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What contributing factors differentiate successful SEO agencies from the rest? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter dive into the world of agency success & failures with Simon Schnieders, CEO of Blue Array - The UK’s largest SEO agency. Together they investigate the highs and lows that shape an agency’s growth trajectory. Plus, understand why building your own SEO tool can be the x-factor that sets your agency apart. Tune in as we get to the bottom line of SEO agency success on episode 97 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back The success & failures of an SEO agency What contributing factors differentiate successful SEO agencies from the rest? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter dive into the world of agency success & failures with Simon Schnieders, CEO of Blue Array - The UK’s largest SEO agency. Together they investigate the highs and lows that shape an agency’s growth trajectory. Plus, understand why building your own SEO tool can be the x-factor that sets your agency apart. Tune in as we get to the bottom line of SEO agency success on episode 97 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 97 | July 24, 2024 | 43 MIN 00:00 / 42:40 This week’s guests Simon Schnieders Schnieders spent over a decade working at the coalface of SEO, heading up in-house teams at companies like Zoopla, Yell and Mail Online prior to starting his own agency, Blue Array. Having previously worked with SEO agencies as a client, Simon had an acute understanding of some of the frustrations clients can encounter with traditional agencies. Taking what he learned from this and from the big SEO campaigns he’d worked on, Simon struck out on his own to launch Blue Array, trademarking the term ‘consulgency’ to describe a unique blend of consultancy and agency concentrating on SEO services and nothing else. And the rest, as they say, is history. In addition to heading up Blue Array, Simon also finds time to pass on his business expertise as an investor and advisor at ClickMechanic.com, SonicJobs and more. 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 the fabulous, incredibly amazing, the uncomparable head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic, incredible, stupendous, magnificent, oh gosh, I ran out of, it's really- Mordy Oberstein: It's hard. Crystal Carter: You make it seem easy. Mordy Oberstein: It's hard. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that great introduction, that was lovely. Mordy Oberstein: Of course. You know Barry Schwarz said we have to redo the intro because we've been doing the podcast... We're inching towards a hundred episodes and we've been doing the podcast for basically two years now. How is it the new wave if we've been doing it for two years? Crystal Carter: SEO is new every day. Every day there's something new. I wish it wasn't new, but it is. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we have a whole series. It's new but also new wave lasted the whole eighties. That was fine. Crystal Carter: That's true. It did, it did. I was little at the time, but I think I would've been involved with that hair situation. It was very exciting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, me too when I had hair. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to a rest your newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, which comes out each and every month, but where you can also better manage your agency's team with advanced user permission settings and set your clients up for success with direct feedback channels built right into Wix Studio's backend. It's with that, that today we're focusing on the success and failures of the UK's largest SEO agency. No, we're not picking on anyone, but we're going to be joined by Simon Schneiders, the CEO of Blue Array, AKA, the UK's largest SEO agency, who will share both tales from the crypt and fairytale endings as we get the story straight from someone who is in the frontline of it all. Plus we'll explore the value of your agency building its own custom tool stack. Of course we have these snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. If you haven't had your Raisin Bran just yet, don't worry, as we have two scoops of agency side defeat and conquest as we give you the scoop straight from the source on this, the 97th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Also, if you don't get the Raisin brand reference or you just hate Raisin Bran, pretend I said two scoops of ice cream. Crystal Carter: I don't tend to scoop my cereal if I'm completely honest. I tend to spoon. Mordy Oberstein: Also, what size is the scoop of raisins? You can have a tiny, tiny ass scoop, it doesn't say anything? Crystal Carter: I suppose so I guess. Mordy Oberstein: Is that even still a thing? Do they even market it like that, like they have two raisins? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I've never been that into Raisin Bran, nor have I- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was going to say raisins aren't that great anyway, so like "Oh great, thanks, two scoops of them." Crystal Carter: We digress. Mordy Oberstein: We digress. Please welcome to the show, as I mentioned before, the CEO of the largest SEO agency in the entire UK. Simon Schneiders, welcome to SERP's Up. Simon Schnieders: Great to join you Mordy and Crystal, it's lovely to be in the company of Americans and the enthusiasm that you bring to just a general conversation. Mordy Oberstein: Is that passive aggression or I don't know how to take English compliments? Simon Schnieders: No, honestly, I lived in Miami for about seven years and I really do miss the enthusiasm for life that Americans seem to have, whereas we Europeans just trudging, drudging get on with our existences. But yeah, it's great to be around Americans again, love the enthusiasm. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get started, please, please pitch whatever you want. We like to say Mark is going to Mark and it'd be awkward if you didn't. Simon Schnieders: Actually, great, that's a very generous of you, Mordy. I think one thing I'd like perhaps your listeners to do for me is to go to the URL, askSEO.AI, so A-S-K S-E-O .ai and we've got a tool there in beta we're looking for beta testers for, so this is a tool that we've been building in the background at Blue Array that allows us to find corroboration and citation for SEO recommendations. As everybody's aware, SEO is a very subjective field and people like Maile Ohye in the past as well, Maile Ohye from Google, have said that when you are working with an SEO professional or an agency, ask them to cite their sources when they're making recommendations for you. We decided to build a tool that does that for you as SEOs and we're looking for beta testers for that. You can either upload a document or cut and paste an email in there and then it will corroborate and cite your recommendations. We're hoping ultimately to transform this into a Gmail plugin as well, but for now it's a desktop SaaS application that we're hoping really helps SEOs do a better job and perhaps standardizes the industry to some degree as well. Crystal Carter: That's a super genuinely helpful tool and I think it's also useful for a reverse engineering if you're looking at someone's recommendations, they're giving them to you and maybe they haven't given you citations, you can run that through as well. Simon Schnieders: Exactly. It can be used in that way. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Wow. Crystal Carter: I think for talks and stuff, sometimes people quote stats and you're like, "Where did you get that stat from?" It's useful to go through the PDF or whatever and find out where they got that information from. It's really useful. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really great tool. Honestly, when we build out the content for our own SEO hub, we include, I'll call them foundational topics, not only for the average person but also because we know agencies or consultants when you're doing SEO work, you should be citing information. We create that information for people to share. Now, you're doing it with AI. You're making us a little bit obsolete, but hopefully you're citing us also, so maybe not. Simon Schnieders: Well, you get to choose your sources when you are using the tool, so you can say, "I only want to include," because you've obviously got things like hreflang where you'll get different recommendations. Bing doesn't utilize hreflang for instance, so you can use Bing's help files versus Google's help files or combine the pair of them or so you get to choose your sources with the tool. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's so cool. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, I already have it in the show notes, so it'll be in the show notes, ask.seo.ai. I got it, right, yeah? Simon Schnieders: Brilliant. Thank you Mordy. Yeah, that's it. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. That's so cool. Okay. When we were deciding about what topic we're going to talk about, and I love this about you, you said, "Oh, let's talk about success and failures," and one of the things that's so great and people should follow you on LinkedIn, wherever else you are on social media, but I see you the most on LinkedIn. You share your personal stories and behind the scenes of what's happening and it's so connective and it's so personal and it's such a great topic. I don't know where you want to start with this, but we're talking about the successes and the failures of an SEO agency and I'm really happy to have you here to talk about it. Wherever you want to go, the floor is yours. Simon Schnieders: Thanks. I like to be transparent about my background, where I've come from. I think people think that you have to be from a certain background to be successful in the SEO industry. I come from quite a challenging background. I was an alcoholic for two decades and found sobriety and through sobriety became very successful SEO, working for a number of big brands here in the UK, people like MailOnline and Zoopla. As a result of that then had lots of requests for consultancy to then start my own agency and I've been completely bootstrapped to success, bootstrapped meaning I've never taken on any funding. I think the most funding I ever had was a few hundred pounds to register the company name and build a website. We've grown as a business customer by customer, employee by employee, and desk by desk. I started off in co-working spaces where we were able to rent a desk at a time and grow the business until we got too big and then had to go to a big leased office. It's been a journey that I think is replicable for most people. I think if you've cut your teeth in SEO, you are successful at what you do, and you want to replicate and scale what you do and make other people successful through that, then there is a blueprint, I hope, through me. I hope I connect with people in a way that I'm not somehow unique, or special, or different from any of you. If you want to start your own agency, go for it. Crystal Carter: I think one of the things that is great about that story is what it's like... I've known you for a few years now and it's just an accurate depiction of who you are. You're very much an open book, you're very, very honest with things. I think the other thing that really strikes me is you share your personal story and through that I hear resilience. Resilience is so important with being an SEO, you hear people saying about what happens with algorithm updates and various things like that, particularly with being an agency owner, because I think agency owners have had quite a complicated ride in the last few years between Covid and other economic challenges and things like that. Did you find challenges during that and did you find that your resilience helped you? Simon Schnieders: Yeah, I think there's a few things to unpack there. One is perhaps why I feel like, or you may feel as though I'm very honest and transparent. I have to practice honesty. It's part of my recovery, by the way, is that I have to be rigorously honest with myself and I try to be that way with others as well. In terms of macro factors challenging the business, yeah, it's been an awful few years. 2020, everybody was very uncertain about the future. There was no light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel. Thankfully, when light did start to appear then the appetite for SEO services was absolutely ferocious. During '21, that was when we had what was called the great musical chairs event. Musical chairs being a fun game. I don't know if it's an American. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. Simon Schnieders: Okay, all right, fine. Yeah, so the great musical chairs event where everybody's shuffling to different businesses and we had a really high job with retention there, particularly as you've got people moving to London agencies with London waiting and being able to offer vastly bigger salaries. We've seen SEO juniors, so executives, we call them, going off and getting double the money that we were able to pay for and they weren't ready for those roles. We told them they weren't ready for those roles, but whoever's offering me that kind of salary seems to think I'm ready, so I'm off. Yeah, although we had a real resurgence in SEO, it was almost impossible as an agency only to keep up with demand. You just couldn't staff for it. We were turning away business, as I imagine other agencies were doing as well during that time. I think in '22 we were starting to see that I think the wheels are going to fall off this. This is just completely unsustainable. We use something called attrition where you're essentially as people are leaving the business, not backfilling those roles to make sure that we're in the position we're in today where we're probably one of the very few agencies that haven't had to make any redundancies. That was just because we had the foresight to see the wheels were definitely going to fall off this thing and we had to prepare for that. We made sure that we were staffed up correctly for a recession, which is ultimately what we went into. I would say that we're starting to see business buoyancy coming back again, but it's a very different type of business. It's very much project work at the moment that we're getting and the challenge then becomes how do we turn that project work into retained work? Because as an agency you need to have retained business in order make sensible decisions about the future for the agency and your customers as well in terms of resourcing the business. That's where we're at today is we've got the challenge of how do we pivot that business into retainer business and we think we're doing a pretty good job in that area. That's just mostly about making sure that whoever we're working with on a project basis understands the longer term opportunity with us and what that could look like for transforming their business. That's a challenge for us rather than a macro challenge, I think. All agencies we need to be thinking about that is how do we turn this project business into retainer? Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that's so astute. Also, I love the thing that I can hear in that story as well is hoping for the best, planning for the worst sort of thing, which I think is something that business owners and agency owners have to think about as well. I think one of the things that I've seen in my time as an agency is the importance of a contract, for instance, it's really important for... Some people are like, "We don't have any contracts," and I'm like, "It's better that you do for everyone," that you have a contract so everyone knows what the terms of engagements are and things because you want to plan for the best but also plan for the worst as well, that sort of thing. Simon Schnieders: Yeah, I think you don't necessarily need to have long-term contracts that customers feel uncomfortable with. We've always, since the inception of the business, had the ability to serve notice on us with two or three months notice. You could say you're signing a year contract, but it's meaningless because you can serve notice at any stage for three months. It's just a rolling three months, basically. The one I like particularly about that is it puts the onus on us as an agency to deliver value. If you've got a customer locked in for a one-year contract, you can take your foot off the gas if you want to and they're locked in for a year. But I feel that it's better... I've been on the other side of the table as a client hiring agencies that the onus should be on us to make sure that they're seeing success and we're delivering results and they're happy with the relationship. I think that's a good way to turn things around and make sure you are more customer focused as an agency. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I want to pivot back to something you had mentioned before that you built up the agency desk by desk, employee by employee and so forth. I'm just curious, because you've grown exponentially, it's an amazing amount of growth. You're running your own conference, you have SEO courses, it's really, even a newsletter. What do you think contributed to that growth? Simon Schnieders: Well, I can tell you about how deliberate we are about things. Everything we do is quite strategic and to give you an example of that, when you're first starting an agency, you really need to figure out who are we going to be targeting? Who is our customer? In the early days of the business, I very quickly figured out that startups and scale-ups were booming in London and they all talked to each other, they were all very well networked. If I could get in with a few of them, then I would be networked with all of them very, very quickly. I think when you're starting off, you need to make those very deliberate strategic moves, like who am I going after? If you're just doing SEO generally, then I don't think you are going to find your space in the market nowadays. I think there are some agencies that might be seen as competitors of ours. I don't see them particularly as competitors, but I see what they're doing and I think it's quite clever. For instance, Novus and Re:signal have a couple of agencies over here, which I have a lot of respect for, they've niched down into e-commerce and so e-commerce SEO agency, and I could see that if I was starting an agency from scratch today, that's the thing I do. I'd niche down into a SEO for B2B websites or find a niche within that. That's probably what I'd do to start to be successful. I think when we started Blue Array, we were quite unique in that we were just a specialist SEO agency. I could see at that particular time, and timing is very important and understanding what's going on in the market is very important. At that particular time there was a book that was being bounded around called the Marketing Agency Blueprint, which everybody seemed to be reading and following, which said that you needed to have an array of different services, so you needed to not be dependent on one particular service line, otherwise you're at the mercy of perhaps that service line not being as popular anymore and you needed to diversify your business. I thought, "Well, if that's the common wisdom, then if I'm uncommon with my wisdom, then I'm going to find a niche." I ignored all of that advice and all of the other SEO agencies at that time had become generalist agencies. They were offering paid search, and paid social and everything else, these ancillary services. I thought, "Well, if we can just go in as a pure play SEO agency, we'd have our niche." That seemed to be incredibly effective. I knew that lots of companies were seemingly in housing, a lot of digital marketing skills, but SEO was one of those things that's very difficult to hire for, very difficult to retain talent around as well. There will always be a place for an SEO agency, I thought. That was the deliberate or some of the deliberate strategic thinking behind why we did what we did, but it had to do with what was going on in the market at that particular time as well. Say, if I was starting from scratch today, I'd have a different approach to things. Certainly, when I was starting out and focusing on startup and scale up scene, it was very easy. I could go to these big coworking spaces and offer office hours and I'd have lots of people coming wanting to talk to me about SEO. It's not as easy nowadays, you just don't get that anymore. I'd be thinking about a slightly different approach, yeah. Crystal Carter: I've heard people discuss the niching strategy for agencies and part of me is like, "Yes, I totally get that." Part of me is like, "Is there a risk? Is there a risk?" What if you say, "I'm going to niche down to just do SEO for, I don't know, cryptocurrency or something. I'm just going to niche-" Mordy Oberstein: SaaS just for SaaS. Everyone loves doing SaaS. Crystal Carter: When you're picking your niche, you talked about some of the ways that you picked that you picked SEO and things, but are there particular strategic considerations? I presume that one needs to look at the size of the market. If you say to yourself, "I'm going to specialize in SEO for people that knit sweaters for cats," that might not be a good niche. Simon Schnieders: No, you are right, and if you were focused on the travel niche during Covid, you were in a very bad spot. I think there are macro factors that can come into play there as well rather than just needing to understand the market. But yeah, you're absolutely right. I think the idea behind it is that you don't stay in that niche, I think. You build your business within that niche and you build a name and reputation within that niche, but then you come out of that at some stage. It's a way for you to build a name, build a reputation, and then start to pivot into the broader, more generalist opportunities. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Is that something that you all still struggle with a little bit? Because if you're saying that the SEO agency world has gone a little bit niche and you've created your agency way back when it wasn't like that, is that a struggle now to figure out a way "How do we kind of keep who we are, but how do we find a niche? Do we care to find a niche? Do we not care to find a niche?" How does it all play out for you? Simon Schnieders: We've verticalized the business where we've got three offerings, one of which is we call it Ignite, which is for startups and scale-ups, and we offer a vastly reduced day rate for startups and scale up because that's still an incredibly effective marketing flywheel for us. An example of that would be when we're talking to growth managers at startups, we're actually talking to the next generation of CMOs for incumbent businesses in two, three years time. For us, that's a particular area we still want to keep quite focused on. Then we've got something called Advantage, which is our core offering, and then we go into a particular offering that is a performance based model, so we call it performance SEO, but it's for particular clients where they want us to come and take the risk with them. We've got some actual skin in the game, but you have to be a certain size and shape for that to work out. At the moment, we're just offering that to e-commerce customers and typically the customer that we go for would be really great battling profile, but immature facets and filters, so we know that there's a massive opportunity there and we're willing to take the risk with them and we can go into that relationship happily breaking even knowing that in six months to a year we'll start to see some really great ROI from them in a way. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: In a way, does it almost feel like starting over, you have to find a new angle and find a new vertical and find a new audience? Simon Schnieders: Yeah, that's just the roller coaster of running an agency is you've got to keep reinventing yourself and some agencies just manage to do that bull-**** their way through it. The amount of agencies that are out there saying, "We're AI first." If you actually scratch behind that and figure out what that means, it doesn't mean anything. Mordy Oberstein: Is it recommended you drink urine to treat your kidney stones? Simon Schnieders: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so there's an awful lot of bull-****. We try and we hopefully cut through all of that. We're serious about what we do and so we're not just strap lines, but there's a lot that happens behind the scenes. Mordy, you mentioned about you seem to have done really well with the education elements, that side of things. We've got something called the Blue Array Academy. There's about 20,000 students in there, by the way, doing our courses, most of them the free course that we do, the technical SEO course. But for us, that's a loss-leader by the way. We don't actually make any money out of the Blue Array Academy. For us, that's about elevating and educating those in the industry and for us, if we can, to some degree, open source what we do, and you can get to that through the SEO manager course, like this is the actual stuff we're doing for our clients that helps to raise the standards of the industry as a whole. We come from, and we still are an unregulated industry, I would say it's not the Wild West it used to be, but there's still a lot more we could and should be doing, and that's partly our contribution towards that is hoping we elevate and raise the standards across the industry by open sourcing what we do a little bit more. Mordy Oberstein: If it makes you feel any better, the reason why we brought you in, one of the reasons why we brought you into our own SEO course, which is I think still forthcoming by the time this episode comes out was a direct result of your own SEO course. I saw that course. I really liked it. I'm like, "Oh, let's pull Blue Array in for our own course because they did a great job with their course," so direct lead right from the course. Simon Schnieders: Yeah, there's an incredible team here. I'm proud of every single one of them. They're just amazing. Yeah. Crystal Carter: No, they're great. I spoke at London SEO XL in 2022, and it was an absolute joy to see the team in action. Lots of people really, really engaged and really dedicated. That particular event took place on May the fourth, and there were people walking around in Star Wars outfits and if anyone didn't know that was Blue Array's team members, that was actual folks from Blue Array who were making the extra effort to make the event particularly eventful. I think that it was very much appreciated and I think that that's something that the team are really dedicated to and I think it really, really shows. I think that you have some very, very smart folks on your team. The other thing that really struck me at the event was the commitment that y'all have to supporting the wider community as well. Not only are you doing things online with the course, but also supporting local folks London to make the London area more robust, I guess you would say, and I think that that's really important as well. How valuable is that corporate responsibility to you as a team? Simon Schnieders: In simple terms, they've got my back, I've got their back, and I guess there's some testament to that. I've burned through roughly the equivalent of a million dollars worth of our cashflow in order to keep everybody in the business at the moment. We've had some pretty difficult years since 2020. I haven't made a single redundancy here, but that hasn't come without cost. The cost has been, we've through our cash reserves in order to keep everybody in the business and they know that I'm that kind of employer, that I genuinely put people before profit. We actually haven't made any profit last year. I don't think we made any profit at all, yeah, year before that was quite slim. This year we're looking at probably no to very, very low profitability again. I think as an agency only, you've got to demonstrate that on a regular basis as well that you've got their backs. It is been a while since I fired a client, but that's a way that I also like to demonstrate that I've got their backs is that if I find any client is being particularly tyrannical, is a bully to the team, for instance, I will fire them without hesitation and move them on from the business and they know that's the way that I deal with things and I've always got their back. Reciprocally, I get so much more in return from them. They're so dedicated and professional in what they do. Mordy Oberstein: I want to say before time slips away from us that if you're listening to this, I just want you to appreciate, I appreciate just how honest and open you are. There's not a lot of people who will come on a podcast and talk about their business as openly the way that you are right now, and I just want to say that I really appreciate it and I really hope the audience really appreciates it, because it's a treat. Simon Schnieders: Oh, that's lovely. Thank you. Yeah, like I say, I have to practice rigorous honesty. It's my makeup now, but I find that it works incredibly well. There's no point in papering over things. You might as well just be honest about stuff and I try to be as much as I can. At the same time, you have to also be a leader in a business and you have to protect people at their times as well and not be fully transparent. I hopefully balance that thing quite well. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you have to keep a poker face. I think you're probably still allowed to have a poker face, yes? Simon Schnieders: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, good. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Simon, if people wanted to follow you and learn more from you, where could they find you? Simon Schnieders: Well, I've just started exploring short form video, so you could probably find me on TikTok, Insta Reels, YouTube shorts- Crystal Carter: You have TikTok? Simon Schnieders: But I've just started getting involved, yeah, so I finally succumbed to TikTok, but I'm most active on LinkedIn, so if you want to engage with me there, please do, I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments. I regularly open questions up to anybody that's willing to read. Crystal Carter: I'll find you on TikTok and I'll direct my 200 very elite followers to follow you as well. Simon Schnieders: Lovely. Mordy Oberstein: I have no followers on TikTok. Sorry. I'm just not a TikTok person yet. Maybe you'll inspire me because I haven't- Crystal Carter: You can just do more of my videos, Mordy and- Mordy Oberstein: You just do more of my videos. Crystal Carter: Literally just do Mordy tries. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know if I can handle that. It's a lot. Simon, thank you again for coming on and we'll see you out there in the ether that is the SEO universe. Simon Schnieders: Yeah, I look forward to it, Mordy and lovely to see you again Crystal. I look forward to meeting up in person again. Crystal Carter: See you again soon. Mordy Oberstein: Bye now. Well, this worked out perfectly. This was not planned by the way, but Simon was talking about their own internal SEO tool that they built over at Blue Array. Before we even knew Simon was even doing that, Crystal and I were like, "A lot of SEO agencies build out their own tools." It's a trend, it's a thing. The question is why. We're going to run through a few good examples of agency side tools as we go through a very unique version of Tool Time. There's a whole bunch that you don't really think about that necessarily as being agency tools, like AlsoAsked. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Probably one of the best SEO tools out there. I will say, it is one of the best SEO tools out there. Crystal Carter: It's a great tool and Mark from Candor Agency was saying basically it was something that they were using to help their clients to understand and to access and do better with people as they asked questions. He was presenting on it at an event and somebody was like, "Oh my God, can I get access to this? This would be really cool if we could." They built it out into a tool and it's something that the industry at large is very, very grateful for and I've shown it to people who are not SEOs and it can be really, really useful for helping them to understand the value of content and the user journey because it really maps out a user journey for you on a particular topic really, really easily. Yeah, it's a great tool. Mordy Oberstein: You see there's this this trend where agencies build out tool stacks and it's interesting why. Why do they do that mean? Well, I was going to say it's like an obvious lead gen. It's a great way to bring in leads, but it's interesting you would think that wouldn't because your marketing to other SEOs for the most part. How does that work? Crystal Carter: What I've seen people do is people will often create a tool, and I think it aligns you next to people that you want to be aligned with, similar agencies, people who are working in similar industries. It also opens you up to a lot more different customers, a lot more potential customers who can see the knowledge and expertise and interest that your agency has. I think a lot of people forget that Screaming Frog comes from an agency tool that's an agency that has a tool that everyone uses that every other agency uses, and that's something that's foundational to SEO, really, particularly for technical SEO now, and it's really valuable. I think it's a great showcase. It's a great show, don't tell around the kinds of things that you can bring for clients. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's great brand building and because of that brand building, you're reaching a larger audience. I'm going to get to in-house in a second. I didn't forget about that, but if you're an SEO and you're like, "Oh, I love AlsoAsked," and you're sharing AlsoAsked, and sharing AlsoAsked, and sharing AlsoAsked, you're sharing Candor Agency at the same time, basically, and it's extending Marks... We're using also as the example, but it's extending out that reach exponentially. At the same time, by the way, whether it's Blue Arrays tool or whether it's Screaming Frog, you're reaching in-house teams at the same time. Yes, the tool is applicable to other SEOs and other agencies who may not be your target audience, but in-house SEOs might very well be your target audience, especially if their team is not built out or if they're a smaller organization or whatever it is. They might say, "You know what? Let's have an SEO agency handle this for us." Crystal Carter: I think so. I think also if you are able to create tools for clients, which is another thing that I've started to see, then that could be a real differentiator for you as an agency. I've seen it before where there are agencies who are building tools that are specific for the client, and sometimes it can be the case that maybe the client doesn't necessarily want their services from you anymore, but they do want the tool or maybe somebody wants the tool. If you've been using the tool for ages and they go, "Hey, could you help me with some additional agency services?" This is something that they do over at Keyword Insights. Andy Chadwick over at Keyword Insights was saying that he built the tool and he started getting service leads from it. Now, he offers services on top of the tool because people who love the tool and love the insights and love, the logic that they can see from Keyword Insights where I would also like some support with this. That's a great way to show people how you think about search, how you think about content, how you think about technical SEO, whatever in practice. Very often people will come to you for additional tools, as well. Another classic example is the Chrome extension that I use literally 70 million times a day, which is the SEO Pro Chrome extension from Kristina Azarenko over at Marketing Syrup. That is an incredible growth engine for her because there's links in there that go straight to her agency, straight to her training platform and things like that. It's incredibly valuable and I tell people about it all the time because it's so useful and it really just speaks to the expertise and the value that Kristina's able to offer. Mordy Oberstein: Especially if you're someone who has a particular identity or a particular focus, if you're, say an e-comm SEO agency or whatever it is, you can build up that specialty and that brand identity and around that and pull in leads or people who are looking at something specifically like that, what Simon was talking about earlier with agencies trying to be a little bit more niche or a little more focused than in the past. That can lean right into that, but whatever it is, it's a momentum builder, which is what you want if you're an agency. Crystal Carter: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think that we see in the Wix app market, we have lots of tools that are created by lots of different teams, including folks who are coming from an agency background. It creates a lot of leavers and a lot of new opportunities. Even on Wix, we have the logo builder for instance, which is a tool that we have available for free for people to use. We have a QR code generator, we have a few other tools as well, and that gives you an opportunity to speak to people and to show people that you're able to provide a solution. People say, "This thing is broken, I want it fixed." You're able to say, "Here's a solution to this," and to be able to provide that to them, and around the clock, it's not necessarily passive income depending on how you're configuring it. Our logo gen is free. There's a free version as well, but it can give you a lot of reach and particularly tools also can transcend language for instance. With something like a logo generator, even if it was in a different language, I could probably figure out whether or not I wanted it to have a rocket going to the moon or whatever on my logo and it would help me to achieve my goals. I think that that's really, really valuable as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I would love to have or create a tool and you can call the naming itself would just be amazing, Barry. Barry should have tools. He does have a tool, wait, I'm wrong. Doesn't he have some algorithm update, like history tracker website thing? Crystal Carter: Yes, I'm sure Barry has tools. I'm sure he has something. Mordy Oberstein: The Barrinator, RustyBricker. Crystal Carter: The Schwartzkoff, I don't know. I don't know. Something like... I don't know, something to that effect. Mordy Oberstein: Schwartz and SERP. Crystal Carter: Schwartzen Ranker. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Schwartzen Ranker. Nice. That's it, trademark. Barry, if you want it, you got to pay for it now, I guess until he creates tools, we'll just have to read his news in the meantime. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: This week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Now, if you're saying, "Hey, wait a second, you didn't cover this breaking news story that happened in the SEO industry," that's because, breaking the fourth wall for you, I'm recording this section of the podcast a little bit earlier than I usually do because of our New York City digital marketing meetup with Search Engine Journal, that by the time you listen to this just happened. Okay, with that, three articles for you from Barry Schwarz, but from two different sources. First up from seroundtable.com, Google core update expected in the coming weeks. Google's Danny Sullivan, the search liaison was in the comments over seroundtable.com and wrote in the comments and replied back to somebody, whoever, whatever. "I would expect we'll see one," meaning a core update, "In the coming weeks because that fits in with our general cycle," but precisely when that's just not known yet. First, that's really interesting. They have a general cycle because sometimes it doesn't feel like they do. I wonder and am speculating if they do have a regular cycle of the refresh, but they sometimes hold off when they actually look at the dataset and say, "Wait a second, what we've tested doesn't seem to have actually worked the way we want it to. Let's hold off retest or whatever. Or we have other things going on that we have to prioritize and we'll push it off until later." I wonder if they have a regular schedule like Danny is saying, but that it often gets altered for various reasons. By the way, this doesn't mean that it's... Coming weeks can mean two weeks, it can mean 12 weeks. We don't exactly know, but there's one coming, which I guess you already knew anyway, there's always one coming. On to Barry Schwartz, but this time from search engine land, Google ending notes on search by the end of the month. Who cares? Oh, that's salty. Google had this feature called notes where users could leave little comments, I guess, or running records on search results. Imagine you had a recipe for best meatloaf, you're running the query best meatloaf, you have all the results, and on whatever recipe website you listed like, "Yeah, I tried this, it was really good, but it was a little bit too dry." You could leave like a running record. Google was basically running these inconsistently, not very often, not extremely very helpful. It's not surprising that they're gone. I feel like this was Google over, not overreaching. That's a bad way of putting it. Overzealously trying to get user generated content onto the SERP because they saw a trend where people want user generated content and there isn't enough across the web, which is why you have the same issue with too much Reddit, too much Quora, whatever, the same kind of thing. That's why they put the notes there. It didn't really work out the way they thought it would. That happens sometimes with products, so by the end of this month, they are going to be gone. Will you miss them? Will you even notice that they're gone? Good question. On to Barry Schwartz again from Search Engine Roundtable, again. Google artificially, by the way, I split the order up this week just so we go from Search Engine Roundtable to Search Engine Land, back to Search Engine Roundtable. That's how my mind works. Google artificially generated content, AGC classification score, this goes back to the lease that we've spoken about before many, many times. You probably know about them already. Juan Gonzalez Villa found in those, because again, the document is enormous and we're finding new things all the time, something that seems to show some site level AGC classification score, artificially generated content like AI content, score. Is Google using the score? We don't know. Have they ever used this score? We don't know, but there seems to be some kind of score at some point. Barry points out in the article that from what's written there in the leaks, I hate calling them leaks that this might be related to a really outdated content. Perhaps this is something Google used in the way, way, way past. However, it wouldn't surprise me and I think wouldn't surprise many if Google had some kind of way of classifying either content that was automatically generated like AI content or in reverse classifying content that seems to be written based on actual human experience. It's a whole separate topic. We actually covered it in our recent webinar with Mike King and Lily Ray, so you can watch the recording on the SEO hub. I'll link to that in the show notes. We actually brought it up at some point, I think later on in the Q&A section we brought it up there. You can listen to our thoughts on that scoring system, what that might be or not be like in that webinar. With that, that is this week's snappy news. Maybe he should just create his own algorithm update tracker, like the volatility tracker, like "Why rely on SEMrush," and whatever, just rely on Barry. Crystal Carter: Well, and if he did, he could do it on Wix Apps builder. He could use the Wix studio apps. He could make an app and he could make a widget and he could sell it in the app store. Mordy Oberstein: Make a widget, Barry. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that'd be great. Mordy Oberstein: When the volatility gets high, it's like an angry Barry face. When it's low, it's a happy Barry face, which happens to be the same Barry face. Crystal Carter: Same face. Mordy Oberstein: Same face. Crystal Carter: Same face. Mordy Oberstein: The entire time. It's not the same, our follow of the week every week must be different. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a follow of the week. It'd just be the follow of the podcast forever. Yeah. This week's follow is Jim Banks. He's got 25 years of high search volume media buying for rapid growth businesses. Check out Jim Banks over on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, Jim Banks is a great follow. He has a great LinkedIn. He also has a great podcast that he does, which he also syndicates to TikTok, and I follow him on TikTok and things. His podcast is centered around some of the challenges and some of the things I wish I'd known as an agency owner and things as well. He really, really expects people to be honest about their agency journey. Mordy Oberstein: That's topical. Crystal Carter: I think it's really great. That's one of the reasons why I thought he'd be a great follow of the week. If you're interested in people telling true stories about the agency journey, he's a great follow. His podcast is called Bad Decisions with Jim Banks, and really, he talks about lots of things. He had a recent podcast with one of the founders or one of the leaders over at Optimizer, for instance, and they're talking about very openly about some of the challenges there. But he's great. Great follow, great guy. Follow Jim Banks. Mordy Oberstein: You know what? That's a great name for a podcast. I'm going to start a podcast like that, Bad Decisions with Mordy Oberstein, and the first person we can interview is my wife. Crystal Carter: Shout out Mrs. Oberstein for- Mordy Oberstein: For having a good heart. Crystal Carter: Right, having a good heart- Mordy Oberstein: And saying yes. Crystal Carter: Long, long suffering, Mrs. Oberstein. No, I'm kidding. She's lovely. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think so. Then I'm not paid to say that. Anyway, that'll do it for this week's SERP's Up. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode as we dive into how to become indispensable to your clients. When I say indispensable, I think of indestructible from The Simpsons where Mr. Burns says, "Indestructible." Anyway, indispensable. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Simon Schnieders Jim Banks Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Blue Array SEO Agency AskSEO Webinar on Understanding Google's Algorithm News: Google Artificially Generated Content AGC Classification Score? Google: Core Update Expected In The Coming Weeks Google ending Notes on Search by end of the month Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Simon Schnieders Jim Banks Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Blue Array SEO Agency AskSEO Webinar on Understanding Google's Algorithm News: Google Artificially Generated Content AGC Classification Score? Google: Core Update Expected In The Coming Weeks Google ending Notes on Search by end of the month 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 the fabulous, incredibly amazing, the uncomparable head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic, incredible, stupendous, magnificent, oh gosh, I ran out of, it's really- Mordy Oberstein: It's hard. Crystal Carter: You make it seem easy. Mordy Oberstein: It's hard. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that great introduction, that was lovely. Mordy Oberstein: Of course. You know Barry Schwarz said we have to redo the intro because we've been doing the podcast... We're inching towards a hundred episodes and we've been doing the podcast for basically two years now. How is it the new wave if we've been doing it for two years? Crystal Carter: SEO is new every day. Every day there's something new. I wish it wasn't new, but it is. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we have a whole series. It's new but also new wave lasted the whole eighties. That was fine. Crystal Carter: That's true. It did, it did. I was little at the time, but I think I would've been involved with that hair situation. It was very exciting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, me too when I had hair. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to a rest your newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, which comes out each and every month, but where you can also better manage your agency's team with advanced user permission settings and set your clients up for success with direct feedback channels built right into Wix Studio's backend. It's with that, that today we're focusing on the success and failures of the UK's largest SEO agency. No, we're not picking on anyone, but we're going to be joined by Simon Schneiders, the CEO of Blue Array, AKA, the UK's largest SEO agency, who will share both tales from the crypt and fairytale endings as we get the story straight from someone who is in the frontline of it all. Plus we'll explore the value of your agency building its own custom tool stack. Of course we have these snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. If you haven't had your Raisin Bran just yet, don't worry, as we have two scoops of agency side defeat and conquest as we give you the scoop straight from the source on this, the 97th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Also, if you don't get the Raisin brand reference or you just hate Raisin Bran, pretend I said two scoops of ice cream. Crystal Carter: I don't tend to scoop my cereal if I'm completely honest. I tend to spoon. Mordy Oberstein: Also, what size is the scoop of raisins? You can have a tiny, tiny ass scoop, it doesn't say anything? Crystal Carter: I suppose so I guess. Mordy Oberstein: Is that even still a thing? Do they even market it like that, like they have two raisins? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I've never been that into Raisin Bran, nor have I- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was going to say raisins aren't that great anyway, so like "Oh great, thanks, two scoops of them." Crystal Carter: We digress. Mordy Oberstein: We digress. Please welcome to the show, as I mentioned before, the CEO of the largest SEO agency in the entire UK. Simon Schneiders, welcome to SERP's Up. Simon Schnieders: Great to join you Mordy and Crystal, it's lovely to be in the company of Americans and the enthusiasm that you bring to just a general conversation. Mordy Oberstein: Is that passive aggression or I don't know how to take English compliments? Simon Schnieders: No, honestly, I lived in Miami for about seven years and I really do miss the enthusiasm for life that Americans seem to have, whereas we Europeans just trudging, drudging get on with our existences. But yeah, it's great to be around Americans again, love the enthusiasm. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get started, please, please pitch whatever you want. We like to say Mark is going to Mark and it'd be awkward if you didn't. Simon Schnieders: Actually, great, that's a very generous of you, Mordy. I think one thing I'd like perhaps your listeners to do for me is to go to the URL, askSEO.AI, so A-S-K S-E-O .ai and we've got a tool there in beta we're looking for beta testers for, so this is a tool that we've been building in the background at Blue Array that allows us to find corroboration and citation for SEO recommendations. As everybody's aware, SEO is a very subjective field and people like Maile Ohye in the past as well, Maile Ohye from Google, have said that when you are working with an SEO professional or an agency, ask them to cite their sources when they're making recommendations for you. We decided to build a tool that does that for you as SEOs and we're looking for beta testers for that. You can either upload a document or cut and paste an email in there and then it will corroborate and cite your recommendations. We're hoping ultimately to transform this into a Gmail plugin as well, but for now it's a desktop SaaS application that we're hoping really helps SEOs do a better job and perhaps standardizes the industry to some degree as well. Crystal Carter: That's a super genuinely helpful tool and I think it's also useful for a reverse engineering if you're looking at someone's recommendations, they're giving them to you and maybe they haven't given you citations, you can run that through as well. Simon Schnieders: Exactly. It can be used in that way. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Wow. Crystal Carter: I think for talks and stuff, sometimes people quote stats and you're like, "Where did you get that stat from?" It's useful to go through the PDF or whatever and find out where they got that information from. It's really useful. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really great tool. Honestly, when we build out the content for our own SEO hub, we include, I'll call them foundational topics, not only for the average person but also because we know agencies or consultants when you're doing SEO work, you should be citing information. We create that information for people to share. Now, you're doing it with AI. You're making us a little bit obsolete, but hopefully you're citing us also, so maybe not. Simon Schnieders: Well, you get to choose your sources when you are using the tool, so you can say, "I only want to include," because you've obviously got things like hreflang where you'll get different recommendations. Bing doesn't utilize hreflang for instance, so you can use Bing's help files versus Google's help files or combine the pair of them or so you get to choose your sources with the tool. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's so cool. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, I already have it in the show notes, so it'll be in the show notes, ask.seo.ai. I got it, right, yeah? Simon Schnieders: Brilliant. Thank you Mordy. Yeah, that's it. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. That's so cool. Okay. When we were deciding about what topic we're going to talk about, and I love this about you, you said, "Oh, let's talk about success and failures," and one of the things that's so great and people should follow you on LinkedIn, wherever else you are on social media, but I see you the most on LinkedIn. You share your personal stories and behind the scenes of what's happening and it's so connective and it's so personal and it's such a great topic. I don't know where you want to start with this, but we're talking about the successes and the failures of an SEO agency and I'm really happy to have you here to talk about it. Wherever you want to go, the floor is yours. Simon Schnieders: Thanks. I like to be transparent about my background, where I've come from. I think people think that you have to be from a certain background to be successful in the SEO industry. I come from quite a challenging background. I was an alcoholic for two decades and found sobriety and through sobriety became very successful SEO, working for a number of big brands here in the UK, people like MailOnline and Zoopla. As a result of that then had lots of requests for consultancy to then start my own agency and I've been completely bootstrapped to success, bootstrapped meaning I've never taken on any funding. I think the most funding I ever had was a few hundred pounds to register the company name and build a website. We've grown as a business customer by customer, employee by employee, and desk by desk. I started off in co-working spaces where we were able to rent a desk at a time and grow the business until we got too big and then had to go to a big leased office. It's been a journey that I think is replicable for most people. I think if you've cut your teeth in SEO, you are successful at what you do, and you want to replicate and scale what you do and make other people successful through that, then there is a blueprint, I hope, through me. I hope I connect with people in a way that I'm not somehow unique, or special, or different from any of you. If you want to start your own agency, go for it. Crystal Carter: I think one of the things that is great about that story is what it's like... I've known you for a few years now and it's just an accurate depiction of who you are. You're very much an open book, you're very, very honest with things. I think the other thing that really strikes me is you share your personal story and through that I hear resilience. Resilience is so important with being an SEO, you hear people saying about what happens with algorithm updates and various things like that, particularly with being an agency owner, because I think agency owners have had quite a complicated ride in the last few years between Covid and other economic challenges and things like that. Did you find challenges during that and did you find that your resilience helped you? Simon Schnieders: Yeah, I think there's a few things to unpack there. One is perhaps why I feel like, or you may feel as though I'm very honest and transparent. I have to practice honesty. It's part of my recovery, by the way, is that I have to be rigorously honest with myself and I try to be that way with others as well. In terms of macro factors challenging the business, yeah, it's been an awful few years. 2020, everybody was very uncertain about the future. There was no light at the end of a seemingly endless tunnel. Thankfully, when light did start to appear then the appetite for SEO services was absolutely ferocious. During '21, that was when we had what was called the great musical chairs event. Musical chairs being a fun game. I don't know if it's an American. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. Simon Schnieders: Okay, all right, fine. Yeah, so the great musical chairs event where everybody's shuffling to different businesses and we had a really high job with retention there, particularly as you've got people moving to London agencies with London waiting and being able to offer vastly bigger salaries. We've seen SEO juniors, so executives, we call them, going off and getting double the money that we were able to pay for and they weren't ready for those roles. We told them they weren't ready for those roles, but whoever's offering me that kind of salary seems to think I'm ready, so I'm off. Yeah, although we had a real resurgence in SEO, it was almost impossible as an agency only to keep up with demand. You just couldn't staff for it. We were turning away business, as I imagine other agencies were doing as well during that time. I think in '22 we were starting to see that I think the wheels are going to fall off this. This is just completely unsustainable. We use something called attrition where you're essentially as people are leaving the business, not backfilling those roles to make sure that we're in the position we're in today where we're probably one of the very few agencies that haven't had to make any redundancies. That was just because we had the foresight to see the wheels were definitely going to fall off this thing and we had to prepare for that. We made sure that we were staffed up correctly for a recession, which is ultimately what we went into. I would say that we're starting to see business buoyancy coming back again, but it's a very different type of business. It's very much project work at the moment that we're getting and the challenge then becomes how do we turn that project work into retained work? Because as an agency you need to have retained business in order make sensible decisions about the future for the agency and your customers as well in terms of resourcing the business. That's where we're at today is we've got the challenge of how do we pivot that business into retainer business and we think we're doing a pretty good job in that area. That's just mostly about making sure that whoever we're working with on a project basis understands the longer term opportunity with us and what that could look like for transforming their business. That's a challenge for us rather than a macro challenge, I think. All agencies we need to be thinking about that is how do we turn this project business into retainer? Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that's so astute. Also, I love the thing that I can hear in that story as well is hoping for the best, planning for the worst sort of thing, which I think is something that business owners and agency owners have to think about as well. I think one of the things that I've seen in my time as an agency is the importance of a contract, for instance, it's really important for... Some people are like, "We don't have any contracts," and I'm like, "It's better that you do for everyone," that you have a contract so everyone knows what the terms of engagements are and things because you want to plan for the best but also plan for the worst as well, that sort of thing. Simon Schnieders: Yeah, I think you don't necessarily need to have long-term contracts that customers feel uncomfortable with. We've always, since the inception of the business, had the ability to serve notice on us with two or three months notice. You could say you're signing a year contract, but it's meaningless because you can serve notice at any stage for three months. It's just a rolling three months, basically. The one I like particularly about that is it puts the onus on us as an agency to deliver value. If you've got a customer locked in for a one-year contract, you can take your foot off the gas if you want to and they're locked in for a year. But I feel that it's better... I've been on the other side of the table as a client hiring agencies that the onus should be on us to make sure that they're seeing success and we're delivering results and they're happy with the relationship. I think that's a good way to turn things around and make sure you are more customer focused as an agency. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I want to pivot back to something you had mentioned before that you built up the agency desk by desk, employee by employee and so forth. I'm just curious, because you've grown exponentially, it's an amazing amount of growth. You're running your own conference, you have SEO courses, it's really, even a newsletter. What do you think contributed to that growth? Simon Schnieders: Well, I can tell you about how deliberate we are about things. Everything we do is quite strategic and to give you an example of that, when you're first starting an agency, you really need to figure out who are we going to be targeting? Who is our customer? In the early days of the business, I very quickly figured out that startups and scale-ups were booming in London and they all talked to each other, they were all very well networked. If I could get in with a few of them, then I would be networked with all of them very, very quickly. I think when you're starting off, you need to make those very deliberate strategic moves, like who am I going after? If you're just doing SEO generally, then I don't think you are going to find your space in the market nowadays. I think there are some agencies that might be seen as competitors of ours. I don't see them particularly as competitors, but I see what they're doing and I think it's quite clever. For instance, Novus and Re:signal have a couple of agencies over here, which I have a lot of respect for, they've niched down into e-commerce and so e-commerce SEO agency, and I could see that if I was starting an agency from scratch today, that's the thing I do. I'd niche down into a SEO for B2B websites or find a niche within that. That's probably what I'd do to start to be successful. I think when we started Blue Array, we were quite unique in that we were just a specialist SEO agency. I could see at that particular time, and timing is very important and understanding what's going on in the market is very important. At that particular time there was a book that was being bounded around called the Marketing Agency Blueprint, which everybody seemed to be reading and following, which said that you needed to have an array of different services, so you needed to not be dependent on one particular service line, otherwise you're at the mercy of perhaps that service line not being as popular anymore and you needed to diversify your business. I thought, "Well, if that's the common wisdom, then if I'm uncommon with my wisdom, then I'm going to find a niche." I ignored all of that advice and all of the other SEO agencies at that time had become generalist agencies. They were offering paid search, and paid social and everything else, these ancillary services. I thought, "Well, if we can just go in as a pure play SEO agency, we'd have our niche." That seemed to be incredibly effective. I knew that lots of companies were seemingly in housing, a lot of digital marketing skills, but SEO was one of those things that's very difficult to hire for, very difficult to retain talent around as well. There will always be a place for an SEO agency, I thought. That was the deliberate or some of the deliberate strategic thinking behind why we did what we did, but it had to do with what was going on in the market at that particular time as well. Say, if I was starting from scratch today, I'd have a different approach to things. Certainly, when I was starting out and focusing on startup and scale up scene, it was very easy. I could go to these big coworking spaces and offer office hours and I'd have lots of people coming wanting to talk to me about SEO. It's not as easy nowadays, you just don't get that anymore. I'd be thinking about a slightly different approach, yeah. Crystal Carter: I've heard people discuss the niching strategy for agencies and part of me is like, "Yes, I totally get that." Part of me is like, "Is there a risk? Is there a risk?" What if you say, "I'm going to niche down to just do SEO for, I don't know, cryptocurrency or something. I'm just going to niche-" Mordy Oberstein: SaaS just for SaaS. Everyone loves doing SaaS. Crystal Carter: When you're picking your niche, you talked about some of the ways that you picked that you picked SEO and things, but are there particular strategic considerations? I presume that one needs to look at the size of the market. If you say to yourself, "I'm going to specialize in SEO for people that knit sweaters for cats," that might not be a good niche. Simon Schnieders: No, you are right, and if you were focused on the travel niche during Covid, you were in a very bad spot. I think there are macro factors that can come into play there as well rather than just needing to understand the market. But yeah, you're absolutely right. I think the idea behind it is that you don't stay in that niche, I think. You build your business within that niche and you build a name and reputation within that niche, but then you come out of that at some stage. It's a way for you to build a name, build a reputation, and then start to pivot into the broader, more generalist opportunities. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Is that something that you all still struggle with a little bit? Because if you're saying that the SEO agency world has gone a little bit niche and you've created your agency way back when it wasn't like that, is that a struggle now to figure out a way "How do we kind of keep who we are, but how do we find a niche? Do we care to find a niche? Do we not care to find a niche?" How does it all play out for you? Simon Schnieders: We've verticalized the business where we've got three offerings, one of which is we call it Ignite, which is for startups and scale-ups, and we offer a vastly reduced day rate for startups and scale up because that's still an incredibly effective marketing flywheel for us. An example of that would be when we're talking to growth managers at startups, we're actually talking to the next generation of CMOs for incumbent businesses in two, three years time. For us, that's a particular area we still want to keep quite focused on. Then we've got something called Advantage, which is our core offering, and then we go into a particular offering that is a performance based model, so we call it performance SEO, but it's for particular clients where they want us to come and take the risk with them. We've got some actual skin in the game, but you have to be a certain size and shape for that to work out. At the moment, we're just offering that to e-commerce customers and typically the customer that we go for would be really great battling profile, but immature facets and filters, so we know that there's a massive opportunity there and we're willing to take the risk with them and we can go into that relationship happily breaking even knowing that in six months to a year we'll start to see some really great ROI from them in a way. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: In a way, does it almost feel like starting over, you have to find a new angle and find a new vertical and find a new audience? Simon Schnieders: Yeah, that's just the roller coaster of running an agency is you've got to keep reinventing yourself and some agencies just manage to do that bull-**** their way through it. The amount of agencies that are out there saying, "We're AI first." If you actually scratch behind that and figure out what that means, it doesn't mean anything. Mordy Oberstein: Is it recommended you drink urine to treat your kidney stones? Simon Schnieders: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so there's an awful lot of bull-****. We try and we hopefully cut through all of that. We're serious about what we do and so we're not just strap lines, but there's a lot that happens behind the scenes. Mordy, you mentioned about you seem to have done really well with the education elements, that side of things. We've got something called the Blue Array Academy. There's about 20,000 students in there, by the way, doing our courses, most of them the free course that we do, the technical SEO course. But for us, that's a loss-leader by the way. We don't actually make any money out of the Blue Array Academy. For us, that's about elevating and educating those in the industry and for us, if we can, to some degree, open source what we do, and you can get to that through the SEO manager course, like this is the actual stuff we're doing for our clients that helps to raise the standards of the industry as a whole. We come from, and we still are an unregulated industry, I would say it's not the Wild West it used to be, but there's still a lot more we could and should be doing, and that's partly our contribution towards that is hoping we elevate and raise the standards across the industry by open sourcing what we do a little bit more. Mordy Oberstein: If it makes you feel any better, the reason why we brought you in, one of the reasons why we brought you into our own SEO course, which is I think still forthcoming by the time this episode comes out was a direct result of your own SEO course. I saw that course. I really liked it. I'm like, "Oh, let's pull Blue Array in for our own course because they did a great job with their course," so direct lead right from the course. Simon Schnieders: Yeah, there's an incredible team here. I'm proud of every single one of them. They're just amazing. Yeah. Crystal Carter: No, they're great. I spoke at London SEO XL in 2022, and it was an absolute joy to see the team in action. Lots of people really, really engaged and really dedicated. That particular event took place on May the fourth, and there were people walking around in Star Wars outfits and if anyone didn't know that was Blue Array's team members, that was actual folks from Blue Array who were making the extra effort to make the event particularly eventful. I think that it was very much appreciated and I think that that's something that the team are really dedicated to and I think it really, really shows. I think that you have some very, very smart folks on your team. The other thing that really struck me at the event was the commitment that y'all have to supporting the wider community as well. Not only are you doing things online with the course, but also supporting local folks London to make the London area more robust, I guess you would say, and I think that that's really important as well. How valuable is that corporate responsibility to you as a team? Simon Schnieders: In simple terms, they've got my back, I've got their back, and I guess there's some testament to that. I've burned through roughly the equivalent of a million dollars worth of our cashflow in order to keep everybody in the business at the moment. We've had some pretty difficult years since 2020. I haven't made a single redundancy here, but that hasn't come without cost. The cost has been, we've through our cash reserves in order to keep everybody in the business and they know that I'm that kind of employer, that I genuinely put people before profit. We actually haven't made any profit last year. I don't think we made any profit at all, yeah, year before that was quite slim. This year we're looking at probably no to very, very low profitability again. I think as an agency only, you've got to demonstrate that on a regular basis as well that you've got their backs. It is been a while since I fired a client, but that's a way that I also like to demonstrate that I've got their backs is that if I find any client is being particularly tyrannical, is a bully to the team, for instance, I will fire them without hesitation and move them on from the business and they know that's the way that I deal with things and I've always got their back. Reciprocally, I get so much more in return from them. They're so dedicated and professional in what they do. Mordy Oberstein: I want to say before time slips away from us that if you're listening to this, I just want you to appreciate, I appreciate just how honest and open you are. There's not a lot of people who will come on a podcast and talk about their business as openly the way that you are right now, and I just want to say that I really appreciate it and I really hope the audience really appreciates it, because it's a treat. Simon Schnieders: Oh, that's lovely. Thank you. Yeah, like I say, I have to practice rigorous honesty. It's my makeup now, but I find that it works incredibly well. There's no point in papering over things. You might as well just be honest about stuff and I try to be as much as I can. At the same time, you have to also be a leader in a business and you have to protect people at their times as well and not be fully transparent. I hopefully balance that thing quite well. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, you have to keep a poker face. I think you're probably still allowed to have a poker face, yes? Simon Schnieders: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, good. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Simon, if people wanted to follow you and learn more from you, where could they find you? Simon Schnieders: Well, I've just started exploring short form video, so you could probably find me on TikTok, Insta Reels, YouTube shorts- Crystal Carter: You have TikTok? Simon Schnieders: But I've just started getting involved, yeah, so I finally succumbed to TikTok, but I'm most active on LinkedIn, so if you want to engage with me there, please do, I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments. I regularly open questions up to anybody that's willing to read. Crystal Carter: I'll find you on TikTok and I'll direct my 200 very elite followers to follow you as well. Simon Schnieders: Lovely. Mordy Oberstein: I have no followers on TikTok. Sorry. I'm just not a TikTok person yet. Maybe you'll inspire me because I haven't- Crystal Carter: You can just do more of my videos, Mordy and- Mordy Oberstein: You just do more of my videos. Crystal Carter: Literally just do Mordy tries. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know if I can handle that. It's a lot. Simon, thank you again for coming on and we'll see you out there in the ether that is the SEO universe. Simon Schnieders: Yeah, I look forward to it, Mordy and lovely to see you again Crystal. I look forward to meeting up in person again. Crystal Carter: See you again soon. Mordy Oberstein: Bye now. Well, this worked out perfectly. This was not planned by the way, but Simon was talking about their own internal SEO tool that they built over at Blue Array. Before we even knew Simon was even doing that, Crystal and I were like, "A lot of SEO agencies build out their own tools." It's a trend, it's a thing. The question is why. We're going to run through a few good examples of agency side tools as we go through a very unique version of Tool Time. There's a whole bunch that you don't really think about that necessarily as being agency tools, like AlsoAsked. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Probably one of the best SEO tools out there. I will say, it is one of the best SEO tools out there. Crystal Carter: It's a great tool and Mark from Candor Agency was saying basically it was something that they were using to help their clients to understand and to access and do better with people as they asked questions. He was presenting on it at an event and somebody was like, "Oh my God, can I get access to this? This would be really cool if we could." They built it out into a tool and it's something that the industry at large is very, very grateful for and I've shown it to people who are not SEOs and it can be really, really useful for helping them to understand the value of content and the user journey because it really maps out a user journey for you on a particular topic really, really easily. Yeah, it's a great tool. Mordy Oberstein: You see there's this this trend where agencies build out tool stacks and it's interesting why. Why do they do that mean? Well, I was going to say it's like an obvious lead gen. It's a great way to bring in leads, but it's interesting you would think that wouldn't because your marketing to other SEOs for the most part. How does that work? Crystal Carter: What I've seen people do is people will often create a tool, and I think it aligns you next to people that you want to be aligned with, similar agencies, people who are working in similar industries. It also opens you up to a lot more different customers, a lot more potential customers who can see the knowledge and expertise and interest that your agency has. I think a lot of people forget that Screaming Frog comes from an agency tool that's an agency that has a tool that everyone uses that every other agency uses, and that's something that's foundational to SEO, really, particularly for technical SEO now, and it's really valuable. I think it's a great showcase. It's a great show, don't tell around the kinds of things that you can bring for clients. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's great brand building and because of that brand building, you're reaching a larger audience. I'm going to get to in-house in a second. I didn't forget about that, but if you're an SEO and you're like, "Oh, I love AlsoAsked," and you're sharing AlsoAsked, and sharing AlsoAsked, and sharing AlsoAsked, you're sharing Candor Agency at the same time, basically, and it's extending Marks... We're using also as the example, but it's extending out that reach exponentially. At the same time, by the way, whether it's Blue Arrays tool or whether it's Screaming Frog, you're reaching in-house teams at the same time. Yes, the tool is applicable to other SEOs and other agencies who may not be your target audience, but in-house SEOs might very well be your target audience, especially if their team is not built out or if they're a smaller organization or whatever it is. They might say, "You know what? Let's have an SEO agency handle this for us." Crystal Carter: I think so. I think also if you are able to create tools for clients, which is another thing that I've started to see, then that could be a real differentiator for you as an agency. I've seen it before where there are agencies who are building tools that are specific for the client, and sometimes it can be the case that maybe the client doesn't necessarily want their services from you anymore, but they do want the tool or maybe somebody wants the tool. If you've been using the tool for ages and they go, "Hey, could you help me with some additional agency services?" This is something that they do over at Keyword Insights. Andy Chadwick over at Keyword Insights was saying that he built the tool and he started getting service leads from it. Now, he offers services on top of the tool because people who love the tool and love the insights and love, the logic that they can see from Keyword Insights where I would also like some support with this. That's a great way to show people how you think about search, how you think about content, how you think about technical SEO, whatever in practice. Very often people will come to you for additional tools, as well. Another classic example is the Chrome extension that I use literally 70 million times a day, which is the SEO Pro Chrome extension from Kristina Azarenko over at Marketing Syrup. That is an incredible growth engine for her because there's links in there that go straight to her agency, straight to her training platform and things like that. It's incredibly valuable and I tell people about it all the time because it's so useful and it really just speaks to the expertise and the value that Kristina's able to offer. Mordy Oberstein: Especially if you're someone who has a particular identity or a particular focus, if you're, say an e-comm SEO agency or whatever it is, you can build up that specialty and that brand identity and around that and pull in leads or people who are looking at something specifically like that, what Simon was talking about earlier with agencies trying to be a little bit more niche or a little more focused than in the past. That can lean right into that, but whatever it is, it's a momentum builder, which is what you want if you're an agency. Crystal Carter: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think that we see in the Wix app market, we have lots of tools that are created by lots of different teams, including folks who are coming from an agency background. It creates a lot of leavers and a lot of new opportunities. Even on Wix, we have the logo builder for instance, which is a tool that we have available for free for people to use. We have a QR code generator, we have a few other tools as well, and that gives you an opportunity to speak to people and to show people that you're able to provide a solution. People say, "This thing is broken, I want it fixed." You're able to say, "Here's a solution to this," and to be able to provide that to them, and around the clock, it's not necessarily passive income depending on how you're configuring it. Our logo gen is free. There's a free version as well, but it can give you a lot of reach and particularly tools also can transcend language for instance. With something like a logo generator, even if it was in a different language, I could probably figure out whether or not I wanted it to have a rocket going to the moon or whatever on my logo and it would help me to achieve my goals. I think that that's really, really valuable as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I would love to have or create a tool and you can call the naming itself would just be amazing, Barry. Barry should have tools. He does have a tool, wait, I'm wrong. Doesn't he have some algorithm update, like history tracker website thing? Crystal Carter: Yes, I'm sure Barry has tools. I'm sure he has something. Mordy Oberstein: The Barrinator, RustyBricker. Crystal Carter: The Schwartzkoff, I don't know. I don't know. Something like... I don't know, something to that effect. Mordy Oberstein: Schwartz and SERP. Crystal Carter: Schwartzen Ranker. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Schwartzen Ranker. Nice. That's it, trademark. Barry, if you want it, you got to pay for it now, I guess until he creates tools, we'll just have to read his news in the meantime. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: This week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Now, if you're saying, "Hey, wait a second, you didn't cover this breaking news story that happened in the SEO industry," that's because, breaking the fourth wall for you, I'm recording this section of the podcast a little bit earlier than I usually do because of our New York City digital marketing meetup with Search Engine Journal, that by the time you listen to this just happened. Okay, with that, three articles for you from Barry Schwarz, but from two different sources. First up from seroundtable.com, Google core update expected in the coming weeks. Google's Danny Sullivan, the search liaison was in the comments over seroundtable.com and wrote in the comments and replied back to somebody, whoever, whatever. "I would expect we'll see one," meaning a core update, "In the coming weeks because that fits in with our general cycle," but precisely when that's just not known yet. First, that's really interesting. They have a general cycle because sometimes it doesn't feel like they do. I wonder and am speculating if they do have a regular cycle of the refresh, but they sometimes hold off when they actually look at the dataset and say, "Wait a second, what we've tested doesn't seem to have actually worked the way we want it to. Let's hold off retest or whatever. Or we have other things going on that we have to prioritize and we'll push it off until later." I wonder if they have a regular schedule like Danny is saying, but that it often gets altered for various reasons. By the way, this doesn't mean that it's... Coming weeks can mean two weeks, it can mean 12 weeks. We don't exactly know, but there's one coming, which I guess you already knew anyway, there's always one coming. On to Barry Schwartz, but this time from search engine land, Google ending notes on search by the end of the month. Who cares? Oh, that's salty. Google had this feature called notes where users could leave little comments, I guess, or running records on search results. Imagine you had a recipe for best meatloaf, you're running the query best meatloaf, you have all the results, and on whatever recipe website you listed like, "Yeah, I tried this, it was really good, but it was a little bit too dry." You could leave like a running record. Google was basically running these inconsistently, not very often, not extremely very helpful. It's not surprising that they're gone. I feel like this was Google over, not overreaching. That's a bad way of putting it. Overzealously trying to get user generated content onto the SERP because they saw a trend where people want user generated content and there isn't enough across the web, which is why you have the same issue with too much Reddit, too much Quora, whatever, the same kind of thing. That's why they put the notes there. It didn't really work out the way they thought it would. That happens sometimes with products, so by the end of this month, they are going to be gone. Will you miss them? Will you even notice that they're gone? Good question. On to Barry Schwartz again from Search Engine Roundtable, again. Google artificially, by the way, I split the order up this week just so we go from Search Engine Roundtable to Search Engine Land, back to Search Engine Roundtable. That's how my mind works. Google artificially generated content, AGC classification score, this goes back to the lease that we've spoken about before many, many times. You probably know about them already. Juan Gonzalez Villa found in those, because again, the document is enormous and we're finding new things all the time, something that seems to show some site level AGC classification score, artificially generated content like AI content, score. Is Google using the score? We don't know. Have they ever used this score? We don't know, but there seems to be some kind of score at some point. Barry points out in the article that from what's written there in the leaks, I hate calling them leaks that this might be related to a really outdated content. Perhaps this is something Google used in the way, way, way past. However, it wouldn't surprise me and I think wouldn't surprise many if Google had some kind of way of classifying either content that was automatically generated like AI content or in reverse classifying content that seems to be written based on actual human experience. It's a whole separate topic. We actually covered it in our recent webinar with Mike King and Lily Ray, so you can watch the recording on the SEO hub. I'll link to that in the show notes. We actually brought it up at some point, I think later on in the Q&A section we brought it up there. You can listen to our thoughts on that scoring system, what that might be or not be like in that webinar. With that, that is this week's snappy news. Maybe he should just create his own algorithm update tracker, like the volatility tracker, like "Why rely on SEMrush," and whatever, just rely on Barry. Crystal Carter: Well, and if he did, he could do it on Wix Apps builder. He could use the Wix studio apps. He could make an app and he could make a widget and he could sell it in the app store. Mordy Oberstein: Make a widget, Barry. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that'd be great. Mordy Oberstein: When the volatility gets high, it's like an angry Barry face. When it's low, it's a happy Barry face, which happens to be the same Barry face. Crystal Carter: Same face. Mordy Oberstein: Same face. Crystal Carter: Same face. Mordy Oberstein: The entire time. It's not the same, our follow of the week every week must be different. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a follow of the week. It'd just be the follow of the podcast forever. Yeah. This week's follow is Jim Banks. He's got 25 years of high search volume media buying for rapid growth businesses. Check out Jim Banks over on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah, Jim Banks is a great follow. He has a great LinkedIn. He also has a great podcast that he does, which he also syndicates to TikTok, and I follow him on TikTok and things. His podcast is centered around some of the challenges and some of the things I wish I'd known as an agency owner and things as well. He really, really expects people to be honest about their agency journey. Mordy Oberstein: That's topical. Crystal Carter: I think it's really great. That's one of the reasons why I thought he'd be a great follow of the week. If you're interested in people telling true stories about the agency journey, he's a great follow. His podcast is called Bad Decisions with Jim Banks, and really, he talks about lots of things. He had a recent podcast with one of the founders or one of the leaders over at Optimizer, for instance, and they're talking about very openly about some of the challenges there. But he's great. Great follow, great guy. Follow Jim Banks. Mordy Oberstein: You know what? That's a great name for a podcast. I'm going to start a podcast like that, Bad Decisions with Mordy Oberstein, and the first person we can interview is my wife. Crystal Carter: Shout out Mrs. Oberstein for- Mordy Oberstein: For having a good heart. Crystal Carter: Right, having a good heart- Mordy Oberstein: And saying yes. Crystal Carter: Long, long suffering, Mrs. Oberstein. No, I'm kidding. She's lovely. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think so. Then I'm not paid to say that. Anyway, that'll do it for this week's SERP's Up. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode as we dive into how to become indispensable to your clients. When I say indispensable, I think of indestructible from The Simpsons where Mr. Burns says, "Indestructible." Anyway, indispensable. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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

Google's recent updates to its algorithms have been about providing information that is user-friendly and trustworthy. They’re trying to think like a human user to give the best possible results. The algorithm aligns more closely with the user's intent more than ever. Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, pilot this very helpful (get it?) conversation on providing content that the user needs to make decisions. Essentially, User-First SEO is like if you asked someone for advice, and they gave you sound advice based on their experience and qualifications. You would want to know that the person giving you the advice had your best interests at heart. User-first SEO is just that: focused on helping the user more than ranking. “Putting the user first, thinking about their pain points, and solving the user’s problem is the goal, ” says Michel Fortin, as he helps us understand the concept even further. Back First things first - User-first SEO Google's recent updates to its algorithms have been about providing information that is user-friendly and trustworthy. They’re trying to think like a human user to give the best possible results. The algorithm aligns more closely with the user's intent more than ever. Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter, pilot this very helpful (get it?) conversation on providing content that the user needs to make decisions. Essentially, User-First SEO is like if you asked someone for advice, and they gave you sound advice based on their experience and qualifications. You would want to know that the person giving you the advice had your best interests at heart. User-first SEO is just that: focused on helping the user more than ranking. “Putting the user first, thinking about their pain points, and solving the user’s problem is the goal, ” says Michel Fortin, as he helps us understand the concept even further. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 08 | October 12, 2022 | 41 MIN 00:00 / 41:26 This week’s guests Michel Fortin Michel Fortin is a marketing advisor, fractional CMO, and senior SEO consultant helping professionals and firms grow their visibility and their businesses. He’s an author, speaker, and consultant with 30 years of experience in digital marketing and marketing communications. Einat Hoobian-Seybold Einat has more than 8 years experience creating organic strategies for leading global brands. After a well-established career focused on SEO execution she fell in love with product development and management. Today Einat combines her love of product management with her experience in SEO as Wix’s SEO Product Manager where she works to build products that make SEO accessible and easy for over 200M users around the world. 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 groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix. And I'm joined by the one, the only, the head of SEO communications at Wix, Crystal Carter. What's up, Crystal? Crystal Carter: Hello, good people of the internet. Hello. Many things are up. Things are up. Mordy Oberstein: Hopefully your rankings are up. Dad joke/SEO joke. Crystal Carter: We want all green arrows, every time. Mordy Oberstein: Someone was telling me that, because we're in the middle of, as we're recording this, some fluctuations on the SERP, and their boss was asking about, "Oh, why did our rankings on page two go down?" And they're like, "Why do we care?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We went from page two to page three, whatever shall we do? Crystal Carter: How come no one's coming to my MySpace page? Because what? Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Crystal Carter: Don't worry. Pick your battles there. Mordy Oberstein: Bigger fish to fry. Or if you don't like frying fish, bigger fish to bake. Crystal Carter: This is true. You could bake it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fish baked more than I like it fried. Anyway, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can empower your [SEO] content strategy with the power of Semrush directly inside of the Wix platform. It's all part of Wix's SEO set up checklist, research keywords and topics, along with metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and even user intent with our Semrush integration. It's like my two worlds combined with that one. So on today's show, geez, Crystal, we better make sure the bots are happy, happy, happy, right? Crystal Carter: S-bots must be very happy. Mordy Oberstein: But wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Crystal Carter: Bots have happy. Mordy Oberstein: Do bots, or search engines, do they pay you money? Crystal Carter: No. No. I've asked. Mordy Oberstein: But I do not get a positive response, because guess what? People, people pay you money. But if I worry about the people, who will worry about the bots? Don't worry, Optimus Prime will. He's their father. Anyway. But if you're worrying about not worrying about the bots, fear not fair SEO for thou art in great luck, for the days of user first SEO are not just nigh, they are upon thee. That is correct. Today we are talking about why worrying about the user and not the bot, believe it or not, is actually good for the bots. That was circular. But who would've thunk. From the research phase to how the Google algorithm is structured, we're diving into why user first SEO matters, with tips of the trade from SEO's own John Bonham, Little Zeppelin reference for you there. Michel Fortin will stop by and share some of his tips with you. We'll also sit down with Wix's own SEO product manager, Einat Hoobian-Seybold, to talk about her approach to putting users first and how that plays out in SEO product development. And of course, we have the snappiest of news for you and who you should be following. Actually a bonus, two people who you should be following on social for SEO awesomeness. Let's let the good times roll, as episode eight of the SERP’s Up podcast is on. Crystal Carter: It's on. Mordy Oberstein: It's on. I almost feel like breaking to song, let the good times roll. Crystal Carter: You bet. This is a very musical introduction there, Mordy, with the John Bonham there. Mordy Oberstein: Totally by accident. Totally by accident. Michel Fortin, by the way, plays the drums and he's awesome, and he's going to stop by. Crystal Carter: He's a really good drummer. He's got his drumming on his website and it's exceptional. He's a very funky drummer. He's a very good drummer. Mordy Oberstein: It's awesome. And he's an awesome SEO who talks a lot about user first SEO, so it's completely makes so much sense. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of user first SEO, Crystal, what are we talking about, user first SEO? Crystal Carter: Yeah, so the thing about user first SEO, one of the reasons why we're talking about this, one of the reasons why it's a little bit of a hot topic is because with their recent algorithm update, Google's announced that they are sort of encouraging or incentivizing people to be creating content. Specifically, they said, "Create content for people, not search engines." Who'd have thunk it? Mordy Oberstein: Who would've thunk that? That's crazy talk. Crystal Carter: Right. In their documentation, they say that the goal is to make sure that when users visit the site, they can find original, helpful content written by people for people, and that it has a satisfying user experience for site visitors. Now, the thing about this is that this is essentially user first content. This is content that is thinking about what the user wants, not necessarily thinking about what hacks, what gimmicks you can use to get to the top of the SERP, but rather thinking about something that's actually made for humans. And this follows on from some of the updates that Google updated in the past, like the Panda update, which really rocked this SEO landscape because it was talking about reducing black hat SEO techniques and reducing the prevalence of that information in the SERP. And when I say SERP, I mean search engine result pages. And what that means is that when people go to Google, they can actually achieve their goals, because I think what people forget sometimes is we think that Google and SEO is about websites, and it pretty much is, but if you go to Google's page how Search works, they explained that their goal is to provide information. They don't say that their goal is to drive traffic to websites. They say their goal is to provide information. And so, this kind of algorithm update, like Panda before it, is the kind that makes sure that they're providing high quality information for people that visit Google. And in order to make it high quality, you need to put the user first. So content creators who do this, and you'll know these content creators when you find them, whether it's on a website or whether it's on YouTube or whether it's on any other platform, they're very clear to address their user's needs. So they'll say, "A lot of people have asked me about this topic and I want to talk about it now." Or they'll share content that people that users have requested. So this is something that Google themselves do. They have a series called Ask Google Bot. And John Mueller will say, "Mordy Oberstein asked me this question on Twitter and I'm answering it here." And there's YouTube channels that I follow where they'll say, "What do you want me to cover next?" And the users will say that and they will cover that for them. They'll test content with their users before publishing it. So Instagram, good Instagramers will do a story and they'll see who replies to it and what kinds of things people are interested in, and then they'll do a longer post later on. There's lots of different techniques that you could do, but putting your user first is really important. And it's something that Google's laid out in a lot of different documentation. The information about the helpful content update from Google is very, very clear with information around that. And also, if you want to do a really deep dive, you can have a look at something called the Quality Rater Guidelines, which is the documentation that Google gives to their team, to their humans and their team to help them determine what is a good quality website. Yeah, it's a really good idea. It gives you lots really good ideas of what makes good content that is made for users. Mordy Oberstein: And that's really the point. Back in the day with the algorithm, there was one way of running for humans and one way of running for bots, and even helpful content updates aside, what Google's been doing, I would say since circa 2018 with the new series of core algorithm updates... And if you look at their documentation around how should you respond to being hit by one of the core algorithm updates, it's very similar. It's all about writing really good content, really helpful content. And what they've been doing algorithmically is basically trying to think qualitatively the way a human could, and sort of mimicking that. And Danny Sullivan from Google's talking about, "Yeah, we look at quality," by the way, quality is for the entire site, a site wide metric, not a per page metric, "And we try to mimic through the algorithms how a person would qualitatively assess the quality of the webpage." So now the algorithm and the user have been synced up in a lot of ways. Is it a hundred percent perfect? Is it a hundred percent there? No. Will it every be? Probably not. But directionally, and way, way, way more than it ever was before. And if you look at people like, I'll say Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray, Marie Haynes, maybe myself, Dr. Pete from over at Moz, when they write about their analysis of the updates, so basically showing you, "Yeah, Google's looking at things like tone and looking at things like the quality in this way and the quality in that way," and now when you put the user first, at the same time, and this is a key point, you're also putting Google first. It's not different anymore. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that what we're seeing is Google puts a lot of emphasis on EAT, which is expertise, authority, and trust. And that document that you mentioned, the one that they always put out whenever there's an algorithm, what SEO should know about or website owners should know about Google updates, talks about expertise, authority, and trust. And there's lots of different ways that you can demonstrate that on a website. And it's essentially like if you asked someone for advice and they gave you advice on something, you would want to know how they were qualified to give you that advice. So if you go and talk to a doctor and then they say, "Oh, I think it might be," I don't know, appendicitis or something like that, you assume that they know what they're talking about, because they're in a doctor's office, they've got their certificates up on the wall, you know who they are. Similarly, if you go to a website and they're giving you advice or they're giving you information about one topic or another, it's very important that you know who they are, that they have an about page that talks about who they are. We recently did a webinar with Semrush around about pages, to talk about some of those elements. But it's also important that you have an address if it's a place of business. I saw recently someone, there was somebody who got in touch or somebody who was online saying, "Oh, I don't know why my webpage for a hotel isn't ranking," and it was a hotel that didn't have an address. And I was like, "That is red flags." Mordy Oberstein: Conceptual hotel. Crystal Carter: That's red flags. Mordy Oberstein: It's where my mind stays. Crystal Carter: It's, "Oh, book, book where, where is this?" Mordy Oberstein: In the ether. It's in the ether. Crystal Carter: Right. And if you think about some of the websites that do really well, if you think about something, so Airbnb, for instance, is something like that, that they have doubled down. They have multiple layers of verifying who is who and trying to make sure that it's very clear, that you're talking to an actual person that's actually in a place and these people are... Then there's agreements and there's all this sort of stuff. Similarly, Google's trying to make sure that when somebody comes to their website and tries to find out, I don't know, how far it is from the earth to the moon or any kind of information, that they're able to get it from a valid source. Because if people are not getting good quality information from Google, then people won't come to Google. And Google wants to make sure that they're keeping their users happy by giving them good quality information. Mordy Oberstein: You make a great point where you're talking about how people are looking at a website, "Can I trust this website? Are they authoritative? They have expertise?" And that's really, if you want to talk about how you create user first content, that's kind of how you do it. You look at it from the lens of the user. One way, I call it the brand sniff test. You go to a webpage and you immediately, because you're a brand, they're going to realize it's, "Oh, machines and AI and Google's so smart and machines are so smart." Your brain is AI on steroids. It takes a look at something, and in three seconds or 0.3 seconds, it takes a million different signals. And without you consciously being aware of it, it's like, "Yeah, I've completely judged this already." You go to a webpage and it's an HTML table from 1999, you go, "I'm not trusting this thing." Even might have great content. If you think, "Okay, how do I know I've created user first content, outside the fact that you know where your heart is? Leaving that aside for a second, if you look at the page and you think, "Okay," from a branding point of view, "What are the latent signals that this page sends? Is the tone right, is the layout friendly? Is it digestible? Is it well structured? Does it give off a sense that this page is well intentioned, trustworthy, and has my best interest in mind?" And if you feel like you know it does, then you've probably created user first content. Crystal Carter: And I think, also, if you're getting good feedback from your users, then that will also tell you this. For instance, if you've got people coming to your Google business profile and they're asking the same questions over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. If you're having people calling you and asking you for the same information over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. You should probably make some information, that kind of information on your website. If you've got people who, "Oh, yeah. I saw this on your page and I thought it was great," or "This was really...", then that's information that you're providing that's clearly good for users. So there's lots of different signals that you can get around that. I know some people put reviews on their blog, just regular blogs, not necessarily a recipe blog, but just a regular blog, "Did you find this content helpful? What do you think of this content?" Three stars, five stars, whatever it is. And you can sort of understand, you can get actual direct feedback from people about whether or not it's helpful, whether or not it's useful. And there's lots of different elements and different factors that can help you to demonstrate that and help you to understand that. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And it really all starts with your mindset. I know you have a whole article about this, I think, where if you're looking at it, I'm was going to go to a keyword research tool and I'm going to plug it in and whatever, and pull out the data and I'm going to... that's probably not the place to start, in my mind. When you're trying to start writing content for the web, for both bots and users, it starts with empathy and understanding your audience, and being able to tap into their mindset. Because now you're going to create content that actually helps them because you actually feel bad for them. Like, "Oh, you have a pain point here? I would love to help you with that." Crystal Carter: Right. I've sometimes written articles, so I remember writing a piece that was around different sources for structured data or something like that. And I use it myself. It was basically, it was a bookmark thing that I put together. And the reason why I put it together was because I couldn't find one. So I think that's one of the things, if you're trying to think about user first, try to be mindful of your experience as a user and the things that irritate you as a user, the content that you don't like as a user. It says something in the description and you get to the page and it's completely different. That can be annoying. Or Google in their helpful content notes talks about the kinds of things where they're saying, "Are you trying to give an answer to a question that doesn't have an answer?" Like when is this show coming out and they haven't announced it and you're just trying to get on the SERP or something, that sort of thing. If you find that irritating, don't make that content. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember that. When I was looking at this, a lot of the people that... I spoke to lots of different SEOs about how they create content for users, and they talk to users. And sometimes this can be interviews or sometimes this can be going through CRM information. So if you are using something like Salesforce or that sort of thing where people are raising tickets regularly or raising customer service queries, you can go through that information and see the ones that come up regularly, and you can help your customer service team by giving them the information that they need and help users at the same time. And with regards to the keywords, not to say that keywords and using keywords tools, not to say you shouldn't use them, but think of the user first and then use the keyword tools just to make sure that you're actually hitting some of the actual terms. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you're refining and gaps you haven't missed, those sort of things, because I've done this before myself. The questions you get from, actually, users are completely different. Crystal Carter: Right, completely. And especially if you're looking into a new space where you think about keyword tools, a lot of times they're using historical data. And it's fantastic. It's amazing to have that kind of data there. But Google said, I think, 15% of queries are new queries. So if you're going into a new space, you're launching a new product, then you're going to need to get new content for that and you're going to need to get that to users. And if you're not somebody who wants to do lots and lots of interviews and stuff, that's okay. There's lots of different things you can look- Mordy Oberstein: Forums and social. Crystal Carter: Forums. Yeah. Reviews. You can do a poll. I sometimes go through Slack channels, Slack messages. You can talk to juniors if you're trying to... Training juniors is incredibly useful because juniors will go, "What is a acronym? I don't know what that means." And they want to know. They want to know. So you can create something that's good for the juniors in your team and also is useful for users who are in the same place, where they want to know desperately, so they need it to be- Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: ... accessible. Mordy Oberstein: And if you're still doubting, well, doing all of this and putting the user first and, I want to say abandoning, slightly abandoning traditional, what you might think is traditional SEO, is that's not going to help me rank, think about what's coming down the pike. MUM is coming down the pike, it's Google's new AI 1000, machine learning rather, 1000 times more powerful than Byrd, it's previous most powerful machine learning property, blah blah blah. One of the things that MUM is doing, it's Google's own example, and they gave an example of something like, "I hiked Mount Adams, now I want to hike Mount Fiji in the fall. What do I need to do to prepare differently?" Something like that. Crystal Carter: That's so many words. That's got too many words, by the way. Mordy Oberstein: But the coolest part is that they show you how they parse the word prepare. Does it mean to equipment, I need to know what equipment I need, or training? Is that what you mean to prepare? And Google's like, "Now we're going to show results about both." And you could probably parse it a million times over. So if Google's going to be parsing topics into smaller subtopics like, "Oh, preparing for a hike." It means equipment. It could mean tips, it could mean food, it could mean trading. The only way that you are going to be able to parse a topic down the same way so that you have the opportunities to rank, that are afforded to you on what's going to be the new search results page is by identifying and empathizing with your audience. Like oh, if someone's going on a hike and they have to prepare, what do they really need? Well, they might need this, they might need that, they might need that. Let me create content about that. So we will most definitely help you rank to put the user first, because that's the only way you're going to be able to create the right content. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that if you're thinking about actually answering the question... Again talking to children is another good one. I have a kid and he asks me questions all the time and he's very capable of understanding if I explain it to him the way that he wants, but he wants a full answer. Kids will just keep asking why, so make sure that you give a full answer for whatever the question, and genuinely get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Like a real substance targeted, nuanced content. Now speaking of questions, we have a question for Michel Fortin, the director of search marketing over at seoplus+. Hey Michel, how do you check yourself to ensure you always keep the user first, not bots? Take it away. Michel Fortin: In SEO and in business, in general, many people tend to think the other way around. They think that we should focus on our product, it's the best things since sliced bread, and then we focus on our marketing because we think that people just need our product. The thing is, is actually the other way around, we should be solving a problem, we should be helping out our market. SEO is no different. We have to keep the user first in mind. Yes, we should be leading with our product, but we also are creating a solution to a problem. So it makes sense that we should focus on the problems that our users are experiencing and we help to solve them, in that case when they're making a search. So to keep the user first, you need to at least start with the user first. To borrow a quote from Steven Covey, "First things first is to put first things first." And it really does mean that in the case of SEO, as in any other form of marketing, because SEO is just a channel for marketing, it's really about putting the user first and thinking about their pain points. I always say this, that to really rank well, to be visible actually is a better way to say it, to really be visible in search engines, you need to do what Google really wants you to do. It's the same thing, we share the same goal, which is to create quality content and a quality user experience. So appeal to your market and optimize those things for their sake and you will naturally appeal to search engines too. In marketing, I think the single biggest challenge is to think like our audience. And I say it's a challenge because we tend to always think that our audience are like us or that we know what our audience wants or what they're thinking about or what their needs are. And there's a famous quote from a mentor of mine from many, many years ago who said, "You are never your own market." And in my previous life, I was a copywriter, we always focused on trying to tell our clients that they are never their own market. Well, SEO is the same. Either we think we know or we expect they know. And that's true also for research engines as it is for the audiences that we are trying to go after. And both are wrong. Both of those notions are wrong. We have to think of our market, we have to think like our market. Think about it this way, Google is always doing split tests all the time. It's always testing and changing and adding new search features. And if things don't work out, I mean how many products have we seen Google put out and it basically didn't last too too long because it just flopped or it didn't really do well or it wasn't... The man wasn't there. Remember Google+? But the thing is, with SEO is that we have to think like our market. We have to think for a market. We have to provide the solution that our market wants. I want to end with this, there's a book on marketing in general, but it's called Scientific Advertising. It was written in 1923 by Claude C. Hopkins. And he said something that was really interesting, "The product itself should be its own best salesman." But here's what he said next in his book that is the most important part, "Almost any question can be answered by a test campaign. The court of last resort is the buyers of your product. No one knows people's desires enough to get an average viewpoint. If you want to know whether your product will work, do a test campaign." Now, the reason why I mentioned this in the context of SEO is when we try to optimize something before we put it up, we are thinking about how Google will see it, but we are ignoring the users of our product. Don't think of the ranking factor or factors first and then create content and the user experience to match that. Think of the user first. Create great content, great experience for them. Then think how you can match that to the ranking factors. I think in SEO we tend to forget that there's a word in there called optimization. And optimization applies that it has to be done after something already exists. We optimize something like content or user experience. We optimize what we provide our users so that they're seen by or ranked by or indexed by search engines. Too often we create content and user experience that focuses on search engines, or we will focus on the user but the search engines are dictating the development, so that's why it's not really optimizing after the fact. We're doing it as we go along. Yes, there's always going to be a place for technical SEO. There's always going to be a place for things that we can apply and optimize that will be appealing to the search engines. But put the user first, then optimize. Mordy Oberstein: You know what? He's so right. And it really, as we spoke about, comes out to mindset. The way I put it is started thinking like a marketer almost, because marketers have been doing this for a long time. I know in SCL, "This is so new, think about the user," but marketer doing this forever. It's time to start thinking more like a traditional marketer in a lot of ways as part of your SEO process. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think that when you do that it makes it more than just ranking. It actually means that you're actually connecting with the audience. So some of the YouTubers, for instance, that I really like, do this a lot. The last audience are together, and then it feels like it's a conversation. When you're literally user first, when a user says to you, "Oh, I don't understand this thing, can you help me?" And you write them a blog or you do the thing, and then you come back to them and you're like, "Hey, remember that thing you asked me about? Here it is." Do you know, they will go to you first the next time they need something that's in your niche, they will go to you first because they'll say, "Well, I trust this person. And if I get stuck, I trust that they'll help me in some way." So it's more than just ranking. It's also about building literal trust, building relationships with your audience. And I think that Google talks a lot about audiences. He was talking a lot about audiences there as well, and about making sure that you are thinking about something that is actually of value to the people that you're connecting with. Mordy Oberstein: Do you know who thinks of value with the people that they're connecting with and who always puts users first and not? Crystal Carter: Oh, yes, [inaudible 00:24:18] she absolutely does. Mordy Oberstein: Einat is a master at this. And she's a master of getting into the minds of the people that she's trying to help. Einat is also the product manager here at Wix for SEO tool set and development. So who would've thunk? What better person then to sit down and chat about how to put users first within an SEO context other than Einat? So join us now as we reach for the stars and go across the Wixverse with our own SEO product manager Einat Hoobian-Seybold. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So we're here with Einat. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We've cornered you. We finally got you on the podcast. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: I'm happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. We're really happy to have you because when we were sitting down, we were talking about doing an episode on user first SEO and how important that is. The person who immediately came to both of our minds was Einat, because your job is literally to put users first. And so many different kinds of users and it's so complicated. So we just wanted to pick your brain about how you put Wix's users first when developing our SEO product. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Well, that's an interesting questions because, first of all, what is Wix users, because we have a variety of users? We have the DIYs, the self-creators, the moms and pops, if you would like, which are just building their small business and they don't know much about SEO. And we have the professionals ones that are SEO professional, that are marketers. They need a lot more things and we need to dance in between. And every time I build a product, I don't build it for one of them, I build it for all of them. And that's the tricky part, because I need to take into consideration all their needs. I need to give the DIY users everything they need in order to have the best SEO without them understanding or without them knowing a lot. So that's why I will create lots of defaults and things that will be created for them with minimum effort or knowledge for their side. But in the same time, I will want to create full customization for the professional users. I want to allow them to have workflows. I want to allow them to have automation to save their time, that they will be able to do anything they want in the platform. I don't want the platform to minimize them in any way. Every time I build a product, I need to cater both of them. So I need to protect the DIYs and I need to give the full customization for our users. And it varies, so a lot of time I will give the basic information in the first view and then I will allow users, advanced users, to find what they can do more. Like I said, I will build a lot of defaults for the users, which is also beneficial for the professional one. For example, in Wix we create a lot of default structure data. I can recognize the page of the user, I know what it is. And for example, if you have a product page, I can already build you the structure data with all the information that you need. So it's, of course, extremely valuable for our DIYs, so they don't know structured data, they for sure don't know how to write it, so I already did it for them. And it's also extremely beneficial for the professional because I saved their time. It's automatically built to work in scale and, of course, they can customize it. If the default that I build is not enough for them, they want to change, they want to edit, they can do it as well. Crystal Carter: And I think this is a great example because one of the things I really like about the structure data customization options is that you have the default, which is great out of the box but, for instance, if you wanted to edit it, it also has a validator, so it tells you if you've misplaced your syntax and won't let you submit incorrect schema markup. The other thing I think is great about Wix is structured data customization options is there are variables, so variables already exist within the platform. I've previously had to build these myself and it can be very time consuming and sometimes inconsistent. So I think that's a great example of something that works for lots of different users. One of the things I also think is great, from observing you and the way that you roll out these products, is how you test them. Can you talk to us a little bit more about your testing process, about how you test to make sure that what you're building is good for your users? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: It's true that almost everything that we do in Wix, we test, because we don't know everything. Even if I know SEO and I know product and I know my users, still, reality is different and we really need to see how users behave and if users understand what they see and what they need to do, so we test everything. Every time I will make a major product or a major change, I will run an A/B test. I will start with 50% of the population. I will start with one market, because in Wix we have over 20 market. I will start with one dedicated one in order to really understand the effect of this new feature or this new tool. And I really will, I will run it 50% A/B test and I will see the effect, first of all, on the existing reality that we live in. We live in Wix in SEO, specifically in a very complex environment. We have lots of tools, again, we have lots of users, so I want to make sure that I didn't harm anything else, that by creating this new feature or by creating this new tool that everything else that our users are known and used to, stays the same and I didn't shake the boat too much. So I will test this and I will test also regarding the feature that I just launched. I will test the specific APIs that I want to reach with this tool, whether if there's usage in the tool, I will understand really how users behave in the tool. And I think one thing that is important to note, we don't only look on the quantitative data, we also look on the quality of data. I will see sometimes numbers and this is working well and this is not, but I want to understand why. For example, right now we ran a test, we added, we have the SEO wiz, we just added a new section GBP, the Google Business Profile to it, and it worked amazingly for Google Business Profile users, created extremely well, more locations as success verification. Was amazing. But it did affect the SEO with the checklist that we have. The KPIs of this affected it. I know that those KPIs, if you complete the checklist, if you move forward, it's improve your SEO, so I don't want to do that. I don't want to create any new feature, I will kind of sabotage the user success because this is really what lead us; user success, how we guide them to success. So what we did is we look at the data and we try to understand what's going on. And we understand that a lot of users, in order to create a Google Business Profile, they need to go out to Google Business Profile, which is in another place. And we participated this. We already added some CTAs to go back to the SEO wiz, to the checklist, but they weren't permanent enough and we saw that users are not seeing this. They are being sent out by me, but they don't come back. So what we did is, first of all, I looked at the full story, which is a tool that we use a lot to understand how user interact with our tools because sometimes just the data of the CTA is not enough. We need to know what he did before and if did he get lost or not. And we understand that they don't see the way to go back to where they were. So now we are improving it in terms of UI and in terms of content. And I will be glad to update you once the test will be done. Mordy Oberstein: We would love to be updated. So let me ask you real quick, because I know we're reaching the end of our allotted time together. Let's take it back a step. When you have so many things to develop, let's say, or multiple things you could be developing, how do you decide which one to do first? What goes through your thought process and how does the user factor into that and how do you really know which makes the most sense? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Yeah, that's true. I think the most painful part of being a product manager that you have to prioritize is you have to decide what you do now and you won't do everything that you want. Because I have tons of plans, but I need to prioritize and I need to scale them down a lot of times. So I have lots of, I will say information sources that I use in order to decide what I do now. The bottom line is impact, is how do I help my users? What I do now is for my users. Will it, like I said, drive them towards success or not? So I have lots of information. I have, first of all, data. I look a lot of data of users and what they do and what they are missing and where they get stuck. And we have an SEO in Wix. We have a team, a dedicated team of SEO domain experts, data, the guys that are connected the most of the industry and they know what is needed, what are we lacking of, what do we need to do next. And so, I rely a lot of their recommendation. I do a lot of research and I really, really look at support information, support tickets, what our users are struggling with, what are coming to support. I talk a lot with the users and I really call our users and we talk about them. And all of this is driving me towards decision of what I need to do. That's the first step, what is missing. And then how do I prioritize this? It will be mainly on a impact. What will close a gap that I missing the most that will help our users? Or what will bring more value to my users? And this is what guides me when I prioritize the products. Crystal Carter: And I love these conversations because whenever we're like, "Oh, what about this?" you're like, "What about the users? How is this going to help the users?" Mordy Oberstein: Yep, so true. Crystal Carter: "How is this going to help the users? This is very interesting, Crystal, how are we going to help the users with this?" Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Einat, thank you so much for stopping by. It's really been a first class look into the mindset of putting a user first and what that looks take from a product point of view. And it really applies to anytime you put a user first, whether it be for a product or service or for a website itself. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Thank you. I really enjoyed being with you. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we'll have to have you back again. Talk to you later. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Bye. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: She is so lovely. Always. Every time I speak with her, I always enjoy... Super calm under pressure too. Always pleasant. Everyone's like, "Oh no, what do we do?" She's always so calm. Crystal Carter: I am always in awe whenever I hear... Einat will give us presentations on all the different stuff that we do and she just. Yeah, exactly, always super calm, super organized, very committed to the project of making Wix SEO stack as best as it can possibly be for our users. It's phenomenal to work alongside Einat. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's great talking to her and being able to talk to her with our audience, because now you actually know one of the key people who has made our SEO product so evolved. And it's really, was a great pleasure to talk to Einat. Crystal Carter: And user first, just user first stuff, she constantly Slack messages, she's constantly, "Yeah, I'm just responding to questions that our users have about various different things." She's very much involved with making sure that things are user first. Mordy Oberstein: 1000%. Let's snap to it, because now it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Well, I guess the pandemic is behind us. I mean, Google did just announce that Google Business Profile health and safety attributes are being kicked to the curb. That's right. Per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, "Google Business Profile removes health and safety attributes." Google business profile attributes, by the way, are little tidbits of info that help users better understand services and structure of a business, for example, that are attributes that let you know of an establishment is wheelchair accessible or there are attributes that let you know that a business is owned by a woman, it's woman led or it's veteran led or so forth. During COVID, Google introduced the option to display health and safety attributes like a mask being required or staff gets temperature checks, et cetera. These are now gone. Why is that important? Well, less so for SEO or there's no ranking that's involved in it if it's gone from all business profiles and users won't expect it to be there at all, so if you don't have it, it's not like your competitors have it. This is more, in my mind, a general marketing point, as it's a strong statement of where the world is and where your potential customers might be currently at. And with that, this is the snappiest of Snappy News. Another wonderful week of SEO news. Crystal Carter: So newsy. Mordy Oberstein: So newsy. It's always newsy in the SEO world. All right, before we have to duly depart, it's really important that we share with you who we think you should be following for more SEO knowledge. And when it comes to being user first and user first friendly, we have two people for you, because it's such an important topic, we thought what person wasn't enough. And we couldn't decide on which person to showcase. So we're like, "Let's do both. Why not do both?" Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Two is better than one. When you have pie, they're like, "Oh, do you want the cherry pie and the blueberry pie?" Then they have a combination of it too. Oh, my god, I'll take that. Crystal Carter: Which pie do you want? Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All. Yes. I love pie, by the way. Crystal Carter: Pie's good. Mordy Oberstein: Here, by the way, is the cherry on your pie in the SEO industry when you're trying to think of being user first. I did it on the fly, I'm so proud of myself. What do we have? Who's your follow of the week or our follow week, but who are you going to showcase, Crystal? Crystal Carter: I would love to give a shoutout to Adriana Stein. She is a writer, she's in SEO and does some incredible user first content. One of the things that she does really often is she regularly speaks directly to people about how they approach content, how they approach different technical tactics, so she'll get on her Twitter account and she'll ask questions. She'll say, "How do you do this? What do you think of that?" And people respond to her and she uses that to help shape her content and how she makes content. And I think it's a great approach and I think she's really good at it. I think her content's really great. So she's someone who's really worth following. She does a lot of stuff with some of the industry's best publications, so it's really good to follow her for that advice and for just seeing how she works. Mordy Oberstein: And her Twitter account is so conversational and so engaging, so it's absolutely worth the follow. It's @adrianakstein, A-D-R-I-A-N-A-K-S-T-E-I-N. Of course, we'll link to her profile in the show notes. And bonus follow of the week- Crystal Carter: Bonus. Mordy Oberstein: ... the man who I will say is so dedicated and passionate to making sure the web actually has good content on there. He's Google's own John Mueller. Crystal Carter: John Mueller. Mordy Oberstein: Is a saint by the way, an absolute saint. I love John. He's hilarious as well. So it's a great follow for many reasons. But I remember when the product review update was first rolling out, maybe it was the second iteration of it, I can't remember which one it was. And people were saying, "Oh, why do we need this? Why is it there?" And John was just calling it as he saw it. No, because there's a lot of really not great content out there around product reviews. And it's so true. And John will literally just tell you like, "No, this is how it really is and this is why we needed improvement." I always say John Mueller is an advocate for Google, but he is also an advocate for a better web and a better web starter, I think, with better content. I think John is a prime example of someone who speaks of that. And I really do appreciate that. Crystal Carter: I think he's great. I think also the other thing that's great about John is that SEO, everyone's coming to SEO from different spaces. You might be an expert in one field and a beginner in another, and he speaks to everyone in the same way. So in his Webmaster Office Hours would very regularly speak to users from all different backgrounds, whatever questions they had. And he always did his best to answer every single question in those spaces. And it is something that is incredibly user first because that gives you a very clear finger on the pulse of the kinds of questions that people have. And he uses that to shape the content that he shares. I think that he's a pillar in that community. Mordy Oberstein: He's just simply wonderful. He's simply wonderful and- Crystal Carter: He's great. Mordy Oberstein: ... honestly, he brings joy to my day sometimes when you're on Twitter and is like things are not going great. John is wonderful. Anyway, it's @john, J-O-H-N-M-U, as in Mueller, John Mueller. And we'll link, of course, to John's profile in the show notes. And that's going to do it for us. 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 an all new episode as we dive into the controversy that is AI writers. AaaaaaaaaI writers, if you're Fonzie. Crystal Carter: Can we just call it AI the whole time? Mordy Oberstein: AI writers. Wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars that we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet 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 Michel Fortin Einat Hoobian-Seybold Adrian Stein John Mueller Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub User-first SEO What creators should know about Google's helpful content update What site owners should know about Google's core updates How to source ideas for user-first content News: Google Business Profiles Removes Health & Safety Attributes Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Michel Fortin Einat Hoobian-Seybold Adrian Stein John Mueller Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub User-first SEO What creators should know about Google's helpful content update What site owners should know about Google's core updates How to source ideas for user-first content News: Google Business Profiles Removes Health & Safety Attributes 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 groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix. And I'm joined by the one, the only, the head of SEO communications at Wix, Crystal Carter. What's up, Crystal? Crystal Carter: Hello, good people of the internet. Hello. Many things are up. Things are up. Mordy Oberstein: Hopefully your rankings are up. Dad joke/SEO joke. Crystal Carter: We want all green arrows, every time. Mordy Oberstein: Someone was telling me that, because we're in the middle of, as we're recording this, some fluctuations on the SERP, and their boss was asking about, "Oh, why did our rankings on page two go down?" And they're like, "Why do we care?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We went from page two to page three, whatever shall we do? Crystal Carter: How come no one's coming to my MySpace page? Because what? Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Crystal Carter: Don't worry. Pick your battles there. Mordy Oberstein: Bigger fish to fry. Or if you don't like frying fish, bigger fish to bake. Crystal Carter: This is true. You could bake it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fish baked more than I like it fried. Anyway, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can empower your [SEO] content strategy with the power of Semrush directly inside of the Wix platform. It's all part of Wix's SEO set up checklist, research keywords and topics, along with metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, and even user intent with our Semrush integration. It's like my two worlds combined with that one. So on today's show, geez, Crystal, we better make sure the bots are happy, happy, happy, right? Crystal Carter: S-bots must be very happy. Mordy Oberstein: But wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Crystal Carter: Bots have happy. Mordy Oberstein: Do bots, or search engines, do they pay you money? Crystal Carter: No. No. I've asked. Mordy Oberstein: But I do not get a positive response, because guess what? People, people pay you money. But if I worry about the people, who will worry about the bots? Don't worry, Optimus Prime will. He's their father. Anyway. But if you're worrying about not worrying about the bots, fear not fair SEO for thou art in great luck, for the days of user first SEO are not just nigh, they are upon thee. That is correct. Today we are talking about why worrying about the user and not the bot, believe it or not, is actually good for the bots. That was circular. But who would've thunk. From the research phase to how the Google algorithm is structured, we're diving into why user first SEO matters, with tips of the trade from SEO's own John Bonham, Little Zeppelin reference for you there. Michel Fortin will stop by and share some of his tips with you. We'll also sit down with Wix's own SEO product manager, Einat Hoobian-Seybold, to talk about her approach to putting users first and how that plays out in SEO product development. And of course, we have the snappiest of news for you and who you should be following. Actually a bonus, two people who you should be following on social for SEO awesomeness. Let's let the good times roll, as episode eight of the SERP’s Up podcast is on. Crystal Carter: It's on. Mordy Oberstein: It's on. I almost feel like breaking to song, let the good times roll. Crystal Carter: You bet. This is a very musical introduction there, Mordy, with the John Bonham there. Mordy Oberstein: Totally by accident. Totally by accident. Michel Fortin, by the way, plays the drums and he's awesome, and he's going to stop by. Crystal Carter: He's a really good drummer. He's got his drumming on his website and it's exceptional. He's a very funky drummer. He's a very good drummer. Mordy Oberstein: It's awesome. And he's an awesome SEO who talks a lot about user first SEO, so it's completely makes so much sense. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of user first SEO, Crystal, what are we talking about, user first SEO? Crystal Carter: Yeah, so the thing about user first SEO, one of the reasons why we're talking about this, one of the reasons why it's a little bit of a hot topic is because with their recent algorithm update, Google's announced that they are sort of encouraging or incentivizing people to be creating content. Specifically, they said, "Create content for people, not search engines." Who'd have thunk it? Mordy Oberstein: Who would've thunk that? That's crazy talk. Crystal Carter: Right. In their documentation, they say that the goal is to make sure that when users visit the site, they can find original, helpful content written by people for people, and that it has a satisfying user experience for site visitors. Now, the thing about this is that this is essentially user first content. This is content that is thinking about what the user wants, not necessarily thinking about what hacks, what gimmicks you can use to get to the top of the SERP, but rather thinking about something that's actually made for humans. And this follows on from some of the updates that Google updated in the past, like the Panda update, which really rocked this SEO landscape because it was talking about reducing black hat SEO techniques and reducing the prevalence of that information in the SERP. And when I say SERP, I mean search engine result pages. And what that means is that when people go to Google, they can actually achieve their goals, because I think what people forget sometimes is we think that Google and SEO is about websites, and it pretty much is, but if you go to Google's page how Search works, they explained that their goal is to provide information. They don't say that their goal is to drive traffic to websites. They say their goal is to provide information. And so, this kind of algorithm update, like Panda before it, is the kind that makes sure that they're providing high quality information for people that visit Google. And in order to make it high quality, you need to put the user first. So content creators who do this, and you'll know these content creators when you find them, whether it's on a website or whether it's on YouTube or whether it's on any other platform, they're very clear to address their user's needs. So they'll say, "A lot of people have asked me about this topic and I want to talk about it now." Or they'll share content that people that users have requested. So this is something that Google themselves do. They have a series called Ask Google Bot. And John Mueller will say, "Mordy Oberstein asked me this question on Twitter and I'm answering it here." And there's YouTube channels that I follow where they'll say, "What do you want me to cover next?" And the users will say that and they will cover that for them. They'll test content with their users before publishing it. So Instagram, good Instagramers will do a story and they'll see who replies to it and what kinds of things people are interested in, and then they'll do a longer post later on. There's lots of different techniques that you could do, but putting your user first is really important. And it's something that Google's laid out in a lot of different documentation. The information about the helpful content update from Google is very, very clear with information around that. And also, if you want to do a really deep dive, you can have a look at something called the Quality Rater Guidelines, which is the documentation that Google gives to their team, to their humans and their team to help them determine what is a good quality website. Yeah, it's a really good idea. It gives you lots really good ideas of what makes good content that is made for users. Mordy Oberstein: And that's really the point. Back in the day with the algorithm, there was one way of running for humans and one way of running for bots, and even helpful content updates aside, what Google's been doing, I would say since circa 2018 with the new series of core algorithm updates... And if you look at their documentation around how should you respond to being hit by one of the core algorithm updates, it's very similar. It's all about writing really good content, really helpful content. And what they've been doing algorithmically is basically trying to think qualitatively the way a human could, and sort of mimicking that. And Danny Sullivan from Google's talking about, "Yeah, we look at quality," by the way, quality is for the entire site, a site wide metric, not a per page metric, "And we try to mimic through the algorithms how a person would qualitatively assess the quality of the webpage." So now the algorithm and the user have been synced up in a lot of ways. Is it a hundred percent perfect? Is it a hundred percent there? No. Will it every be? Probably not. But directionally, and way, way, way more than it ever was before. And if you look at people like, I'll say Glenn Gabe and Lily Ray, Marie Haynes, maybe myself, Dr. Pete from over at Moz, when they write about their analysis of the updates, so basically showing you, "Yeah, Google's looking at things like tone and looking at things like the quality in this way and the quality in that way," and now when you put the user first, at the same time, and this is a key point, you're also putting Google first. It's not different anymore. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that what we're seeing is Google puts a lot of emphasis on EAT, which is expertise, authority, and trust. And that document that you mentioned, the one that they always put out whenever there's an algorithm, what SEO should know about or website owners should know about Google updates, talks about expertise, authority, and trust. And there's lots of different ways that you can demonstrate that on a website. And it's essentially like if you asked someone for advice and they gave you advice on something, you would want to know how they were qualified to give you that advice. So if you go and talk to a doctor and then they say, "Oh, I think it might be," I don't know, appendicitis or something like that, you assume that they know what they're talking about, because they're in a doctor's office, they've got their certificates up on the wall, you know who they are. Similarly, if you go to a website and they're giving you advice or they're giving you information about one topic or another, it's very important that you know who they are, that they have an about page that talks about who they are. We recently did a webinar with Semrush around about pages, to talk about some of those elements. But it's also important that you have an address if it's a place of business. I saw recently someone, there was somebody who got in touch or somebody who was online saying, "Oh, I don't know why my webpage for a hotel isn't ranking," and it was a hotel that didn't have an address. And I was like, "That is red flags." Mordy Oberstein: Conceptual hotel. Crystal Carter: That's red flags. Mordy Oberstein: It's where my mind stays. Crystal Carter: It's, "Oh, book, book where, where is this?" Mordy Oberstein: In the ether. It's in the ether. Crystal Carter: Right. And if you think about some of the websites that do really well, if you think about something, so Airbnb, for instance, is something like that, that they have doubled down. They have multiple layers of verifying who is who and trying to make sure that it's very clear, that you're talking to an actual person that's actually in a place and these people are... Then there's agreements and there's all this sort of stuff. Similarly, Google's trying to make sure that when somebody comes to their website and tries to find out, I don't know, how far it is from the earth to the moon or any kind of information, that they're able to get it from a valid source. Because if people are not getting good quality information from Google, then people won't come to Google. And Google wants to make sure that they're keeping their users happy by giving them good quality information. Mordy Oberstein: You make a great point where you're talking about how people are looking at a website, "Can I trust this website? Are they authoritative? They have expertise?" And that's really, if you want to talk about how you create user first content, that's kind of how you do it. You look at it from the lens of the user. One way, I call it the brand sniff test. You go to a webpage and you immediately, because you're a brand, they're going to realize it's, "Oh, machines and AI and Google's so smart and machines are so smart." Your brain is AI on steroids. It takes a look at something, and in three seconds or 0.3 seconds, it takes a million different signals. And without you consciously being aware of it, it's like, "Yeah, I've completely judged this already." You go to a webpage and it's an HTML table from 1999, you go, "I'm not trusting this thing." Even might have great content. If you think, "Okay, how do I know I've created user first content, outside the fact that you know where your heart is? Leaving that aside for a second, if you look at the page and you think, "Okay," from a branding point of view, "What are the latent signals that this page sends? Is the tone right, is the layout friendly? Is it digestible? Is it well structured? Does it give off a sense that this page is well intentioned, trustworthy, and has my best interest in mind?" And if you feel like you know it does, then you've probably created user first content. Crystal Carter: And I think, also, if you're getting good feedback from your users, then that will also tell you this. For instance, if you've got people coming to your Google business profile and they're asking the same questions over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. If you're having people calling you and asking you for the same information over and over again, they probably can't find that information on your website. You should probably make some information, that kind of information on your website. If you've got people who, "Oh, yeah. I saw this on your page and I thought it was great," or "This was really...", then that's information that you're providing that's clearly good for users. So there's lots of different signals that you can get around that. I know some people put reviews on their blog, just regular blogs, not necessarily a recipe blog, but just a regular blog, "Did you find this content helpful? What do you think of this content?" Three stars, five stars, whatever it is. And you can sort of understand, you can get actual direct feedback from people about whether or not it's helpful, whether or not it's useful. And there's lots of different elements and different factors that can help you to demonstrate that and help you to understand that. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And it really all starts with your mindset. I know you have a whole article about this, I think, where if you're looking at it, I'm was going to go to a keyword research tool and I'm going to plug it in and whatever, and pull out the data and I'm going to... that's probably not the place to start, in my mind. When you're trying to start writing content for the web, for both bots and users, it starts with empathy and understanding your audience, and being able to tap into their mindset. Because now you're going to create content that actually helps them because you actually feel bad for them. Like, "Oh, you have a pain point here? I would love to help you with that." Crystal Carter: Right. I've sometimes written articles, so I remember writing a piece that was around different sources for structured data or something like that. And I use it myself. It was basically, it was a bookmark thing that I put together. And the reason why I put it together was because I couldn't find one. So I think that's one of the things, if you're trying to think about user first, try to be mindful of your experience as a user and the things that irritate you as a user, the content that you don't like as a user. It says something in the description and you get to the page and it's completely different. That can be annoying. Or Google in their helpful content notes talks about the kinds of things where they're saying, "Are you trying to give an answer to a question that doesn't have an answer?" Like when is this show coming out and they haven't announced it and you're just trying to get on the SERP or something, that sort of thing. If you find that irritating, don't make that content. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember that. When I was looking at this, a lot of the people that... I spoke to lots of different SEOs about how they create content for users, and they talk to users. And sometimes this can be interviews or sometimes this can be going through CRM information. So if you are using something like Salesforce or that sort of thing where people are raising tickets regularly or raising customer service queries, you can go through that information and see the ones that come up regularly, and you can help your customer service team by giving them the information that they need and help users at the same time. And with regards to the keywords, not to say that keywords and using keywords tools, not to say you shouldn't use them, but think of the user first and then use the keyword tools just to make sure that you're actually hitting some of the actual terms. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, you're refining and gaps you haven't missed, those sort of things, because I've done this before myself. The questions you get from, actually, users are completely different. Crystal Carter: Right, completely. And especially if you're looking into a new space where you think about keyword tools, a lot of times they're using historical data. And it's fantastic. It's amazing to have that kind of data there. But Google said, I think, 15% of queries are new queries. So if you're going into a new space, you're launching a new product, then you're going to need to get new content for that and you're going to need to get that to users. And if you're not somebody who wants to do lots and lots of interviews and stuff, that's okay. There's lots of different things you can look- Mordy Oberstein: Forums and social. Crystal Carter: Forums. Yeah. Reviews. You can do a poll. I sometimes go through Slack channels, Slack messages. You can talk to juniors if you're trying to... Training juniors is incredibly useful because juniors will go, "What is a acronym? I don't know what that means." And they want to know. They want to know. So you can create something that's good for the juniors in your team and also is useful for users who are in the same place, where they want to know desperately, so they need it to be- Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: ... accessible. Mordy Oberstein: And if you're still doubting, well, doing all of this and putting the user first and, I want to say abandoning, slightly abandoning traditional, what you might think is traditional SEO, is that's not going to help me rank, think about what's coming down the pike. MUM is coming down the pike, it's Google's new AI 1000, machine learning rather, 1000 times more powerful than Byrd, it's previous most powerful machine learning property, blah blah blah. One of the things that MUM is doing, it's Google's own example, and they gave an example of something like, "I hiked Mount Adams, now I want to hike Mount Fiji in the fall. What do I need to do to prepare differently?" Something like that. Crystal Carter: That's so many words. That's got too many words, by the way. Mordy Oberstein: But the coolest part is that they show you how they parse the word prepare. Does it mean to equipment, I need to know what equipment I need, or training? Is that what you mean to prepare? And Google's like, "Now we're going to show results about both." And you could probably parse it a million times over. So if Google's going to be parsing topics into smaller subtopics like, "Oh, preparing for a hike." It means equipment. It could mean tips, it could mean food, it could mean trading. The only way that you are going to be able to parse a topic down the same way so that you have the opportunities to rank, that are afforded to you on what's going to be the new search results page is by identifying and empathizing with your audience. Like oh, if someone's going on a hike and they have to prepare, what do they really need? Well, they might need this, they might need that, they might need that. Let me create content about that. So we will most definitely help you rank to put the user first, because that's the only way you're going to be able to create the right content. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that if you're thinking about actually answering the question... Again talking to children is another good one. I have a kid and he asks me questions all the time and he's very capable of understanding if I explain it to him the way that he wants, but he wants a full answer. Kids will just keep asking why, so make sure that you give a full answer for whatever the question, and genuinely get involved. Mordy Oberstein: Like a real substance targeted, nuanced content. Now speaking of questions, we have a question for Michel Fortin, the director of search marketing over at seoplus+. Hey Michel, how do you check yourself to ensure you always keep the user first, not bots? Take it away. Michel Fortin: In SEO and in business, in general, many people tend to think the other way around. They think that we should focus on our product, it's the best things since sliced bread, and then we focus on our marketing because we think that people just need our product. The thing is, is actually the other way around, we should be solving a problem, we should be helping out our market. SEO is no different. We have to keep the user first in mind. Yes, we should be leading with our product, but we also are creating a solution to a problem. So it makes sense that we should focus on the problems that our users are experiencing and we help to solve them, in that case when they're making a search. So to keep the user first, you need to at least start with the user first. To borrow a quote from Steven Covey, "First things first is to put first things first." And it really does mean that in the case of SEO, as in any other form of marketing, because SEO is just a channel for marketing, it's really about putting the user first and thinking about their pain points. I always say this, that to really rank well, to be visible actually is a better way to say it, to really be visible in search engines, you need to do what Google really wants you to do. It's the same thing, we share the same goal, which is to create quality content and a quality user experience. So appeal to your market and optimize those things for their sake and you will naturally appeal to search engines too. In marketing, I think the single biggest challenge is to think like our audience. And I say it's a challenge because we tend to always think that our audience are like us or that we know what our audience wants or what they're thinking about or what their needs are. And there's a famous quote from a mentor of mine from many, many years ago who said, "You are never your own market." And in my previous life, I was a copywriter, we always focused on trying to tell our clients that they are never their own market. Well, SEO is the same. Either we think we know or we expect they know. And that's true also for research engines as it is for the audiences that we are trying to go after. And both are wrong. Both of those notions are wrong. We have to think of our market, we have to think like our market. Think about it this way, Google is always doing split tests all the time. It's always testing and changing and adding new search features. And if things don't work out, I mean how many products have we seen Google put out and it basically didn't last too too long because it just flopped or it didn't really do well or it wasn't... The man wasn't there. Remember Google+? But the thing is, with SEO is that we have to think like our market. We have to think for a market. We have to provide the solution that our market wants. I want to end with this, there's a book on marketing in general, but it's called Scientific Advertising. It was written in 1923 by Claude C. Hopkins. And he said something that was really interesting, "The product itself should be its own best salesman." But here's what he said next in his book that is the most important part, "Almost any question can be answered by a test campaign. The court of last resort is the buyers of your product. No one knows people's desires enough to get an average viewpoint. If you want to know whether your product will work, do a test campaign." Now, the reason why I mentioned this in the context of SEO is when we try to optimize something before we put it up, we are thinking about how Google will see it, but we are ignoring the users of our product. Don't think of the ranking factor or factors first and then create content and the user experience to match that. Think of the user first. Create great content, great experience for them. Then think how you can match that to the ranking factors. I think in SEO we tend to forget that there's a word in there called optimization. And optimization applies that it has to be done after something already exists. We optimize something like content or user experience. We optimize what we provide our users so that they're seen by or ranked by or indexed by search engines. Too often we create content and user experience that focuses on search engines, or we will focus on the user but the search engines are dictating the development, so that's why it's not really optimizing after the fact. We're doing it as we go along. Yes, there's always going to be a place for technical SEO. There's always going to be a place for things that we can apply and optimize that will be appealing to the search engines. But put the user first, then optimize. Mordy Oberstein: You know what? He's so right. And it really, as we spoke about, comes out to mindset. The way I put it is started thinking like a marketer almost, because marketers have been doing this for a long time. I know in SCL, "This is so new, think about the user," but marketer doing this forever. It's time to start thinking more like a traditional marketer in a lot of ways as part of your SEO process. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think that when you do that it makes it more than just ranking. It actually means that you're actually connecting with the audience. So some of the YouTubers, for instance, that I really like, do this a lot. The last audience are together, and then it feels like it's a conversation. When you're literally user first, when a user says to you, "Oh, I don't understand this thing, can you help me?" And you write them a blog or you do the thing, and then you come back to them and you're like, "Hey, remember that thing you asked me about? Here it is." Do you know, they will go to you first the next time they need something that's in your niche, they will go to you first because they'll say, "Well, I trust this person. And if I get stuck, I trust that they'll help me in some way." So it's more than just ranking. It's also about building literal trust, building relationships with your audience. And I think that Google talks a lot about audiences. He was talking a lot about audiences there as well, and about making sure that you are thinking about something that is actually of value to the people that you're connecting with. Mordy Oberstein: Do you know who thinks of value with the people that they're connecting with and who always puts users first and not? Crystal Carter: Oh, yes, [inaudible 00:24:18] she absolutely does. Mordy Oberstein: Einat is a master at this. And she's a master of getting into the minds of the people that she's trying to help. Einat is also the product manager here at Wix for SEO tool set and development. So who would've thunk? What better person then to sit down and chat about how to put users first within an SEO context other than Einat? So join us now as we reach for the stars and go across the Wixverse with our own SEO product manager Einat Hoobian-Seybold. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So we're here with Einat. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We've cornered you. We finally got you on the podcast. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: I'm happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. We're really happy to have you because when we were sitting down, we were talking about doing an episode on user first SEO and how important that is. The person who immediately came to both of our minds was Einat, because your job is literally to put users first. And so many different kinds of users and it's so complicated. So we just wanted to pick your brain about how you put Wix's users first when developing our SEO product. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Well, that's an interesting questions because, first of all, what is Wix users, because we have a variety of users? We have the DIYs, the self-creators, the moms and pops, if you would like, which are just building their small business and they don't know much about SEO. And we have the professionals ones that are SEO professional, that are marketers. They need a lot more things and we need to dance in between. And every time I build a product, I don't build it for one of them, I build it for all of them. And that's the tricky part, because I need to take into consideration all their needs. I need to give the DIY users everything they need in order to have the best SEO without them understanding or without them knowing a lot. So that's why I will create lots of defaults and things that will be created for them with minimum effort or knowledge for their side. But in the same time, I will want to create full customization for the professional users. I want to allow them to have workflows. I want to allow them to have automation to save their time, that they will be able to do anything they want in the platform. I don't want the platform to minimize them in any way. Every time I build a product, I need to cater both of them. So I need to protect the DIYs and I need to give the full customization for our users. And it varies, so a lot of time I will give the basic information in the first view and then I will allow users, advanced users, to find what they can do more. Like I said, I will build a lot of defaults for the users, which is also beneficial for the professional one. For example, in Wix we create a lot of default structure data. I can recognize the page of the user, I know what it is. And for example, if you have a product page, I can already build you the structure data with all the information that you need. So it's, of course, extremely valuable for our DIYs, so they don't know structured data, they for sure don't know how to write it, so I already did it for them. And it's also extremely beneficial for the professional because I saved their time. It's automatically built to work in scale and, of course, they can customize it. If the default that I build is not enough for them, they want to change, they want to edit, they can do it as well. Crystal Carter: And I think this is a great example because one of the things I really like about the structure data customization options is that you have the default, which is great out of the box but, for instance, if you wanted to edit it, it also has a validator, so it tells you if you've misplaced your syntax and won't let you submit incorrect schema markup. The other thing I think is great about Wix is structured data customization options is there are variables, so variables already exist within the platform. I've previously had to build these myself and it can be very time consuming and sometimes inconsistent. So I think that's a great example of something that works for lots of different users. One of the things I also think is great, from observing you and the way that you roll out these products, is how you test them. Can you talk to us a little bit more about your testing process, about how you test to make sure that what you're building is good for your users? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: It's true that almost everything that we do in Wix, we test, because we don't know everything. Even if I know SEO and I know product and I know my users, still, reality is different and we really need to see how users behave and if users understand what they see and what they need to do, so we test everything. Every time I will make a major product or a major change, I will run an A/B test. I will start with 50% of the population. I will start with one market, because in Wix we have over 20 market. I will start with one dedicated one in order to really understand the effect of this new feature or this new tool. And I really will, I will run it 50% A/B test and I will see the effect, first of all, on the existing reality that we live in. We live in Wix in SEO, specifically in a very complex environment. We have lots of tools, again, we have lots of users, so I want to make sure that I didn't harm anything else, that by creating this new feature or by creating this new tool that everything else that our users are known and used to, stays the same and I didn't shake the boat too much. So I will test this and I will test also regarding the feature that I just launched. I will test the specific APIs that I want to reach with this tool, whether if there's usage in the tool, I will understand really how users behave in the tool. And I think one thing that is important to note, we don't only look on the quantitative data, we also look on the quality of data. I will see sometimes numbers and this is working well and this is not, but I want to understand why. For example, right now we ran a test, we added, we have the SEO wiz, we just added a new section GBP, the Google Business Profile to it, and it worked amazingly for Google Business Profile users, created extremely well, more locations as success verification. Was amazing. But it did affect the SEO with the checklist that we have. The KPIs of this affected it. I know that those KPIs, if you complete the checklist, if you move forward, it's improve your SEO, so I don't want to do that. I don't want to create any new feature, I will kind of sabotage the user success because this is really what lead us; user success, how we guide them to success. So what we did is we look at the data and we try to understand what's going on. And we understand that a lot of users, in order to create a Google Business Profile, they need to go out to Google Business Profile, which is in another place. And we participated this. We already added some CTAs to go back to the SEO wiz, to the checklist, but they weren't permanent enough and we saw that users are not seeing this. They are being sent out by me, but they don't come back. So what we did is, first of all, I looked at the full story, which is a tool that we use a lot to understand how user interact with our tools because sometimes just the data of the CTA is not enough. We need to know what he did before and if did he get lost or not. And we understand that they don't see the way to go back to where they were. So now we are improving it in terms of UI and in terms of content. And I will be glad to update you once the test will be done. Mordy Oberstein: We would love to be updated. So let me ask you real quick, because I know we're reaching the end of our allotted time together. Let's take it back a step. When you have so many things to develop, let's say, or multiple things you could be developing, how do you decide which one to do first? What goes through your thought process and how does the user factor into that and how do you really know which makes the most sense? Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Yeah, that's true. I think the most painful part of being a product manager that you have to prioritize is you have to decide what you do now and you won't do everything that you want. Because I have tons of plans, but I need to prioritize and I need to scale them down a lot of times. So I have lots of, I will say information sources that I use in order to decide what I do now. The bottom line is impact, is how do I help my users? What I do now is for my users. Will it, like I said, drive them towards success or not? So I have lots of information. I have, first of all, data. I look a lot of data of users and what they do and what they are missing and where they get stuck. And we have an SEO in Wix. We have a team, a dedicated team of SEO domain experts, data, the guys that are connected the most of the industry and they know what is needed, what are we lacking of, what do we need to do next. And so, I rely a lot of their recommendation. I do a lot of research and I really, really look at support information, support tickets, what our users are struggling with, what are coming to support. I talk a lot with the users and I really call our users and we talk about them. And all of this is driving me towards decision of what I need to do. That's the first step, what is missing. And then how do I prioritize this? It will be mainly on a impact. What will close a gap that I missing the most that will help our users? Or what will bring more value to my users? And this is what guides me when I prioritize the products. Crystal Carter: And I love these conversations because whenever we're like, "Oh, what about this?" you're like, "What about the users? How is this going to help the users?" Mordy Oberstein: Yep, so true. Crystal Carter: "How is this going to help the users? This is very interesting, Crystal, how are we going to help the users with this?" Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Einat, thank you so much for stopping by. It's really been a first class look into the mindset of putting a user first and what that looks take from a product point of view. And it really applies to anytime you put a user first, whether it be for a product or service or for a website itself. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Exactly. Thank you. I really enjoyed being with you. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we'll have to have you back again. Talk to you later. Einat Hoobian-Seybold: Bye. Audio: Three, two, one, ignition, lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: She is so lovely. Always. Every time I speak with her, I always enjoy... Super calm under pressure too. Always pleasant. Everyone's like, "Oh no, what do we do?" She's always so calm. Crystal Carter: I am always in awe whenever I hear... Einat will give us presentations on all the different stuff that we do and she just. Yeah, exactly, always super calm, super organized, very committed to the project of making Wix SEO stack as best as it can possibly be for our users. It's phenomenal to work alongside Einat. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's great talking to her and being able to talk to her with our audience, because now you actually know one of the key people who has made our SEO product so evolved. And it's really, was a great pleasure to talk to Einat. Crystal Carter: And user first, just user first stuff, she constantly Slack messages, she's constantly, "Yeah, I'm just responding to questions that our users have about various different things." She's very much involved with making sure that things are user first. Mordy Oberstein: 1000%. Let's snap to it, because now it's time for the Snappy News. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Well, I guess the pandemic is behind us. I mean, Google did just announce that Google Business Profile health and safety attributes are being kicked to the curb. That's right. Per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, "Google Business Profile removes health and safety attributes." Google business profile attributes, by the way, are little tidbits of info that help users better understand services and structure of a business, for example, that are attributes that let you know of an establishment is wheelchair accessible or there are attributes that let you know that a business is owned by a woman, it's woman led or it's veteran led or so forth. During COVID, Google introduced the option to display health and safety attributes like a mask being required or staff gets temperature checks, et cetera. These are now gone. Why is that important? Well, less so for SEO or there's no ranking that's involved in it if it's gone from all business profiles and users won't expect it to be there at all, so if you don't have it, it's not like your competitors have it. This is more, in my mind, a general marketing point, as it's a strong statement of where the world is and where your potential customers might be currently at. And with that, this is the snappiest of Snappy News. Another wonderful week of SEO news. Crystal Carter: So newsy. Mordy Oberstein: So newsy. It's always newsy in the SEO world. All right, before we have to duly depart, it's really important that we share with you who we think you should be following for more SEO knowledge. And when it comes to being user first and user first friendly, we have two people for you, because it's such an important topic, we thought what person wasn't enough. And we couldn't decide on which person to showcase. So we're like, "Let's do both. Why not do both?" Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Two is better than one. When you have pie, they're like, "Oh, do you want the cherry pie and the blueberry pie?" Then they have a combination of it too. Oh, my god, I'll take that. Crystal Carter: Which pie do you want? Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All. Yes. I love pie, by the way. Crystal Carter: Pie's good. Mordy Oberstein: Here, by the way, is the cherry on your pie in the SEO industry when you're trying to think of being user first. I did it on the fly, I'm so proud of myself. What do we have? Who's your follow of the week or our follow week, but who are you going to showcase, Crystal? Crystal Carter: I would love to give a shoutout to Adriana Stein. She is a writer, she's in SEO and does some incredible user first content. One of the things that she does really often is she regularly speaks directly to people about how they approach content, how they approach different technical tactics, so she'll get on her Twitter account and she'll ask questions. She'll say, "How do you do this? What do you think of that?" And people respond to her and she uses that to help shape her content and how she makes content. And I think it's a great approach and I think she's really good at it. I think her content's really great. So she's someone who's really worth following. She does a lot of stuff with some of the industry's best publications, so it's really good to follow her for that advice and for just seeing how she works. Mordy Oberstein: And her Twitter account is so conversational and so engaging, so it's absolutely worth the follow. It's @adrianakstein, A-D-R-I-A-N-A-K-S-T-E-I-N. Of course, we'll link to her profile in the show notes. And bonus follow of the week- Crystal Carter: Bonus. Mordy Oberstein: ... the man who I will say is so dedicated and passionate to making sure the web actually has good content on there. He's Google's own John Mueller. Crystal Carter: John Mueller. Mordy Oberstein: Is a saint by the way, an absolute saint. I love John. He's hilarious as well. So it's a great follow for many reasons. But I remember when the product review update was first rolling out, maybe it was the second iteration of it, I can't remember which one it was. And people were saying, "Oh, why do we need this? Why is it there?" And John was just calling it as he saw it. No, because there's a lot of really not great content out there around product reviews. And it's so true. And John will literally just tell you like, "No, this is how it really is and this is why we needed improvement." I always say John Mueller is an advocate for Google, but he is also an advocate for a better web and a better web starter, I think, with better content. I think John is a prime example of someone who speaks of that. And I really do appreciate that. Crystal Carter: I think he's great. I think also the other thing that's great about John is that SEO, everyone's coming to SEO from different spaces. You might be an expert in one field and a beginner in another, and he speaks to everyone in the same way. So in his Webmaster Office Hours would very regularly speak to users from all different backgrounds, whatever questions they had. And he always did his best to answer every single question in those spaces. And it is something that is incredibly user first because that gives you a very clear finger on the pulse of the kinds of questions that people have. And he uses that to shape the content that he shares. I think that he's a pillar in that community. Mordy Oberstein: He's just simply wonderful. He's simply wonderful and- Crystal Carter: He's great. Mordy Oberstein: ... honestly, he brings joy to my day sometimes when you're on Twitter and is like things are not going great. John is wonderful. Anyway, it's @john, J-O-H-N-M-U, as in Mueller, John Mueller. And we'll link, of course, to John's profile in the show notes. And that's going to do it for us. 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 an all new episode as we dive into the controversy that is AI writers. AaaaaaaaaI writers, if you're Fonzie. Crystal Carter: Can we just call it AI the whole time? Mordy Oberstein: AI writers. Wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars that we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet 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 . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Keyword cannibalization: we all know it’s bad, but what is it really? What impact does it have? How do you fix it? We give some helpful tips to figure out if your site is cannibalizing itself on the Google SERP, and what (if anything) you can do to prevent it. Wix’s very own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter help you discover if ranking on the same SERP with multiple pages will dilute your rankings and what you can do about it. Senior SEO Strategist and Co-Founder at forank, Zoe Ashbridge, also weighs in with her own experiences and creative solutions to dealing with keyword cannibalization. Don’t want a ‘bite’ in your rankings? Tune in this week to uncover the misconceptions and determine the truth about keyword cannibalization right here on The SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back What's the real deal with keyword cannibalization Keyword cannibalization: we all know it’s bad, but what is it really? What impact does it have? How do you fix it? We give some helpful tips to figure out if your site is cannibalizing itself on the Google SERP, and what (if anything) you can do to prevent it. Wix’s very own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter help you discover if ranking on the same SERP with multiple pages will dilute your rankings and what you can do about it. Senior SEO Strategist and Co-Founder at forank, Zoe Ashbridge, also weighs in with her own experiences and creative solutions to dealing with keyword cannibalization. Don’t want a ‘bite’ in your rankings? Tune in this week to uncover the misconceptions and determine the truth about keyword cannibalization right here on The SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 58 | October 18, 2023 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 36:39 This week’s guests Zoe Ashbridge Zoe Ashbridge is an SEO Specialist and co-founder at forank. She has over eight years of experience in Digital Project Management. The forank team work on holistic marketing and love data and analytics. Zoe is published in Search Engine Land, HubSpot, GoDaddy and Moz. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some guru new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the stupendous Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, hello, hello. Welcome all to the internet people from around the interwebs, from every corner, from every platform, from every browser. Welcome to the SERP's Up SEO podcast where we'll talk about SEO in a podcast format. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I was going to say, by the way, we're back, but the audience has no clue what happened. To break the fourth wall, we realized that between the two of us, we were basically out the entire August and we were like, "Wait, wait a second. We have to do a podcast." So we recorded two months worth of podcasts in a single month, and this is the first time we're recording since then, basically, Crystal Carter: Honestly. And it's been so strange because I'm literally used to recording a podcast every day now in my schedule. And so not having a podcast every day, I'm like, "What? What time am I podcasting today? Oh, not podcasting today. That's interesting. Very interesting." Mordy Oberstein: I just glue my podcast mic around my neck, so I just walk around... Crystal Carter: Just walk around commenting on things. That was really fascinating. Have you considered how to do this? But this is a small price to pay for doing fantastic things here on the SERP's Up SEO podcast. And thank you to everyone. It's recently in recording time, but probably not recently in our distribution time for celebrating our 50th episode. That was really nice. And yeah, we look forward to many, many, many, many more. Mordy Oberstein: We look forward to 5,000 episodes. Short for the stars, Mordy. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, so get that right into your inbox each and every month, but where you can also optimize your site CSS build sites with AI power responsiveness, build custom and reusable templates and widgets across multiple websites, all while being able to collaborate in new ways with your team and with the ability to create custom client handoff kits for smooth transitioning. It's all part of our agency-first offering, Wix Studio. Check it out over at wix.com/studio. You can also check out the new platform on the Wix Studio YouTube channel. I'll link to that in the show notes. Oh, wait a second. No, what have I done? I told people to go to the YouTube channel and to wix.com/studio. I've given you multiple sources for the same entity? Will that water down the impact of you checking out Wix Studio? Have I cannibalized my Wix studio pitching efforts? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Have you cannibalized it Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. We're going to talk about it because we've finally come to that episode where we take up the age-old burning SEO question. Does ranking on the same SERP with multiple pages dilute your ranking impact? Welcome to the keyword cannibalization episode. We're talking about what is keyword cannibalization? Does it actually exist? And if so, how and when? And by the way, Crystal and I have diverging opinions of this. We're going to get into it here in a little bit. I'm just saying. Plus, should keyword cannibalization exist, is there anything to do about it? Zoey Ashbridge stops by to weigh in. That kind of spoils it because we're having somebody come in to tell you how to handle it. It must exist unless we're completely off our rockers, but that's something totally separate. And we're going to get into the state of domain diversity on the SERP. Crystal and I will explore the topic. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness across social media. So cook up a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti as episode number 58 of the SERP's Up podcast chews on the idea of keyword cannibalization. Crystal Carter: That is a deep cut reference in more ways than one. I applaud the... Okay, fantastic. While Mordy revels in his puns and references there... Mordy Oberstein: Oh, good. Crystal Carter: I'm going to get into a little bit of just chatting about what is keyword cannibalization. So in a fantastic article from Joshua George on the Wix SEO Learning Hub where he talks about how to find and fix keyword cannibalization for your e-commerce website, he gives a general overview of what keyword cannibalization is that is pretty on the mark. He says, "In a nutshell, keyword cannibalization refers to having two or more pages on your website rank for the same keyword. This could result in weaker rankings, competing against your own content and search results for the same query and even confusing potential customers." And this is something that I personally have seen across the web and essentially what will generally happen is that somebody will make some new content, and one page is ranking for that keyword and then when somebody makes the new content, they will enter the fray, enter the chat with regards to ranking for that keyword, and sometimes the website will see a drop in the rankings for the original post and we'll see the new post maybe not quite make a big splash as they would expect it to do. And I've seen this happen like an inverse graph. Basically as soon as the new one is posted, I've seen the other one go down. And this can happen for a few different reasons. I'll get into a little bit of that more, but essentially it's a pain, and it sort of gets into the area of duplicate content and that sort of thing. We covered that a little bit as well. But basically, the long story short of it is you should be thinking about making unique content, and when you don't make unique content across your site, you can sometimes run into troubles and keyword cannibalization is one of those things. So Joshua George talks about it there. He also shares a few different ways where you can identify it. And another person who's also talked about this quite prolifically is Patrick Stox. And he was speaking of it in a more nuanced sort of way I guess you would say. So with regards to keyword cannibalization, as Joshua George is saying, this is sort of the experience that we see on the SERP, what we see on the stats. What Patrick Stox is talking about is that yes, it is possible for two keywords or two pieces of content to rank for similar keywords. This happens across websites regularly. However, he points out that just because it doesn't show for the main keyword doesn't mean that it won't show for other variations of the term, so sometimes you can see this spread across lots of different ways. And I think that that is true. These things sometimes ebb and flow. I've seen it be the case where a domain had lots and lots of articles that were in the sort of same realm of topics, and this is really possible. So if you have a product or if you're writing about owls... I'm just looking around my room and I saw an owl. So let's say you have an owl. Mordy Oberstein: You got an owl around your room? Crystal Carter: I have an owl. My kid drew me a picture. Mordy Oberstein: You have a live owl flying? Crystal Carter: No, not a live owl. I wish I had a live owl, but I have an owl picture on my wall. Mordy Oberstein: Oh no, that makes more sense than having an actual owl. Crystal Carter: My kid drew me a picture of a barn owl. Anyway, so let's say you have a website all about barn owls or whatever and there's going to be lots of times where you overlap and sometimes it's going to happen when you're doing a cluster even, where you think, oh, we're going to get into this cluster. And the thing that's tricky about that is that sometimes you're not even trying to go for the same keyword, but Google will decide that these two pieces of content will rank for the same keyword, which is something that you have to pay attention to and monitor. And so I think that I've definitely seen this happen. It's definitely something that can be annoying, but it's not something that people are making up because we're seeing it in real time and it is something that can deciphered and can be unpicked. And Patrick, in his thing though, he says that the way people think about it is preposterous. Quote unquote preposterous he says at the beginning. He also says that if you see multiple pages that are ranking for multiple keywords, that you could let the pages fight it out for a particular query, but it makes more sense to think about opportunities where you could consolidate the pages where it makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: We want to rank. Multiple URLs will not make us tank. That's my protest. So to sort of frame this, so there's that sign that says keywords, if you have multiple pages ranking for them is going to dilute it. In other words, so if I have multiple pages competing for the same keywords as opposed to one page ranking number two, now both of them rank like five or six. That's the sort of general idea. And to quote Patrick, "Keyword cannibalization does not really exist, at least not in the way many people think. The common belief is that keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages target the same keyword, compete against and hurt each other. Some people think if they have multiple pages about the same keyword, Google won't rank any of them. I find that not to be the case." So I want to say at the onset, there's multiple opinions on this and there's a side to each side. And it's SEO. It's not always so clear. There's no official handbook and Google, believe it or not, has been a little bit like cryptic about some of the things they've said here. You would've expected to find Danny Sullivan or John Mueller coming out and saying, keyword canalization is this or it's real or it's not real and they don't, and it's a little bit weird in my opinion. And maybe it's just a coincidence. I don't know. With that caveat, I will make the case against keyword cannibalization impacting rank, if I could, if I could. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Crystal Carter: Bear you in mind that I've seen it do it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay, That's fine. Okay, so one. Google cares about the best results period. I don't understand conceptually speaking. I'll run through the whole- Crystal Carter: When you say results, what do you mean? Mordy Oberstein: I will run through my argument. Crystal Carter: Okay, Mordy Oberstein: We'll run through it. Crystal Carter: Okay, Mordy Oberstein: I have multiple points. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. They care about the best results period. And it doesn't matter, from Google's point of view, whether or not the top 10 results have two URLs from the same domain or one URL. If those are the best results, those are the best results. I don't understand conceptually speaking how it helps Google. Let's say you have a page and it is the best result for this keyword. Why would Google say, you know what? This is the best result for this page, but because you have another page that's also ranking, we're going to lower what's the best result on that page. That's argument number one. I just don't see how it helps. Also, Google has a domain diversity algorithm. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They announced in, I think it was like 2019 Danny Sullivan announced domain diversity algorithm. But wait a second, if keyword cannibalization is already a thing, then it's already built into the algorithm, what do you need a specific domain diversity algorithm for? It's a contradiction. The very idea of Google saying multiple URLs are ranking higher, they're ranking really well, we need to create a specific algorithm to make sure there's enough diversity on the SERP is inherently a contradiction to the idea of keyword cannibalization. Then there's what Patrick Stox shared. I'll leave that aside for a minute. But also the idea, and this is what kind of what Patrick mentioned, content overlaps. If you have a lot of content on your website, you're going to topically overlap to the point where it would make good logical sense multiple pages would rank for the same thing. That's just the way content works. If you're going to have a lot of content on a website, you're going to topically overlap if you're sticking to what you should be sticking to, which is what you talk about on your website. The idea that Google going to cannibalize that kind of goes the way that content inherently is created. Why would Google do that? It doesn't make any logical sense. In fact, Google's saying, Hey, you know what we don't want? We don't want SEO content. They thought it’d be a helpful content update. They basically, we don't want you to write SEO content. Google demoting the rankings of multiple URLs because they're both showing up because they both kind of target the same keyword is basically incentivizing you to create SEO content and not create content the way you would naturally create content, which would result in overlap. With that, there are multiple statements from John Mueller that I'll read to you that I think it's time to speak to this. And John, you know when John does his funny, sarcastic thing? Every time keyword cannibalization comes up, he goes into that mode. So someone asked, "John, I removed a blog that was causing cannibalization. Main page returned to the SERPs but on page seven for this term. Used to be on page one. All related keywords are on page one. Do we just need to wait?" John writes back, "It sounds like cannibalization wasn't a problem. How do you determine that it was causing your page to drop out of ranking? I'd be surprised if something as visible as that were to happen." Someone when else asked John, "Does creating a web story summarizing an article that was previously published on the site lead to keyword cannibalization issues?" John writes, "What do you consider keyword cannibalization issues?" So when asked, "John, how do we go about dealing with keyword cannibalization?", John writes back, "I guess it would help if you had a consistent meaning of keyword cannibalization." By the way, last point, I do think keyword cannibalization is real. I think it's more about when you have something like you have multiple intents. In other words, imagine you had a blog about socks and you had a product page about socks and they're both ranking for socks, and the user is clicking on your blog post which is ranking higher, but then not on your product page, which is ranking lower. That would be cannibalizing your efforts. I think that's what Patrick is talking about with the opportunity stuff, which John has also mentioned in a video before. Anyway, that's my argument. Crystal Carter: So you mentioned the diversity algorithm and the diversity algorithm is really, really important to this. So with the domain diversity algorithm and in Patrick's thing, which to be fair, is from years ago. That's the other thing is that with all due respect to Patrick who's fantastic and brilliant and amazing, the article that he wrote is from years ago. His team from Ahrefs have also written on keyword cannibalization and how to do this much more recently and how to manage keyword cannibalization and how their tool helps you deal with keyword cannibalization and all of that sort of stuff. So with all due respect to that, it's a few years old. But the domain diversity algorithm is important here. So one of the reasons why they have the domain diversity algorithm is so that you don't have a SERP that is just Nike if you're looking for articles about shoes, because Nike has all of the resources in the world to write a million articles about shoes, about trainers, about sneakers, about Air Jordans or whatever, and if you didn't have a domain diversity thing, then you would just have that. And in Joshua George's article and in Patrick's article, they both talk about performing host clustering to identify, using a host clustering search modifier in order to identify the pages that are ranking on your page or on your site for that page. So I think Joshua George used the example of Amazon, of the different pages that they're ranking for instance. And essentially, host clustering is when you get around the Google domain diversity update with a search modifier. So you would essentially use a filter. There's a filter, and I think in the article he gives the exact syntax for what you need to enter into the search modifier in Google and then you can see all of the ones that are ranking for that page. So the domain diversity algorithm exists so that we don't have giant brands dominating the SERPs for a particular thing. And if so, that you can't just write the same article over and over and over again with a slightly different tweak and it just show lots and lots of times. I think the other thing that's important to think about is that recency is a consideration with regards to ranking. So when they see a new article, they're like, oh, this is newer content. Oh, we should give it a chance to rank. So if that is pretty much like for like for an existing piece of content, then Google's like, oh, okay, well in the domain diversity thing, so once we put you into the host clustering, then we're going to push that one up. Then where do we put this one? And essentially, I think one of the things I like to say with SEO stuff is that with Google, with the bots, they're both incredibly fantastic and smart and they're also kind of dumb or whatever. It's really smart but it's also really simple. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point actually, and that one I think might be more of a real case when I'm arguing. There was a case where you're saying, well, now both of them aren't going to rank well because they're both eating each other's ranking juice out. And I think that's where it gets a little bit tricky in my mind, especially because it's something of the domain diversity algorithm. Because if you had that already, why would you need the diversity algorithm? The algorithm is already doing it. And to me it's a little bit of a funny thing because Google is able to understand we have duplicate content and say, you know what? You have multiple pages. This one we're going to index. This one we're not going to index. But then when it comes to ranking, they're all of a sudden super confused. Which one should we rank? Well, we can't rank both the same. Well, so we'll rank both lower. Why is that? Why would that be the algorithmic solution? Crystal Carter: I've seen it happen. Mordy Oberstein: Correlation doesn't equal causation, but leave that aside for a second. I've seen the opposite also, right? I've seen multiple cases where you have multiple URLs from the same domain ranking well consistently. And I'm not saying by the way that Google can't, and this again, I just want to be clear, I'm not saying that Google might not be confused, like which one should we rank here? Which is your page here? That I agree with that. And you see inverse relationships often with multiple URLs from your website on the SERP, but that's not to say that they're both ranking lower because of that. Crystal Carter: I think that this comes back to crawling, indexing, et cetera. So essentially within the domain diversity thing, you have Google understanding what is on your site and they understand what is most important on your site, right? With regards to what you were talking about and why it might be the case that you see an actual dilution of the ranking is that Google ranks pages. On your website, everyone will tell you that internal linking is an incredibly quick win and incredibly valuable effort for you to make on your website. That's because on your website, you're pointing lots of signals telling Google which things are most important. So if you are splitting the impact of the keywords, for instance on your own website for let's say you have a website about shoes and you've published two articles about Espadrilles. So that means that you are splitting some of the signals within your site to tell them which pages are the most important for that particular site. And internal links, I have seen internal links also like when you lose internal links from your front pages, that will affect rankings across Google as well. So you're also affecting the signals that you're sending within your internal links as well. So when you're thinking about what's going on the SERP, essentially you're changing the signals that you're giving to Google for a single, particular page, which is why when people are talking about keyword cannibalization, they often say that you should consolidate the pages so that you're concentrating the signals to Google about the quality of that page, both with regards to recency and with regards to links, with regards to architecture, with regards to all of that. Mordy Oberstein: And that's a great point. I'm not saying you can't do things on the page that would connect them together that would result in either both of them doing better or both of them doing worse. What I am saying though is that as an algorithmic solution, Google's saying, well, you have two pages, which is I don't think very uncommon across the web. In other words, again, it goes back to my earlier point, when you're writing prolifically around the same topic, you're going to overlap. The fact that Google would have an algorithm that says, hey, we don't like the overlap kind of goes against their whole idea of writing naturally and writing content that's not SEO content. Crystal Carter: I don't think it's the overlap. I think it's the signals. I think that when you're publishing this additional duplicate or whatever, it's reducing the value internally within your own website of that post. So it means that the- Mordy Oberstein: But it's not. Crystal Carter: Just like if you have a piece of content and you lose a backlink, you will very often, like a really good back link, you will very often see a ranking response to that. Similarly, if you're changing around the internal hierarchy of a piece of content within your own website, that's also going to affect the ranking signals that you're sending to Google and therefore will affect where it ranks. Mordy Oberstein: I agree that you can do things on your website and the way you structure and iterate the content that would impact how Google shows that content on the SERP. What I'm saying though is that there's nothing inherent to that. It's quite possible to do that the right way and do it in a good way where it results in both of them doing well. In other words, there's nothing inherent to the idea that you have multiple pages that could rank. If I'm searching for, I don't know. It's a one-size-fits-all hat good to buy. I can have multiple pages. I might have a page that talks about if it's good to buy for kids, I might have a page that's talking about if it's good to buy for adults. And Google says, we're really not sure what the intent is here. We should probably rank both of these. They're both from them the same website. We can't rank both of these the same. Well, we have to rank both of them poorly. That to me just doesn't make sense. Crystal Carter: I don't think similar content is a problem. Where I've seen this happen is essentially where we... There was one time where I saw a website and we had a piece of content that was working really well, and then we published a piece of content that was in the same neighborhood, it was adding more value to the general topic. However, the URL slug was pretty much the same. The URL slug was pretty much the same, the topic was generally the same. They had different content, but a lot of the signals, a lot of the tags on it and a lot of the topics that we were covering and a lot of the things were pretty much the same. And the main piece of content that was doing really well, it started going down. And when we moved around some of the internal linking, we saw that improve and I've seen this happen in other cases. So I think that where you have a lot of signals that are targeting the same keyword, not just the topic generally, but a lot of signals as well as the topic, and I'm talking like meta tags and things like that and lots of different elements, you have a lot of those signals and they're targeting the same keywords and it can happen in that case. With regards to publishing of similar content and keyword cannibalization being good or bad, I've definitely seen it be the case and I think that there's sometimes an opportunity where you might be like, yeah, we're going to go for some of these long tail keywords and yeah, it might cannibalize us, but we can kind of take the hit. It's a standard business practice where you have somebody who will, you get businesses that will go into a place and they have the ability to do a scattershot. So they can put in 10 cafes and they'll take out all of the smaller cafes and they know that they're running a loss-leader. So it is a possibility where you might have a situation where you want to run a loss-leader so that you can take out competition in an area. Mordy Oberstein: Again, I agree cannibalization can exist on the SERP. I'm not saying you can't cannibalize your efforts on the SERP. What I'm saying is that there's nothing algorithmic about Google saying we're going to demote both of these pages because there's two of them. And I think that if there's a case of Google's like, hey, which content is it, they'll choose one. If they think both of these pages are very similar, both of these pages are great, the idea of demoting both of them just doesn't make sense. Crystal Carter: I think what I've generally seen is that, I generally see this happen with new content being published. So new content will be published around a similar thing and it's been published about coordination- Mordy Oberstein: You'll see the pages swap out. Crystal Carter: No. We'll see the main page demote and then we'll see the other page not really do anything. And that's the thing that I've seen most often. And normally this is when we can…. Mordy Oberstein: I've seen a lot of cases where you put out a new piece of content and Google will rank that. Well, we'll take the one that was ranking and be like, okay, maybe this one's better and let's flip it around. And a lot of inverse relating to what was ranking number three now ranks number eight. What was ranking number eight now ranks number three. So that would kind go against the idea of keyword cannibalization killing both of the rankings. The one that was ranking number three, everything is still ranking number... One of the pages is always going to rank number three. It's just a matter of which one is it. And I'm not saying that's a good thing to do or a bad thing. It could be a bad thing to do because you don't want the first one to lose that number three spot and to be in number eight. Regardless, there's two sides to this story. You decide if you're listening to this and let us know on social media who you side with. I will pay you to side with me. Just let me know. Crystal Carter: I'm sure everyone who's paying for keyword cannibalization tools will side with me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But anyone who's saving their money will side with me. And Patrick will side with me. Hey Patrick, if you're listening. Being that we think we both agree there are legitimate cases in some construct, however you want to slice it, of keyword cannibalization, how do you go about fixing it? To help us with that, we have Zoe Ashbridge, the founder of Forank on how do you fix cases of keyword cannibalization? Zoe Ashbridge: In terms of keyword cannibalization, before you get into fixing anything, I would recommend that you actually go and check the SERPs to see if you've actually got a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes when two pages rank for the same keyword, you actually end up with indented SERPs now. So when that wasn't here, keyword cannibalization was nearly always a problem. Whereas now it can actually be desirable to have these two pages ranking. So if you've got indented SERPs, don't worry at all. If you've got two pages ranking on page one, you probably don't need to do anything there either. If you've got two pages ranking but they're not indented, I might recommend just keeping an eye on them. But I've had sites rank for a long time with two pages on page one, so I would recommend just not trying to fix anything unless it's causing you a problem with clicks or something like that. When keyword cannibalization needs fixing, you'll notice one of the following problems. So you'll find that maybe you put a page live, you know what you wanted it to do and it's just not ranking. That can be one indicator course. That can be a multitude of other things as well. Other signs that you need to fix cannibalization would be if you are seeing queries within Google Search Console showing two pages that are ranking for the same keywords. This one does require a little bit more research as well, because if you've got one page on page one and one page is on page four, then it doesn't really matter. So you do need to dig into the nuance a little bit. And the third potential problem, and this is probably the most obvious one I think from a cannibalization issue, is you might notice that you've got two pages that are struggling to rank. And I think this often shows itself in the average position line. So if you can see a page that's bouncing, maybe it's on page one minute, page four the next, then it's on page two, page six, it's kind of struggling to hold a rank, this can be because of cannibalization. The two pages that you've got ranking for the same keyword kind of fighting for their position in the SERPs. The thing to do to start solving this problem is to search the desired keyword, so the keyword where you've got these two pages ranking, and take a look at Google and see what should be ranking. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Zoe. Really appreciate that. You can find Zoe over on X, Twitter, whatever we want to call it, @zoeashbridge, so that's at Z-O-E-A-S-A-H-B-R-I-D-G-E over on Twitter slash X, whatever you want to call it. Thank you so much again, and check out forank.com, which Zoe is the founder of. Now with that, all of this talk about keyword cannibalization this and keyword cannibalization that, let's dive into what happens on the SERP as it pertains to domain diversity, which we spoke about a little bit earlier, and what Google does and doesn't do when showing multiple URLs from the same domain. So we're taking a little bit of a directional look at things with the segment we call going, going, going Google. And it's going, going, Google. It's out of here. We've already spoken a ton about keyword cannibalization. Let's quickly just run through where there are cases, as we kind of alluded to a minute ago, where Google kind of ignores that sometimes. For example, indented results are multiple URLs showing up for the same domain and domain diversity goes out the window for that sometimes. Crystal Carter: So with indented results, it's something that has emerged fairly recently. And Zoe spoke to this in her section, and this is something that's evolved recently. We covered this on another topic, but it seems to be something that also has to do with Google understanding and consolidating some things across subdomains as well to sort of make things work there. So yeah, indented results, if you've not seen these, is when you have, let's say you had a domain that was about ice cream and the query was like raspberry ripple or something, and you would have the main page that was talking about raspberry ripple, which might be a product page. And then underneath of it you might have something that was like, why raspberry ripple is the best ice cream flavor in the world. And then you might have another one underneath of it that might be like things to pair raspberry ripple ice cream with. And then another one, which might be a support document for how to open your raspberry ripple ice cream container or something to that effect. And what you get with that is Google trying to hedge, essentially, hedge what the intent is of the user. Because I think that what people need to remember is that Google's main MO is to deliver good information to users. Sometimes when users enter terrible queries, like if you were to just enter raspberry ripple, which is not a good query, like what do you actually want? Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, exactly. Crystal Carter: Then Google's trying to help you. They're like, do you want this? Do you want that? They've probably got some disambiguation things. They've probably got some bubbles. They're like, well, do you want pictures? Do you want videos? Do you want a recipe? What do you want with that? So I think that it is important to look at that and to see that. And yeah, the indented results are Google trying to balance what you might need. I've looked at the indented results previously and a really good one is to look at baggage sizes for airlines. When you're looking up baggage sizes for airlines, they often show across multiple domains and it's the same content, whatever size the bag is, but they'll show it across multiple domains and in subdomains even. And that's an interesting iteration of that. Mordy Oberstein: And there's multiple cases like this. I found or still find actually that Google, when it comes to documentation, kind of throws it out the window. Also, Google will show a result, but if I have a document from your knowledge base that's similar and Google's like, we love knowledge base content. Let's throw that up there also. Obviously, for a branded query, those are cases where you should obviously dominate. Now you know where there's often not a lot of domain diversity? Is in our SEO news section where it's often Barry Schwartz, which I could not be happier about. So here is this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. This week we have three for you, all three from Barry Schwartz over at seroundtable.com, two of them about SGE. First up, Google's search generative experience light version. Google has tested a what's being described as a light version of the SGE, or what I like to call the AI box at the top of the SERP. What basically it means is instead of the full on ginormous SGE box showing up at the top of the SERP, what you basically have is the beginnings of that box, say half that box, and then a show more button, so you can see the access to the full box. Sort of like where you go to a webpage and you see that, read the full article button, that kind of thing. And then you have the organic results right underneath it. What this does is it sort of combines the best of both worlds in a way. You do have the SGE box there, but the organic results, the traditional organic results are still in purview above the fold with the way this box is formatted. I kind of like it. I think it solves a lot of problems and I'm wondering if this is where they're going to go, but we shall see. Continuing on the SGE front, and again from Barry Schwartz at SE Roundtable, Google search generative experience can create images and text. So what's cool, I love, by the way, I love AI for images. I use it all the time in the Wix platform. There's an automatic AI image generator, and now Google is bringing it into the SGE. I wonder if this does make things like Midjourney less relevant if this does go full-on live when SGE rolls out. It does make sense that Google's bringing this in now that Bing is doing the same thing with daily. Basically what it is, you could search for, I don't know, Google SGE, please draw me a picture of Barry Schwartz smiling and you'll get a picture of Barry Schwartz smiling hopefully. I don't know. I haven't tried it yet, but it does mean that image creation via AI is available in SGE per the latest update, so let's see what happens with that. And the last up, again, from Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable, indented results are gone. Google Search stops indenting results. Why? I love indented results. What indented results were was basically you ran a query on Google and you had the URL from the domain show up, and underneath it were other pages from the same domain indented in, so it was like a massive result from the same domain. I actually liked it because you would get multiple resources from the site that you actually wanted to go to and get multiple different kind of perspectives from that site or multiple resources from that site. For example, if you were to search for how to do SEO on Wix, you might get a blog post from the Wix blog, you might get an article from the Wix SEO learning hub. You might get an article from the Wix knowledge base. It kind of gave you a full-on, 360-degree purview of the topic from that website's perspective kind of thing and I really liked it. And it stinks that they're gone. I actually enjoyed that search feature. Google's Stanley Sullivan, who's their official search liaison, commented on X, Twitter, whatever, saying, "We stopped doing indented results a few weeks ago. It's unrelated to the core update." Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There is still a domain diversity algorithm, so you will not, in general, it can happen and sometimes makes sense that it does happen, have more than one URL or a lot of URLs from one domain showing on the results page, but the indented format of that is gone, which I think again, stinks. And with that, that is this week's version of the snappy news. Wouldn't it have been ironic if this was the one week we didn't have an article from Barry? Is that impossible? Not even possible? Crystal Carter: No, not possible. I don't know. I don't know when he sleeps. He is just like, tells us all the Google things. Mordy Oberstein: The guy is amazing. Anyway, with that, as we slowly are inch our way closer to the end of this podcast, of course we want to give you a person to follow on social media for more SEO awesomeness. And this week, we have Andy Chadwick from Keyword Insights. Andy is fabulous. You can find him over at Digital Quokka. That's @digital, just spelled the way you would normally spell digital, Q-U-O-K-K-A. We'll of course link to Andy's Twitter profile in the show notes. And obviously, we need to throw out a mention to his partner in crime, Zuganthan Mohandass, at the same time. Crystal Carter: I think we should also just shout out to the bars, the sick bars that Andy recently put out. He recently put out a track about keyword clustering, a rap song about keyword clustering. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to that in the show notes also. It's a great little video he did kind of spoofing the SU industry and keyword research and stuff. Crystal Carter: Right. It's fantastic. It's absolutely wonderful. Mordy Oberstein: Loved it. It's so good. So make sure to follow Andy, Andy Chadwick from Keyword Insights over on social media and that'll do it for us today. Crystal Carter: Okay, there we go. Mordy Oberstein: I hope I didn't dilute things too much. I don't want it to be like a cheap bar where they dilute the alcohol. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know. We got some homeopathic SEO things going on. Mordy Oberstein: Throw less ice in there. I don't need ice. I need the... Crystal Carter: I was at a bar once and they were charging like 20 something dollars for a cranberry juice and then they tried to take my ice and I was like, no, that's like three dollars worth of ice. That's mine. You can't have it. No. Mordy Oberstein: Well... Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Well, with that, 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 how to level up an SEO team. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning hub over wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Patrick Stox Zoe Ashbridge Andy Chadwick Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter What people get wrong about keyword cannibalization Google Domain Diversity Algorithm Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: Google Search Stops Indenting Results Google Search Generative Experience Can Create Images & Text Google Search Generative Experience Lite Version Test Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Patrick Stox Zoe Ashbridge Andy Chadwick Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter What people get wrong about keyword cannibalization Google Domain Diversity Algorithm Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: Google Search Stops Indenting Results Google Search Generative Experience Can Create Images & Text Google Search Generative Experience Lite Version Test Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some guru new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the stupendous Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, hello, hello. Welcome all to the internet people from around the interwebs, from every corner, from every platform, from every browser. Welcome to the SERP's Up SEO podcast where we'll talk about SEO in a podcast format. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I was going to say, by the way, we're back, but the audience has no clue what happened. To break the fourth wall, we realized that between the two of us, we were basically out the entire August and we were like, "Wait, wait a second. We have to do a podcast." So we recorded two months worth of podcasts in a single month, and this is the first time we're recording since then, basically, Crystal Carter: Honestly. And it's been so strange because I'm literally used to recording a podcast every day now in my schedule. And so not having a podcast every day, I'm like, "What? What time am I podcasting today? Oh, not podcasting today. That's interesting. Very interesting." Mordy Oberstein: I just glue my podcast mic around my neck, so I just walk around... Crystal Carter: Just walk around commenting on things. That was really fascinating. Have you considered how to do this? But this is a small price to pay for doing fantastic things here on the SERP's Up SEO podcast. And thank you to everyone. It's recently in recording time, but probably not recently in our distribution time for celebrating our 50th episode. That was really nice. And yeah, we look forward to many, many, many, many more. Mordy Oberstein: We look forward to 5,000 episodes. Short for the stars, Mordy. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, so get that right into your inbox each and every month, but where you can also optimize your site CSS build sites with AI power responsiveness, build custom and reusable templates and widgets across multiple websites, all while being able to collaborate in new ways with your team and with the ability to create custom client handoff kits for smooth transitioning. It's all part of our agency-first offering, Wix Studio. Check it out over at wix.com/studio. You can also check out the new platform on the Wix Studio YouTube channel. I'll link to that in the show notes. Oh, wait a second. No, what have I done? I told people to go to the YouTube channel and to wix.com/studio. I've given you multiple sources for the same entity? Will that water down the impact of you checking out Wix Studio? Have I cannibalized my Wix studio pitching efforts? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Have you cannibalized it Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. We're going to talk about it because we've finally come to that episode where we take up the age-old burning SEO question. Does ranking on the same SERP with multiple pages dilute your ranking impact? Welcome to the keyword cannibalization episode. We're talking about what is keyword cannibalization? Does it actually exist? And if so, how and when? And by the way, Crystal and I have diverging opinions of this. We're going to get into it here in a little bit. I'm just saying. Plus, should keyword cannibalization exist, is there anything to do about it? Zoey Ashbridge stops by to weigh in. That kind of spoils it because we're having somebody come in to tell you how to handle it. It must exist unless we're completely off our rockers, but that's something totally separate. And we're going to get into the state of domain diversity on the SERP. Crystal and I will explore the topic. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness across social media. So cook up a side of fava beans and a nice Chianti as episode number 58 of the SERP's Up podcast chews on the idea of keyword cannibalization. Crystal Carter: That is a deep cut reference in more ways than one. I applaud the... Okay, fantastic. While Mordy revels in his puns and references there... Mordy Oberstein: Oh, good. Crystal Carter: I'm going to get into a little bit of just chatting about what is keyword cannibalization. So in a fantastic article from Joshua George on the Wix SEO Learning Hub where he talks about how to find and fix keyword cannibalization for your e-commerce website, he gives a general overview of what keyword cannibalization is that is pretty on the mark. He says, "In a nutshell, keyword cannibalization refers to having two or more pages on your website rank for the same keyword. This could result in weaker rankings, competing against your own content and search results for the same query and even confusing potential customers." And this is something that I personally have seen across the web and essentially what will generally happen is that somebody will make some new content, and one page is ranking for that keyword and then when somebody makes the new content, they will enter the fray, enter the chat with regards to ranking for that keyword, and sometimes the website will see a drop in the rankings for the original post and we'll see the new post maybe not quite make a big splash as they would expect it to do. And I've seen this happen like an inverse graph. Basically as soon as the new one is posted, I've seen the other one go down. And this can happen for a few different reasons. I'll get into a little bit of that more, but essentially it's a pain, and it sort of gets into the area of duplicate content and that sort of thing. We covered that a little bit as well. But basically, the long story short of it is you should be thinking about making unique content, and when you don't make unique content across your site, you can sometimes run into troubles and keyword cannibalization is one of those things. So Joshua George talks about it there. He also shares a few different ways where you can identify it. And another person who's also talked about this quite prolifically is Patrick Stox. And he was speaking of it in a more nuanced sort of way I guess you would say. So with regards to keyword cannibalization, as Joshua George is saying, this is sort of the experience that we see on the SERP, what we see on the stats. What Patrick Stox is talking about is that yes, it is possible for two keywords or two pieces of content to rank for similar keywords. This happens across websites regularly. However, he points out that just because it doesn't show for the main keyword doesn't mean that it won't show for other variations of the term, so sometimes you can see this spread across lots of different ways. And I think that that is true. These things sometimes ebb and flow. I've seen it be the case where a domain had lots and lots of articles that were in the sort of same realm of topics, and this is really possible. So if you have a product or if you're writing about owls... I'm just looking around my room and I saw an owl. So let's say you have an owl. Mordy Oberstein: You got an owl around your room? Crystal Carter: I have an owl. My kid drew me a picture. Mordy Oberstein: You have a live owl flying? Crystal Carter: No, not a live owl. I wish I had a live owl, but I have an owl picture on my wall. Mordy Oberstein: Oh no, that makes more sense than having an actual owl. Crystal Carter: My kid drew me a picture of a barn owl. Anyway, so let's say you have a website all about barn owls or whatever and there's going to be lots of times where you overlap and sometimes it's going to happen when you're doing a cluster even, where you think, oh, we're going to get into this cluster. And the thing that's tricky about that is that sometimes you're not even trying to go for the same keyword, but Google will decide that these two pieces of content will rank for the same keyword, which is something that you have to pay attention to and monitor. And so I think that I've definitely seen this happen. It's definitely something that can be annoying, but it's not something that people are making up because we're seeing it in real time and it is something that can deciphered and can be unpicked. And Patrick, in his thing though, he says that the way people think about it is preposterous. Quote unquote preposterous he says at the beginning. He also says that if you see multiple pages that are ranking for multiple keywords, that you could let the pages fight it out for a particular query, but it makes more sense to think about opportunities where you could consolidate the pages where it makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: We want to rank. Multiple URLs will not make us tank. That's my protest. So to sort of frame this, so there's that sign that says keywords, if you have multiple pages ranking for them is going to dilute it. In other words, so if I have multiple pages competing for the same keywords as opposed to one page ranking number two, now both of them rank like five or six. That's the sort of general idea. And to quote Patrick, "Keyword cannibalization does not really exist, at least not in the way many people think. The common belief is that keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages target the same keyword, compete against and hurt each other. Some people think if they have multiple pages about the same keyword, Google won't rank any of them. I find that not to be the case." So I want to say at the onset, there's multiple opinions on this and there's a side to each side. And it's SEO. It's not always so clear. There's no official handbook and Google, believe it or not, has been a little bit like cryptic about some of the things they've said here. You would've expected to find Danny Sullivan or John Mueller coming out and saying, keyword canalization is this or it's real or it's not real and they don't, and it's a little bit weird in my opinion. And maybe it's just a coincidence. I don't know. With that caveat, I will make the case against keyword cannibalization impacting rank, if I could, if I could. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Crystal Carter: Bear you in mind that I've seen it do it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay, That's fine. Okay, so one. Google cares about the best results period. I don't understand conceptually speaking. I'll run through the whole- Crystal Carter: When you say results, what do you mean? Mordy Oberstein: I will run through my argument. Crystal Carter: Okay, Mordy Oberstein: We'll run through it. Crystal Carter: Okay, Mordy Oberstein: I have multiple points. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. They care about the best results period. And it doesn't matter, from Google's point of view, whether or not the top 10 results have two URLs from the same domain or one URL. If those are the best results, those are the best results. I don't understand conceptually speaking how it helps Google. Let's say you have a page and it is the best result for this keyword. Why would Google say, you know what? This is the best result for this page, but because you have another page that's also ranking, we're going to lower what's the best result on that page. That's argument number one. I just don't see how it helps. Also, Google has a domain diversity algorithm. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They announced in, I think it was like 2019 Danny Sullivan announced domain diversity algorithm. But wait a second, if keyword cannibalization is already a thing, then it's already built into the algorithm, what do you need a specific domain diversity algorithm for? It's a contradiction. The very idea of Google saying multiple URLs are ranking higher, they're ranking really well, we need to create a specific algorithm to make sure there's enough diversity on the SERP is inherently a contradiction to the idea of keyword cannibalization. Then there's what Patrick Stox shared. I'll leave that aside for a minute. But also the idea, and this is what kind of what Patrick mentioned, content overlaps. If you have a lot of content on your website, you're going to topically overlap to the point where it would make good logical sense multiple pages would rank for the same thing. That's just the way content works. If you're going to have a lot of content on a website, you're going to topically overlap if you're sticking to what you should be sticking to, which is what you talk about on your website. The idea that Google going to cannibalize that kind of goes the way that content inherently is created. Why would Google do that? It doesn't make any logical sense. In fact, Google's saying, Hey, you know what we don't want? We don't want SEO content. They thought it’d be a helpful content update. They basically, we don't want you to write SEO content. Google demoting the rankings of multiple URLs because they're both showing up because they both kind of target the same keyword is basically incentivizing you to create SEO content and not create content the way you would naturally create content, which would result in overlap. With that, there are multiple statements from John Mueller that I'll read to you that I think it's time to speak to this. And John, you know when John does his funny, sarcastic thing? Every time keyword cannibalization comes up, he goes into that mode. So someone asked, "John, I removed a blog that was causing cannibalization. Main page returned to the SERPs but on page seven for this term. Used to be on page one. All related keywords are on page one. Do we just need to wait?" John writes back, "It sounds like cannibalization wasn't a problem. How do you determine that it was causing your page to drop out of ranking? I'd be surprised if something as visible as that were to happen." Someone when else asked John, "Does creating a web story summarizing an article that was previously published on the site lead to keyword cannibalization issues?" John writes, "What do you consider keyword cannibalization issues?" So when asked, "John, how do we go about dealing with keyword cannibalization?", John writes back, "I guess it would help if you had a consistent meaning of keyword cannibalization." By the way, last point, I do think keyword cannibalization is real. I think it's more about when you have something like you have multiple intents. In other words, imagine you had a blog about socks and you had a product page about socks and they're both ranking for socks, and the user is clicking on your blog post which is ranking higher, but then not on your product page, which is ranking lower. That would be cannibalizing your efforts. I think that's what Patrick is talking about with the opportunity stuff, which John has also mentioned in a video before. Anyway, that's my argument. Crystal Carter: So you mentioned the diversity algorithm and the diversity algorithm is really, really important to this. So with the domain diversity algorithm and in Patrick's thing, which to be fair, is from years ago. That's the other thing is that with all due respect to Patrick who's fantastic and brilliant and amazing, the article that he wrote is from years ago. His team from Ahrefs have also written on keyword cannibalization and how to do this much more recently and how to manage keyword cannibalization and how their tool helps you deal with keyword cannibalization and all of that sort of stuff. So with all due respect to that, it's a few years old. But the domain diversity algorithm is important here. So one of the reasons why they have the domain diversity algorithm is so that you don't have a SERP that is just Nike if you're looking for articles about shoes, because Nike has all of the resources in the world to write a million articles about shoes, about trainers, about sneakers, about Air Jordans or whatever, and if you didn't have a domain diversity thing, then you would just have that. And in Joshua George's article and in Patrick's article, they both talk about performing host clustering to identify, using a host clustering search modifier in order to identify the pages that are ranking on your page or on your site for that page. So I think Joshua George used the example of Amazon, of the different pages that they're ranking for instance. And essentially, host clustering is when you get around the Google domain diversity update with a search modifier. So you would essentially use a filter. There's a filter, and I think in the article he gives the exact syntax for what you need to enter into the search modifier in Google and then you can see all of the ones that are ranking for that page. So the domain diversity algorithm exists so that we don't have giant brands dominating the SERPs for a particular thing. And if so, that you can't just write the same article over and over and over again with a slightly different tweak and it just show lots and lots of times. I think the other thing that's important to think about is that recency is a consideration with regards to ranking. So when they see a new article, they're like, oh, this is newer content. Oh, we should give it a chance to rank. So if that is pretty much like for like for an existing piece of content, then Google's like, oh, okay, well in the domain diversity thing, so once we put you into the host clustering, then we're going to push that one up. Then where do we put this one? And essentially, I think one of the things I like to say with SEO stuff is that with Google, with the bots, they're both incredibly fantastic and smart and they're also kind of dumb or whatever. It's really smart but it's also really simple. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point actually, and that one I think might be more of a real case when I'm arguing. There was a case where you're saying, well, now both of them aren't going to rank well because they're both eating each other's ranking juice out. And I think that's where it gets a little bit tricky in my mind, especially because it's something of the domain diversity algorithm. Because if you had that already, why would you need the diversity algorithm? The algorithm is already doing it. And to me it's a little bit of a funny thing because Google is able to understand we have duplicate content and say, you know what? You have multiple pages. This one we're going to index. This one we're not going to index. But then when it comes to ranking, they're all of a sudden super confused. Which one should we rank? Well, we can't rank both the same. Well, so we'll rank both lower. Why is that? Why would that be the algorithmic solution? Crystal Carter: I've seen it happen. Mordy Oberstein: Correlation doesn't equal causation, but leave that aside for a second. I've seen the opposite also, right? I've seen multiple cases where you have multiple URLs from the same domain ranking well consistently. And I'm not saying by the way that Google can't, and this again, I just want to be clear, I'm not saying that Google might not be confused, like which one should we rank here? Which is your page here? That I agree with that. And you see inverse relationships often with multiple URLs from your website on the SERP, but that's not to say that they're both ranking lower because of that. Crystal Carter: I think that this comes back to crawling, indexing, et cetera. So essentially within the domain diversity thing, you have Google understanding what is on your site and they understand what is most important on your site, right? With regards to what you were talking about and why it might be the case that you see an actual dilution of the ranking is that Google ranks pages. On your website, everyone will tell you that internal linking is an incredibly quick win and incredibly valuable effort for you to make on your website. That's because on your website, you're pointing lots of signals telling Google which things are most important. So if you are splitting the impact of the keywords, for instance on your own website for let's say you have a website about shoes and you've published two articles about Espadrilles. So that means that you are splitting some of the signals within your site to tell them which pages are the most important for that particular site. And internal links, I have seen internal links also like when you lose internal links from your front pages, that will affect rankings across Google as well. So you're also affecting the signals that you're sending within your internal links as well. So when you're thinking about what's going on the SERP, essentially you're changing the signals that you're giving to Google for a single, particular page, which is why when people are talking about keyword cannibalization, they often say that you should consolidate the pages so that you're concentrating the signals to Google about the quality of that page, both with regards to recency and with regards to links, with regards to architecture, with regards to all of that. Mordy Oberstein: And that's a great point. I'm not saying you can't do things on the page that would connect them together that would result in either both of them doing better or both of them doing worse. What I am saying though is that as an algorithmic solution, Google's saying, well, you have two pages, which is I don't think very uncommon across the web. In other words, again, it goes back to my earlier point, when you're writing prolifically around the same topic, you're going to overlap. The fact that Google would have an algorithm that says, hey, we don't like the overlap kind of goes against their whole idea of writing naturally and writing content that's not SEO content. Crystal Carter: I don't think it's the overlap. I think it's the signals. I think that when you're publishing this additional duplicate or whatever, it's reducing the value internally within your own website of that post. So it means that the- Mordy Oberstein: But it's not. Crystal Carter: Just like if you have a piece of content and you lose a backlink, you will very often, like a really good back link, you will very often see a ranking response to that. Similarly, if you're changing around the internal hierarchy of a piece of content within your own website, that's also going to affect the ranking signals that you're sending to Google and therefore will affect where it ranks. Mordy Oberstein: I agree that you can do things on your website and the way you structure and iterate the content that would impact how Google shows that content on the SERP. What I'm saying though is that there's nothing inherent to that. It's quite possible to do that the right way and do it in a good way where it results in both of them doing well. In other words, there's nothing inherent to the idea that you have multiple pages that could rank. If I'm searching for, I don't know. It's a one-size-fits-all hat good to buy. I can have multiple pages. I might have a page that talks about if it's good to buy for kids, I might have a page that's talking about if it's good to buy for adults. And Google says, we're really not sure what the intent is here. We should probably rank both of these. They're both from them the same website. We can't rank both of these the same. Well, we have to rank both of them poorly. That to me just doesn't make sense. Crystal Carter: I don't think similar content is a problem. Where I've seen this happen is essentially where we... There was one time where I saw a website and we had a piece of content that was working really well, and then we published a piece of content that was in the same neighborhood, it was adding more value to the general topic. However, the URL slug was pretty much the same. The URL slug was pretty much the same, the topic was generally the same. They had different content, but a lot of the signals, a lot of the tags on it and a lot of the topics that we were covering and a lot of the things were pretty much the same. And the main piece of content that was doing really well, it started going down. And when we moved around some of the internal linking, we saw that improve and I've seen this happen in other cases. So I think that where you have a lot of signals that are targeting the same keyword, not just the topic generally, but a lot of signals as well as the topic, and I'm talking like meta tags and things like that and lots of different elements, you have a lot of those signals and they're targeting the same keywords and it can happen in that case. With regards to publishing of similar content and keyword cannibalization being good or bad, I've definitely seen it be the case and I think that there's sometimes an opportunity where you might be like, yeah, we're going to go for some of these long tail keywords and yeah, it might cannibalize us, but we can kind of take the hit. It's a standard business practice where you have somebody who will, you get businesses that will go into a place and they have the ability to do a scattershot. So they can put in 10 cafes and they'll take out all of the smaller cafes and they know that they're running a loss-leader. So it is a possibility where you might have a situation where you want to run a loss-leader so that you can take out competition in an area. Mordy Oberstein: Again, I agree cannibalization can exist on the SERP. I'm not saying you can't cannibalize your efforts on the SERP. What I'm saying is that there's nothing algorithmic about Google saying we're going to demote both of these pages because there's two of them. And I think that if there's a case of Google's like, hey, which content is it, they'll choose one. If they think both of these pages are very similar, both of these pages are great, the idea of demoting both of them just doesn't make sense. Crystal Carter: I think what I've generally seen is that, I generally see this happen with new content being published. So new content will be published around a similar thing and it's been published about coordination- Mordy Oberstein: You'll see the pages swap out. Crystal Carter: No. We'll see the main page demote and then we'll see the other page not really do anything. And that's the thing that I've seen most often. And normally this is when we can…. Mordy Oberstein: I've seen a lot of cases where you put out a new piece of content and Google will rank that. Well, we'll take the one that was ranking and be like, okay, maybe this one's better and let's flip it around. And a lot of inverse relating to what was ranking number three now ranks number eight. What was ranking number eight now ranks number three. So that would kind go against the idea of keyword cannibalization killing both of the rankings. The one that was ranking number three, everything is still ranking number... One of the pages is always going to rank number three. It's just a matter of which one is it. And I'm not saying that's a good thing to do or a bad thing. It could be a bad thing to do because you don't want the first one to lose that number three spot and to be in number eight. Regardless, there's two sides to this story. You decide if you're listening to this and let us know on social media who you side with. I will pay you to side with me. Just let me know. Crystal Carter: I'm sure everyone who's paying for keyword cannibalization tools will side with me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But anyone who's saving their money will side with me. And Patrick will side with me. Hey Patrick, if you're listening. Being that we think we both agree there are legitimate cases in some construct, however you want to slice it, of keyword cannibalization, how do you go about fixing it? To help us with that, we have Zoe Ashbridge, the founder of Forank on how do you fix cases of keyword cannibalization? Zoe Ashbridge: In terms of keyword cannibalization, before you get into fixing anything, I would recommend that you actually go and check the SERPs to see if you've actually got a problem that needs to be solved. Sometimes when two pages rank for the same keyword, you actually end up with indented SERPs now. So when that wasn't here, keyword cannibalization was nearly always a problem. Whereas now it can actually be desirable to have these two pages ranking. So if you've got indented SERPs, don't worry at all. If you've got two pages ranking on page one, you probably don't need to do anything there either. If you've got two pages ranking but they're not indented, I might recommend just keeping an eye on them. But I've had sites rank for a long time with two pages on page one, so I would recommend just not trying to fix anything unless it's causing you a problem with clicks or something like that. When keyword cannibalization needs fixing, you'll notice one of the following problems. So you'll find that maybe you put a page live, you know what you wanted it to do and it's just not ranking. That can be one indicator course. That can be a multitude of other things as well. Other signs that you need to fix cannibalization would be if you are seeing queries within Google Search Console showing two pages that are ranking for the same keywords. This one does require a little bit more research as well, because if you've got one page on page one and one page is on page four, then it doesn't really matter. So you do need to dig into the nuance a little bit. And the third potential problem, and this is probably the most obvious one I think from a cannibalization issue, is you might notice that you've got two pages that are struggling to rank. And I think this often shows itself in the average position line. So if you can see a page that's bouncing, maybe it's on page one minute, page four the next, then it's on page two, page six, it's kind of struggling to hold a rank, this can be because of cannibalization. The two pages that you've got ranking for the same keyword kind of fighting for their position in the SERPs. The thing to do to start solving this problem is to search the desired keyword, so the keyword where you've got these two pages ranking, and take a look at Google and see what should be ranking. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Zoe. Really appreciate that. You can find Zoe over on X, Twitter, whatever we want to call it, @zoeashbridge, so that's at Z-O-E-A-S-A-H-B-R-I-D-G-E over on Twitter slash X, whatever you want to call it. Thank you so much again, and check out forank.com, which Zoe is the founder of. Now with that, all of this talk about keyword cannibalization this and keyword cannibalization that, let's dive into what happens on the SERP as it pertains to domain diversity, which we spoke about a little bit earlier, and what Google does and doesn't do when showing multiple URLs from the same domain. So we're taking a little bit of a directional look at things with the segment we call going, going, going Google. And it's going, going, Google. It's out of here. We've already spoken a ton about keyword cannibalization. Let's quickly just run through where there are cases, as we kind of alluded to a minute ago, where Google kind of ignores that sometimes. For example, indented results are multiple URLs showing up for the same domain and domain diversity goes out the window for that sometimes. Crystal Carter: So with indented results, it's something that has emerged fairly recently. And Zoe spoke to this in her section, and this is something that's evolved recently. We covered this on another topic, but it seems to be something that also has to do with Google understanding and consolidating some things across subdomains as well to sort of make things work there. So yeah, indented results, if you've not seen these, is when you have, let's say you had a domain that was about ice cream and the query was like raspberry ripple or something, and you would have the main page that was talking about raspberry ripple, which might be a product page. And then underneath of it you might have something that was like, why raspberry ripple is the best ice cream flavor in the world. And then you might have another one underneath of it that might be like things to pair raspberry ripple ice cream with. And then another one, which might be a support document for how to open your raspberry ripple ice cream container or something to that effect. And what you get with that is Google trying to hedge, essentially, hedge what the intent is of the user. Because I think that what people need to remember is that Google's main MO is to deliver good information to users. Sometimes when users enter terrible queries, like if you were to just enter raspberry ripple, which is not a good query, like what do you actually want? Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, exactly. Crystal Carter: Then Google's trying to help you. They're like, do you want this? Do you want that? They've probably got some disambiguation things. They've probably got some bubbles. They're like, well, do you want pictures? Do you want videos? Do you want a recipe? What do you want with that? So I think that it is important to look at that and to see that. And yeah, the indented results are Google trying to balance what you might need. I've looked at the indented results previously and a really good one is to look at baggage sizes for airlines. When you're looking up baggage sizes for airlines, they often show across multiple domains and it's the same content, whatever size the bag is, but they'll show it across multiple domains and in subdomains even. And that's an interesting iteration of that. Mordy Oberstein: And there's multiple cases like this. I found or still find actually that Google, when it comes to documentation, kind of throws it out the window. Also, Google will show a result, but if I have a document from your knowledge base that's similar and Google's like, we love knowledge base content. Let's throw that up there also. Obviously, for a branded query, those are cases where you should obviously dominate. Now you know where there's often not a lot of domain diversity? Is in our SEO news section where it's often Barry Schwartz, which I could not be happier about. So here is this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. This week we have three for you, all three from Barry Schwartz over at seroundtable.com, two of them about SGE. First up, Google's search generative experience light version. Google has tested a what's being described as a light version of the SGE, or what I like to call the AI box at the top of the SERP. What basically it means is instead of the full on ginormous SGE box showing up at the top of the SERP, what you basically have is the beginnings of that box, say half that box, and then a show more button, so you can see the access to the full box. Sort of like where you go to a webpage and you see that, read the full article button, that kind of thing. And then you have the organic results right underneath it. What this does is it sort of combines the best of both worlds in a way. You do have the SGE box there, but the organic results, the traditional organic results are still in purview above the fold with the way this box is formatted. I kind of like it. I think it solves a lot of problems and I'm wondering if this is where they're going to go, but we shall see. Continuing on the SGE front, and again from Barry Schwartz at SE Roundtable, Google search generative experience can create images and text. So what's cool, I love, by the way, I love AI for images. I use it all the time in the Wix platform. There's an automatic AI image generator, and now Google is bringing it into the SGE. I wonder if this does make things like Midjourney less relevant if this does go full-on live when SGE rolls out. It does make sense that Google's bringing this in now that Bing is doing the same thing with daily. Basically what it is, you could search for, I don't know, Google SGE, please draw me a picture of Barry Schwartz smiling and you'll get a picture of Barry Schwartz smiling hopefully. I don't know. I haven't tried it yet, but it does mean that image creation via AI is available in SGE per the latest update, so let's see what happens with that. And the last up, again, from Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable, indented results are gone. Google Search stops indenting results. Why? I love indented results. What indented results were was basically you ran a query on Google and you had the URL from the domain show up, and underneath it were other pages from the same domain indented in, so it was like a massive result from the same domain. I actually liked it because you would get multiple resources from the site that you actually wanted to go to and get multiple different kind of perspectives from that site or multiple resources from that site. For example, if you were to search for how to do SEO on Wix, you might get a blog post from the Wix blog, you might get an article from the Wix SEO learning hub. You might get an article from the Wix knowledge base. It kind of gave you a full-on, 360-degree purview of the topic from that website's perspective kind of thing and I really liked it. And it stinks that they're gone. I actually enjoyed that search feature. Google's Stanley Sullivan, who's their official search liaison, commented on X, Twitter, whatever, saying, "We stopped doing indented results a few weeks ago. It's unrelated to the core update." Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There is still a domain diversity algorithm, so you will not, in general, it can happen and sometimes makes sense that it does happen, have more than one URL or a lot of URLs from one domain showing on the results page, but the indented format of that is gone, which I think again, stinks. And with that, that is this week's version of the snappy news. Wouldn't it have been ironic if this was the one week we didn't have an article from Barry? Is that impossible? Not even possible? Crystal Carter: No, not possible. I don't know. I don't know when he sleeps. He is just like, tells us all the Google things. Mordy Oberstein: The guy is amazing. Anyway, with that, as we slowly are inch our way closer to the end of this podcast, of course we want to give you a person to follow on social media for more SEO awesomeness. And this week, we have Andy Chadwick from Keyword Insights. Andy is fabulous. You can find him over at Digital Quokka. That's @digital, just spelled the way you would normally spell digital, Q-U-O-K-K-A. We'll of course link to Andy's Twitter profile in the show notes. And obviously, we need to throw out a mention to his partner in crime, Zuganthan Mohandass, at the same time. Crystal Carter: I think we should also just shout out to the bars, the sick bars that Andy recently put out. He recently put out a track about keyword clustering, a rap song about keyword clustering. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to that in the show notes also. It's a great little video he did kind of spoofing the SU industry and keyword research and stuff. Crystal Carter: Right. It's fantastic. It's absolutely wonderful. Mordy Oberstein: Loved it. It's so good. So make sure to follow Andy, Andy Chadwick from Keyword Insights over on social media and that'll do it for us today. Crystal Carter: Okay, there we go. Mordy Oberstein: I hope I didn't dilute things too much. I don't want it to be like a cheap bar where they dilute the alcohol. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know. We got some homeopathic SEO things going on. Mordy Oberstein: Throw less ice in there. I don't need ice. I need the... Crystal Carter: I was at a bar once and they were charging like 20 something dollars for a cranberry juice and then they tried to take my ice and I was like, no, that's like three dollars worth of ice. That's mine. You can't have it. No. Mordy Oberstein: Well... Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Well, with that, 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 how to level up an SEO team. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning hub over wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and 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

Does momentum matter in SEO? What does having “momentum” in the context of SEO even mean? Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein share how cadence and momentum factor into SEO and why it might just be an SEO’s best friend. Guest Erica Schnieder shares her model for maintaining quality when trying to generate momentum by creating content at scale. Tune in for momentum, cadence, and quality and how it all factors into your SEO strategy on this week's episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast! Back Building SEO momentum for growth Does momentum matter in SEO? What does having “momentum” in the context of SEO even mean? Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein share how cadence and momentum factor into SEO and why it might just be an SEO’s best friend. Guest Erica Schnieder shares her model for maintaining quality when trying to generate momentum by creating content at scale. Tune in for momentum, cadence, and quality and how it all factors into your SEO strategy on this week's episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 38 | May 17, 2023 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 37:22 This week’s guests Erica Schneider Erica is the Head of Content at Grizzle, an agency that creates high-quality content and develops product-led marketing strategies for SaaS and tech companies like Pipedrive, Tide, and Semrush. She grew her audience from 0-42k on Twitter and 500-18k on LinkedIn in only 9 months. She's also trained 100+ writers to produce page-turning content that moves the needle and co-teaches Impactful Social Writing, one of Maven's most popular courses with a 9.6️ rating. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us SERP's Up podcast reporting on some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Overstein, I am SEO of Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulously incredible, the absolutely unequivocable, the absolutely uncomparable, the absolutely best in every way, shape, or form. The best person on planet Earth. Head of Instant Communications here at Wix, crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I think Mordy's finally reached the end of the platitudes. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know what to do anymore. Crystal Carter: I must tell you. I'm mediocre at bowling. Mordy Oberstein: I'm terrible at bowling. I stink with bumpers. Crystal Carter: I was in a bowling league when I was in my youth and my husband, who was never in a bowling league, always beats me at bowling. And I'm like, you're a non-bowler, you never even bowled. And yet I'm happy if I crack 100, if I'm doing that. If I hit three digits, I'm like, job done here. All right, I can go home. Mordy Oberstein: I'm embarrassed to say this. So you have an 8 pound ball, a 10 pound ball, 12 pound. I really enjoy the 8 pound ball. Crystal Carter: That's like softball. That's just playing softball. That's not like bowling. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And then I'll, even with the bumper because I play with my kids, the bumpers are up. You know that one spot in the corners? Crystal Carter: Oh, just before the pins? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's me. Crystal Carter: That's you. Mordy Oberstein: Got my name all over it. That one spot you, you're lucky you get like one pin. Crystal Carter: I'm a mediocre bowler, but I cannot stand bad bowling etiquette. If I'm up there trying to set up my shot and I'm stood there on the little lines and I'm trying to get myself lined up pretending I'm like doing the Lebowski thing or whatever, and somebody just walks up on the lane next door to me and just rolls along and starts throwing the... I get so angry as if they were ruining my perfect shot, as if this was... It's never going to be the perfect shot. I'm never going to get more than two or three pins or whatever. But let me have my moment. Let me just meditate for a second before I embarrass myself. Let me do what I'm doing. Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm the baller who's standing behind you saying, "Hurry up to get on with it and let's keep this train wreck moving because there's still eight more frames left and four more people." Crystal Carter: I’m here] for the snacks. I love bowling alley snacks like the snack bar at the bowling alley is what's up. Also the beer is flowing. They'll give you a whole pitcher and you can just settle in and I love a good bowling session. The last time I bowled actually was with you, Mordy, you and Nikki Moser. Mordy Oberstein: We bowled. Crystal Carter: No, I completely made that up. It was with Nikki. Mordy Oberstein: No. We didn't bowl. Crystal Carter: Was it Nikki at Moscon? You missed it. I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Yeah. I didn't, I wasn't there. I was probably ed a baseball game. Crystal Carter: Nikki's very good at bowling, also Blaine. He's also very good at- Mordy Oberstein: Oh really? Yeah. Okay. So note to self, never bowl these people. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you should check out our e-commerce offering from integrations with Amazon, to drop shipping, to a POS system to help you keep track of your client's transactions, both on and offline. Wix's e-commerce offering can help you and your clients' sites build financial momentum, which is today's word of the day momentum. Which means I should probably not take a break between talking about the next thing cause I just lost the momentum. Ah. Crystal Carter: Moving incremental gains. Move forward further. Mordy Oberstein: Momentum. That's right. Today we're talking about inertia science. Well, SEO inertia as we take out building SEO momentum for growth. Why the opportunity mindset is an SEO's best friend. The real advantage to growth by taking things slowly and keeping your ear to the ground and your finger on the pulse of a sight, stages of development. Oh look, he's crawling now as... I don't know what that makes any sense. And keeping your ear to the ground and your finger on the pulse of a sight stages of development. Plus Erica Schneider of Grizzle joins us to offer her take on how can you maintain quality when creating content at scale? Because momentum means scalability sometimes. So how do you keep the quality of the content at the same time? We're going to get into that. And since we're talking about inertia and growth for SEO, Crystal and I will take a deep dive into the role of momentum in marketing. And of course we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Careful now as you don't want to miss a thing because episode number 38 of the SERP's Up podcast is gaining momentum. Crystal Carter: We are on the move. We have reached velocity, we are going for it, we're moving forward. Mordy Oberstein: Warp speed. Continue with our Star Trek references for the past couple of episodes. Crystal Carter: Many. Mordy Oberstein: So many. Engage. So this is a very much mindset podcast for me. I'm all about mindset by the way, and I know people are, oh, practical tips. And I'm like, yeah, what's the mindset behind those tips? And people are like, yeah, I want the tips. So whatever. I think this is very much for me, a mindset episode. We talk about SEO very categorically, very often on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO. Or we speak of SEO with a continuum of task like task number one, then task number two, then task number three, then task... I can go on. Crystal Carter: And check it, put it on the checklist. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: That's right, but... And I get that when we talk about SEO in that way, it feels like a chore to me. And I don't think SEO should be a chore. I think SEO should be meaningful and to make SEO meaningful, I think it's a mindset. And this is why I love talking about SEO from a growth point of view. So how does SEO help you grow? And growth for me, whatever it is, from growing social media followings to growing as a person, is all about momentum. One thing leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing. So huge sappy music about improving as a person by the way, Crystal Carter: One step at a time, everybody, one step at a time. Mordy Oberstein: As you grow as a person, one step of self-reflection of internal growth often puts you on a path towards transcending and transforming the self on this journey to step number two. And they are not disconnected, one small change leads to another. Same in SEO. Crystal Carter: I mean these are life lessons Mordy, you're dropping some gems here that people can live by as well as do SEO by. Mordy Oberstein: It's not about podcasting, about SEO, it's about showing how podcasting about SEO was really podcasting about life. Crystal Carter: Philosophical this week. Mordy Oberstein: For the second time. Internal joke. For the second time. So anyway, one improvement you do to the site. One strategy you take on should, all things being equal, naturally lead to the next thing and open up all sorts of new doors. And all you really need to do is put your ear to the ground. So cue more sappy music. Crystal Carter: Music. I mean, I don't think you're wrong here at all. I think there's that movie where it says we need a montage. That's that sort of thing. And I feel like that it's that way sometimes with SEO, you work and you add little bits. And even if with a single piece of content, you can create one piece of content and then optimize it again and then optimize it again and then optimize it again. And what happens is Google knows about that content and they learn about that content and they see that you're improving it and they see that you're continuing to improve it and they understand that this is a piece of content that is not being left to wither on the vine, but is growing and is increasing. And if they see that you're doing that across your site, then they will understand that your site is something that is constantly improving and that the bulk of information that they have around you is valuable and is valuable to users. And then they'll send users to you. I think sometimes people think they have to do all of the SEO all at once. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: You don't. Mordy Oberstein: So not true and don't, it's detrimental. Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mordy Oberstein: And not only is it not helpful, it's a bad idea. Crystal Carter: Right. So a lot of times people will say, well, why do we need to do SEO for this long? Why do I need this agency to contract for six months or a year or whatever it may be? And it's because they're putting in building blocks for what you're doing. So you have your technical SEOs, your foundation, making sure that everything works. Then you're going to look at your architecture, then you're going to look at your keywords, then you're going to look at more content more, then you're going to look... And you add and add an ad, and sometimes you add them as in tandem. But the momentum is really, really important to that because I think I've certainly seen it where, and I don't know if you have an example of this where momentum can make a really, really big difference to make a really big impact on what your outcomes are. Have you seen this in the wild there, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: All the time. So one of the things that's great about momentum, and if you are bold enough to do this is that it will shift your strategy. So the detriment of being super checklisty is that you're not open to shifting, you're not open to changing. So as you start first off, you'll skip steps, you try to do it all in one shot. But if you're overly methodical where you try to break it into too many things, do you get hung up on the process? We did step one, now we must do step two. Now we must do step three. Now we must do step four. As opposed to saying after step three, where are we at? What are the things that we should be doing now? You'll often say, you know what, we should be shifting. Our business has changed, our audience has changed, or we've managed to capture an audience we never expected. We never thought this would rank well and it did and now we have a new audience. How do we now cater to that audience? How do we now nurture that audience? How do we now move that audience down the funnel? Whatever it is, which means being open minded enough to say, okay, take stock, ear to the ground. Now let's shift and let's take on a new strategy. And I've seen this a million times over where opportunities that you never knew existed or never thought would exist or didn't even know existed come up because of momentum and be open enough to be able to say, okay, stop, shift change to grab those opportunities. Crystal Carter: And I think that you see this with trending topics and things. So we recently published an article on the Wix SEO hub talking about trending topics. And if let's say you write an article on something that's trending, and let's say it hits right? You're like, oh my gosh, people are really interested in that. You can build momentum on that. You can start to build a topic cluster around that. You can start to pull in a little bit of content around that. You can say, "Wow, people are really interested in this particular topic and we seem to be leading the pack here, so let's put more content on that." Now, if you have your checklist that you are sticking to methodically and you're not paying attention to the momentum that you've got from both users and from Google and also from maybe social interest, et cetera, then you might go, well, that did well onto the next thing and miss the opportunity to grow. Mordy Oberstein: I'll ask you, how many times have you been working on a site or with a client or whatever it is, and the initial plan was X, and you get, let's say a quarter of the way, a third of the way, halfway through the plan of X, and you were like, wait a second, this doesn't make sense, we need to change this up. Crystal Carter: Oh, I mean during COVID, Mordy Oberstein: Right? I was just thinking that COVID is the classic case of this. Crystal Carter: Like the best laid plans were completely set of flame during COVID. I mean, so many times we'd say, "Right, we're going to do this," and then the business would have to close its physical doors and then you'd have to do something completely different, or you'd have to come up with a completely new funnel because they didn't have virtual tours of their real estate buildings before or book a video tour, that sort of thing. So these are things that you need to think about and yeah, it does make a difference. And I think that also, I love building up the momentum. If you think about it like sports training, and this is interesting because I asked the SEO hive mind, I said, "Do you think momentum matters in SEO?" And Myriam Jessier said, "It's like weight loss. On a diet you lose a few pounds early and then it motivates you to keep going. Then it's the same with SEO, but you need to keep building." If you think about sports people, they don't do nothing in the off season. The people who do really well, I talk about Michael Jordan a lot on this podcast, but Michael Jordan was getting slammed by the pistons for years and then spent one season in the off season really bulking up. And when he was doing stuff for Space Jam, he set up a basketball court and had pickup games with all... So in the off season, he was building up all of these skills when nobody was paying any attention, when it was low pressure, when he had time to think strategically about what he wanted to do. With seasonal businesses, the off season is a great time to start building up momentum and to start building up Google understanding your search, the focus of your content. It's a good time to take stock of your content, to do a sort of full audit and full update of things that are tricky to do when you're in the midst of everything. And so that means by the time you hit peak season, you've already crested, you're already at the top so that you're ready to meet that traffic because you built up the momentum when things were quiet. Mordy Oberstein: That example, that metaphor from Myriam, it's perfect because as somebody who's lost weight at one point a couple times in my life, like that initial like you have to get started with something. You have to get started somewhere. And then that one small success breeds another success. I don't know about you, but I look at SEO data when I want to start... That initial feeling, you're looking at a site for the first few times is overwhelming. You're like, I don't know, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where do I start? And what I like to do is start on one thing, one page, whatever it is, start somewhere with one thing and dive into that. And then you start seeing the next thing. You start seeing the next thing and you start slowly and slowly building a picture. That's momentum. That's an example of SEO momentum that I think is super important because when you look at, say in the case of data, when you look at it all in one shot, you get lost. You don't know where to go with it. So you need that momentum to guide you. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And if you turn it off, you sometimes get this in PPC, people are like, oh, let's just turn off the PPC. Let's turn on the PPC. And with PPC, it can be tricky because nowadays, particularly when we think about momentum, there's machine learning. And if you turn off your PPC entirely, I always recommend that you keep a little low level bit of something running in the background just so that if you need to ramp it up, you don't have to do that part where it goes, "Oh, the machine learning is learning about your site." And you're like, "What?" You're like, "We have a sale that starts tomorrow." And they're like, "We're still deciding." And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. And Google, we talk about AI and we talk about machine learning and we talk about all of this, but Google's been using AI and machine learning for years through all sorts of stuff. It's been an integral part of search for years. So when you stop and put things down, just like if you stop exercising... You'll notice that it'll be harder to get back going. If you've got the vacation in two weeks and you haven't done any exercise in two years, it's going to be tricky to get that beach body if that's what you want. Not that any body isn't perfect for the beach, but I'm just saying that sort of thing. If you're worried about that, you have to keep going with something so that if you need to ramp it up, you can when you need to. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, which is why this conversation about momentum and SEO, it's really a much wider... Right? About momentum and marketing overall. But before we get into that, as you're growing, as you're building momentum, as you're doing... Which often means scaling things up, you have to worry about maintaining quality at the same time. So momentum is great, things are firing in all cylinders, blah, blah, blah. Or you got to make sure the quality is maintained. So to help us tackle this is Erica Schneider over at Grizzle who's going to help us understand how you can maintain quality when creating content at scale. Erica Schneider: So the best way to maintain quality when creating content at scale is to treat quality scaling, just like you would treat business scaling. Right? You need to document your processes, you need to have goals, a mission statement, objectives, like everything that you do for your business when you want to be able to scale effectively and not fail and have everything fall apart, is the same way that you should treat scaling your content operations so that you don't mess with your quality as you scale. So my answer is twofold, right? It's really important that you set editorial goals, values, and integrity, and I can just quickly explain what those are. But the other piece of that is that you should start slow and then ramp up in my opinion, just like you're building a business, you don't bring on 50 clients on day one. Right? That would be an absolute disaster. You need to make sure that what you're doing is documented that it works. Get through all the kinks, figure out what you want to keep, what you want to discard from your process, all that jazz, and then scale. So it makes no sense. If you are trying to produce quality content to try to do 10 blogs a week, it's better to maybe start with one a week. Right? I could go into the quality versus quantity argument, but I definitely think that no matter how much you ultimately want to publish on your blog or anywhere that you're distributing content, regardless of the amount that you put out there, it should always be quality content. I don't think that you should ever sacrifice quality, which I actually think means credibility and authority for the sake of ranking, for the sake of brand awareness. Because if people find your content, but it sucks, what's the point. Right? You're going to be remembered for all of the wrong reasons. So you should always put your best content out there regardless of where you are in the process. So back to the editorial goals, values and integrity. The editorial goals are the reasons behind why you're creating content and who you are creating it for. So it just means that every single piece of content you create should be tied to your overall content strategy. It's simple, but if you don't have these editorial goals and you're not comparing them to your strategy, it can be easy to create a content that looks like it fits into your strategy, but it actually doesn't, right? Because the way that you've executed it doesn't align with your original mission. So it's that sense check at the end. What are the editorial goals? Editorial values? Describe how you as a business want to provide meaningful experiences to readers. Right? So deciding which content formats are going to work best to help you reach your goals and all that jazz. Define that at the beginning and that'll change, that's fine. But then continuously revisit it and define it. And then editorial integrity is all about upholding your brand reputation, making sure that your tone of voice and your writing style and the way that you are speaking to your audience is exactly reflected the way that you want it to. And that again, comes down to making sure that there's a rigorous editorial process of sense checking the content. So every step of the way through the production line, there should be somebody in an editorial role reviewing it, whether that's a strategist, making sure that the brief aligns with the editorial goals, somebody checking out the outlines, somebody checking out the final draft. Someone should be sense checking it every step of the way against those original editorial goals. So the best way to maintain quality when creating your content at scale is to set up documented processes. Start slow and continuously sense check your content every single step of the way as you grow. Mordy Oberstein: So thank you so much, Erica. I met Erica at Semrush's Global Marketing Day. We were recording it in New York. She is amazing. Definitely give her a follow on Twitter again, EricasMyName, E-R-I-C-A-S-M-Y-N-A-M-E. She talks about an amazing amount of topics over on Twitter. You should definitely give her a follow. She's one of these people where you meet her for the first time and you're like, "Wow, this person has that it factor." That's how I would describe Erica. She loves talking about all things, editorial standards, quality, strategy, all of it is great. So follow her over on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Fantastic. So all of us talk around building SEO, momentum, SEO momentum, momentum for SEO and capturing opportunity and being smart about and so forth makes me feel like, as I mentioned before that we should be talking about the importance of, I'll call it, cadence and momentum for your business or for your client's business as a whole, not just from an SEO. Let's not pigeonhole momentum to make it all about SEO. That'd be narcissistic as SEOs, but there's so much about cadence and momentum. It's a huge part of doing good marketing. So here's a deep thought on the role of cadence and momentum in marketing. So I think sometimes... I'll start this off... I think that ROI can sometimes be the killer of momentum. Crystal Carter: How so, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, let me just revel on the hot tick of that for a second. Because sometimes... it's so poetic... Sometimes the ROI is just showing that you're alive. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Sometimes the ROI is showing that you are still a relevant, vitalic... That's not a real word. Crystal Carter: Vital? Mordy Oberstein: Vitalicious? Vital. Crystal Carter: Vitalicious. Mordy Oberstein: Vitalicious. Crystal Carter: Vitalicious. Vitalicious, we're sticking with that. Let's go with that Mordy Oberstein: Vitalicious part of the conversation of whatever your niche is. It's like sometimes you create content to get traffic, and sometimes you create content to show that you're just part of the equation here. Crystal Carter: This is really interesting because Christie Holtz was talking about this on her Instagram. So she was talking about how to do good marketing, and she was like, you do stuff and you tell people about it, then you do some other stuff and you tell people about it. So it's essentially, it's one of those things to sort of keep in front of mind and to keep in the conversation. And again, so that you are being consistent in your visibility, and so that you don't have to start afresh from zero. Going from 70 to 80 is much, much easier than going from 0 to 80, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: It's like farming, which I know nothing about. I can't even plant a tomato plant without killing it. Crystal Carter: Old MacMorty had a farm, Mordy Oberstein: Old MacMorty had a farm and it all died. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: And no but so you have to plant the seeds, and from the seeds it grows. Wait, before you even plant the seeds, you need to, what's it sowing the ground. You have to sow the ground. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Cadence is sowing the ground so that eventually you can plant the seeds. So like you're saying, so that you don't just start off, all right, new product, got to get back in there, got to start shoveling the dirt to plant the seeds. If you have cadence, you have momentum. You're a natural, integral part of the conversation. Whatever community that you're in- Crystal Carter: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: ... Lets you do the things later on that give you the ROI. So cadence and momentum is such a huge, valuable, I'll call it a tool in delivering ROI. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that it's not easy to show up every week and do a podcast or show up every week and do your YouTube thing or show up every week with a brand new blog or show up with all those sorts of things. It's not easy. And that's the reason why it's so valuable is because it is not easy. The NFL happens on a Monday, right? You have Monday night football. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, there's Thursday night football now, and some weeks are we go Saturday football. Crystal Carter: There's always a Monday night football right? Now imagine if they were like, yeah, not this week. Maybe next week. Oh, we're not sure. Because that's the other thing is that if somebody knows that every week they'll get a new piece of content from you every month, they'll get a something from you. That you're consistent with your things. And even if they miss you once, they can come back to you for that. So again, so that they're ready to see that you do, and also being consistent there helps to show that you're somebody who is reliable. So whatever tool that you have, it helps to build trust that the thing that they get from you will be of good quality and will be valuable for them and will provide consistent and good results. Mordy Oberstein: It's going to a Google business profile, and there's no information there and you're like, ah, well. There's no cadence, momentum, there's nothing in there. There's no vitality, again, using that word. Crystal Carter: And I always check to see if people have been responding to comments, if people have been posting things, if there's actual, even if there is something there, if it's recent. So if there's something recent, then you can go, okay, this business is still working, this business is still doing stuff. Because sometimes things are online and you think, oh, this is online, and you get there and the ice cream shop is closed, they're not there, and you can't get any ice cream and you're really upset. Mordy Oberstein: And your day is ruined because you did not get ice cream. But it's a great point because the thing that really builds buzz, and the thing that really builds notoriety is not the going viral moment, which usually never happens. It's the micro moments. It's all these little things that add up and add up. So let's go with the Google business profile, the momentum around that. You see that they have a good description, you see they have reviews in there, they're answering. It's all these little things add up to create a sense, to create an association, to create a feeling or sentiment about that brand or product or whatever it is. So the momentum of one little thing and then one other little thing and one other little thing. While in and of itself, each little thing might not have a big ROI, whatever, but together it does. And you shouldn't look at it as each individual thing. You should look at it as all the things, all that cadence and momentum together. What does that produce? Crystal Carter: Right? Exactly. And this is why when I asked the hive mine, I said, "Does momentum matter in SEO?" I had a few people come back to me and they were like, "I'd say consistency is a better term." Amy Hergan said in the trades industries where there's a lot of black hat SEO, continuous white hat momentum is needed to be continued to be competitive. And this is what people were saying. They were like, "No, consistency. You say momentum, I say consistency," and I think it's because one breeds the other. Mordy Oberstein: Tomato, tomato. Tomato. I don't know what the heck of tomato is. But to go full circle, it all comes back to what I was saying before about mindset. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Having that cadence, having that momentum is really a mindset where you're hunting, finding opportunity where you're hunting, feeling out where you're at with your audience and being able to shift. That's not a thing you can quantify. That's very much an outlook on marketing. It's very much an outlook on everything. It's a mindset first and foremost. Crystal Carter: And I think also to bring it back to a technical SEO point, this also affects your crawling and your crawl rate. Google understands your crawl rate based on the amount of content that you create. If you're creating content once a month and then like six weeks later and then a week later, and then three months later or something, Google's like, we don't need to crawl these people all the time. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know when they're doing. But if you're creating content every single day, then Google knows, well, they're making new stuff every day, so we need to check on what they're doing every day. So new sites that are publishing 20, 50, 60 articles a day, they're getting crawled lots over the course of a week. A site that's publishing something once a month, they're going to get crawled a lot less because Google knows they don't need to. So if you're worried about your indexing and you haven't published anything new, like start publishing. Mordy Oberstein: Is it new? Crystal Carter: Right? Is it new? No. And Google knows it's not new, so that's why your pages aren't indexed. So they saw them already and they have nothing new to report. So think about that. Think about that when you're thinking about your cadence and your momentum as well, is that it's both a marketing thing, it's also a technical thing. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: And all of them work together. Mordy Oberstein: It all goes together. Everything works together. Don't separate the things out in general, but you know who's constantly creating content, who Google itself cannot keep up with? It's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz. Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz is a machine of creating content. Google is probably like has a dedicated server just keeping up with the content that Barry is creating. Crystal Carter: Last time I checked, I think he was up to 40? Mordy Oberstein: Over 40 or 30,000 articles about the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Which brings us to this week's snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Monster. Absolute monster of a week for SEO news. This week is the kind of week that brings warm and fuzzy feelings to Barry Schwartz's heart. That's how big the news was this week. Google IO 2023 was here, and we finally have the answer to what was whole AI thing on the SERP is going to look like. Needless to say, SEO will never be the same again. And I'm not even kidding. Okay. As part of the coverage of Google IO 2023, first up as a port over at Search Engine Journal by Matt Southern, Bard, Google's version of ChatGPT is live for everyone. If you haven't had access till now, like myself, go play with it. Have a look at it and see what differs from, let's say Bing. Also Google showcased at IO 2023, how there will be links to sites within that ecosystem. So win. Great. Now for what we're all here for, how will AI chat interact with the SERP and organic results? Drum roll please. For certain queries, for example, those not related to YMYL, health, finance, things can actually impact your life in a significant way, your financial life, your physical, mental life. Google will not show an AI produced summary answering those questions, but very often will produce an AI summary answering a question as part of a query, making featured snippets obsolete for those particular queries. By the way, that doesn't mean that featured snippets are obsolete as a concept, but we shall see. Either way, there will be three cards representing organic results that are attached to that initial summary produced by Google's AI chat experience. You can then refine the answer or ask a follow-up question and/or expand the answer. Here, Google will break down each section of the answer produced into subtopics with links to sites under each breakdown, which I think is absolutely amazing. It's exactly what I think I'm looking for as a user in terms of getting a more topical breakdown of a particular query so that I can explore different areas of that query. What exactly am I talking about? I will read to you what Google used as an example at Google IO. So they searched for what's better for a family with kids under three and a dog, Bryce Canyon, or... I don't remember, I think it was like Yellowstone National Park, was something like that. Anyway, so Google's AI experience produced, "Both Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks are family friendly, although both parks prohibit dogs on unpaved trails. Bryce Canyon has two paved trails that allow dogs." The summary goes on, "Bryce Canyon has distinctive features like hoodoos, natural bridges and waterfalls, and it goes on and on and on." When you click to expand and you see the expanded generative AI experience, it took the original summary and started off "Both Bryce Cannon and Arches National Park are family friendly." Right underneath that is a little card to a website. Then it continues with the summary and goes, "Although both park prohibit dogs on unpaved trails, Bryce Canyon has two paved trails that allow dogs." And then it has three cards talking about pets at these different national parks. And then it goes, "Bryce Canyon has the features like hoodoos, natural bridges and waterfalls," and then has another card to another URL that talks about the features at Bryce Canyon. So it's breaking down the summary into different lines and underneath each section or each line are different URLs, different cards to different URLs, helping you understand more about that particular subtopic within the general answer that Google gave. I think it's brilliant. I think it's awesome. Also to this, when you query something related to a product, Google will show you a list of products underneath an entire summary. And when you click on the product, it brings up a knowledge panel around the product listing much the way that it does now on the SERP where you can actually see a list of stores where you can shop and actually get the product. Make sure your products are listed on Google Merchant Center and are properly optimized. It's already huge. It's going to be huger when all this goes live because the initial listing that Google is showing, the summary is built on the shopping graph. Lastly, Google announces at Google IO or with the content around Google IO, a helpful content update is coming. We're getting another update to the helpful content ranking system to quote, "Google will roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on search." This is a big deal to me. It was part of the official materials created around Google IO, it was tacked onto a blog post where they talked about a new feature around perspectives. Crystal and I talk all about what this means and what all of the AI announcements for search means on a special episode of the SERP's Up podcast we did covering Google IO so look for it wherever you consume your podcasts, we'll link to the show notes here or look for it on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. We talk a lot about the announcements, analyze what they mean for SEO, and do a summary of what others in the community, the SEO community were saying as well. Also, check out Barry's coverage of both of these items of the helpful content update that's coming and of the overall AI experience on the SERP. Barry did a bang up job over a search engine land and an SE Roundtable. You can see what it all actually looks like there and get Barry's thoughts and analysis. So definitely have a look at what Barry wrote up over on Search Engine Land and at seroundtable.com. With that, that is a mouthful of this snappy news. Thank you as always, Barry, for your contribution to the SEO community and the articles that you write so that we can feature them on this news. And also to Matt Southern and Roger Montti, to all the other people, and Danny Goodwin who are contributing to the SEO news community. Crystal Carter: Thank you. And to everyone else, everyone on Twitter who's playing against this new all over the place. So yes, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: We're here. We're here. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yes, it's Mordy's favorite game. Mordy Oberstein: It's my favorite game, but I never win. It's like bowling. It's my bowling. Is this new on Twitter is my bowling. Crystal Carter: I won once and I insisted on getting a little trophy. I think Lily Ray gave me a trophy and a trophy emoji. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of social media, here's who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomes, and this week, since we're talking about momentum and content and all that good stuff, we thought, who better than Casie Gillette, an SEO OG, has been around the community for a long time, super smart. Had the opportunity to work with her a little bit when I was over at Semrush. Super, incredibly smart, incredibly giving and sharing. So definitely give her a follow on Twitter at C-A-S-I-E-G. Of course, we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. I did a Twitter space with her, and the Twitter space was a little bit sort of like ding ding. Is it content or technical SEO? Which one's better? And we were both like, they're both good. Mordy Oberstein: Fun story. Do you want to know who was the person behind who should be on that Twitter space? Got two thumbs and loves controversy, right now... Because they said, "Who should we have?" "Oh, you should have Crystal for the tech. And ask Casie for the-" Crystal Carter: We just made friends Mordy. We just made friends. Casie's lovely and she's very smart, and she knows that you need tech SEO, and I know that you need content SEO, and we all just got along. Mordy Oberstein: I knew that you were in need of a friend, so I recommend them Casie. Crystal Carter: Thank you for being a friend. Mordy Oberstein: And just cue the music. You've got our friend and me. I don't know if we can. Is that licensed? Can we do that? Anyway, that's it for us. Not for us. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: We're still friends. We're still friends. Crystal Carter: Yes. What? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's it for us. I didn't mean it that way. I mean like that's it for the show. Crystal Carter: I enjoyed it. Mordy Oberstein: Come back next week. Not like that's it forever. That's it till next week. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Because we are consistent. Crystal Carter: Until next week. Mordy Oberstein: I am anything but a creature of habit and consistent. Crystal Carter: Until next time, everyone. Mordy Oberstein: Until next time, right. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into getting it right with programmatic SEO or getting with the programmatic SEO program. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it. wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Erica Schneider Casie Gilette Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Grizzle SEO Changes From Google i/o 2023 News: Google Bard Removes Waitlist, Adds Image & Coding Features The new Google Search Generative Experience: Here’s what it looks like Google to update the helpful content system algorithm in the coming months Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Erica Schneider Casie Gilette Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Grizzle SEO Changes From Google i/o 2023 News: Google Bard Removes Waitlist, Adds Image & Coding Features The new Google Search Generative Experience: Here’s what it looks like Google to update the helpful content system algorithm in the coming months Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us SERP's Up podcast reporting on some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Overstein, I am SEO of Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulously incredible, the absolutely unequivocable, the absolutely uncomparable, the absolutely best in every way, shape, or form. The best person on planet Earth. Head of Instant Communications here at Wix, crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I think Mordy's finally reached the end of the platitudes. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know what to do anymore. Crystal Carter: I must tell you. I'm mediocre at bowling. Mordy Oberstein: I'm terrible at bowling. I stink with bumpers. Crystal Carter: I was in a bowling league when I was in my youth and my husband, who was never in a bowling league, always beats me at bowling. And I'm like, you're a non-bowler, you never even bowled. And yet I'm happy if I crack 100, if I'm doing that. If I hit three digits, I'm like, job done here. All right, I can go home. Mordy Oberstein: I'm embarrassed to say this. So you have an 8 pound ball, a 10 pound ball, 12 pound. I really enjoy the 8 pound ball. Crystal Carter: That's like softball. That's just playing softball. That's not like bowling. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And then I'll, even with the bumper because I play with my kids, the bumpers are up. You know that one spot in the corners? Crystal Carter: Oh, just before the pins? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's me. Crystal Carter: That's you. Mordy Oberstein: Got my name all over it. That one spot you, you're lucky you get like one pin. Crystal Carter: I'm a mediocre bowler, but I cannot stand bad bowling etiquette. If I'm up there trying to set up my shot and I'm stood there on the little lines and I'm trying to get myself lined up pretending I'm like doing the Lebowski thing or whatever, and somebody just walks up on the lane next door to me and just rolls along and starts throwing the... I get so angry as if they were ruining my perfect shot, as if this was... It's never going to be the perfect shot. I'm never going to get more than two or three pins or whatever. But let me have my moment. Let me just meditate for a second before I embarrass myself. Let me do what I'm doing. Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm the baller who's standing behind you saying, "Hurry up to get on with it and let's keep this train wreck moving because there's still eight more frames left and four more people." Crystal Carter: I’m here] for the snacks. I love bowling alley snacks like the snack bar at the bowling alley is what's up. Also the beer is flowing. They'll give you a whole pitcher and you can just settle in and I love a good bowling session. The last time I bowled actually was with you, Mordy, you and Nikki Moser. Mordy Oberstein: We bowled. Crystal Carter: No, I completely made that up. It was with Nikki. Mordy Oberstein: No. We didn't bowl. Crystal Carter: Was it Nikki at Moscon? You missed it. I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Yeah. I didn't, I wasn't there. I was probably ed a baseball game. Crystal Carter: Nikki's very good at bowling, also Blaine. He's also very good at- Mordy Oberstein: Oh really? Yeah. Okay. So note to self, never bowl these people. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you should check out our e-commerce offering from integrations with Amazon, to drop shipping, to a POS system to help you keep track of your client's transactions, both on and offline. Wix's e-commerce offering can help you and your clients' sites build financial momentum, which is today's word of the day momentum. Which means I should probably not take a break between talking about the next thing cause I just lost the momentum. Ah. Crystal Carter: Moving incremental gains. Move forward further. Mordy Oberstein: Momentum. That's right. Today we're talking about inertia science. Well, SEO inertia as we take out building SEO momentum for growth. Why the opportunity mindset is an SEO's best friend. The real advantage to growth by taking things slowly and keeping your ear to the ground and your finger on the pulse of a sight, stages of development. Oh look, he's crawling now as... I don't know what that makes any sense. And keeping your ear to the ground and your finger on the pulse of a sight stages of development. Plus Erica Schneider of Grizzle joins us to offer her take on how can you maintain quality when creating content at scale? Because momentum means scalability sometimes. So how do you keep the quality of the content at the same time? We're going to get into that. And since we're talking about inertia and growth for SEO, Crystal and I will take a deep dive into the role of momentum in marketing. And of course we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Careful now as you don't want to miss a thing because episode number 38 of the SERP's Up podcast is gaining momentum. Crystal Carter: We are on the move. We have reached velocity, we are going for it, we're moving forward. Mordy Oberstein: Warp speed. Continue with our Star Trek references for the past couple of episodes. Crystal Carter: Many. Mordy Oberstein: So many. Engage. So this is a very much mindset podcast for me. I'm all about mindset by the way, and I know people are, oh, practical tips. And I'm like, yeah, what's the mindset behind those tips? And people are like, yeah, I want the tips. So whatever. I think this is very much for me, a mindset episode. We talk about SEO very categorically, very often on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO. Or we speak of SEO with a continuum of task like task number one, then task number two, then task number three, then task... I can go on. Crystal Carter: And check it, put it on the checklist. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: That's right, but... And I get that when we talk about SEO in that way, it feels like a chore to me. And I don't think SEO should be a chore. I think SEO should be meaningful and to make SEO meaningful, I think it's a mindset. And this is why I love talking about SEO from a growth point of view. So how does SEO help you grow? And growth for me, whatever it is, from growing social media followings to growing as a person, is all about momentum. One thing leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing. So huge sappy music about improving as a person by the way, Crystal Carter: One step at a time, everybody, one step at a time. Mordy Oberstein: As you grow as a person, one step of self-reflection of internal growth often puts you on a path towards transcending and transforming the self on this journey to step number two. And they are not disconnected, one small change leads to another. Same in SEO. Crystal Carter: I mean these are life lessons Mordy, you're dropping some gems here that people can live by as well as do SEO by. Mordy Oberstein: It's not about podcasting, about SEO, it's about showing how podcasting about SEO was really podcasting about life. Crystal Carter: Philosophical this week. Mordy Oberstein: For the second time. Internal joke. For the second time. So anyway, one improvement you do to the site. One strategy you take on should, all things being equal, naturally lead to the next thing and open up all sorts of new doors. And all you really need to do is put your ear to the ground. So cue more sappy music. Crystal Carter: Music. I mean, I don't think you're wrong here at all. I think there's that movie where it says we need a montage. That's that sort of thing. And I feel like that it's that way sometimes with SEO, you work and you add little bits. And even if with a single piece of content, you can create one piece of content and then optimize it again and then optimize it again and then optimize it again. And what happens is Google knows about that content and they learn about that content and they see that you're improving it and they see that you're continuing to improve it and they understand that this is a piece of content that is not being left to wither on the vine, but is growing and is increasing. And if they see that you're doing that across your site, then they will understand that your site is something that is constantly improving and that the bulk of information that they have around you is valuable and is valuable to users. And then they'll send users to you. I think sometimes people think they have to do all of the SEO all at once. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: You don't. Mordy Oberstein: So not true and don't, it's detrimental. Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mordy Oberstein: And not only is it not helpful, it's a bad idea. Crystal Carter: Right. So a lot of times people will say, well, why do we need to do SEO for this long? Why do I need this agency to contract for six months or a year or whatever it may be? And it's because they're putting in building blocks for what you're doing. So you have your technical SEOs, your foundation, making sure that everything works. Then you're going to look at your architecture, then you're going to look at your keywords, then you're going to look at more content more, then you're going to look... And you add and add an ad, and sometimes you add them as in tandem. But the momentum is really, really important to that because I think I've certainly seen it where, and I don't know if you have an example of this where momentum can make a really, really big difference to make a really big impact on what your outcomes are. Have you seen this in the wild there, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: All the time. So one of the things that's great about momentum, and if you are bold enough to do this is that it will shift your strategy. So the detriment of being super checklisty is that you're not open to shifting, you're not open to changing. So as you start first off, you'll skip steps, you try to do it all in one shot. But if you're overly methodical where you try to break it into too many things, do you get hung up on the process? We did step one, now we must do step two. Now we must do step three. Now we must do step four. As opposed to saying after step three, where are we at? What are the things that we should be doing now? You'll often say, you know what, we should be shifting. Our business has changed, our audience has changed, or we've managed to capture an audience we never expected. We never thought this would rank well and it did and now we have a new audience. How do we now cater to that audience? How do we now nurture that audience? How do we now move that audience down the funnel? Whatever it is, which means being open minded enough to say, okay, take stock, ear to the ground. Now let's shift and let's take on a new strategy. And I've seen this a million times over where opportunities that you never knew existed or never thought would exist or didn't even know existed come up because of momentum and be open enough to be able to say, okay, stop, shift change to grab those opportunities. Crystal Carter: And I think that you see this with trending topics and things. So we recently published an article on the Wix SEO hub talking about trending topics. And if let's say you write an article on something that's trending, and let's say it hits right? You're like, oh my gosh, people are really interested in that. You can build momentum on that. You can start to build a topic cluster around that. You can start to pull in a little bit of content around that. You can say, "Wow, people are really interested in this particular topic and we seem to be leading the pack here, so let's put more content on that." Now, if you have your checklist that you are sticking to methodically and you're not paying attention to the momentum that you've got from both users and from Google and also from maybe social interest, et cetera, then you might go, well, that did well onto the next thing and miss the opportunity to grow. Mordy Oberstein: I'll ask you, how many times have you been working on a site or with a client or whatever it is, and the initial plan was X, and you get, let's say a quarter of the way, a third of the way, halfway through the plan of X, and you were like, wait a second, this doesn't make sense, we need to change this up. Crystal Carter: Oh, I mean during COVID, Mordy Oberstein: Right? I was just thinking that COVID is the classic case of this. Crystal Carter: Like the best laid plans were completely set of flame during COVID. I mean, so many times we'd say, "Right, we're going to do this," and then the business would have to close its physical doors and then you'd have to do something completely different, or you'd have to come up with a completely new funnel because they didn't have virtual tours of their real estate buildings before or book a video tour, that sort of thing. So these are things that you need to think about and yeah, it does make a difference. And I think that also, I love building up the momentum. If you think about it like sports training, and this is interesting because I asked the SEO hive mind, I said, "Do you think momentum matters in SEO?" And Myriam Jessier said, "It's like weight loss. On a diet you lose a few pounds early and then it motivates you to keep going. Then it's the same with SEO, but you need to keep building." If you think about sports people, they don't do nothing in the off season. The people who do really well, I talk about Michael Jordan a lot on this podcast, but Michael Jordan was getting slammed by the pistons for years and then spent one season in the off season really bulking up. And when he was doing stuff for Space Jam, he set up a basketball court and had pickup games with all... So in the off season, he was building up all of these skills when nobody was paying any attention, when it was low pressure, when he had time to think strategically about what he wanted to do. With seasonal businesses, the off season is a great time to start building up momentum and to start building up Google understanding your search, the focus of your content. It's a good time to take stock of your content, to do a sort of full audit and full update of things that are tricky to do when you're in the midst of everything. And so that means by the time you hit peak season, you've already crested, you're already at the top so that you're ready to meet that traffic because you built up the momentum when things were quiet. Mordy Oberstein: That example, that metaphor from Myriam, it's perfect because as somebody who's lost weight at one point a couple times in my life, like that initial like you have to get started with something. You have to get started somewhere. And then that one small success breeds another success. I don't know about you, but I look at SEO data when I want to start... That initial feeling, you're looking at a site for the first few times is overwhelming. You're like, I don't know, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where do I start? And what I like to do is start on one thing, one page, whatever it is, start somewhere with one thing and dive into that. And then you start seeing the next thing. You start seeing the next thing and you start slowly and slowly building a picture. That's momentum. That's an example of SEO momentum that I think is super important because when you look at, say in the case of data, when you look at it all in one shot, you get lost. You don't know where to go with it. So you need that momentum to guide you. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And if you turn it off, you sometimes get this in PPC, people are like, oh, let's just turn off the PPC. Let's turn on the PPC. And with PPC, it can be tricky because nowadays, particularly when we think about momentum, there's machine learning. And if you turn off your PPC entirely, I always recommend that you keep a little low level bit of something running in the background just so that if you need to ramp it up, you don't have to do that part where it goes, "Oh, the machine learning is learning about your site." And you're like, "What?" You're like, "We have a sale that starts tomorrow." And they're like, "We're still deciding." And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. And Google, we talk about AI and we talk about machine learning and we talk about all of this, but Google's been using AI and machine learning for years through all sorts of stuff. It's been an integral part of search for years. So when you stop and put things down, just like if you stop exercising... You'll notice that it'll be harder to get back going. If you've got the vacation in two weeks and you haven't done any exercise in two years, it's going to be tricky to get that beach body if that's what you want. Not that any body isn't perfect for the beach, but I'm just saying that sort of thing. If you're worried about that, you have to keep going with something so that if you need to ramp it up, you can when you need to. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, which is why this conversation about momentum and SEO, it's really a much wider... Right? About momentum and marketing overall. But before we get into that, as you're growing, as you're building momentum, as you're doing... Which often means scaling things up, you have to worry about maintaining quality at the same time. So momentum is great, things are firing in all cylinders, blah, blah, blah. Or you got to make sure the quality is maintained. So to help us tackle this is Erica Schneider over at Grizzle who's going to help us understand how you can maintain quality when creating content at scale. Erica Schneider: So the best way to maintain quality when creating content at scale is to treat quality scaling, just like you would treat business scaling. Right? You need to document your processes, you need to have goals, a mission statement, objectives, like everything that you do for your business when you want to be able to scale effectively and not fail and have everything fall apart, is the same way that you should treat scaling your content operations so that you don't mess with your quality as you scale. So my answer is twofold, right? It's really important that you set editorial goals, values, and integrity, and I can just quickly explain what those are. But the other piece of that is that you should start slow and then ramp up in my opinion, just like you're building a business, you don't bring on 50 clients on day one. Right? That would be an absolute disaster. You need to make sure that what you're doing is documented that it works. Get through all the kinks, figure out what you want to keep, what you want to discard from your process, all that jazz, and then scale. So it makes no sense. If you are trying to produce quality content to try to do 10 blogs a week, it's better to maybe start with one a week. Right? I could go into the quality versus quantity argument, but I definitely think that no matter how much you ultimately want to publish on your blog or anywhere that you're distributing content, regardless of the amount that you put out there, it should always be quality content. I don't think that you should ever sacrifice quality, which I actually think means credibility and authority for the sake of ranking, for the sake of brand awareness. Because if people find your content, but it sucks, what's the point. Right? You're going to be remembered for all of the wrong reasons. So you should always put your best content out there regardless of where you are in the process. So back to the editorial goals, values and integrity. The editorial goals are the reasons behind why you're creating content and who you are creating it for. So it just means that every single piece of content you create should be tied to your overall content strategy. It's simple, but if you don't have these editorial goals and you're not comparing them to your strategy, it can be easy to create a content that looks like it fits into your strategy, but it actually doesn't, right? Because the way that you've executed it doesn't align with your original mission. So it's that sense check at the end. What are the editorial goals? Editorial values? Describe how you as a business want to provide meaningful experiences to readers. Right? So deciding which content formats are going to work best to help you reach your goals and all that jazz. Define that at the beginning and that'll change, that's fine. But then continuously revisit it and define it. And then editorial integrity is all about upholding your brand reputation, making sure that your tone of voice and your writing style and the way that you are speaking to your audience is exactly reflected the way that you want it to. And that again, comes down to making sure that there's a rigorous editorial process of sense checking the content. So every step of the way through the production line, there should be somebody in an editorial role reviewing it, whether that's a strategist, making sure that the brief aligns with the editorial goals, somebody checking out the outlines, somebody checking out the final draft. Someone should be sense checking it every step of the way against those original editorial goals. So the best way to maintain quality when creating your content at scale is to set up documented processes. Start slow and continuously sense check your content every single step of the way as you grow. Mordy Oberstein: So thank you so much, Erica. I met Erica at Semrush's Global Marketing Day. We were recording it in New York. She is amazing. Definitely give her a follow on Twitter again, EricasMyName, E-R-I-C-A-S-M-Y-N-A-M-E. She talks about an amazing amount of topics over on Twitter. You should definitely give her a follow. She's one of these people where you meet her for the first time and you're like, "Wow, this person has that it factor." That's how I would describe Erica. She loves talking about all things, editorial standards, quality, strategy, all of it is great. So follow her over on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Fantastic. So all of us talk around building SEO, momentum, SEO momentum, momentum for SEO and capturing opportunity and being smart about and so forth makes me feel like, as I mentioned before that we should be talking about the importance of, I'll call it, cadence and momentum for your business or for your client's business as a whole, not just from an SEO. Let's not pigeonhole momentum to make it all about SEO. That'd be narcissistic as SEOs, but there's so much about cadence and momentum. It's a huge part of doing good marketing. So here's a deep thought on the role of cadence and momentum in marketing. So I think sometimes... I'll start this off... I think that ROI can sometimes be the killer of momentum. Crystal Carter: How so, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, let me just revel on the hot tick of that for a second. Because sometimes... it's so poetic... Sometimes the ROI is just showing that you're alive. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Sometimes the ROI is showing that you are still a relevant, vitalic... That's not a real word. Crystal Carter: Vital? Mordy Oberstein: Vitalicious? Vital. Crystal Carter: Vitalicious. Mordy Oberstein: Vitalicious. Crystal Carter: Vitalicious. Vitalicious, we're sticking with that. Let's go with that Mordy Oberstein: Vitalicious part of the conversation of whatever your niche is. It's like sometimes you create content to get traffic, and sometimes you create content to show that you're just part of the equation here. Crystal Carter: This is really interesting because Christie Holtz was talking about this on her Instagram. So she was talking about how to do good marketing, and she was like, you do stuff and you tell people about it, then you do some other stuff and you tell people about it. So it's essentially, it's one of those things to sort of keep in front of mind and to keep in the conversation. And again, so that you are being consistent in your visibility, and so that you don't have to start afresh from zero. Going from 70 to 80 is much, much easier than going from 0 to 80, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: It's like farming, which I know nothing about. I can't even plant a tomato plant without killing it. Crystal Carter: Old MacMorty had a farm, Mordy Oberstein: Old MacMorty had a farm and it all died. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: And no but so you have to plant the seeds, and from the seeds it grows. Wait, before you even plant the seeds, you need to, what's it sowing the ground. You have to sow the ground. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Cadence is sowing the ground so that eventually you can plant the seeds. So like you're saying, so that you don't just start off, all right, new product, got to get back in there, got to start shoveling the dirt to plant the seeds. If you have cadence, you have momentum. You're a natural, integral part of the conversation. Whatever community that you're in- Crystal Carter: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: ... Lets you do the things later on that give you the ROI. So cadence and momentum is such a huge, valuable, I'll call it a tool in delivering ROI. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that it's not easy to show up every week and do a podcast or show up every week and do your YouTube thing or show up every week with a brand new blog or show up with all those sorts of things. It's not easy. And that's the reason why it's so valuable is because it is not easy. The NFL happens on a Monday, right? You have Monday night football. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, there's Thursday night football now, and some weeks are we go Saturday football. Crystal Carter: There's always a Monday night football right? Now imagine if they were like, yeah, not this week. Maybe next week. Oh, we're not sure. Because that's the other thing is that if somebody knows that every week they'll get a new piece of content from you every month, they'll get a something from you. That you're consistent with your things. And even if they miss you once, they can come back to you for that. So again, so that they're ready to see that you do, and also being consistent there helps to show that you're somebody who is reliable. So whatever tool that you have, it helps to build trust that the thing that they get from you will be of good quality and will be valuable for them and will provide consistent and good results. Mordy Oberstein: It's going to a Google business profile, and there's no information there and you're like, ah, well. There's no cadence, momentum, there's nothing in there. There's no vitality, again, using that word. Crystal Carter: And I always check to see if people have been responding to comments, if people have been posting things, if there's actual, even if there is something there, if it's recent. So if there's something recent, then you can go, okay, this business is still working, this business is still doing stuff. Because sometimes things are online and you think, oh, this is online, and you get there and the ice cream shop is closed, they're not there, and you can't get any ice cream and you're really upset. Mordy Oberstein: And your day is ruined because you did not get ice cream. But it's a great point because the thing that really builds buzz, and the thing that really builds notoriety is not the going viral moment, which usually never happens. It's the micro moments. It's all these little things that add up and add up. So let's go with the Google business profile, the momentum around that. You see that they have a good description, you see they have reviews in there, they're answering. It's all these little things add up to create a sense, to create an association, to create a feeling or sentiment about that brand or product or whatever it is. So the momentum of one little thing and then one other little thing and one other little thing. While in and of itself, each little thing might not have a big ROI, whatever, but together it does. And you shouldn't look at it as each individual thing. You should look at it as all the things, all that cadence and momentum together. What does that produce? Crystal Carter: Right? Exactly. And this is why when I asked the hive mine, I said, "Does momentum matter in SEO?" I had a few people come back to me and they were like, "I'd say consistency is a better term." Amy Hergan said in the trades industries where there's a lot of black hat SEO, continuous white hat momentum is needed to be continued to be competitive. And this is what people were saying. They were like, "No, consistency. You say momentum, I say consistency," and I think it's because one breeds the other. Mordy Oberstein: Tomato, tomato. Tomato. I don't know what the heck of tomato is. But to go full circle, it all comes back to what I was saying before about mindset. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Having that cadence, having that momentum is really a mindset where you're hunting, finding opportunity where you're hunting, feeling out where you're at with your audience and being able to shift. That's not a thing you can quantify. That's very much an outlook on marketing. It's very much an outlook on everything. It's a mindset first and foremost. Crystal Carter: And I think also to bring it back to a technical SEO point, this also affects your crawling and your crawl rate. Google understands your crawl rate based on the amount of content that you create. If you're creating content once a month and then like six weeks later and then a week later, and then three months later or something, Google's like, we don't need to crawl these people all the time. I don't know what they're doing. I don't know when they're doing. But if you're creating content every single day, then Google knows, well, they're making new stuff every day, so we need to check on what they're doing every day. So new sites that are publishing 20, 50, 60 articles a day, they're getting crawled lots over the course of a week. A site that's publishing something once a month, they're going to get crawled a lot less because Google knows they don't need to. So if you're worried about your indexing and you haven't published anything new, like start publishing. Mordy Oberstein: Is it new? Crystal Carter: Right? Is it new? No. And Google knows it's not new, so that's why your pages aren't indexed. So they saw them already and they have nothing new to report. So think about that. Think about that when you're thinking about your cadence and your momentum as well, is that it's both a marketing thing, it's also a technical thing. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: And all of them work together. Mordy Oberstein: It all goes together. Everything works together. Don't separate the things out in general, but you know who's constantly creating content, who Google itself cannot keep up with? It's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz. Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz is a machine of creating content. Google is probably like has a dedicated server just keeping up with the content that Barry is creating. Crystal Carter: Last time I checked, I think he was up to 40? Mordy Oberstein: Over 40 or 30,000 articles about the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Which brings us to this week's snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Monster. Absolute monster of a week for SEO news. This week is the kind of week that brings warm and fuzzy feelings to Barry Schwartz's heart. That's how big the news was this week. Google IO 2023 was here, and we finally have the answer to what was whole AI thing on the SERP is going to look like. Needless to say, SEO will never be the same again. And I'm not even kidding. Okay. As part of the coverage of Google IO 2023, first up as a port over at Search Engine Journal by Matt Southern, Bard, Google's version of ChatGPT is live for everyone. If you haven't had access till now, like myself, go play with it. Have a look at it and see what differs from, let's say Bing. Also Google showcased at IO 2023, how there will be links to sites within that ecosystem. So win. Great. Now for what we're all here for, how will AI chat interact with the SERP and organic results? Drum roll please. For certain queries, for example, those not related to YMYL, health, finance, things can actually impact your life in a significant way, your financial life, your physical, mental life. Google will not show an AI produced summary answering those questions, but very often will produce an AI summary answering a question as part of a query, making featured snippets obsolete for those particular queries. By the way, that doesn't mean that featured snippets are obsolete as a concept, but we shall see. Either way, there will be three cards representing organic results that are attached to that initial summary produced by Google's AI chat experience. You can then refine the answer or ask a follow-up question and/or expand the answer. Here, Google will break down each section of the answer produced into subtopics with links to sites under each breakdown, which I think is absolutely amazing. It's exactly what I think I'm looking for as a user in terms of getting a more topical breakdown of a particular query so that I can explore different areas of that query. What exactly am I talking about? I will read to you what Google used as an example at Google IO. So they searched for what's better for a family with kids under three and a dog, Bryce Canyon, or... I don't remember, I think it was like Yellowstone National Park, was something like that. Anyway, so Google's AI experience produced, "Both Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks are family friendly, although both parks prohibit dogs on unpaved trails. Bryce Canyon has two paved trails that allow dogs." The summary goes on, "Bryce Canyon has distinctive features like hoodoos, natural bridges and waterfalls, and it goes on and on and on." When you click to expand and you see the expanded generative AI experience, it took the original summary and started off "Both Bryce Cannon and Arches National Park are family friendly." Right underneath that is a little card to a website. Then it continues with the summary and goes, "Although both park prohibit dogs on unpaved trails, Bryce Canyon has two paved trails that allow dogs." And then it has three cards talking about pets at these different national parks. And then it goes, "Bryce Canyon has the features like hoodoos, natural bridges and waterfalls," and then has another card to another URL that talks about the features at Bryce Canyon. So it's breaking down the summary into different lines and underneath each section or each line are different URLs, different cards to different URLs, helping you understand more about that particular subtopic within the general answer that Google gave. I think it's brilliant. I think it's awesome. Also to this, when you query something related to a product, Google will show you a list of products underneath an entire summary. And when you click on the product, it brings up a knowledge panel around the product listing much the way that it does now on the SERP where you can actually see a list of stores where you can shop and actually get the product. Make sure your products are listed on Google Merchant Center and are properly optimized. It's already huge. It's going to be huger when all this goes live because the initial listing that Google is showing, the summary is built on the shopping graph. Lastly, Google announces at Google IO or with the content around Google IO, a helpful content update is coming. We're getting another update to the helpful content ranking system to quote, "Google will roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on search." This is a big deal to me. It was part of the official materials created around Google IO, it was tacked onto a blog post where they talked about a new feature around perspectives. Crystal and I talk all about what this means and what all of the AI announcements for search means on a special episode of the SERP's Up podcast we did covering Google IO so look for it wherever you consume your podcasts, we'll link to the show notes here or look for it on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. We talk a lot about the announcements, analyze what they mean for SEO, and do a summary of what others in the community, the SEO community were saying as well. Also, check out Barry's coverage of both of these items of the helpful content update that's coming and of the overall AI experience on the SERP. Barry did a bang up job over a search engine land and an SE Roundtable. You can see what it all actually looks like there and get Barry's thoughts and analysis. So definitely have a look at what Barry wrote up over on Search Engine Land and at seroundtable.com. With that, that is a mouthful of this snappy news. Thank you as always, Barry, for your contribution to the SEO community and the articles that you write so that we can feature them on this news. And also to Matt Southern and Roger Montti, to all the other people, and Danny Goodwin who are contributing to the SEO news community. Crystal Carter: Thank you. And to everyone else, everyone on Twitter who's playing against this new all over the place. So yes, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: We're here. We're here. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yes, it's Mordy's favorite game. Mordy Oberstein: It's my favorite game, but I never win. It's like bowling. It's my bowling. Is this new on Twitter is my bowling. Crystal Carter: I won once and I insisted on getting a little trophy. I think Lily Ray gave me a trophy and a trophy emoji. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of social media, here's who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomes, and this week, since we're talking about momentum and content and all that good stuff, we thought, who better than Casie Gillette, an SEO OG, has been around the community for a long time, super smart. Had the opportunity to work with her a little bit when I was over at Semrush. Super, incredibly smart, incredibly giving and sharing. So definitely give her a follow on Twitter at C-A-S-I-E-G. Of course, we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. I did a Twitter space with her, and the Twitter space was a little bit sort of like ding ding. Is it content or technical SEO? Which one's better? And we were both like, they're both good. Mordy Oberstein: Fun story. Do you want to know who was the person behind who should be on that Twitter space? Got two thumbs and loves controversy, right now... Because they said, "Who should we have?" "Oh, you should have Crystal for the tech. And ask Casie for the-" Crystal Carter: We just made friends Mordy. We just made friends. Casie's lovely and she's very smart, and she knows that you need tech SEO, and I know that you need content SEO, and we all just got along. Mordy Oberstein: I knew that you were in need of a friend, so I recommend them Casie. Crystal Carter: Thank you for being a friend. Mordy Oberstein: And just cue the music. You've got our friend and me. I don't know if we can. Is that licensed? Can we do that? Anyway, that's it for us. Not for us. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: We're still friends. We're still friends. Crystal Carter: Yes. What? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's it for us. I didn't mean it that way. I mean like that's it for the show. Crystal Carter: I enjoyed it. Mordy Oberstein: Come back next week. Not like that's it forever. That's it till next week. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Because we are consistent. Crystal Carter: Until next week. Mordy Oberstein: I am anything but a creature of habit and consistent. Crystal Carter: Until next time, everyone. Mordy Oberstein: Until next time, right. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into getting it right with programmatic SEO or getting with the programmatic SEO program. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it. wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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Julian is responsible for The Branding Journal's marketing strategy and oversees the strategic development of Traderoo.de. He has worked in SEO and branding for over ten years, helping many startups establish a digital presence and gain traction in their respective markets. Julian Oppelt Partner/CMO at The Branding Journal Julian is responsible for The Branding Journal' s marketing strategy and oversees the strategic development of Traderoo.de. He has worked in SEO and branding for over ten years, helping many startups establish a digital presence and gain traction in their respective markets. Articles & Resources 21 May 2025 Build your brand to stay ahead of Google updates 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

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

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Is the world of analytics leaving you feeling a little blind? Join Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter as they navigate the murky waters of modern marketing data with analytics maestro, Dana DiTomaso. From missing numbers to the almighty Google, it's all about understanding the true story that your data is trying to tell. Discover the secrets of meaningful metrics and learn to embrace trends over absolutes—because it's time to stop being a ‘data accountant’. Prepare to lift the fog on data uncertainty on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Making marketing metrics meaningful Is the world of analytics leaving you feeling a little blind? Join Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter as they navigate the murky waters of modern marketing data with analytics maestro, Dana DiTomaso. From missing numbers to the almighty Google, it's all about understanding the true story that your data is trying to tell. Discover the secrets of meaningful metrics and learn to embrace trends over absolutes—because it's time to stop being a ‘data accountant’. Prepare to lift the fog on data uncertainty on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 121 | February 12, 2025 | 38 MIN 00:00 / 37:51 This week’s guests Dana DiTomaso Founder, KP Playbook President & Partner, Kick Point Dana is founder and lead instructor at KP Playbook, and president and partner at Kick Point. She shows marketers how to set smart goals and track results so that they understand what strategies bring real value. Dana also teaches analytics at the University of Alberta. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm your host, Mordy Oberstein, and I'm joined by she who is not blind. She can see, can see clearly now that the rain has come. She's our own head communications here, Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that lovely introduction. I cannot see as well as I used to be able to see. I have to wear glasses now, but I always forget that I need to wear glasses and then I try to look at things and I can't read them. And why are restaurants so dark? That's my question. Why are they so dark? Mordy Oberstein: They are dark. Crystal Carter: How am I supposed to read the menu? I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: It's so annoying. I got to say something. Restaurants are annoying place to eat a meal. Okay? There's, one, other people around you which is... Crystal Carter: Boo. Mordy Oberstein: ... not what you want. Yeah. Boo. Then secondly, while you're eating, people come around and ask you questions. Oh. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay? Crystal Carter: It's like it's a quiz. Mordy Oberstein: How are things? If I had a problem, you would know. Crystal Carter: What kind of bread would you like? I'm like bread. And then they named 17 bread. They're pumpernickel, rye, sourdough, white bread, brown bread, granary bread, seeded bread, loaf bread. I'm like, I don't know. I didn't know this was a bread... Mordy Oberstein: I want good bread. Crystal Carter: ... bread test. It was a bread test? I didn't know. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. And then there's music. Why do they play music? Now you can't even see the person. Now you can't talk to the person you actually want to talk to because they're playing stupid annoying. It's never good music. It's always annoying. Crystal Carter: I don't like it when you go to a restaurant and there's a million screens. I do not eat my dinner in front of a TV. And then I go to these restaurants and there's 17 TVs playing like 17 different baseball, basketball, football, hockey. Mordy Oberstein: Were you in a sports bar? Crystal Carter: There's loads of places where they're just always on even when you're not in a sports bar. Mordy Oberstein: I was in New York a while ago and went out to eat with my dad and it was on a football Sunday and there was the football game on. It was a regular restaurant. I mean, I was kind of happy to see the football game, but it was weird. Why is that even here? Crystal Carter: It's distracting. It's distracting. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So now that we told you we hate restaurants, SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Peter Lugers. No. It's brought to you by Wix Studio where you can use Wix Studio to get a recording of how users are interacting with your website for free. There is a paid plan as well, and natively is built right in three clicks. It's awesome. I love using it literally. We'll get into more on using data like that later, soon. This as today, are marketers flying blind? What are the metrics that still matter with changes to GA4 and reduced visibility in channels like ChatGPT. Are marketers flying blind? Data throttling in GA4 and GSC? What data matters and what data does it in a sea of analytics to help us sail your ship through the numbers analytics Maven teacher and consultant, Dana DiTomaso sat down with Crystal for a clear conversation about data. And of course we have who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So grab your binoculars, telescope, and magnifying glass or just get some LASIK as episode 121 helps you give yourself sight, the gift of sight of data analytics. Crystal Carter: So yeah, I had a fantastic conversation with Dana DiTomaso. I've heard her speak at MozCon and other events on multiple occasions and she's one of my favorite analytics marketers because she is so astute and so clear with she's, you know, how she communicates what she's saying. Mordy Oberstein: And funny. She's funny. Crystal Carter: She's funny. She's super awesome. And the other thing is that one of the things that really stuck with me, I think it was MozCon this year, she was talking about this topic and she'll get into it into the discussion, but she says that we need to stop being so beholden to the actual numbers. We need to be so beholden between whether or not it's 373 clicks or 375 clicks because really those two clicks isn't going to make that much of a difference and she'll get into this, but essentially the trends are... Mordy Oberstein: Trends. Crystal Carter: ... very important. Mordy Oberstein: Trends. So many times said this, by the way, I said this on Traffic Think Tank the other day because of all the rank volatility and Google's going to run out consistent updates all the time now, stop looking at actual numbers and look at like create a range for yourself of where you think this site normally ranges and just look at that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's the thing. I think that people need to be more intelligent about what actually matters. And I think that people need to be more intelligent about having a good understanding of their data and what normal is and what different is and figuring out what that means for them. Mordy Oberstein: You have me at people should be more intelligent. Crystal Carter: We'll see how it goes. But yeah, we had a super intelligent conversation with Dana and with her doing the heavy lifting on the intelligence there. Mordy Oberstein: So here's two really intelligent people having a really intelligent conversation about data intelligence. Crystal Carter: I am so pleased to be joined here today by analytics maven, Dana DiTomaso, who I've heard speak at MozCon on a couple of occasions about data and analytics and all of those fantastic things. She is the CEO of Kick Point and fount of knowledge of all things analytics. I'm so glad that she's joining us here today. Dana, welcome to the show. Dana DiTomaso: Thank you so much for having me. Crystal Carter: Such an absolute honor. And I think when we were looking at this topic, I said we have to speak to Dana because she knows all about this and basically we're kind of looking at the space that we're in terms of marketers and analytics. I feel like there's a certain amount of uncertainty that we have now. I feel like when I first started my journey as a marketer, even five years ago, I felt very certain about saying we've had this much traffic and we've had this channel brought us in this much value and all of that sort of stuff. Do you feel that certain these days in terms of the information that you're getting from the various tools out there as a marketer? Dana DiTomaso: No. But I also think that it hasn't been certain for longer even than five years. And I think that this is one of the big things that happened when people switched from universal analytics to GA4. A lot of people, if you were transitioning to it early, you had both running at the same time. You had UA and GA4 and you would look at the reports and they'd be different numbers and you would say, well, one of these is wrong. But the thing is they were both right. They were just measuring data in different ways and I think that this is where it sort of pulled back the curtain a little bit and said, hey, actually analytics data is only as good as your analytics measurement system, but there's also a sense of data capture in terms of what you're looking at when you look at analytics. And it doesn't matter if it's GA4 or Matomo or Fathom or any of the other millions of analytics products out there, it is only as good as what the system decides to do with the data. And what you're looking at is never the raw data. So when I first started the field back in the dark ages in 2000, we didn't have Google Analytics. It was called Urchin Analytics and Google bought them in 2004, but I didn't have that. In 2000 we had log file analysis. And I would say that log file analysis is probably the most reliable in terms of what pages are being viewed because it is actually requests from the server. And so we would use products like web trends, if people remember those, and we'd actually look at what things were accessed, but then as soon as other analytics product, and that was when you were looking at the actual raw data. But you're not going to look at the actual raw data and add it up yourself. That's when you use a tool to do it. So you are relying on the tool a little bit to process the data. And then as we move through the analytics landscape, people have ad blockers. People have tabs. People use different devices. You may not be able to tie people across those different devices. Right? And the classic example that I use quite often is, let's say, I am booking a pest control service for my house. I live in an area we have to spray for ants every year, whether you like it or not. And so I found this company that I want to go with, but I sent the link to my wife to do the booking 'cause she was going to be home and I was not. Well, I just texted her the link. That means the attribution path is lost. It's going to show up as direct in their system even though I found them originally from Google business profile. So that is a classic example of attribution that happens every single day. So if you look at your data and you need to point at it and say this is 100% correct, you are wrong. And it doesn't matter how good your analytics is, it doesn't matter if you're using what's called server side tracking, which gets around ad blockers 'cause there's still consent management. If someone says no to being tracked, you can't track them. But then there's also people just using the internet the way the people who use the internet and we really can't control or manage what happens there. So I think that there's a certain amount of uncertainty that we have to get comfortable with in analytics and I think that that's really difficult for analysts because we are used to a lot of certainty. Right? But coming at this from my SEO background, I mean what's the classic SEO response? Right? It depends. And so I think that SEOs are actually a little bit more comfortable with the idea of uncertainty, but because we've always had analytics presented to us as this, this is exact and this is perfect and this is, you know, then I think getting more comfortable with that uncertainty is something that actually, as SEOs, we could bring to analytics a little bit and get them to calm down a little bit on the exact numbers 'cause they're not real. They're never going to be real. They're just pleasant fairy tales sometimes. Crystal Carter: And I think that we all want to be able to get our little gold star, get our dopamine hit. We see that up into the right. And so I can't begrudge people for wanting to believe it's true. I want to believe. Dana DiTomaso: Oh yeah. I totally get that. Like I was working with this one client and we were switching them from UA to GA4 and it turns out that they had their UA code running four times on their blog. So every time someone viewed a page, it would record a four page visits. And then, of course, when we put on GA4, we had the setting turned on that doesn't allow that to happen. And so it was recording one page view and then they're like, oh my god, our traffic has gone down. What happened? Actually your traffic is the same. That's not the issue here. Right? And so this is why I talk about like how can you possibly report on this stuff, if you don't know for sure that's recording properly. Again, you could just have it running multiple times and be like, look, look at these numbers and no one else is going to go in there and double check. So you could be reporting on pleasant fairy tales. You don't know. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And I think also I think it comes down to are you reporting on stuff that actually matters in the first place? And all the analytics suites, you mentioned a few different ones. Wix Studio has built-in analytics. So there's CMS side analytics. There's going to be your third party analytics. There's going to be other stuff. And they're all measuring, they're all giving you various different metrics and some of them matter and some of them don't. And just because I know they say that if it isn't measured, it doesn't matter, but there's also just because measured doesn't necessarily mean that it matters. I mean classic examples like BMI. Right? My BMI is always off the chart, but I'm just thick. I don't know what to tell you. I did sports in high school and I could drop 10, I just, I couldn't possibly, I haven't been that weight since I was 16 and I would look ridiculous, if I was that weight. Dana DiTomaso: Oh no. I boxed for years. Being heavier is an advantage in boxing 'cause you can punch harder. That's why there's weight classes. Crystal Carter: Right. I know somebody who went to the doctor the other day and he told him his weight and the doctor was like, no way. Nuh-uh. I just saw you. And so he got on the scales like I can't believe you weigh that. It's like because it's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous made up measurement. But I think, again, if you think about BMI, which I think most people are familiar with as a general annoyance, it's kind of a guideline. I don't think necessarily that you should be beholden to it, but I guess it's kind of like if you're in the ballpark then that's sort of a guideline generally, but you shouldn't be beholden to it necessarily. You should use your common sense and understand that you did boxing, you did weightlifting, you did whatever. You're a professional athlete who is perfectly fine at this weight. And I think that with the analytics one that people used to go back and forth over was bounce rate all the time back in the day. And sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't. But I think also- Dana DiTomaso: Well, and bounce rate was never measuring what people thought it was too. And this is why I hate bounce rate so much. Anyone's ever seen me present you know that just say bounce rate and I just go on a tangent, but I mean in universal analytics, bounce rate was measuring if you viewed a page and then you didn't have a measurable event on that page, which meant that if you submitted a form and it didn't take you to a second page and you weren't recording that form submit, that person would bounce. And so unless I set up your analytics, I wouldn't trust that your bounce rate was correct. More than once I saw bounce rates close to 0% and it was because somebody decided to fake out bounce rate by having an event be recorded the moment the page was loaded. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: And it's like, yeah, you can totally fake out bounce rate. No problem. And in GA4, I think it is slightly more accurate. You have what's called engagement rate, but I've actually been testing whether or not you can fake that out. And you can. There's an event called user engagement that's recorded when a session becomes engaged and by default a session in GA4 becomes engaged when someone's had your tab as their active tab for at least 10 seconds, viewed a second page, or converted. If you send the user engagement event right away, you could artificially inflate your engagement rates. So it is possible to fake that out as well. But it is actually like you have to actually know what you're doing and try to fake it out. If anyone ever goes on my Kick Point playbook website, looks at the analytics there, you'll see some weird events called pizza, for example. It's just things I'm testing, but I always try to see how you can manipulate the system so I can spot it when I'm working with other people to be like this bounce rate or engagement rate doesn't seem correct. And then in GA4 there is bounce rate, but it's the inverse of engagement rate. So just use engagement rate. Let's all let bounce rate just die out. Thank you. The end. Okay. Crystal Carter: And I think that this comes to, but that's a great point because people, like I said, people are measuring, have been measuring things that don't necessarily matter. And I feel like with the traffic and attribution, I've had it before where I've had clients and I'm trying to piece together their attribution, messy middle because they have like it's an event. Like I had a client and their ticket booking system was a different one from the one that was their website that was different from their things. And then they have microsites and they have KB sites and then they have all of these different stuff and you're trying to piece it all back together. And I think it can be, like you mentioned traffic as a metric, I think that SEOs and speaking about the SEO map thing, traffic is going to become much more complex in the next few years with the advent of AI and an AI search and how people are getting to the content and how people are discovering the brand. So which metrics do you think still matter? Do you think traffic still matters? Do you think other things matter more? Dana DiTomaso: I think traffic is a good temperature check on what's going on. You know? And I think certainly myself and Will Reynolds for example from Seer have spoken about this quite a bit where Will's, I just saw a great presentation by him where he was talking about how he has less traffic on his site, but that traffic is more engaged, is more likely to get in touch with him. And I actually just published a blog post as well. If you do want to see how much AI traffic, AI tool traffic is coming to your website, I have a walkthrough on my website and we can include the link, the show notes of how to set up an AI tools channel in GA4 or really any tool, but it's a piece of what's called RegEx that you can set up and it'll pull out all that. AI tools traffic can put it into own channel for you. And that's really interesting to see as well. But I think it's where, I mean, generally in the industry, I think people have to realize that Google is not necessarily going to be the only player out there for a long time. And if you've been in this for a long time, as I have, Google wasn't always the big player. There's this like cool... Crystal Carter: Netscape. Dana DiTomaso: There's this like AltaVista. Yahoo was a thing. You know? Like it was being actually had a decent market rate for a little while there. So it's not impossible for us to move past Google. And I think search GPT for example, is definitely an existential threat to Google and they're taking it very seriously, as you can see. But I think that there are lots of different ways that people engage with this. If you're aiming for a younger audience, TikTok search, YouTube, by the way, second largest search engine and you report on YouTube search, probably not. Right? So I think that there's lots of opportunities for search that aren't necessarily what people immediately think of when it comes to search. And so when you think about things like traffic, this is where are you bringing together all of your actual traffic sources? And one of the things that I've really been reporting on is what I call efficiency rate. So are part of the effectiveness rate. It used to be called efficiency, I felt effectiveness was a better number. And so effectiveness looks at your impressions across all channels, all of your search console impressions, all of your ads impressions, like social impressions, number of people in your email list, all that stuff, add it all together, divide it by the number of transactions or conversions or whatever your final piece is. And this isn't just recorded in something like GA4, like how many people bought your stuff in store online, just the raw number of transactions. Look at that percentage. Is it going up or down over time? If it's going up, then that means you're more effective with your work, your marketing work that you're doing. If it's going down, then you're less effective. And then that means that maybe you've got some diminishing returns or maybe this big radio campaign you decide to spend some money on wasn't actually that effective or you introduced a bunch of broad match keywords into your Google Ads account you probably shouldn't have or there's lots of different things why but you'll know by looking at those overall trends. And the example that I give is for example, if people live in North America, Old Navy, very big, you know, fast fa, is there Old Navy in the UK? I'm not entirely sure, but. Crystal Carter: They don't have it in the UK. Dana DiTomaso: I think it's just North America. Crystal Carter: They should. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. It's just the idea. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. And they send out approximately 80 million emails a day individually to one person. If you ever get an email list, you're just going to get a thousand emails. Right? No one is going to go into the store and hold up their phone and say, I'm here today 'cause I got an email. Right? But that's probably what encouraged people to come in. And they may not even use the coupons in the email. They might just come in and purchase and, yeah, if they actually enter their email address at the register, which you can see that they're desperately trying to tie everything together, but maybe I bought something and I didn't enter my email at the register, does that mean that that sale should not be attributed to email? No. It should. But if that's your strict rules, then no, it's not going to. And this is where I think something like effectiveness kind of sidesteps that because it's like, hey, we sent out this big email blast and sales in store went up. Great. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: We sent out this other big email blast and stores and sale went down. Oh. I guess that one wasn't as effective. Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: And so it's a way to sort sidestep attribution and really focus on what matters, which is how much are we putting out into the world and then how much are we getting in as a result of that? Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that that is something that's really useful, particularly for teams that are working across multiple channels. If you're sponsoring the local little league team, if you're doing some PR where they've been featured in the newspaper or even featured in different activities, and then you're also doing websites that to support that, not everything's going to be attributed. Every mention that you get for your brand isn't necessarily going to be attributed. Every link might not, you might see every single link necessarily. But yeah, it will add value to your brand and it will be able to … Dana DiTomaso: Especially if you're in a high profile field working with say a criminal defense lawyer, you know, if they had a really high profile case and they got somebody off because of a technicality, for example, people are going to call that lawyer. Are they going to say, hey, I called you because I Googled best criminal defense lawyer in thing? Like no, because of that case. Right? So how do you attribute that? Well, it's still marketing 'cause you were still good at your job. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dana DiTomaso: And so I think that that's where those kinds of things kind of get lost under the radar per se, but it's all attributions, all ways that people have heard about you. So why wouldn't we consider, for example, like the number of views of a news article about your business in addition to everything else that happens? Crystal Carter: Right. So this sounds wonderful. It sounds tricky to set up though, Dana. Dana DiTomaso: It is a little tricky, I have to say. And so there's a really simple, I have again another post on my site where I go through the process. If you just want to start with just the basics, the easiest thing to do is in Looker Studio you can attach Google Search Console, Google Ads, just add those two together, attach GA4 divided by the number of key events that are entered in your GA4. That's a really simple blend to accomplish in Looker Studio. And I go through it in the blog post. And that's a really good way to dip your toe in. But it doesn't have to be fancy. You could just have a spreadsheet with some numbers popped on it that you do some math on. Right? Like this is of true back of the envelope, are things trending in the right direction kind of question. Because one thing I really want to encourage us in the marketing spaces is stop being data accountants. We have sort of taken on this role of trying to be the most precise people in the room when it comes to data, and I don't think that ever should have been put on us. Right? You have accountants in the business. They serve a very useful role. As marketers, we should not be providing that accounting role and really trying to step away from that idea of precision and instead focusing on, say, trends or instead of presenting and say this landing page at 820 visits, say this landing page was 60% of your overall views of landing pages. This landing page, however, only converted people at a 30% rate. Really, if it's 60% of the views, we should see 60% of the conversions. So what can we do with this landing page to improve it or do we just know it's never going to be a great converting tool 'cause it pushes people off somewhere else, for example. You know? And I think that that's where really looking at those percentages instead of absolutes, I think, is really where the future of analysis in marketing and reporting is going. Crystal Carter: And I think also thinking of the percentages in terms of output, you know, like I know great SEOs who sometimes say to people, maybe you don't need SEO right now. Maybe what you actually need is ads for instance right now. Maybe that's what you need or maybe what you need is social right now because that's where your audience is. So I think that- Dana DiTomaso: Or maybe your website does not convert well and you should really work on that before we spend one more dollar getting more people to your website? Crystal Carter: We get them to there and then they just fall off a cliff. Dana DiTomaso: Right. Crystal Carter: That's not good at all. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Crystal Carter: So I think that that's important to know. So in terms of percentage of input compared to percentage of output compared to percentage of growth, I think that the trends are good, and also I think the trends are something that can help you benchmark yourself against almost anyone. So if you are seeing a 10% increase in your business, that's good, whether you're big or small, whatever kind of business you are, and that's useful to think about as well. So if you're seeing that your conversion rate and there are loads of people who have benchmarks for conversion rates across different sectors and stuff, if you're seeing that your conversion rate is on target, then you can plan how you scale what you do and all of that sort of stuff. Dana DiTomaso: I think there's also some value in considering when you're looking at your conversion rate, are you including people who already bought from you and can't buy again? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: You know? Like this is where setting up audiences in whatever, if different analytics tools do help you with this like GA4, for example, set up an audience of people who have not bought from you already, who didn't click the login button on your website. Those people, if they've logged in, they already bought from you. They're not going to buy again. You know? And the example I tell people about is we're working with a convention center, there's two audiences for the convention center. There's people who want to book events and there's people going to events. People going to events want to know how much parking is and the best way to get there and what transit routes go there. Very important information. Are the escalators broken? This was a huge thing at the convention center we were working with the escalators had this whole string of being broken. Right? So the other part of it, you have people who want to book events and when we're talking to the sales team, they do not really care about the people coming to events. That's customer experience. They care about the people who want to book events. So instead of reporting on a site-wide engagement rate, which is driven entirely by whether or not Disney on Ice happens to be there that night because more people are visiting the site, it drives down the conversion rate. Instead, we're only reporting on the people who actually visited a book page and then looking at those conversion rates. And it makes such a difference in the reporting to say, here's my really targeted audience. So again, if there's a way for you to say, these are the people who actually showed intent to go ahead and contact me, then that's what I'm interested in. You know, on Kick Point playbook. For example, we sell courses. If you already bought a course, you're not going to buy it again. Maybe you might buy for more members on your team, but for the most part, you bought the course, you're good. So why would we, in our conversion rates, look at absolutely everybody? Why would we not just look at the people who haven't bought a course yet? You know? And I'm sure that there's lots of ways you can think about how can I exclude people? And if there's nothing on your website that you can use to exclude people already bought from you, think about adding something. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's super, super useful. And I think that we have a whole course, we have the Wix Studio SEO course, and we have a whole section on reporting, because it's super important that you pay attention to the things that matter and segment your audiences. Segmentation is so important. I think that particularly when you're thinking about the messy middle for all of this stuff, because the middle is so much messier I think now in the last little while. I mean I find myself using multiple, multiple tools to find information these days. Some which result in a click. Some which do not result in a click. And so if you're able to segment your audiences so that you're very direct and very bottom up so that they are getting only what they need, then that will make a really, really big difference. I have a question just to get back a little bit in the weeds. What about users? How tricky is it to … these days with users? We talked about trends in terms of traffic and things like that, but I know for a fact I am one of these people that if I go into a store and I want to know what's going on with that product, I will go on their website and look at what they have on their website. I'll look at the reviews on the website. I'll check out other things that they have that I maybe can't find in the shop, but should be on the shelf. Then you also have people who are, like you said, you're sending it to your wife. You're sending it to the person, all these different people. So how tricky is it to keep track of users, especially as people are opting out of things, ad blockers … Dana DiTomaso: Oh. Yeah. I mean consent alone for sure. And this is a concern obviously, I would say. American businesses are starting to pick up on this, for sure, but European businesses are obviously far ahead and I think that European listeners, I would say, yeah, you haven't had analytics for a long time and you're kind looking at North America like what's your problem, man? We haven't been able to track things for years. You know? And I think that the consent management for sure, it's going to remove people. It'll have these conversations and they'll say, well, they said no to being tracked, but we want to track them anyway. You can't. Yes, there is modeling in GA4 where if enough people say no and enough people say yes, it will sort of fill in the blanks on what it thinks maybe happened. But I'm not necessarily a big fan of model data. I'd rather go with what's actually observed. And I think too that there's just accepting that you don't have that certain percentage of your data, and ideally your consent tool should show you how many people have said no. I use Cookiebot quite a lot for consent. I really like their tool. Crystal Carter: That's in Wix Studio. Dana DiTomaso: And they'll show me what percentage of people have said no. Yes. I really like Cookiebot. I think that they have the best set of metrics out there, and I think that they tell you what percentage of people said no, and you can be like, here's our report. 60% of people said no. So this is only 40% of our data, but we're going to make decisions in the 40% we're actually able to measure. Right? That's an important point to make when you're presenting a report to say, senior leadership, 'cause they're not going to know the intricacies of consent management and they don't care and they don't need to care. But then yes, also ad blockers, Chrome is making a change right now that should make ad blockers less effective, but it's an arms race and the ad blockers are going to win. So I think this is just temporary. And then, yeah, there's different devices, and this is the thing with GA4 when it says user, a user is a device, unless you have a log in on your site and you are reporting user IDs from that log in to GA4, and this is true of really any analytic system. Matomo, doesn't matter what you're using, you have to report those user IDs and it has to be something non-identifiable. You can't just say their email address in order for it to understand a user across devices. Otherwise the cookie is set at the device level. And if a cookie set it all, maybe they said no, but that's just how it is and it's how it's been for years. So when you're looking at users, you're really it just say devices, honestly. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. I think that's totally valid. 'Cause I'm absolutely somebody who is on my phone looking at a website on my phone and on my Chrome profile and sometimes on my other Chrome profile as well. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Oh. Marketers are the worst. I have eight different Chrome profiles for all the different accounts I have to log into. Right? I am the problem here. I understand that. Or you're talking about being in a store. More than once, I've been in Home Depot, where do I find this? Load up the website, tells you where to go. Great. Going to aisle nine, bin 18, perfect. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: But I didn't buy online. The Home Depot people are probably like. Why? Well, because standing in your store, I just need to know what it is. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Right. Dana DiTomaso: You know? Crystal Carter: Exactly. Exactly. Dana DiTomaso: So I hope Home Depot marketing people, if you're listening, I hope you have a system to filter that out, but like that's a great example of intent. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: I was never going to buy online. I'm buying in store. How do you deal with that? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Exactly. And I think that maybe we do need to relax, maybe we do need to just chill out a little bit and just. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Well, I don't think it's necessarily, we need to chill out a little bit. I think leadership needs to chill out a little bit. And I think this is where, as marketers, it really comes onto us to do that education piece. And there's always going to be people that you work for who are never going to accept that analytics is fuzzy and blah, blah, blah. They want exact numbers, and you may not be able to change your mind. That's okay. You might want to look for another job, but there are some people who will realize that as you explain to them, this is why things are fuzzy. And so again, but those of my website where I talk about reporting on trends on absolutes. I also talk about how to talk to senior leadership about this. But part of it is really a process. If you've been reporting in exact numbers for years, whether or not those numbers are accurate, that's not where you want to lead with it and say, hey, remember those reports they gave you? They were all lies. Don't start there. It's not a good way to keep your job. Instead, I would say start changing the metrics over slowly. Start removing decimal places. If you're reporting on year over year traffic, does 12.62 versus 12% actually matter? No. Of course not. Crystal Carter: That's a 0.6% increase. Dana... Dana DiTomaso: Oh. Pardon me. It's- Crystal Carter: ... that's a 0.6%. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Which if you round it up is 1%, so hey. Crystal Carter: Basically. Dana DiTomaso: But I mean that is just a rounding error. Right? Just round that number. Instead of 12.62 is 13%. Leave it at that. No one is going to get upset about it. Right? But those are the little changes you can start now. Start including a report that just has, you know, and I have some screenshot examples of this in my website. There's some charts we present that have just bars of percentage amounts of the total as opposed to individual accounts. It's a much easier way to present data or comparing to pie charts. You know, one of my favorite chart types is where I put a pie chart in the middle and then I put a donut around it, and then you compare the composition of the colors and the outer, for example, donut would be sessions by channel. The inner pie would be conversions by channel. Do the slices relatively match up? Yes. No. You know? And there's no numbers on it. We're just looking at whether or not the colors match. And so doing something like that is a really easy way to be able to visually communicate something without making it sound like you're talking over someone's head because nobody likes that. And then also really start to make those slow changes to explain things aren't as accurate as they used to be so this is what we're going to report on instead. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think so. And I think also if we think about conversions as the metric, which it generally ultimately comes down to conversions. Whatever the business is, if it's an attorney, if it's fast fashion, if it's a dog groomer, it will come down eventually to conversions. And I think that where you can say 50% of the conversions came from online, 50% of the conversions came from in-store, or whatever it may be, then I think that that's probably going to be something, a good trend line to follow. Would you agree? Dana DiTomaso: Yep. I would agree for sure. And I think, again, include some caveats with that trend line, but again, also make sure that what you're tracking as a conversion is actually meaningful. You know, for example, if you're using call tracking and you are say a dog groomer to pick on that example, returning phone calls is probably fine 'cause that's going to become a customer as well. If you're a home builder, returning calls, how many times do people order a custom home? You know? Probably not that often. So first time calls may be the way to go. Right? But again, it's not just like you don't want to include telemarketers in that number. You have to actually dial it down and say, here's the number of people who called us who were actually legitimate leads. Right? And so it's where using tools like call tracking, et cetera, are only as good as making sure that the person at the other end, whether it's you working in house and talking to your sales team, or if your agency side and talking to the client, get them to mark off things as good or bad. And I think that's where, you know, yeah, we can see the number of form fills. Were they good form fills? And I think a lot of marketers sort of leave it at the form fill happened and they don't follow through. And what separates an okay marketer from a good marketer is knowing whether or not that follow through happened. Were those leads good? Not just the volume. Crystal Carter: I learned that the hard way. I've told the story a few times. But I remember taking on an account and we got a bunch of signups on the form, more than they'd ever had, and they were like, we didn't notice that. And I was like, what do you mean? And they were like, oh, we didn't notice that. Did you notice that? It's like, oh, I don't know who actually answers those forms. Who actually gets those emails? Dana DiTomaso: Oh. No. Crystal Carter: Like, oh, I think Susan does. Oh. Susan was on vacation and literally my heart sank. Dana DiTomaso: Oh my God. I would, yeah. Crystal Carter: And I learned that the hard way. And this was a few years back. But it was definitely a teachable moment. And then from then on, whenever we started doing anything, I was like, okay, where does this form go? Who's answering that? If the form's not going anywhere, we should take it off. If you don't actually have a newsletter and you have a newsletter sign up, don't put one on there. Dana DiTomaso: That's my favorite is we say to people, hey, how often did you send a newsletter? They're like, oh, we don't. Why do you have this big prominent sign up pop up that comes up on every single page if you're never going to send people a newsletter? Yep. If you somehow convince people to sign up for it, how dare you let them down and then only email you with their Black Friday sale? You know, Black Friday's like the perfect day to find out what email list you've been living on for the past year that you had no idea, for example. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Absolutely. Speaking of newsletters and email lists, good newsletters, where can people find you? I know that you send out lots of fantastic information, actual good information… Where can people find you online to learn more about all of this fantastic stuff? Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. I would say I'm most active on LinkedIn. Although I am on Blue Sky now and using that a bit more, but I would say LinkedIn is still like the place to go. And if you go to KPPlaybook.com/Newsletter, you can sign up for our newsletter, which we send out every other week, and it is, I promise, useful. And if you are listening to this podcast and you would like a discount on any of my courses, use the code WIXSTUDIO to get 20% off any of my courses. Crystal Carter: We love it. Thank you so, so much for joining us, and thank you so, so much for all of that fantastic insight, and we will get all of those links in the show note. So thank you so very much, Dana DiTomaso. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure to follow Dana on all of her social media platforms, and she has a whole course. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Dana has so many courses and so much great content. So she's got great content on LinkedIn. She's got great content on Kick Point Playbook, so do check out all of that. If you're still confused about GA4, she's the person to help you with that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And yeah, stop being a data accountant and get yourself together. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. And to help you get yourself together with even more analytical nerd stuff is our follow of the week, Bri Anderson, self-described analytical nerd. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Bri's great as well, and she's got some fantastic stuff about GA4 and about getting to grips on that. And yeah, there's some great folks doing some great stuff with analytics. So do follow Bri. Do follow Dana. And yeah, get your data together because it's not easy out here, but you got to make it happen. Mordy Oberstein: So you and the captain can make it happen. By the way, that's a great cereal still. Crystal Carter: Cap'n Crunch? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you for getting the reference. Crystal Carter: I'm a Cheerios person myself. Mordy Oberstein: I like Cheerios. I eat Cheerios almost every day 'cause like got enough fiber, not too much fiber. Let's not get into that. But Cap'n Crunch still holds up for me. It's like a sugar cereal. That and Frosted Flakes still hold up for me. Some other sugar cereals don't. Like ew, that's Fruit Loops- Crystal Carter: Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Mordy Oberstein: Cinnamon Toast Crunch still holds up, but as you get older, some of them, the fruity ones don't for me. Like Fruity Pebbles, Fruit Loops, throw them in the trash. Cocoa Pebbles is fine. Crystal Carter: Man, I'm a granola and yogurt kind of person. I make my own granola. It's very good. Mordy Oberstein: You make your own granola? Crystal Carter: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: I never, how did I not know that about you? Crystal Carter: You never asked. Mordy Oberstein: Why would you? Can I ask? I'm supposed to ask like, hey, do you make your own granola? Crystal Carter: I do make my own granola. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. You don't, but there's nothing else about you that would indicate that. Crystal Carter: I do. Mordy Oberstein: Like you don't wear like gemstone jewelry. Crystal Carter: Hey, I blended my own tea yesterday with like multiple dried herbs. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I blended like tea before. I take two different tea flavors in the bag and you mix them together… Crystal Carter: No. I took like… I dried the herbs and then I put them in the thing, and I like did the whole- Mordy Oberstein: You also call them herbs? Crystal Carter: I live in England. My accent is confused. Mordy Oberstein: I thought I, I've known you for a long time at this point, and I'm finding out all these things all at once. Crystal Carter: I'm many layers, many layers. You thought you had all the data, but no. Mordy Oberstein: There's no better way to end the podcast than with that. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/SEO/Learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or on Spotify. Peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Dana DiTomaso  Brie Anderson Resources: Topical Authority Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course KickPoint Playbook Marketing Analytics Data is Wrong. Can It Be Fixed?: GA4: One year on Webinar Getting Started with GA4 Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Dana DiTomaso  Brie Anderson Resources: Topical Authority Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course KickPoint Playbook Marketing Analytics Data is Wrong. Can It Be Fixed?: GA4: One year on Webinar Getting Started with GA4 Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm your host, Mordy Oberstein, and I'm joined by she who is not blind. She can see, can see clearly now that the rain has come. She's our own head communications here, Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that lovely introduction. I cannot see as well as I used to be able to see. I have to wear glasses now, but I always forget that I need to wear glasses and then I try to look at things and I can't read them. And why are restaurants so dark? That's my question. Why are they so dark? Mordy Oberstein: They are dark. Crystal Carter: How am I supposed to read the menu? I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: It's so annoying. I got to say something. Restaurants are annoying place to eat a meal. Okay? There's, one, other people around you which is... Crystal Carter: Boo. Mordy Oberstein: ... not what you want. Yeah. Boo. Then secondly, while you're eating, people come around and ask you questions. Oh. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay? Crystal Carter: It's like it's a quiz. Mordy Oberstein: How are things? If I had a problem, you would know. Crystal Carter: What kind of bread would you like? I'm like bread. And then they named 17 bread. They're pumpernickel, rye, sourdough, white bread, brown bread, granary bread, seeded bread, loaf bread. I'm like, I don't know. I didn't know this was a bread... Mordy Oberstein: I want good bread. Crystal Carter: ... bread test. It was a bread test? I didn't know. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. And then there's music. Why do they play music? Now you can't even see the person. Now you can't talk to the person you actually want to talk to because they're playing stupid annoying. It's never good music. It's always annoying. Crystal Carter: I don't like it when you go to a restaurant and there's a million screens. I do not eat my dinner in front of a TV. And then I go to these restaurants and there's 17 TVs playing like 17 different baseball, basketball, football, hockey. Mordy Oberstein: Were you in a sports bar? Crystal Carter: There's loads of places where they're just always on even when you're not in a sports bar. Mordy Oberstein: I was in New York a while ago and went out to eat with my dad and it was on a football Sunday and there was the football game on. It was a regular restaurant. I mean, I was kind of happy to see the football game, but it was weird. Why is that even here? Crystal Carter: It's distracting. It's distracting. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So now that we told you we hate restaurants, SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Peter Lugers. No. It's brought to you by Wix Studio where you can use Wix Studio to get a recording of how users are interacting with your website for free. There is a paid plan as well, and natively is built right in three clicks. It's awesome. I love using it literally. We'll get into more on using data like that later, soon. This as today, are marketers flying blind? What are the metrics that still matter with changes to GA4 and reduced visibility in channels like ChatGPT. Are marketers flying blind? Data throttling in GA4 and GSC? What data matters and what data does it in a sea of analytics to help us sail your ship through the numbers analytics Maven teacher and consultant, Dana DiTomaso sat down with Crystal for a clear conversation about data. And of course we have who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So grab your binoculars, telescope, and magnifying glass or just get some LASIK as episode 121 helps you give yourself sight, the gift of sight of data analytics. Crystal Carter: So yeah, I had a fantastic conversation with Dana DiTomaso. I've heard her speak at MozCon and other events on multiple occasions and she's one of my favorite analytics marketers because she is so astute and so clear with she's, you know, how she communicates what she's saying. Mordy Oberstein: And funny. She's funny. Crystal Carter: She's funny. She's super awesome. And the other thing is that one of the things that really stuck with me, I think it was MozCon this year, she was talking about this topic and she'll get into it into the discussion, but she says that we need to stop being so beholden to the actual numbers. We need to be so beholden between whether or not it's 373 clicks or 375 clicks because really those two clicks isn't going to make that much of a difference and she'll get into this, but essentially the trends are... Mordy Oberstein: Trends. Crystal Carter: ... very important. Mordy Oberstein: Trends. So many times said this, by the way, I said this on Traffic Think Tank the other day because of all the rank volatility and Google's going to run out consistent updates all the time now, stop looking at actual numbers and look at like create a range for yourself of where you think this site normally ranges and just look at that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's the thing. I think that people need to be more intelligent about what actually matters. And I think that people need to be more intelligent about having a good understanding of their data and what normal is and what different is and figuring out what that means for them. Mordy Oberstein: You have me at people should be more intelligent. Crystal Carter: We'll see how it goes. But yeah, we had a super intelligent conversation with Dana and with her doing the heavy lifting on the intelligence there. Mordy Oberstein: So here's two really intelligent people having a really intelligent conversation about data intelligence. Crystal Carter: I am so pleased to be joined here today by analytics maven, Dana DiTomaso, who I've heard speak at MozCon on a couple of occasions about data and analytics and all of those fantastic things. She is the CEO of Kick Point and fount of knowledge of all things analytics. I'm so glad that she's joining us here today. Dana, welcome to the show. Dana DiTomaso: Thank you so much for having me. Crystal Carter: Such an absolute honor. And I think when we were looking at this topic, I said we have to speak to Dana because she knows all about this and basically we're kind of looking at the space that we're in terms of marketers and analytics. I feel like there's a certain amount of uncertainty that we have now. I feel like when I first started my journey as a marketer, even five years ago, I felt very certain about saying we've had this much traffic and we've had this channel brought us in this much value and all of that sort of stuff. Do you feel that certain these days in terms of the information that you're getting from the various tools out there as a marketer? Dana DiTomaso: No. But I also think that it hasn't been certain for longer even than five years. And I think that this is one of the big things that happened when people switched from universal analytics to GA4. A lot of people, if you were transitioning to it early, you had both running at the same time. You had UA and GA4 and you would look at the reports and they'd be different numbers and you would say, well, one of these is wrong. But the thing is they were both right. They were just measuring data in different ways and I think that this is where it sort of pulled back the curtain a little bit and said, hey, actually analytics data is only as good as your analytics measurement system, but there's also a sense of data capture in terms of what you're looking at when you look at analytics. And it doesn't matter if it's GA4 or Matomo or Fathom or any of the other millions of analytics products out there, it is only as good as what the system decides to do with the data. And what you're looking at is never the raw data. So when I first started the field back in the dark ages in 2000, we didn't have Google Analytics. It was called Urchin Analytics and Google bought them in 2004, but I didn't have that. In 2000 we had log file analysis. And I would say that log file analysis is probably the most reliable in terms of what pages are being viewed because it is actually requests from the server. And so we would use products like web trends, if people remember those, and we'd actually look at what things were accessed, but then as soon as other analytics product, and that was when you were looking at the actual raw data. But you're not going to look at the actual raw data and add it up yourself. That's when you use a tool to do it. So you are relying on the tool a little bit to process the data. And then as we move through the analytics landscape, people have ad blockers. People have tabs. People use different devices. You may not be able to tie people across those different devices. Right? And the classic example that I use quite often is, let's say, I am booking a pest control service for my house. I live in an area we have to spray for ants every year, whether you like it or not. And so I found this company that I want to go with, but I sent the link to my wife to do the booking 'cause she was going to be home and I was not. Well, I just texted her the link. That means the attribution path is lost. It's going to show up as direct in their system even though I found them originally from Google business profile. So that is a classic example of attribution that happens every single day. So if you look at your data and you need to point at it and say this is 100% correct, you are wrong. And it doesn't matter how good your analytics is, it doesn't matter if you're using what's called server side tracking, which gets around ad blockers 'cause there's still consent management. If someone says no to being tracked, you can't track them. But then there's also people just using the internet the way the people who use the internet and we really can't control or manage what happens there. So I think that there's a certain amount of uncertainty that we have to get comfortable with in analytics and I think that that's really difficult for analysts because we are used to a lot of certainty. Right? But coming at this from my SEO background, I mean what's the classic SEO response? Right? It depends. And so I think that SEOs are actually a little bit more comfortable with the idea of uncertainty, but because we've always had analytics presented to us as this, this is exact and this is perfect and this is, you know, then I think getting more comfortable with that uncertainty is something that actually, as SEOs, we could bring to analytics a little bit and get them to calm down a little bit on the exact numbers 'cause they're not real. They're never going to be real. They're just pleasant fairy tales sometimes. Crystal Carter: And I think that we all want to be able to get our little gold star, get our dopamine hit. We see that up into the right. And so I can't begrudge people for wanting to believe it's true. I want to believe. Dana DiTomaso: Oh yeah. I totally get that. Like I was working with this one client and we were switching them from UA to GA4 and it turns out that they had their UA code running four times on their blog. So every time someone viewed a page, it would record a four page visits. And then, of course, when we put on GA4, we had the setting turned on that doesn't allow that to happen. And so it was recording one page view and then they're like, oh my god, our traffic has gone down. What happened? Actually your traffic is the same. That's not the issue here. Right? And so this is why I talk about like how can you possibly report on this stuff, if you don't know for sure that's recording properly. Again, you could just have it running multiple times and be like, look, look at these numbers and no one else is going to go in there and double check. So you could be reporting on pleasant fairy tales. You don't know. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And I think also I think it comes down to are you reporting on stuff that actually matters in the first place? And all the analytics suites, you mentioned a few different ones. Wix Studio has built-in analytics. So there's CMS side analytics. There's going to be your third party analytics. There's going to be other stuff. And they're all measuring, they're all giving you various different metrics and some of them matter and some of them don't. And just because I know they say that if it isn't measured, it doesn't matter, but there's also just because measured doesn't necessarily mean that it matters. I mean classic examples like BMI. Right? My BMI is always off the chart, but I'm just thick. I don't know what to tell you. I did sports in high school and I could drop 10, I just, I couldn't possibly, I haven't been that weight since I was 16 and I would look ridiculous, if I was that weight. Dana DiTomaso: Oh no. I boxed for years. Being heavier is an advantage in boxing 'cause you can punch harder. That's why there's weight classes. Crystal Carter: Right. I know somebody who went to the doctor the other day and he told him his weight and the doctor was like, no way. Nuh-uh. I just saw you. And so he got on the scales like I can't believe you weigh that. It's like because it's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous made up measurement. But I think, again, if you think about BMI, which I think most people are familiar with as a general annoyance, it's kind of a guideline. I don't think necessarily that you should be beholden to it, but I guess it's kind of like if you're in the ballpark then that's sort of a guideline generally, but you shouldn't be beholden to it necessarily. You should use your common sense and understand that you did boxing, you did weightlifting, you did whatever. You're a professional athlete who is perfectly fine at this weight. And I think that with the analytics one that people used to go back and forth over was bounce rate all the time back in the day. And sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't. But I think also- Dana DiTomaso: Well, and bounce rate was never measuring what people thought it was too. And this is why I hate bounce rate so much. Anyone's ever seen me present you know that just say bounce rate and I just go on a tangent, but I mean in universal analytics, bounce rate was measuring if you viewed a page and then you didn't have a measurable event on that page, which meant that if you submitted a form and it didn't take you to a second page and you weren't recording that form submit, that person would bounce. And so unless I set up your analytics, I wouldn't trust that your bounce rate was correct. More than once I saw bounce rates close to 0% and it was because somebody decided to fake out bounce rate by having an event be recorded the moment the page was loaded. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: And it's like, yeah, you can totally fake out bounce rate. No problem. And in GA4, I think it is slightly more accurate. You have what's called engagement rate, but I've actually been testing whether or not you can fake that out. And you can. There's an event called user engagement that's recorded when a session becomes engaged and by default a session in GA4 becomes engaged when someone's had your tab as their active tab for at least 10 seconds, viewed a second page, or converted. If you send the user engagement event right away, you could artificially inflate your engagement rates. So it is possible to fake that out as well. But it is actually like you have to actually know what you're doing and try to fake it out. If anyone ever goes on my Kick Point playbook website, looks at the analytics there, you'll see some weird events called pizza, for example. It's just things I'm testing, but I always try to see how you can manipulate the system so I can spot it when I'm working with other people to be like this bounce rate or engagement rate doesn't seem correct. And then in GA4 there is bounce rate, but it's the inverse of engagement rate. So just use engagement rate. Let's all let bounce rate just die out. Thank you. The end. Okay. Crystal Carter: And I think that this comes to, but that's a great point because people, like I said, people are measuring, have been measuring things that don't necessarily matter. And I feel like with the traffic and attribution, I've had it before where I've had clients and I'm trying to piece together their attribution, messy middle because they have like it's an event. Like I had a client and their ticket booking system was a different one from the one that was their website that was different from their things. And then they have microsites and they have KB sites and then they have all of these different stuff and you're trying to piece it all back together. And I think it can be, like you mentioned traffic as a metric, I think that SEOs and speaking about the SEO map thing, traffic is going to become much more complex in the next few years with the advent of AI and an AI search and how people are getting to the content and how people are discovering the brand. So which metrics do you think still matter? Do you think traffic still matters? Do you think other things matter more? Dana DiTomaso: I think traffic is a good temperature check on what's going on. You know? And I think certainly myself and Will Reynolds for example from Seer have spoken about this quite a bit where Will's, I just saw a great presentation by him where he was talking about how he has less traffic on his site, but that traffic is more engaged, is more likely to get in touch with him. And I actually just published a blog post as well. If you do want to see how much AI traffic, AI tool traffic is coming to your website, I have a walkthrough on my website and we can include the link, the show notes of how to set up an AI tools channel in GA4 or really any tool, but it's a piece of what's called RegEx that you can set up and it'll pull out all that. AI tools traffic can put it into own channel for you. And that's really interesting to see as well. But I think it's where, I mean, generally in the industry, I think people have to realize that Google is not necessarily going to be the only player out there for a long time. And if you've been in this for a long time, as I have, Google wasn't always the big player. There's this like cool... Crystal Carter: Netscape. Dana DiTomaso: There's this like AltaVista. Yahoo was a thing. You know? Like it was being actually had a decent market rate for a little while there. So it's not impossible for us to move past Google. And I think search GPT for example, is definitely an existential threat to Google and they're taking it very seriously, as you can see. But I think that there are lots of different ways that people engage with this. If you're aiming for a younger audience, TikTok search, YouTube, by the way, second largest search engine and you report on YouTube search, probably not. Right? So I think that there's lots of opportunities for search that aren't necessarily what people immediately think of when it comes to search. And so when you think about things like traffic, this is where are you bringing together all of your actual traffic sources? And one of the things that I've really been reporting on is what I call efficiency rate. So are part of the effectiveness rate. It used to be called efficiency, I felt effectiveness was a better number. And so effectiveness looks at your impressions across all channels, all of your search console impressions, all of your ads impressions, like social impressions, number of people in your email list, all that stuff, add it all together, divide it by the number of transactions or conversions or whatever your final piece is. And this isn't just recorded in something like GA4, like how many people bought your stuff in store online, just the raw number of transactions. Look at that percentage. Is it going up or down over time? If it's going up, then that means you're more effective with your work, your marketing work that you're doing. If it's going down, then you're less effective. And then that means that maybe you've got some diminishing returns or maybe this big radio campaign you decide to spend some money on wasn't actually that effective or you introduced a bunch of broad match keywords into your Google Ads account you probably shouldn't have or there's lots of different things why but you'll know by looking at those overall trends. And the example that I give is for example, if people live in North America, Old Navy, very big, you know, fast fa, is there Old Navy in the UK? I'm not entirely sure, but. Crystal Carter: They don't have it in the UK. Dana DiTomaso: I think it's just North America. Crystal Carter: They should. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. It's just the idea. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. And they send out approximately 80 million emails a day individually to one person. If you ever get an email list, you're just going to get a thousand emails. Right? No one is going to go into the store and hold up their phone and say, I'm here today 'cause I got an email. Right? But that's probably what encouraged people to come in. And they may not even use the coupons in the email. They might just come in and purchase and, yeah, if they actually enter their email address at the register, which you can see that they're desperately trying to tie everything together, but maybe I bought something and I didn't enter my email at the register, does that mean that that sale should not be attributed to email? No. It should. But if that's your strict rules, then no, it's not going to. And this is where I think something like effectiveness kind of sidesteps that because it's like, hey, we sent out this big email blast and sales in store went up. Great. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: We sent out this other big email blast and stores and sale went down. Oh. I guess that one wasn't as effective. Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: And so it's a way to sort sidestep attribution and really focus on what matters, which is how much are we putting out into the world and then how much are we getting in as a result of that? Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that that is something that's really useful, particularly for teams that are working across multiple channels. If you're sponsoring the local little league team, if you're doing some PR where they've been featured in the newspaper or even featured in different activities, and then you're also doing websites that to support that, not everything's going to be attributed. Every mention that you get for your brand isn't necessarily going to be attributed. Every link might not, you might see every single link necessarily. But yeah, it will add value to your brand and it will be able to … Dana DiTomaso: Especially if you're in a high profile field working with say a criminal defense lawyer, you know, if they had a really high profile case and they got somebody off because of a technicality, for example, people are going to call that lawyer. Are they going to say, hey, I called you because I Googled best criminal defense lawyer in thing? Like no, because of that case. Right? So how do you attribute that? Well, it's still marketing 'cause you were still good at your job. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dana DiTomaso: And so I think that that's where those kinds of things kind of get lost under the radar per se, but it's all attributions, all ways that people have heard about you. So why wouldn't we consider, for example, like the number of views of a news article about your business in addition to everything else that happens? Crystal Carter: Right. So this sounds wonderful. It sounds tricky to set up though, Dana. Dana DiTomaso: It is a little tricky, I have to say. And so there's a really simple, I have again another post on my site where I go through the process. If you just want to start with just the basics, the easiest thing to do is in Looker Studio you can attach Google Search Console, Google Ads, just add those two together, attach GA4 divided by the number of key events that are entered in your GA4. That's a really simple blend to accomplish in Looker Studio. And I go through it in the blog post. And that's a really good way to dip your toe in. But it doesn't have to be fancy. You could just have a spreadsheet with some numbers popped on it that you do some math on. Right? Like this is of true back of the envelope, are things trending in the right direction kind of question. Because one thing I really want to encourage us in the marketing spaces is stop being data accountants. We have sort of taken on this role of trying to be the most precise people in the room when it comes to data, and I don't think that ever should have been put on us. Right? You have accountants in the business. They serve a very useful role. As marketers, we should not be providing that accounting role and really trying to step away from that idea of precision and instead focusing on, say, trends or instead of presenting and say this landing page at 820 visits, say this landing page was 60% of your overall views of landing pages. This landing page, however, only converted people at a 30% rate. Really, if it's 60% of the views, we should see 60% of the conversions. So what can we do with this landing page to improve it or do we just know it's never going to be a great converting tool 'cause it pushes people off somewhere else, for example. You know? And I think that that's where really looking at those percentages instead of absolutes, I think, is really where the future of analysis in marketing and reporting is going. Crystal Carter: And I think also thinking of the percentages in terms of output, you know, like I know great SEOs who sometimes say to people, maybe you don't need SEO right now. Maybe what you actually need is ads for instance right now. Maybe that's what you need or maybe what you need is social right now because that's where your audience is. So I think that- Dana DiTomaso: Or maybe your website does not convert well and you should really work on that before we spend one more dollar getting more people to your website? Crystal Carter: We get them to there and then they just fall off a cliff. Dana DiTomaso: Right. Crystal Carter: That's not good at all. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Crystal Carter: So I think that that's important to know. So in terms of percentage of input compared to percentage of output compared to percentage of growth, I think that the trends are good, and also I think the trends are something that can help you benchmark yourself against almost anyone. So if you are seeing a 10% increase in your business, that's good, whether you're big or small, whatever kind of business you are, and that's useful to think about as well. So if you're seeing that your conversion rate and there are loads of people who have benchmarks for conversion rates across different sectors and stuff, if you're seeing that your conversion rate is on target, then you can plan how you scale what you do and all of that sort of stuff. Dana DiTomaso: I think there's also some value in considering when you're looking at your conversion rate, are you including people who already bought from you and can't buy again? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: You know? Like this is where setting up audiences in whatever, if different analytics tools do help you with this like GA4, for example, set up an audience of people who have not bought from you already, who didn't click the login button on your website. Those people, if they've logged in, they already bought from you. They're not going to buy again. You know? And the example I tell people about is we're working with a convention center, there's two audiences for the convention center. There's people who want to book events and there's people going to events. People going to events want to know how much parking is and the best way to get there and what transit routes go there. Very important information. Are the escalators broken? This was a huge thing at the convention center we were working with the escalators had this whole string of being broken. Right? So the other part of it, you have people who want to book events and when we're talking to the sales team, they do not really care about the people coming to events. That's customer experience. They care about the people who want to book events. So instead of reporting on a site-wide engagement rate, which is driven entirely by whether or not Disney on Ice happens to be there that night because more people are visiting the site, it drives down the conversion rate. Instead, we're only reporting on the people who actually visited a book page and then looking at those conversion rates. And it makes such a difference in the reporting to say, here's my really targeted audience. So again, if there's a way for you to say, these are the people who actually showed intent to go ahead and contact me, then that's what I'm interested in. You know, on Kick Point playbook. For example, we sell courses. If you already bought a course, you're not going to buy it again. Maybe you might buy for more members on your team, but for the most part, you bought the course, you're good. So why would we, in our conversion rates, look at absolutely everybody? Why would we not just look at the people who haven't bought a course yet? You know? And I'm sure that there's lots of ways you can think about how can I exclude people? And if there's nothing on your website that you can use to exclude people already bought from you, think about adding something. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's super, super useful. And I think that we have a whole course, we have the Wix Studio SEO course, and we have a whole section on reporting, because it's super important that you pay attention to the things that matter and segment your audiences. Segmentation is so important. I think that particularly when you're thinking about the messy middle for all of this stuff, because the middle is so much messier I think now in the last little while. I mean I find myself using multiple, multiple tools to find information these days. Some which result in a click. Some which do not result in a click. And so if you're able to segment your audiences so that you're very direct and very bottom up so that they are getting only what they need, then that will make a really, really big difference. I have a question just to get back a little bit in the weeds. What about users? How tricky is it to … these days with users? We talked about trends in terms of traffic and things like that, but I know for a fact I am one of these people that if I go into a store and I want to know what's going on with that product, I will go on their website and look at what they have on their website. I'll look at the reviews on the website. I'll check out other things that they have that I maybe can't find in the shop, but should be on the shelf. Then you also have people who are, like you said, you're sending it to your wife. You're sending it to the person, all these different people. So how tricky is it to keep track of users, especially as people are opting out of things, ad blockers … Dana DiTomaso: Oh. Yeah. I mean consent alone for sure. And this is a concern obviously, I would say. American businesses are starting to pick up on this, for sure, but European businesses are obviously far ahead and I think that European listeners, I would say, yeah, you haven't had analytics for a long time and you're kind looking at North America like what's your problem, man? We haven't been able to track things for years. You know? And I think that the consent management for sure, it's going to remove people. It'll have these conversations and they'll say, well, they said no to being tracked, but we want to track them anyway. You can't. Yes, there is modeling in GA4 where if enough people say no and enough people say yes, it will sort of fill in the blanks on what it thinks maybe happened. But I'm not necessarily a big fan of model data. I'd rather go with what's actually observed. And I think too that there's just accepting that you don't have that certain percentage of your data, and ideally your consent tool should show you how many people have said no. I use Cookiebot quite a lot for consent. I really like their tool. Crystal Carter: That's in Wix Studio. Dana DiTomaso: And they'll show me what percentage of people have said no. Yes. I really like Cookiebot. I think that they have the best set of metrics out there, and I think that they tell you what percentage of people said no, and you can be like, here's our report. 60% of people said no. So this is only 40% of our data, but we're going to make decisions in the 40% we're actually able to measure. Right? That's an important point to make when you're presenting a report to say, senior leadership, 'cause they're not going to know the intricacies of consent management and they don't care and they don't need to care. But then yes, also ad blockers, Chrome is making a change right now that should make ad blockers less effective, but it's an arms race and the ad blockers are going to win. So I think this is just temporary. And then, yeah, there's different devices, and this is the thing with GA4 when it says user, a user is a device, unless you have a log in on your site and you are reporting user IDs from that log in to GA4, and this is true of really any analytic system. Matomo, doesn't matter what you're using, you have to report those user IDs and it has to be something non-identifiable. You can't just say their email address in order for it to understand a user across devices. Otherwise the cookie is set at the device level. And if a cookie set it all, maybe they said no, but that's just how it is and it's how it's been for years. So when you're looking at users, you're really it just say devices, honestly. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. I think that's totally valid. 'Cause I'm absolutely somebody who is on my phone looking at a website on my phone and on my Chrome profile and sometimes on my other Chrome profile as well. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Oh. Marketers are the worst. I have eight different Chrome profiles for all the different accounts I have to log into. Right? I am the problem here. I understand that. Or you're talking about being in a store. More than once, I've been in Home Depot, where do I find this? Load up the website, tells you where to go. Great. Going to aisle nine, bin 18, perfect. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: But I didn't buy online. The Home Depot people are probably like. Why? Well, because standing in your store, I just need to know what it is. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Right. Dana DiTomaso: You know? Crystal Carter: Exactly. Exactly. Dana DiTomaso: So I hope Home Depot marketing people, if you're listening, I hope you have a system to filter that out, but like that's a great example of intent. You know? Crystal Carter: Right. Dana DiTomaso: I was never going to buy online. I'm buying in store. How do you deal with that? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Exactly. And I think that maybe we do need to relax, maybe we do need to just chill out a little bit and just. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Well, I don't think it's necessarily, we need to chill out a little bit. I think leadership needs to chill out a little bit. And I think this is where, as marketers, it really comes onto us to do that education piece. And there's always going to be people that you work for who are never going to accept that analytics is fuzzy and blah, blah, blah. They want exact numbers, and you may not be able to change your mind. That's okay. You might want to look for another job, but there are some people who will realize that as you explain to them, this is why things are fuzzy. And so again, but those of my website where I talk about reporting on trends on absolutes. I also talk about how to talk to senior leadership about this. But part of it is really a process. If you've been reporting in exact numbers for years, whether or not those numbers are accurate, that's not where you want to lead with it and say, hey, remember those reports they gave you? They were all lies. Don't start there. It's not a good way to keep your job. Instead, I would say start changing the metrics over slowly. Start removing decimal places. If you're reporting on year over year traffic, does 12.62 versus 12% actually matter? No. Of course not. Crystal Carter: That's a 0.6% increase. Dana... Dana DiTomaso: Oh. Pardon me. It's- Crystal Carter: ... that's a 0.6%. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Which if you round it up is 1%, so hey. Crystal Carter: Basically. Dana DiTomaso: But I mean that is just a rounding error. Right? Just round that number. Instead of 12.62 is 13%. Leave it at that. No one is going to get upset about it. Right? But those are the little changes you can start now. Start including a report that just has, you know, and I have some screenshot examples of this in my website. There's some charts we present that have just bars of percentage amounts of the total as opposed to individual accounts. It's a much easier way to present data or comparing to pie charts. You know, one of my favorite chart types is where I put a pie chart in the middle and then I put a donut around it, and then you compare the composition of the colors and the outer, for example, donut would be sessions by channel. The inner pie would be conversions by channel. Do the slices relatively match up? Yes. No. You know? And there's no numbers on it. We're just looking at whether or not the colors match. And so doing something like that is a really easy way to be able to visually communicate something without making it sound like you're talking over someone's head because nobody likes that. And then also really start to make those slow changes to explain things aren't as accurate as they used to be so this is what we're going to report on instead. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think so. And I think also if we think about conversions as the metric, which it generally ultimately comes down to conversions. Whatever the business is, if it's an attorney, if it's fast fashion, if it's a dog groomer, it will come down eventually to conversions. And I think that where you can say 50% of the conversions came from online, 50% of the conversions came from in-store, or whatever it may be, then I think that that's probably going to be something, a good trend line to follow. Would you agree? Dana DiTomaso: Yep. I would agree for sure. And I think, again, include some caveats with that trend line, but again, also make sure that what you're tracking as a conversion is actually meaningful. You know, for example, if you're using call tracking and you are say a dog groomer to pick on that example, returning phone calls is probably fine 'cause that's going to become a customer as well. If you're a home builder, returning calls, how many times do people order a custom home? You know? Probably not that often. So first time calls may be the way to go. Right? But again, it's not just like you don't want to include telemarketers in that number. You have to actually dial it down and say, here's the number of people who called us who were actually legitimate leads. Right? And so it's where using tools like call tracking, et cetera, are only as good as making sure that the person at the other end, whether it's you working in house and talking to your sales team, or if your agency side and talking to the client, get them to mark off things as good or bad. And I think that's where, you know, yeah, we can see the number of form fills. Were they good form fills? And I think a lot of marketers sort of leave it at the form fill happened and they don't follow through. And what separates an okay marketer from a good marketer is knowing whether or not that follow through happened. Were those leads good? Not just the volume. Crystal Carter: I learned that the hard way. I've told the story a few times. But I remember taking on an account and we got a bunch of signups on the form, more than they'd ever had, and they were like, we didn't notice that. And I was like, what do you mean? And they were like, oh, we didn't notice that. Did you notice that? It's like, oh, I don't know who actually answers those forms. Who actually gets those emails? Dana DiTomaso: Oh. No. Crystal Carter: Like, oh, I think Susan does. Oh. Susan was on vacation and literally my heart sank. Dana DiTomaso: Oh my God. I would, yeah. Crystal Carter: And I learned that the hard way. And this was a few years back. But it was definitely a teachable moment. And then from then on, whenever we started doing anything, I was like, okay, where does this form go? Who's answering that? If the form's not going anywhere, we should take it off. If you don't actually have a newsletter and you have a newsletter sign up, don't put one on there. Dana DiTomaso: That's my favorite is we say to people, hey, how often did you send a newsletter? They're like, oh, we don't. Why do you have this big prominent sign up pop up that comes up on every single page if you're never going to send people a newsletter? Yep. If you somehow convince people to sign up for it, how dare you let them down and then only email you with their Black Friday sale? You know, Black Friday's like the perfect day to find out what email list you've been living on for the past year that you had no idea, for example. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Absolutely. Speaking of newsletters and email lists, good newsletters, where can people find you? I know that you send out lots of fantastic information, actual good information… Where can people find you online to learn more about all of this fantastic stuff? Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. I would say I'm most active on LinkedIn. Although I am on Blue Sky now and using that a bit more, but I would say LinkedIn is still like the place to go. And if you go to KPPlaybook.com/Newsletter, you can sign up for our newsletter, which we send out every other week, and it is, I promise, useful. And if you are listening to this podcast and you would like a discount on any of my courses, use the code WIXSTUDIO to get 20% off any of my courses. Crystal Carter: We love it. Thank you so, so much for joining us, and thank you so, so much for all of that fantastic insight, and we will get all of those links in the show note. So thank you so very much, Dana DiTomaso. Dana DiTomaso: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure to follow Dana on all of her social media platforms, and she has a whole course. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Dana has so many courses and so much great content. So she's got great content on LinkedIn. She's got great content on Kick Point Playbook, so do check out all of that. If you're still confused about GA4, she's the person to help you with that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And yeah, stop being a data accountant and get yourself together. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. And to help you get yourself together with even more analytical nerd stuff is our follow of the week, Bri Anderson, self-described analytical nerd. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Bri's great as well, and she's got some fantastic stuff about GA4 and about getting to grips on that. And yeah, there's some great folks doing some great stuff with analytics. So do follow Bri. Do follow Dana. And yeah, get your data together because it's not easy out here, but you got to make it happen. Mordy Oberstein: So you and the captain can make it happen. By the way, that's a great cereal still. Crystal Carter: Cap'n Crunch? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you for getting the reference. Crystal Carter: I'm a Cheerios person myself. Mordy Oberstein: I like Cheerios. I eat Cheerios almost every day 'cause like got enough fiber, not too much fiber. Let's not get into that. But Cap'n Crunch still holds up for me. It's like a sugar cereal. That and Frosted Flakes still hold up for me. Some other sugar cereals don't. Like ew, that's Fruit Loops- Crystal Carter: Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Mordy Oberstein: Cinnamon Toast Crunch still holds up, but as you get older, some of them, the fruity ones don't for me. Like Fruity Pebbles, Fruit Loops, throw them in the trash. Cocoa Pebbles is fine. Crystal Carter: Man, I'm a granola and yogurt kind of person. I make my own granola. It's very good. Mordy Oberstein: You make your own granola? Crystal Carter: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: I never, how did I not know that about you? Crystal Carter: You never asked. Mordy Oberstein: Why would you? Can I ask? I'm supposed to ask like, hey, do you make your own granola? Crystal Carter: I do make my own granola. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. You don't, but there's nothing else about you that would indicate that. Crystal Carter: I do. Mordy Oberstein: Like you don't wear like gemstone jewelry. Crystal Carter: Hey, I blended my own tea yesterday with like multiple dried herbs. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I blended like tea before. I take two different tea flavors in the bag and you mix them together… Crystal Carter: No. I took like… I dried the herbs and then I put them in the thing, and I like did the whole- Mordy Oberstein: You also call them herbs? Crystal Carter: I live in England. My accent is confused. Mordy Oberstein: I thought I, I've known you for a long time at this point, and I'm finding out all these things all at once. Crystal Carter: I'm many layers, many layers. You thought you had all the data, but no. Mordy Oberstein: There's no better way to end the podcast than with that. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/SEO/Learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or on Spotify. 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 Google sweet on your website, or does it have a secret grudge? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter get a little nostalgic as they take a quick detour into ‘90s music, reminiscing about Ace of Base and Hanson—Mmmbop! We learn how to shore up the pages that are on the brink between ranking and not ranking, and figure out if it is a topic or intent misalignment or if it has something to do with your topic depth. Minding the SERP gaps by comparing content with competitors, updating internal links, and supporting content. Andy Crestondina of Orbit Media gives recommendations on what to do once websites are established and already have brand awareness. Suggesting ways to diversify and continue to build momentum beyond the SERP. Don't miss these game-changing SEO insights, topped with a generous side of fun, on this spirited edition of SERP’s Up! Back How to tell if Google loves you Is Google sweet on your website, or does it have a secret grudge? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter get a little nostalgic as they take a quick detour into ‘90s music, reminiscing about Ace of Base and Hanson—Mmmbop! We learn how to shore up the pages that are on the brink between ranking and not ranking, and figure out if it is a topic or intent misalignment or if it has something to do with your topic depth. Minding the SERP gaps by comparing content with competitors, updating internal links, and supporting content. Andy Crestondina of Orbit Media gives recommendations on what to do once websites are established and already have brand awareness. Suggesting ways to diversify and continue to build momentum beyond the SERP. Don't miss these game-changing SEO insights, topped with a generous side of fun, on this spirited edition of SERP’s Up! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 104 | October 2,2024 | 56 MIN 00:00 / 56:37 This week’s guests Despina Gavoyannis Despina is a Senior SEO Consultant with 8+ years of experience growing B2B, e-commerce, SaaS, and national brands. She's an optimist at heart, taking time to enjoy life's silver linings each day. Andy Crestondina Andy is the CMO and Co-Founder at Orbit Media Studios. He has been at the forefront of digital marketing innovation for over two decades. With a deep-seated passion for SEO, analytics, and website optimization, Andy is highly regarded as a leading expert in the marketing field. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights into what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head SEO of brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by she who is always transparent, clear, and crystal. Our own head of communications, Crystal Carter. There's no doubt when it comes to Crystal. Crystal Carter: I get charged up in a full moon. I find water really easily as well. That's another thing. Mordy Oberstein: You have the two pronged stick that finds water? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I'm very reflective in my general demeanor and I like to think that I bring a nice warm glow. Mordy Oberstein: You always know where you stand with Crystal. Crystal Carter: It's true. It's true. Mordy Oberstein: For better or for worse. I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: Mostly for better, I hope. Mordy Oberstein: Only for better. The SERP'S Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our built-in Google Search Console Insights to see just how much Google does love you. As today we're diving into the gray area of the algorithm, how to know the signs of whether or not Google does or doesn't love you. What are the telltale signs that Google is infatuated with your website? What are some of the signs that they maybe are not infatuated with you, and how do all of those reversals you see in algorithm updates factor into this love triangle? HREF's Despina Gavoyannis will join us to share her tips on how to shore up those pages that might be wavering in the rankings. Plus, Orbit Media co-founder, and all around great digital marketer star, Andy Crestodina stops by to chat about what you can do while you're waiting for Google to fall in love with you. So turn up your Ace of Base because today we're showing you the sign of algorithmic love on this the 104th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast. Full disclosure, I had a moment in time where I actually liked the Ace of Base for five minutes. Crystal Carter: Dude, I totally had that CD. I mean, that introduction definitely opened up my eyes. I think. Mordy Oberstein: What's the other song they had? They have another one, one other song. Crystal Carter: The, All That She Wants. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right, that one, right. What the hell were we thinking with that crap. Crystal Carter: Dude. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's terrible. Crystal Carter: They've gone a little bit off the rails in recent times, but in 1998 or whatever- Mordy Oberstein: It made sense in the moment. I remember as a kid being like, "Oh, this is great," and an older friend is like, "No, don't say that. It's not good." Crystal Carter: You had to be there, man. You had to be there. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's kind of like Hanson but worse. Hanson I thought was a good... like, Hanson was good. Crystal Carter: MMMBop is a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good song. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. MMMBop comes on and I am singing every single word. And the breakdown. Mordy Oberstein: There are only three words in MMMBop. What do you mean all words? Crystal Carter: No, I mean there's lots of parts that aren't words like, du dubi dop, ba du bop. Mordy Oberstein: Di dibby dop dop, the du ap. That's the... Crystal Carter: Then there's all of the verses. It's very- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great song. Crystal Carter: You say you can, but you don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Bob Dylan, it is not. Crystal Carter: No, of course not. It's a bop. It's a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a word. Is it a word? Crystal Carter: It's like, the quintessential bop. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, it's great. I'm all for the MMMBop, I'm all for the Hanson. They played their own instruments like, win. Crystal Carter: Hey, I mean, all this nineties nostalgia. It was a beautiful life. Whoa, oh, oh, oh. Mordy Oberstein: How do I pivot this into SEO? I'm just not... just whatever. It's not... Not every day to win is a win, and not every loss is a loss. There's a lot to read into it. And sometimes Google demotes a site's rankings, but you may not know that's going to be a real long-term problem. Maybe these are signs of signals, Google's having a real issue with your website. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the ebb and flow of the rankings on the SERP these days, although it's always been volatile, but pretty, especially these days. For example, you can have a prolonged slow ebbing of the rankings over time. That to me is usually a very serious issue. For me, that's usually something where Google has a quality issue with your website and it's slowly eroding away at your rankings over time. I know we're used to looking at a quality issue with your website as, oh, algorithm update, goodbye, but sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes you might see a downtrend with the algorithm update and then it slowly ebbs and erodes from there. At the same time, there are signs that maybe Google does like your content, and those could be really important for you to realize what those are because then you can improve upon them and build upon them. For example, one case that I saw back with the March 2024 core update was it was a certain keyword and the only website that was ranking... all of the websites that were ranking were pages that were specifically built to target that keyword, meaning the only topic that those pages dealt with was the topic represented in that keyword. There was this other page though that showed up around position like three, four or five, forgot exactly, and that was about the topic overall, but it dealt with as a subtopic, that one aspect of the page dealt with the keyword. That to me was a signal looking at that page and then how that page ranked and how the website ranked overall where Google's like, you know what? This website is so strong that we're even going to rank you for instances or keywords where the page isn't specifically targeting just that keyword, and even though the only other pages that are ranking are targeting that keyword, we're going to rank you anyway 'cause the content overall is so great that you now have the power to rank... in this case, this website had the power to rank, even though it wasn't particularly targeting that keyword, but just dealt with the topic tangentially. That might be a sign. In this case, it was a sign that the site was really showing favor and love in the eyes of Google, so it's really important, I think, to know what those signals and signs might be. I don't think it's an exact science because sometimes you just don't know. Having a look and seeing what the signs are that Google really does have an issue with your website or that Google doesn't, and really is loving your website. Knowing those signs and signals or trends can really be important guiding what you do for your SEO strategy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because I think it determines how much risk you take with different topics and whether or not you, as you said, go into the sort of tangential ones, whether you try something that maybe is very long tail and whether or not you... and whether or not you go for some of those head terms. Because if Google is generally into you, then you'll know because you'll have a couple of big ticket, big search volume pieces of content, and if you're able to give them something that's similar to some of your rock star pieces of content, then they're going to come back for more, and so if you can prove that users appreciate your content and that you have a good experience for users who come to the website, things aren't glitchy, that it all works well, that it's superfast loading, that kind of thing, then yeah, Google's probably going to send you some more traffic because I think what people forget is that Google's into you because users are into you. What's it called? Danny Sullivan was talking about the user signals. We have a podcast on user signals and stuff previously, but he said that people were like, oh, Google uses user signals. He's like, we've always said that. We've always paid attention to that. Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Old. Crystal Carter: Old, not new. And it's not a question of just doing it for Google, which I think Google has been trying to get into people's brains for the last couple of years. It's not just about doing it for Google, it's also about doing it for users, and then Google will see that works and then they will send their users to you. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you were talking about profiling the types of keywords that you're ranking for. That's a huge thing, by the way, to take a look at because you should really be breaking down, not just, am I ranking? Am I not ranking? That's way too broad. Am I ranking or does Google love me? Is too broad of a question. You should really be looking at where does Google rank you? Where do they not rank you? Meaning where do they love me? Where do they not love me? How do they understand me? Because being understood is really what it means to be loved, but really looking at what folders or what types of keywords or topics am I ranking for, and those sort of things are really important to understand so that either you can double down on that and build on that or say, you know what? Or cut off what's not working. It's like a bad limb on a tree. It's dying. Just cut that off. Just happened to me with a tree. Crystal Carter: Because like any relationship, there's going to be things that are annoying. Mordy, you've been married for a while, I've been married for a while. You're in a long-term relationship, there's things that are annoying about yourself and about your partner and Google will know what things they don't like about your website, but they'll know the things that they do like about your website and just if you're in a relationship and you know that maybe they don't like when you leave your shoes in the doorway or maybe they don't like it when you, I don't know, play your music really loud or something like that. If you're trying to carry favor with someone, you wouldn't do the things that you know irritate them. You would do the things that they like. So if you know that they like it when you make that particular dinner for them, you know that they really love that lasagna that you make, give them more lasagna. That's the thing. So you look at your keywords and you're like, what are the things that they like, give them more of that. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes it's very clear that they don't like that. You just don't rank for that no matter what you do and how many links you've built from high DA sites, you're not ranking for that. But sometimes it's a little bit tricky. For example, sometimes you could see with every algorithm update official and unofficial, you get thrown into the volatility fire. That's probably a sign that you might be okay in the end, you might not be okay in the end, but Google's clearly looking around at other partners. Crystal Carter: Right. Right, right, right, right. I had a client and they used to have a lot of competitors, so they'd have loads of competitors for particular keywords, and it was really spicy. Basically for this particular SERP, there was up and down, who was in one, who was in three, and the top five would switch around a lot depending on who had updated what most recently and stuff. In those situations, you really need to give Google your attention in order to make sure that you're able to stay on the side of having that SERP visibility, and that can include, it's sort of a quid pro quo. You want traffic, you have to give them more opportunities to give you traffic. It's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of schema markup and structured data because it gives you more opportunities to get on the SERP because you have more opportunities to get more rich features, for instance. And if your competitors are not optimized in that way, then they have fewer opportunities to get on there. It's another reason why I'm a big fan of using multimedia because that also gives you more opportunities to get in there. It also gives Google more opportunity to show you to different folks, and it helps them to understand your content better. So if you want them to help you, you also have to help them, but there's that saying, what is it? "The Lord helps those who help themselves," and you need to help yourself to let them help you. And I'm not saying that Google's Lord or whatever, but I think that it's worth thinking about it in that way anyway. So yeah, multimedia is something that can help you. Structured data is something that can help you. Obviously having relevant, well-written, well-researched and well-known, as in you're distributing it to people who need to know about it. You're getting people enthused about it. The content that's getting people hyped up is really useful as well because Google can take those signals and go, oh, okay, this sample of people liked it. Then we can show it to other samples of people. The other thing about that kind of thing is today, so historically speaking, when we think about content distribution, we think about it from a sort of opportunities for clicks and things like that, but in today's space where Google is not just a publisher, but Google also is a web browser and Google's also a phone manufacturer and Google is also, they have data on my wallet. I use Google Wallet all the time. They've got all of that data. They store my phone, my phone photos and all that sort of stuff. Google also, when you're sending signals out, when you're sending your content out on social, for instance, you're also giving them signals for which users to send your content to. I don't have the exact technical links between all of the content that they store and all of the data that they store, but they're going to be getting signals from, even if it's a small amount. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's the semantic analysis, that's the semantic web. It's like showing how it's all connected and making those links. Crystal Carter: Right. And like the For You feed essentially from Google that comes up... the Discover page, sorry, that shows up. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. For you is Twitter. Crystal Carter: And also on TikTok as well, but it's basically, it's a similar kind of thing. So,- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. Crystal Carter: ... if I- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And so- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Yankees and SEO. Crystal Carter: So for instance, if you send content to a few people and then they're like, okay, this kind of person likes this content, that gives more opportunity to filter down those bespoke queries, which are going to get more and more bespoke as we get into a more AI assisted search space. So I think that we need to show them that we care about our content before we expect them to care about our content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And the last thing I want to say, I agree with that a billion percent. The last thing I want to say before we get into Despina is, I'm not always big on rank tracking. I think sometimes it could be a little bit of a... you run into the problem of being a little bit of vanity or a little bit too micro-analytic. But looking at rank tracking patterns over time is a great way to get an understanding of how much Google is into you and how Google is not into you, where they're into you and where they're not into you. So if you are using a rank tracking tool, I would highly recommend you go back and look at the rank tracking trends over an extended period of time to take a look at volatility within your keywords and break them down into subcategories or tags, as they're traditionally referred to in SEO tools and to really get an understanding of where Google is into you, where they're not into you, and how in into they are. Crystal Carter: And I think also, I think you need to think about the variables of content creation and all of that sort of stuff. One of the things that you also want to think about is, let's say you're tracking this stuff and you're seeing the patterns and you're seeing the way that Google's looking at the way your content is created, etc. One of the things you might also want to think about is, is it my domain or is it the content? Right? So sometimes if you serve the content on a different domain or if you serve similar content in a different platform, and let's say it goes off, so let's say you've been writing your blog, writing your blog, and maybe you're not getting that much traffic, but let's say you do a guest post on a different blog and that gets loads of traffic and you've taken the same approach that you always do, that's a really positive signal, that's a really positive signal that if you keep going in the way that you're going, that you'll eventually get the traffic. It doesn't mean that you'll get it right that second, but it means that the content itself is good, and that means that the technical things that you do might need to change, but the content itself is solid. And you see this on social a lot where you'll have some creator will do a video or something and then some bigger platform like Lab Bible or something will share it on there and that will go really big. And if it goes off on there, you're like, okay, the content is good. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great point. It's such a good point. Crystal Carter: Distribution, whichever, might be the technical, it might be whatever that might need to change, but the content itself is good. And so I think it's important to do that not just for link building, but also to understand what it is that you need to tweak in order for Google to- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Yeah, is it your authority? Is it the content, is it the technical aspect of it? All that diagnosing where the problem is? That's a great point. Speaking of shoring up that content and finding out what you should be doing and how to go about doing it, we spoke to HREF's Despina Gavoyannis about how to shore up a page or pages that seemed to be wavering between ranking and not ranking. Here's what she had to say. Despina Gavoyannis: So like anything with SEO, it depends on your situation, like what you're seeing and what kind of positions your page is wavering between, because I've seen pages, they just don't stick in the SERPs at all like your targeted keyword, but then in the top 100 they'll show up sometimes and then just drop out of the top 100. So if you're seeing that sort of thing, that's a really big kind of flickering. And to me that is a hundred percent about topic alignment and intent alignment. It means you're targeting the right keyword, sure, but you're not really matching your content with what Google and people expect to see. So when you fix that up, the intent misalignment there. Generally what you'll see is that the page will stick in the SERPs. Now if you wanted to rank higher and stick higher, so for example, it'll land somewhere generally in the top 50 results is what I see, maybe even in the top 30. But then you want to get it ranking and if what you are seeing is that it's wavering between say the bottom of page one and page two, so you can't quite crack position 10 and stay there or higher. So in that case, it could be a topic or an intent misalignment. It could also be a topic depth thing. Maybe you don't have as many sections in your content that cover the subtopics that are relevant to the keyword, and your competitors might be doing a better job of that. So looking at their content and any kind of gaps in terms of the content topic depth perspective. Also looking at any gaps in your core fundamentals of SEO, things like, on-page and links. A lot of SEO depends on doing these small things that on their own don't move the needle much or even at all, but in combination can have a big impact. So for example, if your competitors have much more solid on-page optimization than what you do, that's a big gap. So they're doing it and they're doing a lot of little things that can add up and have a big impact in total. Whereas if you are not doing any of it or very little of it, then that creates a huge gap right there and it's a pretty easy gap to fix. So making sure that you've got your keywords in your headings, you've got keywords in your URLs, that you've got image alt texts and things like that, and providing a great user experience with the page itself, make sure that's all sorted. Also with links, don't look at it just from your whole website. Get links to the individual page and close those gaps. This includes internal links. So if you're covering the topic in other articles on your website, make sure you are internally linking to the page you're trying to support. And also I suppose if you can't internally link because you don't have enough content or any kind of mentions about the topic, then in that case you need to create supporting content so that it works as a hub or a bit of a content cluster that can support each other. And that helps in terms of closing topical gaps across your whole website, not just within one article. And finally, if you've tried all these things, and you're still not seeing much movement. Evaluate the recency of your content. Is the advice relevant to people right now? Even if you add new sections and technically the date on your content might be written in this year, the advice you're giving might still be outdated or not providing great user experience or things like that. So look at, is it relevant to people right now? Is it providing the best experience to people right now? Are your competitors potentially doing a better job there? And if you're not sure, if you can't be unbiased about it, you can use a website like user testing and get real people's feedback, get them to compare your competitor's content to yours and to give you their thoughts on which one they think does a better job of answering a particular question or for a specific keyword. It helps you overcome biases in your own thinking of what's working and whether your content is actually good compared to competitors or not. So those are a few of the things that I think can help. In summary: check your intent misalignment, cover any topical gaps, cover any really basic SEO gaps like, on-page and links. Those have been fundamentals for ages for a reason. Make sure that you're doing internal linking and topical gaps are covered across your whole website. And then also check the recency in user experience of the content for people searching today. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Despina. Look for Despina out on social media. Link to her profile is in the show notes. Yeah, it comes back to we're talking diagnosing. Diagnosing what the problem is, what you should be doing, have a methodical approach. Also running through the options like she's talking about. You don't always know exactly what it is. You have to roll through them and throw the kitchen sink at it in a way. So diagnose, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and also I think she was talking about testing as well. So one of the things she mentioned was user testing. So getting people to look at it and why do you think this content is better? Or why do you think this content is good? Why do you think this content is struggling or whatever? And I think she's totally right because you see this a lot. And Glenn Gabe is a big advocate of user testing for websites and particularly for user journeys because sometimes if you are in it all the time, you don't know how difficult it is to find the things that people need to find. Or maybe you do know how difficult it is, but you've gotten so used to having to navigate it in the way that you do that you're not conscious of it. So I think that getting someone with a fresh set of eyes can be really, really useful, even if, I think she mentioned that it can be a bit painful sometimes. You might have to eat a little bit of humble pie, but it is really important to do and really, really valuable both for publishers who are doing it directly and also for agency folks who are managing clients. Mordy Oberstein: And humble pie is fine because pie is pie. Pie is good. Crystal Carter: I love pie. I'm a big fan of like- Mordy Oberstein: Pie is the best- Crystal Carter: I do love Pie. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best dessert. I'm sorry, hands down, it's pie. Crystal Carter: I also like a savory pie, like- Mordy Oberstein: Like shepherd's pie? Crystal Carter: Shepherd's pie, cottage pie, chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Chicken pot pie is delicious. Oh, love chicken pot pie. Crystal Carter: Right. In England there's a lot of savory pies. It's really common. Also in America, you get chicken pot pie. Chicken pot pie is the classic one. I don't eat meat anymore, but when I did, I was all about the chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Which one? Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. There are lots of delicious, lots of delicious veggie pies that I'm a big fan of. So yeah, pies are good. I just generally like things that are pastry with yummy stuff in the middle of it. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best. It's literally the best. I don't have access to a lot of pie where I live, which means we don't live in a perfect world and while we're not living in a perfect world and you're sorting out your love or Google's love for you, to make sure your content is bringing in the traffic and the conversions and yada yada yada that you want, while that's all being worked out, you might want to try other marketing activities to drive that awareness, traffic, leads, and conversions instead. It's a crazy idea. Which is why we're going down a rabbit hole in a little segment we call, from the top of the SERP, as in this case, we're looking at not what gets you to the top of page one, but what other activities can get you traffic while you work your way there. And to help us, we have special guest, the co-founder of Orbit Media, Andy Crestodina. Andy, welcome to the SERPs Up Podcast. Andy Crestondina: I am glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for sticking with us by the way, because the audience doesn't know this. I've known your name for many, many years, but I couldn't get it out of my mouth the right way. Andy Crestondina: I stumbled on it myself. No trouble at all. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you with us today. Andy Crestondina: Yeah, thanks for having me, Crystal. I'm glad. This will be fun. I've been looking forward to this. I'm psyched. Mordy Oberstein: So I know it's a little bit like heresy to the SEO folk listening to this. If you're not an SEO folk, this makes obvious logical sense. But putting all of your eggs in one algorithmic basket, whether you're still trying to get Google to love you and whatnot, or in general, Google does love you now, they might not love you tomorrow. What do you recommend sites do? Let's say there are an established website, they have traffic, they have some brand awareness. What do you recommend they do to really increase that, diversify their channels and get some momentum beyond the SERP? Andy Crestondina: I love this question. I think that it's important for SEOs to consider this because there is such a thing as topic channel fit, and there are lots of articles and web pages and service we offer different things that have no keyword opportunity. Only about half of the articles that I write are actually relevant for search. And that's fine. I'm not a keyword first marketer. I'm trying to connect a piece of content to a target audience. So my first thought is, I'm making this thing, is there a keyword opportunity here? If no, no problem, I can use other channels. Everything can be promoted in email and social, through influencers, and other ways. So it's really important to keep that in mind. And I sleep well at night knowing that I am not totally beholden to Google for all of my traffic and that I can be kind of a dual threat marketer. There's more to life than search and many things that we all make really are not relevant for that channel whatsoever. Crystal Carter: I think that's a really interesting way to think about it because I've definitely seen people go, oh, well, we shouldn't write this blog because it doesn't have a good search volume. We shouldn't write this piece of content because no one's going to find it on Google or the search volume's low or that sort of thing. And I think it's really interesting that you're like, this is a thing that people need to hear. We can get it to them in a different way. If it's not for search, it can go another way. Is there a way that you sort of figure out which is the best channel for a piece of content that you think people need to hear? Andy Crestondina: For sure. The job of the search marketer is to basically meet expectations. The searcher has an information need and your job is satisfy that information need. The social media marketer, the job is to be a little bit unexpected. See how that's actually the opposite channel? So there are lots of topics where social is the proper channel. Let's say you want to put out a counter-narrative perspective. No one's looking for counter-narratives, they're looking for confirmation or they're looking for an answer. And thought leadership. Another way to say that, op-ed content, anything that is a perspective where you're trying to start a conversation or you're saying something that's maybe contrarian to the conventional wisdom. That stuff crushes social media. It's great in social, it starts big conversations, right? Say something interesting. So search, if your content meets expectations, search. If your content is a bit unexpected, social. And by the way, these channels, understanding the difference between social and search, it's so fascinating. In search there's actually a ceiling to the amount of demand in the market. There's only X number of people searching for a topic each day, but social media, there is no limit. I have seen things... If you've never seen the analytics for a mini viral event, you're missing out. It is breathtaking how many people are on the internet. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, totally true. Andy Crestondina: And if you're exhausted, just long form content, long text pieces, Hey, guess what? The short, punchy, pithy thing, the highly visual thing, the collaboration with an influencer thing, social's perfect. So you don't have enough in your content mix, and Mordy, thanks for saying diversification because that's the perfect perspective. If you are not first thinking of the topic, what does my audience need? What's the most interesting thing I can do today? And then asking what is the proper channel for promoting this thing? The answer is not always search. Mordy Oberstein: So when you're thinking of diversifying those channels, okay, I am not going to write for search. Where do you start? What are you looking at? Is there like, okay, I want to do something on social. Does the channel drive the strategy itself or the type of content drive the strategy, trying to build a brand awareness? What's driving the overall strategy for you? Andy Crestondina: Well, I am a fifteen-year content strategist, and I often think to myself, this is something new, interesting, helpful, valuable to me, working for me, I should share this with the world. Next question. Is this something that could work in content marketing or maybe I'm just make this as a sales enablement piece. By the way, there's bottom of funnel content that you can share with prospects that is 100X the value of that new weird top of funnel, high search volume phrase. Make something for your prospects first. I'd say let's all prioritize the bottom of the funnel. And then whatever that thing is, whatever you're making, does it relate to other pieces of content? Is there already a conversation happening about this? Is this part of a trend? Is this content evergreen? What is the proper format? Should this be a video or long form text or is it an infographic thing here? Give you an example. Two weeks ago, I've always been thinking about this, you know how every chart in marketing is like a log scale curve. There are no straight lines. The top performers are... search especially, top performer gets most of the clicks. Number two gets half as many. Number three gets a third as many. That mathematical distribution is called the Zipfian distribution. Okay, you've never heard of that? No one's heard of that. I get it. But actually it's super interesting that that Zipfian distribution applies across topics and formats and channels. Click-through rate by search position, and a tiny percentage of things go viral, and a tiny percentage of social accounts gets most of the engagement. And a tiny percentage YouTube videos get most of the views. That's a really interesting way to think about marketing and it's valuable because you can focus on trying to make top performers and avoid making the medium quality stuff , but there's a practical takeaway. Okay, you get the idea. I'm making this article, right? I want to do this. I want to show the charts. I want people to see the alignment between this math thing and their marketing, and I want to make strategic recommendations based on that. Focus on the 10X things. No keyword opportunity at all. No one is searching for log scale pattern- Crystal Carter: Zipfian. Andy Crestondina: ... marketing. Yeah, George Zipf. So no problem. I'm making it anyway. I feel strongly about this. I think the world needs the article. It's a failure of the internet that this article doesn't exist. That's how passionate I am about creating it. Who has all the data? Pete Caputa from Databox. Let's talk to Pete. Great, Pete and I have a call. He shares a bunch of data. I overlay my little chart thing on it. He starts a conversation on LinkedIn. I jump in, I write the article, I publish on LinkedIn, he jumps in. It got huge results. Nothing to do with search. What did I do? I found something that was visual. I collaborated with a subject matter expert. I didn't hesitate to write the cool, weird, fun headline with no keywords in it. It's liberating, by the way, to not have to worry about keywords sometimes, right? In search, I'm all in or I'm all out. If that thing's keyword relevant, I'm totally focused on making something that is the best page on the internet for that topic. But if it's just an unusual thing, a weird thing, a visual thing, a surprising thing. It's kind of like working with, if you've ever worked with an innovator or an inventor or someone who makes new things, no one's looking for new things. It doesn't exist yet. Those people should still start those companies. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think it's like, if you were cooking for, I don't know, 500 people, if you were cooking for, I don't know, the family reunion or something like that, you're not going to do an artisanal ceviche or something with heirloom tomatoes from here, there and there. You're going to do the macaroni and cheese. You know that the macaroni and cheese is going to get the most people and they're going to enjoy it and they're going to be happy. Whereas, I don't know, if it's some special dinner for your anniversary or whatever, and it's a special person and you know that they'll appreciate that you've spent all of this time, but it's a different audience. You're still cooking, you're still making whatever you're making, but it's a different kind of situation and they'll appreciate it more. And both audiences will appreciate that you've taken the care to give them the right thing, in the right space. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. Crystal Carter: ... really important. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great example. Andy Crestondina: Yep. Mac and cheese, that's the highest search volume key phrase. And my daughter loves it. But the heirloom tomato, like the fancy Caprese salad that people weren't expecting, like, whoa, dude, pine nuts. Wait a minute, that's a different... you get it, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Andy Crestondina: So, it's really kind of a boring content strategy both for your readers to consume and for you to create if you think that everything's got to be a keyword. Come on. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, a thousand percent. Crystal Carter: And I think also, so there's a couple of things that I come for that. So people who have just discovered you on our podcast might not know that you are also speaking from the point of having a massive social media following. So I think that that's something that's worth thinking about as well. If you're not following Andy on LinkedIn, you should do that because it's absolutely worth doing. And all the other channels as well- Andy Crestondina: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: So I think that that's something that's really important to think about as well, is that you have spent time cultivating an audience that you know is interested in the thing that you found really fascinating this week. The thing that you found really fascinating today or whatever it may be. And I think that in order to do some of the things that you're talking about in order to speak to some of that more creative, more out-of-the-box content, do you think that it's worth building that community first before you start doing that? Or do you think the two things go together? Andy Crestondina: I'm not sure if... community building and in some ways search rankings, these are not... they're more like outcomes than they are a strategy in a way. That's what happens if you did everything else well. So what did I do on LinkedIn? I wrote an article every two weeks for 12 years. I never write an article without collaborating with a subject matter expert or influencer. I made sure that my articles were highly visual. I promoted those things in many places as well as on LinkedIn. I used LinkedIn for all kinds of other activities, for research and collaborating and connecting with people. I started a LinkedIn newsletter, which is my number one tip for B2B marketers today, started a LinkedIn newsletter. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I was talking to Andy about this at MozCon. It really is a masterclass. It's fantastic. Subscribe to Digital Marketing Tips on LinkedIn. Andy Crestondina: Give it a boring name like Digital Marketing Tips. Actually, this is common across channels. Specificity correlates with engagement, conversion, search rankings. I think that a lot of things, a lot of... one of the common mistakes that marketers make is just writing sort of vague headlines and subheads. So Digital Marketing Tips. I've seen people launch LinkedIn newsletters that's like, What's in Brian's Brain? What would I get if... no, I'm not. You can subscribe to a LinkedIn newsletter with one tap of your finger that explains the growth. But why would someone tap? Who's Brian? I don't get... there's no specificity. Be specific about the benefits, right? It's like a call to action in anything. Tell them what they're going to get if they do it. But yeah, LinkedIn newsletters, you can repurpose old content. It's going to reach a much larger audience. It's a lot of tableau funnel stuff, but it's great for brand. Mordy Oberstein: This is SERP's Up Podcast, we ask the hard questions. I don't think I've ever asked a hard question in this podcast before, but this is the first time. If we're saying, okay, wait a second, be careful with the whole Google thing. You're beholden to the algorithm. Who knows what'll happen? Is it the same thing to play devil's advocate on social media? Like, look what happened with X. Andy Crestondina: Excellent point. No social and search are algorithm marketing. And no one really uses that term, but that's exactly what you're doing if you're marketing in those. And those marketers have a bit of anxiety all the time anyway. Oh, what will I do if I... It's like LinkedIn, I've never done it. But some people on LinkedIn, they make a post promoting an article, then they put the article link in the first comment. Oh, because LinkedIn doesn't like if you have a thing that sends people... Who cares? Mordy Oberstein: I'll tell you on that, someone once said, I'm... because I would play around with doing this thing, what worked, what didn't work? And then someone said, "I hate when people put the link in the comment. You never find the damn thing." I'm like, "You know what? I don't care about the algorithm anymore. People who are reading what I'm writing are annoyed by it, then I'm not going to do that." Andy Crestondina: People first, no matter what channel you're in. But then, yeah, I mean a diversified marketing strategy should have more than search and social because you will be forever beholden to those algorithms and they will change. You don't own your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers or your followers or your search rankings. Email, live events, where Crystal and I first met. Webinars, podcasts, we're doing right now. These are all where word of mouth crushes it. They're relationship based. They cause greater loyalty. There are higher touch formats. But now I have to say that Google, LinkedIn, and YouTube and our listeners know this, but those should be in the mix. I'm just saying those shouldn't be the only things in the mix. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. And I think also platforms come and go. TikTok, there's a lot going on there at the moment, but people remember, gosh, I can't even remember the name of it, the audio one, Clubhouse, everyone was crazy for Clubhouse for about 20 minutes. Mordy Oberstein: Blast from the COVID past. Crystal Carter: Right. And there were people everywhere. I'm doing that Clubhouse, and then it was really blowing up and people were desperate to get invitations and stuff like that. But again, not putting everything in one basket, it's kind of like a ghost town now. Mordy Oberstein: It’s still there. Come on. Andy Crestondina: I remember, I guess I'm old, but Google+. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, I was on Google+. Andy Crestondina: There were a lot of people who invested time to build a network, and so yeah, the people who invested in email, they aren't disrupted. You're just prone to disruption. Think of it this way, if you're doing algorithm marketing, big tech sits between you and your audience. Email marketing, webinars, podcasts, live events… Mordy Oberstein: Resources. You have to sign up and download the thing. Submit your email. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Yeah. Gated content. That's disintermediation. You're taking big tech out from in the middle of between you and your audience. I've always thought of email as just a disintermediation. So as soon as that person who lands from search and loved with the thing and shared their address. You got permission to talk to them directly, that is special. And that means you are not forever beholden to the algorithm. You've diversified your traffic sources. I think also algorithm marketers, they get very focused on top of funnel metrics. It's really hard not to obsess over some of these numbers, even if the number has a very low correlation with real business impact. Crystal Carter: I've had this before, so I've worked with clients before and I've done the SEO, we did the audit, we did the updates, we did the thing, we did the blah, and we looked and they're like, "But our traffic went down." I was like, "Yeah, but you had traffic two pages that were trash. They were trash pages. They meant nothing to what you were doing. So yes, the traffic did go down, but your conversions went up. That means that we're more specific. That means that we're more targeted. That means that we are getting to the right people instead of just some random people." And I've had it where I had ads that we were running, for instance, and we were getting tons of traffic in the middle of the night, but none of the people who were looking at the website between midnight and 3:00 A.M. were buying anything. So I turned off all the ads for the looky-loos, and we concentrated it for all the daytime people, and then suddenly we got more conversions. And it's not just about traffic. It's not just about those top of funnel metrics as you're saying, it's about being smart about what you're doing. Mordy Oberstein: Why I hate rank tracking on the SEO side. Yes, you rank number two, one, whatever. Okay, that's nice. Andy Crestondina: I once did a piece, it had no conversion opportunities or keyword opportunities, but I made the case that there's an inverse relationship between the visibility of a metric and its importance. The most important things in your business: net promoter score, net margins, revenue, these things you need an expert to help you create, even to find the metric. Net promoter score is very hard to measure, it takes a big effort. The most visible things in your marketing: number of followers, your rankings for a keyword, have very low correlation with business outcomes. So all the way from the top to bottom, I had this list of 37 metrics and I purposely ordered them in a way where you could sort of see the more visible the metric, the lower the business impact, the less visible the metric, the higher the business impact. It's strangely true. These platforms want us to obsess over them. Social media has gamified engagement and followings, that's why they made the... it's the availability heuristic. We pay attention to things we can see. Those big numbers, even LinkedIn now, remember they used to be like 500+. They show followings. They've gamified engagement and it helps them a lot, but it gets marketers distracted. Mordy Oberstein: LinkedIn as a side note, it's been interesting when the whole X thing was happening, I feel like they boosted engagement on purpose because they knew, okay, people were flocking over from X, let's get them hooked. Whereas I felt like that's why Threads failed or I don't want to say failed, I don't think that Threads caught on the way that it should have because when people were moving from X to Threads, the engagement was garbage, they'd be like, "Ah, what am I doing here?" Which is funny because I think it's an important point to realize that when you're on these platforms, you're right, they are gaming you and they are playing with you a little bit and it's distracting. Andy Crestondina: It is, and junior marketers and less informed executives alike pay a lot of attention to those things. It's also sort of true in analytics because if you only click on the high level report in analytics, you see top line numbers. To really get any, and I strongly believe this, you are using GA4 wrong if you don't add another dimension or drill down to a certain audience. Oh, my search rankings are down. To which pages? From which phrases? Visitors who have what kind of intent? And Crystal, we've all, anybody who's done this for half an hour will know, sure, there's tons of URLs that will attract a ton of visibility with a 0%. They don't see a single other page, they don't subscribe. They don't engage with the offers. So those are vanity. We've all heard the term, vanity metrics, so that's part of it. Don't put all your eggs in one algorithmic basket, Mordy love how you said that. And then don't put all your focus on a single metric. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. I think it's really important, and I think it's really important to keep track and to understand what actual metrics matter to your business. So I had a client once who was really concerned about brochure downloads, and I was like, why? They were really into these brochure download things. No matter what I did. In the end, we parted ways because no matter what I did, we didn't get the brochure downloads. I was like, nobody's going to download your brochure, which is the same thing that the website says. And they were like, "We needed the brochure." I was like, there are other things we can do. We can do a webinar, we could do something else, and it just wouldn't line up. But I think that it is really important for people to be conscious of those data points and maybe not so distracted by the shiny things, by all of the followers, by the things. There was a company I was talking to, or it was a talk I was at, and he was someone who worked with big influencers, people like Ronaldo, the football player, and various different things like big sports teams and stuff. And Ronaldo literally had a thing where he went viral wearing their product and they got tons of views on this video and they got tons of traffic to the site, but they got hardly any sales. Then, and this goes back to your point of the things that aren't visible or the things that really make the difference. They did a postmortem and they figured out that they needed to sort out their funnel so that when these kinds of viral things happened, they were able to actually monetize the funnel so that they were ready for it. So the next time there was a big sports player who was seen with one of these things, they were able to actually monetize it and it wasn't even as big as the first spike, but they were able to get a lot more revenue out of the instance because they spent the time doing the boring... Mordy Oberstein: That's so funny. I feel like that's one of those things where brand and performance people always silo those things separately, but they're not separate. There's just marketing and there's just awareness and there's just revenue and conversions. It's all one. It's a Neil Young song. They all sound the same because it's all one song. It all has to work together. So yeah, you could have that viral moment, but if they can't get through the funnel to buy the actual thing. They're like, great. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. So if you carry that thinking through and you conclude like, Hey, I need to fix the mousetrap before I make cheese. So here's a way to use the analytics, go look at analytics and figure out which of your landing pages converts visitors into subscribers at the highest rate of all in your content marketing. And that's that same Zipfian thing again, right? I have pages where 3% of visitors who land subscribe. I have pages where 0.003% of visitors who land subscribe. This is zero rounded up to zero in GA4. Now that I know that, I know which articles to optimize better for search, which articles to keep in heavy social media rotation, which articles to put back on my home page or to link to from my email signature or to put back on the top of the blog. Once you know where your best mousetraps are, now go make the cheese. This is the problem with SEOs right, they're all cheese and no mousetrap. You're not going to drive results. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think there's a better phrase to end this interview with than it's all cheese and no mousetraps when it comes to SEO. Andy, where can people find you? Andy Crestondina: Crystal mentioned LinkedIn. I'm of course very active there. Orbitmedia.com is where I write one article every two weeks. That's been my frequency forever. I will never send more than one email every two weeks if you sign up there. I don't know, YouTube. I wrote a book, it's on Amazon. You can find me at conferences, that's where Crystal and I hang out, so I'm easy to reach. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, thanks for joining us and I guess we'll see you out there at the next conference. Andy Crestondina: Thanks, Marty. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure you follow Andy on social media. He is absolutely fabulous, almost as fabulous or maybe the opposite way around, maybe this person is almost as fabulous as Andy is Barry Schwartz, which means that it's... is it really fair to compare Andy and Barry. I feel like it's two different things all together. Crystal Carter: Hey, there's plenty of room in the SEO universe for everyone to shine. Mordy Oberstein: Mount Rushmore, only four people. Who do you put on top? Crystal Carter: Oh no, we don't put anything on Mount Rushmore. Leave that mountain alone. Mordy Oberstein: Who's like the Mount Rushmore of Yankees greats? It's always a big argument. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I think leave the mountain alone. My personal opinion is like, let the mountain be a mountain. It doesn't need a face on it. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't need to be an artwork. You know what's artwork? The way Barry covers the SEO news, which means it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, two articles for you from Barry Schwartz and from SE Roundtable or from Barry on SE Roundtable. They're not from two different people, Barry is SE Roundtable. First up, this comes from September 27th. Spike in remove Google Reviews on September 17th. A lot of sevens in there, on September 27th Barry was reporting about a review removal spike on the 17th. Lucky number seven, I guess. Anyway, this comes from a little bit of a consensus across the local SEO space. Tim Colling posted this in local search forums. He basically asked like, Hey, seems like there's a spike in the number of legitimate favorable reviews inside of Google business profiles. Then again, Michel van Luijtelaar, saw the same sort of thing. Claudia Tomina jumped in the conversation and saw, yeah, there seems to be a bigger spike in September with more deleted reviews. So if you are in the local space, or if you are yourself a local business and you're seeing, hey, some of those great reviews are gone, you're not alone, doesn't solve the problem, but you're not alone. Also from Barry and also from SE Roundtable, but not from September 27th but from September 26th, Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25. There's so many dates, so many dates this week Barry. Okay. Basically in a nutshell, the SEO weather tools are still bonkers, still reporting an incredible amount of rank volatility. I think we're approaching at least on the Semrush Sensor. By the time you listen to this and the rank volatility on the Semrush Sensor is still high or very high, you are looking at the longest period of elevated rank volatility in history, or in the history of tracking these things the way that we do. But it sounds better to say in history. But again, all of the tools are kind of bonkers and off the rails. Some of them have reset a little bit and they're showing less volatility the way these things work, there's no such thing as high or low rank volatility, there's just relative high or relative low volatility. Think of the weather itself. If the normal was a million degrees Fahrenheit like we were living on the sun, if it was a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside, wow, that's a pretty cool day. So it's all relative. It does mean, by the way, you have to be looking at what's happening in your rankings and your traffic and yada yada, yada, go Barry, yada, yada yada. There have been reports from folks like Glenn Gabe, I've seen this myself, where a lot of the rewards in the August 2024 update have been reversed. Maybe there have been reversed back since, who knows by the time you listening to this? Who doesn't love a good reversal? Anyway, that's this week's Snappy News. Barry, the Picasso of SEO News. Crystal Carter: What? Are you saying he's all over the place. Is that what you mean? Mordy Oberstein: I didn't call him Jackson Pollock or anything. Can you imagine? You ever seen the movie Pollock where it was Ed Harris plays Jackson Pollock and it goes through the whole thing and like, wow, imagine that's how Barry wrote articles, on the floor smoking cigarettes. Crystal Carter: No, I could not imagine Barry doing that, ever. Just not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Someone should make a meme of that. Instead of Ed Harris in the movie it's Barry's face. Love that. That's a good idea. Someone should do that. Anyway, you know who else is a master of painting the fine arts of SEO? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. Darth is a... first of all, he's brilliant, but we also don't know who he really is, so it's an like an air of mystery. Crystal Carter: He's mysterious. Like a man of mystery, and yeah, he's got this fantastic collection of Threads talking about technical SEO and talking about integrating content and talking about the way you should think about content in a really nuanced way. If you follow him, he is got a really, really great perspective on all of this stuff, and it's really, really nuanced, and it doesn't just stick to standard SEO practices, but he doesn't stay just in the SEO lane. He goes into a lane that includes thinking about the business objectives, thinking about what actually moves the needle for actual businesses, and he's somebody who works with clients and who does a lot of research as well. So honestly, a great follow Mordy Oberstein: Super conceptual, really gives you frameworks that you can operate out of. I used have a standing bet with him. I used to do SEO chat. It was like a Twitter chat that I no longer do. If he could answer a question in one tweet, I gave him 20 bucks. Crystal Carter: Everything is a thread, but they're delightful. Mordy Oberstein: But they're really good. It's a fresh take. It's not the same thing regurded a thousand times over, which is why he's the follow of the week, this week. Props to Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. The man under the mask. Links to his profiles in the show notes. He's now available on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Oh, I did not realize that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. He's on LinkedIn now. Crystal Carter: There we go. Follow him on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: So I'll try to link to both of those in the show notes and quite a collection of people this week. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean, it's been great, but I think as Rihanna said, we want everyone to love us like a hot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really one of those, it's a stew, but in pie form, the stew- Crystal Carter: Stew pie form. And everyone- Mordy Oberstein: Stew pie. It's stupendous. Crystal Carter: We want Google to appreciate the delicious pie that we've made. Mordy Oberstein: And give us a larger piece of the traffic pie. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And put it on a chart. Mordy Oberstein: With a dollop of whipped cream. Crystal Carter: Right. And the dollop needs to go up into the right. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Can I get a good dollop, by the way, that's all... You think AI creates fake things, commercials have been creating fake things for a long time. No one can get a dollop that looks like that, okay. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Yo, dude, I used to work in that industry. I used to work in that industry. Do you know anytime you see an apple pie, it's actually a potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Potato pie? Crystal Carter: It's a mashed potato pie. Because what happens is if you have an actual real apple pie, you cut it and all the apple oozes out. Mordy Oberstein: It oozes out. Yeah. Crystal Carter: So what they do is they bake a mashed potato pie, and then they stick the apples on the side. So when they cut it, the apple stays in, nestled into the mashed potato, and then they just cut the- Mordy Oberstein: You're saying my whole life I've been like, it's been a lie, we're living a lie? Crystal Carter: It's mashed potato pie. I've got other secrets as well. It's like a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Mashed potato pie is also delicious. I'm not upset. Okay. Crystal Carter: I've never had a mashed potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, me neither. But it sounds like it's delicious. It's pie. Crystal Carter: I mean like… Mordy Oberstein: Are potatoes good? Is pie good? Crystal Carter: Best pie. Best pie, Mordy. Best sweet pie? Mordy Oberstein: Cherry pie is the best pie. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Hands down the best pie. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: And you have cherry pie on top of pudding. Or no, key lime pie is also delicious. I'm sorry. Lemon pie is also good. Pumpkin. I can't decide. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: That's also delicious. Crystal Carter: Pecan pie. Mordy Oberstein: Pecan pie is also delicious. Pineapple. I like pineapple pie, which is a weird thing, but- Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me one... Marshmallow pie. Good. Skittles and pie, that would probably taste good. Crystal Carter: Marshmallow. You put marshmallows on your sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Cereal pie. You just put Lucky charms to a pie crust. Crystal Carter: Okay. I think we should end with that. I think that's enough now. Mordy Oberstein: I think it's kind of ridiculous. Crystal Carter: We've reached the conclusion. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for joining us on the Serp's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with the new episode, as we dive into, bored? Here's how to rejuvenate your SEO career. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check on all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio, 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 and pie. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Despina Gavoyannis Andy Crestondina Lyndon NA Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series AHREFS Orbit Media A Guide for Content Marketing Metrics: The 37 Most (and Least) Useful Metrics This Math Pattern Explains Your Content Performance (and what to do about it) News: Spike In Removed Google Reviews On September 17th Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25 Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Despina Gavoyannis Andy Crestondina Lyndon NA Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series AHREFS Orbit Media A Guide for Content Marketing Metrics: The 37 Most (and Least) Useful Metrics This Math Pattern Explains Your Content Performance (and what to do about it) News: Spike In Removed Google Reviews On September 17th Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25 Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights into what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head SEO of brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by she who is always transparent, clear, and crystal. Our own head of communications, Crystal Carter. There's no doubt when it comes to Crystal. Crystal Carter: I get charged up in a full moon. I find water really easily as well. That's another thing. Mordy Oberstein: You have the two pronged stick that finds water? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I'm very reflective in my general demeanor and I like to think that I bring a nice warm glow. Mordy Oberstein: You always know where you stand with Crystal. Crystal Carter: It's true. It's true. Mordy Oberstein: For better or for worse. I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: Mostly for better, I hope. Mordy Oberstein: Only for better. The SERP'S Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our built-in Google Search Console Insights to see just how much Google does love you. As today we're diving into the gray area of the algorithm, how to know the signs of whether or not Google does or doesn't love you. What are the telltale signs that Google is infatuated with your website? What are some of the signs that they maybe are not infatuated with you, and how do all of those reversals you see in algorithm updates factor into this love triangle? HREF's Despina Gavoyannis will join us to share her tips on how to shore up those pages that might be wavering in the rankings. Plus, Orbit Media co-founder, and all around great digital marketer star, Andy Crestodina stops by to chat about what you can do while you're waiting for Google to fall in love with you. So turn up your Ace of Base because today we're showing you the sign of algorithmic love on this the 104th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast. Full disclosure, I had a moment in time where I actually liked the Ace of Base for five minutes. Crystal Carter: Dude, I totally had that CD. I mean, that introduction definitely opened up my eyes. I think. Mordy Oberstein: What's the other song they had? They have another one, one other song. Crystal Carter: The, All That She Wants. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right, that one, right. What the hell were we thinking with that crap. Crystal Carter: Dude. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's terrible. Crystal Carter: They've gone a little bit off the rails in recent times, but in 1998 or whatever- Mordy Oberstein: It made sense in the moment. I remember as a kid being like, "Oh, this is great," and an older friend is like, "No, don't say that. It's not good." Crystal Carter: You had to be there, man. You had to be there. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's kind of like Hanson but worse. Hanson I thought was a good... like, Hanson was good. Crystal Carter: MMMBop is a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good song. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. MMMBop comes on and I am singing every single word. And the breakdown. Mordy Oberstein: There are only three words in MMMBop. What do you mean all words? Crystal Carter: No, I mean there's lots of parts that aren't words like, du dubi dop, ba du bop. Mordy Oberstein: Di dibby dop dop, the du ap. That's the... Crystal Carter: Then there's all of the verses. It's very- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great song. Crystal Carter: You say you can, but you don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Bob Dylan, it is not. Crystal Carter: No, of course not. It's a bop. It's a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a word. Is it a word? Crystal Carter: It's like, the quintessential bop. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, it's great. I'm all for the MMMBop, I'm all for the Hanson. They played their own instruments like, win. Crystal Carter: Hey, I mean, all this nineties nostalgia. It was a beautiful life. Whoa, oh, oh, oh. Mordy Oberstein: How do I pivot this into SEO? I'm just not... just whatever. It's not... Not every day to win is a win, and not every loss is a loss. There's a lot to read into it. And sometimes Google demotes a site's rankings, but you may not know that's going to be a real long-term problem. Maybe these are signs of signals, Google's having a real issue with your website. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the ebb and flow of the rankings on the SERP these days, although it's always been volatile, but pretty, especially these days. For example, you can have a prolonged slow ebbing of the rankings over time. That to me is usually a very serious issue. For me, that's usually something where Google has a quality issue with your website and it's slowly eroding away at your rankings over time. I know we're used to looking at a quality issue with your website as, oh, algorithm update, goodbye, but sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes you might see a downtrend with the algorithm update and then it slowly ebbs and erodes from there. At the same time, there are signs that maybe Google does like your content, and those could be really important for you to realize what those are because then you can improve upon them and build upon them. For example, one case that I saw back with the March 2024 core update was it was a certain keyword and the only website that was ranking... all of the websites that were ranking were pages that were specifically built to target that keyword, meaning the only topic that those pages dealt with was the topic represented in that keyword. There was this other page though that showed up around position like three, four or five, forgot exactly, and that was about the topic overall, but it dealt with as a subtopic, that one aspect of the page dealt with the keyword. That to me was a signal looking at that page and then how that page ranked and how the website ranked overall where Google's like, you know what? This website is so strong that we're even going to rank you for instances or keywords where the page isn't specifically targeting just that keyword, and even though the only other pages that are ranking are targeting that keyword, we're going to rank you anyway 'cause the content overall is so great that you now have the power to rank... in this case, this website had the power to rank, even though it wasn't particularly targeting that keyword, but just dealt with the topic tangentially. That might be a sign. In this case, it was a sign that the site was really showing favor and love in the eyes of Google, so it's really important, I think, to know what those signals and signs might be. I don't think it's an exact science because sometimes you just don't know. Having a look and seeing what the signs are that Google really does have an issue with your website or that Google doesn't, and really is loving your website. Knowing those signs and signals or trends can really be important guiding what you do for your SEO strategy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because I think it determines how much risk you take with different topics and whether or not you, as you said, go into the sort of tangential ones, whether you try something that maybe is very long tail and whether or not you... and whether or not you go for some of those head terms. Because if Google is generally into you, then you'll know because you'll have a couple of big ticket, big search volume pieces of content, and if you're able to give them something that's similar to some of your rock star pieces of content, then they're going to come back for more, and so if you can prove that users appreciate your content and that you have a good experience for users who come to the website, things aren't glitchy, that it all works well, that it's superfast loading, that kind of thing, then yeah, Google's probably going to send you some more traffic because I think what people forget is that Google's into you because users are into you. What's it called? Danny Sullivan was talking about the user signals. We have a podcast on user signals and stuff previously, but he said that people were like, oh, Google uses user signals. He's like, we've always said that. We've always paid attention to that. Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Old. Crystal Carter: Old, not new. And it's not a question of just doing it for Google, which I think Google has been trying to get into people's brains for the last couple of years. It's not just about doing it for Google, it's also about doing it for users, and then Google will see that works and then they will send their users to you. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you were talking about profiling the types of keywords that you're ranking for. That's a huge thing, by the way, to take a look at because you should really be breaking down, not just, am I ranking? Am I not ranking? That's way too broad. Am I ranking or does Google love me? Is too broad of a question. You should really be looking at where does Google rank you? Where do they not rank you? Meaning where do they love me? Where do they not love me? How do they understand me? Because being understood is really what it means to be loved, but really looking at what folders or what types of keywords or topics am I ranking for, and those sort of things are really important to understand so that either you can double down on that and build on that or say, you know what? Or cut off what's not working. It's like a bad limb on a tree. It's dying. Just cut that off. Just happened to me with a tree. Crystal Carter: Because like any relationship, there's going to be things that are annoying. Mordy, you've been married for a while, I've been married for a while. You're in a long-term relationship, there's things that are annoying about yourself and about your partner and Google will know what things they don't like about your website, but they'll know the things that they do like about your website and just if you're in a relationship and you know that maybe they don't like when you leave your shoes in the doorway or maybe they don't like it when you, I don't know, play your music really loud or something like that. If you're trying to carry favor with someone, you wouldn't do the things that you know irritate them. You would do the things that they like. So if you know that they like it when you make that particular dinner for them, you know that they really love that lasagna that you make, give them more lasagna. That's the thing. So you look at your keywords and you're like, what are the things that they like, give them more of that. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes it's very clear that they don't like that. You just don't rank for that no matter what you do and how many links you've built from high DA sites, you're not ranking for that. But sometimes it's a little bit tricky. For example, sometimes you could see with every algorithm update official and unofficial, you get thrown into the volatility fire. That's probably a sign that you might be okay in the end, you might not be okay in the end, but Google's clearly looking around at other partners. Crystal Carter: Right. Right, right, right, right. I had a client and they used to have a lot of competitors, so they'd have loads of competitors for particular keywords, and it was really spicy. Basically for this particular SERP, there was up and down, who was in one, who was in three, and the top five would switch around a lot depending on who had updated what most recently and stuff. In those situations, you really need to give Google your attention in order to make sure that you're able to stay on the side of having that SERP visibility, and that can include, it's sort of a quid pro quo. You want traffic, you have to give them more opportunities to give you traffic. It's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of schema markup and structured data because it gives you more opportunities to get on the SERP because you have more opportunities to get more rich features, for instance. And if your competitors are not optimized in that way, then they have fewer opportunities to get on there. It's another reason why I'm a big fan of using multimedia because that also gives you more opportunities to get in there. It also gives Google more opportunity to show you to different folks, and it helps them to understand your content better. So if you want them to help you, you also have to help them, but there's that saying, what is it? "The Lord helps those who help themselves," and you need to help yourself to let them help you. And I'm not saying that Google's Lord or whatever, but I think that it's worth thinking about it in that way anyway. So yeah, multimedia is something that can help you. Structured data is something that can help you. Obviously having relevant, well-written, well-researched and well-known, as in you're distributing it to people who need to know about it. You're getting people enthused about it. The content that's getting people hyped up is really useful as well because Google can take those signals and go, oh, okay, this sample of people liked it. Then we can show it to other samples of people. The other thing about that kind of thing is today, so historically speaking, when we think about content distribution, we think about it from a sort of opportunities for clicks and things like that, but in today's space where Google is not just a publisher, but Google also is a web browser and Google's also a phone manufacturer and Google is also, they have data on my wallet. I use Google Wallet all the time. They've got all of that data. They store my phone, my phone photos and all that sort of stuff. Google also, when you're sending signals out, when you're sending your content out on social, for instance, you're also giving them signals for which users to send your content to. I don't have the exact technical links between all of the content that they store and all of the data that they store, but they're going to be getting signals from, even if it's a small amount. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's the semantic analysis, that's the semantic web. It's like showing how it's all connected and making those links. Crystal Carter: Right. And like the For You feed essentially from Google that comes up... the Discover page, sorry, that shows up. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. For you is Twitter. Crystal Carter: And also on TikTok as well, but it's basically, it's a similar kind of thing. So,- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. Crystal Carter: ... if I- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And so- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Yankees and SEO. Crystal Carter: So for instance, if you send content to a few people and then they're like, okay, this kind of person likes this content, that gives more opportunity to filter down those bespoke queries, which are going to get more and more bespoke as we get into a more AI assisted search space. So I think that we need to show them that we care about our content before we expect them to care about our content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And the last thing I want to say, I agree with that a billion percent. The last thing I want to say before we get into Despina is, I'm not always big on rank tracking. I think sometimes it could be a little bit of a... you run into the problem of being a little bit of vanity or a little bit too micro-analytic. But looking at rank tracking patterns over time is a great way to get an understanding of how much Google is into you and how Google is not into you, where they're into you and where they're not into you. So if you are using a rank tracking tool, I would highly recommend you go back and look at the rank tracking trends over an extended period of time to take a look at volatility within your keywords and break them down into subcategories or tags, as they're traditionally referred to in SEO tools and to really get an understanding of where Google is into you, where they're not into you, and how in into they are. Crystal Carter: And I think also, I think you need to think about the variables of content creation and all of that sort of stuff. One of the things that you also want to think about is, let's say you're tracking this stuff and you're seeing the patterns and you're seeing the way that Google's looking at the way your content is created, etc. One of the things you might also want to think about is, is it my domain or is it the content? Right? So sometimes if you serve the content on a different domain or if you serve similar content in a different platform, and let's say it goes off, so let's say you've been writing your blog, writing your blog, and maybe you're not getting that much traffic, but let's say you do a guest post on a different blog and that gets loads of traffic and you've taken the same approach that you always do, that's a really positive signal, that's a really positive signal that if you keep going in the way that you're going, that you'll eventually get the traffic. It doesn't mean that you'll get it right that second, but it means that the content itself is good, and that means that the technical things that you do might need to change, but the content itself is solid. And you see this on social a lot where you'll have some creator will do a video or something and then some bigger platform like Lab Bible or something will share it on there and that will go really big. And if it goes off on there, you're like, okay, the content is good. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great point. It's such a good point. Crystal Carter: Distribution, whichever, might be the technical, it might be whatever that might need to change, but the content itself is good. And so I think it's important to do that not just for link building, but also to understand what it is that you need to tweak in order for Google to- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Yeah, is it your authority? Is it the content, is it the technical aspect of it? All that diagnosing where the problem is? That's a great point. Speaking of shoring up that content and finding out what you should be doing and how to go about doing it, we spoke to HREF's Despina Gavoyannis about how to shore up a page or pages that seemed to be wavering between ranking and not ranking. Here's what she had to say. Despina Gavoyannis: So like anything with SEO, it depends on your situation, like what you're seeing and what kind of positions your page is wavering between, because I've seen pages, they just don't stick in the SERPs at all like your targeted keyword, but then in the top 100 they'll show up sometimes and then just drop out of the top 100. So if you're seeing that sort of thing, that's a really big kind of flickering. And to me that is a hundred percent about topic alignment and intent alignment. It means you're targeting the right keyword, sure, but you're not really matching your content with what Google and people expect to see. So when you fix that up, the intent misalignment there. Generally what you'll see is that the page will stick in the SERPs. Now if you wanted to rank higher and stick higher, so for example, it'll land somewhere generally in the top 50 results is what I see, maybe even in the top 30. But then you want to get it ranking and if what you are seeing is that it's wavering between say the bottom of page one and page two, so you can't quite crack position 10 and stay there or higher. So in that case, it could be a topic or an intent misalignment. It could also be a topic depth thing. Maybe you don't have as many sections in your content that cover the subtopics that are relevant to the keyword, and your competitors might be doing a better job of that. So looking at their content and any kind of gaps in terms of the content topic depth perspective. Also looking at any gaps in your core fundamentals of SEO, things like, on-page and links. A lot of SEO depends on doing these small things that on their own don't move the needle much or even at all, but in combination can have a big impact. So for example, if your competitors have much more solid on-page optimization than what you do, that's a big gap. So they're doing it and they're doing a lot of little things that can add up and have a big impact in total. Whereas if you are not doing any of it or very little of it, then that creates a huge gap right there and it's a pretty easy gap to fix. So making sure that you've got your keywords in your headings, you've got keywords in your URLs, that you've got image alt texts and things like that, and providing a great user experience with the page itself, make sure that's all sorted. Also with links, don't look at it just from your whole website. Get links to the individual page and close those gaps. This includes internal links. So if you're covering the topic in other articles on your website, make sure you are internally linking to the page you're trying to support. And also I suppose if you can't internally link because you don't have enough content or any kind of mentions about the topic, then in that case you need to create supporting content so that it works as a hub or a bit of a content cluster that can support each other. And that helps in terms of closing topical gaps across your whole website, not just within one article. And finally, if you've tried all these things, and you're still not seeing much movement. Evaluate the recency of your content. Is the advice relevant to people right now? Even if you add new sections and technically the date on your content might be written in this year, the advice you're giving might still be outdated or not providing great user experience or things like that. So look at, is it relevant to people right now? Is it providing the best experience to people right now? Are your competitors potentially doing a better job there? And if you're not sure, if you can't be unbiased about it, you can use a website like user testing and get real people's feedback, get them to compare your competitor's content to yours and to give you their thoughts on which one they think does a better job of answering a particular question or for a specific keyword. It helps you overcome biases in your own thinking of what's working and whether your content is actually good compared to competitors or not. So those are a few of the things that I think can help. In summary: check your intent misalignment, cover any topical gaps, cover any really basic SEO gaps like, on-page and links. Those have been fundamentals for ages for a reason. Make sure that you're doing internal linking and topical gaps are covered across your whole website. And then also check the recency in user experience of the content for people searching today. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Despina. Look for Despina out on social media. Link to her profile is in the show notes. Yeah, it comes back to we're talking diagnosing. Diagnosing what the problem is, what you should be doing, have a methodical approach. Also running through the options like she's talking about. You don't always know exactly what it is. You have to roll through them and throw the kitchen sink at it in a way. So diagnose, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and also I think she was talking about testing as well. So one of the things she mentioned was user testing. So getting people to look at it and why do you think this content is better? Or why do you think this content is good? Why do you think this content is struggling or whatever? And I think she's totally right because you see this a lot. And Glenn Gabe is a big advocate of user testing for websites and particularly for user journeys because sometimes if you are in it all the time, you don't know how difficult it is to find the things that people need to find. Or maybe you do know how difficult it is, but you've gotten so used to having to navigate it in the way that you do that you're not conscious of it. So I think that getting someone with a fresh set of eyes can be really, really useful, even if, I think she mentioned that it can be a bit painful sometimes. You might have to eat a little bit of humble pie, but it is really important to do and really, really valuable both for publishers who are doing it directly and also for agency folks who are managing clients. Mordy Oberstein: And humble pie is fine because pie is pie. Pie is good. Crystal Carter: I love pie. I'm a big fan of like- Mordy Oberstein: Pie is the best- Crystal Carter: I do love Pie. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best dessert. I'm sorry, hands down, it's pie. Crystal Carter: I also like a savory pie, like- Mordy Oberstein: Like shepherd's pie? Crystal Carter: Shepherd's pie, cottage pie, chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Chicken pot pie is delicious. Oh, love chicken pot pie. Crystal Carter: Right. In England there's a lot of savory pies. It's really common. Also in America, you get chicken pot pie. Chicken pot pie is the classic one. I don't eat meat anymore, but when I did, I was all about the chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Which one? Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. There are lots of delicious, lots of delicious veggie pies that I'm a big fan of. So yeah, pies are good. I just generally like things that are pastry with yummy stuff in the middle of it. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best. It's literally the best. I don't have access to a lot of pie where I live, which means we don't live in a perfect world and while we're not living in a perfect world and you're sorting out your love or Google's love for you, to make sure your content is bringing in the traffic and the conversions and yada yada yada that you want, while that's all being worked out, you might want to try other marketing activities to drive that awareness, traffic, leads, and conversions instead. It's a crazy idea. Which is why we're going down a rabbit hole in a little segment we call, from the top of the SERP, as in this case, we're looking at not what gets you to the top of page one, but what other activities can get you traffic while you work your way there. And to help us, we have special guest, the co-founder of Orbit Media, Andy Crestodina. Andy, welcome to the SERPs Up Podcast. Andy Crestondina: I am glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for sticking with us by the way, because the audience doesn't know this. I've known your name for many, many years, but I couldn't get it out of my mouth the right way. Andy Crestondina: I stumbled on it myself. No trouble at all. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you with us today. Andy Crestondina: Yeah, thanks for having me, Crystal. I'm glad. This will be fun. I've been looking forward to this. I'm psyched. Mordy Oberstein: So I know it's a little bit like heresy to the SEO folk listening to this. If you're not an SEO folk, this makes obvious logical sense. But putting all of your eggs in one algorithmic basket, whether you're still trying to get Google to love you and whatnot, or in general, Google does love you now, they might not love you tomorrow. What do you recommend sites do? Let's say there are an established website, they have traffic, they have some brand awareness. What do you recommend they do to really increase that, diversify their channels and get some momentum beyond the SERP? Andy Crestondina: I love this question. I think that it's important for SEOs to consider this because there is such a thing as topic channel fit, and there are lots of articles and web pages and service we offer different things that have no keyword opportunity. Only about half of the articles that I write are actually relevant for search. And that's fine. I'm not a keyword first marketer. I'm trying to connect a piece of content to a target audience. So my first thought is, I'm making this thing, is there a keyword opportunity here? If no, no problem, I can use other channels. Everything can be promoted in email and social, through influencers, and other ways. So it's really important to keep that in mind. And I sleep well at night knowing that I am not totally beholden to Google for all of my traffic and that I can be kind of a dual threat marketer. There's more to life than search and many things that we all make really are not relevant for that channel whatsoever. Crystal Carter: I think that's a really interesting way to think about it because I've definitely seen people go, oh, well, we shouldn't write this blog because it doesn't have a good search volume. We shouldn't write this piece of content because no one's going to find it on Google or the search volume's low or that sort of thing. And I think it's really interesting that you're like, this is a thing that people need to hear. We can get it to them in a different way. If it's not for search, it can go another way. Is there a way that you sort of figure out which is the best channel for a piece of content that you think people need to hear? Andy Crestondina: For sure. The job of the search marketer is to basically meet expectations. The searcher has an information need and your job is satisfy that information need. The social media marketer, the job is to be a little bit unexpected. See how that's actually the opposite channel? So there are lots of topics where social is the proper channel. Let's say you want to put out a counter-narrative perspective. No one's looking for counter-narratives, they're looking for confirmation or they're looking for an answer. And thought leadership. Another way to say that, op-ed content, anything that is a perspective where you're trying to start a conversation or you're saying something that's maybe contrarian to the conventional wisdom. That stuff crushes social media. It's great in social, it starts big conversations, right? Say something interesting. So search, if your content meets expectations, search. If your content is a bit unexpected, social. And by the way, these channels, understanding the difference between social and search, it's so fascinating. In search there's actually a ceiling to the amount of demand in the market. There's only X number of people searching for a topic each day, but social media, there is no limit. I have seen things... If you've never seen the analytics for a mini viral event, you're missing out. It is breathtaking how many people are on the internet. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, totally true. Andy Crestondina: And if you're exhausted, just long form content, long text pieces, Hey, guess what? The short, punchy, pithy thing, the highly visual thing, the collaboration with an influencer thing, social's perfect. So you don't have enough in your content mix, and Mordy, thanks for saying diversification because that's the perfect perspective. If you are not first thinking of the topic, what does my audience need? What's the most interesting thing I can do today? And then asking what is the proper channel for promoting this thing? The answer is not always search. Mordy Oberstein: So when you're thinking of diversifying those channels, okay, I am not going to write for search. Where do you start? What are you looking at? Is there like, okay, I want to do something on social. Does the channel drive the strategy itself or the type of content drive the strategy, trying to build a brand awareness? What's driving the overall strategy for you? Andy Crestondina: Well, I am a fifteen-year content strategist, and I often think to myself, this is something new, interesting, helpful, valuable to me, working for me, I should share this with the world. Next question. Is this something that could work in content marketing or maybe I'm just make this as a sales enablement piece. By the way, there's bottom of funnel content that you can share with prospects that is 100X the value of that new weird top of funnel, high search volume phrase. Make something for your prospects first. I'd say let's all prioritize the bottom of the funnel. And then whatever that thing is, whatever you're making, does it relate to other pieces of content? Is there already a conversation happening about this? Is this part of a trend? Is this content evergreen? What is the proper format? Should this be a video or long form text or is it an infographic thing here? Give you an example. Two weeks ago, I've always been thinking about this, you know how every chart in marketing is like a log scale curve. There are no straight lines. The top performers are... search especially, top performer gets most of the clicks. Number two gets half as many. Number three gets a third as many. That mathematical distribution is called the Zipfian distribution. Okay, you've never heard of that? No one's heard of that. I get it. But actually it's super interesting that that Zipfian distribution applies across topics and formats and channels. Click-through rate by search position, and a tiny percentage of things go viral, and a tiny percentage of social accounts gets most of the engagement. And a tiny percentage YouTube videos get most of the views. That's a really interesting way to think about marketing and it's valuable because you can focus on trying to make top performers and avoid making the medium quality stuff , but there's a practical takeaway. Okay, you get the idea. I'm making this article, right? I want to do this. I want to show the charts. I want people to see the alignment between this math thing and their marketing, and I want to make strategic recommendations based on that. Focus on the 10X things. No keyword opportunity at all. No one is searching for log scale pattern- Crystal Carter: Zipfian. Andy Crestondina: ... marketing. Yeah, George Zipf. So no problem. I'm making it anyway. I feel strongly about this. I think the world needs the article. It's a failure of the internet that this article doesn't exist. That's how passionate I am about creating it. Who has all the data? Pete Caputa from Databox. Let's talk to Pete. Great, Pete and I have a call. He shares a bunch of data. I overlay my little chart thing on it. He starts a conversation on LinkedIn. I jump in, I write the article, I publish on LinkedIn, he jumps in. It got huge results. Nothing to do with search. What did I do? I found something that was visual. I collaborated with a subject matter expert. I didn't hesitate to write the cool, weird, fun headline with no keywords in it. It's liberating, by the way, to not have to worry about keywords sometimes, right? In search, I'm all in or I'm all out. If that thing's keyword relevant, I'm totally focused on making something that is the best page on the internet for that topic. But if it's just an unusual thing, a weird thing, a visual thing, a surprising thing. It's kind of like working with, if you've ever worked with an innovator or an inventor or someone who makes new things, no one's looking for new things. It doesn't exist yet. Those people should still start those companies. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think it's like, if you were cooking for, I don't know, 500 people, if you were cooking for, I don't know, the family reunion or something like that, you're not going to do an artisanal ceviche or something with heirloom tomatoes from here, there and there. You're going to do the macaroni and cheese. You know that the macaroni and cheese is going to get the most people and they're going to enjoy it and they're going to be happy. Whereas, I don't know, if it's some special dinner for your anniversary or whatever, and it's a special person and you know that they'll appreciate that you've spent all of this time, but it's a different audience. You're still cooking, you're still making whatever you're making, but it's a different kind of situation and they'll appreciate it more. And both audiences will appreciate that you've taken the care to give them the right thing, in the right space. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. Crystal Carter: ... really important. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great example. Andy Crestondina: Yep. Mac and cheese, that's the highest search volume key phrase. And my daughter loves it. But the heirloom tomato, like the fancy Caprese salad that people weren't expecting, like, whoa, dude, pine nuts. Wait a minute, that's a different... you get it, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Andy Crestondina: So, it's really kind of a boring content strategy both for your readers to consume and for you to create if you think that everything's got to be a keyword. Come on. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, a thousand percent. Crystal Carter: And I think also, so there's a couple of things that I come for that. So people who have just discovered you on our podcast might not know that you are also speaking from the point of having a massive social media following. So I think that that's something that's worth thinking about as well. If you're not following Andy on LinkedIn, you should do that because it's absolutely worth doing. And all the other channels as well- Andy Crestondina: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: So I think that that's something that's really important to think about as well, is that you have spent time cultivating an audience that you know is interested in the thing that you found really fascinating this week. The thing that you found really fascinating today or whatever it may be. And I think that in order to do some of the things that you're talking about in order to speak to some of that more creative, more out-of-the-box content, do you think that it's worth building that community first before you start doing that? Or do you think the two things go together? Andy Crestondina: I'm not sure if... community building and in some ways search rankings, these are not... they're more like outcomes than they are a strategy in a way. That's what happens if you did everything else well. So what did I do on LinkedIn? I wrote an article every two weeks for 12 years. I never write an article without collaborating with a subject matter expert or influencer. I made sure that my articles were highly visual. I promoted those things in many places as well as on LinkedIn. I used LinkedIn for all kinds of other activities, for research and collaborating and connecting with people. I started a LinkedIn newsletter, which is my number one tip for B2B marketers today, started a LinkedIn newsletter. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I was talking to Andy about this at MozCon. It really is a masterclass. It's fantastic. Subscribe to Digital Marketing Tips on LinkedIn. Andy Crestondina: Give it a boring name like Digital Marketing Tips. Actually, this is common across channels. Specificity correlates with engagement, conversion, search rankings. I think that a lot of things, a lot of... one of the common mistakes that marketers make is just writing sort of vague headlines and subheads. So Digital Marketing Tips. I've seen people launch LinkedIn newsletters that's like, What's in Brian's Brain? What would I get if... no, I'm not. You can subscribe to a LinkedIn newsletter with one tap of your finger that explains the growth. But why would someone tap? Who's Brian? I don't get... there's no specificity. Be specific about the benefits, right? It's like a call to action in anything. Tell them what they're going to get if they do it. But yeah, LinkedIn newsletters, you can repurpose old content. It's going to reach a much larger audience. It's a lot of tableau funnel stuff, but it's great for brand. Mordy Oberstein: This is SERP's Up Podcast, we ask the hard questions. I don't think I've ever asked a hard question in this podcast before, but this is the first time. If we're saying, okay, wait a second, be careful with the whole Google thing. You're beholden to the algorithm. Who knows what'll happen? Is it the same thing to play devil's advocate on social media? Like, look what happened with X. Andy Crestondina: Excellent point. No social and search are algorithm marketing. And no one really uses that term, but that's exactly what you're doing if you're marketing in those. And those marketers have a bit of anxiety all the time anyway. Oh, what will I do if I... It's like LinkedIn, I've never done it. But some people on LinkedIn, they make a post promoting an article, then they put the article link in the first comment. Oh, because LinkedIn doesn't like if you have a thing that sends people... Who cares? Mordy Oberstein: I'll tell you on that, someone once said, I'm... because I would play around with doing this thing, what worked, what didn't work? And then someone said, "I hate when people put the link in the comment. You never find the damn thing." I'm like, "You know what? I don't care about the algorithm anymore. People who are reading what I'm writing are annoyed by it, then I'm not going to do that." Andy Crestondina: People first, no matter what channel you're in. But then, yeah, I mean a diversified marketing strategy should have more than search and social because you will be forever beholden to those algorithms and they will change. You don't own your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers or your followers or your search rankings. Email, live events, where Crystal and I first met. Webinars, podcasts, we're doing right now. These are all where word of mouth crushes it. They're relationship based. They cause greater loyalty. There are higher touch formats. But now I have to say that Google, LinkedIn, and YouTube and our listeners know this, but those should be in the mix. I'm just saying those shouldn't be the only things in the mix. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. And I think also platforms come and go. TikTok, there's a lot going on there at the moment, but people remember, gosh, I can't even remember the name of it, the audio one, Clubhouse, everyone was crazy for Clubhouse for about 20 minutes. Mordy Oberstein: Blast from the COVID past. Crystal Carter: Right. And there were people everywhere. I'm doing that Clubhouse, and then it was really blowing up and people were desperate to get invitations and stuff like that. But again, not putting everything in one basket, it's kind of like a ghost town now. Mordy Oberstein: It’s still there. Come on. Andy Crestondina: I remember, I guess I'm old, but Google+. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, I was on Google+. Andy Crestondina: There were a lot of people who invested time to build a network, and so yeah, the people who invested in email, they aren't disrupted. You're just prone to disruption. Think of it this way, if you're doing algorithm marketing, big tech sits between you and your audience. Email marketing, webinars, podcasts, live events… Mordy Oberstein: Resources. You have to sign up and download the thing. Submit your email. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Yeah. Gated content. That's disintermediation. You're taking big tech out from in the middle of between you and your audience. I've always thought of email as just a disintermediation. So as soon as that person who lands from search and loved with the thing and shared their address. You got permission to talk to them directly, that is special. And that means you are not forever beholden to the algorithm. You've diversified your traffic sources. I think also algorithm marketers, they get very focused on top of funnel metrics. It's really hard not to obsess over some of these numbers, even if the number has a very low correlation with real business impact. Crystal Carter: I've had this before, so I've worked with clients before and I've done the SEO, we did the audit, we did the updates, we did the thing, we did the blah, and we looked and they're like, "But our traffic went down." I was like, "Yeah, but you had traffic two pages that were trash. They were trash pages. They meant nothing to what you were doing. So yes, the traffic did go down, but your conversions went up. That means that we're more specific. That means that we're more targeted. That means that we are getting to the right people instead of just some random people." And I've had it where I had ads that we were running, for instance, and we were getting tons of traffic in the middle of the night, but none of the people who were looking at the website between midnight and 3:00 A.M. were buying anything. So I turned off all the ads for the looky-loos, and we concentrated it for all the daytime people, and then suddenly we got more conversions. And it's not just about traffic. It's not just about those top of funnel metrics as you're saying, it's about being smart about what you're doing. Mordy Oberstein: Why I hate rank tracking on the SEO side. Yes, you rank number two, one, whatever. Okay, that's nice. Andy Crestondina: I once did a piece, it had no conversion opportunities or keyword opportunities, but I made the case that there's an inverse relationship between the visibility of a metric and its importance. The most important things in your business: net promoter score, net margins, revenue, these things you need an expert to help you create, even to find the metric. Net promoter score is very hard to measure, it takes a big effort. The most visible things in your marketing: number of followers, your rankings for a keyword, have very low correlation with business outcomes. So all the way from the top to bottom, I had this list of 37 metrics and I purposely ordered them in a way where you could sort of see the more visible the metric, the lower the business impact, the less visible the metric, the higher the business impact. It's strangely true. These platforms want us to obsess over them. Social media has gamified engagement and followings, that's why they made the... it's the availability heuristic. We pay attention to things we can see. Those big numbers, even LinkedIn now, remember they used to be like 500+. They show followings. They've gamified engagement and it helps them a lot, but it gets marketers distracted. Mordy Oberstein: LinkedIn as a side note, it's been interesting when the whole X thing was happening, I feel like they boosted engagement on purpose because they knew, okay, people were flocking over from X, let's get them hooked. Whereas I felt like that's why Threads failed or I don't want to say failed, I don't think that Threads caught on the way that it should have because when people were moving from X to Threads, the engagement was garbage, they'd be like, "Ah, what am I doing here?" Which is funny because I think it's an important point to realize that when you're on these platforms, you're right, they are gaming you and they are playing with you a little bit and it's distracting. Andy Crestondina: It is, and junior marketers and less informed executives alike pay a lot of attention to those things. It's also sort of true in analytics because if you only click on the high level report in analytics, you see top line numbers. To really get any, and I strongly believe this, you are using GA4 wrong if you don't add another dimension or drill down to a certain audience. Oh, my search rankings are down. To which pages? From which phrases? Visitors who have what kind of intent? And Crystal, we've all, anybody who's done this for half an hour will know, sure, there's tons of URLs that will attract a ton of visibility with a 0%. They don't see a single other page, they don't subscribe. They don't engage with the offers. So those are vanity. We've all heard the term, vanity metrics, so that's part of it. Don't put all your eggs in one algorithmic basket, Mordy love how you said that. And then don't put all your focus on a single metric. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. I think it's really important, and I think it's really important to keep track and to understand what actual metrics matter to your business. So I had a client once who was really concerned about brochure downloads, and I was like, why? They were really into these brochure download things. No matter what I did. In the end, we parted ways because no matter what I did, we didn't get the brochure downloads. I was like, nobody's going to download your brochure, which is the same thing that the website says. And they were like, "We needed the brochure." I was like, there are other things we can do. We can do a webinar, we could do something else, and it just wouldn't line up. But I think that it is really important for people to be conscious of those data points and maybe not so distracted by the shiny things, by all of the followers, by the things. There was a company I was talking to, or it was a talk I was at, and he was someone who worked with big influencers, people like Ronaldo, the football player, and various different things like big sports teams and stuff. And Ronaldo literally had a thing where he went viral wearing their product and they got tons of views on this video and they got tons of traffic to the site, but they got hardly any sales. Then, and this goes back to your point of the things that aren't visible or the things that really make the difference. They did a postmortem and they figured out that they needed to sort out their funnel so that when these kinds of viral things happened, they were able to actually monetize the funnel so that they were ready for it. So the next time there was a big sports player who was seen with one of these things, they were able to actually monetize it and it wasn't even as big as the first spike, but they were able to get a lot more revenue out of the instance because they spent the time doing the boring... Mordy Oberstein: That's so funny. I feel like that's one of those things where brand and performance people always silo those things separately, but they're not separate. There's just marketing and there's just awareness and there's just revenue and conversions. It's all one. It's a Neil Young song. They all sound the same because it's all one song. It all has to work together. So yeah, you could have that viral moment, but if they can't get through the funnel to buy the actual thing. They're like, great. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. So if you carry that thinking through and you conclude like, Hey, I need to fix the mousetrap before I make cheese. So here's a way to use the analytics, go look at analytics and figure out which of your landing pages converts visitors into subscribers at the highest rate of all in your content marketing. And that's that same Zipfian thing again, right? I have pages where 3% of visitors who land subscribe. I have pages where 0.003% of visitors who land subscribe. This is zero rounded up to zero in GA4. Now that I know that, I know which articles to optimize better for search, which articles to keep in heavy social media rotation, which articles to put back on my home page or to link to from my email signature or to put back on the top of the blog. Once you know where your best mousetraps are, now go make the cheese. This is the problem with SEOs right, they're all cheese and no mousetrap. You're not going to drive results. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think there's a better phrase to end this interview with than it's all cheese and no mousetraps when it comes to SEO. Andy, where can people find you? Andy Crestondina: Crystal mentioned LinkedIn. I'm of course very active there. Orbitmedia.com is where I write one article every two weeks. That's been my frequency forever. I will never send more than one email every two weeks if you sign up there. I don't know, YouTube. I wrote a book, it's on Amazon. You can find me at conferences, that's where Crystal and I hang out, so I'm easy to reach. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, thanks for joining us and I guess we'll see you out there at the next conference. Andy Crestondina: Thanks, Marty. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure you follow Andy on social media. He is absolutely fabulous, almost as fabulous or maybe the opposite way around, maybe this person is almost as fabulous as Andy is Barry Schwartz, which means that it's... is it really fair to compare Andy and Barry. I feel like it's two different things all together. Crystal Carter: Hey, there's plenty of room in the SEO universe for everyone to shine. Mordy Oberstein: Mount Rushmore, only four people. Who do you put on top? Crystal Carter: Oh no, we don't put anything on Mount Rushmore. Leave that mountain alone. Mordy Oberstein: Who's like the Mount Rushmore of Yankees greats? It's always a big argument. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I think leave the mountain alone. My personal opinion is like, let the mountain be a mountain. It doesn't need a face on it. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't need to be an artwork. You know what's artwork? The way Barry covers the SEO news, which means it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, two articles for you from Barry Schwartz and from SE Roundtable or from Barry on SE Roundtable. They're not from two different people, Barry is SE Roundtable. First up, this comes from September 27th. Spike in remove Google Reviews on September 17th. A lot of sevens in there, on September 27th Barry was reporting about a review removal spike on the 17th. Lucky number seven, I guess. Anyway, this comes from a little bit of a consensus across the local SEO space. Tim Colling posted this in local search forums. He basically asked like, Hey, seems like there's a spike in the number of legitimate favorable reviews inside of Google business profiles. Then again, Michel van Luijtelaar, saw the same sort of thing. Claudia Tomina jumped in the conversation and saw, yeah, there seems to be a bigger spike in September with more deleted reviews. So if you are in the local space, or if you are yourself a local business and you're seeing, hey, some of those great reviews are gone, you're not alone, doesn't solve the problem, but you're not alone. Also from Barry and also from SE Roundtable, but not from September 27th but from September 26th, Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25. There's so many dates, so many dates this week Barry. Okay. Basically in a nutshell, the SEO weather tools are still bonkers, still reporting an incredible amount of rank volatility. I think we're approaching at least on the Semrush Sensor. By the time you listen to this and the rank volatility on the Semrush Sensor is still high or very high, you are looking at the longest period of elevated rank volatility in history, or in the history of tracking these things the way that we do. But it sounds better to say in history. But again, all of the tools are kind of bonkers and off the rails. Some of them have reset a little bit and they're showing less volatility the way these things work, there's no such thing as high or low rank volatility, there's just relative high or relative low volatility. Think of the weather itself. If the normal was a million degrees Fahrenheit like we were living on the sun, if it was a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside, wow, that's a pretty cool day. So it's all relative. It does mean, by the way, you have to be looking at what's happening in your rankings and your traffic and yada yada, yada, go Barry, yada, yada yada. There have been reports from folks like Glenn Gabe, I've seen this myself, where a lot of the rewards in the August 2024 update have been reversed. Maybe there have been reversed back since, who knows by the time you listening to this? Who doesn't love a good reversal? Anyway, that's this week's Snappy News. Barry, the Picasso of SEO News. Crystal Carter: What? Are you saying he's all over the place. Is that what you mean? Mordy Oberstein: I didn't call him Jackson Pollock or anything. Can you imagine? You ever seen the movie Pollock where it was Ed Harris plays Jackson Pollock and it goes through the whole thing and like, wow, imagine that's how Barry wrote articles, on the floor smoking cigarettes. Crystal Carter: No, I could not imagine Barry doing that, ever. Just not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Someone should make a meme of that. Instead of Ed Harris in the movie it's Barry's face. Love that. That's a good idea. Someone should do that. Anyway, you know who else is a master of painting the fine arts of SEO? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. Darth is a... first of all, he's brilliant, but we also don't know who he really is, so it's an like an air of mystery. Crystal Carter: He's mysterious. Like a man of mystery, and yeah, he's got this fantastic collection of Threads talking about technical SEO and talking about integrating content and talking about the way you should think about content in a really nuanced way. If you follow him, he is got a really, really great perspective on all of this stuff, and it's really, really nuanced, and it doesn't just stick to standard SEO practices, but he doesn't stay just in the SEO lane. He goes into a lane that includes thinking about the business objectives, thinking about what actually moves the needle for actual businesses, and he's somebody who works with clients and who does a lot of research as well. So honestly, a great follow Mordy Oberstein: Super conceptual, really gives you frameworks that you can operate out of. I used have a standing bet with him. I used to do SEO chat. It was like a Twitter chat that I no longer do. If he could answer a question in one tweet, I gave him 20 bucks. Crystal Carter: Everything is a thread, but they're delightful. Mordy Oberstein: But they're really good. It's a fresh take. It's not the same thing regurded a thousand times over, which is why he's the follow of the week, this week. Props to Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. The man under the mask. Links to his profiles in the show notes. He's now available on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Oh, I did not realize that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. He's on LinkedIn now. Crystal Carter: There we go. Follow him on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: So I'll try to link to both of those in the show notes and quite a collection of people this week. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean, it's been great, but I think as Rihanna said, we want everyone to love us like a hot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really one of those, it's a stew, but in pie form, the stew- Crystal Carter: Stew pie form. And everyone- Mordy Oberstein: Stew pie. It's stupendous. Crystal Carter: We want Google to appreciate the delicious pie that we've made. Mordy Oberstein: And give us a larger piece of the traffic pie. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And put it on a chart. Mordy Oberstein: With a dollop of whipped cream. Crystal Carter: Right. And the dollop needs to go up into the right. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Can I get a good dollop, by the way, that's all... You think AI creates fake things, commercials have been creating fake things for a long time. No one can get a dollop that looks like that, okay. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Yo, dude, I used to work in that industry. I used to work in that industry. Do you know anytime you see an apple pie, it's actually a potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Potato pie? Crystal Carter: It's a mashed potato pie. Because what happens is if you have an actual real apple pie, you cut it and all the apple oozes out. Mordy Oberstein: It oozes out. Yeah. Crystal Carter: So what they do is they bake a mashed potato pie, and then they stick the apples on the side. So when they cut it, the apple stays in, nestled into the mashed potato, and then they just cut the- Mordy Oberstein: You're saying my whole life I've been like, it's been a lie, we're living a lie? Crystal Carter: It's mashed potato pie. I've got other secrets as well. It's like a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Mashed potato pie is also delicious. I'm not upset. Okay. Crystal Carter: I've never had a mashed potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, me neither. But it sounds like it's delicious. It's pie. Crystal Carter: I mean like… Mordy Oberstein: Are potatoes good? Is pie good? Crystal Carter: Best pie. Best pie, Mordy. Best sweet pie? Mordy Oberstein: Cherry pie is the best pie. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Hands down the best pie. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: And you have cherry pie on top of pudding. Or no, key lime pie is also delicious. I'm sorry. Lemon pie is also good. Pumpkin. I can't decide. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: That's also delicious. Crystal Carter: Pecan pie. Mordy Oberstein: Pecan pie is also delicious. Pineapple. I like pineapple pie, which is a weird thing, but- Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me one... Marshmallow pie. Good. Skittles and pie, that would probably taste good. Crystal Carter: Marshmallow. You put marshmallows on your sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Cereal pie. You just put Lucky charms to a pie crust. Crystal Carter: Okay. I think we should end with that. I think that's enough now. Mordy Oberstein: I think it's kind of ridiculous. Crystal Carter: We've reached the conclusion. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for joining us on the Serp's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with the new episode, as we dive into, bored? Here's how to rejuvenate your SEO career. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check on all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio, 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 and pie. 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

Google Gemini is here but what does it mean for SEO? How does Gemini factor into Search and what does it even mean for the evolution of AI in general? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Search Engine Land’s Editor-in-Chief, Danny Goodwin, to evaluate what Gemini is and might become from an SEO point of view. Plus, The Neuron’s Pete Huang takes a look at what Gemini means for the overall evolution of AI. Look up at the stars, and tune in to episode 74 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as today we are all Geminis! Back How will Google's most powerful AI, Gemini, impact SEO? Google Gemini is here but what does it mean for SEO? How does Gemini factor into Search and what does it even mean for the evolution of AI in general? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Search Engine Land’s Editor-in-Chief, Danny Goodwin, to evaluate what Gemini is and might become from an SEO point of view. Plus, The Neuron’s Pete Huang takes a look at what Gemini means for the overall evolution of AI. Look up at the stars, and tune in to episode 74 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as today we are all Geminis! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 74 | February 14, 2024 | 48 MIN 00:00 / 47:44 This week’s guests Danny Goodwin Danny Goodwin is the Managing Editor of Search Engine Land & SMX (Search Marketing Expo). Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest search marketing news and updates since 2007. He joined Search Engine Land in 2022, where he manages the Search Engine Land SME (Subject Matter Expert) program and oversees the programming of U.S. SMX events. Pete Huang Pete Huang is an AI futurist and artificial intelligence leader with a global following that relies on his technological expertise to run their businesses. He created The Neuron, a daily newsletter tracking the latest AI trends, products and research making an impact, with over 250,000+ business leaders relying on their coverage to stay informed about AI. Pete has spoken about AI around the world and is regularly tapped as a consultant to enterprises investing in AI. 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 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 searches the stars for SEO answers, the one, the only, Head of Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. My name is Crystal Carter. I'm a Pisces and I am a stargazer. I've been enjoying Jupiter being in the Northern Hemisphere for the last few months. It keeps hanging out by the moon. We're going to talk about lots of things like that. So yeah, welcome to our podcast about SEO. Mordy Oberstein: I'm also a Pisces. What does that mean though? Crystal Carter: I know you're a Pisces. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, because of my personality or because you know what my birthday is? Crystal Carter: Actually, a lot of SEOs are Pisces. I think it's because we like to jump around and we like to go with the flow of the algorithm and things. Mordy Oberstein: I always thought it was my traumatic childhood, but now you're telling me it's really... Okay. Got it. Crystal Carter: Definitely your star sign. Mordy Oberstein: That's just- Crystal Carter: I mean, I think I am definitely... I'm a Pisces rising in a Taurus. No, I'm kidding. I don't know how that works. Literally, I'm very top level on my astrology. I'm completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: I know Taurus, I know Pisces, and I know Gemini, and that's all I know. Crystal Carter: Okay, well, we'll leave it at that. Mordy Oberstein: A little foreshadowing there. Now, 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 also automate the heck out of your client's site with Wix's revamped integration with Zapier. Connect your client's site and take advantage of thousands of marketing automations. You know what else can automate a heck of a lot of things? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Google's Gemini. Oh. They're taking a play out of the back pages of a newspaper, as our horoscope says AI technology is on the horizon. We'll get into what is Google Gemini, what has Google said about Gemini in search, and what are some possible ways Gemini may impact SEO in the future. To help us see the future of search, we'll soon chat with the one, the only, editor of Search Engine Land, that's Barry Schwartz's boss. Danny Goodwin will join us in just a few moments. We'll also talk to the co-founder of The Neuron, Peter Huang, about what Gemini means, not just for SEO, but beyond SEO, and of course we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So let's see what's in the stars today and what the horoscope of the SERP is, as episode number 74 of the SERP's Up podcast. It's all playful, perceptive, and intellectually curious as we go all Gemini on you. Crystal Carter: You know, there are a lot of sides to a Gemini. It's like they have twin personality. Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea. I have literally no clue. Crystal Carter: That's what they say about all of that sort of thing, and I mean that kind of tracks with what we've heard about it so far. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Nicely done. I've never actually read a horoscope in my life before. Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: No, I've never really like- Crystal Carter: I love horoscopes. It's like a fortune cookie. That's how I treat it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fortune cookies. They tastes good. Can you eat a horoscope? Crystal Carter: I mean... Mordy Oberstein: I don't care. Okay, so before we bring in Danny, let's talk a little bit what just very, very quickly is catch everybody up. What is Google Gemini? It's a new AI model that allegedly solves very complex tasks. It could understand all sorts of media and mediums, from text, to code, to audio, et cetera. It's extremely powerful and it's meant to compete with Google... With Google's. With OpenAI's GPT-4, and according to certain tests, it seems to outperform GPT-4, which is interesting. So there are all sorts of possible implications about what this means for Google search. Google has kind of talked a little bit about it, which is why we thought we would bring Danny Goodwin on, because Danny wrote a whole article about this. So welcome to SERP's Up, Danny. Danny Goodwin: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Mordy, and Crystal, I guess I should disclose I'm a Scorpio. So- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right. Scorpio. Right, right, right. Okay. I know that one. Crystal Carter: Right? Okay. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Danny Goodwin: It depends. Mordy Oberstein: It depends. Crystal Carter: Although Scorpios I know are very, very loyal people. Very loyal- Danny Goodwin: Very true. Crystal Carter: Very, like, ride or die. That's my homie. Danny Goodwin: Very much. Crystal Carter: That's the end of that. Danny Goodwin: That's some people saying and it's some people, not their thing. But yes, that's a very good assessment. Loyal, ambitious, all that stuff. Crystal Carter: Well, welcome to the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like competing personality traits, loyal and ambitious. Danny Goodwin: Well, I don't know. I tend to look at as I like to do my absolute best for whatever company I work for. But in doing so, I also grow my own brand, so to speak. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, okay. That works. Danny Goodwin: I think they work together. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's cool. Okay. I get it. Crystal Carter: I think so. Danny Goodwin: It's like... You think back on my earliest days in search was at Search Engine Watch. A lot of the work I did there sort of built my reputation for the rest of my career. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Danny Goodwin: So I thought... Yeah, I think just generally doing hard work and showcasing your talent is incredibly valuable for advancing your career. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And advancing the company you're with. So I've heard people who are like, "Oh, should I let my team go out and do speaking and stuff? What if they go somewhere else?" I'm like, "Yeah, but they're letting you shine by shining. I shine, you shine, we all shine." It's good for everybody. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: Agree. Danny Goodwin: And we all love shining happy people. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let's talk Gemini. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: You wrote a whole article about covering... When Google came out with their big Gemini announcement covering what Google has said about it and what it is. So what has Google said about Gemini in search and what is Gemini exactly? Danny Goodwin: The easiest way to think about it is Gemini is basically the equivalent to GPT from OpenAI. It's sort of the backend large language model that is powering a lot of the things that Google wants to do in search in the future. I don't think they have all the capabilities yet. And basically they came out with three flavors, I guess, of Gemini, initially, and this is 1.0. So we're going to see advancements in it. They have Ultra, Pro, and Nano. We're getting a taste of the Pro model now in Bard, and I believe... The rumor is they're going to have a paid version of Bard in the future, and I think that will be powered by the Ultra version. So we'll see how that shakes out. That's just all rumor at this point. But basically, yeah. So right now they're testing Gemini for SGE. They've said that in addition to reducing the time it takes to generate the SGE responses, the AI answers, they claim that it basically has resulted in other search quality improvements. But they didn't really explain what those are. It's in testing now and they said that it is coming to search and ads in the future, in the next few months. So that will be interesting and I don't think they're going to announce it before it comes out. I imagine it'll be sort of RankBrain or some of the other things they've just deployed. It will be there and then at some point later they'll go, "Oh, by the way, we launched this two months ago." So we will see. I could be wrong. And I think this just ultimately gets Google closer to that model it's sort of been at for the... They've had this long-term vision. If you go back to some of the earliest interviews, Marie Haynes uncovered this really great old interview with Larry Page. It's just like, ultimately AI is search. "When someone comes to Google and asks a question, we give them the right answer. That's AI. That's search." It's sort of always been the model. I've been comparing it recently... I'll give credit, too, to Michael King for this one. He had this great video from a few years ago where he compared where Google's going to the movie Her, which I don't know if you guys have seen. It was a 2013 movie, I believe. Scarlett Johansson... Really good cast, actually. Amy Adams and some other good people. But it's basically like Her was an operating system. It's a virtual assistant. It adapts to you. It learns from you. I think that's where Google's going. It's just you talk to Google and it will- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I did see this movie. Okay. I did see this. Danny Goodwin: ... Respond to you. Yeah, it's basically it learns from you and responds to you and anticipates your needs. It's basically your virtual assistant. And I think we're going to start seeing that first when they incorporate Bard into the assistant on Google phones. Mordy Oberstein: So where do you think, based upon what Google has said, what they're trying to do, where do you think they're going, what are they trying to use Gemini for exactly? It's simply to generate answers as better answers, faster answers? Or are they going to expand what AI means? Or do you think... Because we don't really know what they're going to do. But do you think they're going to expand what AI means on the SERP, beyond what we're currently seeing in the form of SGE? Danny Goodwin: I think right now, my guess is a lot of it, because... I'm sure you remember when they first launched SGE, it took a really long time to generate those answers, and I have definitely... We've reported, Michael King did research on it, Authoritas did some research on it, and that time has definitely reduced. So I think that's the biggest area right now. Quality wise, I still don't see perfect answers or they're just very surfacey, generic. I don't know if they're going to make... I'd love to see a bit more depth if they're going to really go all in on this, but they're not there. It's kind of like a fourth grade book report on, "Tell me about this thing." So I don't know if that's going to improve. That'll be interesting to see. But I ultimately think they have so much data that they collected on you, on me... They know the story you clicked on in Google News and what videos you watch on YouTube. I just imagine them connecting all these dots together ultimately, and Gemini is going to be that kind of backend for connecting all these dots and trying to figure out what you want, click on what you want, what content you want to consume, what do you want to read, what videos you want to see, all these things and just be like a real recommendation engine. Best way to compare it to what TikToks doing. Mordy Oberstein: So Google Discover on steroids? Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yes. That's what it feels like. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting. Yeah. Crystal Carter: And do you think that this is a play to put them back ahead of the game? I think that when ChatGPT broke more for the mainstream, and particularly when Bing was like, "We've put this into New Bing," I think Google, it seemed anyway, they were a little bit on the back foot. Not that they haven't been progressing with AI. They've had tons of AI for years. But for a public facing product, they seem to be a little bit trying to pull something together. Do you think that this is a play to move to be the forerunners, and do you think this puts them there? Danny Goodwin: I think it's definitely... There's definitely a PR aspect to a lot of what we're seeing. Going all the way back to SGE, it was kind of like vaporware announcements. It's like, "We have this really awesome thing. You can't see it yet though." And that seems to be how they've been going with us. And it was even the same with Gemini to an extent, because they had that video. Mordy Oberstein: The video was interesting. Danny Goodwin: The video was very interesting and was also very fake, and I called out on it. So it's like they're taking a couple steps forward and back. But it's like when they flubbed their initial introduction of Bard, when they had that wrong answer, and they got called out on it and their stock took a dive. Remember that way back in the day? And all these things have consequences. So from big perspective, Bing is honestly... The game is over for Microsoft. This was, to me, I thought their kind of the last chance because they had all this hype going with GPT, but we've followed the numbers. They've gained no market share since launching this, despite all the hoopla. Despite like, "Oh my God, this is the shiny new thing. ChatGPT is awesome." Hasn't helped them a bit. Mordy Oberstein: Which is interesting because Google went doubled down and said, "Oh, you're going to do that? We'll do that better." But was that really what users really want in the end? And I think... We don't like talking about this on the podcast, but the money aspect is fascinating and the PR aspect is fascinating, because a lot of this does have to do with stock prices. And a lot of it is, "Hey, let's put this out there. Let's show us... Position ourselves at a certain way." But at a certain point, you do have to actually address what users want. Otherwise, your fundamental product will not work and that's also impact the stock price. And I wonder if it goes back to what you were saying before about offering deeper answers because I find it... It's novel, it's interesting. It's really not that helpful. It's a featured snippet with citations. Like, okay, that's interesting. But one of the things that I thought was interesting when Google announced Gemini was they were showing, if you can ask it something like... I think the example they gave had to do was "I want to plan a birthday party for my kid." And it gave you one format of results that kind of aligned to the information. Maybe there's a lot of videos there, maybe there's a lot of lists or whatever. And they formatted the result to meet the need of that query, so that you can better explore what you wanted to learn about whatever is about a birthday party for your kid. Then they asked about a recipe and the format was very different because the type of exploration you're going to do when you're looking for a recipe requires a different visual format to be able to explore those results. I thought that was fascinating, and I wondered if maybe they would bring something like that to SGE. I think where SGE, to me, at least where it's novel is... Not it's pitting out an answer. It's novel in being able to facilitate exploration. "Here's a bunch of little tidbit of information. Here's a bunch of information that I'll give you the TLDR and you can now go explore this." And it'll be really interesting to me if they were able to bring in the custom formatting that they discussed in the Gemini demo, we'll link to that in the show notes, and bring that to SGE because that would really allow you to explore like a mad person. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that Google hasn't figured this thing out. I think they'll dispute it. They'll say they didn't rush this out. I feel like they felt like they had to rush it out. It's an imperfect product. It's an experiment. They keep reiterating, "It's still an experiment." So yeah, I feel like this is just going to be one of those things. They're really all in on this. I know a lot of people are like, "Oh, they think that SGE is not going to end up being launched." It is going to be launched. Mordy Oberstein: No, it's going to be launched. Just what will it be? Danny Goodwin: Right? Yeah. And that's the big question. So yeah, if they can do that and they can really nail that user intent, that is going to be, I think, the major change. We've already talked about there are certain niches that are really going to be hammered hard by SGE. There's been lots of discussion about that. Informational searches. What is this thing? What is that thing? Those are going to be hurt. They're going to lose a lot of traffic. Yes. And I remember Ryan Jones... I don't know if everyone watching knows who Ryan Jones is, but he is in SEO. He's been around for a long time. At Pubcon, he basically said, when I was watching his presentations, "When the web launched, you have to think about... " People were looking for answers, but webpages were the only way at that time you could get an answer. Since that time, 25 years later now, the web has evolved a lot. So there are other ways to get answers now, especially with these deep learning systems that Google's using, passage ranking, all these things, and users really expect more. Even Google has admitted that they're seeing the Gen Z, the younger people, they're going to TikTok, they're going Instagram when they're looking for a restaurant or other things, and that is a threat to them. So it's like they have to adapt, especially... Maybe the three of us have searched a certain way. We've done so for many years, but maybe we're not the core audience anymore. I know I'm probably outside the key demographic for them at this point, but- Mordy Oberstein: Are we old? Danny Goodwin: It could be. I know I am, but I don't know how old you two are, but- Crystal Carter: I do not identify as old. Mordy Oberstein: I do, and I have for a long time, even though I was young. Danny Goodwin: You both look much younger than me. Crystal Carter: Thank you! Danny Goodwin: SEO is aged for me very much. Crystal Carter: Like when you see those presidents at the beginning of their term and then at the end, and they're like, "Wow." Danny Goodwin: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you see Obama on a jet ski and you're like, "Oh, he looks great now. He suddenly doesn't have the way to the world." But one thing that I think is interesting, with Gemini, for instance. With the release, they also talked about Vertex AI, which is one of their product things. And essentially, they talk about other people being able to build with it and to be able to create with it. How much do you think that's going to affect how this develops and who adopts and what they adopt and how they integrate? Danny Goodwin: That part is very interesting. I've been reading a lot of stuff that's kind of outside of SEO. It almost seems like to me we're heading toward this weird future, too, where Crystal has her own AI persona. Like Mordy has his own AI persona. And your persona exists separate of you on the web, goes out, and does things that Mordy would want or figure out things that you would be interested in and finds it. Mordy Oberstein: I already have this. It's called my Twitter account. Danny Goodwin: Well, yes. But imagine you just took and trained your model on your Twitter account. You went out there. Boom, there you go. Now you don't even have to do it. Mordy Oberstein: Don't let that happen. Crystal Carter: Too late. Danny Goodwin: It's kind of scary. It's like the whole web at some point in the future could just be the AIs talking to other AIs. And that was another part of that movie Her. It's like the main AI in that movie, the Her character is talking to all these other AIs and they're coming up with these solutions to things and doing things all on their own, separate from humans. So it's really interesting to think about. Is the Web even going to be human-centric 10 years from now? I know we're already overrun and we're already overrun by bots. We know that too. Bot traffic too. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Danny Goodwin: So that's only going to get worse. Crystal Carter: I definitely know what you mean though, because I've seen people saying, "Oh yeah, you can have your AI read your emails." And then somebody else being like, "You can have AI write your emails." So who is actually reading the emails? But I also have this sort of thing where I'm regularly thinking, "Oh, that's how we ended... How that movie ended up like that." I feel like we're in a lot of times these days, I just find myself like, "Oh, that's how that movie starts. That's how we ended in that futurescape." Danny Goodwin: Totally. I know. Yeah, just don't let it take over the defense system is all I know. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Someone cue up the Terminator music. Danny Goodwin: Right. That's when all the trouble really starts. Crystal Carter: But I do think it's important to look at the Google Cloud stuff as well, because when I found... Particularly when I was looking at visual search a few years ago. When I was doing the research for it, I was looking at all of the Google Cloud product drops. Basically, that's where they tell you how the AI actually works, is that they're at the Google Cloud product drop things. That's where a lot of the magic happens, and I think that it'll be interesting to see who adopts the APIs for Gemini and how that rolls out to see... Because Google very often gets ideas from users, from large scale users for these kinds of products, for how we might see it applied in search, I think. Danny Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's definitely a To-Be-Determined area. I couldn't claim specialization in that area or expertise, so I won't. But yeah, I definitely agree. Definitely watch whatever Google Cloud is doing. I've seen that many times, especially the stuff around... All the entity SEO stuff. There's so much to learn in that area too, from Google Cloud and all those tools. So yes. Mordy Oberstein: It does, to me, kind of come down to what you were talking about before as to how we consume content and how that changes. To piggyback off of Ryan, I'll oftentimes... I don't live in the US anymore, but I follow NFL football. So most of the games are in the middle of the night for me. So if it's a game that I want to catch up on, I'll watch the highlights in the morning. I'm like, "All right, I'll watch the highlights. I don't want to know the score yet." And before I even go to Google or anything, I turn my phone on and there's a little card that says the score. I'm like, "Damn it." And that's not a feature snippet on the service. Not a direct answer on the service. This is a push notification. And the way we consume content and people talk about, "Oh, it's taking away clicks." But it's not just Google doing it. It's just a whole ecosystem is built and designed... That quick information is not meant for websites anymore. I know it sounds horrible to say, but to a certain extent, it's not. It's meant for a push notification. It's meant for an AI answer. It's meant for whatever. And I feel like however content consumption evolves is how AI is going to evolve to match it and to supplement it and to drive that need or that desire that people have in what they consume and how they consume it. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, I remember there was all kinds of outrage at one point. I don't remember the year. It was probably early 2010s, and everybody got so upset. I think it was a search on Google for the temperature was literally a one answer result. I don't know if you remember this. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I remember this. I remember freaking out about it. Danny Goodwin: Everybody freaked out about it. Mordy Oberstein: Every once in a while still shows up that way. There's nothing else on the SERP, but the direct answer. Danny Goodwin: Exactly. And it's just like, well, yeah, because you can find the temperature on weather channels, on the news, on various... It's just a thing. You shouldn't base your monetary model around getting organic traffic for the current temperature. Mordy Oberstein: Basing your business strategy on something that someone's able to understand by literally sticking their hand out the window- Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: ... Is probably not the best thing. Danny Goodwin: Also, yes. But one interesting thing that, just going really quickly back to the sports thing, which I found very interesting. I don't know if this could be rolled out in some way to search, but I just signed up for YouTube TV. They have an option on the TV now where you can hide sports scores before you watch the game, which I had not seen before. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Danny Goodwin: That would be very interesting if they could roll that out into search somehow where it's like a spoiler free version. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. That'd be great because it's happened so many times. Okay, I'm looking forward to that. Danny Goodwin: So anyway. I don't know if that, but if YouTube's doing it now on YouTube TV. Who knows? It could come to search someday. We'll see. Crystal Carter: I think that comes back to what you were talking about before. You mentioned that Google has all these different data sets and they have all this different amount of data on us, just as Google users and all of that. And I think it's interesting, because you were saying with Bing while they were trying to push ChatGPT and while they were trying to push New Bing, they were like, "Hey, if you want new Bing, you've got to make Edge your default browser." And I was like, "What?" They were like, "You got to put it on your phone." And I was like, "Huh?" My first response was like, "Why are they doing this?" And then I realized, "Oh, they don't have the same amount of data that Google has on me for being a Chrome user for years and years and years, and that everybody who has a Google Pixel has and everybody who has Gmail and all that sort of stuff. That whole ecosystem." And I think that that's going to be the linchpin for Google being able to drive Gemini forward and more of their other tech is how much data that they're able to collect on a daily basis about search and things like that. And like you said, being able to pull the dots together. Danny Goodwin: I mean, yeah, there are cases where being the first mover matters. I don't think in search it does, because Google can wait. And from the beginning, I was almost like, "Google's going to sit and watch Bing for a little while, see what they screw up, and not do that." That was my thinking from the beginning. I was just like, "Let Bing be the first one through the wall. Let them make all the mistakes. And it's one less thing that they'll have to worry about maybe from a feature antitrust thing, because I can go, oh, well, Microsoft did that first." Mordy Oberstein: Well, that is coming back to bite. There are lawsuits now. Danny Goodwin: Well, this is true, yes. But it's just... Again, goes back to the PR angle, which I know probably isn't most interesting to your listeners. Mordy Oberstein: No, I find that part the most interesting, because it's like the puppet and the string kind of thing. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, ultimately... And I said this... I did my keynote at SMX. It's like when you think about these AI companies, behind everything, you always have to remember it's monetary. They're not in this... I mean, yes, they want to give users a good experience, blah, blah, blah, because it makes them money. Like, yes. Okay, you're going to get good results. But ultimately they're making money on these great results and they don't want to upset that model. So that's why I say people who are saying SGE won't launch, just give that up. It's launching. They're going to figure it out and I kind of compared it to a casino. It's like, the House always wins. They just got to figure out where to put the big money slot machines on the right location on the floor, and they're going to stack the deck and they're going to figure it out. And they're probably going to end up, too, with ads. It's going to be less inventory, which means prices are going to go up for PPC advertisers. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing is that they've got a lot of, in terms of the house always wins or whatever, they've got a lot of cards in their hand. Danny Goodwin: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: They call it SGE now. It might be that it feeds into a different part of the SERP. That it might be that it shows up in a different way. It might be that it's just a shopping assistant or something and that sort of stuff. So they have a lot of different levers they can pull in terms of AI integration. So yeah, I think it is absolutely important that people pay attention to what they're doing there and how it all moves around. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So if people wanted to connect the dots and find you, Danny, where could they find you? Danny Goodwin: They can find me on Search Engine Land. Probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Just search for me. I'm Mr. Danny Goodwin on socials. I am on X, but not as much as I used to be. But yes, mainly, writing daily on Search Engine Land or near daily. And we also have our two big SMX shows twice a year, SMX Advanced and SMX next. And you just spoke Next and Mordy got rave reviews. Everybody should know, because he is awesome as a presenter. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: So thank you for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: One good thing I'm good at. Presenting. I'm very presentable. Danny Goodwin: You are. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Yeah, the people love you in our community. Well, some of them. Mordy Oberstein: No, well. The SMX site are a classic... Some people do. SMX are a classic SEO conference. They moved to digital a couple of years ago. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: And they're free. Are they... Right? I'm correct to say that? Danny Goodwin: They're totally free. Yep. Yeah, we moved online, unfortunately due to covid, but they've actually ended up working out really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I spoke at SMX during Covid, and it was lovely. I think I spoke with, I remember chatting to Barry actually during a session. Danny Goodwin: That must have been fun. Crystal Carter: Which was great. Mordy Oberstein: I hope you two had fun. Barry loves fun. Crystal Carter: Oh yes, we did have fun. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. So yeah, definitely please, you're listening to this. Check out the SMX conference series. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's free. Sign up. You can learn an absolute ton. Danny Goodwin: And yeah, read Search Engine Land every day. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Danny Goodwin: All spam. That was my spam plug. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. We're all- Danny Goodwin: Sign up for the newsletter. Follow us on social. Mordy Oberstein: No, we're all for plugging. Crystal Carter: Like and subscribe. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, like and subscribe. Mordy Oberstein: So say thank you to Barry and say hi to Barry, rather. Say hi to Barry for us. Barry looms large over our show. He's a part of our show every week, but he is not actually on it. Crystal Carter: Should we have him on it one day? Mordy Oberstein: We had him once. You forgot? We had Barry. See? We- Crystal Carter: Yes, that's true. That's true. But we didn't have him as an interview. That's why. Mordy Oberstein: For those of you, it's your first time listening to the podcast, we cover the SEO news. Often we'll cover Danny's articles. But we also often inevitably cover at least one of Barry Schwartz's articles. So Barry is a very much part of our podcast each and every week, and he looms over it. Danny Goodwin: Have you had the Standee behind you for an entire podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I need to get that. It's still in England, I think. Danny Goodwin: That was fantastic. So I just remember... I don't... Which conference was it? Was that BrightonSEO, where you went- Mordy Oberstein: It was Brighton, yeah. We had a giant cut out of Barry Schwartz and it was a cornhole game too. Danny Goodwin: That was epic. I remember seeing that and just laughing when I saw that on social. I was like, "That's awesome." I wanted that. Mordy Oberstein: People, we have to get it. It's still somewhere in England. People came up and thought, "Wait, is that actually Barry?" And didn't realize it was a cutout. Crystal Carter: Like a foot taller than him as well. It was a giant Barry. Mordy Oberstein: He was a great sport. He took a picture just for that. I didn't pull that picture offline. He actually took a picture for the thing. He's a great sport, Barry. Danny Goodwin: Yes, yes he is. And he is been doing it 20 years, which is insane. His productivity, I don't know... If you don't mind me plugging one more thing. JR Oakes did this really awesome article on Search Engine Land. I don't know if you saw that one. But yeah, it was just sort of recapping the history through the lens of Barry Schwartz, which was... There was so many amazing insights of how productive Barry is and just all the... So many topics he's covered through 20 years and how his growth of... His writing has gone up into the right curve over the years, which is insane. He just gets more and more productive. So I don't know how he does it. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. JR is also amazing. I will- Crystal Carter: Do you think it's AI? Danny Goodwin: No. Definitely not. Mordy Oberstein: Barry's not a robot. Danny Goodwin: BI? Barry intelligence? Mordy Oberstein: Barry... Danny Goodwin: But we do need to... Yeah, we should download his brain. Mordy Oberstein: We should save it in the ether forever. Danny Goodwin: Yes, absolutely. If for nothing else, just the sarcasm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. A thousand percent. Thank you so much, Danny. Really appreciate you coming on, and we'll see you out there. Thanks for all you do for Search Engine Land and the industry. Danny Goodwin: Thank you, Mordy. Thank you, Crystal. It's been great to be here. Mordy Oberstein: So limiting the conversation around AI just to SEO will not be doing Gemini justice. And because it is something of influence in the stars, I want to do Gemini justice, and I don't want to get my horoscope ruined and my life destroyed because I didn't do justice. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So we're going to take a look at what Gemini means for the evolution of AI with a little help from the co-founder of The Neuron, Pete Huang, as we move out of SEO per se and into a segment we call the Great Beyond. So Pete is a masterful expert around all things AI. Said a lot about the topic. So we asked him, "Hey Pete, why is Chip and I a big deal for the evolution of AI?" And here's what Pete had to say. Pete Huang: Gemini is really a catch-up moment for Google this time. Last year, people had two thoughts when it came to this sector, AI, if you rewind to just two months after ChatGPT got released. The first one is OpenAI might just run away with it and nobody's ever going to catch up. And two, where the heck is Google? I mean, after all, they have everything on their side. Money, computing, resources, talent, and they seem to have no answer to what OpenAI has done. And so every time Google would make an announcement, it would just be one or two steps behind where people thought they needed to be for them to catch up. So Google releases Gemini and makes a very pointed statement that their best model Gemini Ultra beats OpenAI's GPT-4. And if this holds up after people get access to Gemini Ultra, we would now have two models at this level, which is more choice and more capabilities on the market that performs as well as GPT-4 does, which is currently what powers ChatGPT on the backend, especially if you upgrade to ChatGPT Plus. The main way this has shown up so far is in Google Bard, which is like Google's version of ChatGPT. It had always been lagging ChatGPT and was sort of unusable when it first launched. When we first used it, we would ask it for basic integration stuff, which is, "Can you find me three restaurants near this area?" And all the information would be wrong. Since then, they've swapped out the model behind Bard to use Gemini, and it's gotten a whole lot better. It's become good enough to recommend, in fact, especially if you use Google products. So in summary, Gemini is really Google saying, "We're here now and we've taken a year to do this." I mean, Gemini was released in the tail end of 2023. "But we're finally here." And in the grand scheme of these sort of races to build technology one year really isn't all that much. But it does paint a contrast to what was going on earlier in the year in 2023, where it felt like every day, every week, every month, there was something happening. And so therefore, it made Google's relative silence feel like there was nothing real or tangible or productive going on there, or at least that they were very much falling behind in the race. So from my perspective, it is good for developers, good for businesses who want more choice, and certainly good for the consumer who wants to use Google products even more. As for SEO, I think this is the part where the SGE generated results might get a little bit better. The question I think is whether or not SGE is the form factor, is the product that makes users more engaged. That is ultimately the question that decides how far a new feature gets rolled out. So we might see SGE results improve, especially if they share that Gemini is powering those results. But that is all TBD and I think more immediately we're seeing the impact in products that Google Bard for now. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Pete. Make sure you check out Pete's newsletter, The Neuron Daily at TheNeuronDaily.com, and we'll link to Pete's social media profiles in the show notes. So make sure to give them a follow. Really, really interesting. First off, I want to take up the SGE thing really quick. I don't want to get too hung up on the SEO side. We said it's the great beyond. We're beyond SEO for a minute. But if you look at what happened with Bing and their version of SGE, it did nothing for them in terms of market share. And I think we talked about this in the podcast multiple times. The SGE, as you see it now, was part of the great AI race to keep up with Bing. And I don't think it's fundamentally what users actually need or want and that what will move the needle for Google. So I do see, to Pete's point, I do see SGE morphing to something else and not being what it is now. In terms of the overall picture, if I could sum up what I took away from that, there was a lot of daily noise for the last year or so, and then things went quiet. And now we're finally looking at the real developments in AI as opposed to all of the noise around AI, which is so ironic because you see the interest in ChatGPT falling off a little bit over the last few months. So it's sort of ironic as now things actually ramp up and things develop people's interest in it, it's sort of gone down just a bit. We're all past the hype part of it. But ironically now we're getting to the real stuff. Maybe it's now when you should be paying attention. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that that's the case. I think that when a lot of people are like, "Oh, AI is magical." It's not magical. Basically- Mordy Oberstein: No. Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Crystal Carter: It's not magical. Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was at the end of a rainbow was an pot full of AI? Crystal Carter: No, no. And the other thing is that we've had AI in our lives for ages. What we've have now is the ability to harness it directly ourselves in a way that we were not able to do before. And I agree with Pete when he says that Google was playing catch up and this is now them trying to get into it. Because I think that ChatGPT has made AI more accessible. It's very user-friendly. It's very easily accessible. But to get real good nuanced, sophisticated benefit from these tools, you still have to know stuff. You can't just be like any schmo off the street and just walk in and get something that's particularly amazing because literally everyone has access to it. So the smart people still have access to the same thing as the people who are maybe moving along and making their way. So I think that we are seeing, like you said, the real... More sophisticated, more nuanced, and people who have been working with these tools for years, because they have been available for years, are able to do more than they were able to do before. And I think that, yeah, I agree that Bard is going to... I think at the moment they've got a lot of things running. They've got Bard running, they've got the SGE running, they've got Gemini running, they've got lots of different things running, and I think that we're probably going to see convergence. Mordy Oberstein: Bet their knees hurt from all the running. Crystal Carter: We're probably going to see a convergence of some of these AI tools at the same time, because the other thing that they have running as well is Lens. I've talked about Lens a lot across when I was talking about visual search a lot. And Lens is becoming very, very sophisticated. So you can use it for QR codes. You can use it for it for- Mordy Oberstein: Translation of images. I use it all the time for that. Crystal Carter: Right? It's super useful for that. You just hold it up in the thing and it translates multiple languages at once. Mordy Oberstein: It's so good. Crystal Carter: So if you're looking at ingredients and you're trying to figure out whether or not it has peanuts and it's going to give you an allergic reaction, you can see it in English and French and Spanish, and it can translate all of those different languages at once. And I think that we're probably going to see a convergence of those tools into something that changes search significantly. And Gemini, I think, like Pete is saying, is going to be the backbone of that. Mordy Oberstein: And you see that reflected in the fact that Gemini has multiple pricing models and multiple models are not for the average person. Crystal Carter: Right? And like I said, in our discussion earlier as well, we are going to see more players that are making use of Gemini, the quicker Google's going to be able to learn from that. It's the same reason why they made ChatGPT available to people in the first place for pretty much for free. And then the plus is because they are learning. They're learning from every single interaction that we're having with it, and they're learning what people value from it, what people can do with it, and all of that. So as Gemini is more available to enterprise level clients, they're going to be able to learn what it's able to do and they're going to be able to make more advance, more advancements more quickly. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I would like? I would like to have some sort of chatGPT version of Barry. BarryGPT. It's like you ask Siri. "Hey Siri, what's happening with the NFL today?" And Siri gives you an answer back. "Hey Barry, what's happening in the SEO news today?" And it would be Barry talking and telling you what's happening. BarryGPT. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, you've put that down. Now that... You now ideate that. Mordy Oberstein: If anyone takes it, I want, some kind of finder's fee for it. Crystal Carter: I'm sure there's a technical term. Technical legal term for it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't know what it is, but give me the money. It was my idea first. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, here's Barry and other people talking about the SEO news and possibly about AI. Let's find out. Mordy Oberstein: Now for this week's snappy news. Barry Schwartz reports on SEL that Google has dropped web stories from the image results, Google Discover carousel, and reduced the grid view to carousel view in Google search. Web stories have had a mixed reception amongst search marketers due to their complex implementation, effect on Google Discover traffic, and what Lily Ray referred to as the ability of folks to have used the feature by spamming the hell out of web stories. Glenn Gabe, who shared a great thread on the news, predicts that this change is the start of a full scale deprecation and that web stories could be completely gone in a year or so. Time will tell. Over on Search Engine Land, Danny Goodwin reports that Yandex search engine has been sold in a $5.2 billion deal. The Dutch parent company of what is effectively Russia's version of Google has just agreed on the sale of their search engine to a conglomerate of Russian based companies and business leaders. It is used by more than 60% of people in Russia and could result in some changes to how the search engine performs in the not too distance feature. So keep an eye on this one. In a post from blog.google, Google has announced that they are merging their Google Bard product into Gemini. This signals a move to streamline their AI offering and is illustrated by the fact that they are adding Gemini into the Google Assistant tool. This means that those who opt-in can use Google Gemini on their phone simply by saying, "Hey, Google." This, combined with a subscription-based model, should help them become more direct competitors, which ChatGPT, and might make voice search more of a thing. Maybe this year is the year. This week, there was also some great discussion on core web vitals as Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan, doubled down on a previous statement saying, "We don't confirm any core web vitals as a direct ranking factor." As reported by Barry Schwartz in Search Engine Roundtable, Sullivan shared an article saying, "While not all aspects may be directly used to inform ranking, they do generally align with success in search ranking and are worth attention." And in a lively Twitter discussion, he shared that. It doesn't say it's a ranking factor. SEOs continue to be confused by this, but as Danny explains, "Is there a single page experience signal that Google uses for ranking? There is no single signal. Our core systems look at a variety of signals that align with overall page experience." So in the end, I think if we can all agree that it depends, and that's this week's snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think now that Barry heard this idea, because Barry does listen to the podcast, if he'll create, if Barry created BarryGPT himself, does he still owe me a finder's fee thing? Crystal Carter: I don't know. You'd have to discuss that with Barry. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. It's all right, Barry, I'll just take a bread and butter sandwich instead as payment. Crystal Carter: Sounds good. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. Mordy Oberstein: For Halloween, I want to dress up as the butter and Barry can be the bread. This is, by the way, an inside joke about Barry's ability to make butter sandwiches, which is not as great as his ability to make news. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "Why didn't you toast it?" And he's like, "No, I just thought I'd mangle the bread." Mordy Oberstein: "There's no time." Just to explain, Barry, a year ago and somehow it resurfaced, posted a picture of his butter sandwich that he made, and it's mutilated. It's like the bread is torn. The butters in chunks. Crystal Carter: It's what happens when you put cold butter on soft bread and just smear it. Mordy Oberstein: Just force it. Crystal Carter: Right? It's not going to work. Mordy Oberstein: Spread, damn it. Spread. It's unbelievable. But he's like, "I didn't have any time to make a sandwich." I'm like, "All right." Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to the tweet in the show notes. That's how... Yeah, this is pathetic, but we'll link to it in the show notes. We've gotten way off the rails. Speaking of other people who are AI tools, or love AI tools rather, our follow of the week this week is a very special person. He happens to be one of the producers of this very podcast. It is the one, the only, host of EDGE of the web radio. Erin Sparks over at E-R-I-N-S-P-A-R-K-S Sparks on X, formerly known as Twitter. Twitter, formerly known as X, in my mind. Erin does a podcast called EDGE of the Web. It's a great podcast. Listen to it after you listen to this one. And he does the SEO news every week, which I co-host with him, which is full of shenanigans. It's not like anything like this podcast at all. Pure shenanigans. Crystal Carter: With the occasional guest star from yours truly as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I do appreciate you, Crystal filling in for me when I can't. Crystal Carter: Mordy's like, "I can't. Can you?" And I'm like, "Sure. Great." Love Erin. Love Jacob. Mordy Oberstein: They're great. Jacob, Jacob Mann. They're fabulous people. And Erin loves his AI tools. And every week on the SEO... On the EDGE of the web news rather, he'll cover his favorite AI tools, which makes me completely check out, by the way. Crystal Carter: Okay. So every time I guest host, and this is the reason why Erin is our follow of the week... If you're not following Erin, do. But every time we go on there, he's always like, "Oh, I found this new thing." I'm like, "But that's so cool." Mordy Oberstein: Some of it is really cool. Okay, I gave him a hard time. But there are some really cool ones in there. Crystal Carter: There's some cool ones. The best one I found, or the one that he showed me last time, was one that was around AI image generators. And I've tried AI generator- Mordy Oberstein: You showed me this hack, by the way. Crystal Carter: ... And my prompts are... It's good, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very good. Okay, explain, please. Crystal Carter: So my prompts are janky. I've tried and people are like, "Yeah, it's great." And I was like, "What?" And all the images that I get are terrible. My prompts, I do my best. They don't really work. So then he showed me something called freeflow.ai, and basically they have a bank of prompts that did work. And you can go in- Mordy Oberstein: And you just steal them. Crystal Carter: ... And you can copy, you can adapt, you can remix, you can update the prompts for it. I used this to redecorate my office. So I found a design prompt and stuff. But for instance, there's one that's like a selfie one, for instance, and you can see the prompt. And the prompt is selfie shot, iPhone 12 Pro Max of subject taking a selfie, et cetera, et cetera. It's got all these different things that whoever's done these prompts actually understands the way, the syntax that the bots prefer in order to give them the best thing. Anyway, it's really great, and he has tons of these and he shares them a lot. And Erin's also super nice and funny and knowledgeable and does a great podcast. And yeah, follow Erin. Mordy Oberstein: Him, Jacob, the whole EDGE of the web crew, really wonderful people. A lot of SEO knowledge. A lot of AI knowledge. So definitely please give them a follow and tell them we said hi when you follow them. "Crystal and Mordy sent us to follow you." That's... I'm all out of predictions from the stars this week. I have nothing else to add. Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, I think that means Mercury's in retrograde or something. Is that what it means? Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Mercury. It's in tuna fish also. Crystal Carter: I'm done. That ended me. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. Anyway, 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 do you really need experts to write the content for you to actually be expert content by experts? Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO Learning over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinar resources on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Danny Goodwin Pete Huang Erin Sparks Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Search Engine Land Google Gemini Google Gemini is here – and it’s already being tested in Search The Neuron Barry Schwartz's Famous Butter Sandwich Edge of the Web Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Danny Goodwin Pete Huang Erin Sparks Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Search Engine Land Google Gemini Google Gemini is here – and it’s already being tested in Search The Neuron Barry Schwartz's Famous Butter Sandwich Edge of the Web 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 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 searches the stars for SEO answers, the one, the only, Head of Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. My name is Crystal Carter. I'm a Pisces and I am a stargazer. I've been enjoying Jupiter being in the Northern Hemisphere for the last few months. It keeps hanging out by the moon. We're going to talk about lots of things like that. So yeah, welcome to our podcast about SEO. Mordy Oberstein: I'm also a Pisces. What does that mean though? Crystal Carter: I know you're a Pisces. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, because of my personality or because you know what my birthday is? Crystal Carter: Actually, a lot of SEOs are Pisces. I think it's because we like to jump around and we like to go with the flow of the algorithm and things. Mordy Oberstein: I always thought it was my traumatic childhood, but now you're telling me it's really... Okay. Got it. Crystal Carter: Definitely your star sign. Mordy Oberstein: That's just- Crystal Carter: I mean, I think I am definitely... I'm a Pisces rising in a Taurus. No, I'm kidding. I don't know how that works. Literally, I'm very top level on my astrology. I'm completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: I know Taurus, I know Pisces, and I know Gemini, and that's all I know. Crystal Carter: Okay, well, we'll leave it at that. Mordy Oberstein: A little foreshadowing there. Now, 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 also automate the heck out of your client's site with Wix's revamped integration with Zapier. Connect your client's site and take advantage of thousands of marketing automations. You know what else can automate a heck of a lot of things? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Google's Gemini. Oh. They're taking a play out of the back pages of a newspaper, as our horoscope says AI technology is on the horizon. We'll get into what is Google Gemini, what has Google said about Gemini in search, and what are some possible ways Gemini may impact SEO in the future. To help us see the future of search, we'll soon chat with the one, the only, editor of Search Engine Land, that's Barry Schwartz's boss. Danny Goodwin will join us in just a few moments. We'll also talk to the co-founder of The Neuron, Peter Huang, about what Gemini means, not just for SEO, but beyond SEO, and of course we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So let's see what's in the stars today and what the horoscope of the SERP is, as episode number 74 of the SERP's Up podcast. It's all playful, perceptive, and intellectually curious as we go all Gemini on you. Crystal Carter: You know, there are a lot of sides to a Gemini. It's like they have twin personality. Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea. I have literally no clue. Crystal Carter: That's what they say about all of that sort of thing, and I mean that kind of tracks with what we've heard about it so far. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Nicely done. I've never actually read a horoscope in my life before. Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: No, I've never really like- Crystal Carter: I love horoscopes. It's like a fortune cookie. That's how I treat it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fortune cookies. They tastes good. Can you eat a horoscope? Crystal Carter: I mean... Mordy Oberstein: I don't care. Okay, so before we bring in Danny, let's talk a little bit what just very, very quickly is catch everybody up. What is Google Gemini? It's a new AI model that allegedly solves very complex tasks. It could understand all sorts of media and mediums, from text, to code, to audio, et cetera. It's extremely powerful and it's meant to compete with Google... With Google's. With OpenAI's GPT-4, and according to certain tests, it seems to outperform GPT-4, which is interesting. So there are all sorts of possible implications about what this means for Google search. Google has kind of talked a little bit about it, which is why we thought we would bring Danny Goodwin on, because Danny wrote a whole article about this. So welcome to SERP's Up, Danny. Danny Goodwin: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Mordy, and Crystal, I guess I should disclose I'm a Scorpio. So- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right. Scorpio. Right, right, right. Okay. I know that one. Crystal Carter: Right? Okay. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Danny Goodwin: It depends. Mordy Oberstein: It depends. Crystal Carter: Although Scorpios I know are very, very loyal people. Very loyal- Danny Goodwin: Very true. Crystal Carter: Very, like, ride or die. That's my homie. Danny Goodwin: Very much. Crystal Carter: That's the end of that. Danny Goodwin: That's some people saying and it's some people, not their thing. But yes, that's a very good assessment. Loyal, ambitious, all that stuff. Crystal Carter: Well, welcome to the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like competing personality traits, loyal and ambitious. Danny Goodwin: Well, I don't know. I tend to look at as I like to do my absolute best for whatever company I work for. But in doing so, I also grow my own brand, so to speak. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, okay. That works. Danny Goodwin: I think they work together. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's cool. Okay. I get it. Crystal Carter: I think so. Danny Goodwin: It's like... You think back on my earliest days in search was at Search Engine Watch. A lot of the work I did there sort of built my reputation for the rest of my career. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Danny Goodwin: So I thought... Yeah, I think just generally doing hard work and showcasing your talent is incredibly valuable for advancing your career. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And advancing the company you're with. So I've heard people who are like, "Oh, should I let my team go out and do speaking and stuff? What if they go somewhere else?" I'm like, "Yeah, but they're letting you shine by shining. I shine, you shine, we all shine." It's good for everybody. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: Agree. Danny Goodwin: And we all love shining happy people. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let's talk Gemini. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: You wrote a whole article about covering... When Google came out with their big Gemini announcement covering what Google has said about it and what it is. So what has Google said about Gemini in search and what is Gemini exactly? Danny Goodwin: The easiest way to think about it is Gemini is basically the equivalent to GPT from OpenAI. It's sort of the backend large language model that is powering a lot of the things that Google wants to do in search in the future. I don't think they have all the capabilities yet. And basically they came out with three flavors, I guess, of Gemini, initially, and this is 1.0. So we're going to see advancements in it. They have Ultra, Pro, and Nano. We're getting a taste of the Pro model now in Bard, and I believe... The rumor is they're going to have a paid version of Bard in the future, and I think that will be powered by the Ultra version. So we'll see how that shakes out. That's just all rumor at this point. But basically, yeah. So right now they're testing Gemini for SGE. They've said that in addition to reducing the time it takes to generate the SGE responses, the AI answers, they claim that it basically has resulted in other search quality improvements. But they didn't really explain what those are. It's in testing now and they said that it is coming to search and ads in the future, in the next few months. So that will be interesting and I don't think they're going to announce it before it comes out. I imagine it'll be sort of RankBrain or some of the other things they've just deployed. It will be there and then at some point later they'll go, "Oh, by the way, we launched this two months ago." So we will see. I could be wrong. And I think this just ultimately gets Google closer to that model it's sort of been at for the... They've had this long-term vision. If you go back to some of the earliest interviews, Marie Haynes uncovered this really great old interview with Larry Page. It's just like, ultimately AI is search. "When someone comes to Google and asks a question, we give them the right answer. That's AI. That's search." It's sort of always been the model. I've been comparing it recently... I'll give credit, too, to Michael King for this one. He had this great video from a few years ago where he compared where Google's going to the movie Her, which I don't know if you guys have seen. It was a 2013 movie, I believe. Scarlett Johansson... Really good cast, actually. Amy Adams and some other good people. But it's basically like Her was an operating system. It's a virtual assistant. It adapts to you. It learns from you. I think that's where Google's going. It's just you talk to Google and it will- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I did see this movie. Okay. I did see this. Danny Goodwin: ... Respond to you. Yeah, it's basically it learns from you and responds to you and anticipates your needs. It's basically your virtual assistant. And I think we're going to start seeing that first when they incorporate Bard into the assistant on Google phones. Mordy Oberstein: So where do you think, based upon what Google has said, what they're trying to do, where do you think they're going, what are they trying to use Gemini for exactly? It's simply to generate answers as better answers, faster answers? Or are they going to expand what AI means? Or do you think... Because we don't really know what they're going to do. But do you think they're going to expand what AI means on the SERP, beyond what we're currently seeing in the form of SGE? Danny Goodwin: I think right now, my guess is a lot of it, because... I'm sure you remember when they first launched SGE, it took a really long time to generate those answers, and I have definitely... We've reported, Michael King did research on it, Authoritas did some research on it, and that time has definitely reduced. So I think that's the biggest area right now. Quality wise, I still don't see perfect answers or they're just very surfacey, generic. I don't know if they're going to make... I'd love to see a bit more depth if they're going to really go all in on this, but they're not there. It's kind of like a fourth grade book report on, "Tell me about this thing." So I don't know if that's going to improve. That'll be interesting to see. But I ultimately think they have so much data that they collected on you, on me... They know the story you clicked on in Google News and what videos you watch on YouTube. I just imagine them connecting all these dots together ultimately, and Gemini is going to be that kind of backend for connecting all these dots and trying to figure out what you want, click on what you want, what content you want to consume, what do you want to read, what videos you want to see, all these things and just be like a real recommendation engine. Best way to compare it to what TikToks doing. Mordy Oberstein: So Google Discover on steroids? Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yes. That's what it feels like. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting. Yeah. Crystal Carter: And do you think that this is a play to put them back ahead of the game? I think that when ChatGPT broke more for the mainstream, and particularly when Bing was like, "We've put this into New Bing," I think Google, it seemed anyway, they were a little bit on the back foot. Not that they haven't been progressing with AI. They've had tons of AI for years. But for a public facing product, they seem to be a little bit trying to pull something together. Do you think that this is a play to move to be the forerunners, and do you think this puts them there? Danny Goodwin: I think it's definitely... There's definitely a PR aspect to a lot of what we're seeing. Going all the way back to SGE, it was kind of like vaporware announcements. It's like, "We have this really awesome thing. You can't see it yet though." And that seems to be how they've been going with us. And it was even the same with Gemini to an extent, because they had that video. Mordy Oberstein: The video was interesting. Danny Goodwin: The video was very interesting and was also very fake, and I called out on it. So it's like they're taking a couple steps forward and back. But it's like when they flubbed their initial introduction of Bard, when they had that wrong answer, and they got called out on it and their stock took a dive. Remember that way back in the day? And all these things have consequences. So from big perspective, Bing is honestly... The game is over for Microsoft. This was, to me, I thought their kind of the last chance because they had all this hype going with GPT, but we've followed the numbers. They've gained no market share since launching this, despite all the hoopla. Despite like, "Oh my God, this is the shiny new thing. ChatGPT is awesome." Hasn't helped them a bit. Mordy Oberstein: Which is interesting because Google went doubled down and said, "Oh, you're going to do that? We'll do that better." But was that really what users really want in the end? And I think... We don't like talking about this on the podcast, but the money aspect is fascinating and the PR aspect is fascinating, because a lot of this does have to do with stock prices. And a lot of it is, "Hey, let's put this out there. Let's show us... Position ourselves at a certain way." But at a certain point, you do have to actually address what users want. Otherwise, your fundamental product will not work and that's also impact the stock price. And I wonder if it goes back to what you were saying before about offering deeper answers because I find it... It's novel, it's interesting. It's really not that helpful. It's a featured snippet with citations. Like, okay, that's interesting. But one of the things that I thought was interesting when Google announced Gemini was they were showing, if you can ask it something like... I think the example they gave had to do was "I want to plan a birthday party for my kid." And it gave you one format of results that kind of aligned to the information. Maybe there's a lot of videos there, maybe there's a lot of lists or whatever. And they formatted the result to meet the need of that query, so that you can better explore what you wanted to learn about whatever is about a birthday party for your kid. Then they asked about a recipe and the format was very different because the type of exploration you're going to do when you're looking for a recipe requires a different visual format to be able to explore those results. I thought that was fascinating, and I wondered if maybe they would bring something like that to SGE. I think where SGE, to me, at least where it's novel is... Not it's pitting out an answer. It's novel in being able to facilitate exploration. "Here's a bunch of little tidbit of information. Here's a bunch of information that I'll give you the TLDR and you can now go explore this." And it'll be really interesting to me if they were able to bring in the custom formatting that they discussed in the Gemini demo, we'll link to that in the show notes, and bring that to SGE because that would really allow you to explore like a mad person. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that Google hasn't figured this thing out. I think they'll dispute it. They'll say they didn't rush this out. I feel like they felt like they had to rush it out. It's an imperfect product. It's an experiment. They keep reiterating, "It's still an experiment." So yeah, I feel like this is just going to be one of those things. They're really all in on this. I know a lot of people are like, "Oh, they think that SGE is not going to end up being launched." It is going to be launched. Mordy Oberstein: No, it's going to be launched. Just what will it be? Danny Goodwin: Right? Yeah. And that's the big question. So yeah, if they can do that and they can really nail that user intent, that is going to be, I think, the major change. We've already talked about there are certain niches that are really going to be hammered hard by SGE. There's been lots of discussion about that. Informational searches. What is this thing? What is that thing? Those are going to be hurt. They're going to lose a lot of traffic. Yes. And I remember Ryan Jones... I don't know if everyone watching knows who Ryan Jones is, but he is in SEO. He's been around for a long time. At Pubcon, he basically said, when I was watching his presentations, "When the web launched, you have to think about... " People were looking for answers, but webpages were the only way at that time you could get an answer. Since that time, 25 years later now, the web has evolved a lot. So there are other ways to get answers now, especially with these deep learning systems that Google's using, passage ranking, all these things, and users really expect more. Even Google has admitted that they're seeing the Gen Z, the younger people, they're going to TikTok, they're going Instagram when they're looking for a restaurant or other things, and that is a threat to them. So it's like they have to adapt, especially... Maybe the three of us have searched a certain way. We've done so for many years, but maybe we're not the core audience anymore. I know I'm probably outside the key demographic for them at this point, but- Mordy Oberstein: Are we old? Danny Goodwin: It could be. I know I am, but I don't know how old you two are, but- Crystal Carter: I do not identify as old. Mordy Oberstein: I do, and I have for a long time, even though I was young. Danny Goodwin: You both look much younger than me. Crystal Carter: Thank you! Danny Goodwin: SEO is aged for me very much. Crystal Carter: Like when you see those presidents at the beginning of their term and then at the end, and they're like, "Wow." Danny Goodwin: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you see Obama on a jet ski and you're like, "Oh, he looks great now. He suddenly doesn't have the way to the world." But one thing that I think is interesting, with Gemini, for instance. With the release, they also talked about Vertex AI, which is one of their product things. And essentially, they talk about other people being able to build with it and to be able to create with it. How much do you think that's going to affect how this develops and who adopts and what they adopt and how they integrate? Danny Goodwin: That part is very interesting. I've been reading a lot of stuff that's kind of outside of SEO. It almost seems like to me we're heading toward this weird future, too, where Crystal has her own AI persona. Like Mordy has his own AI persona. And your persona exists separate of you on the web, goes out, and does things that Mordy would want or figure out things that you would be interested in and finds it. Mordy Oberstein: I already have this. It's called my Twitter account. Danny Goodwin: Well, yes. But imagine you just took and trained your model on your Twitter account. You went out there. Boom, there you go. Now you don't even have to do it. Mordy Oberstein: Don't let that happen. Crystal Carter: Too late. Danny Goodwin: It's kind of scary. It's like the whole web at some point in the future could just be the AIs talking to other AIs. And that was another part of that movie Her. It's like the main AI in that movie, the Her character is talking to all these other AIs and they're coming up with these solutions to things and doing things all on their own, separate from humans. So it's really interesting to think about. Is the Web even going to be human-centric 10 years from now? I know we're already overrun and we're already overrun by bots. We know that too. Bot traffic too. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Danny Goodwin: So that's only going to get worse. Crystal Carter: I definitely know what you mean though, because I've seen people saying, "Oh yeah, you can have your AI read your emails." And then somebody else being like, "You can have AI write your emails." So who is actually reading the emails? But I also have this sort of thing where I'm regularly thinking, "Oh, that's how we ended... How that movie ended up like that." I feel like we're in a lot of times these days, I just find myself like, "Oh, that's how that movie starts. That's how we ended in that futurescape." Danny Goodwin: Totally. I know. Yeah, just don't let it take over the defense system is all I know. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Someone cue up the Terminator music. Danny Goodwin: Right. That's when all the trouble really starts. Crystal Carter: But I do think it's important to look at the Google Cloud stuff as well, because when I found... Particularly when I was looking at visual search a few years ago. When I was doing the research for it, I was looking at all of the Google Cloud product drops. Basically, that's where they tell you how the AI actually works, is that they're at the Google Cloud product drop things. That's where a lot of the magic happens, and I think that it'll be interesting to see who adopts the APIs for Gemini and how that rolls out to see... Because Google very often gets ideas from users, from large scale users for these kinds of products, for how we might see it applied in search, I think. Danny Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's definitely a To-Be-Determined area. I couldn't claim specialization in that area or expertise, so I won't. But yeah, I definitely agree. Definitely watch whatever Google Cloud is doing. I've seen that many times, especially the stuff around... All the entity SEO stuff. There's so much to learn in that area too, from Google Cloud and all those tools. So yes. Mordy Oberstein: It does, to me, kind of come down to what you were talking about before as to how we consume content and how that changes. To piggyback off of Ryan, I'll oftentimes... I don't live in the US anymore, but I follow NFL football. So most of the games are in the middle of the night for me. So if it's a game that I want to catch up on, I'll watch the highlights in the morning. I'm like, "All right, I'll watch the highlights. I don't want to know the score yet." And before I even go to Google or anything, I turn my phone on and there's a little card that says the score. I'm like, "Damn it." And that's not a feature snippet on the service. Not a direct answer on the service. This is a push notification. And the way we consume content and people talk about, "Oh, it's taking away clicks." But it's not just Google doing it. It's just a whole ecosystem is built and designed... That quick information is not meant for websites anymore. I know it sounds horrible to say, but to a certain extent, it's not. It's meant for a push notification. It's meant for an AI answer. It's meant for whatever. And I feel like however content consumption evolves is how AI is going to evolve to match it and to supplement it and to drive that need or that desire that people have in what they consume and how they consume it. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, I remember there was all kinds of outrage at one point. I don't remember the year. It was probably early 2010s, and everybody got so upset. I think it was a search on Google for the temperature was literally a one answer result. I don't know if you remember this. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I remember this. I remember freaking out about it. Danny Goodwin: Everybody freaked out about it. Mordy Oberstein: Every once in a while still shows up that way. There's nothing else on the SERP, but the direct answer. Danny Goodwin: Exactly. And it's just like, well, yeah, because you can find the temperature on weather channels, on the news, on various... It's just a thing. You shouldn't base your monetary model around getting organic traffic for the current temperature. Mordy Oberstein: Basing your business strategy on something that someone's able to understand by literally sticking their hand out the window- Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: ... Is probably not the best thing. Danny Goodwin: Also, yes. But one interesting thing that, just going really quickly back to the sports thing, which I found very interesting. I don't know if this could be rolled out in some way to search, but I just signed up for YouTube TV. They have an option on the TV now where you can hide sports scores before you watch the game, which I had not seen before. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Danny Goodwin: That would be very interesting if they could roll that out into search somehow where it's like a spoiler free version. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. That'd be great because it's happened so many times. Okay, I'm looking forward to that. Danny Goodwin: So anyway. I don't know if that, but if YouTube's doing it now on YouTube TV. Who knows? It could come to search someday. We'll see. Crystal Carter: I think that comes back to what you were talking about before. You mentioned that Google has all these different data sets and they have all this different amount of data on us, just as Google users and all of that. And I think it's interesting, because you were saying with Bing while they were trying to push ChatGPT and while they were trying to push New Bing, they were like, "Hey, if you want new Bing, you've got to make Edge your default browser." And I was like, "What?" They were like, "You got to put it on your phone." And I was like, "Huh?" My first response was like, "Why are they doing this?" And then I realized, "Oh, they don't have the same amount of data that Google has on me for being a Chrome user for years and years and years, and that everybody who has a Google Pixel has and everybody who has Gmail and all that sort of stuff. That whole ecosystem." And I think that that's going to be the linchpin for Google being able to drive Gemini forward and more of their other tech is how much data that they're able to collect on a daily basis about search and things like that. And like you said, being able to pull the dots together. Danny Goodwin: I mean, yeah, there are cases where being the first mover matters. I don't think in search it does, because Google can wait. And from the beginning, I was almost like, "Google's going to sit and watch Bing for a little while, see what they screw up, and not do that." That was my thinking from the beginning. I was just like, "Let Bing be the first one through the wall. Let them make all the mistakes. And it's one less thing that they'll have to worry about maybe from a feature antitrust thing, because I can go, oh, well, Microsoft did that first." Mordy Oberstein: Well, that is coming back to bite. There are lawsuits now. Danny Goodwin: Well, this is true, yes. But it's just... Again, goes back to the PR angle, which I know probably isn't most interesting to your listeners. Mordy Oberstein: No, I find that part the most interesting, because it's like the puppet and the string kind of thing. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, ultimately... And I said this... I did my keynote at SMX. It's like when you think about these AI companies, behind everything, you always have to remember it's monetary. They're not in this... I mean, yes, they want to give users a good experience, blah, blah, blah, because it makes them money. Like, yes. Okay, you're going to get good results. But ultimately they're making money on these great results and they don't want to upset that model. So that's why I say people who are saying SGE won't launch, just give that up. It's launching. They're going to figure it out and I kind of compared it to a casino. It's like, the House always wins. They just got to figure out where to put the big money slot machines on the right location on the floor, and they're going to stack the deck and they're going to figure it out. And they're probably going to end up, too, with ads. It's going to be less inventory, which means prices are going to go up for PPC advertisers. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing is that they've got a lot of, in terms of the house always wins or whatever, they've got a lot of cards in their hand. Danny Goodwin: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: They call it SGE now. It might be that it feeds into a different part of the SERP. That it might be that it shows up in a different way. It might be that it's just a shopping assistant or something and that sort of stuff. So they have a lot of different levers they can pull in terms of AI integration. So yeah, I think it is absolutely important that people pay attention to what they're doing there and how it all moves around. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So if people wanted to connect the dots and find you, Danny, where could they find you? Danny Goodwin: They can find me on Search Engine Land. Probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Just search for me. I'm Mr. Danny Goodwin on socials. I am on X, but not as much as I used to be. But yes, mainly, writing daily on Search Engine Land or near daily. And we also have our two big SMX shows twice a year, SMX Advanced and SMX next. And you just spoke Next and Mordy got rave reviews. Everybody should know, because he is awesome as a presenter. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: So thank you for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: One good thing I'm good at. Presenting. I'm very presentable. Danny Goodwin: You are. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Yeah, the people love you in our community. Well, some of them. Mordy Oberstein: No, well. The SMX site are a classic... Some people do. SMX are a classic SEO conference. They moved to digital a couple of years ago. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: And they're free. Are they... Right? I'm correct to say that? Danny Goodwin: They're totally free. Yep. Yeah, we moved online, unfortunately due to covid, but they've actually ended up working out really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I spoke at SMX during Covid, and it was lovely. I think I spoke with, I remember chatting to Barry actually during a session. Danny Goodwin: That must have been fun. Crystal Carter: Which was great. Mordy Oberstein: I hope you two had fun. Barry loves fun. Crystal Carter: Oh yes, we did have fun. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. So yeah, definitely please, you're listening to this. Check out the SMX conference series. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's free. Sign up. You can learn an absolute ton. Danny Goodwin: And yeah, read Search Engine Land every day. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Danny Goodwin: All spam. That was my spam plug. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. We're all- Danny Goodwin: Sign up for the newsletter. Follow us on social. Mordy Oberstein: No, we're all for plugging. Crystal Carter: Like and subscribe. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, like and subscribe. Mordy Oberstein: So say thank you to Barry and say hi to Barry, rather. Say hi to Barry for us. Barry looms large over our show. He's a part of our show every week, but he is not actually on it. Crystal Carter: Should we have him on it one day? Mordy Oberstein: We had him once. You forgot? We had Barry. See? We- Crystal Carter: Yes, that's true. That's true. But we didn't have him as an interview. That's why. Mordy Oberstein: For those of you, it's your first time listening to the podcast, we cover the SEO news. Often we'll cover Danny's articles. But we also often inevitably cover at least one of Barry Schwartz's articles. So Barry is a very much part of our podcast each and every week, and he looms over it. Danny Goodwin: Have you had the Standee behind you for an entire podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I need to get that. It's still in England, I think. Danny Goodwin: That was fantastic. So I just remember... I don't... Which conference was it? Was that BrightonSEO, where you went- Mordy Oberstein: It was Brighton, yeah. We had a giant cut out of Barry Schwartz and it was a cornhole game too. Danny Goodwin: That was epic. I remember seeing that and just laughing when I saw that on social. I was like, "That's awesome." I wanted that. Mordy Oberstein: People, we have to get it. It's still somewhere in England. People came up and thought, "Wait, is that actually Barry?" And didn't realize it was a cutout. Crystal Carter: Like a foot taller than him as well. It was a giant Barry. Mordy Oberstein: He was a great sport. He took a picture just for that. I didn't pull that picture offline. He actually took a picture for the thing. He's a great sport, Barry. Danny Goodwin: Yes, yes he is. And he is been doing it 20 years, which is insane. His productivity, I don't know... If you don't mind me plugging one more thing. JR Oakes did this really awesome article on Search Engine Land. I don't know if you saw that one. But yeah, it was just sort of recapping the history through the lens of Barry Schwartz, which was... There was so many amazing insights of how productive Barry is and just all the... So many topics he's covered through 20 years and how his growth of... His writing has gone up into the right curve over the years, which is insane. He just gets more and more productive. So I don't know how he does it. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. JR is also amazing. I will- Crystal Carter: Do you think it's AI? Danny Goodwin: No. Definitely not. Mordy Oberstein: Barry's not a robot. Danny Goodwin: BI? Barry intelligence? Mordy Oberstein: Barry... Danny Goodwin: But we do need to... Yeah, we should download his brain. Mordy Oberstein: We should save it in the ether forever. Danny Goodwin: Yes, absolutely. If for nothing else, just the sarcasm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. A thousand percent. Thank you so much, Danny. Really appreciate you coming on, and we'll see you out there. Thanks for all you do for Search Engine Land and the industry. Danny Goodwin: Thank you, Mordy. Thank you, Crystal. It's been great to be here. Mordy Oberstein: So limiting the conversation around AI just to SEO will not be doing Gemini justice. And because it is something of influence in the stars, I want to do Gemini justice, and I don't want to get my horoscope ruined and my life destroyed because I didn't do justice. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So we're going to take a look at what Gemini means for the evolution of AI with a little help from the co-founder of The Neuron, Pete Huang, as we move out of SEO per se and into a segment we call the Great Beyond. So Pete is a masterful expert around all things AI. Said a lot about the topic. So we asked him, "Hey Pete, why is Chip and I a big deal for the evolution of AI?" And here's what Pete had to say. Pete Huang: Gemini is really a catch-up moment for Google this time. Last year, people had two thoughts when it came to this sector, AI, if you rewind to just two months after ChatGPT got released. The first one is OpenAI might just run away with it and nobody's ever going to catch up. And two, where the heck is Google? I mean, after all, they have everything on their side. Money, computing, resources, talent, and they seem to have no answer to what OpenAI has done. And so every time Google would make an announcement, it would just be one or two steps behind where people thought they needed to be for them to catch up. So Google releases Gemini and makes a very pointed statement that their best model Gemini Ultra beats OpenAI's GPT-4. And if this holds up after people get access to Gemini Ultra, we would now have two models at this level, which is more choice and more capabilities on the market that performs as well as GPT-4 does, which is currently what powers ChatGPT on the backend, especially if you upgrade to ChatGPT Plus. The main way this has shown up so far is in Google Bard, which is like Google's version of ChatGPT. It had always been lagging ChatGPT and was sort of unusable when it first launched. When we first used it, we would ask it for basic integration stuff, which is, "Can you find me three restaurants near this area?" And all the information would be wrong. Since then, they've swapped out the model behind Bard to use Gemini, and it's gotten a whole lot better. It's become good enough to recommend, in fact, especially if you use Google products. So in summary, Gemini is really Google saying, "We're here now and we've taken a year to do this." I mean, Gemini was released in the tail end of 2023. "But we're finally here." And in the grand scheme of these sort of races to build technology one year really isn't all that much. But it does paint a contrast to what was going on earlier in the year in 2023, where it felt like every day, every week, every month, there was something happening. And so therefore, it made Google's relative silence feel like there was nothing real or tangible or productive going on there, or at least that they were very much falling behind in the race. So from my perspective, it is good for developers, good for businesses who want more choice, and certainly good for the consumer who wants to use Google products even more. As for SEO, I think this is the part where the SGE generated results might get a little bit better. The question I think is whether or not SGE is the form factor, is the product that makes users more engaged. That is ultimately the question that decides how far a new feature gets rolled out. So we might see SGE results improve, especially if they share that Gemini is powering those results. But that is all TBD and I think more immediately we're seeing the impact in products that Google Bard for now. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Pete. Make sure you check out Pete's newsletter, The Neuron Daily at TheNeuronDaily.com, and we'll link to Pete's social media profiles in the show notes. So make sure to give them a follow. Really, really interesting. First off, I want to take up the SGE thing really quick. I don't want to get too hung up on the SEO side. We said it's the great beyond. We're beyond SEO for a minute. But if you look at what happened with Bing and their version of SGE, it did nothing for them in terms of market share. And I think we talked about this in the podcast multiple times. The SGE, as you see it now, was part of the great AI race to keep up with Bing. And I don't think it's fundamentally what users actually need or want and that what will move the needle for Google. So I do see, to Pete's point, I do see SGE morphing to something else and not being what it is now. In terms of the overall picture, if I could sum up what I took away from that, there was a lot of daily noise for the last year or so, and then things went quiet. And now we're finally looking at the real developments in AI as opposed to all of the noise around AI, which is so ironic because you see the interest in ChatGPT falling off a little bit over the last few months. So it's sort of ironic as now things actually ramp up and things develop people's interest in it, it's sort of gone down just a bit. We're all past the hype part of it. But ironically now we're getting to the real stuff. Maybe it's now when you should be paying attention. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that that's the case. I think that when a lot of people are like, "Oh, AI is magical." It's not magical. Basically- Mordy Oberstein: No. Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Crystal Carter: It's not magical. Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was at the end of a rainbow was an pot full of AI? Crystal Carter: No, no. And the other thing is that we've had AI in our lives for ages. What we've have now is the ability to harness it directly ourselves in a way that we were not able to do before. And I agree with Pete when he says that Google was playing catch up and this is now them trying to get into it. Because I think that ChatGPT has made AI more accessible. It's very user-friendly. It's very easily accessible. But to get real good nuanced, sophisticated benefit from these tools, you still have to know stuff. You can't just be like any schmo off the street and just walk in and get something that's particularly amazing because literally everyone has access to it. So the smart people still have access to the same thing as the people who are maybe moving along and making their way. So I think that we are seeing, like you said, the real... More sophisticated, more nuanced, and people who have been working with these tools for years, because they have been available for years, are able to do more than they were able to do before. And I think that, yeah, I agree that Bard is going to... I think at the moment they've got a lot of things running. They've got Bard running, they've got the SGE running, they've got Gemini running, they've got lots of different things running, and I think that we're probably going to see convergence. Mordy Oberstein: Bet their knees hurt from all the running. Crystal Carter: We're probably going to see a convergence of some of these AI tools at the same time, because the other thing that they have running as well is Lens. I've talked about Lens a lot across when I was talking about visual search a lot. And Lens is becoming very, very sophisticated. So you can use it for QR codes. You can use it for it for- Mordy Oberstein: Translation of images. I use it all the time for that. Crystal Carter: Right? It's super useful for that. You just hold it up in the thing and it translates multiple languages at once. Mordy Oberstein: It's so good. Crystal Carter: So if you're looking at ingredients and you're trying to figure out whether or not it has peanuts and it's going to give you an allergic reaction, you can see it in English and French and Spanish, and it can translate all of those different languages at once. And I think that we're probably going to see a convergence of those tools into something that changes search significantly. And Gemini, I think, like Pete is saying, is going to be the backbone of that. Mordy Oberstein: And you see that reflected in the fact that Gemini has multiple pricing models and multiple models are not for the average person. Crystal Carter: Right? And like I said, in our discussion earlier as well, we are going to see more players that are making use of Gemini, the quicker Google's going to be able to learn from that. It's the same reason why they made ChatGPT available to people in the first place for pretty much for free. And then the plus is because they are learning. They're learning from every single interaction that we're having with it, and they're learning what people value from it, what people can do with it, and all of that. So as Gemini is more available to enterprise level clients, they're going to be able to learn what it's able to do and they're going to be able to make more advance, more advancements more quickly. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I would like? I would like to have some sort of chatGPT version of Barry. BarryGPT. It's like you ask Siri. "Hey Siri, what's happening with the NFL today?" And Siri gives you an answer back. "Hey Barry, what's happening in the SEO news today?" And it would be Barry talking and telling you what's happening. BarryGPT. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, you've put that down. Now that... You now ideate that. Mordy Oberstein: If anyone takes it, I want, some kind of finder's fee for it. Crystal Carter: I'm sure there's a technical term. Technical legal term for it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't know what it is, but give me the money. It was my idea first. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, here's Barry and other people talking about the SEO news and possibly about AI. Let's find out. Mordy Oberstein: Now for this week's snappy news. Barry Schwartz reports on SEL that Google has dropped web stories from the image results, Google Discover carousel, and reduced the grid view to carousel view in Google search. Web stories have had a mixed reception amongst search marketers due to their complex implementation, effect on Google Discover traffic, and what Lily Ray referred to as the ability of folks to have used the feature by spamming the hell out of web stories. Glenn Gabe, who shared a great thread on the news, predicts that this change is the start of a full scale deprecation and that web stories could be completely gone in a year or so. Time will tell. Over on Search Engine Land, Danny Goodwin reports that Yandex search engine has been sold in a $5.2 billion deal. The Dutch parent company of what is effectively Russia's version of Google has just agreed on the sale of their search engine to a conglomerate of Russian based companies and business leaders. It is used by more than 60% of people in Russia and could result in some changes to how the search engine performs in the not too distance feature. So keep an eye on this one. In a post from blog.google, Google has announced that they are merging their Google Bard product into Gemini. This signals a move to streamline their AI offering and is illustrated by the fact that they are adding Gemini into the Google Assistant tool. This means that those who opt-in can use Google Gemini on their phone simply by saying, "Hey, Google." This, combined with a subscription-based model, should help them become more direct competitors, which ChatGPT, and might make voice search more of a thing. Maybe this year is the year. This week, there was also some great discussion on core web vitals as Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan, doubled down on a previous statement saying, "We don't confirm any core web vitals as a direct ranking factor." As reported by Barry Schwartz in Search Engine Roundtable, Sullivan shared an article saying, "While not all aspects may be directly used to inform ranking, they do generally align with success in search ranking and are worth attention." And in a lively Twitter discussion, he shared that. It doesn't say it's a ranking factor. SEOs continue to be confused by this, but as Danny explains, "Is there a single page experience signal that Google uses for ranking? There is no single signal. Our core systems look at a variety of signals that align with overall page experience." So in the end, I think if we can all agree that it depends, and that's this week's snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think now that Barry heard this idea, because Barry does listen to the podcast, if he'll create, if Barry created BarryGPT himself, does he still owe me a finder's fee thing? Crystal Carter: I don't know. You'd have to discuss that with Barry. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. It's all right, Barry, I'll just take a bread and butter sandwich instead as payment. Crystal Carter: Sounds good. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. Mordy Oberstein: For Halloween, I want to dress up as the butter and Barry can be the bread. This is, by the way, an inside joke about Barry's ability to make butter sandwiches, which is not as great as his ability to make news. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "Why didn't you toast it?" And he's like, "No, I just thought I'd mangle the bread." Mordy Oberstein: "There's no time." Just to explain, Barry, a year ago and somehow it resurfaced, posted a picture of his butter sandwich that he made, and it's mutilated. It's like the bread is torn. The butters in chunks. Crystal Carter: It's what happens when you put cold butter on soft bread and just smear it. Mordy Oberstein: Just force it. Crystal Carter: Right? It's not going to work. Mordy Oberstein: Spread, damn it. Spread. It's unbelievable. But he's like, "I didn't have any time to make a sandwich." I'm like, "All right." Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to the tweet in the show notes. That's how... Yeah, this is pathetic, but we'll link to it in the show notes. We've gotten way off the rails. Speaking of other people who are AI tools, or love AI tools rather, our follow of the week this week is a very special person. He happens to be one of the producers of this very podcast. It is the one, the only, host of EDGE of the web radio. Erin Sparks over at E-R-I-N-S-P-A-R-K-S Sparks on X, formerly known as Twitter. Twitter, formerly known as X, in my mind. Erin does a podcast called EDGE of the Web. It's a great podcast. Listen to it after you listen to this one. And he does the SEO news every week, which I co-host with him, which is full of shenanigans. It's not like anything like this podcast at all. Pure shenanigans. Crystal Carter: With the occasional guest star from yours truly as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I do appreciate you, Crystal filling in for me when I can't. Crystal Carter: Mordy's like, "I can't. Can you?" And I'm like, "Sure. Great." Love Erin. Love Jacob. Mordy Oberstein: They're great. Jacob, Jacob Mann. They're fabulous people. And Erin loves his AI tools. And every week on the SEO... On the EDGE of the web news rather, he'll cover his favorite AI tools, which makes me completely check out, by the way. Crystal Carter: Okay. So every time I guest host, and this is the reason why Erin is our follow of the week... If you're not following Erin, do. But every time we go on there, he's always like, "Oh, I found this new thing." I'm like, "But that's so cool." Mordy Oberstein: Some of it is really cool. Okay, I gave him a hard time. But there are some really cool ones in there. Crystal Carter: There's some cool ones. The best one I found, or the one that he showed me last time, was one that was around AI image generators. And I've tried AI generator- Mordy Oberstein: You showed me this hack, by the way. Crystal Carter: ... And my prompts are... It's good, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very good. Okay, explain, please. Crystal Carter: So my prompts are janky. I've tried and people are like, "Yeah, it's great." And I was like, "What?" And all the images that I get are terrible. My prompts, I do my best. They don't really work. So then he showed me something called freeflow.ai, and basically they have a bank of prompts that did work. And you can go in- Mordy Oberstein: And you just steal them. Crystal Carter: ... And you can copy, you can adapt, you can remix, you can update the prompts for it. I used this to redecorate my office. So I found a design prompt and stuff. But for instance, there's one that's like a selfie one, for instance, and you can see the prompt. And the prompt is selfie shot, iPhone 12 Pro Max of subject taking a selfie, et cetera, et cetera. It's got all these different things that whoever's done these prompts actually understands the way, the syntax that the bots prefer in order to give them the best thing. Anyway, it's really great, and he has tons of these and he shares them a lot. And Erin's also super nice and funny and knowledgeable and does a great podcast. And yeah, follow Erin. Mordy Oberstein: Him, Jacob, the whole EDGE of the web crew, really wonderful people. A lot of SEO knowledge. A lot of AI knowledge. So definitely please give them a follow and tell them we said hi when you follow them. "Crystal and Mordy sent us to follow you." That's... I'm all out of predictions from the stars this week. I have nothing else to add. Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, I think that means Mercury's in retrograde or something. Is that what it means? Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Mercury. It's in tuna fish also. Crystal Carter: I'm done. That ended me. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. Anyway, 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 do you really need experts to write the content for you to actually be expert content by experts? Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO Learning over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinar resources on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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Keywords sure aren’t what they used to be. Google is challenging SEOs to understand the user first. Here’s where to start. Crystal Carter kicks off this episode with an explanation of keywords in search and how Google has evolved its understanding of user intent (as opposed to the literal use of the word). Along with Mordy Oberstein, they break it down like this: Understanding what’s already on the SERP (like, the actual SERP) gives you the full picture of how Google understands user intent. Analyzing the current real estate shows how users are being affected along their search pursuit. SEO legend Cindy Krum of Mobile Moxie, also jumps in and provides a solid overview of how leveraging topic-cluster knowledge guides an understanding of user intent. Entities matter a lot, and they continue to make keywords less relevant. Oh, and one more thing. We need to talk about the WixVerse and Featured Snippets. Mordy and Crystal catch up with Idan Segal, Head of Organic Growth & Brand Development at Wix, as we go Inside the WixVerse. Let’s dive in Back The real deal with keyword research Keywords sure aren’t what they used to be. Google is challenging SEOs to understand the user first. Here’s where to start. Crystal Carter kicks off this episode with an explanation of keywords in search and how Google has evolved its understanding of user intent (as opposed to the literal use of the word). Along with Mordy Oberstein, they break it down like this: Understanding what’s already on the SERP (like, the actual SERP) gives you the full picture of how Google understands user intent. Analyzing the current real estate shows how users are being affected along their search pursuit. SEO legend Cindy Krum of Mobile Moxie, also jumps in and provides a solid overview of how leveraging topic-cluster knowledge guides an understanding of user intent. Entities matter a lot, and they continue to make keywords less relevant. Oh, and one more thing. We need to talk about the WixVerse and Featured Snippets. Mordy and Crystal catch up with Idan Segal, Head of Organic Growth & Brand Development at Wix, as we go Inside the WixVerse. Let’s dive in Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 04 | September 14, 2022 | 48 MIN 00:00 / 47:59 This week’s guests Cindy Krum Cindy Krum is the Founder & CEO of MobileMoxie (previously Rank-Mobile). She has been bringing fresh and creative ideas about SEO & ASO to consulting clients and digital marketing stages around the world since 2005. She regularly speaks at national and international trade events, and launched MobileMoxie in 2008 to address mobile-specific marketing needs within the traditional digital marketing specialty. Cindy’s leadership helped MobileMoxie launch the first mobile-focused SEO toolset, to help SEO's see what actual mobile search results & pages look like from anywhere and to provide insights about the impact of Mobile-First Indexing on search results; Now, free versions of these great tools are also available to all digital marketers as two easy to use Chrome Extensions. Idan Segal Idan Segal is the Head of Organic Growth at Wix.com. Idan leads SEO, Blogs, CRO, international, Social Media & Brand teams in the marketing department. Obsessed with everything related to content marketing and growth hacking 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, and I'm joined by the fabulous head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everybody. I hope everybody's feeling gnarly and radical and tubular today. Mordy Oberstein: I'm feeling gnarly, but not radical. Crystal Carter: Not radical, not feeling radical, just feeling normal. Not- Mordy Oberstein: No, but gnarly. Crystal Carter: Gnarly. I don't know. Yeah. I just say- Mordy Oberstein: When I say it I mean nauseous like, oh, that's gnarly. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: How do you mean gnarly? Crystal Carter: I just watched Bill and Ted's and I'm just saying the things that I saw on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so I grew up on that, right? When I said gnarly as an individual, like, awe, that's gnarly. That's messed up. Crystal Carter: Like bad? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, bad. Ah it's gnarly. Ugh. Crystal Carter: Have I used the keyword with the wrong intent there? Did I- Mordy Oberstein: No. No. I think I am. Crystal Carter: ...not do enough keyword research on my term. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Oh, SEO joke. Good SEO joke. You know what's no joke? The fact that this podcast is brought to you by Wix where 301 redirects are automatic for your main pages products and booking pages. Hello. Crystal Carter: Hello, automated automatic automations. That's right. You can also do bulk 301. Redirects take them all in bulk and poof. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I'm dancing as if the people can see me. It's a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No, we are dancing like robots. Anyway, we're not talking about 301 redirects in this particular podcast in this podcast, [00:01:46] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up? we're talking about the real deal with keyword research. That's right. Keywords ain't what they used to be, which means your process for doing keyword research has or should have changed. We'll cover what you should be doing with keyword research, where you should be starting the process. Spoiler alert. It's not where many people say you should start keyword research, which is SEO tools. And we'll talk about where the tools do and don't come in the keyword research process and special tip from the great legend of SEO, Cindy Krum on Google keywords advancements. Also, we're talking with Wix's head of organic growth at Idan Segal, all about how he uses keyword research to capture featured snippets in his net of awesomeness. Crystal Carter: Amazing, amazing. Idan is such a Jedi when it comes to all of this stuff, it's absolutely incredible. I've studied his featured snippets. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're going to talk to him later, which is why you said we should invite him about this topic. Also, we're going to get a little bit philosophical here. We're talking entities and SEO, and we're going to be covering the latest and greatest in the SEO news. And of course, as we do each and every week, who you should be following out there in the SEO industry [00:02:57] Focus Topic of the Week: The Real Deal on Keyword Research so you could get some more SEO a wesomeness. But let's kick it off with the real deal on keyword research. Crystal Carter: Cool. I'm just going to do a little explainer real quick just to make sure everybody's on the same page. So when we talk about keywords, we are essentially talking about phrases that people enter into search to find the information that they need. For years Google has understood these terms, the keywords as literal, the literal words that people type in. And so just to be clear, a keyword can be one word or it can be lots of words. So we talk about a keyword as a singular thing, but it's actually the whole phrase that people enter in. It used to be that Google would understand this quite literally. So if you were writing something about coriander and you were writing something else about cilantro, then it used to be that those pages would rank differently and that you would need to spell it out really, really clearly. But a lot of SEO has been built around this sort of literal phrasing of those particular words, but Google's getting much better at understanding that cilantro and coriander are essentially the same plant. When we talk about that, that's where we start to get into the area of entities. And Google's starting to understand that they don't necessarily need to rank one page for cilantro and one page for coriander. They can rank the best content around that plant for users. So that comes into how we think about keyword research that comes into how users are experiencing the web, that comes into thinking about the common names that are seen across lots of different media. And the change from being more literal terms to being more entity-based keywords, will affect how you approach your keyword research as you go forward with your SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: I never knew that cilantro and coriander were the same thing until right now. Crystal Carter: They're the same entity. So I'm from California and I eat a lot of Mexican food. And basically I had to start making my own when I moved to England and in England, it's called coriander and in California, it's called cilantro. So I learned that very quickly. And similarly, there's a Latin name for that plant as well, which is different again. And I'm sure they call it something else in other places. So Google knows that if I want to make guacamole and I'm in London, they will serve me whatever content is best. Even if I put in coriander for guacamole, they'll give me a good guacamole recipe, which has cilantro in it. Mordy Oberstein: I never liked cilantro until maybe relatively recently, last few years. I always hated it for some reason. It tastes like soap to me, anyway. Crystal Carter: Sir, you're incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: It's good. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Sheesh. Tough crowd. Crystal Carter: Don't come at me about guacamole Mordy Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I think I'm not. Crystal Carter: I take it very seriously. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry I offended you. Are we still friends? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: That escalated so quickly. So let's start this off with where you should start with keyword research. And I always start, I've said it already on this podcast at this point, I probably said 10 times already, I always start with understanding two people. Me and you. Who am I? What do I do with my website? What's my website all about what am I trying to accomplish with my website? What's my site's identity? What am I all about as a company, a product, as a website, and what are the people who I'm trying to target? What are they all about? What are their pain points? What's their life circumstance. What's their life context? Where are they coming from? I'm trying to empathize with them. So know thyself and then know thy other, which I don't think is a real phrase, but it is now. Know thy other. And that's where I start with keyword research, which is not where many SEOs usually do. Crystal Carter: I absolutely agree that it's important to think like a user. So think about how your users are discovering your service or your products, and think about how users are talking about it. It may very well be the case that you refer to your particular product in one way, but if users are referring it to it in another way, then you need to think about that. And you need to understand that and you need to make sure that you're articulating that clearly. And that you're including those things. There are lots of tools that can help you do this. But I mentioned this before, when you're thinking about keywords, it's also important to actually talk to people who are speaking regularly to users. So if you're talking to your sales team, if you're talking to people who are front of house, if you are reading reviews, then that will give you some information about how people are interacting with your product and the kind of keywords that you should be including in your content and the kind of entities even that you should be including in your content. Mordy Oberstein: And it doesn't tell you just that. It tells you what kind of content they're looking for also. The problem with a keyword research tool, I know we all use them and I know if you're getting into SEO, you've probably heard all about them. And I know when you Google how to do keyword research, you're going to see a whole bunch of stuff about tools, which is why we're literally doing this podcast to be honest with you. Yeah. The keyword research tool can tell you, this is the keyword, but what kind of content do you create around it? Do you create a video around it? Do you create a really long post? Do you create something really salesy? Do you create something informational, but when you think about your audience or when you see what people are saying about what they want, or what they like, what they don't like. It helps you to understand what kind of content they want. Even if it's informational. Obviously you're talking about the best toaster oven. What kind of content do users want around that? Do they want something comparing multiple toaster ovens? They want a blog post just about this one toaster oven. It's all about the intent. Crystal Carter: The intent will change dramatically depending on what the term is. And also depending on what the person's trying to do with it. So I think that if you were thinking about uses for coconut oil, there's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Everything. On everything. Crystal Carter: On everything. Mordy Oberstein: To me it's just everything. Crystal Carter: So there's lots of different ways that you can use coconut oil. But if the intent is cooking, then that's one thing. If the intent is, I don't know, skincare, that's another thing. If the intent is wellness or something, that's another thing, but there's lots of different uses. So you can't just go literally coconut oil. Coconut oil is good. You should use coconut oil. You have to think about the intent behind that. And you have to think about how users are using it. And it might be that there's ways that users are using it, that you've never even considered, that you've never even considered. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think YouTube is a really good example of this. On YouTube I watch a lot of hair tutorials and people are combining different products and people are saying, "Oh, I use this like this, I use that like this." That's great information for keyword research. That is a great place to do keyword research. If there's a really popular YouTube video, that's talking about your product, or talking about product in your wheelhouse, then that's a really good source for that sort of stuff, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: And then to take your coconut oil example, because my wife loves coconut oil. You have to segment those intents out. I always think of it by the way, primarily for skincare, cause my wife really likes it for skincare. And if you want to write a top 10 ways to use coconut oil and you're writing a mix of, use it for your skincare and you use it on your salad, you might be catering to nobody and everybody at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And you might need to write just 10 ways to use coconut oil for skincare. Probably don't do the whole 10 ways thing by the way. Crystal Carter: But that's the thing, I think also it has to do with your website. So if you are a spa or something or you're a dermatologist or you're a skincare professional and you write 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to the skincare area, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: If you are a recipe blog and you're saying 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to food. Mordy Oberstein: The key [inaudible 00:10:04] are not going to tell you that, that goes back to what we talked about before. Your identity as a site. You have a context of where you're working out of it's not coming out of nowhere. And again, the keyword research tool, you'll come down on them is not the best place for that. You what the great place for that is? The SERP. Crystal Carter: The SERP. The SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Go to the actual SERP. Crystal Carter: And look up your keywords because this comes back to the user journey. You need to think about how users are actually experiencing finding your content. And it's very, very, very vague, very important that you do this on both desktop and mobile. And also particularly if you're an international branch, you have a look at some of the different mobile experiences. So I do not live in the United States, even though I am an American, the SERP in America is very different from the SERP where I live. And so if you have a lot of clients or users who are based there, that it's important to look at what the SERP looks like there and what the competition is there compared to what the conversation is, where you are. And then again, on different devices. So mobile versus desktop will again be very, very different. So if you're not on top of that, then you won't be able to understand the keywords. And Google's recommending keywords as well. So on the coconut oil, they'll say, do you mean coconut oil for skin or they'll suggest coconut oil health. Mordy Oberstein: People also search for coconut oil for your hair. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. People also ask related searches- Mordy Oberstein: Can I use coconut oil on my hair? Does coconut oil help you retain your hair? Does it? I would like to know the answer to that one. But no, the SERP is really, really important for so many different reasons. One is you can reverse engineer it from multiple perspectives. If you see Google's showing videos and images, you can tell... Yes, and again, a keyword research tool might not be able to tell you this. They might be able in some kind of way, but you need to know, yeah, I can create a post about this, but I really need to have some kind of media in there because that's part of the intent package. You see this by the way, with recipes all the time, there's always going to be an image of the food. That's not by accident. Google wants that there. There's also something really important for understanding your keyword research and what you should or shouldn't be targeting. And that's, there are a limited number of slots on page one. And there's a limited number of slots for certain types of content. Take, for example, the go-to example, they always use it buy car insurance. So 10 years ago, every single ranking website was a place where you can buy car insurance. Now it's split up between places I can go, Geico, Allstate State Farm, to buy car insurance and places to learn about buying car insurance. What's the best policy? What kind of policies should I not consider? Where should you go to buy car insurance? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Crystal Carter: The comparison sites where you're comparing lots at once. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, review sites a hundred percent, which will be my next point. But you need to know how many slots are available. If I'm trying to ring for a commercial oriented page, maybe there's only two slots available. Maybe I need to create an informational page. And if I'm creating an informational page, what kind of informational page should I create? Should I create a listicle? Should I create a comparison? Should I create a long form blog post? I need to see what's there. And there might be three slots for a long form blog post, and only one slot for a listicle. And that's all part of the intent package on the SERP. Crystal Carter: And it's also the case that it might be that it doesn't even need to be immediately on your website. Everything should come back to your website. Your website should always be HQ. You should always have anything that you do online should always be able to be traced back to your website and supported by stuff on your website. But for instance, if it's a how to, like how to use coconut oil in your hair, it's probably going to be a video. A video's, probably going to be what people are going to expect. And you should probably put it on YouTube. That's not on your website, but you can obviously tie that back in within the comments and the links and the various different things. And you can support that on your website as well. So make sure that you're understanding where the best venue for the information is for that particular query as well as the query itself. And to be honest, I think that tools sometimes do this well, but they cannot give you the full picture. They cannot give you the full picture that you can get from the SERP. They can give you a sort of bird's eye view of certain things like featured snippets and things like video or things like images and things. They can give you a general bird's eye view, but the SERP can be very dynamic and it can change really, really quickly. Google doesn't have to tell anybody when they want to change what they [inaudible 00:14:15] what the SERP looks like. And there's also certain features that aren't included. So if you look up a lion on Google, you get a 3D AR lion. There's a penguin one, there's a 3D AR thing of the tower of London, for instance. That's not going to show up in a third party keyword research tool, but that is going to affect how people are behaving on the search. So this is something that you have to track. Mordy Oberstein: Before we end this conversation or move on from this conversation around keyword research and whatnot. Tools do play a role. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: We're not advocating you shouldn't use a keyword research tool. I like to use a keyword research tool. Once I've understood myself and my audience. I know what's out there on the SEPR. I know exactly how Google's relating to this keyword, but there's things that I missed, like subtopics that I may have never thought of or questions I may never have thought of or getting some more context about the topic overall by seeing what kind of results the keyword resources are coming back with. I like to sort of refine my process. I don't start my process with the keyword research tool. I know many people do, I don't. But I do refine my process with the keyword research tools. Crystal Carter: I always think that with anything, and particularly in SEO, I always use a couple of tools at once. So I will look at the SERP, I'll get some ideas. I'll go through the keyword research tools and see what they say. Then I'll check the SERP that they say. I'll check that in Google as well. And then you want to back that up with a few different things and experience it as a user on different devices. So there's a couple of different tools, but I don't think you should ever rely on a single source for anything. And also you should also back it up with stuff from Google Search Console. So Google Search Console will give you information on where you're getting impressions for, but maybe not necessarily getting quick clicks for. They also have a breakdown of different parts of the search. So whether it's webpages, whether it's images, whether it's videos, whether it's product pages, that sort of thing. So it's important to just spend the time to see how the keywords are showing on the different parts of the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: And there's just so many tools in there from Search Console, which everybody should be using to Semrush, Ahrefs, they have Mangools, also [inaudible 00:16:11]. There's plenty of tools out there. Have a look at them. A lot of them offer a freemium version. [inaudible 00:16:16]. If I didn't mention your tool, I'm sorry. SEOrank. I could keep going. There's really a ton of them. Crystal Carter: Many tools are available. Mordy Oberstein: Many, many tools. Now we've been mentioning and throwing around entities a little bit and we're going to get into more of that later on in the podcast, but we thought it would make sense to bring it an absolute SEO legend for you, to talk about entities, to talk about keywords, to talk about specifically, how has Google's ability to understand entities made focusing on specific keywords less relevant? [00:16:47] Focus Topic Guest: Cindy Krum Here's the founder of MobileMoxie, the one, the only Cindy Krum. Cindy Krum: So when I think about keyword research for entities, I think about topic clusters. And so your main kind of head keyword, the main concept is in the center. And then we think about ways that that topic breaks down. So if we're thinking about a breed of a dog, let's say a labradoodle. So we have labradoodle and then we have their health, coat, where to adopt a labradoodle, temperament, things like that. And so you would do the research to see what comes up around the head term. And then you would create a cluster for each topic that is a reasonable section of questions about that head term. And you can see when Google's building out entities, they do this and they add sometimes in a mobile search result, they'll add expanders under the knowledge graph where they know, and they say, Hey, here's the main topic. And here are some subtopics. And so subtopics are different from related topics. Subtopics are within the core topic and they're just a division of what you would want to know or what someone might want to know. And I think to rank well in search, in some cases, we may have to go a little bit beyond topics that our website has a financial benefit for. So for instance, let's say that we are a site that allows you to adopt Labradoodles. When we only talk about adopting Labradoodles, Google knows that people who want to adopt a pet have more questions than just where to adopt, usually. And so they are thinking about the next step of someone saying, "Well, I think I want to adopt a labradoodle," because that's how the normal process goes. You don't go, I think I want to adopt, let's do it today. You usually go through a research process. And the more you can answer those questions and help users with their journey on the topic and not just try and sell them things it seems like, the more Google is going to count that as high quality content, the more Google is going to understand the entity. The more Google is going to understand that you understand the entity and you are going to have the requisite keywords clustered somewhat together or in a meaningful way that Google uses to determine if you are authoritative and an expert. And if you're willingly giving people information to help them, or if you're just trying to make a sale. And I think that Google does seem to want the extra steps to prove that you're not an affiliate site for instance, or maybe if you are an affiliate site, that you're a great affiliate site that you're going the extra mile to keep your customers happy. In my mind, I kind of equate it to having a clean brick and mortar store. Yes, you could sell stuff in a brick and mortar store, but just selling it might not be enough. You also have to have nice educated employees. You have to have a clean store. You have to have easy parking, things like this. And since those aren't concerns, when you're shopping on the internet or when you're searching on the internet, they're looking for other things, other symbols that this is going to be a good experience for you. Mordy Oberstein: So that was super, super interesting. And what I think people don't necessarily realize is that concepts, topics are entities. I know Cindy gave the example of a labradoodle, which my in-laws used to have a labradoodle, I really did not like that dog. But anyway, topics are entities. Concepts are entities. And within a certain topic, there are certain things that are subsumed in that topic, or also known as subtopic. So if you're talking about baseball, you're going to have teams and players and rules and playoffs and world series and blah, blah, blah, blah. This goes into how machine learning works. When you talk about a certain topic... Well, let's go back a step. When Google see a certain topic, let's say Labradoodles, or let's say, I don't know, healthcare. It understands that healthcare means X. It means subtopic, A subtopic B subtopic C. And this is connected to that thing. And that things connected to this thing. This is all what constructs the concept of healthcare. And then when you talk about healthcare on your site, if your profile doesn't match that, if, when you talk about healthcare, you're not talking about A, B and C, you're talking about completely different things in the way Google understands the entity that is healthcare, the concept that is healthcare, that's not going to bode well for you. So you can be focusing on all the keywords that you want. It's not going to matter. What you need to focus on is the fact, how does Google understand this entity? And that could be, again, anything from Labradoodles, to healthcare, to bricks, to astrophysics. If you understand and talk about that entity, the same way that Google understands it, which is hopefully how everybody kind of sees it, because let's hope we all understand astrophysics the same way, then that will help you rank as opposed to focusing on the keywords. That's what I took away from that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the difference between keywords and topics or entities is very clear to me because I've seen this in action. So for instance, goggles, if I talk about goggles, there's lots of different types of goggles and the intent will change, depending on what you're talking about. So if I were to write just keyword optimizing for the word goggles, I could say, goggles are great. You can wear goggles on your face, goggles protect your eyes, buy goggles in Brazil. Yeah. I could say that. And that would be optimized for the word goggles because I said it lots of time. Or that's what old school just- Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: Goggles, right. Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: But what kind of goggles am I actually talking about? When I say that. Beer goggles, ski goggles, safety goggles, swimming goggles. What am I talking about now? Now if I said, when you are skiing, you should wear goggles to protect your eyes from sun and wind. That's giving Google a lot more information about context, topic, and more relationships for the entity of the goggles that I'm talking about. And additionally, if I were to talk about that as a topic, I might also include things like ski gloves or hats or helmets or protective clothing for skiing or maybe even sunscreen. And that helps Google to understand that I'm talking about goggles. I'm also helping the user who's probably going skiing and is probably deciding what they need to wear to be safe. And it's telling them that all of those entities are related and they understand that all of those entities are related and that they're different from if I was talking about goggles and a swimsuit and fins and a snorkel and things like that, they understand that those are different, but you have to put them in a topic together to help them to understand that the entity is the entity that you're actually talking about. Mordy Oberstein: The entity. Speaking of the entity, we've been talking a lot about entities. But the truth is what is an entity? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: [00:24:12] Deep Thoughts, with Crystal and Mordy You are now entering a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy around entities? Mordy Oberstein: What are entities, crystal? Crystal Carter: An entity is like... It's a person, place or thing. It's a noun people. It's a noun... Wait. It's a noun. Mordy Oberstein: Oh that settles it. We have defined [inaudible 00:24:37]. We're done. Crystal Carter: We're done entities. We're done. Done here. But yeah, it's essentially, the way I think about it's very similar to Latin names. So there's a Latin name for an Oak tree, Quercus. Quercus hispanica I think is the Latin name for London plane tree, for instance. And I might call it one thing and somebody else might call it another thing, but there's a Latin name for that tree or Latin name for that animal. Like Roly-Poly bugs we used to call them when I was a kid, but my husband calls them something else. But there's a Latin name for that. And essentially in science, they settled that and they said you might call it a bear. I might call it oso, but is it a bear? And they'll settle that. Google's essentially trying to do that with entities. They're trying to apply that same logic of just understanding the concept to the world. Wider things in the world. And I think that it's- Mordy Oberstein: Which by the way, it saves them so much on resources. Crystal Carter: Saves them so much because I mentioned cilantro and coriander. Mordy Oberstein: Because they understand bear. And bear goes with honey and bear goes with Winnie. It all goes. And then the language doesn't matter. They know this is universal across the board. They don't have to figure out it again in another language by looking at the number of instances that bear went with honey on a webpage. Crystal Carter: So again, there's a Latin name for a brown bear for instance. And it doesn't matter if I call it cafe Oso or if I call it brown bear, Google understands just like scientists understand that it's the same thing. And that means that it's transferable because it's the same thing. And you've essentially distilled it to its essence. And you can see a really good way to see this as well is if you have Google photos, if you go to the Explorer area and type in a word, you can see the way that they understand entities because they classify everything into different sections. So they'll classify things into trees or birds or flowers or cars. Or if you look up goggles, you'll see lots of sunglasses because they just sort of think of it as eyewear for instance. But yeah, there's a lot of different tools around there. And a lot of people who are doing some very clever things around entities and it's very, very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I think of entities as fundamentally, something that has a unique identity. That's something that's discernible, that's distinct. And that, by the way, identity, we're going to go philosophical here for a sec. Identity can either be independent identity or dependent identity, for example. And this is where you start understanding why entities relate to other entities because they have to. For example, a keyboard. A keyboard's it's own thing, but then a keyboard has keys. So the keys on the keyboard. Is the key it's own thing or is it part of a keyboard? Crystal Carter: It's also which keyboard are you talking about? Mordy Oberstein: A keyboard on my computer. Keyboard. Crystal Carter: I thought you were talking about piano keyboard. Mordy Oberstein: Oh we're not going that way with the entities right now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. Keyboard on my laptop, right? So the keys on my laptop, are the keys independent? Are they it's own thing? Yeah. I can obviously refer to it. That's the A key, that's the W key, but together they can also be a keyboard. So entities relate to one another because no entity is independent of another entity. Right, parent and child. I am me, but I'm also my mother's son. So entities are always going to relate to other things and be spoken about as independent things at the same time. Which is super important to know because now you could understand why Google is going to automatically connect whatever entity that you're talking about with something else. Because that is simply the nature of entity. It's not making this up out of nowhere. That's how entities work. Also important to know, and I'll end on this point is that your website is an entity. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Is your website a distinct discernible thing? I would hope so. Then it too is an entity. Crystal Carter: It too is an entity. Mordy Oberstein: Now what kind of entity is it? Let's say you have a website that talks about bricks. I [inaudible 00:28:17] saying bricks. I'm looking out my window and looking at bricks. What does it mean to be a brick website, a website that talks about bricks? It's very different than a website that talks about physics. Crystal Carter: Also there's relationships between the entities because there's keywords and with keyword research now in this space, we have to think about the modifiers, right? So you say bricks, there's lots of different types of bricks, so different bricks materials. There's also like Lego bricks. So I spend a lot of time playing Lego with my kid. So when you say bricks, I think Lego straightaway. That's what I think. And you're looking out your window and you're thinking another things. So Google says, okay, Cindy talked about the head keyword and it's like, okay, brick. They're like, great. Now if you said rusty brick, that would mean a different thing. Mordy Oberstein: That would mean Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Right, that would be Barry Schwartz. If you said Lego brick, that means a different thing. And that takes you down a different path. So it's very important to understand the modifiers. So not just the keyword, but also the modifiers that are important for those users. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. And it also is really important about what you talk about, what you link out to what's linking to you on your website. Because again, if you are a brick website and you are talking about things like air conditioners, right? Yeah, that might make sense. I could see if you have a brick in your house, how do you connect your air conditioning unit to the bricks? Right? That would make sense if you have... I guess, I think. If you have a brick website that sells bricks to build your house and you're talking about football teams, does that really make sense? And when Google's looking at that, your site is an entity, your site's an entity about bricks. Your entity is a brick website. Does a brick website, talk about football teams? No. So what's going on here? Are you really a brick entity website? Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And there you have it. Crystal Carter: And there you have it. Mordy Oberstein: From philosophy to action. All on the SERP's Up podcast. Crystal Carter: That's what we're doing here, people. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we do here. All day, every day or at least once a week. But we're not done yet. We are not done yet. You thought we were done. We're not done, because we have a legend for you. [00:24:12] Inside the WixVerse: Idan Segal We have Idan Segal, the head of organic growth here at Wix. As we go across the Wixverse to bring you experts from Wix who talk about all different types of things, in this case about getting keywords for featured snippets. Let's talk with Idan. Mordy Oberstein: So as promised, I just want to preface this. A lot of the time you go out there on Twitter or wherever you consume social media content around SEO. And you see all these people with a lot of big mouths, I'm talking about myself in particular, but you don't see the people working behind the scenes doing some great things who are generally in house, because they don't feel they need to have a social presence in the same way that some other people do. And that's fine. I feel at Wix, we have so many people here that you have no idea who they are, and you might know who Ian is, I'm not talking about Idan that way, but it's so important to bring those voices out in general. So I kind of love this segment. With that, Idan is here. Idan Segal: What's up? It's nice to finally be here. Mordy Oberstein: It is. Idan, I love your eyes. I always say that. Idan Segal: Yeah. You say it a lot, I must say. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: So much. Idan Segal: No, it's okay. It's okay. I'm already so flattered from what you said before. So what can I say now? Mordy Oberstein: Did I set you up? Idan Segal: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, you invited me so many times and finally I'm here. I was starting to think that those [inaudible 00:31:48] invitations. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well when you know when you invite somebody your wedding or whatever, but you don't really want them to come. So you invite, "Yeah, it's at one o'clock in the morning, but we'd love to have you there." Crystal Carter: Oh, in England they do it two tier. At England there's the ceremony and that's how you know your real friends. And if they're like meh friends, you only get invited to the dinner after. Mordy Oberstein: What? I would do the opposite. I don't want to be invited to the ceremony. Invite me to the dinner. That's all I care about. Idan Segal: Anyways, for me, it's amazing. What a morning. I repaired my car. I watch the NBA finals and now I'm in a podcast. So it's a work procrastination at its best. Mordy Oberstein: So we've been talking in this episode a lot about keywords and keyword research. And you're a little bit of a legend around here because you and your team and we, all of you, but you're the head of this, so we're going to call it you, rank for a ton of featured snippets. Idan Segal: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal in particular is really impressed. Not that I'm not impressed, but... Idan Segal: So yeah, I'm leading a team of rock stars. They really do the magic, not me, but it's a bunch of SEO teams and blog teams and CRO teams. But the bottom line is really amazing. I think only in the US, we're triggering more than 3,000 feature snippets. I think 54% of them, according to the May report, probably even more now are from the blog. Many of them are from product gates. And that's really cool. I must say that even the last algorithm change worked tremendously well for us. And I think we increased the amount of featured snippet that we have in 20 something percent. So that's just awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Do you get a bonus for that when you- Idan Segal: I'm not answering without my lawyer. Crystal Carter: I'm not surprised because I did an article around featured snippets for Search London recently and they used Wix as a really good case study because the featured snippets, for instance, there was one article that was 120 best blog niche ideas to write about. And if you look up topics for blogs, it shows as the featured snippet for that. If you look up blog topics for beginners, that same article shows as the people also ask. And then if you look up blog topics, it shows in an accordion as a dropdown there as well. You're also covered if you look up blogging, it shows in the knowledge panel as one of the, what is the subtopics of blogging as well. It really is an incredible case study in topic clusters of how you mapped out different topics around blogging. Can you share any insights on how you did that? Idan Segal: First of all, we are big fans of HubSpot and HubSpot Strategy in general here. We think that they're awesome. I think by the way, they are kind of a role model, to some extent. I think they even call the HTML components, some of them, when you go to the HTML, you see they call them featured snippets. Let's say that they're students of the game and they really try to get better every day. And this is my philosophy here as well. I think that here in Wix we are very lucky to have products in many niches so we can get tons of feature snippets. I think it's also a good sign for our product to show that you are capable of getting featured snippets when using the Wix blog. We have 22 different blogs in 16 languages and in most of them or all of them, we are getting featured snippets. And that's really, really cool. I think we are really trying to give the people what they want to bring real value. I don't want to say some fancy words, but we're really trying to bring value and to answer real problems. And by doing that, we also have structure that we're trying to do because we see that it's working. If we are doing a recap in the end so we're also doing a precap in the beginning, an introduction. We are trying to use things that we see that are working like ordered list and unordered list. And we have even showcases, inspirational intent content, we are trying to use scattered age free titles along the text. And you see that it's just working because we write great content and our philosophy that we're always on the hunt for more, but it's not that I detect featured snippets on the SERP and I'm trying to get them. I'm trying to even help Google educate him that it's worth a featured snippets. And I think we have tons of success by creating feature snippets on SERP's that didn't have any, and that's really cool. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really great point, because the way you usually hear this topic being talked about and even the way we introduced it was, yeah, how do you target keywords for featured snippets? Whereas you're just saying, yeah, we just target writing content and then we tell Google, this is a great place for a feature snippet. Idan Segal: Google is kind of good in what they're doing. Usually they figure it out and it's not always violets and roses here. I think in the last algo update, there was a topic that it's not really our niche, but was how to start a YouTube channel. And now of course Google is getting the featured snippet, their support. And I think we crushed. Decreased. I have it here, 67% decrease, but on the same graph we had some content about writing a bio, about blogging, about fonts, I think. And we increased in a second in between 20 to 50% in traffic. And in general featured snippet are more than 10% of our blog traffic. And that's huge. That's really huge for business. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think one of the things that I noticed again, from studying your featured snippets from the outside or whatever is that you spend a lot of time on the long tail, which is really, really core for featured snippets. A lot of the broad terms are going to be covered by things like Wikipedia or even by an instant answer. So the number of blogs you have about blogging is extensive, which means that you're going to be getting into that sort of longer tail. Can you talk to us a little bit about your research process at all? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. How do you break down topics like that? What's your approach? Idan Segal: Again, I think in the Wix blog, we're going after our products and what we're really offering to people and we're trying to go after that. So we have different clusters. One of them is about the website creation and that means that I need to cover everything. Also, things that I can't really cover on my product pages. And if I want to talk about menus and about the importance of navigation and about what is a 404, it's all about semantic depth. And again, I am a very cynical person and I am a capitalistic pig that cares about conversions. But having said that, I do try to do it while I'm trying to imagine that I'm writing to a fancy editor and to really give value because that's the right way to tackle it. So blogging is another big cluster of ours that we're trying to tackle the same way that marketing is and web design is. And we're trying to all the time to beef up and to learn from our competitors about topics that we're not covering. And also for us to lose a featured snippet, it's a wake up call. It means that we need to do something better. We need to try to learn from our competitors how to do things better. And sometimes it's just about Google turning off the feature snippet. And that's also okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good point that, we were talking about this earlier in the podcast, about when you're thinking about keyword research in a nonlinear way, not so focused on the tools, it's really about being able to yourself, and you can use tools to help you do this, being able to parse out what that topic is or what that topic means and creating content around all of that in a really substantial kind of way. Just one more question before we have to let you go. When you see that you lose a feature snippet, you're talking about the YouTube content that came in and took away our feature snippets. Do you try to regain that or do you say, "Okay, look, I realize I should never have really had those to begin with and I'm not going to waste my time." Idan Segal: So, if I think that I didn't deserve it, it will affect my priorities. Having said that the fact that I got it previously means that at least I will give it a try. And I think that part of our work process here, we have tons of emphasis on redos. We want to send Google fresh signals that will keep working on our content. Huge part of our strategy is evergreen content. So for me, when I'm losing it, I'm trying to learn why I lost it. What's the other competitor, the URL that took it. I'm trying to learn from what they did. And I will try to do a redo to prioritize it in many cases the success rate is awesome. And again, all the credits to my team. And also I'm lucky to work in a company that has a great domain authority because Wix has a great product. That enables us to get those featured snippets. Crystal Carter: When I was speaking at Search London about featured snippets, someone said, "Oh, can you go over existing content to make feature snippets?" And I was like, "Yeah, you absolutely 100% can. And it's definitely, as you say, redos, going back over the content and adding bullet points or lists or tables or adding images or videos or whatever can really help. Idan Segal: There was a thread on Twitter from someone that I didn't know. Maybe you'll remember it. And if not, I will share it and you can share it later in a thread or something about someone that explained to details, how he's trying to tackle featured snippets. It was a very insightful one. Most of the things that he's trying to do we are already doing here, but I learned a trick or two. And there is a lot of technicalities when you're doing it, right? So you need to use some techniques, some HTML markup, ordered lists, unordered lists, hierarchy, amount of text, imperative verbs. There's some stuff to do, but eventually create good content and you'll enjoy the fruits. Mordy Oberstein: Idan, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day and joining us. Idan Segal: No problem. Thank you for inviting me. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Again, Idan, before you leave, where can we find you out there in the public? Where can your people find you? Idan Segal: You know, you can find me on Twitter probably. You can share the handle later on. Mordy Oberstein: I'll share the handle. It'll be in the show notes. Look for it in the show notes folks. Idan, thank you so much. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Idan Segal: Amazing. Thank you, Crystal. Thank you, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Bye, bye. Idan Segal: Ciao. Mordy Oberstein: Brilliant fellow, no? Crystal Carter: Idan never ceases to amaze. I think that he just delivers. I think there's such amazing content that comes out of that team and the way that they approach it is incredible. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we go across the Wixverse. There's so many awesome people here. By the way, there's so many people out there in the SEO world who are not super famous who are doing super amazing things. [00:41:43] Snappy News So just know that. You know what else might be news to you other than the fact that there are SEOs out there who don't have huge profiles? The actual news, the actual news. The actual SEO, snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Let's get right into it because otherwise it wouldn't be snappy. First up for the master of disaster and last week's guest Barry, made the Schwartz be with you. From search engine round table, new Google featured snippet with multiple answers, new design call outs and more. Essentially what we have here is a featured snippet on a gray background with a call out i.e. bolded text that basically gives you the answer to the query and multiple answers from multiple URLs to boot. I'm covering this because this has been the fifth or sixth test where Google's actually using multiple URLs inside of the feature snippet. It's a big shift in how they're thinking about feature snippets and search overall. In my honest opinion, Asher just covered this and why I think Google is doing this on the Wix SEO hub. I'll link to that and I'll link to Barry's article where you can see what this feature snippet looks like. So check out the show notes. Okay. More on the old HCU the Helpful Content Update from SEJ, Search Engine Journals, Matt Southern. Google, helpful content signal, make it stronger with next core update. So the helpful content update might be a strong part of the ranking equation as time goes on. It was not a very potent part of the equation this go around as the update, as Google confirmed, has finished rolling out. This actually kind of makes sense as the HCU as we call it, the Helpful Content Update is based on machine learning properties and the machine needs to learn. And as it learns, it'll be more powerful than anything the SERP has ever known before. Okay. Maybe that's hyperbolic, but it does make sense that as time goes on, as the machine learns more, it will be a greater factor in the ranking equation. So Helpful Content Update, go get some learning done and come back soon, you hear. And with that, that is the snappiest of news. And what a set of news that was, no? Crystal Carter: It as very news news to me. Mordy Oberstein: That was very newsy. It was newsworthy, Newsies, good movie. Classic growing up as a kid, Christian Bale. Crystal Carter: I was just about to say that people don't realize the American Psycho was in Newsies. Mordy Oberstein: He was. Dancing around singing about newspapers. Crystal Carter: Do you want some news? Because he's Batman as well. That was my Batman. Mordy Oberstein: News. Crystal Carter: That's a much better Batman. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I have specialties in doing Batman voices. Now let's talk about other stuff about SEO. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Again, before we leave you and thank you so much for listening all the way through to this point, we want to make sure that you understand that there is so much great SEO information out there besides just this podcast. And a lot of it comes from the SEO industry itself, which means the people, the people are the industry. [00:46:31] Follow of the Week And today we're going to share who you should be following out there in Twitter. And that person is Crystal. No, it is crystal. Crystal Carter: It's not me. Mordy Oberstein: You are someone we should follow. It's not what I meant. But crystal, who are we following this week? Crystal Carter: Today I would like to discuss, and I would like to put a little shine on Lazarina Stoy. I think she's amazing. She's an SEO, she's like a data phenom. She's really- Mordy Oberstein: Machine learning. Crystal Carter: Right. She's really into machine learning and she's got some great, great resources that she has particularly around keywords. She has a tool called the keyword search intent classifier tool. And it's a Google sheet that you can use to understand your keywords better and to understand the intent behind them. She also has some really good resources around big data sets as well. So she's a great person to follow. She tinkers a lot and makes a lot of really cool resources and shares some really good stuff. And she's just really, really clever. I think that if you're interested in keywords, you're interested in machine learning, you're interested in checking out somebody who's doing really cool stuff follow Lazarina. Mordy Oberstein: She's doing some really cool stuff. And that's @LazarinaStoy on Twitter. L-A-Z-A-R-I-N-A-S-T-O-Y. And of course we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes for this podcast. Folks, that's it. That's that's all we got. I know you wanted more, but that's all we got for you 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 an all new episode diving into Ooh, ranking factors. Should you care? Crystal Carter: Should you? Mordy Oberstein: We have different point of views on this one I think. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, we kind of do. Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Going to be some drama. Well- Crystal Carter: It's going to get heated. [inaudible 00:46:43] at the guacamole discussions though. Mordy Oberstein: I will draw lines in the sand. You should not cross them. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars we have on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time everyone peace, love and SEO. See ya. Crystal Carter: Bye. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Cindy Krum Idan Segal Lazarina Stoy Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Mobile Moxie Featured Snippets In 2022 Lazarina Stoy SEO Resources Google’s shifts from authority to content diversity on the SERP News: New Google Featured Snippet With Multiple Answers, New Design, Callouts & More? Google Announces September 2022 Core Algorithm Update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Cindy Krum Idan Segal Lazarina Stoy Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Mobile Moxie Featured Snippets In 2022 Lazarina Stoy SEO Resources Google’s shifts from authority to content diversity on the SERP News: New Google Featured Snippet With Multiple Answers, New Design, Callouts & More? Google Announces September 2022 Core Algorithm Update 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, and I'm joined by the fabulous head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everybody. I hope everybody's feeling gnarly and radical and tubular today. Mordy Oberstein: I'm feeling gnarly, but not radical. Crystal Carter: Not radical, not feeling radical, just feeling normal. Not- Mordy Oberstein: No, but gnarly. Crystal Carter: Gnarly. I don't know. Yeah. I just say- Mordy Oberstein: When I say it I mean nauseous like, oh, that's gnarly. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: How do you mean gnarly? Crystal Carter: I just watched Bill and Ted's and I'm just saying the things that I saw on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so I grew up on that, right? When I said gnarly as an individual, like, awe, that's gnarly. That's messed up. Crystal Carter: Like bad? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, bad. Ah it's gnarly. Ugh. Crystal Carter: Have I used the keyword with the wrong intent there? Did I- Mordy Oberstein: No. No. I think I am. Crystal Carter: ...not do enough keyword research on my term. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Oh, SEO joke. Good SEO joke. You know what's no joke? The fact that this podcast is brought to you by Wix where 301 redirects are automatic for your main pages products and booking pages. Hello. Crystal Carter: Hello, automated automatic automations. That's right. You can also do bulk 301. Redirects take them all in bulk and poof. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I'm dancing as if the people can see me. It's a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: No, we are dancing like robots. Anyway, we're not talking about 301 redirects in this particular podcast in this podcast, [00:01:46] What's On This Episode of SERP's Up? we're talking about the real deal with keyword research. That's right. Keywords ain't what they used to be, which means your process for doing keyword research has or should have changed. We'll cover what you should be doing with keyword research, where you should be starting the process. Spoiler alert. It's not where many people say you should start keyword research, which is SEO tools. And we'll talk about where the tools do and don't come in the keyword research process and special tip from the great legend of SEO, Cindy Krum on Google keywords advancements. Also, we're talking with Wix's head of organic growth at Idan Segal, all about how he uses keyword research to capture featured snippets in his net of awesomeness. Crystal Carter: Amazing, amazing. Idan is such a Jedi when it comes to all of this stuff, it's absolutely incredible. I've studied his featured snippets. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're going to talk to him later, which is why you said we should invite him about this topic. Also, we're going to get a little bit philosophical here. We're talking entities and SEO, and we're going to be covering the latest and greatest in the SEO news. And of course, as we do each and every week, who you should be following out there in the SEO industry [00:02:57] Focus Topic of the Week: The Real Deal on Keyword Research so you could get some more SEO a wesomeness. But let's kick it off with the real deal on keyword research. Crystal Carter: Cool. I'm just going to do a little explainer real quick just to make sure everybody's on the same page. So when we talk about keywords, we are essentially talking about phrases that people enter into search to find the information that they need. For years Google has understood these terms, the keywords as literal, the literal words that people type in. And so just to be clear, a keyword can be one word or it can be lots of words. So we talk about a keyword as a singular thing, but it's actually the whole phrase that people enter in. It used to be that Google would understand this quite literally. So if you were writing something about coriander and you were writing something else about cilantro, then it used to be that those pages would rank differently and that you would need to spell it out really, really clearly. But a lot of SEO has been built around this sort of literal phrasing of those particular words, but Google's getting much better at understanding that cilantro and coriander are essentially the same plant. When we talk about that, that's where we start to get into the area of entities. And Google's starting to understand that they don't necessarily need to rank one page for cilantro and one page for coriander. They can rank the best content around that plant for users. So that comes into how we think about keyword research that comes into how users are experiencing the web, that comes into thinking about the common names that are seen across lots of different media. And the change from being more literal terms to being more entity-based keywords, will affect how you approach your keyword research as you go forward with your SEO activity. Mordy Oberstein: I never knew that cilantro and coriander were the same thing until right now. Crystal Carter: They're the same entity. So I'm from California and I eat a lot of Mexican food. And basically I had to start making my own when I moved to England and in England, it's called coriander and in California, it's called cilantro. So I learned that very quickly. And similarly, there's a Latin name for that plant as well, which is different again. And I'm sure they call it something else in other places. So Google knows that if I want to make guacamole and I'm in London, they will serve me whatever content is best. Even if I put in coriander for guacamole, they'll give me a good guacamole recipe, which has cilantro in it. Mordy Oberstein: I never liked cilantro until maybe relatively recently, last few years. I always hated it for some reason. It tastes like soap to me, anyway. Crystal Carter: Sir, you're incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: It's good. Mordy Oberstein: I said I like it now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Sheesh. Tough crowd. Crystal Carter: Don't come at me about guacamole Mordy Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I think I'm not. Crystal Carter: I take it very seriously. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry I offended you. Are we still friends? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: That escalated so quickly. So let's start this off with where you should start with keyword research. And I always start, I've said it already on this podcast at this point, I probably said 10 times already, I always start with understanding two people. Me and you. Who am I? What do I do with my website? What's my website all about what am I trying to accomplish with my website? What's my site's identity? What am I all about as a company, a product, as a website, and what are the people who I'm trying to target? What are they all about? What are their pain points? What's their life circumstance. What's their life context? Where are they coming from? I'm trying to empathize with them. So know thyself and then know thy other, which I don't think is a real phrase, but it is now. Know thy other. And that's where I start with keyword research, which is not where many SEOs usually do. Crystal Carter: I absolutely agree that it's important to think like a user. So think about how your users are discovering your service or your products, and think about how users are talking about it. It may very well be the case that you refer to your particular product in one way, but if users are referring it to it in another way, then you need to think about that. And you need to understand that and you need to make sure that you're articulating that clearly. And that you're including those things. There are lots of tools that can help you do this. But I mentioned this before, when you're thinking about keywords, it's also important to actually talk to people who are speaking regularly to users. So if you're talking to your sales team, if you're talking to people who are front of house, if you are reading reviews, then that will give you some information about how people are interacting with your product and the kind of keywords that you should be including in your content and the kind of entities even that you should be including in your content. Mordy Oberstein: And it doesn't tell you just that. It tells you what kind of content they're looking for also. The problem with a keyword research tool, I know we all use them and I know if you're getting into SEO, you've probably heard all about them. And I know when you Google how to do keyword research, you're going to see a whole bunch of stuff about tools, which is why we're literally doing this podcast to be honest with you. Yeah. The keyword research tool can tell you, this is the keyword, but what kind of content do you create around it? Do you create a video around it? Do you create a really long post? Do you create something really salesy? Do you create something informational, but when you think about your audience or when you see what people are saying about what they want, or what they like, what they don't like. It helps you to understand what kind of content they want. Even if it's informational. Obviously you're talking about the best toaster oven. What kind of content do users want around that? Do they want something comparing multiple toaster ovens? They want a blog post just about this one toaster oven. It's all about the intent. Crystal Carter: The intent will change dramatically depending on what the term is. And also depending on what the person's trying to do with it. So I think that if you were thinking about uses for coconut oil, there's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Everything. On everything. Crystal Carter: On everything. Mordy Oberstein: To me it's just everything. Crystal Carter: So there's lots of different ways that you can use coconut oil. But if the intent is cooking, then that's one thing. If the intent is, I don't know, skincare, that's another thing. If the intent is wellness or something, that's another thing, but there's lots of different uses. So you can't just go literally coconut oil. Coconut oil is good. You should use coconut oil. You have to think about the intent behind that. And you have to think about how users are using it. And it might be that there's ways that users are using it, that you've never even considered, that you've never even considered. Mordy Oberstein: A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think YouTube is a really good example of this. On YouTube I watch a lot of hair tutorials and people are combining different products and people are saying, "Oh, I use this like this, I use that like this." That's great information for keyword research. That is a great place to do keyword research. If there's a really popular YouTube video, that's talking about your product, or talking about product in your wheelhouse, then that's a really good source for that sort of stuff, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: And then to take your coconut oil example, because my wife loves coconut oil. You have to segment those intents out. I always think of it by the way, primarily for skincare, cause my wife really likes it for skincare. And if you want to write a top 10 ways to use coconut oil and you're writing a mix of, use it for your skincare and you use it on your salad, you might be catering to nobody and everybody at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And you might need to write just 10 ways to use coconut oil for skincare. Probably don't do the whole 10 ways thing by the way. Crystal Carter: But that's the thing, I think also it has to do with your website. So if you are a spa or something or you're a dermatologist or you're a skincare professional and you write 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to the skincare area, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: If you are a recipe blog and you're saying 10 ways to use coconut oil, then you should keep it to food. Mordy Oberstein: The key [inaudible 00:10:04] are not going to tell you that, that goes back to what we talked about before. Your identity as a site. You have a context of where you're working out of it's not coming out of nowhere. And again, the keyword research tool, you'll come down on them is not the best place for that. You what the great place for that is? The SERP. Crystal Carter: The SERP. The SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Go to the actual SERP. Crystal Carter: And look up your keywords because this comes back to the user journey. You need to think about how users are actually experiencing finding your content. And it's very, very, very vague, very important that you do this on both desktop and mobile. And also particularly if you're an international branch, you have a look at some of the different mobile experiences. So I do not live in the United States, even though I am an American, the SERP in America is very different from the SERP where I live. And so if you have a lot of clients or users who are based there, that it's important to look at what the SERP looks like there and what the competition is there compared to what the conversation is, where you are. And then again, on different devices. So mobile versus desktop will again be very, very different. So if you're not on top of that, then you won't be able to understand the keywords. And Google's recommending keywords as well. So on the coconut oil, they'll say, do you mean coconut oil for skin or they'll suggest coconut oil health. Mordy Oberstein: People also search for coconut oil for your hair. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. People also ask related searches- Mordy Oberstein: Can I use coconut oil on my hair? Does coconut oil help you retain your hair? Does it? I would like to know the answer to that one. But no, the SERP is really, really important for so many different reasons. One is you can reverse engineer it from multiple perspectives. If you see Google's showing videos and images, you can tell... Yes, and again, a keyword research tool might not be able to tell you this. They might be able in some kind of way, but you need to know, yeah, I can create a post about this, but I really need to have some kind of media in there because that's part of the intent package. You see this by the way, with recipes all the time, there's always going to be an image of the food. That's not by accident. Google wants that there. There's also something really important for understanding your keyword research and what you should or shouldn't be targeting. And that's, there are a limited number of slots on page one. And there's a limited number of slots for certain types of content. Take, for example, the go-to example, they always use it buy car insurance. So 10 years ago, every single ranking website was a place where you can buy car insurance. Now it's split up between places I can go, Geico, Allstate State Farm, to buy car insurance and places to learn about buying car insurance. What's the best policy? What kind of policies should I not consider? Where should you go to buy car insurance? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Crystal Carter: The comparison sites where you're comparing lots at once. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, review sites a hundred percent, which will be my next point. But you need to know how many slots are available. If I'm trying to ring for a commercial oriented page, maybe there's only two slots available. Maybe I need to create an informational page. And if I'm creating an informational page, what kind of informational page should I create? Should I create a listicle? Should I create a comparison? Should I create a long form blog post? I need to see what's there. And there might be three slots for a long form blog post, and only one slot for a listicle. And that's all part of the intent package on the SERP. Crystal Carter: And it's also the case that it might be that it doesn't even need to be immediately on your website. Everything should come back to your website. Your website should always be HQ. You should always have anything that you do online should always be able to be traced back to your website and supported by stuff on your website. But for instance, if it's a how to, like how to use coconut oil in your hair, it's probably going to be a video. A video's, probably going to be what people are going to expect. And you should probably put it on YouTube. That's not on your website, but you can obviously tie that back in within the comments and the links and the various different things. And you can support that on your website as well. So make sure that you're understanding where the best venue for the information is for that particular query as well as the query itself. And to be honest, I think that tools sometimes do this well, but they cannot give you the full picture. They cannot give you the full picture that you can get from the SERP. They can give you a sort of bird's eye view of certain things like featured snippets and things like video or things like images and things. They can give you a general bird's eye view, but the SERP can be very dynamic and it can change really, really quickly. Google doesn't have to tell anybody when they want to change what they [inaudible 00:14:15] what the SERP looks like. And there's also certain features that aren't included. So if you look up a lion on Google, you get a 3D AR lion. There's a penguin one, there's a 3D AR thing of the tower of London, for instance. That's not going to show up in a third party keyword research tool, but that is going to affect how people are behaving on the search. So this is something that you have to track. Mordy Oberstein: Before we end this conversation or move on from this conversation around keyword research and whatnot. Tools do play a role. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: We're not advocating you shouldn't use a keyword research tool. I like to use a keyword research tool. Once I've understood myself and my audience. I know what's out there on the SEPR. I know exactly how Google's relating to this keyword, but there's things that I missed, like subtopics that I may have never thought of or questions I may never have thought of or getting some more context about the topic overall by seeing what kind of results the keyword resources are coming back with. I like to sort of refine my process. I don't start my process with the keyword research tool. I know many people do, I don't. But I do refine my process with the keyword research tools. Crystal Carter: I always think that with anything, and particularly in SEO, I always use a couple of tools at once. So I will look at the SERP, I'll get some ideas. I'll go through the keyword research tools and see what they say. Then I'll check the SERP that they say. I'll check that in Google as well. And then you want to back that up with a few different things and experience it as a user on different devices. So there's a couple of different tools, but I don't think you should ever rely on a single source for anything. And also you should also back it up with stuff from Google Search Console. So Google Search Console will give you information on where you're getting impressions for, but maybe not necessarily getting quick clicks for. They also have a breakdown of different parts of the search. So whether it's webpages, whether it's images, whether it's videos, whether it's product pages, that sort of thing. So it's important to just spend the time to see how the keywords are showing on the different parts of the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: And there's just so many tools in there from Search Console, which everybody should be using to Semrush, Ahrefs, they have Mangools, also [inaudible 00:16:11]. There's plenty of tools out there. Have a look at them. A lot of them offer a freemium version. [inaudible 00:16:16]. If I didn't mention your tool, I'm sorry. SEOrank. I could keep going. There's really a ton of them. Crystal Carter: Many tools are available. Mordy Oberstein: Many, many tools. Now we've been mentioning and throwing around entities a little bit and we're going to get into more of that later on in the podcast, but we thought it would make sense to bring it an absolute SEO legend for you, to talk about entities, to talk about keywords, to talk about specifically, how has Google's ability to understand entities made focusing on specific keywords less relevant? [00:16:47] Focus Topic Guest: Cindy Krum Here's the founder of MobileMoxie, the one, the only Cindy Krum. Cindy Krum: So when I think about keyword research for entities, I think about topic clusters. And so your main kind of head keyword, the main concept is in the center. And then we think about ways that that topic breaks down. So if we're thinking about a breed of a dog, let's say a labradoodle. So we have labradoodle and then we have their health, coat, where to adopt a labradoodle, temperament, things like that. And so you would do the research to see what comes up around the head term. And then you would create a cluster for each topic that is a reasonable section of questions about that head term. And you can see when Google's building out entities, they do this and they add sometimes in a mobile search result, they'll add expanders under the knowledge graph where they know, and they say, Hey, here's the main topic. And here are some subtopics. And so subtopics are different from related topics. Subtopics are within the core topic and they're just a division of what you would want to know or what someone might want to know. And I think to rank well in search, in some cases, we may have to go a little bit beyond topics that our website has a financial benefit for. So for instance, let's say that we are a site that allows you to adopt Labradoodles. When we only talk about adopting Labradoodles, Google knows that people who want to adopt a pet have more questions than just where to adopt, usually. And so they are thinking about the next step of someone saying, "Well, I think I want to adopt a labradoodle," because that's how the normal process goes. You don't go, I think I want to adopt, let's do it today. You usually go through a research process. And the more you can answer those questions and help users with their journey on the topic and not just try and sell them things it seems like, the more Google is going to count that as high quality content, the more Google is going to understand the entity. The more Google is going to understand that you understand the entity and you are going to have the requisite keywords clustered somewhat together or in a meaningful way that Google uses to determine if you are authoritative and an expert. And if you're willingly giving people information to help them, or if you're just trying to make a sale. And I think that Google does seem to want the extra steps to prove that you're not an affiliate site for instance, or maybe if you are an affiliate site, that you're a great affiliate site that you're going the extra mile to keep your customers happy. In my mind, I kind of equate it to having a clean brick and mortar store. Yes, you could sell stuff in a brick and mortar store, but just selling it might not be enough. You also have to have nice educated employees. You have to have a clean store. You have to have easy parking, things like this. And since those aren't concerns, when you're shopping on the internet or when you're searching on the internet, they're looking for other things, other symbols that this is going to be a good experience for you. Mordy Oberstein: So that was super, super interesting. And what I think people don't necessarily realize is that concepts, topics are entities. I know Cindy gave the example of a labradoodle, which my in-laws used to have a labradoodle, I really did not like that dog. But anyway, topics are entities. Concepts are entities. And within a certain topic, there are certain things that are subsumed in that topic, or also known as subtopic. So if you're talking about baseball, you're going to have teams and players and rules and playoffs and world series and blah, blah, blah, blah. This goes into how machine learning works. When you talk about a certain topic... Well, let's go back a step. When Google see a certain topic, let's say Labradoodles, or let's say, I don't know, healthcare. It understands that healthcare means X. It means subtopic, A subtopic B subtopic C. And this is connected to that thing. And that things connected to this thing. This is all what constructs the concept of healthcare. And then when you talk about healthcare on your site, if your profile doesn't match that, if, when you talk about healthcare, you're not talking about A, B and C, you're talking about completely different things in the way Google understands the entity that is healthcare, the concept that is healthcare, that's not going to bode well for you. So you can be focusing on all the keywords that you want. It's not going to matter. What you need to focus on is the fact, how does Google understand this entity? And that could be, again, anything from Labradoodles, to healthcare, to bricks, to astrophysics. If you understand and talk about that entity, the same way that Google understands it, which is hopefully how everybody kind of sees it, because let's hope we all understand astrophysics the same way, then that will help you rank as opposed to focusing on the keywords. That's what I took away from that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the difference between keywords and topics or entities is very clear to me because I've seen this in action. So for instance, goggles, if I talk about goggles, there's lots of different types of goggles and the intent will change, depending on what you're talking about. So if I were to write just keyword optimizing for the word goggles, I could say, goggles are great. You can wear goggles on your face, goggles protect your eyes, buy goggles in Brazil. Yeah. I could say that. And that would be optimized for the word goggles because I said it lots of time. Or that's what old school just- Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: Goggles, right. Mordy Oberstein: Goggles. Crystal Carter: But what kind of goggles am I actually talking about? When I say that. Beer goggles, ski goggles, safety goggles, swimming goggles. What am I talking about now? Now if I said, when you are skiing, you should wear goggles to protect your eyes from sun and wind. That's giving Google a lot more information about context, topic, and more relationships for the entity of the goggles that I'm talking about. And additionally, if I were to talk about that as a topic, I might also include things like ski gloves or hats or helmets or protective clothing for skiing or maybe even sunscreen. And that helps Google to understand that I'm talking about goggles. I'm also helping the user who's probably going skiing and is probably deciding what they need to wear to be safe. And it's telling them that all of those entities are related and they understand that all of those entities are related and that they're different from if I was talking about goggles and a swimsuit and fins and a snorkel and things like that, they understand that those are different, but you have to put them in a topic together to help them to understand that the entity is the entity that you're actually talking about. Mordy Oberstein: The entity. Speaking of the entity, we've been talking a lot about entities. But the truth is what is an entity? Crystal Carter: Who am I? Mordy Oberstein: [00:24:12] Deep Thoughts, with Crystal and Mordy You are now entering a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy around entities? Mordy Oberstein: What are entities, crystal? Crystal Carter: An entity is like... It's a person, place or thing. It's a noun people. It's a noun... Wait. It's a noun. Mordy Oberstein: Oh that settles it. We have defined [inaudible 00:24:37]. We're done. Crystal Carter: We're done entities. We're done. Done here. But yeah, it's essentially, the way I think about it's very similar to Latin names. So there's a Latin name for an Oak tree, Quercus. Quercus hispanica I think is the Latin name for London plane tree, for instance. And I might call it one thing and somebody else might call it another thing, but there's a Latin name for that tree or Latin name for that animal. Like Roly-Poly bugs we used to call them when I was a kid, but my husband calls them something else. But there's a Latin name for that. And essentially in science, they settled that and they said you might call it a bear. I might call it oso, but is it a bear? And they'll settle that. Google's essentially trying to do that with entities. They're trying to apply that same logic of just understanding the concept to the world. Wider things in the world. And I think that it's- Mordy Oberstein: Which by the way, it saves them so much on resources. Crystal Carter: Saves them so much because I mentioned cilantro and coriander. Mordy Oberstein: Because they understand bear. And bear goes with honey and bear goes with Winnie. It all goes. And then the language doesn't matter. They know this is universal across the board. They don't have to figure out it again in another language by looking at the number of instances that bear went with honey on a webpage. Crystal Carter: So again, there's a Latin name for a brown bear for instance. And it doesn't matter if I call it cafe Oso or if I call it brown bear, Google understands just like scientists understand that it's the same thing. And that means that it's transferable because it's the same thing. And you've essentially distilled it to its essence. And you can see a really good way to see this as well is if you have Google photos, if you go to the Explorer area and type in a word, you can see the way that they understand entities because they classify everything into different sections. So they'll classify things into trees or birds or flowers or cars. Or if you look up goggles, you'll see lots of sunglasses because they just sort of think of it as eyewear for instance. But yeah, there's a lot of different tools around there. And a lot of people who are doing some very clever things around entities and it's very, very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I think of entities as fundamentally, something that has a unique identity. That's something that's discernible, that's distinct. And that, by the way, identity, we're going to go philosophical here for a sec. Identity can either be independent identity or dependent identity, for example. And this is where you start understanding why entities relate to other entities because they have to. For example, a keyboard. A keyboard's it's own thing, but then a keyboard has keys. So the keys on the keyboard. Is the key it's own thing or is it part of a keyboard? Crystal Carter: It's also which keyboard are you talking about? Mordy Oberstein: A keyboard on my computer. Keyboard. Crystal Carter: I thought you were talking about piano keyboard. Mordy Oberstein: Oh we're not going that way with the entities right now. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. Keyboard on my laptop, right? So the keys on my laptop, are the keys independent? Are they it's own thing? Yeah. I can obviously refer to it. That's the A key, that's the W key, but together they can also be a keyboard. So entities relate to one another because no entity is independent of another entity. Right, parent and child. I am me, but I'm also my mother's son. So entities are always going to relate to other things and be spoken about as independent things at the same time. Which is super important to know because now you could understand why Google is going to automatically connect whatever entity that you're talking about with something else. Because that is simply the nature of entity. It's not making this up out of nowhere. That's how entities work. Also important to know, and I'll end on this point is that your website is an entity. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Is your website a distinct discernible thing? I would hope so. Then it too is an entity. Crystal Carter: It too is an entity. Mordy Oberstein: Now what kind of entity is it? Let's say you have a website that talks about bricks. I [inaudible 00:28:17] saying bricks. I'm looking out my window and looking at bricks. What does it mean to be a brick website, a website that talks about bricks? It's very different than a website that talks about physics. Crystal Carter: Also there's relationships between the entities because there's keywords and with keyword research now in this space, we have to think about the modifiers, right? So you say bricks, there's lots of different types of bricks, so different bricks materials. There's also like Lego bricks. So I spend a lot of time playing Lego with my kid. So when you say bricks, I think Lego straightaway. That's what I think. And you're looking out your window and you're thinking another things. So Google says, okay, Cindy talked about the head keyword and it's like, okay, brick. They're like, great. Now if you said rusty brick, that would mean a different thing. Mordy Oberstein: That would mean Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Right, that would be Barry Schwartz. If you said Lego brick, that means a different thing. And that takes you down a different path. So it's very important to understand the modifiers. So not just the keyword, but also the modifiers that are important for those users. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. And it also is really important about what you talk about, what you link out to what's linking to you on your website. Because again, if you are a brick website and you are talking about things like air conditioners, right? Yeah, that might make sense. I could see if you have a brick in your house, how do you connect your air conditioning unit to the bricks? Right? That would make sense if you have... I guess, I think. If you have a brick website that sells bricks to build your house and you're talking about football teams, does that really make sense? And when Google's looking at that, your site is an entity, your site's an entity about bricks. Your entity is a brick website. Does a brick website, talk about football teams? No. So what's going on here? Are you really a brick entity website? Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And there you have it. Crystal Carter: And there you have it. Mordy Oberstein: From philosophy to action. All on the SERP's Up podcast. Crystal Carter: That's what we're doing here, people. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we do here. All day, every day or at least once a week. But we're not done yet. We are not done yet. You thought we were done. We're not done, because we have a legend for you. [00:24:12] Inside the WixVerse: Idan Segal We have Idan Segal, the head of organic growth here at Wix. As we go across the Wixverse to bring you experts from Wix who talk about all different types of things, in this case about getting keywords for featured snippets. Let's talk with Idan. Mordy Oberstein: So as promised, I just want to preface this. A lot of the time you go out there on Twitter or wherever you consume social media content around SEO. And you see all these people with a lot of big mouths, I'm talking about myself in particular, but you don't see the people working behind the scenes doing some great things who are generally in house, because they don't feel they need to have a social presence in the same way that some other people do. And that's fine. I feel at Wix, we have so many people here that you have no idea who they are, and you might know who Ian is, I'm not talking about Idan that way, but it's so important to bring those voices out in general. So I kind of love this segment. With that, Idan is here. Idan Segal: What's up? It's nice to finally be here. Mordy Oberstein: It is. Idan, I love your eyes. I always say that. Idan Segal: Yeah. You say it a lot, I must say. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Is that weird? Crystal Carter: So much. Idan Segal: No, it's okay. It's okay. I'm already so flattered from what you said before. So what can I say now? Mordy Oberstein: Did I set you up? Idan Segal: Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, you invited me so many times and finally I'm here. I was starting to think that those [inaudible 00:31:48] invitations. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well when you know when you invite somebody your wedding or whatever, but you don't really want them to come. So you invite, "Yeah, it's at one o'clock in the morning, but we'd love to have you there." Crystal Carter: Oh, in England they do it two tier. At England there's the ceremony and that's how you know your real friends. And if they're like meh friends, you only get invited to the dinner after. Mordy Oberstein: What? I would do the opposite. I don't want to be invited to the ceremony. Invite me to the dinner. That's all I care about. Idan Segal: Anyways, for me, it's amazing. What a morning. I repaired my car. I watch the NBA finals and now I'm in a podcast. So it's a work procrastination at its best. Mordy Oberstein: So we've been talking in this episode a lot about keywords and keyword research. And you're a little bit of a legend around here because you and your team and we, all of you, but you're the head of this, so we're going to call it you, rank for a ton of featured snippets. Idan Segal: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal in particular is really impressed. Not that I'm not impressed, but... Idan Segal: So yeah, I'm leading a team of rock stars. They really do the magic, not me, but it's a bunch of SEO teams and blog teams and CRO teams. But the bottom line is really amazing. I think only in the US, we're triggering more than 3,000 feature snippets. I think 54% of them, according to the May report, probably even more now are from the blog. Many of them are from product gates. And that's really cool. I must say that even the last algorithm change worked tremendously well for us. And I think we increased the amount of featured snippet that we have in 20 something percent. So that's just awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Do you get a bonus for that when you- Idan Segal: I'm not answering without my lawyer. Crystal Carter: I'm not surprised because I did an article around featured snippets for Search London recently and they used Wix as a really good case study because the featured snippets, for instance, there was one article that was 120 best blog niche ideas to write about. And if you look up topics for blogs, it shows as the featured snippet for that. If you look up blog topics for beginners, that same article shows as the people also ask. And then if you look up blog topics, it shows in an accordion as a dropdown there as well. You're also covered if you look up blogging, it shows in the knowledge panel as one of the, what is the subtopics of blogging as well. It really is an incredible case study in topic clusters of how you mapped out different topics around blogging. Can you share any insights on how you did that? Idan Segal: First of all, we are big fans of HubSpot and HubSpot Strategy in general here. We think that they're awesome. I think by the way, they are kind of a role model, to some extent. I think they even call the HTML components, some of them, when you go to the HTML, you see they call them featured snippets. Let's say that they're students of the game and they really try to get better every day. And this is my philosophy here as well. I think that here in Wix we are very lucky to have products in many niches so we can get tons of feature snippets. I think it's also a good sign for our product to show that you are capable of getting featured snippets when using the Wix blog. We have 22 different blogs in 16 languages and in most of them or all of them, we are getting featured snippets. And that's really, really cool. I think we are really trying to give the people what they want to bring real value. I don't want to say some fancy words, but we're really trying to bring value and to answer real problems. And by doing that, we also have structure that we're trying to do because we see that it's working. If we are doing a recap in the end so we're also doing a precap in the beginning, an introduction. We are trying to use things that we see that are working like ordered list and unordered list. And we have even showcases, inspirational intent content, we are trying to use scattered age free titles along the text. And you see that it's just working because we write great content and our philosophy that we're always on the hunt for more, but it's not that I detect featured snippets on the SERP and I'm trying to get them. I'm trying to even help Google educate him that it's worth a featured snippets. And I think we have tons of success by creating feature snippets on SERP's that didn't have any, and that's really cool. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really great point, because the way you usually hear this topic being talked about and even the way we introduced it was, yeah, how do you target keywords for featured snippets? Whereas you're just saying, yeah, we just target writing content and then we tell Google, this is a great place for a feature snippet. Idan Segal: Google is kind of good in what they're doing. Usually they figure it out and it's not always violets and roses here. I think in the last algo update, there was a topic that it's not really our niche, but was how to start a YouTube channel. And now of course Google is getting the featured snippet, their support. And I think we crushed. Decreased. I have it here, 67% decrease, but on the same graph we had some content about writing a bio, about blogging, about fonts, I think. And we increased in a second in between 20 to 50% in traffic. And in general featured snippet are more than 10% of our blog traffic. And that's huge. That's really huge for business. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think one of the things that I noticed again, from studying your featured snippets from the outside or whatever is that you spend a lot of time on the long tail, which is really, really core for featured snippets. A lot of the broad terms are going to be covered by things like Wikipedia or even by an instant answer. So the number of blogs you have about blogging is extensive, which means that you're going to be getting into that sort of longer tail. Can you talk to us a little bit about your research process at all? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. How do you break down topics like that? What's your approach? Idan Segal: Again, I think in the Wix blog, we're going after our products and what we're really offering to people and we're trying to go after that. So we have different clusters. One of them is about the website creation and that means that I need to cover everything. Also, things that I can't really cover on my product pages. And if I want to talk about menus and about the importance of navigation and about what is a 404, it's all about semantic depth. And again, I am a very cynical person and I am a capitalistic pig that cares about conversions. But having said that, I do try to do it while I'm trying to imagine that I'm writing to a fancy editor and to really give value because that's the right way to tackle it. So blogging is another big cluster of ours that we're trying to tackle the same way that marketing is and web design is. And we're trying to all the time to beef up and to learn from our competitors about topics that we're not covering. And also for us to lose a featured snippet, it's a wake up call. It means that we need to do something better. We need to try to learn from our competitors how to do things better. And sometimes it's just about Google turning off the feature snippet. And that's also okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good point that, we were talking about this earlier in the podcast, about when you're thinking about keyword research in a nonlinear way, not so focused on the tools, it's really about being able to yourself, and you can use tools to help you do this, being able to parse out what that topic is or what that topic means and creating content around all of that in a really substantial kind of way. Just one more question before we have to let you go. When you see that you lose a feature snippet, you're talking about the YouTube content that came in and took away our feature snippets. Do you try to regain that or do you say, "Okay, look, I realize I should never have really had those to begin with and I'm not going to waste my time." Idan Segal: So, if I think that I didn't deserve it, it will affect my priorities. Having said that the fact that I got it previously means that at least I will give it a try. And I think that part of our work process here, we have tons of emphasis on redos. We want to send Google fresh signals that will keep working on our content. Huge part of our strategy is evergreen content. So for me, when I'm losing it, I'm trying to learn why I lost it. What's the other competitor, the URL that took it. I'm trying to learn from what they did. And I will try to do a redo to prioritize it in many cases the success rate is awesome. And again, all the credits to my team. And also I'm lucky to work in a company that has a great domain authority because Wix has a great product. That enables us to get those featured snippets. Crystal Carter: When I was speaking at Search London about featured snippets, someone said, "Oh, can you go over existing content to make feature snippets?" And I was like, "Yeah, you absolutely 100% can. And it's definitely, as you say, redos, going back over the content and adding bullet points or lists or tables or adding images or videos or whatever can really help. Idan Segal: There was a thread on Twitter from someone that I didn't know. Maybe you'll remember it. And if not, I will share it and you can share it later in a thread or something about someone that explained to details, how he's trying to tackle featured snippets. It was a very insightful one. Most of the things that he's trying to do we are already doing here, but I learned a trick or two. And there is a lot of technicalities when you're doing it, right? So you need to use some techniques, some HTML markup, ordered lists, unordered lists, hierarchy, amount of text, imperative verbs. There's some stuff to do, but eventually create good content and you'll enjoy the fruits. Mordy Oberstein: Idan, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day and joining us. Idan Segal: No problem. Thank you for inviting me. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Again, Idan, before you leave, where can we find you out there in the public? Where can your people find you? Idan Segal: You know, you can find me on Twitter probably. You can share the handle later on. Mordy Oberstein: I'll share the handle. It'll be in the show notes. Look for it in the show notes folks. Idan, thank you so much. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much. Idan Segal: Amazing. Thank you, Crystal. Thank you, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Bye, bye. Idan Segal: Ciao. Mordy Oberstein: Brilliant fellow, no? Crystal Carter: Idan never ceases to amaze. I think that he just delivers. I think there's such amazing content that comes out of that team and the way that they approach it is incredible. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we go across the Wixverse. There's so many awesome people here. By the way, there's so many people out there in the SEO world who are not super famous who are doing super amazing things. [00:41:43] Snappy News So just know that. You know what else might be news to you other than the fact that there are SEOs out there who don't have huge profiles? The actual news, the actual news. The actual SEO, snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Let's get right into it because otherwise it wouldn't be snappy. First up for the master of disaster and last week's guest Barry, made the Schwartz be with you. From search engine round table, new Google featured snippet with multiple answers, new design call outs and more. Essentially what we have here is a featured snippet on a gray background with a call out i.e. bolded text that basically gives you the answer to the query and multiple answers from multiple URLs to boot. I'm covering this because this has been the fifth or sixth test where Google's actually using multiple URLs inside of the feature snippet. It's a big shift in how they're thinking about feature snippets and search overall. In my honest opinion, Asher just covered this and why I think Google is doing this on the Wix SEO hub. I'll link to that and I'll link to Barry's article where you can see what this feature snippet looks like. So check out the show notes. Okay. More on the old HCU the Helpful Content Update from SEJ, Search Engine Journals, Matt Southern. Google, helpful content signal, make it stronger with next core update. So the helpful content update might be a strong part of the ranking equation as time goes on. It was not a very potent part of the equation this go around as the update, as Google confirmed, has finished rolling out. This actually kind of makes sense as the HCU as we call it, the Helpful Content Update is based on machine learning properties and the machine needs to learn. And as it learns, it'll be more powerful than anything the SERP has ever known before. Okay. Maybe that's hyperbolic, but it does make sense that as time goes on, as the machine learns more, it will be a greater factor in the ranking equation. So Helpful Content Update, go get some learning done and come back soon, you hear. And with that, that is the snappiest of news. And what a set of news that was, no? Crystal Carter: It as very news news to me. Mordy Oberstein: That was very newsy. It was newsworthy, Newsies, good movie. Classic growing up as a kid, Christian Bale. Crystal Carter: I was just about to say that people don't realize the American Psycho was in Newsies. Mordy Oberstein: He was. Dancing around singing about newspapers. Crystal Carter: Do you want some news? Because he's Batman as well. That was my Batman. Mordy Oberstein: News. Crystal Carter: That's a much better Batman. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I have specialties in doing Batman voices. Now let's talk about other stuff about SEO. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Again, before we leave you and thank you so much for listening all the way through to this point, we want to make sure that you understand that there is so much great SEO information out there besides just this podcast. And a lot of it comes from the SEO industry itself, which means the people, the people are the industry. [00:46:31] Follow of the Week And today we're going to share who you should be following out there in Twitter. And that person is Crystal. No, it is crystal. Crystal Carter: It's not me. Mordy Oberstein: You are someone we should follow. It's not what I meant. But crystal, who are we following this week? Crystal Carter: Today I would like to discuss, and I would like to put a little shine on Lazarina Stoy. I think she's amazing. She's an SEO, she's like a data phenom. She's really- Mordy Oberstein: Machine learning. Crystal Carter: Right. She's really into machine learning and she's got some great, great resources that she has particularly around keywords. She has a tool called the keyword search intent classifier tool. And it's a Google sheet that you can use to understand your keywords better and to understand the intent behind them. She also has some really good resources around big data sets as well. So she's a great person to follow. She tinkers a lot and makes a lot of really cool resources and shares some really good stuff. And she's just really, really clever. I think that if you're interested in keywords, you're interested in machine learning, you're interested in checking out somebody who's doing really cool stuff follow Lazarina. Mordy Oberstein: She's doing some really cool stuff. And that's @LazarinaStoy on Twitter. L-A-Z-A-R-I-N-A-S-T-O-Y. And of course we'll link to her Twitter profile in the show notes for this podcast. Folks, that's it. That's that's all we got. I know you wanted more, but that's all we got for you 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 an all new episode diving into Ooh, ranking factors. Should you care? Crystal Carter: Should you? Mordy Oberstein: We have different point of views on this one I think. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, we kind of do. Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Going to be some drama. Well- Crystal Carter: It's going to get heated. [inaudible 00:46:43] at the guacamole discussions though. Mordy Oberstein: I will draw lines in the sand. You should not cross them. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars we have on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time everyone peace, love and SEO. See ya. Crystal Carter: Bye. 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