that part in the process. So when is there a regular optimization happening or how often are content topics created and how? Is it one brainstorming session a month? Everyone's got to come there with their ideas and that's it, really stick to that. Or is it every three months we're doing an audit on this sort of thing, or every six months we're doing an audit on this sort of thing, or I don't know, maybe there's a new service offering. And so we need to understand, okay, how do we implement this with the rest of the content so that the messaging is consistent? We're still talking about both things, but there's different pain points that still is part of the optimization process. So I would say really just add space for that in this content production checklist. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Do you ever find though that there's parts of the strategy that are at odds with each other? So let's go back to the example of things are getting more conversational out there with brands. That's great. And you may say, you know what? We need to pivot. We need to become more conversational. And I can imagine an SEO saying, wait, wait, but the age two needs to have the keyword. You don't have the keyword now. Now what do we do? Adriana Stein: Well, yeah, I think that's the bane of every SEO's existence is like, how do we create really great content but that's still adheres to SEO formatting? Which is so strict in particular. It's very, very difficult to find a balance of both. But I think if you can try to focus, for example, content ideation, even if it's something conversational based on, okay, how from the beginning can we apply this to SEO? So not that SEO is a later stage in the content strategy, but it's really at the forefront. And I think that's one of the biggest channels that needs to be at the forefront because if you can think of, okay, this content group, content cluster or something like this, this can work really well for SEO and then here's how we're going to do the rest of the content in relation to that. We're going to link to some conversion mining pages. Maybe we're going to link to a lead magnet off of this page, and then that can be used for email marketing later to capture some emails like this. So put it directly within your content strategy, your content planning, and that will help that a little bit be a bit more natural. Because if SEO comes so much later down, you've got a content strategy and then three months later you're like, okay, let's do SEO and let's try to shove the SEO into this content strategy, then you're going to have some difficulties putting those keywords properly. Crystal Carter: And I think that it can be a challenge to build that in. What role do you consider education to play in making sure that your wider team are able to do some of that SEO as they go along or so are able to keep SEO in the forefront of their minds as they're creating even that more sort of conversational or reactionary content? Adriana Stein: Yeah, that's a good question. So what we use on our team is briefs. We use really, really detailed briefs for our content writers. I would say even a lot of the content is kind of half written. It's not elegantly written. That's what the writer is there to kind of help us refine, maybe dig in with some of the research a bit further. But what we provide the content writer, which comes from the strategist who knows the overarching business strategy, how this fits into the content strategy at hand, then they're creating a very, very detailed brief for the writer. So the writer really knows, okay, here's how this fits into SEO. Here's what I'm supposed to write in relation to the structure of the content. So what goes into each section focuses of the keywords so they know, and it comes off very naturally when you do it this way because then it's not asking the content writer to just add, I don't know like, say this keyword, write this keyword 20 times into this content. That doesn't work. That sort of way of doing SEO I think is really outdated. It's a lot about coming from the top down, putting SEO into the business strategy and then creating content topics based on that, and then briefing the writer based on that. And then all of the processes is a lot more natural. And it's not a struggle for the writer to do that. Mordy Oberstein: If there's like one consistent theme. It's the planning all the way throughout. Adriana Stein: Yes, it is. Mordy Oberstein: And it's such a good point because if the overlap between content and SEO was that much stronger, you really need to loop in the SEO into the full content process all the way down. It just makes so much sense. We could probably dive into way more of this, but I know that your time is short and extremely valuable, so we'll let you get back to creating all of that great content. But where can people find you first? Adriana Stein: Best place would be on LinkedIn probably. So feel free to send me a message. You can just type in my name, Adrian Stein, you'll find me there. I'm also on Twitter too if you're really keen on still using that Wild Wild West platform these days. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I guess it beat Mastodon. Adriana Stein: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry Simon. Crystal Carter: But thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure. And yes, I'm getting the hint that process... It's all about the process. Adriana Stein: Yep. It's all about the process. Mordy Oberstein: Trust the process, trust the process with- Adriana Stein: I will probably be saying this from my grave, look at your process- Crystal Carter: It was the process. Mordy Oberstein: He trusted the process. Well, thank you so much Adriana, showed a link to your social profiles in the show notes for this episode, so you can keep getting awesomeness from Adriana out there on social media. Thank you, Adriana. Adriana Stein: Thanks so much for having me. Super pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Adriana Stein: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: So speaking of plans and content plans and content plans, changing and planning and the planning and the planning, one thing that's constantly changing and I think where people are pivoting or platforms are pivoting with their content would be AI content generators. By the way, we're talking about content, does any other content even exist other than content written by AI generators? The answer was, I hope so. Crystal Carter: I hope so. Mordy Oberstein: I hope so Crystal Carter: Yes, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: But be that as it may and your stance on AI aside, it is super interesting what the search engines are doing with integrating AI chat experiences and how changing they are. And Bing actually has made some really interesting changes to their AI chat experience. So while we usually go Google this time, we're going Bing. Speaker 5: And it's going. Google. It's outta here. Mordy Oberstein: Recently, relatively recently, Bing made an update. It was covered by Search Engine Land & Search Engine Roundtable, both by Barry Schwartz back on April 21st, where Bing wrote quote, we've taken steps to help Bing give better answers if you're asking questions about news. And the pain point there is obviously, news is changing very quickly. You got to be really good at understanding what's happening out there in the ecosystem for an AI chat experience to offer back an answer of something that's relevant because it's news, it's constantly changing. So I thought we should take a look and see how good being has gotten with this. One of the things that I've done is, so I'm a big sports nut, as you all know at this point. And I thought, you know what I'll do? I'll ask Bing chat a bunch of questions about players and injury status because that's very current and let's see how well Bing can do it. And the answer is kind of okay. There's a player, his name is Giancarlo Stanton. He's a center fielder for the New York Yankees. He gets hurt a lot, all the time, at least- Crystal Carter: Unlucky. Mordy Oberstein: He's a big dude. He's very muscular in baseball. The traditional player was more stringy. Crystal Carter: I mean, Babe Ruth, come on, Babe Ruth was like... I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Well, Babe Ruth, this is a different... An aberration unto itself. He was eating a thousand hotdog before a game. Shows up, hits a couple home runs, goes back to eating the hotdog. That dude was different. Crystal Carter: Okay, built differently. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, built differently. Back in the day though, the player were just... They were more athletic than they were muscular. 'Cause muscular, you get hurt. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And John Carlo is a very muscular man and he gets hurt a lot. So I asked Bing chat, what is John Carlo Stanton's status? This, by the way, was after I asked Bing chat, what team has Aaron Rogers played for. Crystal Carter: Sure. Mordy Oberstein: And he's a football player. He recently got traded and Bing got it wrong. He said he played for his old team. So I'm like, all right, let's give Bing another chance. Give it another chance. And I asked, what is Giancarlo Stanton? And Bing chat wrote back, Giancarlo Stan has missed most of the 2022 season. We're in 2023. With various injuries, including left achilles tendon, white quadricep and foot ankle. He told you he gets injured all the freaking time. Dude's a walking injury. He has not played the game since July 24th. That has not run the basis or gone on a rehab assignment. He hopes to return in September and October, but his status is alone unclear. He underwent x-rays on his foot ankle that came back negative, very prolific answer, very out of date. Crystal Carter: Foot ankle? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Foot slash ankle, sorry. Okay, that's my fault. That's the Mordy. That's not the AI. But then it said most recently he suffered a hamstring strain and will miss six weeks and that's accurate as hell. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. So it's got a little bit of a mixed bag there. Mordy Oberstein: It's a little bit of both. And I just thought, it's so interesting how the content that these AI chat experiences are spitting out is changing and how far we've come because I think it's awesome that being is making that update. And I think what they've done is awesome and they've clearly gotten it right, but they've also clearly gotten it wrong. And I think there's two ways to look at this from a technology point of view. This is amazing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: From a user point of view for the correct information, this is eh, sort of kind of. Crystal Carter: Yeah. If you said, if I jump off this bridge, will I live, and the answer was like 50% accurate, I wouldn't trust that information. So I think that that's the case. I mean, in my experiments with Bing Chat and I've used it a bit and I've kicked the tires a little bit, pushing on some more sensitive topics. What I sometimes find is that with sensitive topics, it'll just shut down. It'll say, "I don't want to talk about that. I think we should change the subject." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes. Crystal Carter: And I'm like, "What?" So then I open up a new chat with the same question and then it'll say something and I say, "Well, why did you say that?" And says, "I don't want to talk about that." And then so I'm like, "Stop being so fragile Bing." Mordy Oberstein: I did the same thing. So when I asked Bing Chat, "Hey, you know what team has Aaron Rogers played for? He is a quarterback, he used to play for the Green Bay Packers and now he plays for the New York Jets." It came back. Aaron Rodgers, American football quarterback who currently plays for the Green Bay Packers, I wrote back, wasn't he traded to the Jets. And Bing Chat wrote back, according to recent reports, Aaron Rodgers has been traded to the New York Jets. And then I wrote being my snarky self. So why did you say he was on the Packers? Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: I then, "I apologize for the confusion. We must have missed the recent news." Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Precisely. And this is the thing, it gets a little bit sensitive, but I think that one of the other things that I find is that because it can be a bit sensitive, it sometimes hedges. So I think sometimes it will hedge itself on things on fairly safe information. So I asked it recently, what is the latest news in SEO? And the information that came back was sourced from Forbes past company and business Lancaster shouting out to Mark A. Preston. Actually, I'm talking about SEO. And the things that it said were pretty generic answers. They're not really news, they're just general sort of SEO trends. It was saying that Forbes says businesses must adapt their SEO strategies to ensure their content stays relevant. I mean, that could be the news from this week or from last month or from two years ago or from wherever it is. And I'm really surprised that those sources for SEO news, because there are a number of news publications for SEO that are notable. Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz, SEJ, SEL there's tons of them that are very specifically dedicated to SEO. So I think it's interesting that they're hedging on some of these particular sources that are sort of seen as sort of maybe safe or maybe vanilla. Because I think Bing gets a little bit... It gets a little bit sensitive. It gets feelings get hurt. Mordy Oberstein: Well, oh, my feelings get hurt really easily too. So I can't blame Bing. Crystal Carter: We all have feelings. Mordy Oberstein: We all have feelings. Something really interesting about that point. Rich Tatum posted something on Twitter where I think what he posted was he was asking Chat GPT to basically fudge experience, write up a prompt about what it's like to drive a Ford Mustang or something similar to that. And it tried to fudge that experience of driving a Ford Mustang. And it gave pretty generic experiences. It was superfast and fun to drive that Mustang with those 220 ….. That level of nuance, you can't actually fudge actual experience and actual expertise. And it's a really good point. 'Cause I was thinking, you know what? I never thought of that hack. If I got... I'm trying to play the review update, right? I'm going to show experience, I'll just go ask the AI, right? As if I had experience. But you can't fudge it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's very difficult. 'Cause I think also there's sometimes where... I think this is where actual reviews are really interesting is because... And I've seen this before where you see some sites are ranking for reviews and others are not, because the particular reviews that they have on their site are more unique than the other ones. So if the other reviews are like, oh, it's great, or oh, it's nice, then that's going to be different from a review that's very detailed. And they're very often the ones that are on the edges, they're either the one star or the five star who are getting into the sort of like, oh actually when I tried to assemble this chair, it didn't come with enough bolts. Or when I tried to... I recently bought an office chair and someone said, I do not like this chair. I would not wish this cursed chair on my worst enemies. And I was like, cursed. Did you really put cursed in there? But that is a unique review full of some unique feelings. And those sorts of things are not... Being Bing are very sensitive about how it feels about its results. It's not going to put that kind of content in what it's saying. Chat GPT probably wouldn't as well. I mean, I don't know if you could ask Chat GPT add to, I never asked Chat GPT to write a salty review about it- Mordy Oberstein: But it probably wouldn't had that level of nuance. I just wouldn't be there. So end of the day, 'cause we're talking about refining content strategies and refining content plans on the pivoting and refining the strategy when Bing saw the need to get news more accurate, A plus. Good job on you Bing, that's what you should be doing. In the execution, I think we're at a C. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think they can A for effort, and I did actually test this. So after the Oscars, there was an image AI image of Zendaya at the Oscars that was making the rounds on Twitter, and it was retweeted by a few major news publications. And I asked Bing, "Was Zendaya at the Oscars." And they were like, "No, she wasn't. She was in London with her boyfriend." And I was like, okay, Bing. All right, I see you good. That's good information. Good sorting out that information there. So I think also they were fighting it a lot, so they'll get there- Mordy Oberstein: It's a work in project. It's not a critique at all. This whole technology really is in its infancy, but as a user, if you're going to be asking you questions about like Giancarlo Stanton injury status, take the answer with a grain of salt. You have to really be careful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it might be worth them putting a little label on there that's like, do check. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But be that as it may anyway. Well, this was kind of new. What was definitely new is the news. Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: So here's our owed, our weekly owed to Barry Schwartz. As we get into the Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Get a whole bunch of things for you from Barry Schwartz over at SearchEngineRoundtable.com. They're all from Barry this week, and they're all from SearchEngineRoundtable.com. First up, Google rolling out multiple feature snippets on desktop search. Reports are coming in showing that Google is using multiple featured snippets. Three to be exact on desktop. So you search on desktop and you would get three snippets of texts with three URLs crammed into the same space at the top of the SERP. I'm not sure how widespread this is. I don't see it on desktop. I do see it on mobile, which goes back to a previous Google release. Again, I don't see it on desktop in the US or not in the US. I don't see it, but maybe you do. By the way, the idea of Google going more diverse with feature snippets is something I've been clamoring about for a long time. Did whole article about it on the Wix DEO hub. So I will link to that in the show notes. Okay, AI, Google search, generative experience results are not really personalized. Thank you, Barry. Good to know. Google Bard can now provide more precise local results if you allow Bard to access your location. Thank you, Mary. Good to know, Microsoft, Bing chat to work on all browsers soon. Once again, Barry, thank you very much. Great to know. And that's this week's snappy news. Thanks for listening to our little news section. I hope you enjoyed it. Crystal Carter: Thank you. We have some listeners who say that the news is their favorite part of the SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. We have one listener who says that. His name rhymes with Mary Borts. Crystal Carter: No, there was somebody else who said that they absolutely love the Snappy News. And shout out to all of our listeners. Hello, listeners out there in Radioland... Not Radioland. Podcast Land. Mordy Oberstein: Podcast Land. Crystal Carter: Thank you for joining us and thank you for enjoying the Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it was quite snappy. But before we do the part for this week, we have to go through our follow of the week and we have... 'Cause we're talking about content and content strategies. We have somebody who's all about content, contributor to the Wix SEO Hub herself, Maddy Osman over at Maddy Osman on Twitter, that's M-A-D-D-Y O-S-M-A-N. And Maddy is a content strategist execution. She wrote a book. She has a book about writing content that you can buy. Crystal Carter: She's really into her content. She's contributed some fantastic articles on the Wix SEO Hub. And she has, again, yeah, written the book and she's got a really good community that she runs that talks about content as well. So yeah, do you check out Maddy at Blocksmiths, she also runs courses on content as well. Super, super friendly. Super, super clever. A great follow if you're looking to increase your content quality and quantity. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, she's definitely little more prominent SEOs on the content side, thinking about content from an SEO point of view and just from a pure content point of view. So give a follow to Maddy and tell her we sent you. Nut you can't do when you follow someone, I wish you could... There should be a referral of some kind. Like I followed you because the SERP's Up Podcast editor follow you. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that'd be good. Ride the wave. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Ride the Wave because the SERP's Up Podcast, it's a whole surfing thing. Get it? Thanks. Anyway, thank you for joining us on this SERP's Up Podcast. Already going to miss us not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into what the heck is helpful content, actually? Crystal Carter: What is helpful, what is unhelpful? What's going on with helpful content? Let's talk about it. Mordy Oberstein: What does it all mean? What does it all mean? Crystal Carter: Can we get some help? Mordy Oberstein: Yes- Crystal Carter: I need somebody. Mordy Oberstein: It would be very helpful. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO learning them over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Checkout all of the great content and webinars and newsletter on the Wix SEO Learning, however 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. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . 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Aaron Anderson is the founder and lead link builder at Linkpitch.io, an outreach-driven link building agency. He's also the host of the "Let's Talk Link Building” podcast. When not building backlinks, he enjoys traveling the world with his family. Aaron Anderson Founder and Lead Link Builder, Linkpitch.io Aaron Anderson is the founder and lead link builder at Linkpitch.io , an outreach-driven link building agency. He's also the host of the "Let's Talk Link Building” podcast. When not building backlinks, he enjoys traveling the world with his family. Articles & Resources 30 May 2023 HARO link building: The backlink strategy everyone should use Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO