Agency saves time, money and SEO headaches “Building websites with Wix is like having a team of developers on your side. They’re always innovating for us and we can just run with it. ” 50% Increase in the speed of website builds 50% Reduction in costs compared to bespoke builds 50% Of all web projects in the last 12 months delivered on Wix When Optix Solutions made the strategic decision to start outsourcing their development work, the agency began to worry that they had traded in one type of bottleneck for another. What they needed was a web creation platform that could give them the flexibility to say yes to client requests, without the logistical headache of always having to factor in someone else's timelines and costs. And most importantly for their in-house SEO team, it had to be a platform that could give them complete control over clients’ SEO. The business Based in Exeter, England, Optix Solutions is a full-service agency with a special focus on digital marketing and web creation. Founded back in 1999 by two university pals, it has grown into a high-powered operation led by 17 staff who deliver everything from paid media strategy to creative TV campaigns. With a client list that ranges from much-loved local businesses to large government bodies like the UK National Health Service, it’s fair to say the projects that Optix Solutions take on never fall into the category of one-size-fits-all. As digital marketing makes up the biggest slice of their business, SEO is one of their key offerings. The SEO challenge After every client meeting, Optix Solutions’ Creative Lead, Samuel Skinner, always asked himself two questions: How quickly can we do this? and How much is it going to cost us? Without developers on demand, he now had another pressing consideration to add to the mix: Who’s going to do this for us? Samuel Skinner, Creative Lead at Optix Solutions Deceptively simple on the face of it, these issues all posed blockers for the agency. As Samuel notes, customers often came in with big plans and very little idea of the time, cost and logistics that it would take to bring them to fruition. “I've always had a problem explaining to a customer why something they can describe to me in very simple words is actually going to be painful or very expensive for them,” he shares. “They’ll say, ‘All I want to do is take this picture out, put this graphic in, and move that text there.’ But of course, a developer’s got to sit down and write the code, test the code, and deploy the code.” When it came to factoring in SEO, Samuel found he was spending far too much time briefing developers and spelling out each website’s specific requirements. If he didn’t do this, he found that things could get skipped over, which led to bottlenecks for the SEO team further down the line. For example, it was essential that they were able to access the website’s metadata, make edits, add tags to pages, and do URL redirects. And while third-party plugins were an option, they were a messy route the agency would rather not go down. The solution Samuel had been a personal advocate of Wix for some time, having first picked it up in his college days to build his online portfolio. It would now prove to be a game-changer for his agency—enabling them to move faster and reduce costs, without having to rely on developers. The upshot? Samuel’s team is saying yes to more clients than ever before. “Wix gives us a flexibility that’s incredibly powerful,” Samuel enthuses. “I can deliver a better customer experience because I'm not having to say no all the time—the old barriers are gone. Not only can we deliver at a fraction of the price and move really fast, we can also be quite experimental with it. We know that we can phase projects without unexpected costs creeping in. It’s opened up a lot of ideas and opportunities for us.” As well as being ideal for one-off campaigns like landing pages, the agency finds Wix especially useful for mid-sized clients with sites anywhere between 40 and 50 pages—the bonus being that Wix offers them the ability to keep scaling. “You know those clients who want professional sites that look superb, but are a bit squeamish when it comes to putting tons of money behind it? That’s where we can come in and say hey, you know what, we have a great solution.” Another major win is that Samuel’s team can now build websites with SEO in mind, rather than an afterthought. From the get-go, all the SEO capabilities they need are at their fingertips. “ Things like the URL Redirect Manager and the built-in SEO tools for areas like the blog, especially OG images and Twitter cards, are really excellent features,” Sam lists. “Having worked with a lot of bespoke site builds, factoring these things into the specification and then testing thoroughly would always eat time. Wix’s features work straight out-of-the-box, so I can execute with speed—and without fiddley plugins.” Optix Solutions’ newfound agility doesn’t end there. Samuel’s team can now enjoy far more flexibility in the placement of their in-house resources. “Wix is like an extra service that slots into our business and we can all jump on it,” he says. “The best part is that getting staff trained up is super efficient because I can direct them to all of Wix’s video guides and how-tos.” No bottlenecks in sight. The results “We can comfortably deliver an entire site within a couple of months (less if we needed to). In a typical project with specialist developers, we would run at least twice this. So our timelines have been cut in half .” “ Budget wise we’re able to deliver solutions well below the £10k mark and keep it viable for our business. This isn’t a figure we can reach with other platforms or options, so Wix is our sole offering for clients that need to work within these kinds of budgets.” Discover how advanced SEO features on Wix give you the ability to work smarter and faster for your clients and explore our SEO Learning Hub for the latest insights from industry experts. Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Greg is one of the founders of Cypress North and its head of performance and innovation. He co-manages the digital marketing department and works to ensure clients achieve the best results. He also co-hosts the Marketing O'Clock podcast, providing updates, insights, and hot takes on the latest SEO, PPC, and social media marketing news. Greg Finn Partner at Cypress North Greg is one of the founders of Cypress North and its head of performance and innovation. He co-manages the digital marketing department and works to ensure clients achieve the best results. He also co-hosts the Marketing O'Clock podcast , providing updates, insights, and hot takes on the latest SEO, PPC, and social media marketing news. Articles & Resources 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

Do you need to show the value of your SEO work to executives? Often that’s the case and it can be a bit overwhelming if not scary. How should SEOs communicate their business contributions to the C-suite? Which SEO reports should be front and center when presenting to the C-suite and which ones can be appendicized? Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein share how you can be successful in showcasing the value of your SEO work to the c-suite. Guest, Craig Dunham, CEO at Lumar, offers his take on SEOs interacting with the C-suite and board and why it’s best not to go too far in the data weeds. It’s time to talk SEO and the C-suite on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Back Is the c-suite any place for an SEO? Do you need to show the value of your SEO work to executives? Often that’s the case and it can be a bit overwhelming if not scary. How should SEOs communicate their business contributions to the C-suite? Which SEO reports should be front and center when presenting to the C-suite and which ones can be appendicized? Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein share how you can be successful in showcasing the value of your SEO work to the c-suite. Guest, Craig Dunham, CEO at Lumar, offers his take on SEOs interacting with the C-suite and board and why it’s best not to go too far in the data weeds. It’s time to talk SEO and the C-suite on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 27 | March 1, 2023 | 38 MIN 00:00 / 37:40 This week’s guests Craig Dunham Craig Dunham is a passionate marketing technology professional and serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Lumar, with responsibility for leading on the company vision and strategy globally. In his previous role, he served as General Manager of Financial Services and Hospitality verticals at Guild Education, responsible to lead client growth and retention strategy and execution; including marketing, sales, and client service organizations. In prior roles, Craig Dunham was the General Manager of Financial Services at Seismic (a leading sales and marketing technology platform). There he was responsible for driving go-to-market strategy, customer success and product innovation within Seismic’s Financial Services market vertical. During his time at Seismic, Craig was also responsible for leading Seismic through its 2018 acquisition of the Savo Group, integrating all business functions. Throughout his time at Seismic, Craig served as a member of Seismic’s executive leadership team that grew Seismic’s valuation from $15 million in 2013 to a $1.6 billion Series F in 2020. 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 group new insights around what's happened in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous and not AI writer, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: How do you know I'm not AI? Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking at you right now. You don't look like AI to me. Crystal Carter: But I could be like auto-generated video, and then with the sound. I've seen those things on the internet. I saw a video where they made Snoop Dogg speak a completely different language. He did a Just Eat advert, but in another language that he didn't originally speak. Mordy Oberstein: Can I go full nerd on you? Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: There's a Star Trek Picard episode where he dies and he becomes an Android and his consciousness gets transferred from his body to this Android. So now Captain Picard is actually an Android in reality. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, this happened. By the way, if you're listening to this and you like Star Trek, I have just spoiled the Picard series? Yeah. Crystal Carter: This is ridiculous. I haven't seen season two. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: You clearly haven't seen season one, it happened in season one. Crystal Carter: No it didn't. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it did. Crystal Carter: Did it? Mordy Oberstein: He becomes the Android in the end. Crystal Carter: Then I watched it and didn't understand. Mordy Oberstein: It was very confusing. Season 2 was way better. Crystal Carter: I just remember Data with long hair being like all Zen and stuff. And also, it's just good to see old Riker. Riker's like- Mordy Oberstein: I love Riker. They're all coming back for three, all the old cast. Crystal Carter: Okay. The other thing that's great about Riker is like, have you ever seen the Rikering video? He never sits down in a chair. Mordy Oberstein: Right. He always sits backwards on it. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And after you see it, you never unsee it. It's very important. Mordy Oberstein: True. He's so tall. That's why. Crystal Carter: So tall. Mordy Oberstein: He's so tall. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we have the data, Google Search Console data. Google Search Console Data Insights in our new SEO home dashboard, and a heap of filterable GSC data inside of Wix Analytics. No red checks needed. So you can show off your prowess, your organization's C level folk, which I mentioned because this week we're diving into C-suite, and is it really a place for SEO? Yes, episode done. It is a place for... SEO belongs in the C-suite. We've solved that problem. We finished the episode in one second. Crystal Carter: You're not wrong. It's really important and I think that it's one of those things where there are some discussions that should be had before they filter down further into the organization that only an SEO can have in our very important, very special way. So yeah, I think it's really important and I'm really glad that we're talking about this because it's something I'm very passionate about. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're diving into how would you bring SEO up to the board? How valuable is SEO to top level decision makers and why C level should be a concern for any SEO agency? Plus very, very honorable and very, very special guests. C level guest has Craig Dunham, the CEO of Lumar, joins us to talk about what actually goes into communicating and helping C level folk understand SEO. Plus, we're going to go into why C level optimizing themselves for search is an actual SEO strategy, kind of sort of you'll have to see. Of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. This is the executive version of the SERP's Up podcast. Episode number 27 is on, or let's buy stock in episode number 27. So many C level things to say. Crystal Carter: So many C level things to say. I agree, I concur. I second that motion. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I always thought as a kid, it was I second that motion and that I second that emotion. Crystal Carter: The song? Mordy Oberstein: The song, yeah. I don't know why I thought that as a kid. Crystal Carter: So you took out the play on words that they put in? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was like 10. Don't blame me. Okay. I'm a 10-year-old still. Crystal Carter: Okay. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: So let's get into it. So you have a large organization, you work with a large organization, you work in a large organization and you need to get buy-in around your SEO. So clearly, getting SEO is relevant to you and you need to be relevant to C-level folk because those are the people who are going to be making the decision about let's say your budget and all of that good stuff. So getting C-level folk associated with SEO or SEO in front of them applies to everyone. It applies if you're in-house, obviously. It applies if you're in an agency because the POC that you're working with your client, your POC at the company at some point inevitably, it's going to get passed up the chain to C level. So you need to make them look good. That's your job. You're an agency, so you need to consider about C level. And C level is tricky because C level brings in the soft skills of SEO. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And I know that many times SEOs will scoff at the soft skills side of SEO, but that's usually because those SEOs don't have them. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? I think one of the things that's tricky about it is that it's very difficult to optimize for soft skills. It's very difficult to quantify for soft skills. But those skills, building trust, being able to communicate well, being able to relate to your client, being able to relate to the C-suite, being able to have empathy for business struggles and challenges that they might be having, those can make the difference because lots of people are smart, but not everyone can communicate in a way that their client understands or that the business owner understands or that the board or the trustees or whoever understand. Those things can make the difference between making sure that you have a profitable and a good relationship overall. Mordy Oberstein: And it all comes down to fundamentally, like everything significant in life, you have to know your audience, from your kids to your clients to your C-level folk. And for example, I don't bribe my kids with episodes of Perfect Strangers. I bribe them with Pokemon, cousin Larry. Or Batman, they like Batman now, they're into Batman. You need to speak to your C-levels, not about SEO audits, not interested in how many broken back links you have. You need to speak about growth, about the brand and about revenue. Don't forget the brand part by the way, because CMOs are not dumb. CMOs know, especially at big companies, they know that money comes from brands. So if you only talk about SEO spitting up revenue, you're missing half of their considerations, by the way. So point of order around that. But yeah, you need to understand who your audience is to be talking to C-level and that's the tricky part of it. So let's take a step back and let's first ask, is C-level even pertinent to SEO? I think we've already answered that obviously, but only partially by saying that yes, SEO was a big part of brand awareness and we need to zoom out and discuss search as a channel because the importance of search as a channel is going to be what gets you into the boardroom. If 53% of all web traffic, which I saw once that say comes from organic search, then that's going to be the starting point with talking to C-level because it's going to be an inherent part of their success. Crystal Carter: Indeed. And I think that it can affect lots and lots of decisions across the board about how people are deciding to move forward with different business challenges. So we talked a bit about budget there. C-level suites, they'll decide, well, we need to buy a new piece of technology because of this, that or the other. We're having this challenge, like we're having a challenge hiring, for instance. You might be having a challenge hiring because you're not optimized for search, for instance, when people are looking for jobs. I've sat in C-level discussions and I was like, the site isn't optimized for job hires. People can't see that you have jobs to hire. So you're making a decision to allocate budget for recruiters or for this or for that and you haven't got this easy win that we could do with a few strokes of a code, we could sort that. And so with search, sometimes you're able to find solutions at help people to move forward in a business positive way. And you talked about remembering what the business objectives are, what people are trying to move forward through. Organizations that have boards of directors like trustees and things like that, and even smaller organizations, a lot of agencies might have a board of directors that they have to refer to. They're guiding principles, they'll have their objectives, they'll have vision statements, all of these things. And you can fine tune the way that you focus your SEO objectives and your SEO projects to align with those things. And that can help you get a lot closer to the things that you want to do on the site and the things that you think are going to be valuable to them. And the soft skills as well is a great point. This is something that Eli Schwartz talks a lot about. He speaks a lot in the enterprise SEO and in C-suites and speaking to folks about that. He says that it's really, really important to make friends with everyone. And this is important as well because different teams report to boards at different times. So if you are speaking with different teams and they understand the value of SEO and they understand the value of what you're doing, then when they speak to the C-suite, they will also speak your praises. That's really, really important. And also, if they come to you and they ask you for stats, they ask you for evidence that the SEO that you did brought on a business benefit, then if you're able to provide that, again, gets you in front of that. Even if you're not at the actual meeting necessarily, it allows people in the C-suite to keep the fact that SEO is valuable in their minds. And that's really important. And again, I think that Eli Schwartz in his article, which we have on the SEO hub, will link it in the show notes. He also talks about talking to them in words that they understand. So business terms, like you said, Mordy, they're not stupid. People who don't understand SEO jargon are not stupid. They understand their business and they understand what makes their business work and they remember their customers and they understand their customers. Talk to them about their customers, about how you're helping them to get more downloads, get more registrations, get more leads, get more sales and how SEO plays into that equation. That's really, really important. And I think that in a boardroom, people will have discussions. So give them things to talk about and understand that you can have a conversation about what this is. And I think that we sometimes think of a board level room as being like, oh, like a big giant, huge ginormous company. And sometimes they are, of course. But there are also, I've worked at agencies that had a board of directors and a board of directors can be a few people sometimes, but they need to be able to make a decision in a short span of time and they need to have the key points of what that is. And also, what generally happens at a board meeting is that you'll get the papers beforehand. So make sure that you're outlining your case in your documents explicitly and clearly and well before it goes to the boardroom because people will read those papers before they get to the meeting. And then there will be a short discussion at the meeting and then they will decide. And that's what happens. And if you're not able to make your case and paper very clearly, it's going to be trickier to get that budget approval, it's going to be trickier to get that project approval and all of that sort of stuff. So keep that in mind when you're talking to C-Suite folks. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to go all the way back to the first point you made. Crystal Carter: All the way back. All the way back. Mordy Oberstein: All the way back, back in time. 88 miles an hour. So when you talk about, let's say the jobs thing, they have a website, they need to bring in new clients, obviously need to bring in new clients. But you need to bring in new talent and the website is not built to do that. That's why SEO should be included in C-suite... I can't speak. SEO should be included in C-suite decisions because that can impact the health of the business. And the problem is that you need to get the buy-in to do that. That's not going to happen. They're not going to say, "You know what? We really like organic search. We need to make sure we're including that." Like you mentioned, you need to show the value and you need to do it in a way that resonates with them. And that means understanding who the people on the board are because they're going to be very, very, very, very different people. And I'm going to give you an example from our own SEO advisory boards. Do we have an SEO advisory board, we meet monthly, we go through the Wix product. We try to make it even better than it already is and we have so many different kinds of people on the board. We have people who work on very heavy on the Wix side and they're a Wix partner, let's say, like Mark Preston. We have somebody who's a very, very broad thinker about search in Kevin Indig. We have somebody's on the e-comm side, like Luke Carthy, somebody from the traditional SEO technical side, Niki Mosier. There's so many different kinds of people and it's on purpose. And it's the same thing with a regular board or a company board. There's different kinds of people for different reasons and you need to make sure that you address all of them actually. So if we're talking about the SEO tools in Wix, I need to make sure if I'm going to be addressing them to Luke Carthy, that I bring it from an e-comm point of view. Otherwise, I'm not going to be speaking his language. If they don't talk about the overall strategy and growth possibilities with the tool, it's not going to speak to Kevin Indig the same way. So you need to be able to speak to multiple audiences at one time, which as an SEO, you should be pretty good at doing. Right? Crystal Carter: Right. And to be honest, this applies for the C-suite. It also applies if you're an agency or if you're a marketing manager and you're doing SEO and people want to know your report or something, like what happened last month? How did that SEO campaign go? Remember that you need to have a space so that somebody who's the business owner can understand what you're talking about and you can drill down later on. Normally, if you're reporting to a board as an SEO, you'll have the top level so that they can understand exactly what's going on and then there'll be an appendix so that if somebody wants to dig into the details, they can. But make sure that you lead with a TLDR that makes sense, right? With something that makes sense, it's easily accessible, like sales are up. Don't bury that news. Lead with the fact that sales are up. Lead with the fact that rankings are up, lead with that. Detail it later on as well, but lead with the main thing. That's really important because that's going to be important to everybody and that's going to be useful for everybody. And going back to what you were saying about the C-suite and the business decisions, so there's a lot of change happening in search right now. As you're an SEO, you know that that's happening. We know that that's coming down the pipe. However, sometimes the business owners don't, the C-suite doesn't. They don't know necessarily that there are big changes coming in certain things. So for instance, like the jobs one for instance, when that came in, that completely changed how people are applying for jobs. And if you think about it's like sometimes Google will give us big announcements that we are building this new thing and it's happening and you're going to need to deal with it. So for instance, GA4, right? GA4 is coming in and it's changing stuff. If you're not in the weeds like an SEO, then you don't know that that's happening. And so the C-suite are going to need to know that the way we track our marketing and the way that we understand our sales and the way that we track what happens online is going to change and we have to change and we need to get buy-in for them to make a decision on what we need to do. So you can be the canary in the coal mine here for some of the things that rule have big impact. And when people don't respond to some of those changes, for instance, I remember when e-comm hit a sort of big peak and there was a bit of a slow change where some businesses were online and some businesses weren't selling online. Well, the people who got in there early, because they had leadership that was able to connect with people who are on the ground and could say, "Hey, this e-comm a big deal, we should get in there early, we should do more," those people who are able to talk all the way through the business, they will be an advantage to people who are not. So we need to make sure that you're able to tell them and to have a communication with your leadership about changes in search, changes in tech that are going to affect them. And that's really, really valuable. And it's something that people that are not in the details of search and information retrieval and all that sort of stuff aren't going to know. And that's really important for you to be able to have those conversations and to make sure that those lines of communications are open. Mordy Oberstein: To that point, you might be great at SEO, may be great at SEO strategy, you might not be the best communicator. And I think it's important to take a step back and check the ego, I am not the best communicator. Let me bring somebody in who is. And I think that's really the epitome of a good leader. A good leader is not threatened by other good people. They bring in better people than themselves. And that's what makes you a good leader. And if there's somebody better at you in communicating to the C-level, then bring them with you. Let's use a biblical reference. Bring Aaron. If you're Moses, bring Aaron with you. Crystal Carter: These are my tablets, Aaron explain them. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Yeah, yeah. Here's what we did. Aaron, go ahead. Junior, go ahead, explain it and do that. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's useful because you can have all the stats. So if somebody wants to know the big picture, like what's most important about the points, great. And if somebody wants to know, but what happened on the 3rd of June in 2022 or something, you can be like, "Well actually, it was up 17% and down 3%," and all that sort of stuff. So you can have the details and you can know all of those things. But yeah, if you need somebody to lead on the pitch or on the discussion, absolutely do that. And I think that with these meetings it's really important to be focused on achieving your goal and remember what's most effective for helping you achieve that goal. And remember that it's sometimes very important that you are able to have those conversations for businesses because sometimes they don't know that there's a helpful content coming up or a helpful content update, for instance coming up, and that maybe we should have a think about the way we've been thinking about content for instance, or there's plenty of other things that happen and they don't want to be broadsided and you can help them, and remember that. Mordy Oberstein: And also, if you bring somebody in to help you and to talk for you, you look well important like, "Ah yes, let me. Steven, go ahead, explain it to them." Crystal Carter: While you sip your coffee in the corner. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes, yes. Now who is well important, the CEO of Lumar, which is one of the leading enterprise SEO platforms, who by the way has a wonderful integration with Wix, formally notice Deepcrawl, by the way. So if you're looking in the Wix at markets under Deepcrawl, not Lumar. But now it's Lumar, not Deepcrawl. Craig Dunham is here to share his insights of an actual C-level person and somebody who literally helps so many SEOs speak the C-level folk. He should to help you understand how SEOs add value to board level decisions. Take it away. Craig, Craig Dunham: Thanks for having me. This is a really great question. I'll open with It is absolutely essential, right for leaders to understand how their budget decisions are supporting larger business goals. And so SEOs are generally giving credit for brand discoverability awareness, but there's often a lack of knowledge at the board and leadership level around the particulars of SEO and website health more generally. And so let's be honest, right? If you're in a board meeting, you might lose some people or eyes may glaze over a bit if they're unfamiliar with the more technical concepts and terms that are being presented to them. Even if SEO is discussed or maybe some data is provided to leadership, if you start diving deep into discussions about URL redirects or no index rules, you're not going to keep this audience's attention for very long. And so you need to speak to be understood. And SEOs have to start to think about educating leadership on the value of their work, but in language that the board is familiar with. And so what that translates to is keeping the focus on how do the particular website efforts contribute to broader business outcomes like customer acquisition and connecting the technical aspects of SEO with specific commercial goals, right? Understanding the impact, tying it to revenue. Even if it's via traffic and conversion metrics, you ultimately need to make that connection to revenue or some other identified core business objective. Now, we've tried to make this easier for SEOs by introducing data visualizations and reporting options that are built to help with this, call it cross team collaboration, like the organic traffic funnel, something that we use which connects specific aspects of a website's technical health, for example, crawlability or indexability. And it connects it with the larger picture around brand discoverability. And so you'll find many leaders, especially those with a marketing background, are already familiar with this concept of funnels. And so organizing your data in a way that connects the technical aspects of SEO to frameworks that they understand creates this common ground of understanding. I think it's also worth noting that as we start 2023, there's this talk of potential recession in the business news and it's all over the place and it's a really important time for SEOs to make the case, I think for website optimization. And this means more directly that leaders are probably looking at how do we lower the cost of acquiring customers? And with the ongoing decline of third-party cookies, this over-reliance on more costly paid channels like digital ads, this is not sustainable, it won't offer the most cost-effective path forward. And so I suspect that many businesses are revisiting and reworking sort of this balance between paid and organic marketing. And as boards start to take a fresh look at organic marketing channels and their potential to reduce this cost of acquiring new customers, feels like a great time for SEOs to make the case for SEO and driving website health more broadly. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you Craig. That was incredibly crisp. The best way I could describe. It's a great point about contextualizing your SEO average. We talked about it earlier a few minutes ago. But you were talking about SEO being rolling for brand discovery and you're zooming out. As an SEO, you're often so narrowly focused on what you do, but the board, the CMO is not. He's very broadly focused, she's very broadly focused. And if you don't speak in that context or you don't contextualize SEO say in brand discovery and branding and in acquisition itself, obviously, then you're going to lose them because they're not narrowly focused the way you might be. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think the one phrase that stood out for that was speak to be understood. He also talked about people's eyes glazing over when you get into the details of some of the SEO stuff. I've definitely been in meetings when I've been like, "Oh, this is really important," and been very excited about it and people are like, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know." And so speaking to be understood is so important. And he also talked about the timeliness with regards to economic situations and yeah, this is the time when everybody's coming to the board, asking for money, asking for resources and all of that sort of stuff. So you need to make sure that you can speak to be understood, and you need to make sure that you have a clear outline of how what you do can benefit the business currently and in the future. I think that's the other thing that's great about search and the thing that I love about search is discovering opportunities. There's almost always untapped opportunities within SEO and within a website, within a digital presence. There's almost always you can, a good SEO can look at it and they can say, "Hey, actually we're not using this completely free channel." For instance, we have a Google business profile or we have 17 Google business profiles and we're not using them to the full extent of what we could. It's free. We could do that right now and that would help improve our business outcomes and that would help us do more. Then they'll say, "Well, what do you need?" And it's like, "Well, we need one more person," or something. And it's like, "Well, what's the ROI on that? Well, we would expect to see this, this, and this." And then they can say, "Yeah, we can approve that and we can get that done. We can move that forward." And I think that remembering your role across the business. And I think he also talked about charts. Charts are useful. Everybody likes a chart. You want up and to the right green, that sort of thing. And charts are useful from having those conversations. And yeah, that's a great insights from Craig there. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else is useful? And speaking of CEOs, did you know that CEOs optimizing themselves for SEO was perhaps good for SEO? Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: But it's true. Yeah. CEOs optimizing themselves for search can play a role in organic success as we introduce to you a brand new segment on the SERP's Up podcast. And it is an ode to a baseball phrase, so I love it for two reasons because we're calling it Going, Going, Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going, Google, it's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the first ever Going, Going, Google. I have to do a baseball announcer voice when I say it. Going, Going, Google. The crowd goes wild. Where we're going to look at where Google is heading so that you can update your focus in SEO strategy. And this case, we're talking about CEOs and beyond. Not just CEOs, but prominent members of your company and the optimization and the knowledge panels and all of that stuff. So let's get going with Going, Going, Google. Crystal Carter: Okay, so Going, Going, Google is essentially talking about the way that things are going on Google, like general trends that we're seeing around Google. And one of the trends that I thought was particularly interesting was essentially talking about biographical entities. Lily Ray, who we featured on the podcast previously, is somebody who's known for talking about E-A-T. Marie Haynes is another person who's known for talking about E-A-T. E-A-T stands for expertise, authority, and trust. They've added another E recently. Mordy Oberstein: Another E, it's EE. Crystal Carter: E-E-A-T. So the other E is experience. And one of the things that you'll find, like if you look up a big corporation, so for instance, if you look up something like Microsoft, you might see a knowledge panel for that company. And when you look that up, they will list the people that are in that company. They will often list the founders. For instance, they will also list the chairperson for that company. So for instance, if you look up Microsoft, you will see that the chairperson is Satya Nadella. And then when you click on that, that person has a full sort of knowledge panel, or not a knowledge panel, I'm not sure what they're calling this at the moment, but it's SERP feature that includes pictures, biographical information, information about their education, information about their videos, all of this sort of stuff. Why? Because Google has a very good understanding of the biographical entity around that person. And what that means is that Google can also understand that that person is associated with that business. And so there's a lot of push for AI, which is an interesting why we're talking about Microsoft. But there's a lot of push for AI at the moment. But Google is also making a big push for making sure that they're very clear on who the people are behind different companies, different websites, different digital assets. And this is something that's part of that. And I think that the fact that they're giving this kind of treatment to not just people like Beyonce, not just people who are literal rock stars, but also to people who are on boards of directors, people who are professionals, is really, really important. And it shows the emphasis that they are putting on understanding biographical entities so that they can make better decisions and make better, not necessarily ranking decisions I guess I would say, but better insights around the E-A-T that's associated with a particular business or website. Mordy Oberstein: And what I think works you, take a company like Wix, right? So you search for Wix, you get our founders, you get the CEO, it's all great and it's all well. I think Google could contextualize Wix without that. They understand who we are because we such a big presence without that. But if you're a smaller company and you have a CEO or a founder or somebody, a C-level person of significance in the company, who has biographical, we'll say recognition, that part of the knowledge graph, that could, in many ways, affect how Google understands your business and where your business is relevant. You can piggyback, whereas with Microsoft, let's say, or Amazon, the particular people who work for the company might be benefiting from Amazon's authority. If you work for a smaller mid-size company, that company might piggyback its authority off the people who work for it. And that's where it comes into play. So if that person, for example, the CEO is writing a blog post, now, this recognition of, okay, we know who that is, they are an expert on this, they are writing it for this company, for this blog, for this website, rather, now this post benefits from their authority. So they give it a very narrow, simple, linear way of seeing that play out. Because I think it's way more than that narrow, simple way of playing out. It's a very holistic in and out, back and forth kind of dynamic. But just to give it a sort of define it, that would be one way of thinking about how the company benefits off and piggybacks off of the authority of the individuals who work for it. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's all a contributor. Is it Leviathan? It's a person that's made up of lots of little or lots of smaller people. Is that the one that I'm thinking of, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Isn't a Leviathan a giant monster, the giant sea serpent from the Bible. Our second biblical reference today. Crystal Carter: Okay, so maybe that's not the one I'm thinking. Mordy Oberstein: I think you're thinking of the Megazord from Power Rangers, made of moving parts and transforms. Crystal Carter: No, I'm not thinking of the Megazord. I am. Thomas Hobbes Leviathan is sort of one person and it's got lots of smaller people. But basically, your company, your business is made up of people and Google knows that. And Google knows that and when they talked about their helpful content update for instance, they were talking about content written for people by people. They understand who those people are. And it's really important for you in a business of any size to think about who the people on your team are and to have an understanding of their digital presence. So I call it a biographical entity. Lots of people call it other things. But it's important that people know that you're related to the company and that they can verify your expertise. So one really, really simple, easy way is to actually spend a little bit of time on your LinkedIn profile, even if you're not posting every day about how you're thrilled about whatever it is you've done or making some long-winded metaphor that has nothing to do with being a tax attorney, but you've decided to put it out on a LinkedIn anyway. Even if you're not posting enormously. Most professionals' names, if you look up whatever their name is and their professional thing, one of the first entries that shows up on Google will be their LinkedIn profile for instance. And Google has said, I'm sure I've heard John Mueller say this. I can find the link in the show notes. But he said that that's one of the ways that they verify E-A-T, or one of the sources that they go to for thinking about that. And also, it's a case that the Google also uses this, often pulls LinkedIn content for saying what is so-and-so known for. It'll show up as a featured snippet for that. They'll say, so-and-so is known for being a fantastic figure skater or an amazing flutist. Mordy Oberstein: Artist. They're an artist. And also make sure you have it on the website itself because Google looks for multiple... LinkedIn, Crunchbase. Let's assume you don't have a Wikipedia entry that'll make things overly simple. There's none, right? You don't have to have a Wikipedia entry to be an entity. That's so not true at all. But if you put it on the website itself, Google might actually pull the website and make the connection between the entity which you want to and the entity you're trying to, which is the business, and connect them together because it's on the same website. That's where the entity exists. Whatever it is that you're doing, and it's a great business strategy overall, build up the people that are working for you, that are part of your company because you can create strong biographical connections or knowledge graph connection between them and the business, which impacts the visibility of that business in a lot of ways on Google search and well beyond. And now let us go well beyond by diving into what is going out there on the great beyond that we know as the SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy News. Well, it's been a while since we talked about an official Google update. So here it comes, or rather here it is. At the time of this recording, the February, 2023 product review update is live as reported by Barry Schwartz over a Search Engine Roundtable. 5:00 PM Eastern Time on February 21st saw the release of the latest iteration of the product review update. While this update only applies to pages reviewing products and even lists of best products, it can impact general shopping SERPs as product review pages that get shuffled around impact the overall rankings of URLs on those SERPs. So for example, you sell laptops and are ranking for the keyword by laptop, your pages might not be directly impacted by the product review update. But if the page reviewing laptops of all sorts of kinds gets a ranking boost at the hands of the update and happens to rank for that very same keyword, that might mean you now rank lower. So if you sell products, definitely keep your eyes peeled as the update continues to roll out. As of the day of this recording, the summer censure is showing multiple days of elevator ranking. Since the announcement, it would seem at least on the surface, that this update might have a little bit more teeth on it as compared to previous iterations of the product review update, or maybe even the more recent iterations of the product review updates. Best advice, showcase personal experience using the products when creating product review content. All right, this one's for all y'all AI nerds. Bing has pulled back the curtain... Try that again. Bing has pulled back the curtain in a recent blog post by VP of search and AI that explains how Bing's new AI chat shows relevant information when open AI's data source only goes through November, 2021. In a nutshell, Bing has something called Prometheus, sounds fancy, which feeds open AI relevant information from the actual Bing index, meaning now the AI has the latest and greatest and most updated information possible. It does so by breaking down the chat prompt the user enters into various subqueries. So for example, if UX being chat rather, how do you make bread and dessert for someone with an allergy to gluten? Bing would break that down in to, how do you make gluten-free bread and a separate query for, how do you make gluten-free dessert? It would feed open AI with any of the needed relevant information on that topic. By the way, by working it out in this way, Bing can also present citations for specific sections of the AI response, which it does, which is pretty cool. And last up, as reported from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, you can now better optimize LinkedIn articles for search as you have access to custom set the title tag and meta description, which is I guess nifty, if you write articles on LinkedIn. Which I don't, but maybe you do. So now you know. And with that, that is the snappiest of SEO news. So much news, but we only did a few stories. Crystal Carter: It's a really dynamic time in search. Mordy Oberstein: It was a busy week, a dynamic week in search, considering all that's been going on. Crystal Carter: So much. Mordy Oberstein: So much, so much going on. Do you know who also has so much going on? Our follow of the week? This week's follow of the week, who you should be following on. Social media is former member of Wix's own SEO advisory board, former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land and current LinkedIn data nerd, Michelle fricking Robbins. Crystal Carter: Michelle Robbins. Michelle Robbins is a fantastic legend. Legendary, but also amazing. She was on the Wix SEO board previously and she is somebody who really understands the value of SEO for business and the value of SEO for business objectives. And she speaks with incredible clarity and knowledge around this. She's a great follow for lots of reasons. She was recently featured on the Search Off the Record podcast, talking about her career, her career journey. Mordy Oberstein: Which is Google's own podcast. Crystal Carter: Google's own podcast. And it's fascinating. And she's someone who is... yeah, she's so clear, so smart, and so laser focused on making sure that digital activity leads to business growth and that is what it's there for. We don't make websites for the sake of making websites. We make websites to achieve an objective. And it might be that we want to share something that we really, really love and that might be the objective. But the website, for instance, is a tool for achieving that objective and that she's very good at making sure that people are focused on moving forward with her objectives. Mordy Oberstein: So not to play down the other follows of the week that we've recommended in the past, but having worked with Michelle on the Wix successor advisory board, I'm thinking for like probably the better part of two years. I'm saying this to all genuineness. I left every meeting that she was a part of having learned something from her, and I always felt privileged to have been a part of that because I was able to learn from Michelle. So this is a very strong recommendation to follow Michelle Robbins online, on LinkedIn, on Twitter. On Twitter, it's @MichelleRobbins, M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E R-O-B-B-I-N-S, over on Twitter, of course, we'll link to it in the show notes. So I think that's it. Crystal Carter: I think that's it. Mordy Oberstein: We have reached the precipice. Crystal Carter: Okay, do we a... what is it? Mordy Oberstein: A Leviathan? Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Megazord? Do you have a Megazord? I wish you had a Megazord. Crystal Carter: Do the eyes have it? Mordy Oberstein: The eyes? Yes. Crystal Carter: Nevermind. Mordy Oberstein: We have gone off the rails. Thank you for listening to 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 retain your SEO clients in 10 days. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars over 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 are waiting on Spotify or both. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Craig Dunham Michelle Robbins Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Lumar Enterprise SEO Tips News: Google Unwraps February 2023 Product Reviews Update With Language Support Building the New Bing LinkedIn Introduces SEO Tools For Articles Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Craig Dunham Michelle Robbins Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Lumar Enterprise SEO Tips News: Google Unwraps February 2023 Product Reviews Update With Language Support Building the New Bing LinkedIn Introduces SEO Tools For Articles 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 group new insights around what's happened in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous and not AI writer, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: How do you know I'm not AI? Mordy Oberstein: I'm looking at you right now. You don't look like AI to me. Crystal Carter: But I could be like auto-generated video, and then with the sound. I've seen those things on the internet. I saw a video where they made Snoop Dogg speak a completely different language. He did a Just Eat advert, but in another language that he didn't originally speak. Mordy Oberstein: Can I go full nerd on you? Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: There's a Star Trek Picard episode where he dies and he becomes an Android and his consciousness gets transferred from his body to this Android. So now Captain Picard is actually an Android in reality. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, this happened. By the way, if you're listening to this and you like Star Trek, I have just spoiled the Picard series? Yeah. Crystal Carter: This is ridiculous. I haven't seen season two. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: You clearly haven't seen season one, it happened in season one. Crystal Carter: No it didn't. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it did. Crystal Carter: Did it? Mordy Oberstein: He becomes the Android in the end. Crystal Carter: Then I watched it and didn't understand. Mordy Oberstein: It was very confusing. Season 2 was way better. Crystal Carter: I just remember Data with long hair being like all Zen and stuff. And also, it's just good to see old Riker. Riker's like- Mordy Oberstein: I love Riker. They're all coming back for three, all the old cast. Crystal Carter: Okay. The other thing that's great about Riker is like, have you ever seen the Rikering video? He never sits down in a chair. Mordy Oberstein: Right. He always sits backwards on it. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And after you see it, you never unsee it. It's very important. Mordy Oberstein: True. He's so tall. That's why. Crystal Carter: So tall. Mordy Oberstein: He's so tall. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we have the data, Google Search Console data. Google Search Console Data Insights in our new SEO home dashboard, and a heap of filterable GSC data inside of Wix Analytics. No red checks needed. So you can show off your prowess, your organization's C level folk, which I mentioned because this week we're diving into C-suite, and is it really a place for SEO? Yes, episode done. It is a place for... SEO belongs in the C-suite. We've solved that problem. We finished the episode in one second. Crystal Carter: You're not wrong. It's really important and I think that it's one of those things where there are some discussions that should be had before they filter down further into the organization that only an SEO can have in our very important, very special way. So yeah, I think it's really important and I'm really glad that we're talking about this because it's something I'm very passionate about. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why we're diving into how would you bring SEO up to the board? How valuable is SEO to top level decision makers and why C level should be a concern for any SEO agency? Plus very, very honorable and very, very special guests. C level guest has Craig Dunham, the CEO of Lumar, joins us to talk about what actually goes into communicating and helping C level folk understand SEO. Plus, we're going to go into why C level optimizing themselves for search is an actual SEO strategy, kind of sort of you'll have to see. Of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. This is the executive version of the SERP's Up podcast. Episode number 27 is on, or let's buy stock in episode number 27. So many C level things to say. Crystal Carter: So many C level things to say. I agree, I concur. I second that motion. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, I always thought as a kid, it was I second that motion and that I second that emotion. Crystal Carter: The song? Mordy Oberstein: The song, yeah. I don't know why I thought that as a kid. Crystal Carter: So you took out the play on words that they put in? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was like 10. Don't blame me. Okay. I'm a 10-year-old still. Crystal Carter: Okay. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: So let's get into it. So you have a large organization, you work with a large organization, you work in a large organization and you need to get buy-in around your SEO. So clearly, getting SEO is relevant to you and you need to be relevant to C-level folk because those are the people who are going to be making the decision about let's say your budget and all of that good stuff. So getting C-level folk associated with SEO or SEO in front of them applies to everyone. It applies if you're in-house, obviously. It applies if you're in an agency because the POC that you're working with your client, your POC at the company at some point inevitably, it's going to get passed up the chain to C level. So you need to make them look good. That's your job. You're an agency, so you need to consider about C level. And C level is tricky because C level brings in the soft skills of SEO. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And I know that many times SEOs will scoff at the soft skills side of SEO, but that's usually because those SEOs don't have them. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? I think one of the things that's tricky about it is that it's very difficult to optimize for soft skills. It's very difficult to quantify for soft skills. But those skills, building trust, being able to communicate well, being able to relate to your client, being able to relate to the C-suite, being able to have empathy for business struggles and challenges that they might be having, those can make the difference because lots of people are smart, but not everyone can communicate in a way that their client understands or that the business owner understands or that the board or the trustees or whoever understand. Those things can make the difference between making sure that you have a profitable and a good relationship overall. Mordy Oberstein: And it all comes down to fundamentally, like everything significant in life, you have to know your audience, from your kids to your clients to your C-level folk. And for example, I don't bribe my kids with episodes of Perfect Strangers. I bribe them with Pokemon, cousin Larry. Or Batman, they like Batman now, they're into Batman. You need to speak to your C-levels, not about SEO audits, not interested in how many broken back links you have. You need to speak about growth, about the brand and about revenue. Don't forget the brand part by the way, because CMOs are not dumb. CMOs know, especially at big companies, they know that money comes from brands. So if you only talk about SEO spitting up revenue, you're missing half of their considerations, by the way. So point of order around that. But yeah, you need to understand who your audience is to be talking to C-level and that's the tricky part of it. So let's take a step back and let's first ask, is C-level even pertinent to SEO? I think we've already answered that obviously, but only partially by saying that yes, SEO was a big part of brand awareness and we need to zoom out and discuss search as a channel because the importance of search as a channel is going to be what gets you into the boardroom. If 53% of all web traffic, which I saw once that say comes from organic search, then that's going to be the starting point with talking to C-level because it's going to be an inherent part of their success. Crystal Carter: Indeed. And I think that it can affect lots and lots of decisions across the board about how people are deciding to move forward with different business challenges. So we talked a bit about budget there. C-level suites, they'll decide, well, we need to buy a new piece of technology because of this, that or the other. We're having this challenge, like we're having a challenge hiring, for instance. You might be having a challenge hiring because you're not optimized for search, for instance, when people are looking for jobs. I've sat in C-level discussions and I was like, the site isn't optimized for job hires. People can't see that you have jobs to hire. So you're making a decision to allocate budget for recruiters or for this or for that and you haven't got this easy win that we could do with a few strokes of a code, we could sort that. And so with search, sometimes you're able to find solutions at help people to move forward in a business positive way. And you talked about remembering what the business objectives are, what people are trying to move forward through. Organizations that have boards of directors like trustees and things like that, and even smaller organizations, a lot of agencies might have a board of directors that they have to refer to. They're guiding principles, they'll have their objectives, they'll have vision statements, all of these things. And you can fine tune the way that you focus your SEO objectives and your SEO projects to align with those things. And that can help you get a lot closer to the things that you want to do on the site and the things that you think are going to be valuable to them. And the soft skills as well is a great point. This is something that Eli Schwartz talks a lot about. He speaks a lot in the enterprise SEO and in C-suites and speaking to folks about that. He says that it's really, really important to make friends with everyone. And this is important as well because different teams report to boards at different times. So if you are speaking with different teams and they understand the value of SEO and they understand the value of what you're doing, then when they speak to the C-suite, they will also speak your praises. That's really, really important. And also, if they come to you and they ask you for stats, they ask you for evidence that the SEO that you did brought on a business benefit, then if you're able to provide that, again, gets you in front of that. Even if you're not at the actual meeting necessarily, it allows people in the C-suite to keep the fact that SEO is valuable in their minds. And that's really important. And again, I think that Eli Schwartz in his article, which we have on the SEO hub, will link it in the show notes. He also talks about talking to them in words that they understand. So business terms, like you said, Mordy, they're not stupid. People who don't understand SEO jargon are not stupid. They understand their business and they understand what makes their business work and they remember their customers and they understand their customers. Talk to them about their customers, about how you're helping them to get more downloads, get more registrations, get more leads, get more sales and how SEO plays into that equation. That's really, really important. And I think that in a boardroom, people will have discussions. So give them things to talk about and understand that you can have a conversation about what this is. And I think that we sometimes think of a board level room as being like, oh, like a big giant, huge ginormous company. And sometimes they are, of course. But there are also, I've worked at agencies that had a board of directors and a board of directors can be a few people sometimes, but they need to be able to make a decision in a short span of time and they need to have the key points of what that is. And also, what generally happens at a board meeting is that you'll get the papers beforehand. So make sure that you're outlining your case in your documents explicitly and clearly and well before it goes to the boardroom because people will read those papers before they get to the meeting. And then there will be a short discussion at the meeting and then they will decide. And that's what happens. And if you're not able to make your case and paper very clearly, it's going to be trickier to get that budget approval, it's going to be trickier to get that project approval and all of that sort of stuff. So keep that in mind when you're talking to C-Suite folks. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to go all the way back to the first point you made. Crystal Carter: All the way back. All the way back. Mordy Oberstein: All the way back, back in time. 88 miles an hour. So when you talk about, let's say the jobs thing, they have a website, they need to bring in new clients, obviously need to bring in new clients. But you need to bring in new talent and the website is not built to do that. That's why SEO should be included in C-suite... I can't speak. SEO should be included in C-suite decisions because that can impact the health of the business. And the problem is that you need to get the buy-in to do that. That's not going to happen. They're not going to say, "You know what? We really like organic search. We need to make sure we're including that." Like you mentioned, you need to show the value and you need to do it in a way that resonates with them. And that means understanding who the people on the board are because they're going to be very, very, very, very different people. And I'm going to give you an example from our own SEO advisory boards. Do we have an SEO advisory board, we meet monthly, we go through the Wix product. We try to make it even better than it already is and we have so many different kinds of people on the board. We have people who work on very heavy on the Wix side and they're a Wix partner, let's say, like Mark Preston. We have somebody who's a very, very broad thinker about search in Kevin Indig. We have somebody's on the e-comm side, like Luke Carthy, somebody from the traditional SEO technical side, Niki Mosier. There's so many different kinds of people and it's on purpose. And it's the same thing with a regular board or a company board. There's different kinds of people for different reasons and you need to make sure that you address all of them actually. So if we're talking about the SEO tools in Wix, I need to make sure if I'm going to be addressing them to Luke Carthy, that I bring it from an e-comm point of view. Otherwise, I'm not going to be speaking his language. If they don't talk about the overall strategy and growth possibilities with the tool, it's not going to speak to Kevin Indig the same way. So you need to be able to speak to multiple audiences at one time, which as an SEO, you should be pretty good at doing. Right? Crystal Carter: Right. And to be honest, this applies for the C-suite. It also applies if you're an agency or if you're a marketing manager and you're doing SEO and people want to know your report or something, like what happened last month? How did that SEO campaign go? Remember that you need to have a space so that somebody who's the business owner can understand what you're talking about and you can drill down later on. Normally, if you're reporting to a board as an SEO, you'll have the top level so that they can understand exactly what's going on and then there'll be an appendix so that if somebody wants to dig into the details, they can. But make sure that you lead with a TLDR that makes sense, right? With something that makes sense, it's easily accessible, like sales are up. Don't bury that news. Lead with the fact that sales are up. Lead with the fact that rankings are up, lead with that. Detail it later on as well, but lead with the main thing. That's really important because that's going to be important to everybody and that's going to be useful for everybody. And going back to what you were saying about the C-suite and the business decisions, so there's a lot of change happening in search right now. As you're an SEO, you know that that's happening. We know that that's coming down the pipe. However, sometimes the business owners don't, the C-suite doesn't. They don't know necessarily that there are big changes coming in certain things. So for instance, like the jobs one for instance, when that came in, that completely changed how people are applying for jobs. And if you think about it's like sometimes Google will give us big announcements that we are building this new thing and it's happening and you're going to need to deal with it. So for instance, GA4, right? GA4 is coming in and it's changing stuff. If you're not in the weeds like an SEO, then you don't know that that's happening. And so the C-suite are going to need to know that the way we track our marketing and the way that we understand our sales and the way that we track what happens online is going to change and we have to change and we need to get buy-in for them to make a decision on what we need to do. So you can be the canary in the coal mine here for some of the things that rule have big impact. And when people don't respond to some of those changes, for instance, I remember when e-comm hit a sort of big peak and there was a bit of a slow change where some businesses were online and some businesses weren't selling online. Well, the people who got in there early, because they had leadership that was able to connect with people who are on the ground and could say, "Hey, this e-comm a big deal, we should get in there early, we should do more," those people who are able to talk all the way through the business, they will be an advantage to people who are not. So we need to make sure that you're able to tell them and to have a communication with your leadership about changes in search, changes in tech that are going to affect them. And that's really, really valuable. And it's something that people that are not in the details of search and information retrieval and all that sort of stuff aren't going to know. And that's really important for you to be able to have those conversations and to make sure that those lines of communications are open. Mordy Oberstein: To that point, you might be great at SEO, may be great at SEO strategy, you might not be the best communicator. And I think it's important to take a step back and check the ego, I am not the best communicator. Let me bring somebody in who is. And I think that's really the epitome of a good leader. A good leader is not threatened by other good people. They bring in better people than themselves. And that's what makes you a good leader. And if there's somebody better at you in communicating to the C-level, then bring them with you. Let's use a biblical reference. Bring Aaron. If you're Moses, bring Aaron with you. Crystal Carter: These are my tablets, Aaron explain them. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Yeah, yeah. Here's what we did. Aaron, go ahead. Junior, go ahead, explain it and do that. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's useful because you can have all the stats. So if somebody wants to know the big picture, like what's most important about the points, great. And if somebody wants to know, but what happened on the 3rd of June in 2022 or something, you can be like, "Well actually, it was up 17% and down 3%," and all that sort of stuff. So you can have the details and you can know all of those things. But yeah, if you need somebody to lead on the pitch or on the discussion, absolutely do that. And I think that with these meetings it's really important to be focused on achieving your goal and remember what's most effective for helping you achieve that goal. And remember that it's sometimes very important that you are able to have those conversations for businesses because sometimes they don't know that there's a helpful content coming up or a helpful content update, for instance coming up, and that maybe we should have a think about the way we've been thinking about content for instance, or there's plenty of other things that happen and they don't want to be broadsided and you can help them, and remember that. Mordy Oberstein: And also, if you bring somebody in to help you and to talk for you, you look well important like, "Ah yes, let me. Steven, go ahead, explain it to them." Crystal Carter: While you sip your coffee in the corner. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes, yes. Now who is well important, the CEO of Lumar, which is one of the leading enterprise SEO platforms, who by the way has a wonderful integration with Wix, formally notice Deepcrawl, by the way. So if you're looking in the Wix at markets under Deepcrawl, not Lumar. But now it's Lumar, not Deepcrawl. Craig Dunham is here to share his insights of an actual C-level person and somebody who literally helps so many SEOs speak the C-level folk. He should to help you understand how SEOs add value to board level decisions. Take it away. Craig, Craig Dunham: Thanks for having me. This is a really great question. I'll open with It is absolutely essential, right for leaders to understand how their budget decisions are supporting larger business goals. And so SEOs are generally giving credit for brand discoverability awareness, but there's often a lack of knowledge at the board and leadership level around the particulars of SEO and website health more generally. And so let's be honest, right? If you're in a board meeting, you might lose some people or eyes may glaze over a bit if they're unfamiliar with the more technical concepts and terms that are being presented to them. Even if SEO is discussed or maybe some data is provided to leadership, if you start diving deep into discussions about URL redirects or no index rules, you're not going to keep this audience's attention for very long. And so you need to speak to be understood. And SEOs have to start to think about educating leadership on the value of their work, but in language that the board is familiar with. And so what that translates to is keeping the focus on how do the particular website efforts contribute to broader business outcomes like customer acquisition and connecting the technical aspects of SEO with specific commercial goals, right? Understanding the impact, tying it to revenue. Even if it's via traffic and conversion metrics, you ultimately need to make that connection to revenue or some other identified core business objective. Now, we've tried to make this easier for SEOs by introducing data visualizations and reporting options that are built to help with this, call it cross team collaboration, like the organic traffic funnel, something that we use which connects specific aspects of a website's technical health, for example, crawlability or indexability. And it connects it with the larger picture around brand discoverability. And so you'll find many leaders, especially those with a marketing background, are already familiar with this concept of funnels. And so organizing your data in a way that connects the technical aspects of SEO to frameworks that they understand creates this common ground of understanding. I think it's also worth noting that as we start 2023, there's this talk of potential recession in the business news and it's all over the place and it's a really important time for SEOs to make the case, I think for website optimization. And this means more directly that leaders are probably looking at how do we lower the cost of acquiring customers? And with the ongoing decline of third-party cookies, this over-reliance on more costly paid channels like digital ads, this is not sustainable, it won't offer the most cost-effective path forward. And so I suspect that many businesses are revisiting and reworking sort of this balance between paid and organic marketing. And as boards start to take a fresh look at organic marketing channels and their potential to reduce this cost of acquiring new customers, feels like a great time for SEOs to make the case for SEO and driving website health more broadly. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you Craig. That was incredibly crisp. The best way I could describe. It's a great point about contextualizing your SEO average. We talked about it earlier a few minutes ago. But you were talking about SEO being rolling for brand discovery and you're zooming out. As an SEO, you're often so narrowly focused on what you do, but the board, the CMO is not. He's very broadly focused, she's very broadly focused. And if you don't speak in that context or you don't contextualize SEO say in brand discovery and branding and in acquisition itself, obviously, then you're going to lose them because they're not narrowly focused the way you might be. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think the one phrase that stood out for that was speak to be understood. He also talked about people's eyes glazing over when you get into the details of some of the SEO stuff. I've definitely been in meetings when I've been like, "Oh, this is really important," and been very excited about it and people are like, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know." And so speaking to be understood is so important. And he also talked about the timeliness with regards to economic situations and yeah, this is the time when everybody's coming to the board, asking for money, asking for resources and all of that sort of stuff. So you need to make sure that you can speak to be understood, and you need to make sure that you have a clear outline of how what you do can benefit the business currently and in the future. I think that's the other thing that's great about search and the thing that I love about search is discovering opportunities. There's almost always untapped opportunities within SEO and within a website, within a digital presence. There's almost always you can, a good SEO can look at it and they can say, "Hey, actually we're not using this completely free channel." For instance, we have a Google business profile or we have 17 Google business profiles and we're not using them to the full extent of what we could. It's free. We could do that right now and that would help improve our business outcomes and that would help us do more. Then they'll say, "Well, what do you need?" And it's like, "Well, we need one more person," or something. And it's like, "Well, what's the ROI on that? Well, we would expect to see this, this, and this." And then they can say, "Yeah, we can approve that and we can get that done. We can move that forward." And I think that remembering your role across the business. And I think he also talked about charts. Charts are useful. Everybody likes a chart. You want up and to the right green, that sort of thing. And charts are useful from having those conversations. And yeah, that's a great insights from Craig there. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else is useful? And speaking of CEOs, did you know that CEOs optimizing themselves for SEO was perhaps good for SEO? Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: But it's true. Yeah. CEOs optimizing themselves for search can play a role in organic success as we introduce to you a brand new segment on the SERP's Up podcast. And it is an ode to a baseball phrase, so I love it for two reasons because we're calling it Going, Going, Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going, Google, it's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the first ever Going, Going, Google. I have to do a baseball announcer voice when I say it. Going, Going, Google. The crowd goes wild. Where we're going to look at where Google is heading so that you can update your focus in SEO strategy. And this case, we're talking about CEOs and beyond. Not just CEOs, but prominent members of your company and the optimization and the knowledge panels and all of that stuff. So let's get going with Going, Going, Google. Crystal Carter: Okay, so Going, Going, Google is essentially talking about the way that things are going on Google, like general trends that we're seeing around Google. And one of the trends that I thought was particularly interesting was essentially talking about biographical entities. Lily Ray, who we featured on the podcast previously, is somebody who's known for talking about E-A-T. Marie Haynes is another person who's known for talking about E-A-T. E-A-T stands for expertise, authority, and trust. They've added another E recently. Mordy Oberstein: Another E, it's EE. Crystal Carter: E-E-A-T. So the other E is experience. And one of the things that you'll find, like if you look up a big corporation, so for instance, if you look up something like Microsoft, you might see a knowledge panel for that company. And when you look that up, they will list the people that are in that company. They will often list the founders. For instance, they will also list the chairperson for that company. So for instance, if you look up Microsoft, you will see that the chairperson is Satya Nadella. And then when you click on that, that person has a full sort of knowledge panel, or not a knowledge panel, I'm not sure what they're calling this at the moment, but it's SERP feature that includes pictures, biographical information, information about their education, information about their videos, all of this sort of stuff. Why? Because Google has a very good understanding of the biographical entity around that person. And what that means is that Google can also understand that that person is associated with that business. And so there's a lot of push for AI, which is an interesting why we're talking about Microsoft. But there's a lot of push for AI at the moment. But Google is also making a big push for making sure that they're very clear on who the people are behind different companies, different websites, different digital assets. And this is something that's part of that. And I think that the fact that they're giving this kind of treatment to not just people like Beyonce, not just people who are literal rock stars, but also to people who are on boards of directors, people who are professionals, is really, really important. And it shows the emphasis that they are putting on understanding biographical entities so that they can make better decisions and make better, not necessarily ranking decisions I guess I would say, but better insights around the E-A-T that's associated with a particular business or website. Mordy Oberstein: And what I think works you, take a company like Wix, right? So you search for Wix, you get our founders, you get the CEO, it's all great and it's all well. I think Google could contextualize Wix without that. They understand who we are because we such a big presence without that. But if you're a smaller company and you have a CEO or a founder or somebody, a C-level person of significance in the company, who has biographical, we'll say recognition, that part of the knowledge graph, that could, in many ways, affect how Google understands your business and where your business is relevant. You can piggyback, whereas with Microsoft, let's say, or Amazon, the particular people who work for the company might be benefiting from Amazon's authority. If you work for a smaller mid-size company, that company might piggyback its authority off the people who work for it. And that's where it comes into play. So if that person, for example, the CEO is writing a blog post, now, this recognition of, okay, we know who that is, they are an expert on this, they are writing it for this company, for this blog, for this website, rather, now this post benefits from their authority. So they give it a very narrow, simple, linear way of seeing that play out. Because I think it's way more than that narrow, simple way of playing out. It's a very holistic in and out, back and forth kind of dynamic. But just to give it a sort of define it, that would be one way of thinking about how the company benefits off and piggybacks off of the authority of the individuals who work for it. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's all a contributor. Is it Leviathan? It's a person that's made up of lots of little or lots of smaller people. Is that the one that I'm thinking of, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Isn't a Leviathan a giant monster, the giant sea serpent from the Bible. Our second biblical reference today. Crystal Carter: Okay, so maybe that's not the one I'm thinking. Mordy Oberstein: I think you're thinking of the Megazord from Power Rangers, made of moving parts and transforms. Crystal Carter: No, I'm not thinking of the Megazord. I am. Thomas Hobbes Leviathan is sort of one person and it's got lots of smaller people. But basically, your company, your business is made up of people and Google knows that. And Google knows that and when they talked about their helpful content update for instance, they were talking about content written for people by people. They understand who those people are. And it's really important for you in a business of any size to think about who the people on your team are and to have an understanding of their digital presence. So I call it a biographical entity. Lots of people call it other things. But it's important that people know that you're related to the company and that they can verify your expertise. So one really, really simple, easy way is to actually spend a little bit of time on your LinkedIn profile, even if you're not posting every day about how you're thrilled about whatever it is you've done or making some long-winded metaphor that has nothing to do with being a tax attorney, but you've decided to put it out on a LinkedIn anyway. Even if you're not posting enormously. Most professionals' names, if you look up whatever their name is and their professional thing, one of the first entries that shows up on Google will be their LinkedIn profile for instance. And Google has said, I'm sure I've heard John Mueller say this. I can find the link in the show notes. But he said that that's one of the ways that they verify E-A-T, or one of the sources that they go to for thinking about that. And also, it's a case that the Google also uses this, often pulls LinkedIn content for saying what is so-and-so known for. It'll show up as a featured snippet for that. They'll say, so-and-so is known for being a fantastic figure skater or an amazing flutist. Mordy Oberstein: Artist. They're an artist. And also make sure you have it on the website itself because Google looks for multiple... LinkedIn, Crunchbase. Let's assume you don't have a Wikipedia entry that'll make things overly simple. There's none, right? You don't have to have a Wikipedia entry to be an entity. That's so not true at all. But if you put it on the website itself, Google might actually pull the website and make the connection between the entity which you want to and the entity you're trying to, which is the business, and connect them together because it's on the same website. That's where the entity exists. Whatever it is that you're doing, and it's a great business strategy overall, build up the people that are working for you, that are part of your company because you can create strong biographical connections or knowledge graph connection between them and the business, which impacts the visibility of that business in a lot of ways on Google search and well beyond. And now let us go well beyond by diving into what is going out there on the great beyond that we know as the SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy News. Well, it's been a while since we talked about an official Google update. So here it comes, or rather here it is. At the time of this recording, the February, 2023 product review update is live as reported by Barry Schwartz over a Search Engine Roundtable. 5:00 PM Eastern Time on February 21st saw the release of the latest iteration of the product review update. While this update only applies to pages reviewing products and even lists of best products, it can impact general shopping SERPs as product review pages that get shuffled around impact the overall rankings of URLs on those SERPs. So for example, you sell laptops and are ranking for the keyword by laptop, your pages might not be directly impacted by the product review update. But if the page reviewing laptops of all sorts of kinds gets a ranking boost at the hands of the update and happens to rank for that very same keyword, that might mean you now rank lower. So if you sell products, definitely keep your eyes peeled as the update continues to roll out. As of the day of this recording, the summer censure is showing multiple days of elevator ranking. Since the announcement, it would seem at least on the surface, that this update might have a little bit more teeth on it as compared to previous iterations of the product review update, or maybe even the more recent iterations of the product review updates. Best advice, showcase personal experience using the products when creating product review content. All right, this one's for all y'all AI nerds. Bing has pulled back the curtain... Try that again. Bing has pulled back the curtain in a recent blog post by VP of search and AI that explains how Bing's new AI chat shows relevant information when open AI's data source only goes through November, 2021. In a nutshell, Bing has something called Prometheus, sounds fancy, which feeds open AI relevant information from the actual Bing index, meaning now the AI has the latest and greatest and most updated information possible. It does so by breaking down the chat prompt the user enters into various subqueries. So for example, if UX being chat rather, how do you make bread and dessert for someone with an allergy to gluten? Bing would break that down in to, how do you make gluten-free bread and a separate query for, how do you make gluten-free dessert? It would feed open AI with any of the needed relevant information on that topic. By the way, by working it out in this way, Bing can also present citations for specific sections of the AI response, which it does, which is pretty cool. And last up, as reported from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, you can now better optimize LinkedIn articles for search as you have access to custom set the title tag and meta description, which is I guess nifty, if you write articles on LinkedIn. Which I don't, but maybe you do. So now you know. And with that, that is the snappiest of SEO news. So much news, but we only did a few stories. Crystal Carter: It's a really dynamic time in search. Mordy Oberstein: It was a busy week, a dynamic week in search, considering all that's been going on. Crystal Carter: So much. Mordy Oberstein: So much, so much going on. Do you know who also has so much going on? Our follow of the week? This week's follow of the week, who you should be following on. Social media is former member of Wix's own SEO advisory board, former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land and current LinkedIn data nerd, Michelle fricking Robbins. Crystal Carter: Michelle Robbins. Michelle Robbins is a fantastic legend. Legendary, but also amazing. She was on the Wix SEO board previously and she is somebody who really understands the value of SEO for business and the value of SEO for business objectives. And she speaks with incredible clarity and knowledge around this. She's a great follow for lots of reasons. She was recently featured on the Search Off the Record podcast, talking about her career, her career journey. Mordy Oberstein: Which is Google's own podcast. Crystal Carter: Google's own podcast. And it's fascinating. And she's someone who is... yeah, she's so clear, so smart, and so laser focused on making sure that digital activity leads to business growth and that is what it's there for. We don't make websites for the sake of making websites. We make websites to achieve an objective. And it might be that we want to share something that we really, really love and that might be the objective. But the website, for instance, is a tool for achieving that objective and that she's very good at making sure that people are focused on moving forward with her objectives. Mordy Oberstein: So not to play down the other follows of the week that we've recommended in the past, but having worked with Michelle on the Wix successor advisory board, I'm thinking for like probably the better part of two years. I'm saying this to all genuineness. I left every meeting that she was a part of having learned something from her, and I always felt privileged to have been a part of that because I was able to learn from Michelle. So this is a very strong recommendation to follow Michelle Robbins online, on LinkedIn, on Twitter. On Twitter, it's @MichelleRobbins, M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E R-O-B-B-I-N-S, over on Twitter, of course, we'll link to it in the show notes. So I think that's it. Crystal Carter: I think that's it. Mordy Oberstein: We have reached the precipice. Crystal Carter: Okay, do we a... what is it? Mordy Oberstein: A Leviathan? Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Megazord? Do you have a Megazord? I wish you had a Megazord. Crystal Carter: Do the eyes have it? Mordy Oberstein: The eyes? Yes. Crystal Carter: Nevermind. Mordy Oberstein: We have gone off the rails. Thank you for listening to 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 retain your SEO clients in 10 days. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars over 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 are waiting on Spotify or both. 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

Wondering if email marketing and SEO can be the one-two punch you need in 2025? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter explore the powerful relationship between search and email marketing with Intuit Mailchimp’s Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy, Jillian Ryan. Discover why owning your relationship with your audience through email could be the key to sidestepping the chaos of ever-changing search algorithms. Plus, Jillian shares recent insights from a global research report that Mailchimp produced in conjunction with Ipsos. Canvassing 2,000+ mid-marketers, the research sheds light on which channels are helping marketers grow and drive revenue. Get ready to combine the best of SEO and email marketing for a one-two combination in 2025 on episode 118 of SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back How will email marketing impact Search in 2025? Wondering if email marketing and SEO can be the one-two punch you need in 2025? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter explore the powerful relationship between search and email marketing with Intuit Mailchimp’s Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy, Jillian Ryan. Discover why owning your relationship with your audience through email could be the key to sidestepping the chaos of ever-changing search algorithms. Plus, Jillian shares recent insights from a global research report that Mailchimp produced in conjunction with Ipsos. Canvassing 2,000+ mid-marketers, the research sheds light on which channels are helping marketers grow and drive revenue. Get ready to combine the best of SEO and email marketing for a one-two combination in 2025 on episode 118 of SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 118 | January 22, 2025 | 48MIN 00:00 / 48:53 This week’s guests Jillian Ryan Jillian Ryan spearheads Intuit Mailchimp’s thought leadership and research on the topics that matter most to mid-market marketers who are looking to grow and scale their business. A former eMarketer principal analyst, Jillian has covered B2B marketing, digital transformation and email marketing since 2015. She has been featured on podcasts, webinars, in the press, and has spoken at marketing events such as ANA, IAB, Advertising Week, and Social Media Week. 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, overseeing the head of SEO brand here at Wix, joined by the very open, rateable, clickable, never spammed, never spamming head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everyone. I would like to talk to you in your email, and I'm definitely who I say I am. I'm not some pretend email address at the top or some pretend subject name and then a really weird email address underneath. Mordy Oberstein: Unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. Crystal Carter: I know. I'm definitely just me, I promise. Welcome to our podcast. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you mean you didn't get into my email from some random conference that I happened to attend, and I didn't realize I was actually signing up permission to have the sponsor send out. Crystal Carter: Forever, forever, forever, and ever and ever. No, no, no. Not particularly. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. Unsubscribe. Crystal Carter: I am the queen of unsubscribe. As soon as somebody's like, "Hi." I'm like, "Uh-huh. Nope." Mordy Oberstein: I'm your best friend then because I'll take a long time to, I'll just open the email and move on. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: I'm an email marketer's best friend. Crystal Carter: Email people, I open it and then I just delete. I just bulk delete. Mordy Oberstein: You're a better person. Crystal Carter: If I get a cold call email, I literally just block them immediately. Mordy Oberstein: Phone calls I don't answer. If I don't know the number, or I'm not expecting, okay, I have a virtual doctor appointment, and I know it's a weird number, that's where they're calling from, I don't answer. Crystal Carter: My friend Scam Lightly calls me all the time. She's so nice. It's just so sweet. Mordy Oberstein: I wouldn't know because I don't answer. Crystal Carter: I don't answer. Mordy Oberstein: We should trade strategies. I'll take your email strategy, you take my phone call strategy, and together we'll live in a spamless world. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: With our powers combined, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix and 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 directly connect your Wix and Wix Studio account and your efforts to MailChimp with our native integration with MailChimp. Look for it in the Wix Studio App Market. Links in the show. This is part of Wix's ongoing partnership efforts to provide best-in-class online presence and marketing tools to business customers worldwide. As this, as we talk, the impact email marketing will have on SEO in 2025, why owned audiences are more in focus for more and more SEOs, how email marketing and search equals deeper engagement and, check this out, more revenue, and what you need to be doing in order to let email and search form a powerful combination in 2025. There's no better person to help the open rate of our minds hear these powerful lessons than Intuit Mailchimp's own Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy, Jillian Ryan, who will join us in just a jiffy. And don't forget, we have who you should be following on social media for more SEO or perhaps more email marketing awesomeness, so put on your satin robe and put on your hood and step into the ring despite the fact that you're a 58-year-old man who hasn't thrown a punch in 20 years as you don't need a Netflix special to tell you that email marketing and search are a powerful one two punch in 2025 on this, the 118th episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. In case you didn't get the reference, I was making fun of the whole Mike Tyson Netflix special thing. One two punch. Crystal Carter: I haven't seen that one, but there's been some great Netflix stuff on recently, and maybe I should sign up for their newsletter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yes. Crystal Carter: Then maybe I would know more about it. Mordy Oberstein: Maybe you'd know about the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul thing. Mike Tyson was an old boxer. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Fought a dude and didn't win because he's, despite being an incredible all time grade, he's 58 years old. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's a hard age to box in the ring. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. This is true, but you know what's a knockout? Mordy Oberstein: What's that? Crystal Carter: A good email newsletter? Mordy Oberstein: A good email newsletter. You know what's a real knockout combination? If you combine search and email marketing. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. We try to do this ourselves with our search light newsletter. We got an LP, we've set it up, it's ranking for email newsletters, things like that. These are things we got to combine. Mordy Oberstein: Most definitely, and certainly in 2025, which is why we sat down with Jillian Ryan from Intuit Mailchimp. Here's our conversation with Jillian. Okay, so before Jillian actually joins us, one of the big themes that I feel has gone under the radar for a long time is this strong connection between your audience and deeply resonating with them, so building that audience and then making that strong connection with them. I often come at this from a brand marketing point of view where people are looking for something authentic or more authentic than they have been, and that is actually catching up with us. We're kind of caught up in generating a lot of AI, which can often be very good, very helpful, don't want to mess with the AI overlords, but it can make a little bit of problem for you in terms of resonating and connecting with your actual audience because AI, at the end of the day, is not an actual person. There is another facet of this conversation. It's what we started a few weeks ago with the episode we did with Jake Hunley, where we talked about moving past the ever unreliable algorithms, whether it be search, whether it be social, and that facet is the relationship between having a deeper connection with your audience and being able to pull in more revenue. There is a direct connection with that, which I feel, and I'm going on a limb here saying that that's an important connection between SEO and email marketing heading to the crux of 2025, that needs to be explored. And as I mentioned before, there's no one better than Intuit Mailchimp's own Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy, Jillian Ryan, to do that with us. Welcome to the show. Jillian Ryan: I'm so happy to be here, and I have to say your feeling is based and grounded in research. I have the data to back up your feeling and excited to talk about it with you and the audience. Mordy Oberstein: The audience can't see, but I said, "Yes." Hands up in the air. Jillian Ryan: Mordy was celebrating. Mordy Oberstein: I was celebrating. Jillian Ryan: So he's excited. I'm excited, and I think everybody here is also excited. Mordy Oberstein: I'm excited. I'm also excited that, hey, this is awesome we have this integration between Mailchimp and Wix. Super excited about that. Before we get started into the actual crux of it all, marketers going to market, what do you do over at Mailchimp? I would love to learn more about that. Jillian Ryan: Yeah, so it's kind of a dream job. I lead our thought leadership practice. So essentially what that means is Mailchimp is super invested into creating really rich, insight-driven pieces of research and insights that help educate, help inspire, not just our customers, but all marketers and especially mid-market marketers that can often be underserved in the marketing space. And so I get to lead that strategy, and that means I get to create really robust and super interesting pieces of research that talk about the problems that marketers are facing, how the consumer landscape is changing, and also give practical tidbits and best practices that marketers can actually go and do after they read the report or watch the webinar. And so I get to be at the helm of that, and it's a really exciting space to be in, and I've been in the space for a while and doing that for such a legacy brand that is so beloved is awesome, so that's my day job, and then I moonlight on podcasts like this. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, clearly. First off, I'm really excited. One is I love as a marketing strategy, as a brand marketing strategy, thought leadership is sometimes overused, sometimes generic, but when it's done really well, it's so powerful and so effective in creating engagement, actually being helpful to your actual audience, but I'm also super excited because it means you probably have, like you mentioned before, a lot of data and access to a lot of data. Jillian Ryan: Yes. I always try to come packing with the data, and our biggest thing is that we don't want to add any more noise. The marketing landscape is oversaturated with everybody talking about the same thing and so many marketers are using AI created "thought leadership" that's not thought leadership. And so it's- Mordy Oberstein: It's literally regurgitated across the, literally. Jillian Ryan: Exactly. Exactly. But we take a lot of pride in making sure that anything that we put out is differentiated and that it adds value, and if it doesn't pass tests, we wouldn't publish it. So yeah, I am packing with insights and now I hope I haven't set the bar too high when I share them. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. I feel like we're only going to exceed those expectations. Where do you want to start with? You want to start on the data side with this? Tell me where you want to start because there's so much to talk about. If you're listening to this podcast on a regular basis, and you're from the SEO space, you know there's been so much tumult, and there's been so much, I don't want to say chaos. I don't want to say chaos. I would say chaos. I don't want to say chaos. There's been a lot of uncertainty, and one of the things that a lot of SEOs have been advocating for, I just did an episode of Crawling Mondays with the Ellie DeSolis who's a contributor to our wonderful SEO course pitch that you should take over at the Wix Studio Learning Hub. And one of the things people were talking about were other channels, SEOs pivoting out, or not pivoting out, or expanding out into other channels, and email marketing is such an important channel because you own that audience. Jillian Ryan: Yep, yep. Mordy Oberstein: What do you feel like, where do you want to start between the connection between search marketing and email marketing? Jillian Ryan: So I've come prepared, like I said, with a few data points, and maybe I talk through that, and I think that can open up a wide range of things that we can dig into from there. So I'm going to start off with the least sexy part of research, but something that I also very much enjoy, which is our methodology. It has to be statistically significant. Mordy Oberstein: You're speaking my language because- Jillian Ryan: We love a methodology. Mordy Oberstein: We do, and we don't. The real people do. Right? And it's such a good on your brand for doing this because when you read, I don't know, a research paper, like a PhD paper, the first thing they do is talk about the limitations and the methodology, right? Jillian Ryan: Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: When you read a marketing study, it's usually not there at all, but it needs to be there. So big clap and big kudos, methodology all the way. Jillian Ryan: Mordy is clapping. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to clap for so many things today. Jillian Ryan: I'll jump into methodology and then I'll cruise through some data points, and we can see where the road takes us. So part of what I'll be talking about today is this report that we just produced in conjunction with Ipsos. So we partnered with a super reputable market insights market research firm because we care. We want to make sure that the insights are sound and that they're rooted in data backed and trusted sources. And so we surveyed 2000 plus mid-market marketers, eCommerce marketers specifically, and we define mid-market as 10 to 500 employees in terms of company size, and it's a super global survey, which we were really intentional about. So we surveyed US marketers, UK marketers, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Nordics, and Benelux as well. That was all part of our sample. And what we were really hoping to understand from this survey was actually what you were just talking about, Mordy, what was the channel mix? How is it evolving? Which channels are helping marketers grow? Which are helping them drive revenue? And so what we did was, first of all, understand the performance of each of these marketers, and we came up with three different cohorts from this sample of 2000 plus. And so we have what are called baseline marketers. That's like 52% of marketers, so just over half, and they're marketers that are doing a decent job. They're not failing. They achieve steady, consistent results. They're using standard marketing practices that are widely accepted, but they're not seeing any outsized gains either. So those that are seeing outsized gains are performance obsessed marketers, that's what we call them, 48% of the sample. And basically what that means is on at least one of four metrics, so that's revenue, channel engagement, lifetime value, and their list health, their list size, they grew by 16% or more year over year. And then a super, super special group within the performance obsessed are our revenue leaders, so 25% of the total sample, and they grew their revenue by 16% or more annually, which is we could all aspire, right? It's a really good North Star to look towards. And what we tried to do is really understand what are revenue leaders doing that the baseline isn't doing? What are they doing that's different from the total to really provide hello, a blueprint, pun intended, for driving revenue? And then we came up with four revenue pillars, and one of those revenue pillars was email. But also in our evaluation of email, that's where we tried to dig deeper into what is the channel mix and what are the channels that work alongside email. Email, obviously we're Mailchimp, we know email works, it performs. When we look at channels used to generate revenue from the total sample, 85% of all marketers, 84% of all marketers are using email to generate awareness and drive purchases, so email is a tried and true tool, but it doesn't work on its own. It needs other channels to support it, to help drive people in your audience into your ecosystem. And so we also looked at social media websites, digital ads, and of course search here as well. And I do have some interesting stacks on search, but I'll pause there because I've talked a lot. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, after the commercial break. Jillian Ryan: After the commercial break, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Digital commercial break for the record. Jillian Ryan: No, I know, I know. But I wanted to know if there was anything in there you wanted to dig into, or I can keep rattling. You let me know. Mordy Oberstein: First off, that's really interesting to see. First off, I want to tell the audience, that amount of growth is few and far between as the data you just said says, so make sure you have adequate expectations and do what Jillian's telling you to do, which basically is like take what they're looking, at what they're doing, look at that as a North Star, as a blueprint, but the fact that you haven't achieved that does not make you a failure. Jillian Ryan: A hundred percent. Yeah. Revenue leaders are what you should aspire to be, but a baseline marketer is not, they're not underperforming. They're still growing. They're just not growing at that same velocity and that same trajectory. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I mean, look, not everybody's Michael Jordan throwing sports ball for a quick second. Patrick Ewing, that's also fine. I'm going nineties sports ball because I'm an old person. Okay, now we can get into the search data because I am, color me intrigued, to hear what happened. Jillian Ryan: Yeah, well, there's a lot here. And I'll start off with, we did ask total marketers, so as search becomes less utilized because of a lot of the headwinds that I know that you guys talk about on the show all the time. We know that search is changing and evolving, and as search becomes less utilized what does that mean for email? And 59% of total marketers, so everybody in the survey, said that as that happens with search, email is still remaining a necessary channel for customer engagement, and it was slightly higher for those revenue leaders. So the revenue leaders that are crushing it on revenue, we even had a higher response rate at 61.2%. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Jillian Ryan: We also asked some questions about how AI is changing the search landscape too, and there were a few interesting things here. So one of the things we asked was what marketers thought about the impact of AI being used as an alternative to search? So consumers basically going to a ChatGPT, a bar, what have you, to search rather than traditional Google. And then of course Google's new search features where the AI- Mordy Oberstein: AIOs. Jillian Ryan: ... responses are at the top. And basically what are all these changes in search mean for your SEO strategy, for your search strategy? Is there still value there? And it was really interesting, the results were actually split. So 46% said that AI search would make their SEO less valuable, so a little less than half, whereas 54% said that actually it would have no impact. And I think that's really interesting to see. I mean, again, it's not exactly 50/50 but roughly half. It's kind of a divided issue right now and a little bit of a wait and see as we continue to see the rippling impacts of this. And then one other piece about AI, 41% of marketers said that changes in search usage will have no impact in how they use email to engage with customers. So again, less than half, that still means that 59% are saying that changes in search usage will change how they use email. So I think it just shows that there's a strong interconnection between how these two channels work in concert, how they orchestrate together, and as there are changes in that search landscape, really not just thinking about search and how you optimize that channel, but how you look at your larger mix to make sure that if search is diminishing or search is changing, that you still have a strategy in place with your other channels to insulate that, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. There's so many points. Jillian Ryan: I know. There's a lot here. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to SEO nerd for a quick second. So one is the numbers that you said, but that's split. Let's call it like a 50/50 split. Makes so much sense to me. One, it's kind of what I feel I hear going on out there. It's kind of what I've seen. I have certain websites where they have a lot of AI overviews, their links are showing in a lot of AI overviews, and there's been no change. On that, I recently did a study with Semrush showing how inconsistent the URL placement can be inside of an AI overview. So you might have the link, but the data in aggregated all depends on the keyword and of course on the domain, that URL gets swapped out really often. Google's changing those URLs, so they're not very consistent. We don't know, by the way, what the CTR is on the AI overview. So the user sees the AI generated answer, it sees the summary, it sees a bunch of links, and Google is doing a better job of showing those links, but no one's put out, it was so interesting, no one's put out data in on the CTR in the SEO space. Are users actually clicking? Are they reading? Are they bypassing going to their organic results? And I think that's where that 50/50 split comes in because I see sites where they have the AI overviews, nothing's changed, meaning in those cases, most likely what's happening is the user is either before there was a direct answer or a feature snippet and the behavior's not changing. Just like before, they're either reading the answer and being satisfied with that direct answer and moving on, or they're still going for the click, despite there being a direct answer of some sort, in this case, an AI overview, on the results page, fine. The next point is the chicken and the egg point which I really want to hash out with you because SEOs will be like, "Oh, okay, yeah, you need an email." A conversation again, I've seen so many times recently. "You need an email marketing list. You need to own your audience. You can't rely on the algorithms." But the problem is, and this is where here's the rub, you can't magically generate an email list. You need to somehow pull the users in, user, people, in to wherever they can sign up for that email. Let's say it's a newsletter. Jillian Ryan: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: That has to happen somewhere. And that's where I wonder where search just changed the landscape because if you were getting X number of visitors coming in from search, and you were able to funnel them to sign up for, say, your newsletter, if that's not happening anymore to the same extent, that does impact your ability to email market, and it might mean you need to do other activities to supplement that. Jillian Ryan: Yeah. First of all, love everything that you just shared and the fact that there is no click-through rate on those AIO reviews is startling, and it probably is why we're seeing such a split with the uncertainty. So love that you mentioned that. As for your other point, search is still important. It is that primary channel. It's designed to capture that audience intention. It's when there's that interest. Intent is at a peak in that moment. You have someone that's coming to find out information that you have, but there are other channels that can also do that. And so in our survey we did find that actually, more so than search, that social media, websites, and digital ads are being used to both generate awareness and drive purchases, so those are other channels in the mix that well, your website is where you're trying to drive them of course, but your organic social and your paid ads in conjunction with organic search and paid search are all these, and people can't see my hands, but I'm showing how all these channels are coming back to the center. Yeah, they're coming back to the center, which is right, your website, you're owned and operated. And then of course on your website, that's where it needs to be optimized, and you need to have that opt-in form. What is the offer, what is the value add, what is the incentive, and how are you getting folks to sign up for that permission? Email is so important because it's permission based. You have your hand up. What are your thoughts? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. I wanted to get your thought on something that I have always been in the opinion of, but I'm not an email marketing guru. Search is interesting, or I'm not an email marketing ninja, I'm not either or of those things, not on my LinkedIn bio. Jillian Ryan: Neither am I. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. You're not an email marketing ninja and or guru on your email on your LinkedIn? Jillian Ryan: Not my LinkedIn. No, I mean, but I am a thought leader, so there you have it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, I'll take that. I'll take that over ninja any day of the week. So one of the things that's interesting about search is that it's random to a certain extent. I'm Googling, how do I stay updated on the New York Yankees? Always go to sports. And someone's website shows up, and I click on the website, and they happen to have a newsletter. I never, in a lot of cases, I'm not talking about where you purposely click because you know that brand, you're familiar with that brand, and that's why you clicked on them maybe even because if they rank lower than some of the other results because that is a thing. I'm talking about it's a discovery search. It's the first time you've seen that website. You never intended to find them. I feel like the chances of you signing up for, let's say, their newsletter are very slim as opposed to social or as opposed to, let's say, display where you're on a certain publication, you've seen their ads a gazillion times, you know who they are, they're a player in this space. You click, you show up, you get what you want. Oh, they have an email, a list, or a newsletter or whatever it is. I'm signing up. Or they're running a webinar that requires a sign up. I would like to do their webinar. Whatever it is. I feel those other channels are way better than search and getting email signups. Jillian Ryan: Okay, I love this. There's a lot there. I think first of all, you are spot on, but not every search is like surging with intent. Some of them are, some of are people that are ready to buy, but search is also a mechanism to drive people to your site, to build brand awareness, build brand affinity, start a relationship, try to capitalize on really creating that lasting bond. And so while of course you want to provide an opportunity with a pop-up form or with that offer, it should also be fair value. You can't just gate everything in hopes to getting an email address, right? It's like you need to be providing something that offers incentive and that builds trust. And that could be, I mean there's a lot of different things. It could be a coupon code, it could be a really, really meaty piece of content that's going to add value and opportunity to attend an event that has some sort of appeal that will help your audience. So there are ways to do that, but in some cases it's okay, and I feel like the marketing gods are not going to like this, but it's okay if they came, they learned, they now kind of know you, and they didn't know you before, and then they leave, and you can't track that. And that's also what's really complicated. But now you're creating mental availability. Now you're in their head, and there's, in another piece of thought leadership that we produce, which is called How to Grow Your brand, and it's a report that features chapters authored by some of the leading minds in marketing, people way smarter than me. But one of the things we talk about is the 95/5 rule, which is essentially that 95% of your target market at any given moment is not in market, is not ready to buy. 5% is, but that 5% isn't static, it's dynamic. People come in and out of that 5% when they're super ready to buy. And so you need to be building that mental availability, building your brand, creating resonance with that 95% because when they move to that 5%, when they're ready to buy, you're on their short list, which is when they'll come back to search and be like, "Oh, I remember that skin care brand." And they'll search it into the search bar. Hopefully you're in the top of the search results or the AI overview if you've done your job. And then that is when you'll get that opt-in, and I see you reacting, which I love. So what do you think? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, this is great. I love everything you're saying. One of the things that's super interesting is maybe they'll do a search, and they'll actually search with your brand, which by the way, full SEO geek, Mark Williams Cook, former guest of the show recently did a talk where he actually found a vulnerability or an exploitation in Google, and they actually paid him for the exploitation. Oh, yeah, he got paid $13,000 to report this to them because it's an actual real thing. And one of the things he was saying is one of the things he found within this whole vulnerability that he discovered because he runs Also Asked, which is a people also ask data pull tool, which is a great tool by the way, I'm not even pitching it, I literally use it all the time, is that Google, part of their quality scoring is doing branded searches. So are people searching for your brand? Are they searching Nike shoes, or Nike sneakers, whatever it is. That doesn't happen. I want to go, I'm talking to the SEOs now, and I'm talking about you trying to get that. That doesn't happen in a vacuum. That happens after a long time of building up that brand. So let's just run it through for a second. You have a nice big social account, you have a lot of engagement. Maybe they follow you, maybe they didn't follow you, but they saw you, whatever it is, and they discovered your website, they discovered your content, and now they sign up for your newsletter, or they sign up for your emails to come to your monthly webinar, whatever it's that you're doing, and they get that email in that whatever it is in that inbox, once a month, weekly, whatever it may be, and you build up that connection over time, over a month, over whatever it is, that's when, when they come into market, because they've seen your newsletter or your webinars, and you've been in their inbox time and time again, and you've provided value each time you're in the inbox, that's when they search your brand plus your service or your product. And that's why I feel email marketing is so powerful for search right now going forward because it's going to drive those overall brand signals that Google's going to look at to rank you higher, which in this case, by the way, they're doing a branded search, so hopefully you rank, but then hopefully it'll help you rank when they're not doing a branded search, they're just searching for sneakers, and you show up. Jillian Ryan: I mean, once they do the branded search, I feel like that's a critical win for marketers. It means that your brand awareness is working, right? There's something that you said too about once you get that opt in, and I think from the research that I've done just being in the space I think, I mentioned permission before, and I think permission is super important because email and SMS honestly are permission based channels, which means you've gotten that opt in, someone has put their hand up and said, "I want you to send me stuff." That's wild. As a channel, that's, I think, a superpower, right? It also allows you to then own that audience. And owning the audience means that you can be an architect, right, for how your customer data gets applied, how you understand your customer and how that delivers value and how you can optimize that over time. It's access, right? It's not just access to the inbox to send a well-timed, a personalized and automated, I mean, we could dive into all that stuff, but might be another episode, right? Email that adds value, and you get your open, you get your click, and hopefully you get your cart complete, right? You want all those things, but email is so powerful because you also get to learn every time they didn't open. Who didn't open? Why didn't they open? They didn't click, or the click-through rate was really high, it was really low. There's the ability to just have this window into your different audience segments in a way that no channel can do because it's not a wall garden. You're not looking at your social media metrics and limited to what you can see. You could really dig deep into the data. And what that does is it really allows you to then tailor and personalize your marketing over time based on that performance, and it helps you AB test, it helps you multi-variant test in order to continue to learn down the line what is going to convert and what isn't, and I think that is super powerful when it comes to email marketing. Mordy Oberstein: That's super powerful. I mean, you're basically learning what resonates and what doesn't resonate. And that should impact, by the way, your SEO strategy of what keywords you do and you don't target because you should target keywords that resonate and not keywords that don't resonate just because they have a high search volume. I want to pivot a little bit as time rolls away from us quickly, but I feel like we're talking about looking ahead at 2025, and we barely talked about 2025. What do you think comes into focus, if I'm an SEO, and I'm trying to leverage other channels, I'm trying to leverage email marketing, what comes for you? What comes into focus heading into the crux or the core of 2025? Jillian Ryan: That's a great question. I will actually, I think, push back a little bit on what you just said. I think everything we just talked about, even though it's current state, is incredibly applicable to '25. And something that I like to think about with our thought leadership is that we're talking about, there's a different maturity level of marketers, and I think everything that we just said, as you are looking, and by your, I mean our audience right now, as you're looking ahead to '25, if there's anything that we just talked about that you're like, "Oh, wow, we're not doing that." Tune up time. New year, new me. This is your time to assess, "Okay, what are the things that we're missing?" So I feel like a lot of what we talked about can be future look, future thinking. And I think the other thing is just when we think about AI on a whole, right, making sure that you're staying ahead of the curve on what AI can do for you. And we dive deep into this in the revenue blueprint report. We have a whole section on AI. And to me, I think gen AI is the hype. Everybody's talking about it. It's the "newer" piece of it, but analytical AI, predictive AI, the other side of it is also very, very important, and that could help you as you measure your email performance, as you measure your search performance. It helps you across all channels. And what we're seeing is that revenue leaders on a whole, the ones that are most successful, are using both of those types of AI in tandem with each other. And I think assessing across your marketing value chain and your channel mix, what the opportunity is to implement AI into your workflows, into how you analyze customer data and search performance data is very, very important. And the final piece of that is that I think sometimes as marketers, it's easy to get lured and like, "Oh, AI can do it for me." And yes, AI can be done for you, but human intervention cannot be like I cannot state how important that is. You need to be working with AI as your assistant and think about the ways that it can help you for efficiency's sake, to better understand your customers. And the other piece of this is that if you're not doing that, there is a marketer that is, and you are behind them, and that should be the real impetus to embrace it, so those are my thoughts. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great, first off, you could have said IBID, right? Oh, I already covered that. By the way, I do in Google Docs, which is a horrible habit, I'll put in if my comment is the same comment as before, no one knows what this word means. I just write IBID. It just means I see the previous note, whatever. I just do that because I know no one knows what it actually is, and I get a kick out of it. But the other point about using AI in the data is such a great imagine, okay, you're running your email marketing campaigns, you're overwhelmed with this data. You have spreadsheets of data, endless number of tag, ask the AI to help you with that. Ask the AI to pull out what are the data points I should be focused on here? What are the biggest discrepancies? Where are the biggest trends? Etc., etc., etc. And that's a great way outside of using AI to generate content, using AI to help you understand data, pull out data, make the data more translatable, make it more digestible for you, is a great way to leverage the power of AI in 2025. Jillian Ryan: And even further than that, yes, really, really great point. But the other piece of it too is we alluded at the lightest level to segmentation and personalization, which is baked into our platform, and that's where we see the marketers that are using those more personalized and targeted emails, see higher click-through rates, higher open rates, and so AI can also help you, I want to send campaigns to predicted segments, right? I want to send campaigns to lookalikes that look like this. And so AI can also be used as a tool to help you figure out who you're sending emails to and the days of blast messages, I know some marketers are still doing it. That is not going to serve your list health over time. It's going to impact your deliverability, and making sure that you're targeted and tailored is very important, and it's no longer something that needs to be purely manual. And so I think that's where AI can come in to help you do it more efficiently, help you do it in a more tailored fashion, and that's something that we're really excited about. Mordy Oberstein: That is super exciting, and this is a little by the way, for an SEO, what you're doing with your actual SEO strategy. And with that, I'm not going to ask where people could email you because that's just stupid, but if people are looking for some more help from you and want to pick your brain a little bit, where maybe on social could they find you? Jillian Ryan: Oh my gosh. First of all, love that. I am on LinkedIn. Come and find me. Jillian Ryan. As Mordy mentioned, Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy Intuit Mailchimp, and the other piece is that I'm very proud of this work, and so I am constantly touting it. I want to make sure that I'm unpacking these insights from the report and putting it into bite-sized pieces for social, so I do tend to share this research because I want it to get out there. I think there's so much that we're producing that adds value, and so always making sure to have those derivative little pieces out there on LinkedIn. Give me a follow. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Make sure link in the show notes. Also link to the Wix Studio, Wix MailChimp integration in the show notes as well. Jillian, thank you so much for coming on our show. One of my favorite conversations because I feel like it's so important for SEOs to understand how to leverage channels beyond search, and then also not just build up that list because it's a little bit more complicated than that. Jillian Ryan: Yeah, no, an absolute pleasure. And for us on the MailChimp side, email is an important part of the mix, but you need to be thinking about your website visitors and how you're going to capture them, and you need to be thinking about all the channels that drive that owned and operated. So always good to come out of the email world and think about how we're interconnected because siloed channels are not going to work. It's an integrated ecosystem, right? And so excited to just scratch the surface, let's be honest, on all of the potential there. Mordy Oberstein: Email and search, digital BFFs forever. Jillian Ryan: Totally. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much, Jillian. Jillian Ryan: Pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Thanks again, Jillian. Make sure you follow Jillian on social media and check out all the amazing studies that she's doing. Now, did you know something, Crystal? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Bet you didn't know this. Barry has a newsletter. Crystal Carter: Does he? Mordy Oberstein: He does, and it gets into my inbox every day, but I've already read everything he puts out before I get the newsletter. Crystal Carter: Right, because you also get a news digest from him before we do. It's new. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. I do get an email from Barry with what's coming on SE Roundtable that day, so we can do our daily news series. It's new with him. So wow, the power of email right there. Crystal Carter: Super useful for disseminating information and making sure that everyone knows about your content just as it's ready to go out. Mordy Oberstein: Just as useful as Barry Schwartz himself as we transition into The Snappy News, most likely from Barry Schwartz. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. I'm covering one article, or one story rather, from multiple sources. This has been a bonkers news story, and I'm going to say the outset, a little bit of a hot take. I think y'all SEOs are getting this whole story wrong. Not the people covering the story. I think you're kind of okay. Anywho, let's start off with Barry Schwartz over our Search Engine Roundtable, who I believe, as usual was the first one to break this news. Is Google blocking SEO rank checking tools as search volatility continues? I don't know why I read the title that way. This, what happened was Barry saw a tweet, I believe, from Ziptie's CEO and Founder, Ziptie tracks AI overview saying, "Oh boy, something broke." In a nutshell. Gun Gabe chimed in on it. There was a whole conversation. Then Barry says, "This seems to be a wider issue with other tracking tools too." Uh-oh, and there's all board of chatter. What's going on? Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada as Barry would like to say. Then over on Search Engine Journal, Roger Mangiro confirmed Google is requiring JavaScript to block SEO tools. So what happened was this came out through an email, I believe, from a Google person, either to someone at TechCrunch, yeah, an email to TechCrunch, where they basically said, "Enabling JavaScript allows us to better protect our services and users from bots and evolving forms of abuse and spam." The spokesperson told TechCrunch, "And to provide the most relevant and up-to-date information." Then on Search Engine Land, Denny Goodwin covered Google versus SEO tools, why your SEO data might be missing. You can find it on a milk carton. No, just kidding. You can find this probably back already in most cases. He goes through the various tools, a similar way I've issued a statement saying, "Oh my gosh, there was a major change that happened, bigger than the disruption of 2018." I will talk about 2018 in a second because I was working for Rank Ranger in 2018 when that happened, so I know exactly what they're talking about, and it goes through all the various tools. HREFs and Semrush say nothing on their side. Systrix says nothing on their side and so forth. Let me decipher this a little bit. And what I'm saying here is a little bit my opinion, a lot of bit really good opinion, some of it anecdotal and speculative, but hey, it's my show, so I'm going to say what I think. I'm going to say something a little bit controversial first. Not all SEO tools are created equal, and I'm saying this having worked at multiple SEO tools for multiple SEO providers, partnering with multiple SEO tools in the past. They're not all created equal, and I'm not saying that based on, "Oh, this tool is better than that tool. They have this feature. That tool doesn't have that feature. The UI and UX is way better in this tool than that." I'm talking about the infra, the infrastructure used to pull and then disseminate the data, not all tools are equal. It is a simple fact. I'm not putting anyone down. It's a very complicated, hard and expensive thing to do, and certain tools have a certain infrastructure, certain tools have a different infrastructure. Certain tools are more vulnerable for X, certain tools are more vulnerable for Y. What I think happened was is that there was a whoops, shift, certain tools, and I'll say this goes on, I was at Rank Ranger in 2018 when the CCTLD wreaked havoc on the SEO tools because it changed the way that the SEO tools were able to access data centers, local data centers. Okay? We made a quick shift at the time, within a day or two even, I think even less, a couple of hours, data for the most part in most geos was fine in a few hours. It took other tools days to figure that out. I think what happened here, if I'm reading the room, and I'm reading what the tools are saying, and I'm reading what I'm seeing happening is certain tools had really strong infrastructure. They saw the, oops, something shifted, press the button, fixed. Other tools had to, and are still at the time of this recording, having to make real infrastructure changes that are not so easy and that are really complicated. Other tools, this is me being speculative, have figured out a quick patch, but I think realize, "Oh no, we're going to need to significantly change our processes going forward in order to keep that working for the long term." That's one issue I want to address that I don't think the SEO community fully understands. The second one is that I think this has nothing to do with SEO tools whatsoever. So back in the day, SEO tools were very worried about scraping because it's technically against Google's guidelines. Google over the years, through various statements from various Googlers, something we pay very careful attention to at an SEO tool, is there stance tremendously. I think Google, this is my personal take, is completely fine with SEO tool scraping. They get it. It is what it is. This is the world that we live in. This is fine. This, this change, this change is about LLMs. To me, this change is about Google saying, "Hey, perplexity or hey, open AI, we do not want to let your AI bots know what's on our pages, be able to pull big data. We want to keep a competitive advantage. We want to keep you and your bots out of our ecosystem." I can make a joke, a Will Smith joke, but I won't. So again, I think there's a misconception about the tools themselves, and I think there's a bigger misconception about what Google is doing here. I very much believe, and I could be completely wrong, because again, it's my opinion, this has nothing to do with SEO tools and everything to do with Google's AI advantage or trying to maintain or keep or even find an AI advantage, and that's this week's not so snappy, I took a long time doing this, SEO news. Again, make sure you sign up for our newsletter and also get Barry's newsletter. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean newsletters can be really, really good. There was one I used to subscribe to the Inhabitat newsletter, which was one of my favorite ones. It was all environmental stuff and things like that, and I remember when the Highline opened years ago, this is how long ago that was, when the Highline opened, my friend was like, "Oh, we're going to go check out this thing called the Highline." I was like, "I know all about that because I've been following it on this newsletter and the whole development of the whole thing." And I was so excited, and let me tell you something, Mordy, I walked on the grass on the Highline when it opened, and I remember being there and being like, "This grass is going to be cordoned off in no matter of about six months, so I'm going to walk on the grass while I still can, while it's still legal." So I did. I put my feet on that grass. It was delightful. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, by the way, there's nothing like having your feet on a good set of grass just like there's nothing like following some great folks across social media to get some more information. Yeah? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Love that pivot, right? Yeah. Patting back for the pivot. This week, a very special set of follow weeks for you. This comes from Jillian herself. These are some folks over at the MailChimp Intuit team that you should be following across social media. First up for you is Jim Ruddle, who's the Regional Director at Intuit MailChimp of their EMEA audience. Link in the show notes. Then Anthony Capano, who's their Regional Director in Australia and New Zealand over Intuit MailChimp, and last but not least, it's a three-fer on this episode of SERP's Up, Michelle Tate, who is the Global Chief Marketing Officer over Intuit MailChimp. Make sure you follow all of them across social media for more information about how to build up that marketing strategy, particularly in your email side. Links of course in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yes, and I met a few folks from the MailChimp team now, the Intuit MailChimp team, and they're so awesome. I also met Zelinka Phillips for the UK team, and she's great as well. So yeah, shout out to the folks over at Mailchimp to keep you updated with all the cool stuff that they're doing. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of great folks over on their team. Crystal, I'll email you later with some other people. Crystal Carter: Looking forward to it. I will subscribe. Mordy Oberstein: Look in your spam folder, where sometimes I belong. Crystal Carter: But only with ketchup. Mordy Oberstein: I don't eat spam, but I get the joke. Is it good with ketchup? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't eat it anymore, but I used to eat spam musubis when I lived in Hawaii. They're delicacies. Spam musubis are delicious. It's like a salty deliciousness. Mordy Oberstein: The more you know on the SERP's Up Podcast, which will do it for us this week. Thanks for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week in the new episode as we dive into, "Hey, SEO and digital marketers, here's how you can negotiate your next salary." Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content of webinars and our SEO course over on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, say it again, 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 Jillian Ryan Michelle Taite Anthony Capano Jim Rudall Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Mailchimp Wix Mailchimp Integration The Revenue Blueprint Report How to Grow Your Brand Report News: Is Google Blocking SEO Rank Checking Tools As Search Volatility Continues Google vs. SEO tools: Why your SEO data might be missing Confirmed: Google Is Requiring JavaScript To Block SEO Tools Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Jillian Ryan Michelle Taite Anthony Capano Jim Rudall Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Mailchimp Wix Mailchimp Integration The Revenue Blueprint Report How to Grow Your Brand Report News: Is Google Blocking SEO Rank Checking Tools As Search Volatility Continues Google vs. SEO tools: Why your SEO data might be missing Confirmed: Google Is Requiring JavaScript To Block SEO Tools Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search 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, overseeing the head of SEO brand here at Wix, joined by the very open, rateable, clickable, never spammed, never spamming head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everyone. I would like to talk to you in your email, and I'm definitely who I say I am. I'm not some pretend email address at the top or some pretend subject name and then a really weird email address underneath. Mordy Oberstein: Unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. Crystal Carter: I know. I'm definitely just me, I promise. Welcome to our podcast. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you mean you didn't get into my email from some random conference that I happened to attend, and I didn't realize I was actually signing up permission to have the sponsor send out. Crystal Carter: Forever, forever, forever, and ever and ever. No, no, no. Not particularly. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. Unsubscribe. Crystal Carter: I am the queen of unsubscribe. As soon as somebody's like, "Hi." I'm like, "Uh-huh. Nope." Mordy Oberstein: I'm your best friend then because I'll take a long time to, I'll just open the email and move on. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: I'm an email marketer's best friend. Crystal Carter: Email people, I open it and then I just delete. I just bulk delete. Mordy Oberstein: You're a better person. Crystal Carter: If I get a cold call email, I literally just block them immediately. Mordy Oberstein: Phone calls I don't answer. If I don't know the number, or I'm not expecting, okay, I have a virtual doctor appointment, and I know it's a weird number, that's where they're calling from, I don't answer. Crystal Carter: My friend Scam Lightly calls me all the time. She's so nice. It's just so sweet. Mordy Oberstein: I wouldn't know because I don't answer. Crystal Carter: I don't answer. Mordy Oberstein: We should trade strategies. I'll take your email strategy, you take my phone call strategy, and together we'll live in a spamless world. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: With our powers combined, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix and 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 directly connect your Wix and Wix Studio account and your efforts to MailChimp with our native integration with MailChimp. Look for it in the Wix Studio App Market. Links in the show. This is part of Wix's ongoing partnership efforts to provide best-in-class online presence and marketing tools to business customers worldwide. As this, as we talk, the impact email marketing will have on SEO in 2025, why owned audiences are more in focus for more and more SEOs, how email marketing and search equals deeper engagement and, check this out, more revenue, and what you need to be doing in order to let email and search form a powerful combination in 2025. There's no better person to help the open rate of our minds hear these powerful lessons than Intuit Mailchimp's own Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy, Jillian Ryan, who will join us in just a jiffy. And don't forget, we have who you should be following on social media for more SEO or perhaps more email marketing awesomeness, so put on your satin robe and put on your hood and step into the ring despite the fact that you're a 58-year-old man who hasn't thrown a punch in 20 years as you don't need a Netflix special to tell you that email marketing and search are a powerful one two punch in 2025 on this, the 118th episode of the SERP's Up Podcast. In case you didn't get the reference, I was making fun of the whole Mike Tyson Netflix special thing. One two punch. Crystal Carter: I haven't seen that one, but there's been some great Netflix stuff on recently, and maybe I should sign up for their newsletter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yes. Crystal Carter: Then maybe I would know more about it. Mordy Oberstein: Maybe you'd know about the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul thing. Mike Tyson was an old boxer. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Fought a dude and didn't win because he's, despite being an incredible all time grade, he's 58 years old. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's a hard age to box in the ring. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. This is true, but you know what's a knockout? Mordy Oberstein: What's that? Crystal Carter: A good email newsletter? Mordy Oberstein: A good email newsletter. You know what's a real knockout combination? If you combine search and email marketing. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. We try to do this ourselves with our search light newsletter. We got an LP, we've set it up, it's ranking for email newsletters, things like that. These are things we got to combine. Mordy Oberstein: Most definitely, and certainly in 2025, which is why we sat down with Jillian Ryan from Intuit Mailchimp. Here's our conversation with Jillian. Okay, so before Jillian actually joins us, one of the big themes that I feel has gone under the radar for a long time is this strong connection between your audience and deeply resonating with them, so building that audience and then making that strong connection with them. I often come at this from a brand marketing point of view where people are looking for something authentic or more authentic than they have been, and that is actually catching up with us. We're kind of caught up in generating a lot of AI, which can often be very good, very helpful, don't want to mess with the AI overlords, but it can make a little bit of problem for you in terms of resonating and connecting with your actual audience because AI, at the end of the day, is not an actual person. There is another facet of this conversation. It's what we started a few weeks ago with the episode we did with Jake Hunley, where we talked about moving past the ever unreliable algorithms, whether it be search, whether it be social, and that facet is the relationship between having a deeper connection with your audience and being able to pull in more revenue. There is a direct connection with that, which I feel, and I'm going on a limb here saying that that's an important connection between SEO and email marketing heading to the crux of 2025, that needs to be explored. And as I mentioned before, there's no one better than Intuit Mailchimp's own Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy, Jillian Ryan, to do that with us. Welcome to the show. Jillian Ryan: I'm so happy to be here, and I have to say your feeling is based and grounded in research. I have the data to back up your feeling and excited to talk about it with you and the audience. Mordy Oberstein: The audience can't see, but I said, "Yes." Hands up in the air. Jillian Ryan: Mordy was celebrating. Mordy Oberstein: I was celebrating. Jillian Ryan: So he's excited. I'm excited, and I think everybody here is also excited. Mordy Oberstein: I'm excited. I'm also excited that, hey, this is awesome we have this integration between Mailchimp and Wix. Super excited about that. Before we get started into the actual crux of it all, marketers going to market, what do you do over at Mailchimp? I would love to learn more about that. Jillian Ryan: Yeah, so it's kind of a dream job. I lead our thought leadership practice. So essentially what that means is Mailchimp is super invested into creating really rich, insight-driven pieces of research and insights that help educate, help inspire, not just our customers, but all marketers and especially mid-market marketers that can often be underserved in the marketing space. And so I get to lead that strategy, and that means I get to create really robust and super interesting pieces of research that talk about the problems that marketers are facing, how the consumer landscape is changing, and also give practical tidbits and best practices that marketers can actually go and do after they read the report or watch the webinar. And so I get to be at the helm of that, and it's a really exciting space to be in, and I've been in the space for a while and doing that for such a legacy brand that is so beloved is awesome, so that's my day job, and then I moonlight on podcasts like this. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, clearly. First off, I'm really excited. One is I love as a marketing strategy, as a brand marketing strategy, thought leadership is sometimes overused, sometimes generic, but when it's done really well, it's so powerful and so effective in creating engagement, actually being helpful to your actual audience, but I'm also super excited because it means you probably have, like you mentioned before, a lot of data and access to a lot of data. Jillian Ryan: Yes. I always try to come packing with the data, and our biggest thing is that we don't want to add any more noise. The marketing landscape is oversaturated with everybody talking about the same thing and so many marketers are using AI created "thought leadership" that's not thought leadership. And so it's- Mordy Oberstein: It's literally regurgitated across the, literally. Jillian Ryan: Exactly. Exactly. But we take a lot of pride in making sure that anything that we put out is differentiated and that it adds value, and if it doesn't pass tests, we wouldn't publish it. So yeah, I am packing with insights and now I hope I haven't set the bar too high when I share them. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. I feel like we're only going to exceed those expectations. Where do you want to start with? You want to start on the data side with this? Tell me where you want to start because there's so much to talk about. If you're listening to this podcast on a regular basis, and you're from the SEO space, you know there's been so much tumult, and there's been so much, I don't want to say chaos. I don't want to say chaos. I would say chaos. I don't want to say chaos. There's been a lot of uncertainty, and one of the things that a lot of SEOs have been advocating for, I just did an episode of Crawling Mondays with the Ellie DeSolis who's a contributor to our wonderful SEO course pitch that you should take over at the Wix Studio Learning Hub. And one of the things people were talking about were other channels, SEOs pivoting out, or not pivoting out, or expanding out into other channels, and email marketing is such an important channel because you own that audience. Jillian Ryan: Yep, yep. Mordy Oberstein: What do you feel like, where do you want to start between the connection between search marketing and email marketing? Jillian Ryan: So I've come prepared, like I said, with a few data points, and maybe I talk through that, and I think that can open up a wide range of things that we can dig into from there. So I'm going to start off with the least sexy part of research, but something that I also very much enjoy, which is our methodology. It has to be statistically significant. Mordy Oberstein: You're speaking my language because- Jillian Ryan: We love a methodology. Mordy Oberstein: We do, and we don't. The real people do. Right? And it's such a good on your brand for doing this because when you read, I don't know, a research paper, like a PhD paper, the first thing they do is talk about the limitations and the methodology, right? Jillian Ryan: Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: When you read a marketing study, it's usually not there at all, but it needs to be there. So big clap and big kudos, methodology all the way. Jillian Ryan: Mordy is clapping. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to clap for so many things today. Jillian Ryan: I'll jump into methodology and then I'll cruise through some data points, and we can see where the road takes us. So part of what I'll be talking about today is this report that we just produced in conjunction with Ipsos. So we partnered with a super reputable market insights market research firm because we care. We want to make sure that the insights are sound and that they're rooted in data backed and trusted sources. And so we surveyed 2000 plus mid-market marketers, eCommerce marketers specifically, and we define mid-market as 10 to 500 employees in terms of company size, and it's a super global survey, which we were really intentional about. So we surveyed US marketers, UK marketers, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Nordics, and Benelux as well. That was all part of our sample. And what we were really hoping to understand from this survey was actually what you were just talking about, Mordy, what was the channel mix? How is it evolving? Which channels are helping marketers grow? Which are helping them drive revenue? And so what we did was, first of all, understand the performance of each of these marketers, and we came up with three different cohorts from this sample of 2000 plus. And so we have what are called baseline marketers. That's like 52% of marketers, so just over half, and they're marketers that are doing a decent job. They're not failing. They achieve steady, consistent results. They're using standard marketing practices that are widely accepted, but they're not seeing any outsized gains either. So those that are seeing outsized gains are performance obsessed marketers, that's what we call them, 48% of the sample. And basically what that means is on at least one of four metrics, so that's revenue, channel engagement, lifetime value, and their list health, their list size, they grew by 16% or more year over year. And then a super, super special group within the performance obsessed are our revenue leaders, so 25% of the total sample, and they grew their revenue by 16% or more annually, which is we could all aspire, right? It's a really good North Star to look towards. And what we tried to do is really understand what are revenue leaders doing that the baseline isn't doing? What are they doing that's different from the total to really provide hello, a blueprint, pun intended, for driving revenue? And then we came up with four revenue pillars, and one of those revenue pillars was email. But also in our evaluation of email, that's where we tried to dig deeper into what is the channel mix and what are the channels that work alongside email. Email, obviously we're Mailchimp, we know email works, it performs. When we look at channels used to generate revenue from the total sample, 85% of all marketers, 84% of all marketers are using email to generate awareness and drive purchases, so email is a tried and true tool, but it doesn't work on its own. It needs other channels to support it, to help drive people in your audience into your ecosystem. And so we also looked at social media websites, digital ads, and of course search here as well. And I do have some interesting stacks on search, but I'll pause there because I've talked a lot. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, after the commercial break. Jillian Ryan: After the commercial break, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Digital commercial break for the record. Jillian Ryan: No, I know, I know. But I wanted to know if there was anything in there you wanted to dig into, or I can keep rattling. You let me know. Mordy Oberstein: First off, that's really interesting to see. First off, I want to tell the audience, that amount of growth is few and far between as the data you just said says, so make sure you have adequate expectations and do what Jillian's telling you to do, which basically is like take what they're looking, at what they're doing, look at that as a North Star, as a blueprint, but the fact that you haven't achieved that does not make you a failure. Jillian Ryan: A hundred percent. Yeah. Revenue leaders are what you should aspire to be, but a baseline marketer is not, they're not underperforming. They're still growing. They're just not growing at that same velocity and that same trajectory. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I mean, look, not everybody's Michael Jordan throwing sports ball for a quick second. Patrick Ewing, that's also fine. I'm going nineties sports ball because I'm an old person. Okay, now we can get into the search data because I am, color me intrigued, to hear what happened. Jillian Ryan: Yeah, well, there's a lot here. And I'll start off with, we did ask total marketers, so as search becomes less utilized because of a lot of the headwinds that I know that you guys talk about on the show all the time. We know that search is changing and evolving, and as search becomes less utilized what does that mean for email? And 59% of total marketers, so everybody in the survey, said that as that happens with search, email is still remaining a necessary channel for customer engagement, and it was slightly higher for those revenue leaders. So the revenue leaders that are crushing it on revenue, we even had a higher response rate at 61.2%. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Jillian Ryan: We also asked some questions about how AI is changing the search landscape too, and there were a few interesting things here. So one of the things we asked was what marketers thought about the impact of AI being used as an alternative to search? So consumers basically going to a ChatGPT, a bar, what have you, to search rather than traditional Google. And then of course Google's new search features where the AI- Mordy Oberstein: AIOs. Jillian Ryan: ... responses are at the top. And basically what are all these changes in search mean for your SEO strategy, for your search strategy? Is there still value there? And it was really interesting, the results were actually split. So 46% said that AI search would make their SEO less valuable, so a little less than half, whereas 54% said that actually it would have no impact. And I think that's really interesting to see. I mean, again, it's not exactly 50/50 but roughly half. It's kind of a divided issue right now and a little bit of a wait and see as we continue to see the rippling impacts of this. And then one other piece about AI, 41% of marketers said that changes in search usage will have no impact in how they use email to engage with customers. So again, less than half, that still means that 59% are saying that changes in search usage will change how they use email. So I think it just shows that there's a strong interconnection between how these two channels work in concert, how they orchestrate together, and as there are changes in that search landscape, really not just thinking about search and how you optimize that channel, but how you look at your larger mix to make sure that if search is diminishing or search is changing, that you still have a strategy in place with your other channels to insulate that, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. There's so many points. Jillian Ryan: I know. There's a lot here. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to SEO nerd for a quick second. So one is the numbers that you said, but that's split. Let's call it like a 50/50 split. Makes so much sense to me. One, it's kind of what I feel I hear going on out there. It's kind of what I've seen. I have certain websites where they have a lot of AI overviews, their links are showing in a lot of AI overviews, and there's been no change. On that, I recently did a study with Semrush showing how inconsistent the URL placement can be inside of an AI overview. So you might have the link, but the data in aggregated all depends on the keyword and of course on the domain, that URL gets swapped out really often. Google's changing those URLs, so they're not very consistent. We don't know, by the way, what the CTR is on the AI overview. So the user sees the AI generated answer, it sees the summary, it sees a bunch of links, and Google is doing a better job of showing those links, but no one's put out, it was so interesting, no one's put out data in on the CTR in the SEO space. Are users actually clicking? Are they reading? Are they bypassing going to their organic results? And I think that's where that 50/50 split comes in because I see sites where they have the AI overviews, nothing's changed, meaning in those cases, most likely what's happening is the user is either before there was a direct answer or a feature snippet and the behavior's not changing. Just like before, they're either reading the answer and being satisfied with that direct answer and moving on, or they're still going for the click, despite there being a direct answer of some sort, in this case, an AI overview, on the results page, fine. The next point is the chicken and the egg point which I really want to hash out with you because SEOs will be like, "Oh, okay, yeah, you need an email." A conversation again, I've seen so many times recently. "You need an email marketing list. You need to own your audience. You can't rely on the algorithms." But the problem is, and this is where here's the rub, you can't magically generate an email list. You need to somehow pull the users in, user, people, in to wherever they can sign up for that email. Let's say it's a newsletter. Jillian Ryan: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: That has to happen somewhere. And that's where I wonder where search just changed the landscape because if you were getting X number of visitors coming in from search, and you were able to funnel them to sign up for, say, your newsletter, if that's not happening anymore to the same extent, that does impact your ability to email market, and it might mean you need to do other activities to supplement that. Jillian Ryan: Yeah. First of all, love everything that you just shared and the fact that there is no click-through rate on those AIO reviews is startling, and it probably is why we're seeing such a split with the uncertainty. So love that you mentioned that. As for your other point, search is still important. It is that primary channel. It's designed to capture that audience intention. It's when there's that interest. Intent is at a peak in that moment. You have someone that's coming to find out information that you have, but there are other channels that can also do that. And so in our survey we did find that actually, more so than search, that social media, websites, and digital ads are being used to both generate awareness and drive purchases, so those are other channels in the mix that well, your website is where you're trying to drive them of course, but your organic social and your paid ads in conjunction with organic search and paid search are all these, and people can't see my hands, but I'm showing how all these channels are coming back to the center. Yeah, they're coming back to the center, which is right, your website, you're owned and operated. And then of course on your website, that's where it needs to be optimized, and you need to have that opt-in form. What is the offer, what is the value add, what is the incentive, and how are you getting folks to sign up for that permission? Email is so important because it's permission based. You have your hand up. What are your thoughts? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. I wanted to get your thought on something that I have always been in the opinion of, but I'm not an email marketing guru. Search is interesting, or I'm not an email marketing ninja, I'm not either or of those things, not on my LinkedIn bio. Jillian Ryan: Neither am I. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. You're not an email marketing ninja and or guru on your email on your LinkedIn? Jillian Ryan: Not my LinkedIn. No, I mean, but I am a thought leader, so there you have it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, I'll take that. I'll take that over ninja any day of the week. So one of the things that's interesting about search is that it's random to a certain extent. I'm Googling, how do I stay updated on the New York Yankees? Always go to sports. And someone's website shows up, and I click on the website, and they happen to have a newsletter. I never, in a lot of cases, I'm not talking about where you purposely click because you know that brand, you're familiar with that brand, and that's why you clicked on them maybe even because if they rank lower than some of the other results because that is a thing. I'm talking about it's a discovery search. It's the first time you've seen that website. You never intended to find them. I feel like the chances of you signing up for, let's say, their newsletter are very slim as opposed to social or as opposed to, let's say, display where you're on a certain publication, you've seen their ads a gazillion times, you know who they are, they're a player in this space. You click, you show up, you get what you want. Oh, they have an email, a list, or a newsletter or whatever it is. I'm signing up. Or they're running a webinar that requires a sign up. I would like to do their webinar. Whatever it is. I feel those other channels are way better than search and getting email signups. Jillian Ryan: Okay, I love this. There's a lot there. I think first of all, you are spot on, but not every search is like surging with intent. Some of them are, some of are people that are ready to buy, but search is also a mechanism to drive people to your site, to build brand awareness, build brand affinity, start a relationship, try to capitalize on really creating that lasting bond. And so while of course you want to provide an opportunity with a pop-up form or with that offer, it should also be fair value. You can't just gate everything in hopes to getting an email address, right? It's like you need to be providing something that offers incentive and that builds trust. And that could be, I mean there's a lot of different things. It could be a coupon code, it could be a really, really meaty piece of content that's going to add value and opportunity to attend an event that has some sort of appeal that will help your audience. So there are ways to do that, but in some cases it's okay, and I feel like the marketing gods are not going to like this, but it's okay if they came, they learned, they now kind of know you, and they didn't know you before, and then they leave, and you can't track that. And that's also what's really complicated. But now you're creating mental availability. Now you're in their head, and there's, in another piece of thought leadership that we produce, which is called How to Grow Your brand, and it's a report that features chapters authored by some of the leading minds in marketing, people way smarter than me. But one of the things we talk about is the 95/5 rule, which is essentially that 95% of your target market at any given moment is not in market, is not ready to buy. 5% is, but that 5% isn't static, it's dynamic. People come in and out of that 5% when they're super ready to buy. And so you need to be building that mental availability, building your brand, creating resonance with that 95% because when they move to that 5%, when they're ready to buy, you're on their short list, which is when they'll come back to search and be like, "Oh, I remember that skin care brand." And they'll search it into the search bar. Hopefully you're in the top of the search results or the AI overview if you've done your job. And then that is when you'll get that opt-in, and I see you reacting, which I love. So what do you think? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, this is great. I love everything you're saying. One of the things that's super interesting is maybe they'll do a search, and they'll actually search with your brand, which by the way, full SEO geek, Mark Williams Cook, former guest of the show recently did a talk where he actually found a vulnerability or an exploitation in Google, and they actually paid him for the exploitation. Oh, yeah, he got paid $13,000 to report this to them because it's an actual real thing. And one of the things he was saying is one of the things he found within this whole vulnerability that he discovered because he runs Also Asked, which is a people also ask data pull tool, which is a great tool by the way, I'm not even pitching it, I literally use it all the time, is that Google, part of their quality scoring is doing branded searches. So are people searching for your brand? Are they searching Nike shoes, or Nike sneakers, whatever it is. That doesn't happen. I want to go, I'm talking to the SEOs now, and I'm talking about you trying to get that. That doesn't happen in a vacuum. That happens after a long time of building up that brand. So let's just run it through for a second. You have a nice big social account, you have a lot of engagement. Maybe they follow you, maybe they didn't follow you, but they saw you, whatever it is, and they discovered your website, they discovered your content, and now they sign up for your newsletter, or they sign up for your emails to come to your monthly webinar, whatever it's that you're doing, and they get that email in that whatever it is in that inbox, once a month, weekly, whatever it may be, and you build up that connection over time, over a month, over whatever it is, that's when, when they come into market, because they've seen your newsletter or your webinars, and you've been in their inbox time and time again, and you've provided value each time you're in the inbox, that's when they search your brand plus your service or your product. And that's why I feel email marketing is so powerful for search right now going forward because it's going to drive those overall brand signals that Google's going to look at to rank you higher, which in this case, by the way, they're doing a branded search, so hopefully you rank, but then hopefully it'll help you rank when they're not doing a branded search, they're just searching for sneakers, and you show up. Jillian Ryan: I mean, once they do the branded search, I feel like that's a critical win for marketers. It means that your brand awareness is working, right? There's something that you said too about once you get that opt in, and I think from the research that I've done just being in the space I think, I mentioned permission before, and I think permission is super important because email and SMS honestly are permission based channels, which means you've gotten that opt in, someone has put their hand up and said, "I want you to send me stuff." That's wild. As a channel, that's, I think, a superpower, right? It also allows you to then own that audience. And owning the audience means that you can be an architect, right, for how your customer data gets applied, how you understand your customer and how that delivers value and how you can optimize that over time. It's access, right? It's not just access to the inbox to send a well-timed, a personalized and automated, I mean, we could dive into all that stuff, but might be another episode, right? Email that adds value, and you get your open, you get your click, and hopefully you get your cart complete, right? You want all those things, but email is so powerful because you also get to learn every time they didn't open. Who didn't open? Why didn't they open? They didn't click, or the click-through rate was really high, it was really low. There's the ability to just have this window into your different audience segments in a way that no channel can do because it's not a wall garden. You're not looking at your social media metrics and limited to what you can see. You could really dig deep into the data. And what that does is it really allows you to then tailor and personalize your marketing over time based on that performance, and it helps you AB test, it helps you multi-variant test in order to continue to learn down the line what is going to convert and what isn't, and I think that is super powerful when it comes to email marketing. Mordy Oberstein: That's super powerful. I mean, you're basically learning what resonates and what doesn't resonate. And that should impact, by the way, your SEO strategy of what keywords you do and you don't target because you should target keywords that resonate and not keywords that don't resonate just because they have a high search volume. I want to pivot a little bit as time rolls away from us quickly, but I feel like we're talking about looking ahead at 2025, and we barely talked about 2025. What do you think comes into focus, if I'm an SEO, and I'm trying to leverage other channels, I'm trying to leverage email marketing, what comes for you? What comes into focus heading into the crux or the core of 2025? Jillian Ryan: That's a great question. I will actually, I think, push back a little bit on what you just said. I think everything we just talked about, even though it's current state, is incredibly applicable to '25. And something that I like to think about with our thought leadership is that we're talking about, there's a different maturity level of marketers, and I think everything that we just said, as you are looking, and by your, I mean our audience right now, as you're looking ahead to '25, if there's anything that we just talked about that you're like, "Oh, wow, we're not doing that." Tune up time. New year, new me. This is your time to assess, "Okay, what are the things that we're missing?" So I feel like a lot of what we talked about can be future look, future thinking. And I think the other thing is just when we think about AI on a whole, right, making sure that you're staying ahead of the curve on what AI can do for you. And we dive deep into this in the revenue blueprint report. We have a whole section on AI. And to me, I think gen AI is the hype. Everybody's talking about it. It's the "newer" piece of it, but analytical AI, predictive AI, the other side of it is also very, very important, and that could help you as you measure your email performance, as you measure your search performance. It helps you across all channels. And what we're seeing is that revenue leaders on a whole, the ones that are most successful, are using both of those types of AI in tandem with each other. And I think assessing across your marketing value chain and your channel mix, what the opportunity is to implement AI into your workflows, into how you analyze customer data and search performance data is very, very important. And the final piece of that is that I think sometimes as marketers, it's easy to get lured and like, "Oh, AI can do it for me." And yes, AI can be done for you, but human intervention cannot be like I cannot state how important that is. You need to be working with AI as your assistant and think about the ways that it can help you for efficiency's sake, to better understand your customers. And the other piece of this is that if you're not doing that, there is a marketer that is, and you are behind them, and that should be the real impetus to embrace it, so those are my thoughts. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great, first off, you could have said IBID, right? Oh, I already covered that. By the way, I do in Google Docs, which is a horrible habit, I'll put in if my comment is the same comment as before, no one knows what this word means. I just write IBID. It just means I see the previous note, whatever. I just do that because I know no one knows what it actually is, and I get a kick out of it. But the other point about using AI in the data is such a great imagine, okay, you're running your email marketing campaigns, you're overwhelmed with this data. You have spreadsheets of data, endless number of tag, ask the AI to help you with that. Ask the AI to pull out what are the data points I should be focused on here? What are the biggest discrepancies? Where are the biggest trends? Etc., etc., etc. And that's a great way outside of using AI to generate content, using AI to help you understand data, pull out data, make the data more translatable, make it more digestible for you, is a great way to leverage the power of AI in 2025. Jillian Ryan: And even further than that, yes, really, really great point. But the other piece of it too is we alluded at the lightest level to segmentation and personalization, which is baked into our platform, and that's where we see the marketers that are using those more personalized and targeted emails, see higher click-through rates, higher open rates, and so AI can also help you, I want to send campaigns to predicted segments, right? I want to send campaigns to lookalikes that look like this. And so AI can also be used as a tool to help you figure out who you're sending emails to and the days of blast messages, I know some marketers are still doing it. That is not going to serve your list health over time. It's going to impact your deliverability, and making sure that you're targeted and tailored is very important, and it's no longer something that needs to be purely manual. And so I think that's where AI can come in to help you do it more efficiently, help you do it in a more tailored fashion, and that's something that we're really excited about. Mordy Oberstein: That is super exciting, and this is a little by the way, for an SEO, what you're doing with your actual SEO strategy. And with that, I'm not going to ask where people could email you because that's just stupid, but if people are looking for some more help from you and want to pick your brain a little bit, where maybe on social could they find you? Jillian Ryan: Oh my gosh. First of all, love that. I am on LinkedIn. Come and find me. Jillian Ryan. As Mordy mentioned, Senior Manager of Content Marketing Strategy Intuit Mailchimp, and the other piece is that I'm very proud of this work, and so I am constantly touting it. I want to make sure that I'm unpacking these insights from the report and putting it into bite-sized pieces for social, so I do tend to share this research because I want it to get out there. I think there's so much that we're producing that adds value, and so always making sure to have those derivative little pieces out there on LinkedIn. Give me a follow. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Make sure link in the show notes. Also link to the Wix Studio, Wix MailChimp integration in the show notes as well. Jillian, thank you so much for coming on our show. One of my favorite conversations because I feel like it's so important for SEOs to understand how to leverage channels beyond search, and then also not just build up that list because it's a little bit more complicated than that. Jillian Ryan: Yeah, no, an absolute pleasure. And for us on the MailChimp side, email is an important part of the mix, but you need to be thinking about your website visitors and how you're going to capture them, and you need to be thinking about all the channels that drive that owned and operated. So always good to come out of the email world and think about how we're interconnected because siloed channels are not going to work. It's an integrated ecosystem, right? And so excited to just scratch the surface, let's be honest, on all of the potential there. Mordy Oberstein: Email and search, digital BFFs forever. Jillian Ryan: Totally. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much, Jillian. Jillian Ryan: Pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Thanks again, Jillian. Make sure you follow Jillian on social media and check out all the amazing studies that she's doing. Now, did you know something, Crystal? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Bet you didn't know this. Barry has a newsletter. Crystal Carter: Does he? Mordy Oberstein: He does, and it gets into my inbox every day, but I've already read everything he puts out before I get the newsletter. Crystal Carter: Right, because you also get a news digest from him before we do. It's new. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. I do get an email from Barry with what's coming on SE Roundtable that day, so we can do our daily news series. It's new with him. So wow, the power of email right there. Crystal Carter: Super useful for disseminating information and making sure that everyone knows about your content just as it's ready to go out. Mordy Oberstein: Just as useful as Barry Schwartz himself as we transition into The Snappy News, most likely from Barry Schwartz. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. I'm covering one article, or one story rather, from multiple sources. This has been a bonkers news story, and I'm going to say the outset, a little bit of a hot take. I think y'all SEOs are getting this whole story wrong. Not the people covering the story. I think you're kind of okay. Anywho, let's start off with Barry Schwartz over our Search Engine Roundtable, who I believe, as usual was the first one to break this news. Is Google blocking SEO rank checking tools as search volatility continues? I don't know why I read the title that way. This, what happened was Barry saw a tweet, I believe, from Ziptie's CEO and Founder, Ziptie tracks AI overview saying, "Oh boy, something broke." In a nutshell. Gun Gabe chimed in on it. There was a whole conversation. Then Barry says, "This seems to be a wider issue with other tracking tools too." Uh-oh, and there's all board of chatter. What's going on? Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada as Barry would like to say. Then over on Search Engine Journal, Roger Mangiro confirmed Google is requiring JavaScript to block SEO tools. So what happened was this came out through an email, I believe, from a Google person, either to someone at TechCrunch, yeah, an email to TechCrunch, where they basically said, "Enabling JavaScript allows us to better protect our services and users from bots and evolving forms of abuse and spam." The spokesperson told TechCrunch, "And to provide the most relevant and up-to-date information." Then on Search Engine Land, Denny Goodwin covered Google versus SEO tools, why your SEO data might be missing. You can find it on a milk carton. No, just kidding. You can find this probably back already in most cases. He goes through the various tools, a similar way I've issued a statement saying, "Oh my gosh, there was a major change that happened, bigger than the disruption of 2018." I will talk about 2018 in a second because I was working for Rank Ranger in 2018 when that happened, so I know exactly what they're talking about, and it goes through all the various tools. HREFs and Semrush say nothing on their side. Systrix says nothing on their side and so forth. Let me decipher this a little bit. And what I'm saying here is a little bit my opinion, a lot of bit really good opinion, some of it anecdotal and speculative, but hey, it's my show, so I'm going to say what I think. I'm going to say something a little bit controversial first. Not all SEO tools are created equal, and I'm saying this having worked at multiple SEO tools for multiple SEO providers, partnering with multiple SEO tools in the past. They're not all created equal, and I'm not saying that based on, "Oh, this tool is better than that tool. They have this feature. That tool doesn't have that feature. The UI and UX is way better in this tool than that." I'm talking about the infra, the infrastructure used to pull and then disseminate the data, not all tools are equal. It is a simple fact. I'm not putting anyone down. It's a very complicated, hard and expensive thing to do, and certain tools have a certain infrastructure, certain tools have a different infrastructure. Certain tools are more vulnerable for X, certain tools are more vulnerable for Y. What I think happened was is that there was a whoops, shift, certain tools, and I'll say this goes on, I was at Rank Ranger in 2018 when the CCTLD wreaked havoc on the SEO tools because it changed the way that the SEO tools were able to access data centers, local data centers. Okay? We made a quick shift at the time, within a day or two even, I think even less, a couple of hours, data for the most part in most geos was fine in a few hours. It took other tools days to figure that out. I think what happened here, if I'm reading the room, and I'm reading what the tools are saying, and I'm reading what I'm seeing happening is certain tools had really strong infrastructure. They saw the, oops, something shifted, press the button, fixed. Other tools had to, and are still at the time of this recording, having to make real infrastructure changes that are not so easy and that are really complicated. Other tools, this is me being speculative, have figured out a quick patch, but I think realize, "Oh no, we're going to need to significantly change our processes going forward in order to keep that working for the long term." That's one issue I want to address that I don't think the SEO community fully understands. The second one is that I think this has nothing to do with SEO tools whatsoever. So back in the day, SEO tools were very worried about scraping because it's technically against Google's guidelines. Google over the years, through various statements from various Googlers, something we pay very careful attention to at an SEO tool, is there stance tremendously. I think Google, this is my personal take, is completely fine with SEO tool scraping. They get it. It is what it is. This is the world that we live in. This is fine. This, this change, this change is about LLMs. To me, this change is about Google saying, "Hey, perplexity or hey, open AI, we do not want to let your AI bots know what's on our pages, be able to pull big data. We want to keep a competitive advantage. We want to keep you and your bots out of our ecosystem." I can make a joke, a Will Smith joke, but I won't. So again, I think there's a misconception about the tools themselves, and I think there's a bigger misconception about what Google is doing here. I very much believe, and I could be completely wrong, because again, it's my opinion, this has nothing to do with SEO tools and everything to do with Google's AI advantage or trying to maintain or keep or even find an AI advantage, and that's this week's not so snappy, I took a long time doing this, SEO news. Again, make sure you sign up for our newsletter and also get Barry's newsletter. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean newsletters can be really, really good. There was one I used to subscribe to the Inhabitat newsletter, which was one of my favorite ones. It was all environmental stuff and things like that, and I remember when the Highline opened years ago, this is how long ago that was, when the Highline opened, my friend was like, "Oh, we're going to go check out this thing called the Highline." I was like, "I know all about that because I've been following it on this newsletter and the whole development of the whole thing." And I was so excited, and let me tell you something, Mordy, I walked on the grass on the Highline when it opened, and I remember being there and being like, "This grass is going to be cordoned off in no matter of about six months, so I'm going to walk on the grass while I still can, while it's still legal." So I did. I put my feet on that grass. It was delightful. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, by the way, there's nothing like having your feet on a good set of grass just like there's nothing like following some great folks across social media to get some more information. Yeah? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Love that pivot, right? Yeah. Patting back for the pivot. This week, a very special set of follow weeks for you. This comes from Jillian herself. These are some folks over at the MailChimp Intuit team that you should be following across social media. First up for you is Jim Ruddle, who's the Regional Director at Intuit MailChimp of their EMEA audience. Link in the show notes. Then Anthony Capano, who's their Regional Director in Australia and New Zealand over Intuit MailChimp, and last but not least, it's a three-fer on this episode of SERP's Up, Michelle Tate, who is the Global Chief Marketing Officer over Intuit MailChimp. Make sure you follow all of them across social media for more information about how to build up that marketing strategy, particularly in your email side. Links of course in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yes, and I met a few folks from the MailChimp team now, the Intuit MailChimp team, and they're so awesome. I also met Zelinka Phillips for the UK team, and she's great as well. So yeah, shout out to the folks over at Mailchimp to keep you updated with all the cool stuff that they're doing. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of great folks over on their team. Crystal, I'll email you later with some other people. Crystal Carter: Looking forward to it. I will subscribe. Mordy Oberstein: Look in your spam folder, where sometimes I belong. Crystal Carter: But only with ketchup. Mordy Oberstein: I don't eat spam, but I get the joke. Is it good with ketchup? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't eat it anymore, but I used to eat spam musubis when I lived in Hawaii. They're delicacies. Spam musubis are delicious. It's like a salty deliciousness. Mordy Oberstein: The more you know on the SERP's Up Podcast, which will do it for us this week. Thanks for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week in the new episode as we dive into, "Hey, SEO and digital marketers, here's how you can negotiate your next salary." Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content of webinars and our SEO course over on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, say it again, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . 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Debbie Chew is an SEO manager and organic growth consultant with over 10 years of experience in digital marketing. She specializes in content and link building, and she's passionate about sharing her learnings with other marketers. Debbie Chew Global SEO Manager Debbie Chew is an SEO manager and organic growth consultant with over 10 years of experience in digital marketing. She specializes in content and link building, and she's passionate about sharing her learnings with other marketers. Articles & Resources 14 Jul 2025 Your guide to the first 90 days in a new SEO job 6 Feb 2024 Link building for SaaS: A niche-specific guide for better rankings and traffic 12 Oct 2023 How to measure your link building 27 Dec 2022 Why link building is important and how to get started 8 Sept 2022 The truth about link building for SMBs: 6 myths and misconceptions Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

How do you get your content into Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) feature on the SERP? In what way does content quality influence the PAA and Featured Snippet sections? How does Google determine what URLs should appear in the PAA box? The founder of AlsoAsked.com, Mark Williams-Cook, joins Wix's Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter to discuss the connection between quality content and Google's PAA SERP feature. Plus, content marketing maestro Kaleigh Moore stops by to help you understand what it really means to answer a user's question. She shares her expertise in writing quality responses to customer pain points and unravels her understanding of the customer mindset. Your SEO & content marketing questions are answered on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back People Also Ask & the content Google prefers How do you get your content into Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) feature on the SERP? In what way does content quality influence the PAA and Featured Snippet sections? How does Google determine what URLs should appear in the PAA box? The founder of AlsoAsked.com, Mark Williams-Cook, joins Wix's Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter to discuss the connection between quality content and Google's PAA SERP feature. Plus, content marketing maestro Kaleigh Moore stops by to help you understand what it really means to answer a user's question. She shares her expertise in writing quality responses to customer pain points and unravels her understanding of the customer mindset. Your SEO & content marketing questions are answered on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 52 | August 23, 2023 | 49 MIN 00:00 / 49:07 This week’s guests Mark Williams-Cook Mark has over 20 years of SEO experience and is co-owner of search agency Candour, the founder of AlsoAsked, and runs a pet category eCommerce business. Outside of speaking at conferences, Mark has trained over 3,000 SEOs with his Udemy course. Kaleigh Moore Kaleigh Moore is a contributor to Forbes covering retail, e-commerce and direct-to-consumer business with a focus on the fashion, beauty and luxury verticals. A full-time freelance writer and consultant, Kaleigh’s work has appeared in Vogue Business, Fast Company, Inc., Entrepreneur, and others. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERB's Up podcast, where you get 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 super quality, the super relevant, the super always curious and questioning, the one and only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: People always ask me things... Mordy Oberstein: People always do ask you. Crystal Carter: ... about this podcast. It's true. It's true. Mordy Oberstein: What's funny though- Crystal Carter: What a fantastic introduction. Mordy Oberstein: ... is that when you give an answer, you expand, drop down to- Crystal Carter: And just ask more questions. Mordy Oberstein: And more questions load. It's so dynamic. Crystal Carter: Everyone loves when you ask a question and people just give you more questions back. That's always something that- Mordy Oberstein: I always answering a question with a question like, "How are you doing Mordy?" "How should I be doing?" Crystal Carter: What do you think? I'm not sure anymore. Mordy Oberstein: What's it to you? Crystal Carter: Wouldn't you like to know? These are things that we would all like to know. Mordy Oberstein: Music. Crystal Carter: And this is why we're here. Mordy Oberstein: Why we're here is the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to a SEO newsletter, Searchlight, which comes out each and every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also set up your pages to answer questions, user questions, write on the SERP by adding FAQ structured data markup. Leverage the power of structured data markup with our structured data markup automation, which can save you hours of work, plus all the customization that comes along with it. So create and customize whatever you want and benefit from the automated markup we create for you. It's Wix, where we got your back on structured data markup. Now speaking of answering user questions, nothing speaks to this than the SERP and nothing speaks to that on the SERP more than People Also Ask, which is why today we're talking about quality content and its relationship to Google's People Also Ask box. When they say good things come in threes, they weren't looking at the SERP where good things come in fours usually. Today we're talking about the four questions. No, not those four questions. The four questions that often show up on the SERP under the label People Also Ask, as we take a deep dive into how content quality might be influencing the People Also Ask appearance with none other than the founder of Also Ask, the best tool for extracting People Also Ask insights for keyword research, and who also happens to be the founder of Candor, an SEO agency out of the UK. Mark Williams-Cook himself joins the podcast in just a few minutes. We'll also get into what content marketing extraordinaire Kaleigh Moore has to say about how you can write quality answers to those most pressing user questions. And of course we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So when it comes to the People Also Ask questions, riddle me this, riddle me that. How do I get myself some of that? As episode number 52 of SERP's Up podcast works to solve the puzzle that is People Also Ask policemen. Crystal Carter: That is a stonker. Mordy Oberstein: That was a lot. That was a lot. Crystal Carter: That's a lot. Mordy Oberstein: I really took it the next level. I told you my highlight of the week is writing those. Crystal Carter: That's absolutely stonking introduction. I think I'm really excited to be talking about this because it's a fascinating part of the SERP, and I'm going to just shower him with praise now before we get into it, because I know that Mark Williams-Cook is a fairly humble person. But also, it's literally just the best tool. You said it was the best tool. Mordy Oberstein: It's so good. Crystal Carter: It's such a good tool. I spoke to a team of designers about SEO and all this sort of stuff and I was like, "Oh, there's these great tools. Try this one. It's free. It's really easy to use." And they were like, "This is amazing. This is so good." And I was like, "I know. I know the dude who made it, he is super nice as well and really smart and he just made this thing and it's really useful and you can just see it all spread out really-" Mordy Oberstein: It's super useful. Crystal Carter: Super useful, super clever, super intuitive. You don't need loads of time to go into it. Anyway, it's great. Mordy Oberstein: Check out alsoask.com, or I'm sure we're going to get into more when Mark joins us. We actually did a tool time about this way, way, way early on in the tool time segment we do once in a while. Okay, so let's do a little intro on People Also Ask and then we'll bring Mark on. So I like to call People Also Ask, I'm going to call it PAA, People Also Ask, for short because People Also Ask takes me a long time to say it and I'm out of water. Crystal Carter: We're done. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to go with PAA. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I call it the universal SERP feature. By the way, those not familiar with the PAA box, when you type a query on Google, very often you'll get a series of four questions, sometimes three, sometimes two, but usually four. And then you expand the question to get a snippet of content with the URL ahat kind of answers your question. Then you can go into the actual webpage to get more information about it. It all sits under a header goal, People Also Ask. So these questions relate to the original query. So if I were to Google who is the captain of the Starship Enterprise, I'd get four questions on the SERP under a header that says People Also Ask. And the four questions are, how is this night different than all other nights? No, sorry, wrong four questions again. Who are the captains of the USS Enterprise in order? Who is the captain of the Enterprise after Kirk? Who was the first captain of the Enterprise before Kirk? And who is the greatest Starship captain? Obviously it's Kirk. If I expand one of these tabs- Crystal Carter: It's Picard. Mordy Oberstein: I know, Crystal and I have a hotly contested issue, but if I expand one of these tabs, I get a snippet of content that answers who was the greatest Starship captain and usually a URL to visit that page where the snippet of content came from. And according to Semrush, People Also Ask shows up on 65% of SERPs, which is insane. And I've done a few survey of the SERP studies in the past, once at Rank Ranger, once at Semrush, and one thing that I liked to look at was how often SERP features pair up together. How often do you see a feature snippet in a local pack? Almost never. Almost never. How often do you see a People Also Ask box with another SERP feature? And it's very, very often why I call it the universal donor of SERP features, and it makes it super powerful. Showing up here can be a great way to drive traffic to your website, and that's why we're honored to have Captain Cook, not Captain Kirk, Captain Cook, the Captain of Candor and Also Ask here right now with us to talk about People Also Ask and content and quality. So, oh, he's here right now. Oh, hi Mark. Mark Williams-Cook: Hello. I'm having a wonderful time already. What an intro. What an intro. Mordy Oberstein: It's a vibe. It's a vibe. Crystal Carter: Welcome to the podcast and welcome to the vibe. Welcome to the vibe. Mark Williams-Cook: Thank you. Super excited to talk to you about PAAs. I'll also be calling them PAAs. I can only say People Also Ask so many times. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So yeah, we're going to stick with some acronyms as we get into the SERP. We should also explain the SERP one, search engine results pages for any folks who are unacquainted. Mordy Oberstein: So you're right, SERP is a fancy word for the results page on Google. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Again, results page, you say too many times. SERP, it just rolls off the tongue. So before we get started, please full on plug for Also Ask. Mark Williams-Cook: Yes, cool. So thank you for the lovely introduction, by the way. You pretty much nailed it. So Also Asked is a tool that essentially saves you a whole bunch of time. You can go there, type in your query as you would in Google, and it will return a graphical map of what I call the nearest intent proximity terms to that question. We've got some more advanced features. So you can do things like customize the country and language you want to do the search in. So Google obviously, although PAAs are generally generated and mostly in English and they're done by language more than region, the results do vary. So rather than spending money on a VPN and trying to get them yourself, you can do that with Also Asked. We've also got the ability to do this in bulk. And by bulk, I mean you can upload a thousand queries at a time, which will mean on average you'll get between 25,000 and 50,000 questions in a download, which we made in a few minutes. And it also gives you, as you mentioned, the actual snippet as well that's showing on the page the URL. So there's lots of other interesting things you can do with that data, especially now people are building their own tool workflows using LLMs like ChatGPT. So there's lots of really interesting analysis you can do at scale on what Google's ranking. But it's mainly there to be accessible to everyone. So we actually, I demonstrated, because because we've been using as an agency PAA data for many years, and I demonstrated at a conference a command line tool we were using to do something similar, thinking lots of people were doing this. And feedback afterwards was like, "Wow, how do we do this?" And I think that bar for knowing a bit of Python and stuff is actually higher than you realize in kind of your bubble of the SEO community, because there's loads of people this tool's great for, like just people that do content, they've got no interest in coding. So that's who it's for. Crystal Carter: It's great. And I think also, so in the training that I was doing where I was, again, I was working with some graphic designers trying to get them to think about user intent and the user journey as they're building a website. So I don't necessarily think that they need to be all the way in the weeds on the keyword research and getting into breaking things down into clusters and stuff like that. But for instance, if you were to enter a search query and you notice that a lot of the things are about where to get something or whatever, if it was coffee and everything was like, where can I get a coffee? Where's the nearest cafe? That sort of thing. And it was all that sort of thing. Well guess what? As a graphic designer, for instance, that tells you that you should prioritize the location in your design. That tells you that should make it really easy for people to find out where you are to see that sort of thing. And it sort of gives you an idea of the sort of hive mind of how people feel about a particular topic. Mark Williams-Cook: Exactly. It's really interesting you touched on clustering already. So clustering, for maybe those who haven't come across it, is when you're putting a bunch of keywords or queries together of a similar topic or with the same intent, that might go in the same kind of place on a website. And there's loads of different tools obviously that do clustering. And that's a whole other interesting topic because one thing I've learned from seeing loads and loads and loads and loads of PAA data and working with other people doing clustering is that clustering, by definition, can't be objective in that the same query can mean a different thing to different people, as we know. And even if the query means the same thing to two different people, they might have different background knowledge and therefore their intent is slightly different. And what's really fascinating about this to me is you mentioned you get the four PAA questions when you do a Google search. And when you click on those questions, you get the concertinas out and you get some more related questions. Now those questions, so say you click on the first question and you get say four more. Those questions that come out in the concertina will be different to if you just re-Google that first question. And I think this has got to do with Google trying to understand the starting point of what you know and where you are in that journey, and each one has its own kind of fingerprint of intent. So it's one thing I talk to people about. The other really cool thing about this data is, to use the term kind of loosely, you are getting Google's clustering, if you like, on this topic. I call it intent proximity because I think what we're actually seeing is a probabilistic, if someone searches for this, this is the next most likely thing they are going to be asking. Which gives you a great path, as you were saying, to go down on your content. So what should we be focusing on? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that what we've seen before when we've done, because we have a feature that's where we play a game with People Also Ask. And what we sometimes found, I think on one of the ones that we did was migration. And sometimes what you find in terms of that path in Google trying to figure out what the next thing is, sometimes that the People Also Asks are very mixed. The intent is very mixed. They're like, are you talking about migration for data? Are you talking about migration of people? Are you talking about migration of animals? And Google's like, what do you want here? And that can tell you that this is a complicated SERP and things like that. So yeah, that's interesting. Mark Williams-Cook: A hundred percent. So I think Google uses it for query refinement as well. So when you've got a query and Google's kind of like, eh, I'm not really sure what you mean by that because 20% of people wanted this and another 20% wanted this. So it's like another tool for Google to bridge that gap, where apart from the terrifying amount of data they have on everyone, it's kind of- Mark Williams-Cook: Apart from the terrifying amount of data they have on everyone, it's a little bit in that context we don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get too far into the weeds on this, let's zoom out for a second. How do I actually get into the PAA box? That's the first thing. I think you have to realize if I Google how to make a bagel, I get a couple of recipe car results. Then the first thing I get right after that is the People Also Ask box. Not only does this show up on a lot of result pages, it shows up really, really high. You'll see in SEO tools all over the place, they're tracking and telling you when you're in the PAA box, when your competitors are in the PAA box. But the question is how to actually get in it. I've seen a lot of content about this and no one really talks about just the overall quality of your website and the overall quality of your content. It's usually very checklist-y, "Yeah, here's how you get into the PAA box." But since we're here, how do you get into the PAA box and does quality content matter? I know it's a very general question, but maybe let's just start there and see where it goes. Mark Williams-Cook: Start with a bombshell, quality content doesn't matter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, only core web vitals matter. Mark Williams-Cook: So one thing I'm happy to talk about, one thing I'll caveat before I start on this is a lot of people go into Also Ask thinking it is a tool to get you into PAAs. And I tell people that's not the goal. The goal here is more what Crystal was talking about, which is we want to write about this topic, what should we be saying? What should we be answering? And that's a broader strategy thing. But specifically I have found some nice ways to steal PAAs from people. And this was when, again, I was looking through all the data we were getting on PAAs. An interesting thing I found is that from what I can tell, the question that Google displays in the PAA is driven from user typed queries, not necessarily what is on the webpage that is hosting the answer. And actually there's data to suggest that Google even sometimes tidies up those queries that they're showing in PAAs. They're not always exactly how people type them. Now, Google is always playing this probability game of, okay, I think this webpage is answering this question on this section, so I will show this say as a featured snippet or in a PAA. And there's been loads of times we know where Google has embarrassed itself where it's shown horribly incorrect information as a feature snippet or in PAAs. And that's going to happen on the scale that they're doing things. So they're always going to lump for what they can be most sure is correct because it's a hard job. Because there's no actual structure to the web. You can make any HTML you like and search engines have to come along and be like, "What's going on here? I think this is here." So this sounds kind of lame, but one thing I've done is where I've seen PAA questions that I think are relevant, literally citing the actual question and using FAQ page schema on the page to mark it up because it allows Google to then say, "Well, this page I've got the answer from, I think they're answering this question here. Whereas this page, I've got almost the identical query and they've structured data up for me the exact answer here so I can be more sure that this is correct." Now, there's a fine line here because Google has specifically said we don't use structured data as an algorithmic thing, but we do use it to help understand your content better, which to me is very- Mordy Oberstein: The same thing in a way. Mark Williams-Cook: ... much the same thing. If they understand you are providing the specific answer to that specific question at a higher certainty than someone else, it's more likely you'll be in there. There are of course other factors that's not going to guarantee you get it. We've seen tests where people have done stuff like blocked their website completely from search engines and then opened it up for crawling again and they've lost their PAAs, featured snippets and they don't get them back. So there does seem to be some queuing system and user interaction thing that's going on there for Google to assess as well if it is a good answer. So I think potentially if Google has already an A plus answer there, you might not be able to steal it very easily. If they've got one they're still on the fence about and you provide these other signals, I think that could be a way in. Crystal Carter: In my experience, I've seen it, I don't know if you've seen this as well. So my favorite is where there's a PAA and it doesn't actually answer the question. And I'm like, "We could do that." Mark Williams-Cook: A hundred percent, exactly. Crystal Carter: And the FAQs are great and the scheme is great, but you can also do it with headers and your blog title and things like that, making sure that you're saying, I don't know, what should you wear to climb Mount Everest or whatever? And maybe somebody's saying to climb a mountain, you should do this. Maybe you actually know which actual things you need to climb specifically Mount Everest. Maybe you need a special something or other and you can answer that. The other one that I've seen, I don't know if you've also seen this as well, is that the current ranking PAA is old. It's like five, seven years old and you're like- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, there's a lot of them like that. Crystal Carter: We got some new stuff. Y'all have been ranking for a while. It's my time now. Mark Williams-Cook: It's my time to shine now. Mordy Oberstein: It's weird to me because when you look at those older results, oh, I should give you an example. So in this case of how to make a bagel, one of the questions is, do all bagels have to be boiled? Where do you think the answer would come from? Probably a Food Network website or food.com or allrecipes.com. It's coming from npr.org from 2015. Crystal Carter: Yeah. If you're Einstein Bros. Bagels, you could get that, Einstein Bros., if you're listening. I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: But it's just weird to me that Google doesn't default to those kinds of websites to begin with. That's what's going to show up in the recipe card. That's going to show up. The organic results are all the greatkneeder.com or Sally's Baking Addiction or Sophisticated Gourmet, they're all food sites. But the People Also Ask seems to be a different thing going on sometimes. Mark Williams-Cook: One of the interesting bits of feedback we've had from customers have also asked is, "Oh, I've typed this query," and they're in the UK and I'm getting us results, say about Walmart or something. And my understanding is that while a lot of features are engineered from what is in the index and are looking at or relying quite heavily on other Google metrics they have about websites, the PAA stuff seems to rely heavily on a language model. And there's a couple of reasons why I think this. So firstly is there's a massive bias towards the English language. PAAs are actually quite rare in a lot of other languages, even in European languages. Because I get this, again, I get lots of support feedback like, "Oh, I did this search in the Netherlands and there's no results" or something. And I think that's because the way they're building these maps of intent is on a language, not website country basis. Because the other really interesting thing about linguistics is intent is very much sewn into a language. And you come across that when you do international projects and people are like, "Oh no, no, no, no, don't just translate, localize. Because you can't just translate this, that's not how people ask these questions." So when you are trying to do what Google or achieve what Google's trying to achieve, which is this essentially linguistic map of intent and next questions, it has to be from a language, not a structural web basis. So that's why very commonly I see English US and English UK very weirdly mixed in those results. And I think why at the moment we see so many fewer results in other languages. I just think it's a really interesting point because it's the only feature I'm aware of I think that is built that way, where the geography actually has very little impact on the end result. That seems to be changing over time because we monitor how many no results we get from searches across different languages and countries. And especially Google's been talking about all these multimodal models they've got, and I think we're coming close to the point where they're like "Translation is solved." Because they've got their real time text in one language, the intent is coming out the other side, not just a machine translation, which I think is going to again, explode PAAs across the world, because at the minute I don't realize because I'm a monoglot, I'm very English focused, I can't look into these other sets. But that's what I'm seeing from a data point of view and customer feedback. Mordy Oberstein: Do you feel then quality for, say you have the helpful content up, that you have quality for a website, it's a very holistic thing. Do you think that quality for People Also Ask answer is just micro-focused and not macro-focused? They're just looking at the actual content for the answer. As long as your site is not like crap, you're not on a malicious site, it's not a spammy site. Whether or not your site is topically connected very specifically doesn't seem to matter from what I see in a lot of cases. So does that mean quality is less holistic for the People Also Ask box? Mark Williams-Cook: I would say within reason, yes, because it's more focused on this language model. I do think Google takes the quality of the site in general into consideration because again, it's gambling by putting you at the very forefront. It's betting on you being good and not malicious or just outright wrong. So I do think there's a overall reputational aspect that is considered. But again, when I use the actual functional as a digital matter as an SEO, when I use PAA data, I see it, as I said, more as a way to improve my site quality overall. So to give you an example, really common basic questions we have people using PAA data is do I need to create a single page for each one of these questions? And the answer is like absolutely not. Don't do that. And at the moment, like many things we do in SEO, I feel the tactics that are serving well and why they're working well is because as content creators you are filling a technological gap that Google hasn't quite bridged yet. Let me give you an example of this. When Google back in May, 2020x talked about mum for the first time, they gave the example, actually I think you had touched on, Crystal about climbing Mount Fuji and what do I need? And one of the things that interested me there was, they were saying these queries on average take nine searches to complete. And one of the long-term goals of this system was, well, all of those questions aren't answered in one place. So this system we've got can grab information from around the web and dynamically generate you your closest intent proximity all in one place. And I think we're way off that working well yet, and certainly what we've seen with the SGE stuff. But using PAA data I think is the next logical step to achieve that for users, for Google on your website. And when we're talking about, because it's tied into this topical authority, I think sometimes, not present company, but I've seen some people interpret topical authority as we need lots of pages on this topic. Whereas to use a human example, I have a specific friend I would ask if I wanted to buy a new car their advice. They're not necessarily my best friend, but over the years they've fed me small answers to lots of questions I've had about cars. So I now trust them for the big questions. And I think that's where PAAs fit in with this content quality, which is, yeah, look, okay, we've got a client that does drug rehab stuff, big, heavy competitive search terms. You can't just come in swinging trying to rank for alcohol addiction. You need to demonstrate that you have the answers to all of the small questions and build up the trust in exactly the same way we work as humans together. I won't go and trust someone with a big decision, with a big question until over a period of time they've drip fed me this knowledge and showed their understanding. And to me that's more topical authority about it. It's not number of pages, any of this. It's about this intent, proximity and building from the ground up. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's relevant topical authority. It should be relevant. So you wouldn't ask your mechanic friend about how to stop smoking cigarettes. They're not the same type of topic knowledge. I think what the other thing that you touched on is different networks of knowledge around Google. And my experience on search and working with clients and stuff, the thing I've seen is that you very often see featured snippets content showing up in lots of different places around the web. And sorry, People Also Ask content. Crystal Carter: ... in lots of different places around the web. And sorry, people also ask content showing up in lots of different places around the web, including featured snippets, also knowledge panels, also little dropdown, things like that. Are you able to speak on a little bit of that and how PAAs can help people to be displayed in some more of those content spaces around the SERP? Do you think that it has to be a very specific query that allows you to achieve that, or can it be a little bit fuzzier? Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah, it definitely can be a bit fuzzier. So obviously I gave the example of if I want to try and nab a PAA of someone, I've been very targeted in that and verbatim written the question out. That's sometimes a tactic I will use if we're operating in super competitive areas because it can be a lot easier to grab a featured snippet or grab a PAA. There's a lot that goes into the normal 10 pack ranking, links, all that kind of stuff. And it takes time to do that. Sometimes you can just punch out of your weight and be like, "Here's a great answer to this very specific thing," and get some nice traffic. In general, when we're doing content planning and writing, I don't think it's beneficial always for the user to have content that's structured in a question, answer, question, answer, question, answer, because that doesn't make for good reading. I think, again, without sounding like a Google spokesperson, there's a way to write the content that makes it an optimal user experience for web. And by that I mean there, to me, is a middle ground between if I go to New York Times and I want to read a long form well-written article by an author I like versus I transactionally want to understand the answer to this question. I think there's a middle ground that we see quite a lot on the web, a good use of headers, things like this that indicates very quickly to the user where they can find that specific information and written in a way that a machine can understand that. I'm confident we're at that stage now where machines can pick out those answers. I've covered previously before Google updates around passage indexing, BERT, and stuff that help with that, but we've seen it, I think, on a wider scale with things like ChatGPT. So one of the uses I have for ChatGPT in terms of what we're talking about is I will sometimes have a list of PAA questions and I can give ChatGPT a URL and I can say, "Put into a table yes or no if these questions are answered in this text." And even ChatGPT is good enough to, at very high accuracy, tell me if... There is the fuzzy answer in there. It doesn't have to be the exact question, but it's like, "Yeah, I've picked out that, that and that." And that's again, a way at scale we can kind of analyze maybe what's missing from our pages when we get this raw data, but it's a good indication as well if we've got publicly accessible tools for 20 bucks that can do this. Google's been doing this quite a while and it's very key to what they're at. And we've seen it again with clients. We've got our own projects here where we've prepared content briefs based on this data, but we don't to mostly answer the exact question. And yes, we're still ranking for it. That's the other advantage with the PAA data. So it's really the speed at which it updates. So when we were having a new prime minister in the UK, we were tracking hourly updates. Every few hours, the questions were changing. When there's a new episode of like Crystal Carter: Is it a lettuce? Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. Super quick. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. So that's the other kind of, I guess, advantage you get with PAA stuff when it comes to content briefs, which is you get the new questions, the new intent before they flow downstream into bigger keyword tools. I mean, ChatGPT as a search term was, for well over a month after launch, saying, "Zero search volume," and all this when there was millions of people searching for it because it takes a while to get downstream, but you type that into Google and immediately you had PAAs and what people were asking about it. Mordy Oberstein: If there's a PAA there, then people are asking about it because otherwise, if no one's asking about it, why would there be a PAA? Mark Williams-Cook: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great point. Mark Williams-Cook: Last point on this would be your bagel kind of thing when we're talking about car mechanics and stuff and site quality, which is again, I do see some your money, your life type filtering in PAAs and I think that drastically affects, again, if you are going to rank there. To use that mechanic example as Google, if I've got a topic where I don't really understand it, sometimes I'll just default to my best friend kind of thing, which is maybe why sites like NPR are ranking for bagels because Google's kind of like, "Bagels are not really that important. That's a good website." Mordy Oberstein: I'm from New York, dude. Bagels are very important. Mark Williams-Cook: From a YMYL perspective. Mordy Oberstein: All right. All right. Mark Williams-Cook: Maybe I need to localize my knowledge there. I seemed to have hit a nerve. But yeah, I think that plays a big factor as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's funny because I wonder if this'll change, but one of the things I've always tried to do when I'm either trying to optimize for a featured snippet or the same thing applies for a PAA question is, okay, I'm writing content, I'm writing a blog post, I'm writing naturally, and I write a header and the header's a question. I'm like, "Oh, wait a second, this is perfect." The first thing I'll do, even though I might not have done this otherwise, is I'll answer the question very explicitly in the first two lines. So if I'm asking, "Do all bagels need to be boiled?" Next line, "All bagels need to be boiled because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then the next paragraph, I'll start what I really wanted to start with, and I know it's a little bit like hmmm but maybe not the best thing to do, but it does kind of work. Google does make that connection between okay, header, answer. And for the most part it's pretty natural way of writing and I feel like that's kind of a good way of balancing I want to have the questions, but I also want to write in a way where the user gets to the page. It's going to seem kind of seamless. Crystal Carter: Also, I think Mark's talked lots about intent as well, and I think that if you click on a PAA for a question, you want the answer to the question. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Mark Williams-Cook: Yes. I mean I don't think anyone would disagree with that. I mean that's like a newspaper way of writing where you give the big facts and then you step back. To me, there's nothing I can use there. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I just don't enjoy that kind of writing as a person, but I get that most people do, and from my personal preference, I don't. Yeah. Mark Williams-Cook: Do you not enjoy reading that kind of writing? Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't enjoy reading it. I don't enjoy writing it. Mark Williams-Cook: Oh, interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I'm a weirdo. I'm a content snob, but that is the way to do it. Mark Williams-Cook: Do you like the suspense or something as you're building up to the actual answer? Like, "Do these bagels need to be boiled?" Mordy Oberstein: I like a narrative to build up. I want the background. I want to be able to build a scheme, like a knowledge scheme. When you just tell with the answer right away, I lose interest. Mark Williams-Cook: Okay. That's really interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I like the suspense. Mark Williams-Cook: And then the crescendo of, "Yes, they need to be boiled." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it does. Right. "Well, boiling bagels first started because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Historically- Mark Williams-Cook: Mordy, you should open a recipe website. Mordy Oberstein: That's exactly what I should be doing. Crystal Carter: Classic. Absolutely classic. Totally agree. It's my understanding that Mordy makes a mean General Tso's chicken. I'm just saying that. I haven't had it yet, but it's my understanding that it's very good. Mordy Oberstein: It is, and I made the sauce from scratch before also. Mark Williams-Cook: I'd love to hear more about the history of that. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I'll tell you. Crystal Carter: There's a movie on Netflix. Mordy Oberstein: I'm writing a book about it. It's coming out hardcover and soft cover. You can find it at a store near you soon. I'm not joking. I'll write a book now about General Tso's chicken. Mark, where can people find you? Mark Williams-Cook: People can no longer find me on X, unfortunately. Maybe one day I'll be back. I'm the taffer boy there. Same on most platforms actually. I'm currently most active on LinkedIn. I'm the only Mark Williams-Cook on LinkedIn. So search me out. You'll find me. I'm also on this new thing called Threads, which I'm trying to go out. Yeah. So again, the taffer boy. Mordy Oberstein: I'm there too. I'm there too. So come on over. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. You were the first person actually that Threaded me. Is that right? Threaded? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. You were like, "Hey, we can communicate again." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because you were off X. Mark Williams-Cook: X. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: For a while. I'm like, "You're gone and this is terrible." I really enjoyed having you on the platform, but now you're back on Threads. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah, LinkedIn's probably best if you want to find me. Maybe I'll be back to X one day if it's still a thing. But I'm trying to make a thing of Threads. I'm hyping it for people. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Mark Williams-Cook: Everyone's still a bit like, "Eh." Mordy Oberstein: I'm there. I'm there. I'm there. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah, we've still got access to X, so we'll kind of be there, but we'll check in with you once a week. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Mark. Check out AlsoAsked. Check out Candour. They also have a great podcast with Candour. Jack Chambers-Ward hosts that with you. So check that out as well, and check out AlsoAsked, which I said again for the third time, but check out AlsoAsked, and we will link to the tool in the show notes. Thanks, Mark. Mark Williams-Cook: Thanks for having me both. Appreciate it. Had a lot of fun. Crystal Carter: Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Thank you again. And Mark, it's one thing to talk about PAAs and content quality. It's another to actually know how to write a quality answer to a question, which is why we're going deep with the help of the co-owner of Content remix. Kaleigh Moore is here to help us understand what it means to really answer a user's question. So before Crystal and I weigh in, here's what Kaleigh had to say. Kaleigh Moore: In order to answer a user's pain points accurately, I think the first thing you have to do is really understand what your customers' or your users' pain points are, and there's no cheating this. So you have to really do the homework to figure out what those are. And that means speaking to your users, talking to your support team if that's something you have access to. What are the frequently asked questions? Figuring out what those are. Just really understanding the dynamic that you need to create with your customers and their actual true pain points. I think it's easy to guess at these. I think it's easy to build customer personas that sound really good on the page, but they're not accurate if you haven't done the legwork of actually having those one-to-one conversations with real users who not only just use the product or whatever it is occasionally, but use it a lot and really know the ins and outs can give you some actually valuable perspective. When you're writing an answer to these questions that is supposed to address these pain points, that's the biggest piece of the puzzle is just doing that homework, figuring out what the true pain points are and then answering them in depth. So not just breezing through them, giving a quick answer that somebody could scan through and read through in under a minute. We're talking about giving examples, giving context, showing actual use cases of how the pain point is addressed in real time. Again, you're not just getting on the surface here, you're going deep. You're giving them some true actionable insight on how they can solve the pain point. And I think that that's a difficult thing to do. I think a lot of people often cheat this and will do the quick and easy thing and just guess at the pain points and then provide a very generic answer or even use something like AI to kick out an answer that's good enough, but a really, really good job at this, it takes work. It takes some time and energy and it's not a quick fix. So it's something you have to really do your homework on. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think one of the things that really is interesting to me these days that I've been really harping on a lot lately is that we always talk about empathy when you're marketing, right? When I want to market something, I really need to empathize with the audience. I really to understand their pain points. But I think one of the things that Kaleigh is kind of alluding to that it's really more than that. When you are able to answer user's questions, and I think it comes in from a branding point of view, you're able to demonstrate something that's really powerful and that's, "I understand you and I'm in it with you. We're together with this. I understand your problems. I have a solution for you. Here's the answer." And it creates not just, "Okay, the user feels like, I understand that you have the answer for me, you understand me," it's that we're together. There's an identification that takes place where the person answering the question and the person asking the question bond and they see each other. So it's not just like you see your users and your users see you, it's that you both see each other together and you both kind of identify with each other and answering questions in a way where you really understand the audience tells your audience that they can trust you, that they're somebody that they can identify with. Once they identify with- Mordy Oberstein: They're somebody that they can identify with, and once they identify with you, then they'll buy from you. Crystal Carter: And I think that when it's in APA they'll say, "Oh, there's APA for that." Then when they get the answer and it's like, "Oh, you already know how to solve this problem, you already know the answer to this question. That means that you have already tried this path." I mean, again, I'm not alone. I can fix this. You know how to do all of these things. And that is so, so powerful because if you think about, I don't know, hospitality or something, if you sit down at the table and you're like, "Can I have..." And they're like, "Here's your glass of water," and you're like, "Do you have that?" They're like, "Here's that lovely bowl of bread." And you're like, "Oh my gosh, thanks guys. This is great. This is here for me." That is a really powerful experience. And like you said, it builds a relationship with the person and especially when they're searching for that topic, and we were talking about topic knowledge, topic authority. When they're searching generally in that topic, if they keep finding answers from you, then that builds up that trust, that builds up that really powerful relationship. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because I think what it comes down to, if you were to ask what does a conversion fundamentally come down to, I feel like it's the idea that the person who's buying from you sees themselves in you, right? That's usually what trust fundamentally is. Okay, we always talk about trust. Let's get real deep here. We talk about trust and authority, all these kind of things a lot. We talk about a lot on this podcast, but what is that fundamentally is that I see myself in you. I trust myself. I trust me. If I'm able to see myself in you, then I'll trust you. And that's how trust works. And when you answer questions and you demonstrate that you understand me, and now I see that you get me, now I start seeing myself in you and I start to really be able to trust you, and now I will buy from you. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think we mentioned recipe things for instance, and recipes are quite personal, for instance, because there's a lot of dietary things that people have to consider and stuff like that. So if I look up a recipe for a chocolate cake and I go, "Wait, but what about for dairy free?" And they're like, "I got that for you. This is what you do if you're dairy free." And you're like, "Oh, okay, well, what about gluten-free?" And they're like, "Oh, well, I got that for you too. That's right here." And like, "Well, what about this and that?" And you're like, "Well, I've got that right here, sugar-free right there for you. Don't worry. It's all fine. I got you." And that is a fundamental trust, that they already know what you need. And it's like if somebody comes to your house and you make sure, it's like a hospitality sort of thing, you make sure that people feel welcome. You make sure that people know that you thought about what they needed. So we were talking about answering the questions like you answer the question to the best of your ability with all of the information that you have available, and let them know, "Yeah, we wrote a guide on this last week. Or Hey, here's a video that'll help you do it, or here's some pictures that will illustrate it better for you." And that again, builds trust. And I think, yeah, when you see that they understand your perspective, they understand your need, that builds trust. And she was saying that there's no shortcuts in this, and she's absolutely right. You have to look at your actual data. I did an article on user first keyword research stuff, and this is when you go to your customer service people and go, "What are the things that people are asking about our product?" And they say, "They always ask this," and it's like, "Okay, well, we need to answer that question because they're always asking it." And sometimes it can be a little bit manual. Sometimes you have to talk to people who maybe are on the front lines a little bit, and sometimes you have to sit down and do some actual qualitative, messy research, and it's useful. Mordy Oberstein: You really have to get in their mindset. You really have to understand where that person's coming from because again, answering the question means a lot more than just answering a question. It means a lot. It's the foundation of establishing a relationship. So thank you, Kaleigh. Make sure you check out Kaleigh over on Twitter or X, I don't know what we're calling it anymore these days. We're recording this right after Twitter rebranded. That's over @kaleighf on Twitter. That's K-A-L-E-I-G-H-F. And also check out kaleighmoore.com. I'll link to both in the show notes. Thank you again, Kaleigh, so much. You know why I always feel gets me, I see myself in because of all the information that he gives me? Crystal Carter: And also because he can help settle SEO arguments when someone's like, "Nah," and you're like, "Uh-huh," and they're like, "Nah." And you're like, "Uh-huh." You can get on there and you can go, "Well- Mordy Oberstein: Barry said. Barry has an article. Crystal Carter: Barry said that this person said this. Barry said that that person said that. Barry said this. Barry referenced this change in the documentation there on this date here at that time. He's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: And here he is with this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two for you today. First up, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, add social media links to your Google Business profiles as Spotify last week's guest, Elizabeth Rule. You can now manage which links, which social media platforms Google shows in your Google business profile. Rule of thumb, if Google gives you control, take it. If you're an SEO, a business owner, why not control the social media profiles and accounts that show up in the businesses profile? Okay. Big stuff on the AI front as covered again by Barry Shores, but this time on search engine land, Google search generative experience adds SGE while browsing. Basically on some webpage and on some browsers, you can have Google's SGE create a summary of the page you're looking at. It's basically cliff notes for a webpage, and the implications of widespread adoption are huge. If the user just goes to the summary and they don't see all of your CTAs, they don't see all of the banner ads, or they don't get the full branding and authority benefit because they're not seeing all of the content on the page, what does that mean for the website? Google has said you cannot opt out of this feature as of yet, but paywall content does not work with the feature. Which brings up another vital question about the ecosystem. Are we going to see more paywalled content? Along with this change, Google's SGE can now give you a definition of a word within its generative text summary for a query in certain instances via hover over, which is kind of cool. Quick reminder, SGE is not seen across the world, so if you don't have access or if you don't see it when using Google, that's nothing to worry about because it's just not rolled out to half the planet yet. And that's this week's snappy news. Always so snappy, always so interesting, always so digestible. That's our snappy news is for you. Crystal Carter: No, it's not a digestible, it's a digestive is another name for like a cookie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So I'm not from the UK, but they have them here, and I never saw them when I lived in the US. I'm like, "What is this? It sounds like something, if I have stomach problems, I need a digestive." Yeah, but it's not, they're delicious. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they're totally fine. They're totally enjoyable. Mordy Oberstein: There's just regular cookies. Crystal Carter: But it sounds medicinal. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, right? Somehow they got past the branding there and people buy the... I don't know. Crystal Carter: Americans are like, "Chips Ahoy, Oreos." Mordy Oberstein: Right. Oreos. Crystal Carter: Like, oh, Nilla Wafers or whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Dunkaroos. Crystal Carter: Dunkaroos, UK digestives. Mordy Oberstein: Well, speaking of the UK, you know who's from the UK and who also works at Candour, which is the agency that Mark Williams Cook owns. It's Jack Chambers Ward, and he is our follow of the week. Hey, Jack, you're a follow of the week. Follow Jack on Twitter, @jlwchambers, C-H-A-M-B-E-R-S. We'll link to the profile in the show knows, but we love Jack. Jack is an all time favorite. Crystal Carter: We love Jack so much. Jack is so fantastic. He is a fantastic cornhole player, is much better than all of the other competition at cornhole. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, he'd be so bad at BrightonSEO cornhole. It wasn't even funny. I am looking forward to a rematch in three years from now when I'm able to go back to BrightonSEO in the UK. Crystal Carter: He is- Mordy Oberstein: But if you want to come to BrightonSEO at San Diego, Jack, if you're listening, I'm there and we will find a place to play cornhole and I'll have my revenge. Crystal Carter: I should also shout out that Jack Chambers Ward also does a fantastic podcast for Pandora Agency, and he's also really good at voice stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: He does like a Jean-Luc Picard vocal thing. Mordy Oberstein: Imitation. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He's great. Crystal Carter: Those things. Mordy Oberstein: Very talented. Crystal Carter: He's great. He's really great at the vocal stuff. And yeah, he's a great super nice guy, super smart, and does podcast things at events and is a fantastic follow. Do you follow Jack? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And if you have a question, he's such a sweet guy, happy to answer any questions you have. So if you have an SEO question, ask Jack. Ask Jack. All right, Jack, we got to hit the road, Jack. This is the end of the show. You Hit the Road Jack music. Who sings that? I don't know. That's a classic. Crystal Carter: That's Ray Charles. Mordy Oberstein: Hit the road Jack is Ray Charles? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Hit the Road Jack. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not thinking of the original version. I'm thinking of someone did a newer version. Wow. I'm not bad. Usually I know that stuff. Crystal Carter: It's definitely Ray Charles, Jamie Lee Fox as Jamie Lee Fox. Not Jamie Lee Fox, Jamie Fox, not Jamie Lee Fox. That's Jamie Lee Curtis. I've combined two human beings there. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. It is Ray Charles, but there's someone else who did it more recently, and when I say more recent, I mean, like 30, 40 years ago, who I'm thinking of. Anyway, wow. Crystal Carter: It's a big song. Mordy Oberstein: No, I knew that, and I feel totally embarrassed now. Before I embarrass myself any further with any other music reference that I don't know, but I should know, 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 brand new episode as we dive into is SEO part of marketing? Look forward 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, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Mark Williams-Cook Kaleigh Moore Jack Chambers Ward Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Candour SEO Agency Also Asked Search with Candour Podcast Kaleigh Moore Content Writing News: Add Social Media Links To Your Google Business Profiles Google Search Generative Experience adds SGE while browsing Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Mark Williams-Cook Kaleigh Moore Jack Chambers Ward Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Candour SEO Agency Also Asked Search with Candour Podcast Kaleigh Moore Content Writing News: Add Social Media Links To Your Google Business Profiles Google Search Generative Experience adds SGE while browsing Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERB's Up podcast, where you get 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 super quality, the super relevant, the super always curious and questioning, the one and only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: People always ask me things... Mordy Oberstein: People always do ask you. Crystal Carter: ... about this podcast. It's true. It's true. Mordy Oberstein: What's funny though- Crystal Carter: What a fantastic introduction. Mordy Oberstein: ... is that when you give an answer, you expand, drop down to- Crystal Carter: And just ask more questions. Mordy Oberstein: And more questions load. It's so dynamic. Crystal Carter: Everyone loves when you ask a question and people just give you more questions back. That's always something that- Mordy Oberstein: I always answering a question with a question like, "How are you doing Mordy?" "How should I be doing?" Crystal Carter: What do you think? I'm not sure anymore. Mordy Oberstein: What's it to you? Crystal Carter: Wouldn't you like to know? These are things that we would all like to know. Mordy Oberstein: Music. Crystal Carter: And this is why we're here. Mordy Oberstein: Why we're here is the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to a SEO newsletter, Searchlight, which comes out each and every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also set up your pages to answer questions, user questions, write on the SERP by adding FAQ structured data markup. Leverage the power of structured data markup with our structured data markup automation, which can save you hours of work, plus all the customization that comes along with it. So create and customize whatever you want and benefit from the automated markup we create for you. It's Wix, where we got your back on structured data markup. Now speaking of answering user questions, nothing speaks to this than the SERP and nothing speaks to that on the SERP more than People Also Ask, which is why today we're talking about quality content and its relationship to Google's People Also Ask box. When they say good things come in threes, they weren't looking at the SERP where good things come in fours usually. Today we're talking about the four questions. No, not those four questions. The four questions that often show up on the SERP under the label People Also Ask, as we take a deep dive into how content quality might be influencing the People Also Ask appearance with none other than the founder of Also Ask, the best tool for extracting People Also Ask insights for keyword research, and who also happens to be the founder of Candor, an SEO agency out of the UK. Mark Williams-Cook himself joins the podcast in just a few minutes. We'll also get into what content marketing extraordinaire Kaleigh Moore has to say about how you can write quality answers to those most pressing user questions. And of course we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So when it comes to the People Also Ask questions, riddle me this, riddle me that. How do I get myself some of that? As episode number 52 of SERP's Up podcast works to solve the puzzle that is People Also Ask policemen. Crystal Carter: That is a stonker. Mordy Oberstein: That was a lot. That was a lot. Crystal Carter: That's a lot. Mordy Oberstein: I really took it the next level. I told you my highlight of the week is writing those. Crystal Carter: That's absolutely stonking introduction. I think I'm really excited to be talking about this because it's a fascinating part of the SERP, and I'm going to just shower him with praise now before we get into it, because I know that Mark Williams-Cook is a fairly humble person. But also, it's literally just the best tool. You said it was the best tool. Mordy Oberstein: It's so good. Crystal Carter: It's such a good tool. I spoke to a team of designers about SEO and all this sort of stuff and I was like, "Oh, there's these great tools. Try this one. It's free. It's really easy to use." And they were like, "This is amazing. This is so good." And I was like, "I know. I know the dude who made it, he is super nice as well and really smart and he just made this thing and it's really useful and you can just see it all spread out really-" Mordy Oberstein: It's super useful. Crystal Carter: Super useful, super clever, super intuitive. You don't need loads of time to go into it. Anyway, it's great. Mordy Oberstein: Check out alsoask.com, or I'm sure we're going to get into more when Mark joins us. We actually did a tool time about this way, way, way early on in the tool time segment we do once in a while. Okay, so let's do a little intro on People Also Ask and then we'll bring Mark on. So I like to call People Also Ask, I'm going to call it PAA, People Also Ask, for short because People Also Ask takes me a long time to say it and I'm out of water. Crystal Carter: We're done. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to go with PAA. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I call it the universal SERP feature. By the way, those not familiar with the PAA box, when you type a query on Google, very often you'll get a series of four questions, sometimes three, sometimes two, but usually four. And then you expand the question to get a snippet of content with the URL ahat kind of answers your question. Then you can go into the actual webpage to get more information about it. It all sits under a header goal, People Also Ask. So these questions relate to the original query. So if I were to Google who is the captain of the Starship Enterprise, I'd get four questions on the SERP under a header that says People Also Ask. And the four questions are, how is this night different than all other nights? No, sorry, wrong four questions again. Who are the captains of the USS Enterprise in order? Who is the captain of the Enterprise after Kirk? Who was the first captain of the Enterprise before Kirk? And who is the greatest Starship captain? Obviously it's Kirk. If I expand one of these tabs- Crystal Carter: It's Picard. Mordy Oberstein: I know, Crystal and I have a hotly contested issue, but if I expand one of these tabs, I get a snippet of content that answers who was the greatest Starship captain and usually a URL to visit that page where the snippet of content came from. And according to Semrush, People Also Ask shows up on 65% of SERPs, which is insane. And I've done a few survey of the SERP studies in the past, once at Rank Ranger, once at Semrush, and one thing that I liked to look at was how often SERP features pair up together. How often do you see a feature snippet in a local pack? Almost never. Almost never. How often do you see a People Also Ask box with another SERP feature? And it's very, very often why I call it the universal donor of SERP features, and it makes it super powerful. Showing up here can be a great way to drive traffic to your website, and that's why we're honored to have Captain Cook, not Captain Kirk, Captain Cook, the Captain of Candor and Also Ask here right now with us to talk about People Also Ask and content and quality. So, oh, he's here right now. Oh, hi Mark. Mark Williams-Cook: Hello. I'm having a wonderful time already. What an intro. What an intro. Mordy Oberstein: It's a vibe. It's a vibe. Crystal Carter: Welcome to the podcast and welcome to the vibe. Welcome to the vibe. Mark Williams-Cook: Thank you. Super excited to talk to you about PAAs. I'll also be calling them PAAs. I can only say People Also Ask so many times. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So yeah, we're going to stick with some acronyms as we get into the SERP. We should also explain the SERP one, search engine results pages for any folks who are unacquainted. Mordy Oberstein: So you're right, SERP is a fancy word for the results page on Google. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Again, results page, you say too many times. SERP, it just rolls off the tongue. So before we get started, please full on plug for Also Ask. Mark Williams-Cook: Yes, cool. So thank you for the lovely introduction, by the way. You pretty much nailed it. So Also Asked is a tool that essentially saves you a whole bunch of time. You can go there, type in your query as you would in Google, and it will return a graphical map of what I call the nearest intent proximity terms to that question. We've got some more advanced features. So you can do things like customize the country and language you want to do the search in. So Google obviously, although PAAs are generally generated and mostly in English and they're done by language more than region, the results do vary. So rather than spending money on a VPN and trying to get them yourself, you can do that with Also Asked. We've also got the ability to do this in bulk. And by bulk, I mean you can upload a thousand queries at a time, which will mean on average you'll get between 25,000 and 50,000 questions in a download, which we made in a few minutes. And it also gives you, as you mentioned, the actual snippet as well that's showing on the page the URL. So there's lots of other interesting things you can do with that data, especially now people are building their own tool workflows using LLMs like ChatGPT. So there's lots of really interesting analysis you can do at scale on what Google's ranking. But it's mainly there to be accessible to everyone. So we actually, I demonstrated, because because we've been using as an agency PAA data for many years, and I demonstrated at a conference a command line tool we were using to do something similar, thinking lots of people were doing this. And feedback afterwards was like, "Wow, how do we do this?" And I think that bar for knowing a bit of Python and stuff is actually higher than you realize in kind of your bubble of the SEO community, because there's loads of people this tool's great for, like just people that do content, they've got no interest in coding. So that's who it's for. Crystal Carter: It's great. And I think also, so in the training that I was doing where I was, again, I was working with some graphic designers trying to get them to think about user intent and the user journey as they're building a website. So I don't necessarily think that they need to be all the way in the weeds on the keyword research and getting into breaking things down into clusters and stuff like that. But for instance, if you were to enter a search query and you notice that a lot of the things are about where to get something or whatever, if it was coffee and everything was like, where can I get a coffee? Where's the nearest cafe? That sort of thing. And it was all that sort of thing. Well guess what? As a graphic designer, for instance, that tells you that you should prioritize the location in your design. That tells you that should make it really easy for people to find out where you are to see that sort of thing. And it sort of gives you an idea of the sort of hive mind of how people feel about a particular topic. Mark Williams-Cook: Exactly. It's really interesting you touched on clustering already. So clustering, for maybe those who haven't come across it, is when you're putting a bunch of keywords or queries together of a similar topic or with the same intent, that might go in the same kind of place on a website. And there's loads of different tools obviously that do clustering. And that's a whole other interesting topic because one thing I've learned from seeing loads and loads and loads and loads of PAA data and working with other people doing clustering is that clustering, by definition, can't be objective in that the same query can mean a different thing to different people, as we know. And even if the query means the same thing to two different people, they might have different background knowledge and therefore their intent is slightly different. And what's really fascinating about this to me is you mentioned you get the four PAA questions when you do a Google search. And when you click on those questions, you get the concertinas out and you get some more related questions. Now those questions, so say you click on the first question and you get say four more. Those questions that come out in the concertina will be different to if you just re-Google that first question. And I think this has got to do with Google trying to understand the starting point of what you know and where you are in that journey, and each one has its own kind of fingerprint of intent. So it's one thing I talk to people about. The other really cool thing about this data is, to use the term kind of loosely, you are getting Google's clustering, if you like, on this topic. I call it intent proximity because I think what we're actually seeing is a probabilistic, if someone searches for this, this is the next most likely thing they are going to be asking. Which gives you a great path, as you were saying, to go down on your content. So what should we be focusing on? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that what we've seen before when we've done, because we have a feature that's where we play a game with People Also Ask. And what we sometimes found, I think on one of the ones that we did was migration. And sometimes what you find in terms of that path in Google trying to figure out what the next thing is, sometimes that the People Also Asks are very mixed. The intent is very mixed. They're like, are you talking about migration for data? Are you talking about migration of people? Are you talking about migration of animals? And Google's like, what do you want here? And that can tell you that this is a complicated SERP and things like that. So yeah, that's interesting. Mark Williams-Cook: A hundred percent. So I think Google uses it for query refinement as well. So when you've got a query and Google's kind of like, eh, I'm not really sure what you mean by that because 20% of people wanted this and another 20% wanted this. So it's like another tool for Google to bridge that gap, where apart from the terrifying amount of data they have on everyone, it's kind of- Mark Williams-Cook: Apart from the terrifying amount of data they have on everyone, it's a little bit in that context we don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get too far into the weeds on this, let's zoom out for a second. How do I actually get into the PAA box? That's the first thing. I think you have to realize if I Google how to make a bagel, I get a couple of recipe car results. Then the first thing I get right after that is the People Also Ask box. Not only does this show up on a lot of result pages, it shows up really, really high. You'll see in SEO tools all over the place, they're tracking and telling you when you're in the PAA box, when your competitors are in the PAA box. But the question is how to actually get in it. I've seen a lot of content about this and no one really talks about just the overall quality of your website and the overall quality of your content. It's usually very checklist-y, "Yeah, here's how you get into the PAA box." But since we're here, how do you get into the PAA box and does quality content matter? I know it's a very general question, but maybe let's just start there and see where it goes. Mark Williams-Cook: Start with a bombshell, quality content doesn't matter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, only core web vitals matter. Mark Williams-Cook: So one thing I'm happy to talk about, one thing I'll caveat before I start on this is a lot of people go into Also Ask thinking it is a tool to get you into PAAs. And I tell people that's not the goal. The goal here is more what Crystal was talking about, which is we want to write about this topic, what should we be saying? What should we be answering? And that's a broader strategy thing. But specifically I have found some nice ways to steal PAAs from people. And this was when, again, I was looking through all the data we were getting on PAAs. An interesting thing I found is that from what I can tell, the question that Google displays in the PAA is driven from user typed queries, not necessarily what is on the webpage that is hosting the answer. And actually there's data to suggest that Google even sometimes tidies up those queries that they're showing in PAAs. They're not always exactly how people type them. Now, Google is always playing this probability game of, okay, I think this webpage is answering this question on this section, so I will show this say as a featured snippet or in a PAA. And there's been loads of times we know where Google has embarrassed itself where it's shown horribly incorrect information as a feature snippet or in PAAs. And that's going to happen on the scale that they're doing things. So they're always going to lump for what they can be most sure is correct because it's a hard job. Because there's no actual structure to the web. You can make any HTML you like and search engines have to come along and be like, "What's going on here? I think this is here." So this sounds kind of lame, but one thing I've done is where I've seen PAA questions that I think are relevant, literally citing the actual question and using FAQ page schema on the page to mark it up because it allows Google to then say, "Well, this page I've got the answer from, I think they're answering this question here. Whereas this page, I've got almost the identical query and they've structured data up for me the exact answer here so I can be more sure that this is correct." Now, there's a fine line here because Google has specifically said we don't use structured data as an algorithmic thing, but we do use it to help understand your content better, which to me is very- Mordy Oberstein: The same thing in a way. Mark Williams-Cook: ... much the same thing. If they understand you are providing the specific answer to that specific question at a higher certainty than someone else, it's more likely you'll be in there. There are of course other factors that's not going to guarantee you get it. We've seen tests where people have done stuff like blocked their website completely from search engines and then opened it up for crawling again and they've lost their PAAs, featured snippets and they don't get them back. So there does seem to be some queuing system and user interaction thing that's going on there for Google to assess as well if it is a good answer. So I think potentially if Google has already an A plus answer there, you might not be able to steal it very easily. If they've got one they're still on the fence about and you provide these other signals, I think that could be a way in. Crystal Carter: In my experience, I've seen it, I don't know if you've seen this as well. So my favorite is where there's a PAA and it doesn't actually answer the question. And I'm like, "We could do that." Mark Williams-Cook: A hundred percent, exactly. Crystal Carter: And the FAQs are great and the scheme is great, but you can also do it with headers and your blog title and things like that, making sure that you're saying, I don't know, what should you wear to climb Mount Everest or whatever? And maybe somebody's saying to climb a mountain, you should do this. Maybe you actually know which actual things you need to climb specifically Mount Everest. Maybe you need a special something or other and you can answer that. The other one that I've seen, I don't know if you've also seen this as well, is that the current ranking PAA is old. It's like five, seven years old and you're like- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, there's a lot of them like that. Crystal Carter: We got some new stuff. Y'all have been ranking for a while. It's my time now. Mark Williams-Cook: It's my time to shine now. Mordy Oberstein: It's weird to me because when you look at those older results, oh, I should give you an example. So in this case of how to make a bagel, one of the questions is, do all bagels have to be boiled? Where do you think the answer would come from? Probably a Food Network website or food.com or allrecipes.com. It's coming from npr.org from 2015. Crystal Carter: Yeah. If you're Einstein Bros. Bagels, you could get that, Einstein Bros., if you're listening. I'm just saying. Mordy Oberstein: But it's just weird to me that Google doesn't default to those kinds of websites to begin with. That's what's going to show up in the recipe card. That's going to show up. The organic results are all the greatkneeder.com or Sally's Baking Addiction or Sophisticated Gourmet, they're all food sites. But the People Also Ask seems to be a different thing going on sometimes. Mark Williams-Cook: One of the interesting bits of feedback we've had from customers have also asked is, "Oh, I've typed this query," and they're in the UK and I'm getting us results, say about Walmart or something. And my understanding is that while a lot of features are engineered from what is in the index and are looking at or relying quite heavily on other Google metrics they have about websites, the PAA stuff seems to rely heavily on a language model. And there's a couple of reasons why I think this. So firstly is there's a massive bias towards the English language. PAAs are actually quite rare in a lot of other languages, even in European languages. Because I get this, again, I get lots of support feedback like, "Oh, I did this search in the Netherlands and there's no results" or something. And I think that's because the way they're building these maps of intent is on a language, not website country basis. Because the other really interesting thing about linguistics is intent is very much sewn into a language. And you come across that when you do international projects and people are like, "Oh no, no, no, no, don't just translate, localize. Because you can't just translate this, that's not how people ask these questions." So when you are trying to do what Google or achieve what Google's trying to achieve, which is this essentially linguistic map of intent and next questions, it has to be from a language, not a structural web basis. So that's why very commonly I see English US and English UK very weirdly mixed in those results. And I think why at the moment we see so many fewer results in other languages. I just think it's a really interesting point because it's the only feature I'm aware of I think that is built that way, where the geography actually has very little impact on the end result. That seems to be changing over time because we monitor how many no results we get from searches across different languages and countries. And especially Google's been talking about all these multimodal models they've got, and I think we're coming close to the point where they're like "Translation is solved." Because they've got their real time text in one language, the intent is coming out the other side, not just a machine translation, which I think is going to again, explode PAAs across the world, because at the minute I don't realize because I'm a monoglot, I'm very English focused, I can't look into these other sets. But that's what I'm seeing from a data point of view and customer feedback. Mordy Oberstein: Do you feel then quality for, say you have the helpful content up, that you have quality for a website, it's a very holistic thing. Do you think that quality for People Also Ask answer is just micro-focused and not macro-focused? They're just looking at the actual content for the answer. As long as your site is not like crap, you're not on a malicious site, it's not a spammy site. Whether or not your site is topically connected very specifically doesn't seem to matter from what I see in a lot of cases. So does that mean quality is less holistic for the People Also Ask box? Mark Williams-Cook: I would say within reason, yes, because it's more focused on this language model. I do think Google takes the quality of the site in general into consideration because again, it's gambling by putting you at the very forefront. It's betting on you being good and not malicious or just outright wrong. So I do think there's a overall reputational aspect that is considered. But again, when I use the actual functional as a digital matter as an SEO, when I use PAA data, I see it, as I said, more as a way to improve my site quality overall. So to give you an example, really common basic questions we have people using PAA data is do I need to create a single page for each one of these questions? And the answer is like absolutely not. Don't do that. And at the moment, like many things we do in SEO, I feel the tactics that are serving well and why they're working well is because as content creators you are filling a technological gap that Google hasn't quite bridged yet. Let me give you an example of this. When Google back in May, 2020x talked about mum for the first time, they gave the example, actually I think you had touched on, Crystal about climbing Mount Fuji and what do I need? And one of the things that interested me there was, they were saying these queries on average take nine searches to complete. And one of the long-term goals of this system was, well, all of those questions aren't answered in one place. So this system we've got can grab information from around the web and dynamically generate you your closest intent proximity all in one place. And I think we're way off that working well yet, and certainly what we've seen with the SGE stuff. But using PAA data I think is the next logical step to achieve that for users, for Google on your website. And when we're talking about, because it's tied into this topical authority, I think sometimes, not present company, but I've seen some people interpret topical authority as we need lots of pages on this topic. Whereas to use a human example, I have a specific friend I would ask if I wanted to buy a new car their advice. They're not necessarily my best friend, but over the years they've fed me small answers to lots of questions I've had about cars. So I now trust them for the big questions. And I think that's where PAAs fit in with this content quality, which is, yeah, look, okay, we've got a client that does drug rehab stuff, big, heavy competitive search terms. You can't just come in swinging trying to rank for alcohol addiction. You need to demonstrate that you have the answers to all of the small questions and build up the trust in exactly the same way we work as humans together. I won't go and trust someone with a big decision, with a big question until over a period of time they've drip fed me this knowledge and showed their understanding. And to me that's more topical authority about it. It's not number of pages, any of this. It's about this intent, proximity and building from the ground up. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's relevant topical authority. It should be relevant. So you wouldn't ask your mechanic friend about how to stop smoking cigarettes. They're not the same type of topic knowledge. I think what the other thing that you touched on is different networks of knowledge around Google. And my experience on search and working with clients and stuff, the thing I've seen is that you very often see featured snippets content showing up in lots of different places around the web. And sorry, People Also Ask content. Crystal Carter: ... in lots of different places around the web. And sorry, people also ask content showing up in lots of different places around the web, including featured snippets, also knowledge panels, also little dropdown, things like that. Are you able to speak on a little bit of that and how PAAs can help people to be displayed in some more of those content spaces around the SERP? Do you think that it has to be a very specific query that allows you to achieve that, or can it be a little bit fuzzier? Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah, it definitely can be a bit fuzzier. So obviously I gave the example of if I want to try and nab a PAA of someone, I've been very targeted in that and verbatim written the question out. That's sometimes a tactic I will use if we're operating in super competitive areas because it can be a lot easier to grab a featured snippet or grab a PAA. There's a lot that goes into the normal 10 pack ranking, links, all that kind of stuff. And it takes time to do that. Sometimes you can just punch out of your weight and be like, "Here's a great answer to this very specific thing," and get some nice traffic. In general, when we're doing content planning and writing, I don't think it's beneficial always for the user to have content that's structured in a question, answer, question, answer, question, answer, because that doesn't make for good reading. I think, again, without sounding like a Google spokesperson, there's a way to write the content that makes it an optimal user experience for web. And by that I mean there, to me, is a middle ground between if I go to New York Times and I want to read a long form well-written article by an author I like versus I transactionally want to understand the answer to this question. I think there's a middle ground that we see quite a lot on the web, a good use of headers, things like this that indicates very quickly to the user where they can find that specific information and written in a way that a machine can understand that. I'm confident we're at that stage now where machines can pick out those answers. I've covered previously before Google updates around passage indexing, BERT, and stuff that help with that, but we've seen it, I think, on a wider scale with things like ChatGPT. So one of the uses I have for ChatGPT in terms of what we're talking about is I will sometimes have a list of PAA questions and I can give ChatGPT a URL and I can say, "Put into a table yes or no if these questions are answered in this text." And even ChatGPT is good enough to, at very high accuracy, tell me if... There is the fuzzy answer in there. It doesn't have to be the exact question, but it's like, "Yeah, I've picked out that, that and that." And that's again, a way at scale we can kind of analyze maybe what's missing from our pages when we get this raw data, but it's a good indication as well if we've got publicly accessible tools for 20 bucks that can do this. Google's been doing this quite a while and it's very key to what they're at. And we've seen it again with clients. We've got our own projects here where we've prepared content briefs based on this data, but we don't to mostly answer the exact question. And yes, we're still ranking for it. That's the other advantage with the PAA data. So it's really the speed at which it updates. So when we were having a new prime minister in the UK, we were tracking hourly updates. Every few hours, the questions were changing. When there's a new episode of like Crystal Carter: Is it a lettuce? Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. Super quick. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. So that's the other kind of, I guess, advantage you get with PAA stuff when it comes to content briefs, which is you get the new questions, the new intent before they flow downstream into bigger keyword tools. I mean, ChatGPT as a search term was, for well over a month after launch, saying, "Zero search volume," and all this when there was millions of people searching for it because it takes a while to get downstream, but you type that into Google and immediately you had PAAs and what people were asking about it. Mordy Oberstein: If there's a PAA there, then people are asking about it because otherwise, if no one's asking about it, why would there be a PAA? Mark Williams-Cook: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great point. Mark Williams-Cook: Last point on this would be your bagel kind of thing when we're talking about car mechanics and stuff and site quality, which is again, I do see some your money, your life type filtering in PAAs and I think that drastically affects, again, if you are going to rank there. To use that mechanic example as Google, if I've got a topic where I don't really understand it, sometimes I'll just default to my best friend kind of thing, which is maybe why sites like NPR are ranking for bagels because Google's kind of like, "Bagels are not really that important. That's a good website." Mordy Oberstein: I'm from New York, dude. Bagels are very important. Mark Williams-Cook: From a YMYL perspective. Mordy Oberstein: All right. All right. Mark Williams-Cook: Maybe I need to localize my knowledge there. I seemed to have hit a nerve. But yeah, I think that plays a big factor as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's funny because I wonder if this'll change, but one of the things I've always tried to do when I'm either trying to optimize for a featured snippet or the same thing applies for a PAA question is, okay, I'm writing content, I'm writing a blog post, I'm writing naturally, and I write a header and the header's a question. I'm like, "Oh, wait a second, this is perfect." The first thing I'll do, even though I might not have done this otherwise, is I'll answer the question very explicitly in the first two lines. So if I'm asking, "Do all bagels need to be boiled?" Next line, "All bagels need to be boiled because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then the next paragraph, I'll start what I really wanted to start with, and I know it's a little bit like hmmm but maybe not the best thing to do, but it does kind of work. Google does make that connection between okay, header, answer. And for the most part it's pretty natural way of writing and I feel like that's kind of a good way of balancing I want to have the questions, but I also want to write in a way where the user gets to the page. It's going to seem kind of seamless. Crystal Carter: Also, I think Mark's talked lots about intent as well, and I think that if you click on a PAA for a question, you want the answer to the question. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Mark Williams-Cook: Yes. I mean I don't think anyone would disagree with that. I mean that's like a newspaper way of writing where you give the big facts and then you step back. To me, there's nothing I can use there. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I just don't enjoy that kind of writing as a person, but I get that most people do, and from my personal preference, I don't. Yeah. Mark Williams-Cook: Do you not enjoy reading that kind of writing? Mordy Oberstein: No, I don't enjoy reading it. I don't enjoy writing it. Mark Williams-Cook: Oh, interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I'm a weirdo. I'm a content snob, but that is the way to do it. Mark Williams-Cook: Do you like the suspense or something as you're building up to the actual answer? Like, "Do these bagels need to be boiled?" Mordy Oberstein: I like a narrative to build up. I want the background. I want to be able to build a scheme, like a knowledge scheme. When you just tell with the answer right away, I lose interest. Mark Williams-Cook: Okay. That's really interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I like the suspense. Mark Williams-Cook: And then the crescendo of, "Yes, they need to be boiled." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it does. Right. "Well, boiling bagels first started because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Historically- Mark Williams-Cook: Mordy, you should open a recipe website. Mordy Oberstein: That's exactly what I should be doing. Crystal Carter: Classic. Absolutely classic. Totally agree. It's my understanding that Mordy makes a mean General Tso's chicken. I'm just saying that. I haven't had it yet, but it's my understanding that it's very good. Mordy Oberstein: It is, and I made the sauce from scratch before also. Mark Williams-Cook: I'd love to hear more about the history of that. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I'll tell you. Crystal Carter: There's a movie on Netflix. Mordy Oberstein: I'm writing a book about it. It's coming out hardcover and soft cover. You can find it at a store near you soon. I'm not joking. I'll write a book now about General Tso's chicken. Mark, where can people find you? Mark Williams-Cook: People can no longer find me on X, unfortunately. Maybe one day I'll be back. I'm the taffer boy there. Same on most platforms actually. I'm currently most active on LinkedIn. I'm the only Mark Williams-Cook on LinkedIn. So search me out. You'll find me. I'm also on this new thing called Threads, which I'm trying to go out. Yeah. So again, the taffer boy. Mordy Oberstein: I'm there too. I'm there too. So come on over. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. You were the first person actually that Threaded me. Is that right? Threaded? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah. You were like, "Hey, we can communicate again." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because you were off X. Mark Williams-Cook: X. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: For a while. I'm like, "You're gone and this is terrible." I really enjoyed having you on the platform, but now you're back on Threads. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah, LinkedIn's probably best if you want to find me. Maybe I'll be back to X one day if it's still a thing. But I'm trying to make a thing of Threads. I'm hyping it for people. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Mark Williams-Cook: Everyone's still a bit like, "Eh." Mordy Oberstein: I'm there. I'm there. I'm there. Mark Williams-Cook: Yeah, we've still got access to X, so we'll kind of be there, but we'll check in with you once a week. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Mark. Check out AlsoAsked. Check out Candour. They also have a great podcast with Candour. Jack Chambers-Ward hosts that with you. So check that out as well, and check out AlsoAsked, which I said again for the third time, but check out AlsoAsked, and we will link to the tool in the show notes. Thanks, Mark. Mark Williams-Cook: Thanks for having me both. Appreciate it. Had a lot of fun. Crystal Carter: Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Thank you again. And Mark, it's one thing to talk about PAAs and content quality. It's another to actually know how to write a quality answer to a question, which is why we're going deep with the help of the co-owner of Content remix. Kaleigh Moore is here to help us understand what it means to really answer a user's question. So before Crystal and I weigh in, here's what Kaleigh had to say. Kaleigh Moore: In order to answer a user's pain points accurately, I think the first thing you have to do is really understand what your customers' or your users' pain points are, and there's no cheating this. So you have to really do the homework to figure out what those are. And that means speaking to your users, talking to your support team if that's something you have access to. What are the frequently asked questions? Figuring out what those are. Just really understanding the dynamic that you need to create with your customers and their actual true pain points. I think it's easy to guess at these. I think it's easy to build customer personas that sound really good on the page, but they're not accurate if you haven't done the legwork of actually having those one-to-one conversations with real users who not only just use the product or whatever it is occasionally, but use it a lot and really know the ins and outs can give you some actually valuable perspective. When you're writing an answer to these questions that is supposed to address these pain points, that's the biggest piece of the puzzle is just doing that homework, figuring out what the true pain points are and then answering them in depth. So not just breezing through them, giving a quick answer that somebody could scan through and read through in under a minute. We're talking about giving examples, giving context, showing actual use cases of how the pain point is addressed in real time. Again, you're not just getting on the surface here, you're going deep. You're giving them some true actionable insight on how they can solve the pain point. And I think that that's a difficult thing to do. I think a lot of people often cheat this and will do the quick and easy thing and just guess at the pain points and then provide a very generic answer or even use something like AI to kick out an answer that's good enough, but a really, really good job at this, it takes work. It takes some time and energy and it's not a quick fix. So it's something you have to really do your homework on. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think one of the things that really is interesting to me these days that I've been really harping on a lot lately is that we always talk about empathy when you're marketing, right? When I want to market something, I really need to empathize with the audience. I really to understand their pain points. But I think one of the things that Kaleigh is kind of alluding to that it's really more than that. When you are able to answer user's questions, and I think it comes in from a branding point of view, you're able to demonstrate something that's really powerful and that's, "I understand you and I'm in it with you. We're together with this. I understand your problems. I have a solution for you. Here's the answer." And it creates not just, "Okay, the user feels like, I understand that you have the answer for me, you understand me," it's that we're together. There's an identification that takes place where the person answering the question and the person asking the question bond and they see each other. So it's not just like you see your users and your users see you, it's that you both see each other together and you both kind of identify with each other and answering questions in a way where you really understand the audience tells your audience that they can trust you, that they're somebody that they can identify with. Once they identify with- Mordy Oberstein: They're somebody that they can identify with, and once they identify with you, then they'll buy from you. Crystal Carter: And I think that when it's in APA they'll say, "Oh, there's APA for that." Then when they get the answer and it's like, "Oh, you already know how to solve this problem, you already know the answer to this question. That means that you have already tried this path." I mean, again, I'm not alone. I can fix this. You know how to do all of these things. And that is so, so powerful because if you think about, I don't know, hospitality or something, if you sit down at the table and you're like, "Can I have..." And they're like, "Here's your glass of water," and you're like, "Do you have that?" They're like, "Here's that lovely bowl of bread." And you're like, "Oh my gosh, thanks guys. This is great. This is here for me." That is a really powerful experience. And like you said, it builds a relationship with the person and especially when they're searching for that topic, and we were talking about topic knowledge, topic authority. When they're searching generally in that topic, if they keep finding answers from you, then that builds up that trust, that builds up that really powerful relationship. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because I think what it comes down to, if you were to ask what does a conversion fundamentally come down to, I feel like it's the idea that the person who's buying from you sees themselves in you, right? That's usually what trust fundamentally is. Okay, we always talk about trust. Let's get real deep here. We talk about trust and authority, all these kind of things a lot. We talk about a lot on this podcast, but what is that fundamentally is that I see myself in you. I trust myself. I trust me. If I'm able to see myself in you, then I'll trust you. And that's how trust works. And when you answer questions and you demonstrate that you understand me, and now I see that you get me, now I start seeing myself in you and I start to really be able to trust you, and now I will buy from you. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think we mentioned recipe things for instance, and recipes are quite personal, for instance, because there's a lot of dietary things that people have to consider and stuff like that. So if I look up a recipe for a chocolate cake and I go, "Wait, but what about for dairy free?" And they're like, "I got that for you. This is what you do if you're dairy free." And you're like, "Oh, okay, well, what about gluten-free?" And they're like, "Oh, well, I got that for you too. That's right here." And like, "Well, what about this and that?" And you're like, "Well, I've got that right here, sugar-free right there for you. Don't worry. It's all fine. I got you." And that is a fundamental trust, that they already know what you need. And it's like if somebody comes to your house and you make sure, it's like a hospitality sort of thing, you make sure that people feel welcome. You make sure that people know that you thought about what they needed. So we were talking about answering the questions like you answer the question to the best of your ability with all of the information that you have available, and let them know, "Yeah, we wrote a guide on this last week. Or Hey, here's a video that'll help you do it, or here's some pictures that will illustrate it better for you." And that again, builds trust. And I think, yeah, when you see that they understand your perspective, they understand your need, that builds trust. And she was saying that there's no shortcuts in this, and she's absolutely right. You have to look at your actual data. I did an article on user first keyword research stuff, and this is when you go to your customer service people and go, "What are the things that people are asking about our product?" And they say, "They always ask this," and it's like, "Okay, well, we need to answer that question because they're always asking it." And sometimes it can be a little bit manual. Sometimes you have to talk to people who maybe are on the front lines a little bit, and sometimes you have to sit down and do some actual qualitative, messy research, and it's useful. Mordy Oberstein: You really have to get in their mindset. You really have to understand where that person's coming from because again, answering the question means a lot more than just answering a question. It means a lot. It's the foundation of establishing a relationship. So thank you, Kaleigh. Make sure you check out Kaleigh over on Twitter or X, I don't know what we're calling it anymore these days. We're recording this right after Twitter rebranded. That's over @kaleighf on Twitter. That's K-A-L-E-I-G-H-F. And also check out kaleighmoore.com. I'll link to both in the show notes. Thank you again, Kaleigh, so much. You know why I always feel gets me, I see myself in because of all the information that he gives me? Crystal Carter: And also because he can help settle SEO arguments when someone's like, "Nah," and you're like, "Uh-huh," and they're like, "Nah." And you're like, "Uh-huh." You can get on there and you can go, "Well- Mordy Oberstein: Barry said. Barry has an article. Crystal Carter: Barry said that this person said this. Barry said that that person said that. Barry said this. Barry referenced this change in the documentation there on this date here at that time. He's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: And here he is with this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two for you today. First up, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, add social media links to your Google Business profiles as Spotify last week's guest, Elizabeth Rule. You can now manage which links, which social media platforms Google shows in your Google business profile. Rule of thumb, if Google gives you control, take it. If you're an SEO, a business owner, why not control the social media profiles and accounts that show up in the businesses profile? Okay. Big stuff on the AI front as covered again by Barry Shores, but this time on search engine land, Google search generative experience adds SGE while browsing. Basically on some webpage and on some browsers, you can have Google's SGE create a summary of the page you're looking at. It's basically cliff notes for a webpage, and the implications of widespread adoption are huge. If the user just goes to the summary and they don't see all of your CTAs, they don't see all of the banner ads, or they don't get the full branding and authority benefit because they're not seeing all of the content on the page, what does that mean for the website? Google has said you cannot opt out of this feature as of yet, but paywall content does not work with the feature. Which brings up another vital question about the ecosystem. Are we going to see more paywalled content? Along with this change, Google's SGE can now give you a definition of a word within its generative text summary for a query in certain instances via hover over, which is kind of cool. Quick reminder, SGE is not seen across the world, so if you don't have access or if you don't see it when using Google, that's nothing to worry about because it's just not rolled out to half the planet yet. And that's this week's snappy news. Always so snappy, always so interesting, always so digestible. That's our snappy news is for you. Crystal Carter: No, it's not a digestible, it's a digestive is another name for like a cookie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So I'm not from the UK, but they have them here, and I never saw them when I lived in the US. I'm like, "What is this? It sounds like something, if I have stomach problems, I need a digestive." Yeah, but it's not, they're delicious. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they're totally fine. They're totally enjoyable. Mordy Oberstein: There's just regular cookies. Crystal Carter: But it sounds medicinal. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, right? Somehow they got past the branding there and people buy the... I don't know. Crystal Carter: Americans are like, "Chips Ahoy, Oreos." Mordy Oberstein: Right. Oreos. Crystal Carter: Like, oh, Nilla Wafers or whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Dunkaroos. Crystal Carter: Dunkaroos, UK digestives. Mordy Oberstein: Well, speaking of the UK, you know who's from the UK and who also works at Candour, which is the agency that Mark Williams Cook owns. It's Jack Chambers Ward, and he is our follow of the week. Hey, Jack, you're a follow of the week. Follow Jack on Twitter, @jlwchambers, C-H-A-M-B-E-R-S. We'll link to the profile in the show knows, but we love Jack. Jack is an all time favorite. Crystal Carter: We love Jack so much. Jack is so fantastic. He is a fantastic cornhole player, is much better than all of the other competition at cornhole. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, he'd be so bad at BrightonSEO cornhole. It wasn't even funny. I am looking forward to a rematch in three years from now when I'm able to go back to BrightonSEO in the UK. Crystal Carter: He is- Mordy Oberstein: But if you want to come to BrightonSEO at San Diego, Jack, if you're listening, I'm there and we will find a place to play cornhole and I'll have my revenge. Crystal Carter: I should also shout out that Jack Chambers Ward also does a fantastic podcast for Pandora Agency, and he's also really good at voice stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: He does like a Jean-Luc Picard vocal thing. Mordy Oberstein: Imitation. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He's great. Crystal Carter: Those things. Mordy Oberstein: Very talented. Crystal Carter: He's great. He's really great at the vocal stuff. And yeah, he's a great super nice guy, super smart, and does podcast things at events and is a fantastic follow. Do you follow Jack? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And if you have a question, he's such a sweet guy, happy to answer any questions you have. So if you have an SEO question, ask Jack. Ask Jack. All right, Jack, we got to hit the road, Jack. This is the end of the show. You Hit the Road Jack music. Who sings that? I don't know. That's a classic. Crystal Carter: That's Ray Charles. Mordy Oberstein: Hit the road Jack is Ray Charles? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Hit the Road Jack. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not thinking of the original version. I'm thinking of someone did a newer version. Wow. I'm not bad. Usually I know that stuff. Crystal Carter: It's definitely Ray Charles, Jamie Lee Fox as Jamie Lee Fox. Not Jamie Lee Fox, Jamie Fox, not Jamie Lee Fox. That's Jamie Lee Curtis. I've combined two human beings there. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. It is Ray Charles, but there's someone else who did it more recently, and when I say more recent, I mean, like 30, 40 years ago, who I'm thinking of. Anyway, wow. Crystal Carter: It's a big song. Mordy Oberstein: No, I knew that, and I feel totally embarrassed now. Before I embarrass myself any further with any other music reference that I don't know, but I should know, 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 brand new episode as we dive into is SEO part of marketing? Look forward 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, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us your 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

Celeste Gonzalez leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Celeste Gonzalez Director of RooLabs at RicketyRoo Celeste Gonzalez leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Articles & Resources 16 Jul 2024 Local link building: How community and local activities lead to backlinks 18 Jan 2024 Microsoft Clarity: Get more from your SEO by improving UX and conversions 27 Apr 2023 Keyword research essentials for local SEO 3 Nov 2022 How to start optimizing your Wix site for search 12 Aug 2022 Local citations: Why you need them and how to get started 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

Did you know Google calls its own SERP an ecosystem? That’s right. Today’s SERP is its own living, breathing thing. Google is constantly coming up with new SERP features & changes which impact rankings and placement of content. How do you adapt to all these changes, you ask? That’s exactly what we’ll discuss in this episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast! With over 12 years of SEO experience, Lily Ray has led SEO campaigns for dozens of major retailers and brands. She joins the SERP’s Up team this week to discuss SERP changes and their impact on CTRs. Join Mordy and Crystal, and learn how to cope with SERP changes. Back How to adapt to changes on the SERP? Did you know Google calls its own SERP an ecosystem? That’s right. Today’s SERP is its own living, breathing thing. Google is constantly coming up with new SERP features & changes which impact rankings and placement of content. How do you adapt to all these changes, you ask? That’s exactly what we’ll discuss in this episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast! With over 12 years of SEO experience, Lily Ray has led SEO campaigns for dozens of major retailers and brands. She joins the SERP’s Up team this week to discuss SERP changes and their impact on CTRs. Join Mordy and Crystal, and learn how to cope with SERP changes. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 20 | January 11, 2023 | 36 MIN 00:00 / 36:25 This week’s guests Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPS Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERPS Up podcast. We're pointing out some groovy new insights around what's happened in an SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by the lustrous, the fabulous, the amazingly whatever, whatever, whatever, I've run out of adjectives yet again, the head of SEO communications here at Wix's Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: That was an amazing introduction, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I totally nailed it, right? Nailed it. Crystal Carter: You nailed it. Mordy Oberstein: I nailed it. I had all the words in my head and I forgot them. Crystal Carter: But whatever, whatever, whatever, I think I should get that on a business card. Mordy Oberstein: I want that on my tombstone, whatever, whatever, whatever, Mordy Oberstein. Crystal Carter: I mean, to be fair, it's normally a shower of compliments, which I'll take that. I'll take that. Mordy Oberstein: I meant, whatever best adjectives you can think of and that's what I meant. Crystal Carter: Insert adjective here. Mordy Oberstein: That's in my heart. Crystal Carter: Someone posted an outreach email that was like, insert name. Mordy Oberstein: I saw that on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Here, insert name. I hope, insert current event and or whether and/or blank, we would be delighted to have you, blah, blah, blah. I was just like, "Wow." It's like you were sincerely, insert name, again. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Wow. They have one job to do. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Honestly. Honestly. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, cold outreach is hard. Let's be fair. Crystal Carter: Oh man. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's so hard. Crystal Carter: The thing that used to drive me crazy is when people would call you up and they'd be like, "Oh, can I have five minutes of your time?" I'd be like, "No. My God." Mordy Oberstein: Telemarketers back in the day... Now I just get spam on my text messages and scams in my text messages. It used to be scam phone calls at home, at dinner. Crystal Carter: Scam calls at home, at dinner. Right, right. I used to get them at the agency. People would call us up and they'd be like, "Can I have five minutes of your time?" I was like, "I don't know, how much money you got. I have billable hours. These are billable hours, sir." Like, "No, I don't have time for you, because I'm on billable hours. Goodbye." Mordy Oberstein: But aren't you interested in the Renoco slow cooker? Crystal Carter: I'm not doing a survey for you for free. What? No. Mordy Oberstein: The SERPS Up podcast is brought to you by Wix's, where you can manage your local citations, respond to user reviews across various platforms, and even set up Google posts. All right. From Wix with our overall app. Look for it in the app market within the Wix dashboard. We're talking about the Uberall app and all that local stuff, because local stuff is full of SERP feature stuff and SERP feature stuff is what we're talking about, because it's constantly changing. The SERP is constantly changing, which is why today we're talking about how you can adapt to the changes on the Google results page. Things like why, oh why is Google changing all the time, all the time, and how to keep up with these changes. Why you should keep up with these changes and what you should do with all of these changes. Also, the Great Lily Ray stops by to share the most significant changes and trends she's seen on the SERP and we dive into a tool to help you keep track of those changes. Of course, we got some snappy news for you and a very special edition of who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Episode number 20 of the SERPS Up podcast is on the move. Crystal Carter: I can't believe we're at episode 20. Mordy Oberstein: Isn't that nuts? Crystal Carter: This is crazy, Mordy. What have we been doing with ourselves? Mordy Oberstein: I've been podcasting this whole time. I don't know what you've been doing. Crystal Carter: I feel like a celebration is an order or something. I don't know. What is it like- Mordy Oberstein: Well, in the last episode, I think we mentioned every time we dance when we celebrate. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. We'll do a little's podcast dance. Mordy Oberstein: This is a time on sprockets when we dance, for all you Saturday Night Live folks from back in the '90s. Crystal Carter: If anybody is listening to this podcast, I hope people are listening to this podcast, but everyone who's listening to this podcast, the dance moves that I'm doing right now are incredible. But you've never seen dance this…. Mordy Oberstein: You're not even dancing anymore. Crystal Carter: I am dancing, Mordy, and the moves are incredible and amazing and they're world changing. Oh, now Mordy's doing some very strange dancing. Mordy Oberstein: The John Volta thing from Pulp Fiction. Anyway, let's talk Google and it's search results, because the SERP is an ecosystem. I was at a Google event recently in Tel Aviv a little while ago, and that's how Google described themselves and the SERP. They called it an ecosystem, a little spoiler, not sure I'm allowed to share that are not. Too late. They called it an ecosystem. And because it is an ecosystem, it's not just a spattering of URLs and do-hickeys, aka SERP features. It's a living, breathing dynamic and it is indeed a dynamic. Things in a dynamic constantly change and on Google and this dynamic, it is very much constantly changing. I don't just mean URLs and changing in rank. I mean the very fabric of that ecosystem. The ether that is the SERP is always changing. I'm talking about, again, not just the results that Google's showing, but also the media format Google tends to prefer for various keyword intents, how it goes about showing that information. It's not just what Google shows, but how is it showing it to searchers and how is that changing over time? Then what does that say about the way we consume content? Because there are a lot of lessons you can learn from what Google is doing on the results page and how it's changing. Of course, I'm talking about the format of the very SERP itself and the tests and the changes that it makes inside of SERP features. Things like boxes and carousels and do-hickeys, SERP features, which we spoke about on the podcast a couple weeks ago with Kevin Indig. By the way, from now on, calling SERP features do-hickeys officially. Crystal Carter: I'm totally on board with that. I think that's fine. Mordy Oberstein: SERP do-hickeys. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think in the animated Spiderman that was recently out, I think Spiderman calls it like a dongle or a dougle or something. The thing that you've got to go get to save the day. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, dougle. Yeah, sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: That's what these SERP features are and Google's always testing new functionality inside of them and new elements inside of them. Sometimes keeping up with them at least can sometimes feel voyeuristic, but as someone who tries to keep up with all of it, if you take a step back and you try to aggregate all of the changes that Google's making on the SERP, it does kind of paint a picture of how that ecosystem is functioning and working and what kind of things Google wants from you. So let's start off with why is Google always changing this thingamajigger around so much, Crystal? Crystal Carter: I think the reason why they make a lot of these updates is because the way that we search for information and the way that we access information is constantly changing. So if you think about mobile first, for instance, and the mobile age, when Google first started way, way, way back in the day, there was pretty much one way to access the internet and it was on your computer in your house or in your office. That was one way to access information online. Now there's lots of ways to access information online, your computer, your phone, your car, your refrigerator, your washing machine. There's lots of different ways that you can access information from the web and Google has to be there to meet those requests and to satisfy those queries. The features that we see, a lot of the SERP features are actually very mobile first, for instance. Those big boxes are really easy to click. They're much easier to click than a single word. The SERP features where if you think about recipes, for instance, they have a video, they'll often have a video card that's animated. Again, these are things that are really useful for people. Also, there's a lot of input on Google now. I don't know if you've watched that Wednesday series on Netflix, and if you watch a new series on Netflix or whatever it is, then you can go onto Google. When you look that up, you can also submit a review there. If I go to a restaurant somewhere, for instance, I can also submit a review there. I can say I'm here right now and it's busy, for instance. So it's a two-way conversation. In order for Google to keep up with that, they have to adapt and they have to adapt to new features that are available on phones. They have to adapt to new ways that people are accessing the web. They have to adapt to lots of different things so that they can provide the most accurate and the most accessible in lots of different ways, both accessible with a small A, of both accessible on a phone and also accessible for people who have different abilities and different accessibility challenges. Yeah, they have to make sure that the web is most accurate and most accessible and that the information that people are getting from them is good. Mordy Oberstein: The mobile case is a really good example of that. It's a really stark example of that, how the web changes, user behavior changes, consumer expectations, user expectations change, and Google has to adapt and you can really dive into... That's why I think by the way, that when you look at what Google's changing on the results page, it's a good way of looking and seeing how Google thinks users and their content consumption experience and expectations are also changing. You can always take away lessons from that. The thing that speaks out to me the most, and you really dive into this, is you see the way that Google has changed the formatting of the SERP, it's very visual now. Or for example, it used to be you searched for Jameson Tyrone, who's a pitcher in baseball, used to be for the Yankees. he got traded to the Cubs, not traded, signed with the Cubs recently. It doesn't matter. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, of course. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, of course. Obviously, right? It used to be a kind of linear, it would give you a picture of him, maybe some stats about him, but now it's way more immersive. Google shows you a video up there and a bunch of these little bubble things about how tall he is, how much salary is, a little snippet about him. It's a lot more dynamic than it used to be, because consumer expectations around consuming content have change and Google's trying to align with that. I think it's a good lesson just as to why it's important to keep up with these things. Content is malleable, the expectations around them are very, very malleable. It's always changing. I always go back to the 1960s, six '60s, it's got to be '60, presidential debate between Richard Nixon and JFK. Crystal's looking at me like, "What the hell are you going to say now?" It was the first televised debate on TV, that's where things are televised obviously, that's not redundant. If you listened on the radio, you thought Nixon won the debate. But if you watched it on TV, you thought that Kennedy won the debate and always say it like this, because why? Because Richard Nixon looked like Richard Nixon and JFK looked like JFK. But it changed expectations around what people want out of that kind of content. They want to be much more visual. That includes certain implications about how the content is delivered. It's the same thing with web content. It's constantly changing. People are expecting different things out of it. They're expecting to be way more quality now than they did in the past. Why? You see this conversation about Google and quality results and are Google's results quality, because what people expect constantly changes and the SERP changes along with that. So that's why it's really important to keep up with it. But now I guess the question is, how do you keep up with all of it? Crystal Carter: I mean Barry Schwartz is one, shout out to Senior Roasty Break. Mordy Oberstein: Is this new? Crystal Carter: Is this new? So yeah, so that's really useful. I think also it's important to remember that Google doesn't even always know when... I'm sure someone at Google knows, but there's a lot of tests being run in conjunction with each other a lot of the time. So I think that there are particular verticals where there's going to be a lot of action. I think in e-commerce there's a lot of changes very regularly. That's a very dynamic SERP. So if you are in an e-commerce space regularly check in on some of your keywords and on how- Mordy Oberstein: It's been nuts. Crystal Carter: Yeah, how they're displayed on the SERP. You won't even see those displayed in third party tools necessarily, because they're adding new elements to the SERP all the time. They can't tell you much more about them, because there isn't really a metric for it yet, because it only just showed up. If there's particular SERPS that are really valuable to you, actually Google them every now and then. I don't know, once a week, maybe once a day, but depending on what it is, because they will change. I don't think necessarily you need to know every single SERP feature that's ever existed for every single thing. Mordy Oberstein: What? Crystal Carter: So for instance, there's- Mordy Oberstein: What? Wait, you don't? Crystal Carter: No, I don't think so? I mean, if it's not at the- Mordy Oberstein: You're killing me here. Crystal Carter: I mean from an SEO point of view, it's useful, but if you are somebody who is a business owner, you don't necessarily need to know.. Mordy Oberstein: No, you're totally right. I'm a freak. I get it. Crystal Carter: But Google for instance, also some of the sort of features on Google are also tools. For instance, I looked up timer, I needed a timer and I didn't want to dig around in my phone to find the timer. I just typed in timer into Google and there's a timer and I can just use a timer. There's also, I was doing some sewing and I needed to get the circumference so I could do a circle and stuff and they have it. There's a pie conference, pie R squared, find the diameter, solve for R, all of that sort of stuff. You can just put in one of the metrics and it'll spit out the others. There's lots of tools like that that are in the SERP. Some of those elements will push down other parts of the SERP and might change the things. For instance, if you have an article about circumference or the origins of pie or how to solve pie for, I don't know, 1700 places or whatever it is, you might be lowered down and you might see different click-through rate before, if there's now a tool on that SERP. Understand which queries are relevant to you and keep an eye on those queries actually in the SERP or those queries. I don't think it necessarily has to be every single one, but if there's particular ones that you know you get a lot of traffic or you know are head terms that have a knock on effect for the rest of your keyword profile, then make sure that you're checking in on those SERPS regularly. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my god, I have so much to say now. I don't know where to start. You said so much.. I actually do that. I have a thing, I put it on my notes, check the SERP once a week. Yeah, you're right, you can't do it for everything, but I just kind of want to see what's happening in the ecosystem. Two, your point about e-com is amazing, because back in the day when I was really first getting started, checking in all these SERP features all the time, I'm thinking like 2016, 2017, a lot of the changes were around local, local packs, local finder, map, all those kind of stuff. They kind of told you where Google's focus was, which was very much local. If you look at what Google's changing today and what they're announcing today about how they're changing the results page, it's almost all, not say all, but a lot of it is about e-com. Then it just goes to show you where Google thinks opportunity is, where Google's focus, maybe we speaks to where Google thinks the web is heading. Maybe the web itself is coming more e-com focused as opposed to informational focused. So seeing where Google's making these changes is another reason why it's important to keep track. Kind of shows you where they think things are at and what's important to them. In terms of tracking it? Yeah, Barry is an amazing resource. We're going to talk about more resources a little bit later on, but definitely one of the things I like doing is looking at seroundtable.com every day, because Barry will keep track of what's been happening. Again, it kind of seems like, wow, they changed the line here, who cares? Sometimes legit is that, they changed a line here, who cares? But sometimes when you aggregate it all together, it kind of helps you to understand directionally what's happening. Again, as you mentioned, there's definitely real impact. One of the things that Google announced recently is there's like these filters or carousel filtered to the top of the results page. I've been screaming about this forever, not forever, for two years, because they've been there for two years in a different format. They've been more bubble filter kind of things. You'd search, where to go on vacation? And there'd be a filter of with kids, without kids, without kids, for your parents, I don't know, whatever it is. In the summertime? Instead of seeing your feature snippet there, I would just bypass and then go without kids and see results for all the vacation results without kids, just so I can dream. Yes, all of that. Oh my gosh, I just said a lot there, I know. Crystal Carter: I know, I know and I agree with you. I think that for those topic levels, again, that is something that is around mobile first, because without kids it's easier to just click it than it is to type it all in again. Also, I think that you were talking about back in the day it was about local and now it's more about e-com, some of these things have to do with some of the tools that Google has available, some of the new shiny tools that Google has available. Google Maps was the big thing for Google for a while. They have gone all in on that. They covered every inch of the globe. I've personally seen them driving around the streets of my town. Mordy Oberstein: It's a weird camera thingy. Crystal Carter: Right, and I'm like, "Oh look, there's Google. It's Google." Mordy Oberstein: There they are. Crystal Carter: Right. I've seen people who've tagged, they're like, "There's my dad in a Google Maps picture." These are the things. So Google Maps was the big one. At the moment they're going really big on visual search. A lot of stuff from vision AI and they're adding loads of that to the e-commerce experience, partially, because you can think about the wider ecosystem. Within Amazon, they have a visual search thing. I could take a picture of a handbag and they could be like, "Oh, this handbag?" And Google's trying to follow suit using a lot of the tools that they have. I think that thinking about that and thinking about where they're going is really useful. We talked about Barry Schwartz. It's also really useful if you want to have a bird's eye view of some of the things that Google's going to be rolling out. Things like Google IO and search on our amazing resources so they're free. Google has a couple of big annual events where they'll say the kinds of things that they're doing over the next year or so and then over the next few months you'll see them sort of slowly rolled out. Mordy Oberstein: The filter thing is from IO. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So it's worth paying attention to those. You can watch them at a time and a half if you want to save some time. Failed to do a little recap of it as well. Mordy Oberstein: That makes me nuts by the way, does FYI. The time and a half, I know people love that... Glen Gabe loves that. I love that. Crystal Carter: I love it. Mordy Oberstein: It makes me crazy. Crystal Carter: It's my favorite. I love it. Mordy Oberstein: One thing I do want to hit on, which we kind of barely touched on, which you really dive into is the SEO tools and the third party tracking. Because one, as you mentioned, they don't always track these things and show them how it impacts your rank, but they do track that they exist on the SERP. Sometimes you see a lot of posts about go after those SERP features, go into the SEO tool, see what SERP features are showing for the queries that are important for you and get those SERP features. There's this kind of pressure of better go get those SERP features, I won't get any traffic. I feel like as anything in SEO, that really depends. I think that comes down to opportunity costs. What's there for you? Look, PAA box is great. Sometimes the questions are wonky. So if the SEO tool is telling you, "Yeah, you better get a PAA box, people also ask, there's four questions there, you expand the box, you get your URL in there, people will grab that URL and go to your website." Yeah, they would if the questions are relevant, but if the questions are wonky, they're not. Crystal Carter: Yeah. The other thing I would say about that is good about third party tools particularly, and that sort feature element that you're talking about is they'll tell you if a SERP is particularly spicy. So if you're seeing that for your query, there's like four different SERP features that they're saying are available for that, then that's telling you that that's a busy SERP and that if you've just got a page of text, that probably ain't going to cut it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's multiple kind of intent there. There's image intent, video intent. There's all kinds of things there. Yeah, I'm not knocking the tools. Tools are great. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. But I think that if it's telling you that there's a busy SERP, then that means that we got to mix it up here, people. We can't just do text, we need to have texts, maybe some images, maybe some video, maybe something else going through there. I don't know, I don't know, I said lots of things. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. But take it all with opportunity costs, because again, you can have a feeder snippet there and Wikipedia's in there. Let me tell you something about that Wikipedia URL, that's not going anywhere. Crystal Carter: Not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere at all. Yeah, there's a few different things you can think about, but I think that it can also tell you that there are other opportunities. Because I think when we think about SERP features, we sometimes think about SERP features on the main part of Google, but there are SERP features within SERP features and there's also lots of different parts of Google. So there's the images, there's shopping, there's news, there's travel, there's things like that. There's lots of stuff within that. You can pitch for one part at one heavy SERP feature and potentially make your way onto the main as well. So it's complex, but it's worth doing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, definitely worthwhile to track all this. Definitely worthwhile to read up on all of this. If a new feature does get announced and you think it might impact you, don't freak out. Let's see how it goes. I look at these things very directionally and I would take thematically, analyze what's kind of happening on the SERP and see where's Google going with all this? So many filters, oh I guess I should probably write much more specific information than it was in the past, because Google's getting more filters. But I don't want to get lost in all this, because we have an amazing guest. Lily Ray is here. She is phenomenal. Crystal Carter: Lily Ray. She's the best. Mordy Oberstein: She the best. We did a wonderful webinar with her and Glen Gabe all about content and what you should be doing with content around your website. But today Lily's here to talk about, because she very much keep us up with all of this, what's the most significant change or trend on the SERP that's been out there in the relatively recent past? So Lily's here to tell us what's she seen. Lily Ray: So the most significant change to the SERP that I've seen maybe in the last year or so is really just Google becoming a lot more visual with the types of results that it's showing. Not just in terms of showing Google images for example, but making the knowledge panel more colorful and robust. If you Google celebrity names, you might see a really colorful panel at the top with a lot of different news about that celebrity or different information about them and they're just kind of tweaking the way that looks. But it does take up a lot of real estate on the page, especially on mobile. That's kind of a big trend with Google in general. I think that they're rolling out a lot of features that are more interactive directly in the search results. They're more colorful, they're more engaging. There's things like journeys and interesting finds and all these different ways that you can get a lot of interactive information directly on Google. Also, there's a lot of new accordions that they've been rolling out in the last year or two. So of course we see people also ask across the board for most queries these days. I know sometimes the tools show that it comes and goes, but really there's definitely been a big rise and people also ask in the last few years. But beyond that, Google's using that same kind of functionality to roll out across different types of accordions. So things like buy-in guides and things to know, for example. If you'd Google specific medical conditions or products that you might be reviewing, Google can show something like things to know or buy-in guides. That's actually information taken from various different websites and kind of integrated into this accordion where you can learn about specifications about the product or different symptoms and treatments for medical conditions and things like that. So I think the trend is and always has been that Google's taking information from different sites, repurposing it into different ways that they display directly on the SERP. I mean even as a searcher myself, sometimes I find myself not clicking on any sites, because everything that I need is directly there. These people also ask, accordions are also kind of like if you click on one and then you click on a second one, they just scroll infinitely. So you can click on it, just kind of stay on Google and keep clicking on them. So we've all known this in the SEO space, but it definitely seems to be the case that Google is experimenting with a lot of different features that make it easy to just get all the information you need directly on Google without clicking on anything. As much as a lot of these things appear to be SEO opportunities, I see a lot of people saying, "Hey, how do you get into the people..." Also ask accordion or buy-in guide accordion and yeah, you should probably do that. But unfortunately, realistically, I don't know how many people are actually clicking into those links and it's very hard to track with search consoles. Yes, optimize in all the different ways that you can, but unfortunately I think the trend continues that a lot of these new features kind of cut into click through rates. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2023. Hopefully there are some changes that benefit SEO a little bit more and drive more traffic to our sites. So good luck with your rankings. Mordy Oberstein: That was amazing as always. Definitely follow Lily on Twitter at Lily Ray NYC. She's all over the place. There's not enough praise I can heap on her and not enough links we can link to where we can find the things that she's talking about. So find all of it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, find all of it. She's really active on Twitter, she's really active on LinkedIn as well. She writes loads, she presents at many, many conferences around the world. Mordy Oberstein: Many, many. Crystal Carter: Around the world. So keep your eye out and yeah, do give Lily a follow, because she shares a lot of great tips and a lot of great insights. Mordy Oberstein: Now keeping with the Lily theme, because I actually found out about this from Lily, she shared it on Twitter. I'm like, "Oh, that is cool." It's important to keep up with what's happening on the SERP, not just SERP features, but what's happening with rankings. What I mean by that is not like, "Okay, I'm here now I'm there." I mean what's switched with who and who switched where, because what does that mean? I'll give you a really clear example. All of a sudden you had, I don't know, five ultimate guides are ranking at the top of the SERP and then you see Google swap those five top ultimate guides with that really specific one and shorter answers to that particular query. That kind of tells you that, well the whole intent is flipped. There's a tool out there that Lily has shared a long time ago that I've always loved. It means that for the second week in a row, we're going tool time on the SERPS Up podcast When you're trying to see who switched with who, who's up, who's down, who got replaced by who on the results page, Crystal Carter: Who's on first. Mordy Oberstein: Who's on first, now is on second on the second page of the SERP. SISTRIX has a great tool, I don't know the name of it, I don't know if it has a name, but it is part of their trend and I guess it's called Compare SERPS. What it does is, it shows you the date. So let's say on January 1st, it shows you all the URLs that are ranking one through 20 for particular keyword. Then you pull another date, let's say a week later and you can see who went down and who went up and who switched with who. Sometimes there's direct swaps, like this one was number nine and that one went up to number 10 and they actually replaced each other. Those are the ones I really like, because you can see, okay, Google's purposely switching these two URLs around for the same kind of intent or whatever is on the SERP. It's a great tool. Crystal Carter: It's a great tool. It's really, really useful and it can help you track activity over time. It can also help you to see the volatility of a SERP over time. So sometimes things will change on the SERP because somebody's published something new and sometimes recency it can be a factor. Let's say nobody's written on a topic since 2018 or something and then you write something in 2022, then Google's like, "Okay, well this is probably more up to date than the thing before." So that might be one of the reasons why, but it's very interesting when you're saying some of these swaps, it's like have they updated something on the content or has Google updated how they understand that content? Mordy Oberstein: That's why I like looking at this kind of stuff after an update, because then you can see, okay, I can see this swap. Before the update here was the top 20, after the update, you can see who switched with who. Then take a look at, okay, the one that went up, what did they have on the page that the other one that lost didn't have? Or these five went up, these five went down. Is there a common theme between them? Because then you can try to pull the needle out of the haystack, which is what did Google add to the algorithm that now they're looking for that they couldn't do before? Which is the magic billion-dollar question. Crystal Carter: Exactly. I think that this can help you to plan your content, to optimize your content. You talked about opportunity costs to see which opportunities might have the most value for you. I think it's a really, really useful tool, especially as it can sometimes feel a little bit like a memory hole , because you're like, "What? Was that there? Is that new? I'm not sure." So being able to- Mordy Oberstein: Were they really ranking number seven last week? I don't remember. But now you know. Crystal Carter: Also, I think because sometimes clients will be like, "Oh, it's not on online." And I'm like, "Well it's on mine." Or like, "Oh, it's not on my desktop, we're here." I'm like, "Well mobile, you're there," and that sort of thing. So this is a great example of where a tool is really satisfying at really valuable need from SEO. Mordy Oberstein: If you want to look at it, I have the documentation on it, I found it. I will link to it in the show notes for you so you could take a look at it if it's new to you. Now, if that's new to you, what I know what else is new to you is actual news. Every week I get so corny about this pivot, I feel so corny inside, but that's me. Crystal Carter: Nailed it. Mordy Oberstein: Slightly corny. So anyway, here's Snappy News. Snappy news. Snappy news. Reports are abound that ChatGPT is coming to Bing. Search from Barry Schwartz, over at Search Engine Land. Microsoft to add ChatGPT features to Bing search. It's not official, but there are reports coming out that Bing could be adding everyone's favorite new technology ChatGPT to Bing search. To quote the source of the, I'll call it rumors, but maybe it's more than rumors. Anyway, to quote them, "Microsoft could soon get a return on its 1 billion investment in open AI creative ChatGPT, Chatbot, which gives human-like text answers to questions. Microsoft is preparing to launch a version of its Bing search engine that uses the artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT to answer some search queries rather than just showing a list of links according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans." I know there's all sorts of talk about ChatGPT being a search engine killer and that we don't need search engines anymore. We're just going to ask AI writers like ChatGPT questions and it'll spit back answers. I don't see it that way. I'm curious to see how they do integrate it into the platform, obviously makes sense that they invested so much money to do that. However, even if you provide a summary, and now I'm also curious about authorship or attribution, who do you attribute the source of the information. If the source is an AI writer scraping the entire web and regurgitating it back for you, different question. That's more of an ethical question I guess. But either way, even if the AI writer can give a short summary of something, you're, much like a feature snippet, going to need links in order to allow the user to extend the journey they want to learn more about it. I guess unless it's like a direct answer where they're like, how many home runs did Babe Ruth hit? 714, whatever. Also, there's questions about how it would handle a long tail queries where the information is a little bit more nuanced and so forth. We're probably getting this at a future episode of the SERPS UP podcast we haven't planned already, so stay tuned for that. But I don't think it's a search engine killer. Also, story number two, here's a fun little one for you. From Barry Schwartz again, over at seroundtable this time, Google's John Mueller says, "SEO skills needed for 2023 are curiosity and persistent." When asked what skills an SEO needs in 2023, Google's John Mueller said, "Curiosity and persistence." What does he mean by that? Who knows. My take, it highlights the creative end of SEO and that SEO is a slow grind with lots of trial and error. That'll do it for this week's version of the Snappy News. Wasn't that news? Snappy... Crystal Carter: Oh, because I mentioned the Wednesday. Mordy Oberstein: Because you mentioned Wednesday. See, I haven't watched that yet. I've been like binging an old show I've watched a long time ago. I'm almost through it. It's one of the ones I want to go to. Crystal Carter: Go on, what is it? What have you been watching? Mordy Oberstein: It's such a guilty pleasure. I don't know if I want to say. Crystal Carter: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Are you going to judge me? Crystal Carter: No. Probably. Mordy Oberstein: Friday Night Lights. Crystal Carter: Friday Night Lights. I've heard good things about this. Do you know what that's completely on brand, Mordy. It's a football show. Mordy Oberstein: It's a football show. Yeah, there's parts of high school drama and that's a guilty pleasure part. My wife was like, "What are you watching?" I'm like, "Oh, Friday Night Lights," and there's a movie. Don't get confused. It's duplicate content and they're not canonicalised. There's a movie and that's based on a book and that's a true story. That's crazy in its own right, because these people are nuts. Then there's a TV show that's kind of based off the movie format wise, but that's not true at all. And there's a high school drama part of it, which is the guilty... My wife's like, "What the hell are you watching?" But part of it's real and it's good and everyone wants the coach to be their dad kind of thing. It's amazing. Crystal Carter: The cool kids are talking to the other kids and somebody's going to go to the dance and all of those things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's a little bit of that. But there's also a little bit like my dad's off fighting in... It's the old show, fighting in Iraq and I'm stuck watching my grandmother who has dementia while I'm going to school and on the football team, kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Wow. I wasn't expecting that. This is a deeper show than I was expecting it to... Mordy Oberstein: See, it's deeper than you think. Okay. It's deeper than you think. Crystal Carter: I thought you were going to say Dawson's Creek or something when you said that. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm not. Who do you think I am? Crystal Carter: Lot's of people love Dawson's Creek. Mordy Oberstein: Only thing I like my Dawson is the meme with the guy crying. Anyway, okay, follow of the week before we leave, follow week. I mentioned before, we have a very special section of the follow of the week this week, because we're talking about changes on the SERP. There are so many people who cover these things who are keeping up on that and reporting on the news site. I thought instead of giving you one person, because I couldn't narrow it down, I'm going to give you one, two, three, four, five, six people to follow this week. Oh boy. It's a lot. I'm going to do it. One breath. You ready? Barry Schwartz... I can't give it one breath. Sorry. Barry Schwartz at Rusty Brick, Matt Southern, who writes for SEJ, that's @MattGSouthern, Danny Goodwin, who used to be at SEJ, but now he's a Search Engine Land. That's probably a whole bunch of SEO soap operaness, @MrDannyGoodwin, Goodwin with an I, not a Y. Then there's Lauren Baker, who is the founder of SEJ, which just happens to be a member of our SEO advisory board. He's @LaurenBaker. Then there's Roger Monty who writes for SEJ also and he's @MartinIBuster. Then there's Brody Clark who doesn't write for anybody, but who's just keeping up on all this stuff all the time. He writes his own blog, but he's keeping up on all this stuff on Twitter and he's @BrodySEO. I'm not going to go through spelling all these for you, but I'll link them in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Can I also throw out a special mention to Glen Gabe? To Mr. Glen Gabe? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I'm so sorry. I was debating do we have Glen again? Because we had Glen as a follow week in the past, but yes, and @MarieHaines also. Crystal Carter: @MarieHaines. @MarieHaines as well. There's so many people who keep up with this. It's so much fun. It's super fun. Also, if you add Barry Schwartz, is this new, it's a lot of fun. Even if he tells you it's not new. If it is new, then you may very well get yourself a little bit of internet fun times. Mordy Oberstein: Celebrity and fun. I have a whole website dedicated by the way, isthisnew.com, the Wix site. You can check that out. You can also buy DA from Barry there. Crystal Carter: These are all lies, people. Mordy Oberstein: No, the fact I have a website called isthisnew.com is not a lie. Crystal Carter: Oh, that's not a lie. That's not a lie at all. Mordy has talked a lot about this website. And he's extremely proud of himself. Mordy Oberstein: I love it. It's my favorite website. There's a Easter egg, our head of SEO editorial, George Winn who used to work at Search Engine Land and Run SMX. I have a little GIF of him there also. So it's a little fun little one pager website. It shows I have no life. Crystal Carter: Follow the whole crew who are keeping up with the SERP, because they will keep you up with the SERP. They're amazing. Mordy Oberstein: They'll keep you up on the SERP. It's kind of like SERPS Up. Get it? Oh, amazing. That was amazing. Anyway, we'll link all their profiles in the show notes, because there's way too many spellings to do for you. I'm going to lose all my audience if I do that. Like Mordy, why are you spelling so many names out? I can't write them down fast enough. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERPS Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back with the new episode as we talk about site migrations, thundercloud, lightning, ominous. Look wherever you consume your podcast or our SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Look and learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content and webinars we have at the Wix 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: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Lily Ray Barry Schwartz Matt Southern Danny Goodwyn Loren Baker Roger Montti Brodie Clark Glenn Gabe Marie Haynes Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub SERP's Up SEO Podcast on SERP Features What Google Want From Your Content Sistrix News: Microsoft to add ChatGPT features to Bing Search Google's John Mueller Said SEO Skills Needed For 2023 Are Curiosity & Persistence Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Lily Ray Barry Schwartz Matt Southern Danny Goodwyn Loren Baker Roger Montti Brodie Clark Glenn Gabe Marie Haynes Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub SERP's Up SEO Podcast on SERP Features What Google Want From Your Content Sistrix News: Microsoft to add ChatGPT features to Bing Search Google's John Mueller Said SEO Skills Needed For 2023 Are Curiosity & Persistence Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPS Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERPS Up podcast. We're pointing out some groovy new insights around what's happened in an SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by the lustrous, the fabulous, the amazingly whatever, whatever, whatever, I've run out of adjectives yet again, the head of SEO communications here at Wix's Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: That was an amazing introduction, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I totally nailed it, right? Nailed it. Crystal Carter: You nailed it. Mordy Oberstein: I nailed it. I had all the words in my head and I forgot them. Crystal Carter: But whatever, whatever, whatever, I think I should get that on a business card. Mordy Oberstein: I want that on my tombstone, whatever, whatever, whatever, Mordy Oberstein. Crystal Carter: I mean, to be fair, it's normally a shower of compliments, which I'll take that. I'll take that. Mordy Oberstein: I meant, whatever best adjectives you can think of and that's what I meant. Crystal Carter: Insert adjective here. Mordy Oberstein: That's in my heart. Crystal Carter: Someone posted an outreach email that was like, insert name. Mordy Oberstein: I saw that on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Here, insert name. I hope, insert current event and or whether and/or blank, we would be delighted to have you, blah, blah, blah. I was just like, "Wow." It's like you were sincerely, insert name, again. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Wow. They have one job to do. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Honestly. Honestly. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, cold outreach is hard. Let's be fair. Crystal Carter: Oh man. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's so hard. Crystal Carter: The thing that used to drive me crazy is when people would call you up and they'd be like, "Oh, can I have five minutes of your time?" I'd be like, "No. My God." Mordy Oberstein: Telemarketers back in the day... Now I just get spam on my text messages and scams in my text messages. It used to be scam phone calls at home, at dinner. Crystal Carter: Scam calls at home, at dinner. Right, right. I used to get them at the agency. People would call us up and they'd be like, "Can I have five minutes of your time?" I was like, "I don't know, how much money you got. I have billable hours. These are billable hours, sir." Like, "No, I don't have time for you, because I'm on billable hours. Goodbye." Mordy Oberstein: But aren't you interested in the Renoco slow cooker? Crystal Carter: I'm not doing a survey for you for free. What? No. Mordy Oberstein: The SERPS Up podcast is brought to you by Wix's, where you can manage your local citations, respond to user reviews across various platforms, and even set up Google posts. All right. From Wix with our overall app. Look for it in the app market within the Wix dashboard. We're talking about the Uberall app and all that local stuff, because local stuff is full of SERP feature stuff and SERP feature stuff is what we're talking about, because it's constantly changing. The SERP is constantly changing, which is why today we're talking about how you can adapt to the changes on the Google results page. Things like why, oh why is Google changing all the time, all the time, and how to keep up with these changes. Why you should keep up with these changes and what you should do with all of these changes. Also, the Great Lily Ray stops by to share the most significant changes and trends she's seen on the SERP and we dive into a tool to help you keep track of those changes. Of course, we got some snappy news for you and a very special edition of who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Episode number 20 of the SERPS Up podcast is on the move. Crystal Carter: I can't believe we're at episode 20. Mordy Oberstein: Isn't that nuts? Crystal Carter: This is crazy, Mordy. What have we been doing with ourselves? Mordy Oberstein: I've been podcasting this whole time. I don't know what you've been doing. Crystal Carter: I feel like a celebration is an order or something. I don't know. What is it like- Mordy Oberstein: Well, in the last episode, I think we mentioned every time we dance when we celebrate. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. We'll do a little's podcast dance. Mordy Oberstein: This is a time on sprockets when we dance, for all you Saturday Night Live folks from back in the '90s. Crystal Carter: If anybody is listening to this podcast, I hope people are listening to this podcast, but everyone who's listening to this podcast, the dance moves that I'm doing right now are incredible. But you've never seen dance this…. Mordy Oberstein: You're not even dancing anymore. Crystal Carter: I am dancing, Mordy, and the moves are incredible and amazing and they're world changing. Oh, now Mordy's doing some very strange dancing. Mordy Oberstein: The John Volta thing from Pulp Fiction. Anyway, let's talk Google and it's search results, because the SERP is an ecosystem. I was at a Google event recently in Tel Aviv a little while ago, and that's how Google described themselves and the SERP. They called it an ecosystem, a little spoiler, not sure I'm allowed to share that are not. Too late. They called it an ecosystem. And because it is an ecosystem, it's not just a spattering of URLs and do-hickeys, aka SERP features. It's a living, breathing dynamic and it is indeed a dynamic. Things in a dynamic constantly change and on Google and this dynamic, it is very much constantly changing. I don't just mean URLs and changing in rank. I mean the very fabric of that ecosystem. The ether that is the SERP is always changing. I'm talking about, again, not just the results that Google's showing, but also the media format Google tends to prefer for various keyword intents, how it goes about showing that information. It's not just what Google shows, but how is it showing it to searchers and how is that changing over time? Then what does that say about the way we consume content? Because there are a lot of lessons you can learn from what Google is doing on the results page and how it's changing. Of course, I'm talking about the format of the very SERP itself and the tests and the changes that it makes inside of SERP features. Things like boxes and carousels and do-hickeys, SERP features, which we spoke about on the podcast a couple weeks ago with Kevin Indig. By the way, from now on, calling SERP features do-hickeys officially. Crystal Carter: I'm totally on board with that. I think that's fine. Mordy Oberstein: SERP do-hickeys. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think in the animated Spiderman that was recently out, I think Spiderman calls it like a dongle or a dougle or something. The thing that you've got to go get to save the day. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, dougle. Yeah, sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: That's what these SERP features are and Google's always testing new functionality inside of them and new elements inside of them. Sometimes keeping up with them at least can sometimes feel voyeuristic, but as someone who tries to keep up with all of it, if you take a step back and you try to aggregate all of the changes that Google's making on the SERP, it does kind of paint a picture of how that ecosystem is functioning and working and what kind of things Google wants from you. So let's start off with why is Google always changing this thingamajigger around so much, Crystal? Crystal Carter: I think the reason why they make a lot of these updates is because the way that we search for information and the way that we access information is constantly changing. So if you think about mobile first, for instance, and the mobile age, when Google first started way, way, way back in the day, there was pretty much one way to access the internet and it was on your computer in your house or in your office. That was one way to access information online. Now there's lots of ways to access information online, your computer, your phone, your car, your refrigerator, your washing machine. There's lots of different ways that you can access information from the web and Google has to be there to meet those requests and to satisfy those queries. The features that we see, a lot of the SERP features are actually very mobile first, for instance. Those big boxes are really easy to click. They're much easier to click than a single word. The SERP features where if you think about recipes, for instance, they have a video, they'll often have a video card that's animated. Again, these are things that are really useful for people. Also, there's a lot of input on Google now. I don't know if you've watched that Wednesday series on Netflix, and if you watch a new series on Netflix or whatever it is, then you can go onto Google. When you look that up, you can also submit a review there. If I go to a restaurant somewhere, for instance, I can also submit a review there. I can say I'm here right now and it's busy, for instance. So it's a two-way conversation. In order for Google to keep up with that, they have to adapt and they have to adapt to new features that are available on phones. They have to adapt to new ways that people are accessing the web. They have to adapt to lots of different things so that they can provide the most accurate and the most accessible in lots of different ways, both accessible with a small A, of both accessible on a phone and also accessible for people who have different abilities and different accessibility challenges. Yeah, they have to make sure that the web is most accurate and most accessible and that the information that people are getting from them is good. Mordy Oberstein: The mobile case is a really good example of that. It's a really stark example of that, how the web changes, user behavior changes, consumer expectations, user expectations change, and Google has to adapt and you can really dive into... That's why I think by the way, that when you look at what Google's changing on the results page, it's a good way of looking and seeing how Google thinks users and their content consumption experience and expectations are also changing. You can always take away lessons from that. The thing that speaks out to me the most, and you really dive into this, is you see the way that Google has changed the formatting of the SERP, it's very visual now. Or for example, it used to be you searched for Jameson Tyrone, who's a pitcher in baseball, used to be for the Yankees. he got traded to the Cubs, not traded, signed with the Cubs recently. It doesn't matter. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, of course. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, of course. Obviously, right? It used to be a kind of linear, it would give you a picture of him, maybe some stats about him, but now it's way more immersive. Google shows you a video up there and a bunch of these little bubble things about how tall he is, how much salary is, a little snippet about him. It's a lot more dynamic than it used to be, because consumer expectations around consuming content have change and Google's trying to align with that. I think it's a good lesson just as to why it's important to keep up with these things. Content is malleable, the expectations around them are very, very malleable. It's always changing. I always go back to the 1960s, six '60s, it's got to be '60, presidential debate between Richard Nixon and JFK. Crystal's looking at me like, "What the hell are you going to say now?" It was the first televised debate on TV, that's where things are televised obviously, that's not redundant. If you listened on the radio, you thought Nixon won the debate. But if you watched it on TV, you thought that Kennedy won the debate and always say it like this, because why? Because Richard Nixon looked like Richard Nixon and JFK looked like JFK. But it changed expectations around what people want out of that kind of content. They want to be much more visual. That includes certain implications about how the content is delivered. It's the same thing with web content. It's constantly changing. People are expecting different things out of it. They're expecting to be way more quality now than they did in the past. Why? You see this conversation about Google and quality results and are Google's results quality, because what people expect constantly changes and the SERP changes along with that. So that's why it's really important to keep up with it. But now I guess the question is, how do you keep up with all of it? Crystal Carter: I mean Barry Schwartz is one, shout out to Senior Roasty Break. Mordy Oberstein: Is this new? Crystal Carter: Is this new? So yeah, so that's really useful. I think also it's important to remember that Google doesn't even always know when... I'm sure someone at Google knows, but there's a lot of tests being run in conjunction with each other a lot of the time. So I think that there are particular verticals where there's going to be a lot of action. I think in e-commerce there's a lot of changes very regularly. That's a very dynamic SERP. So if you are in an e-commerce space regularly check in on some of your keywords and on how- Mordy Oberstein: It's been nuts. Crystal Carter: Yeah, how they're displayed on the SERP. You won't even see those displayed in third party tools necessarily, because they're adding new elements to the SERP all the time. They can't tell you much more about them, because there isn't really a metric for it yet, because it only just showed up. If there's particular SERPS that are really valuable to you, actually Google them every now and then. I don't know, once a week, maybe once a day, but depending on what it is, because they will change. I don't think necessarily you need to know every single SERP feature that's ever existed for every single thing. Mordy Oberstein: What? Crystal Carter: So for instance, there's- Mordy Oberstein: What? Wait, you don't? Crystal Carter: No, I don't think so? I mean, if it's not at the- Mordy Oberstein: You're killing me here. Crystal Carter: I mean from an SEO point of view, it's useful, but if you are somebody who is a business owner, you don't necessarily need to know.. Mordy Oberstein: No, you're totally right. I'm a freak. I get it. Crystal Carter: But Google for instance, also some of the sort of features on Google are also tools. For instance, I looked up timer, I needed a timer and I didn't want to dig around in my phone to find the timer. I just typed in timer into Google and there's a timer and I can just use a timer. There's also, I was doing some sewing and I needed to get the circumference so I could do a circle and stuff and they have it. There's a pie conference, pie R squared, find the diameter, solve for R, all of that sort of stuff. You can just put in one of the metrics and it'll spit out the others. There's lots of tools like that that are in the SERP. Some of those elements will push down other parts of the SERP and might change the things. For instance, if you have an article about circumference or the origins of pie or how to solve pie for, I don't know, 1700 places or whatever it is, you might be lowered down and you might see different click-through rate before, if there's now a tool on that SERP. Understand which queries are relevant to you and keep an eye on those queries actually in the SERP or those queries. I don't think it necessarily has to be every single one, but if there's particular ones that you know you get a lot of traffic or you know are head terms that have a knock on effect for the rest of your keyword profile, then make sure that you're checking in on those SERPS regularly. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my god, I have so much to say now. I don't know where to start. You said so much.. I actually do that. I have a thing, I put it on my notes, check the SERP once a week. Yeah, you're right, you can't do it for everything, but I just kind of want to see what's happening in the ecosystem. Two, your point about e-com is amazing, because back in the day when I was really first getting started, checking in all these SERP features all the time, I'm thinking like 2016, 2017, a lot of the changes were around local, local packs, local finder, map, all those kind of stuff. They kind of told you where Google's focus was, which was very much local. If you look at what Google's changing today and what they're announcing today about how they're changing the results page, it's almost all, not say all, but a lot of it is about e-com. Then it just goes to show you where Google thinks opportunity is, where Google's focus, maybe we speaks to where Google thinks the web is heading. Maybe the web itself is coming more e-com focused as opposed to informational focused. So seeing where Google's making these changes is another reason why it's important to keep track. Kind of shows you where they think things are at and what's important to them. In terms of tracking it? Yeah, Barry is an amazing resource. We're going to talk about more resources a little bit later on, but definitely one of the things I like doing is looking at seroundtable.com every day, because Barry will keep track of what's been happening. Again, it kind of seems like, wow, they changed the line here, who cares? Sometimes legit is that, they changed a line here, who cares? But sometimes when you aggregate it all together, it kind of helps you to understand directionally what's happening. Again, as you mentioned, there's definitely real impact. One of the things that Google announced recently is there's like these filters or carousel filtered to the top of the results page. I've been screaming about this forever, not forever, for two years, because they've been there for two years in a different format. They've been more bubble filter kind of things. You'd search, where to go on vacation? And there'd be a filter of with kids, without kids, without kids, for your parents, I don't know, whatever it is. In the summertime? Instead of seeing your feature snippet there, I would just bypass and then go without kids and see results for all the vacation results without kids, just so I can dream. Yes, all of that. Oh my gosh, I just said a lot there, I know. Crystal Carter: I know, I know and I agree with you. I think that for those topic levels, again, that is something that is around mobile first, because without kids it's easier to just click it than it is to type it all in again. Also, I think that you were talking about back in the day it was about local and now it's more about e-com, some of these things have to do with some of the tools that Google has available, some of the new shiny tools that Google has available. Google Maps was the big thing for Google for a while. They have gone all in on that. They covered every inch of the globe. I've personally seen them driving around the streets of my town. Mordy Oberstein: It's a weird camera thingy. Crystal Carter: Right, and I'm like, "Oh look, there's Google. It's Google." Mordy Oberstein: There they are. Crystal Carter: Right. I've seen people who've tagged, they're like, "There's my dad in a Google Maps picture." These are the things. So Google Maps was the big one. At the moment they're going really big on visual search. A lot of stuff from vision AI and they're adding loads of that to the e-commerce experience, partially, because you can think about the wider ecosystem. Within Amazon, they have a visual search thing. I could take a picture of a handbag and they could be like, "Oh, this handbag?" And Google's trying to follow suit using a lot of the tools that they have. I think that thinking about that and thinking about where they're going is really useful. We talked about Barry Schwartz. It's also really useful if you want to have a bird's eye view of some of the things that Google's going to be rolling out. Things like Google IO and search on our amazing resources so they're free. Google has a couple of big annual events where they'll say the kinds of things that they're doing over the next year or so and then over the next few months you'll see them sort of slowly rolled out. Mordy Oberstein: The filter thing is from IO. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So it's worth paying attention to those. You can watch them at a time and a half if you want to save some time. Failed to do a little recap of it as well. Mordy Oberstein: That makes me nuts by the way, does FYI. The time and a half, I know people love that... Glen Gabe loves that. I love that. Crystal Carter: I love it. Mordy Oberstein: It makes me crazy. Crystal Carter: It's my favorite. I love it. Mordy Oberstein: One thing I do want to hit on, which we kind of barely touched on, which you really dive into is the SEO tools and the third party tracking. Because one, as you mentioned, they don't always track these things and show them how it impacts your rank, but they do track that they exist on the SERP. Sometimes you see a lot of posts about go after those SERP features, go into the SEO tool, see what SERP features are showing for the queries that are important for you and get those SERP features. There's this kind of pressure of better go get those SERP features, I won't get any traffic. I feel like as anything in SEO, that really depends. I think that comes down to opportunity costs. What's there for you? Look, PAA box is great. Sometimes the questions are wonky. So if the SEO tool is telling you, "Yeah, you better get a PAA box, people also ask, there's four questions there, you expand the box, you get your URL in there, people will grab that URL and go to your website." Yeah, they would if the questions are relevant, but if the questions are wonky, they're not. Crystal Carter: Yeah. The other thing I would say about that is good about third party tools particularly, and that sort feature element that you're talking about is they'll tell you if a SERP is particularly spicy. So if you're seeing that for your query, there's like four different SERP features that they're saying are available for that, then that's telling you that that's a busy SERP and that if you've just got a page of text, that probably ain't going to cut it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's multiple kind of intent there. There's image intent, video intent. There's all kinds of things there. Yeah, I'm not knocking the tools. Tools are great. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. But I think that if it's telling you that there's a busy SERP, then that means that we got to mix it up here, people. We can't just do text, we need to have texts, maybe some images, maybe some video, maybe something else going through there. I don't know, I don't know, I said lots of things. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. But take it all with opportunity costs, because again, you can have a feeder snippet there and Wikipedia's in there. Let me tell you something about that Wikipedia URL, that's not going anywhere. Crystal Carter: Not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere at all. Yeah, there's a few different things you can think about, but I think that it can also tell you that there are other opportunities. Because I think when we think about SERP features, we sometimes think about SERP features on the main part of Google, but there are SERP features within SERP features and there's also lots of different parts of Google. So there's the images, there's shopping, there's news, there's travel, there's things like that. There's lots of stuff within that. You can pitch for one part at one heavy SERP feature and potentially make your way onto the main as well. So it's complex, but it's worth doing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, definitely worthwhile to track all this. Definitely worthwhile to read up on all of this. If a new feature does get announced and you think it might impact you, don't freak out. Let's see how it goes. I look at these things very directionally and I would take thematically, analyze what's kind of happening on the SERP and see where's Google going with all this? So many filters, oh I guess I should probably write much more specific information than it was in the past, because Google's getting more filters. But I don't want to get lost in all this, because we have an amazing guest. Lily Ray is here. She is phenomenal. Crystal Carter: Lily Ray. She's the best. Mordy Oberstein: She the best. We did a wonderful webinar with her and Glen Gabe all about content and what you should be doing with content around your website. But today Lily's here to talk about, because she very much keep us up with all of this, what's the most significant change or trend on the SERP that's been out there in the relatively recent past? So Lily's here to tell us what's she seen. Lily Ray: So the most significant change to the SERP that I've seen maybe in the last year or so is really just Google becoming a lot more visual with the types of results that it's showing. Not just in terms of showing Google images for example, but making the knowledge panel more colorful and robust. If you Google celebrity names, you might see a really colorful panel at the top with a lot of different news about that celebrity or different information about them and they're just kind of tweaking the way that looks. But it does take up a lot of real estate on the page, especially on mobile. That's kind of a big trend with Google in general. I think that they're rolling out a lot of features that are more interactive directly in the search results. They're more colorful, they're more engaging. There's things like journeys and interesting finds and all these different ways that you can get a lot of interactive information directly on Google. Also, there's a lot of new accordions that they've been rolling out in the last year or two. So of course we see people also ask across the board for most queries these days. I know sometimes the tools show that it comes and goes, but really there's definitely been a big rise and people also ask in the last few years. But beyond that, Google's using that same kind of functionality to roll out across different types of accordions. So things like buy-in guides and things to know, for example. If you'd Google specific medical conditions or products that you might be reviewing, Google can show something like things to know or buy-in guides. That's actually information taken from various different websites and kind of integrated into this accordion where you can learn about specifications about the product or different symptoms and treatments for medical conditions and things like that. So I think the trend is and always has been that Google's taking information from different sites, repurposing it into different ways that they display directly on the SERP. I mean even as a searcher myself, sometimes I find myself not clicking on any sites, because everything that I need is directly there. These people also ask, accordions are also kind of like if you click on one and then you click on a second one, they just scroll infinitely. So you can click on it, just kind of stay on Google and keep clicking on them. So we've all known this in the SEO space, but it definitely seems to be the case that Google is experimenting with a lot of different features that make it easy to just get all the information you need directly on Google without clicking on anything. As much as a lot of these things appear to be SEO opportunities, I see a lot of people saying, "Hey, how do you get into the people..." Also ask accordion or buy-in guide accordion and yeah, you should probably do that. But unfortunately, realistically, I don't know how many people are actually clicking into those links and it's very hard to track with search consoles. Yes, optimize in all the different ways that you can, but unfortunately I think the trend continues that a lot of these new features kind of cut into click through rates. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2023. Hopefully there are some changes that benefit SEO a little bit more and drive more traffic to our sites. So good luck with your rankings. Mordy Oberstein: That was amazing as always. Definitely follow Lily on Twitter at Lily Ray NYC. She's all over the place. There's not enough praise I can heap on her and not enough links we can link to where we can find the things that she's talking about. So find all of it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, find all of it. She's really active on Twitter, she's really active on LinkedIn as well. She writes loads, she presents at many, many conferences around the world. Mordy Oberstein: Many, many. Crystal Carter: Around the world. So keep your eye out and yeah, do give Lily a follow, because she shares a lot of great tips and a lot of great insights. Mordy Oberstein: Now keeping with the Lily theme, because I actually found out about this from Lily, she shared it on Twitter. I'm like, "Oh, that is cool." It's important to keep up with what's happening on the SERP, not just SERP features, but what's happening with rankings. What I mean by that is not like, "Okay, I'm here now I'm there." I mean what's switched with who and who switched where, because what does that mean? I'll give you a really clear example. All of a sudden you had, I don't know, five ultimate guides are ranking at the top of the SERP and then you see Google swap those five top ultimate guides with that really specific one and shorter answers to that particular query. That kind of tells you that, well the whole intent is flipped. There's a tool out there that Lily has shared a long time ago that I've always loved. It means that for the second week in a row, we're going tool time on the SERPS Up podcast When you're trying to see who switched with who, who's up, who's down, who got replaced by who on the results page, Crystal Carter: Who's on first. Mordy Oberstein: Who's on first, now is on second on the second page of the SERP. SISTRIX has a great tool, I don't know the name of it, I don't know if it has a name, but it is part of their trend and I guess it's called Compare SERPS. What it does is, it shows you the date. So let's say on January 1st, it shows you all the URLs that are ranking one through 20 for particular keyword. Then you pull another date, let's say a week later and you can see who went down and who went up and who switched with who. Sometimes there's direct swaps, like this one was number nine and that one went up to number 10 and they actually replaced each other. Those are the ones I really like, because you can see, okay, Google's purposely switching these two URLs around for the same kind of intent or whatever is on the SERP. It's a great tool. Crystal Carter: It's a great tool. It's really, really useful and it can help you track activity over time. It can also help you to see the volatility of a SERP over time. So sometimes things will change on the SERP because somebody's published something new and sometimes recency it can be a factor. Let's say nobody's written on a topic since 2018 or something and then you write something in 2022, then Google's like, "Okay, well this is probably more up to date than the thing before." So that might be one of the reasons why, but it's very interesting when you're saying some of these swaps, it's like have they updated something on the content or has Google updated how they understand that content? Mordy Oberstein: That's why I like looking at this kind of stuff after an update, because then you can see, okay, I can see this swap. Before the update here was the top 20, after the update, you can see who switched with who. Then take a look at, okay, the one that went up, what did they have on the page that the other one that lost didn't have? Or these five went up, these five went down. Is there a common theme between them? Because then you can try to pull the needle out of the haystack, which is what did Google add to the algorithm that now they're looking for that they couldn't do before? Which is the magic billion-dollar question. Crystal Carter: Exactly. I think that this can help you to plan your content, to optimize your content. You talked about opportunity costs to see which opportunities might have the most value for you. I think it's a really, really useful tool, especially as it can sometimes feel a little bit like a memory hole , because you're like, "What? Was that there? Is that new? I'm not sure." So being able to- Mordy Oberstein: Were they really ranking number seven last week? I don't remember. But now you know. Crystal Carter: Also, I think because sometimes clients will be like, "Oh, it's not on online." And I'm like, "Well it's on mine." Or like, "Oh, it's not on my desktop, we're here." I'm like, "Well mobile, you're there," and that sort of thing. So this is a great example of where a tool is really satisfying at really valuable need from SEO. Mordy Oberstein: If you want to look at it, I have the documentation on it, I found it. I will link to it in the show notes for you so you could take a look at it if it's new to you. Now, if that's new to you, what I know what else is new to you is actual news. Every week I get so corny about this pivot, I feel so corny inside, but that's me. Crystal Carter: Nailed it. Mordy Oberstein: Slightly corny. So anyway, here's Snappy News. Snappy news. Snappy news. Reports are abound that ChatGPT is coming to Bing. Search from Barry Schwartz, over at Search Engine Land. Microsoft to add ChatGPT features to Bing search. It's not official, but there are reports coming out that Bing could be adding everyone's favorite new technology ChatGPT to Bing search. To quote the source of the, I'll call it rumors, but maybe it's more than rumors. Anyway, to quote them, "Microsoft could soon get a return on its 1 billion investment in open AI creative ChatGPT, Chatbot, which gives human-like text answers to questions. Microsoft is preparing to launch a version of its Bing search engine that uses the artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT to answer some search queries rather than just showing a list of links according to two people with direct knowledge of the plans." I know there's all sorts of talk about ChatGPT being a search engine killer and that we don't need search engines anymore. We're just going to ask AI writers like ChatGPT questions and it'll spit back answers. I don't see it that way. I'm curious to see how they do integrate it into the platform, obviously makes sense that they invested so much money to do that. However, even if you provide a summary, and now I'm also curious about authorship or attribution, who do you attribute the source of the information. If the source is an AI writer scraping the entire web and regurgitating it back for you, different question. That's more of an ethical question I guess. But either way, even if the AI writer can give a short summary of something, you're, much like a feature snippet, going to need links in order to allow the user to extend the journey they want to learn more about it. I guess unless it's like a direct answer where they're like, how many home runs did Babe Ruth hit? 714, whatever. Also, there's questions about how it would handle a long tail queries where the information is a little bit more nuanced and so forth. We're probably getting this at a future episode of the SERPS UP podcast we haven't planned already, so stay tuned for that. But I don't think it's a search engine killer. Also, story number two, here's a fun little one for you. From Barry Schwartz again, over at seroundtable this time, Google's John Mueller says, "SEO skills needed for 2023 are curiosity and persistent." When asked what skills an SEO needs in 2023, Google's John Mueller said, "Curiosity and persistence." What does he mean by that? Who knows. My take, it highlights the creative end of SEO and that SEO is a slow grind with lots of trial and error. That'll do it for this week's version of the Snappy News. Wasn't that news? Snappy... Crystal Carter: Oh, because I mentioned the Wednesday. Mordy Oberstein: Because you mentioned Wednesday. See, I haven't watched that yet. I've been like binging an old show I've watched a long time ago. I'm almost through it. It's one of the ones I want to go to. Crystal Carter: Go on, what is it? What have you been watching? Mordy Oberstein: It's such a guilty pleasure. I don't know if I want to say. Crystal Carter: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Are you going to judge me? Crystal Carter: No. Probably. Mordy Oberstein: Friday Night Lights. Crystal Carter: Friday Night Lights. I've heard good things about this. Do you know what that's completely on brand, Mordy. It's a football show. Mordy Oberstein: It's a football show. Yeah, there's parts of high school drama and that's a guilty pleasure part. My wife was like, "What are you watching?" I'm like, "Oh, Friday Night Lights," and there's a movie. Don't get confused. It's duplicate content and they're not canonicalised. There's a movie and that's based on a book and that's a true story. That's crazy in its own right, because these people are nuts. Then there's a TV show that's kind of based off the movie format wise, but that's not true at all. And there's a high school drama part of it, which is the guilty... My wife's like, "What the hell are you watching?" But part of it's real and it's good and everyone wants the coach to be their dad kind of thing. It's amazing. Crystal Carter: The cool kids are talking to the other kids and somebody's going to go to the dance and all of those things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's a little bit of that. But there's also a little bit like my dad's off fighting in... It's the old show, fighting in Iraq and I'm stuck watching my grandmother who has dementia while I'm going to school and on the football team, kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Wow. I wasn't expecting that. This is a deeper show than I was expecting it to... Mordy Oberstein: See, it's deeper than you think. Okay. It's deeper than you think. Crystal Carter: I thought you were going to say Dawson's Creek or something when you said that. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm not. Who do you think I am? Crystal Carter: Lot's of people love Dawson's Creek. Mordy Oberstein: Only thing I like my Dawson is the meme with the guy crying. Anyway, okay, follow of the week before we leave, follow week. I mentioned before, we have a very special section of the follow of the week this week, because we're talking about changes on the SERP. There are so many people who cover these things who are keeping up on that and reporting on the news site. I thought instead of giving you one person, because I couldn't narrow it down, I'm going to give you one, two, three, four, five, six people to follow this week. Oh boy. It's a lot. I'm going to do it. One breath. You ready? Barry Schwartz... I can't give it one breath. Sorry. Barry Schwartz at Rusty Brick, Matt Southern, who writes for SEJ, that's @MattGSouthern, Danny Goodwin, who used to be at SEJ, but now he's a Search Engine Land. That's probably a whole bunch of SEO soap operaness, @MrDannyGoodwin, Goodwin with an I, not a Y. Then there's Lauren Baker, who is the founder of SEJ, which just happens to be a member of our SEO advisory board. He's @LaurenBaker. Then there's Roger Monty who writes for SEJ also and he's @MartinIBuster. Then there's Brody Clark who doesn't write for anybody, but who's just keeping up on all this stuff all the time. He writes his own blog, but he's keeping up on all this stuff on Twitter and he's @BrodySEO. I'm not going to go through spelling all these for you, but I'll link them in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Can I also throw out a special mention to Glen Gabe? To Mr. Glen Gabe? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I'm so sorry. I was debating do we have Glen again? Because we had Glen as a follow week in the past, but yes, and @MarieHaines also. Crystal Carter: @MarieHaines. @MarieHaines as well. There's so many people who keep up with this. It's so much fun. It's super fun. Also, if you add Barry Schwartz, is this new, it's a lot of fun. Even if he tells you it's not new. If it is new, then you may very well get yourself a little bit of internet fun times. Mordy Oberstein: Celebrity and fun. I have a whole website dedicated by the way, isthisnew.com, the Wix site. You can check that out. You can also buy DA from Barry there. Crystal Carter: These are all lies, people. Mordy Oberstein: No, the fact I have a website called isthisnew.com is not a lie. Crystal Carter: Oh, that's not a lie. That's not a lie at all. Mordy has talked a lot about this website. And he's extremely proud of himself. Mordy Oberstein: I love it. It's my favorite website. There's a Easter egg, our head of SEO editorial, George Winn who used to work at Search Engine Land and Run SMX. I have a little GIF of him there also. So it's a little fun little one pager website. It shows I have no life. Crystal Carter: Follow the whole crew who are keeping up with the SERP, because they will keep you up with the SERP. They're amazing. Mordy Oberstein: They'll keep you up on the SERP. It's kind of like SERPS Up. Get it? Oh, amazing. That was amazing. Anyway, we'll link all their profiles in the show notes, because there's way too many spellings to do for you. I'm going to lose all my audience if I do that. Like Mordy, why are you spelling so many names out? I can't write them down fast enough. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERPS Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back with the new episode as we talk about site migrations, thundercloud, lightning, ominous. Look wherever you consume your podcast or our SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Look and learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content and webinars we have at the Wix 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

Erika Varangouli is responsible for growing Riverside.fm’s organic visibility. Before Riverside, she led organic and brand teams at Semrush. She has worked with companies like Capterra, Symantec, Travelex, Asics, HSBC etc. She is a guest speaker, webinar host, and awards judge. Erika Varangouli Head of Search, Riverside.fm Erika Varangouli is responsible for growing Riverside.fm’s organic visibility. Before Riverside, she led organic and brand teams at Semrush. She has worked with companies like Capterra, Symantec, Travelex, Asics, HSBC etc. She is a guest speaker, webinar host, and awards judge. Articles & Resources 14 May 2024 The Content MVP Framework: Create and iterate to rank on any budget Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Should you drop the facade and present your true self to your customer base and audience? Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro joins Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter to share the power that authenticity brings to your marketing efforts. Understand the power of authenticity to the brand and what it means to your consumers. Dive into how authenticity in storytelling and product value resonates and sparks something different than the noise of competitors. Find your true voice in this episode of the SERP’s Up+ Podcast! Back The power of authenticity for marketing Should you drop the facade and present your true self to your customer base and audience? Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro joins Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter to share the power that authenticity brings to your marketing efforts. Understand the power of authenticity to the brand and what it means to your consumers. Dive into how authenticity in storytelling and product value resonates and sparks something different than the noise of competitors. Find your true voice in this episode of the SERP’s Up+ Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode SERP's Up+ 02 | September 7, 2023 | 52 MIN 00:00 / 51:35 This week’s guests Rand Fishkin Rand Fishkin is the cofounder and CEO of SparkToro, makers of fine audience research software. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand’s not working, he’s usually cooking a fancy meal for the love of his life, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you bribe him with great pasta or fancy cocktails, he’ll pull back the curtain on big tech’s dark secrets. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of marketing podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up+! Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up+ Podcast, where we give you guys some groovy new insights around what's happening in digital marketing. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the authentic,, the actual, the original, the bonafide Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello internet, SEO and marketing, and PPC, and social media, and PR, and all of the other people. Mordy Oberstein: Name all the verticals. Crystal Carter: Every single vertical. There's also going to be AI people as well now, doing things or something. Mordy Oberstein: Is there prompt optimization? Is that a thing now? Prompt optimization. Crystal Carter: AI management, content people, stuff as well. I don't know. There's lots of things, they're all of the people. The people, the people everywhere, welcome. You're all welcome here on our brand new version of our podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's right, because normally we have our SERPs Up Podcast, our weekly SEO podcast. But this is our monthly bonus series, where we talk about all sorts of digital marketing topics. Which brings us to the SERPs Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can use the app we built together with Trustpilot, to help build credibility with your audience, and do things like automatically trigger service review invitations to customers, using the Trustpilot app in the Wix app marketplace. Which ties into our topic of the day. I mean, what are the chances of that happening? I'm genuinely surprised. Okay, the truth is, I plan that out every time. I shall not lie. Because today we're talking about the power of authenticity in marketing. We're looking at why you should forget the phony baloney, and be real with your audience and true to yourself, both for business success, and so that you can tolerate yourself at night. And to do that, one of the greatest marketers of our lifetime, the founder of SparkToro, Rand Fishkin will be by in just a few moments to share why being and how being one's true self, is the epitome of marketing Zen. So close your eyes, meditate, say a few ohms. And if that's not your thing, crank up the tunes, have a cup of chai or kick back a glass of single malt. That is, do whatever it is that is the voodoo that you do, as the SERP's Up+ Podcast helps you find your true marketing self. I'm out of breath. Crystal Carter: You could have just said, be like Jenny from the block. She was like, I'm real. Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got. These are the things that you have to remember. Mordy Oberstein: She's so real, she dropped A-rod like it was hot. Crystal Carter: Oh, we're coming in, we're just straight off the bat. Mordy Oberstein: When you say real, I don't think A-rod... as a salty, salty Yankee fan, that man cheated. He got suspended for... we're going on another rant. I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: I was talking about JLo. I don't know what you're talking about. She had her and Ja Rule or something. I don't know, everyone, it's all good. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. One of, I think, the greatest things that is us, is the inner depth of our personality, and our persona and who we are. So to share a bit of my personal philosophy on life, I'm somebody who thinks that philosophy and marketing are really connected. I don't want to get too mushy gushy with it, but I think there's something very deep and very powerful, almost like buried within the recesses of who we are that's entirely unique, and that's special, and that if we can tap into that part of who we are, you can do some pretty cool special marketing things. I know I'm getting a little bit sappy. However, it's rare in a world that's filled with marketing fluff and cliches, to feel that connection. But someone I always thought who did that really, really well, someone for years, when you listened to him talk, you felt there was something real emanating from his core, and you could really grab onto it. And that has been Rand Fishkin. So who better to help us talk about the value of being authentic in your marketing, than the founder of SparkToro, Rand Fishkin. Welcome. Rand Fishkin: Thanks for having me, Mordy. Thanks for having me, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us. It's an absolute pleasure, honor, delight. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I hope you caught my pithy commentary in our meeting chat about specifically, A-rod. Mordy Oberstein: A-rod, yes. Rand Fishkin: Many negative thoughts about him. Mordy Oberstein: I can't stand that he's part of the pre-game coverage on some of the games. It's terrible. So inauthentic, by the way. Rand Fishkin: I think one of the problems functionally speaking in, I'm going to say modern capitalist culture, is you were good at your job, therefore we should pay attention to you about other things. And that's just not true, right? Crystal Carter: Right, right. Rand Fishkin: Fundamentally, this is one of the values of authenticity, is that you don't listen to someone just because of what they could do for you. We were talking before the official podcast kicked off, about how you might have opinions on businesses of various sizes. And I was telling you guys that I love small businesses, and I'm not a big fan of helping big businesses. And very frequently, I get this, "But they have so much money, they could do so much." For whatever, for your career, or your company or what about M and A? And I was always like, well, sorry. If you're valued at over a billion, I'm kind of the inverse of a VC. I kind of hate unicorns. Okay, well, your valuation's too high. I don't like you anymore. You used to be cool, now you're not cool anymore. I think it's because I grew up with Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, and Nirvana, and it's like the pre-sellout culture stuck. Mordy Oberstein: So not a Stone Temple Pilot fan, because they were considered to be like a fake grunge band. They weren't really a grunge band, in my honest opinion, but whatever. Rand Fishkin: Honestly, I'm okay with it. I'm fine. I think they were talented musicians, and not despicably evil people. And so if a studio whatever wants to form a... I'm like this with the Monkees too. I don't completely hate it. Whatever. You want to put together an NSYNC, you want to put together a... fine, it's none of my business. Mordy Oberstein: But Billy Joel? Because I saw, I saw the thread. Billy Joel, no. No Billy Joel. Rand Fishkin: He's not talented. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my goodness. Crystal Carter: Oh man, we're dropping bombs everywhere. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get into marketing, for a second, I'm literally from the border of Queens on Long Island. You cross the street and you're on Long Island. And there's three fundamental truths about Long Island: Bagel Boss, Adventureland and Billy Joel. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, Long Island has problems. Crystal Carter: They have great iced tea though. The iced tea is delicious. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, all right. I'll have to check that out. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. I'm moving out. Crystal Carter: I think it's really interesting though, that you referenced some folks from the nineties and nineties music culture. Because when we're talking about authenticity, I was also thinking in the nineties there was a lot of stuff in hip hop culture about keeping it real, keep it real here, and people being called out for not keeping it real, for being fake and being that sort of thing. And I feel like that sentiment seems to have dissipated from the general popular culture, that people are doing it for the gram and that's fine. And that people don't... there's a lot of people who, like you were saying, have terrible opinions based on nothing to do with the topic necessarily, and they spread them across everywhere. Why do you think that that shift has happened, and how do you think we can try to rectify it? Or do you think we should? Rand Fishkin: Yeah, let's see. I'm torn. I have the half of me that is the things that I value are authenticity, and transparency, and whatever you want to call it. Not selling out, keeping it real. But at the same time, it is impossible for me to begrudge, whatever, younger generations who are doing things that might not be true to themselves or their personality, but they're doing it for, whatever, social media attention and awareness, or they're doing it for their career. Because fundamentally, I think that one of the biggest shifts that's happened in our lifetimes, especially in the United States, is we've gone from a world where you could work a part-time job, and put yourself through college, and pay your rent, to a world where that is impossible. And so when I was born, there's this classic concept of the American dream. You come from nothing, you have nothing, but economic mobility is so high in this country that over the course of even just one generation, a family can transform themselves through not even that hard work, a little bit of work and attention, into a middle class or a totally getting by family. And now that's completely not true. Almost all the wealth gain, obviously in the last 50 years, has gone to the top 10th of a percent of Americans, leaving everyone else behind. Obviously, inflation and affordability of everything has gone down. And so now I'm kind of like, God, you know what? Maybe keeping it real is selling out. To keep it real, you have to sell out. I'm not sure that these cultural ideas that we attribute to, whatever, hip hop artists, or grunge artists, or popular music, or television, or film or whatever it is, I'm not sure that that's where it comes from. I think it comes from economics, and I think it comes from the reality of where people are. So hey, you're doing it for the Gram. Maybe you're doing it for your career. Maybe you're doing it so you can afford Goddamn healthcare. So, who am I to judge? Mordy Oberstein: On the opposite side though, you have the big companies, or bigger brands, or not even bigger brands, just your established companies. And I was doing some research for a landing page I was writing, and I went through a couple of hundred different landing pages. And after a while I'm like, wow, I don't think I've read anything real for the last five hours. It's all like ultimate power, unlimited, whatever. And I walked away feeling, in five years from now, I hope and I think it's going to sound like a used car sales ad, like, "Come on down to Bob's." There's nothing real there. I get people feel maybe that they have to put on that front of really driving the sale, because they're nervous they're not going to get the sale. But I think in the end you come off, just in my personal opinion, as not really connecting in a real way. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I think what's going on is the difference between judging people harshly for their willingness to compromise the creative, artistic, human side of who they are in order to make money, versus hey, when you do that, why don't you do marketing, and sales, and copywriting, and content creation in ways that resonate with real people? And those are two different things. One is at the macro level, and one is at the micro level. And at the micro level, I think this is where authenticity still works wonders. You can feel brands that resonate with people, even if they are... I think one of my favorite examples that I bring up regularly, is the Mars Corporation's Snickers campaign of the last 15 years. Snickers sort of had this, I think they worked with an agency, but I can't remember the agency's name, this is back in the early 2000s. They worked with an agency who uncovers through audience research, they talk to a bunch of people who buy Snickers, people who don't buy Snickers, people who eat it regular... the candy bar, for anyone who's not familiar. And they talked to a lot of people, and found that they were using Snickers as a tastier alternative to a meal replacement. Essentially it was, Snickers was almost competing more with Power Bars in people's minds, or Luna Bars, which at the time, early 2000s Power Bar was sort of, if you're a dude, you have to eat this. Luna Bar was, if you're a woman, you have to eat this. And so, of course my pantry is stacked with Luna Bars, because F the gender paradigm. The reality was, they discovered lots of people are essentially eating Snickers in lieu of a meal or whatever. So therefore, we should position Snickers as the one candy bar that's a solution to hunger, as opposed to a reward or a treat. And the campaign was ludicrously successful. You can see even to this day, they haven't gone away from it. It's been 17 years, 18 years or something that they've been running with this. You're not you when you're hungry. Let's keep playing on that for forever. I'm not sure they should ever give it up. Because I think that that positioning is incredibly valuable. It's also authentic. For better or worse, I can't explain exactly why the combination of Snickers ingredients, which is no healthier- Rand Fishkin: The combination of Snickers ingredients, which is no healthier for you than anything else. Crystal Carter: No. Rand Fishkin: Right? Absolutely not. But if I eat a, I don't know, a Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or a bag of M&M's, I do not feel like, okay, I've had my calories. I'm okay. I can go on with my day. But I do feel that way with the Snickers. Crystal Carter: I mean, yeah, that's totally true. I mean, another similar campaign that I've seen is Marmite, which folks who've been to the UK will know about that, and Marmite is like, some people love us, some people hate us. That's just how it is. And they run with that throughout their campaigns, and they run with that for years. And in fact, it's to the point where it's like it's idiomatic. People are like, "Oh yeah, it's a bit of a Marmite kind of thing." It's a saying that people say and they know what that means, and that is extremely ingrained, authentic branding, but they're just sort of like, "That's who we are." Like, "Pick one." Rand Fishkin: What's tough is, and this goes back to Mordy's original point, translating the success that campaigns like this have had in plenty of consumer sectors to B2B where it's so hard, so hard in B2B to find examples of campaigns that resonate. I think part of it is how B2B is perceived, how it's bought and sold. I think part of it is the long marketing and sales cycle of B2B. Part of it is the expected professionalism. And so a lot of these companies feel like they can't play toward their brand positioning. And many of them, most of them also don't make incredibly obvious products. So you have to explain what you do and the features. Snickers does not have to be like, "What you hold in your hands is what's called a candy bar." They can dispense with all that BS. Everybody knows exactly what it is. And the same thing is true if you, whatever, go to a waterpark or buy Marmite at the store or see a bottle of wine. Consumer products are just a known variable, known quantity. Whereas B2B, there's so much. Wix, right? Okay, Wix has to explain, "Hey, we are a CMS, but we're this kind of CMS for this kind of person. These are the features, these are the reasons you would choose us." All that kind of stuff. If you could see CMSs, whatever, at the drugstore on the counter, the way you see candy bars, Wix would probably do a very different kind of branding campaign and positioning. And so I think this goes, Mordy, to the challenge around authenticity and sales language that you're finding. Mordy Oberstein: If Wix were a candy bar, by the way, we would have caramel and peanuts on this for the record. Rand Fishkin: Caramel and peanuts. Is that a PAYDAY? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's like a PAYDAY, right? It's like a Snickers, but there's no nougat. It just... Right, yeah. Rand Fishkin: PAYDAY is a peanut caramel bar and yet somehow when I'm hungry, I don't want a PAYDAY. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that it's the nougat that does it. It's definitely that. But I think also, I think sometimes with authenticity, particularly with products, I think if I see a product and they're like, "We don't do this. We do do this really, really well, but we don't do that," that there's a certain amount of confidence to that. One of the classics examples, and I know this is a consumer product, but for instance, Domino's Pizza says, "We will get you a pizza in 30 minutes or less." That's one of the things that they say they're able to do. They don't say, "We will get you the best pizza you've ever had in your life in 30 minutes or less." They don't say that it will have everything you ever wanted in a pizza. No. They say, "This is what we can do for you, and if you would like this, we have that. That's what we can promise you. We can promise you that." And the stuff in between, you make your choices. Sometimes you want a pizza that takes longer than that. Sometimes you want to go to this artisanal place around the corner and get something that, what's the Long Island pizza place there, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: There are so many. Crystal Carter: So many. It's like, I don't even know where to start. Mordy Oberstein: Well, a famous one. It’s a whole different story Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. But I think you mentioned value propositions, and I think it's really important to understand what is your genuine actual USP for why you started your business. There must've been some point where you thought to yourself, "You know what? Lots of people are making pizza or doing whatever it is they're doing or making whatever SaaS products they are, but it's missing something and it's missing this, and I think that I can fill that gap, and I think that being able to understand your USP is really, really important. Rand Fishkin: We had on the SparkToro homepage a video that was relatively expensive to make, and we worked with a professional video company and we went to a wedding venue that has sort of a hedge maze up north of Seattle. Mordy Oberstein: I remember that. I remember that video. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. So Casey and I went up there with a video crew and we filmed this whole thing. Took 10 hours of filming, nine hours of filming, something like that, and then lots of editing work to get it down to, I think it was about a 40-second, 45-second video, and we put it on our homepage. We were very proud of it. It was quite authentic. It even started off, Crystal, with a, I think the line was like, "I'm Rand Fishkin and I spent my career trying to return data that big tech steals and hides away to marketers who deserve to have it," which is fundamentally like, that's why we created SparkToro. I was like, pre 2016, Facebook would tell you all this data about your audience, and pre Elon Twitter would show you all this interesting information in Audience Insights. I think they actually took it away even before he bought it, but then it started this world of like, whoa, whoa, walled gardens, let's keep people in. Don't let people out. Google hiding keyword data, all this stuff. And I was like, "That sucks." That sucks and it's dumb, and screw big tech, hate those guys. Let's return this data to people. We have a big free version that a 100,000 people use and we've got our paid version. But telling that story interestingly, I think made us resonate a little bit better with a very small group, but it hurt our conversion rate, it didn't help it. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, so I think it was one of those interesting experiences. We kept the video there for a year because we were like, "Well, let's keep trying. Maybe we put it below the call to action. Maybe we keep it over here." But no, it really was, it was a detractor because it was a second call to action on the homepage from just try the product, put in your keywords or your search terms or whatever. And yeah, we finally pulled it recently, and I don't think we're going to bring it back for the V2 that we're building. So it's a tough thing, and maybe the video didn't do what it was supposed to do, maybe it wasn't resonating the way we hoped it would, but certainly I think it's a hard thing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think a lot of businesses struggle with this. So one of the classic cases where people do all these beauty shots of their products and they do all these amazing, amazing, beautiful shots of the crème brulée in the restaurant and the hotel room all sorted out like that. If I'm somebody who's looking in the business, I'm going to TripAdvisor, I'm going to TripAdvisor, and I'm going to go and have a look at what the people who went in and took a picture on their terrible old iPhone that's got a crack on the screen, what they took a picture of and what the room actually looks like. If their holiday snaps still look okay, then I'm like, "Cool." If the restaurant still looks all right, then cool. If the reviews similarly of your fantastic, amazing SaaS product or whatever kind of product still say roughly the same kinds of things that you're promising on your website, then that's going to resonate with me. So I think that companies invest a lot of time in making all these beauty shots and making all this beautiful copy and all of that sort of stuff, but making sure that people have something that connects with how they are interacting with it and how they are experiencing the product is really important. Like you were saying that it was distracting from actually being able to try the tool. Like with a tool like an online thing, being able to try the tool is really the bread and butter. That's the proof in the pudding as it were, to name many other food metaphors. I don't know. I could talk about pies or something or... Mordy Oberstein: I love pies. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, I mean, the hotels thing is really interesting. I've talked to a few hoteliers about this and the website, the photography, all of this kind of stuff. There's two fascinating things that I learned that were sort of going on there. One is pure positioning. So when you get to a website that looks and feels like small luxury hotels of the world, you get in the mindset of what you expect the price to be, what you expect the service to be like, blah, blah, blah. You probably will go to TripAdvisor and look at the reviews and dah, dah, dah, dah. But if you're visiting that area and you're that kind of consumer, the difference between a 4.1 and a 4.5 and a 4.9 out of five doesn't mean that much to you. You're probably going to choose that location anyway if it's your kind of hotel and your kind of place. And then the second one was apparently, interestingly enough, a huge part of the visual aesthetic, design, all the website stuff is like a local ecosystem contribution. For example, I was talking to a hotelier in Puglia in Italy, the south, the heel of the boot of Italy, and the hotelier was explaining that, "Oh, well, when we make our website, of course we want to hire the best local photographers, and then they also will want to work with us when someone has a wedding here, they also work with us when someone had their engagement and they're coming here for their trip or their honeymoon or something like that. And we work with those people. We work with the florist for the flowers for the photo shoot, and then that promotes their business, which... " Like it's all this, I don't know what you want to call it, relationship building, relationship building through craft, creation of these kinds of things, versus the Holiday Inn where it is, boom, this is exactly... Like you know exactly what you're going to get the same thing over and over again. Hilton is the same way and Marriott and Radisson and all the big brands. They have their system, but for these small local ones, again, it's that we want to show to the consumer and the potential buyer who we are and we're also trying to create relationships inside our local community with the people who, if you're a wedding photographer, we want you to recommend to your event planner that all the couples that you work with should come to our hotel, so we hire you. Mordy Oberstein: That's something that's interesting to me because something that you do so well, I feel like, and you're a SaaS platform, is that you come across, SparkToro comes across, all the things you guys are doing over there, Amanda, it comes across very boutique, it comes across very genuine, it comes across very connective, and it's so interesting because it's so peculiar for a SaaS platform to be able to pull that off and I'm wondering how you do that. Rand Fishkin: So I think that it sort of goes back to what are you allowed to do based on the design of your business. So from the building blocks level, I think this is the wonderful and terrible thing about entrepreneurship and whatever, the funding ecosystem and how capitalism has sort of evolved for entrepreneurship, especially in tech. And that is we get to be very peculiar. And peculiar is a beautiful world because to me, it has this connotation of weird, for the sake of being weird. You are doing this different thing because not just you want to stand out from the crowd in a way that gets you money, but you want to stand out from the crowd in a way that's like a Wes Anderson movie. You're sort of being particular for the sake of being particular because this is just who you are. And one of my favorite facts about Wes Anderson movies, apparently everybody gets paid like a thousand bucks a day to work on the movie. It doesn't matter if you're Scarlett Johansson. You make the lowest rate and the same rate as all the background actors. There's no, I can't remember what they call it, scale. They call it scale in the industry. So everybody makes that money because you want to work on a Wes Anderson movie and it's super weird and the project's going to be weird, and the movie's going to look beautiful, and the plot's going to make no sense and all those kinds of things. And clearly he's built this reputation, and I think that's great. And SparkToro, we have this like, our funding structure lets us, so long as we're alive and profitable, we can really do what we want. We do not have to grow. I mean, I'd like to grow, Casey wants to grow, Amanda wants to grow, but we don't have to. We're doing a nice amount of revenue, a very nice amount of revenue per person. There's only three of us. So we're super different from other SaaS platforms in that we just don't have the same motivation and incentive to, okay, how do we maximize revenue? We better build a sales team, we better get people on board. Like, no, we don't build the sales team not because it wouldn't be good for the business, we don't build the sales team because I don't like managing salespeople. And a ton of what you feel from SparkToro and a lot of boutiques and indie brands and indie startups is, oh, they're doing this because they like doing this and they're not doing this because they don't like doing this. And I don't think you can build competitive advantage fundamentally with something that isn't your strength and something that's not your passion. So- Rand Fishkin: ... fundamentally with something that isn't your strength and something that's not your passion. So I'm trying to build a life, not a business that maximizes the amount of revenue it takes from customers, and that's already real. That's already a real thing. You're talking about how I decide to live my life because your work life, your business life is part of your life. The biggest reason that I hope SparkToro is successful on a bigger scale than it is now and that I hope in 10 years, it's like a company that lots of people point to and talk about is so that this fundamental idea will trickle down into the broader world of tech and entrepreneurship, that maybe you should not optimize for maximizing revenue growth and investor returns, but instead you should build something that gives you and your employees and team and customers the life that they want and the solutions that they want. And I think frankly, that's a very un-American way to live, but a really beautiful one. Mordy Oberstein: It's a very existential way to live. It's the meaningful life versus the life. Rand Fishkin: I want to be clear: I also do stuff for the brand. I'm not trying to paint myself as like everything Rand does is authentic... Behind me, I have this whiteboard, I film these weekly whiteboard videos, the five-minute whiteboards for SparkToro now, and part of that is like a, "Gosh, well, I tried coming up with some other video formats and trying some other things," but you know what? I saw that the old classic resonated with people: my 17 years of doing Whiteboard Friday at Moz really stuck with folks: they missed that, they wanted it again. When I do them, they get high engagement. Okay, I'm going to give the people what they want. And also, a five-minute whiteboard is not a terrible challenge or anything, and I enjoy the experience, so it's not completely inauthentic. But I absolutely will do things for whatever personal and professional gain. I am not against that, right? I'm not Kurt Cobain, and, "Oh my God, I'm making money. It's the end," but I have a little bit more of that in me than most venture-backed entrepreneurs. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that comes back to the confidence of having the confidence to say, "We are going to grow in ways that are valuable to us and in ways that enrich us," because you say haven't got a sales team that's going and getting more sales, doing all of that, I think that it does give you an opportunity to be more creative, and more flexible, and to try new things. And certainly one of the things that's fundamental and to the core of Wix, and one of the things I love about our team here at Wix is that people try new things. People try new things and people will be like, "Hey, I tried a thing," and they go, "Oh, you did what?", and, "Oh, that's cool. I like that. Hey, check out this thing that this person made." We have hackathons, we have markathon with marketing things where everybody just gets together and has ideas. Mordy Oberstein: And it goes into the product. We can see it at least on the inside like, "Oh, that's, from that," that's from hackathon. Crystal Carter: Right. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I think at a larger... How many people is Wix now? Mordy Oberstein: 5,000, something like that. I should know that. It's around 5,000. Rand Fishkin: I think in an environment like that, one of the biggest things I hear from folks who work in larger companies, and when I say larger, I mean 200 plus, nevermind 2,000 plus, but is, "I do work and I don't know how it contributes to the business." To the end of the day, "Customers get more value," or whatever, "Our investors make more money and my stock price goes up," or whatever, "This is valued and recognized by people in leadership," that visibility goes away really early in a company's growth cycle. I think people felt that way at Moz at 210 people when I was there, and that sucks. Fundamentally, it is terrible, I think to do work and not know how that work contributes or to feel like it doesn't contribute. When I look at people who are, I saw an old friend of Geraldine's yesterday posting on LinkedIn that it was their last day at Google. They were leaving Google after 13, 14 years. And it was subtly written, but one of the things in there was, "For the last few years I've been working on a project that never went live, but now I'm going to a smaller company where I...", And I had this, yeah, I get it. I get that, "I'm well paid, I have a cushy job, things are going really great in my professional career, I've been promoted, whatever, but I just spent years working on a project that no one will ever know about. I'm going somewhere where my work actually contributes to society." Mordy Oberstein: I think it's almost divine: you want to feel like you're having an impact on something, somehow. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I think it can be purely capitalist, purely financial, but if it's nothing, that's just brutal. So, I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense, I'm very proud to hear, glad to hear that Wix is investing in a, "Hey, do this stuff," and then that stuff will be in the live version of the product that customers are using, and you'll be able to see how many people used it and you'll hear, "Oh man, that thing I contributed to, it turned into something real." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Rand Fishkin: And beautiful. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, if you're listening to this podcast, you're a marketer and you're working with a product team, I feel like it's your role as a marketer to tell the product team, "Hey, so-and-so was talking about this product that you made and they loved it." We had that today in our WhatsApp group like, "Hey, yo, some SEO was saying that they love what you all are doing." And the product people were like, "Awesome. We're having an impact. They just made our day, legit." Crystal Carter: It's such a big deal working as a tech SEO, tell the devs that if you asked the devs for this ticket and that ticket and that ticket and this ticket, and you saw your SEO go off the charts, tell them. Tell them that, "That work that you did helped us get 15% ROI uplift," or whatever it may be, because that will make getting the dev tickets actioned quicker the next time because they'll want to get that feedback from you. Similarly, if you're working on a campaign and you asked for a favor from somebody in a different team to do the thing, you asked for somebody to be in this video that you were going to put on the whatever, tell them that it had an impact. It makes such a big difference and costs you nothing. Sending an email, sending a Slack message costs you nothing and can make such a big difference to the cohesion of your team, and to how these enthusiastic people are going forward as well. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, absolutely. I think a huge part of this for folks who do consulting and agency work, one of the biggest frustrations that I hear over and over again is, "We did this big deep dive on the client's website and we looked at all the problems that they need to solve, we did this audit, we presented all these findings, we tried to get approval to go make the changes and improve things, and they were like, okay, thanks for the audit, and it's two years later, nothing's happened." It's mind-blowing from an agency perspective to be like, "Gosh, but when this other client we worked with actually did the things we said, they got way more business and money, so why are you doing nothing?" Crystal Carter: And you sometimes never find out. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, but the answer is complicated. When you dig in, it's almost never the case that there's some, I don't know, evil mid-level manager- Crystal Carter: Mu-ah-ha. Rand Fishkin: ... who's like, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hire an agency, going to pay them money, and then I'm going to do none of the work they recommend. Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha." That cartoon villain just doesn't exist, right? Crystal Carter: "I'm going to wait until they do the PowerPoint. I'm going to ask lots of questions. Lots of them,". Rand Fishkin: Yeah, but I do think it pays as an agency, as a marketer who's contributing even in-house on a team, when you have that conversation about like, "Okay, well these findings, they're going to translate into these actions," and those actions are going to translate directly into, whatever, financial gain, or improvements in conversion rate, or improvements in whatever this metric is. And if that thing is not fundamentally tied to the incentives, the directives, and the goals that leadership has defined for whatever the second tier or the third tier of management that you're working with, well probably it's not going to get done. And even if is, even if it is beautifully and perfectly aligned, if they don't have the resources or if those resources have projects that are sitting with even higher priorities or those resources have capability and competence problems, many times these things won't happen. Crystal Carter: To bring it back to the realness, to the depths of the real, I think that this is incredibly important. We talk about realness in your marketing, authenticity in your marketing, as we're thinking about outbound communications and things like that. When you are talking to your teams and when you are talking to your stakeholders in your campaigns, being able to be a straight-shooter, being able to actually answer the questions in plain English without jargon, and to be able to address, like you said, the actual concerns that they have, the actual goals that they have, not, "I'm so smart. Look at my beautiful pie charts. I'm so clever. This is a fantastic pie chart," and it is hitting all of the best practices for all of the things that you are expected to do. It's like, "That's great: we have two people in our team and we can't do any of that." So when you're thinking about your authenticity, when you're talking to clients about your marketing campaign, your SEO campaign, your audience research, whatever, being authentic with them, of being like, "Hey guys, what can you actually achieve? What can you actually do?", before you start the audit, "What can you actually do? How many hours do you have to do this? What kind of resources do you have to actually achieve this?", can make such a difference, and also can mean that they're more likely to tell you and be honest with you and be clear with you when they need help. When they're like, "We don't know how to do this. Can you help us?", and then maybe you get more billable hours or whatever it may be. Rand Fishkin: I also highly recommend to folks that before you start your audit or your deep dive, find out what the resourcing is: like, "Oh, do we have capability to do this, to do this, do this? What if I come up with suggestions that need this or this or this?", and then if the client or the team or the person, whatever, tells you, "Oh yeah, we can definitely do this. We can't do this. These things are kind in the middle," you can structure your findings that way. You can be like, "All right, I found a lot of opportunities. Many of them sit in the, we can't fix it bucket, but I'm presenting them anyway in the hopes that someday we will be able to fix them. These sit in the maybe bucket. And these are the ones we said we could fix right away, and I prioritize them by importance," and then it's like, all right, now we're talking about action. Crystal Carter: Right, because you're real and they were real. You're speaking like a real human person. Rand Fishkin: The transparency inside organizations and the alignment between people in teams is hugely important. I fundamentally believe to my core that Elon Musk is a piece of shit, but I say that in all sincerity and in every way. But he does have this concept of people as vectors in an organization, and if you point them all in the same direction along the same lines, you get the full power of their impact. And so, simply aligning people all to go in the same direction, even in very large organizations, if the leader of that organization, the CEO themselves says, "We are all working on this. Everyone is going to get us to here. You tell me what you need to do to get there," I think there's one of the reasons, probably one of the biggest reasons why several of his companies have been very successful. And then obviously Twitter, he's chosen very poorly which things to do, no surprise. And also, his awfulness bleeds into the attractiveness of the platform generally. But I think there's lessons to be learned even from terrible people, and this is a great one where that alignment allows SpaceX and Tesla to do things well and fast that are very hard for more complex, less transparently, "Everyone's on the same page, moving toward the same goals," organizations in the engineering and tech field. Mordy Oberstein: I generally pride in myself on my pivots, but I don't have one here... And I do have a slight pivot actually because I guess we were talking about tech and not being seen in the greatest light. Something I've been meaning to ask you this entire podcast is these big tech companies end up front of Congress for whatever particular reason, whether it's Google, whether it's Facebook, whatever it is, TikTok most recently, I guess, and we as digital marketers sometimes sit back and laugh like, "Oh, the Congress asks the most ridiculous question to that person. They know clearly know nothing about Google or TikTok or whatever, or technology. They've never used a computer in their life. It's quite obvious," but- Mordy Oberstein: They've never used a computer in their life. It's quite obvious. But my dad, who also has hardly used a computer in his life, will look at that and be like, wait a second. Should I be trusting this stuff that's on my phone? You're telling me to go to the Google, to go to the Facebook. Do I trust this stuff now? Because now I saw the CEO of Facebook sitting in front of Congress. It must mean he's not trustworthy. And I wonder, going back to our previous conversation, I know we're running out of time, and so you don't have to get too deep into it, but I really just wanted to ask it. Do you think that that has an impact of when we as marketers talk to consumers or to other businesses and try to sell a product or a service? If people are looking at the web more skeptically, does it mean that we're going to end up moving to a more conversational model? Because when they look and see that landing page, where you're writing that marketing schlock, are people going to start to see through that because they're starting to think of the webinar in a more skeptical kind of way? Rand Fishkin: I think on the whole, I completely disagree. I think people are more trusting today of things that they see on the web than they ever have been. And a huge part of that is because these big tech companies have made the web such a relatively safe place to go. The late nineties, the early two thousands, you could get malware, spam, stuff that would just destroy your computer and then trying to fix it in whatever early versions of Windows or like Windows 98, I remember debugging my grandfather's computer in Windows 98, Jesus Christ, oh my God, he visited the wrong internet website and clicked the wrong thing. But today, that experience is so curated. It's so relatively safe that I actually fundamentally would say no. I think people trust the web like never before they believe it's safe to put in their credit card. They'll give you their social security number over the internet, they'll digitally sign things over to the internet, they'll sell their house on the internet. It has gotten to a really different place. Where I would say you drag Zuckerberg in front of Congress or you bring Sundar Pichai in front of Congress. And what surprises me the most is that Congress has no teeth. So Sundar Pichai, for example, when in front of Congress, I believe this was 2019, and talked about Google sending more and more traffic to the open web. Maybe it was 2020. And it was an obvious lie, provable with data. You just go out there and get it. So I remember I wrote an article, I think on SparkToro that was like, Hey, I don't know why Congress is unwilling to hold Google CEO's feet to the fire, but I'll do it. Here you go. And I think I had a call with Lina Khan who now Biden is appointed as the head of the FTC, and she was like, okay, can you walk me through this? I'm trying to understand exactly what's going on here, but basically no action from Congress. I had a call with David Cicilline, who's the congressman in charge of the committee looking into Google, and they were like their hands are tied. There's not a lot that they can do. And so I'm going to say this also Mordy to defend, no American has ever defended Congress to my knowledge. But I will say I talk to a lot of people in government, even during the Trump administration, which you can probably tell, I obviously disliked and disagreed with most of that. But I talked to people inside the administration. I think these are mostly appointees who were appointed for their knowledge and skills rather than political appointees. But they seemed good-natured and good-hearted doing the best that they could. They seemed smart and talented and capable. I will say one of the things that frustrates me about media is that the most ridiculous, silly, you know nothing and it's obvious, those are the quotes that make it to the top of Reddit. The ones where it's like Congress is an idiot, they know nothing about technology. And then if you listen to the hearings, you're like, oh, got it. Four hours of good questions and then 15 minutes from this one idiot. Like, all right, I see how sort of media is shaped. If you watch the whole C-SPAN thing, you're like, huh, these people are pretty savvy. Crystal Carter: Then one person's like, what is Finsta? And they're like, it's not a thing. No, but what is Finsta? It's fake Instagram. But how do I get to it? Rand Fishkin: Yeah, and those are the quotes, right? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had an hour of super spectacularly, good question, but it got no attention. It was kind of like a, okay, yeah, she's knowledgeable, she knows her stuff and she's asking good questions, and these are all smart things and all right, good, good, good. Fine. Ignore it. Don't air it. But how do I get to my cousin's Finsta? Like, oh, geez. Look at this, Congress are a bunch of idiots. Okay. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That conversation did not go where I thought it was. That's really interesting. To quote Bob Dylan, the Hour is getting late. It's actually not a Jimi Hendrix quote because Dylan wrote it. Hendrix covered it, but Dylan said he wrote it for Hendrix, metaphorically obviously. Crystal Carter: Find some way out of here. Rand Fishkin: I saw Bob Dylan perform maybe 20 years ago. Mordy Oberstein: I walked out. Rand Fishkin: Oh, man. I mean obviously phenomenal songwriter, singer, but geez, that guy, he can barely hold a tune. Mordy Oberstein: All I can say is thank God Tom Petty went on first and not Dylan. Rand Fishkin: I did just see Bruce Springsteen when we were in Italy in April, and holy crap, let me tell you, the E Street Band, there was not a note out of tune. There was not a beat missed. He didn't take a sip of water in a four-hour show. It was just song, song, song, song, song. No breaks, nothing. It's the most professional performance I've ever seen, and my mind was blown. I was like, oh, I guess I like Springsteen. It was great. Mordy Oberstein: What a thunk. I actually saw Springsteen at Giant Stadium like, this is boring. I'd rather be at Billy Joel. Crystal Carter: I'm a Beyonce fan. I saw her in the Renaissance tour. It was amazing. So on that note, thank you very much. Rand Fishkin: Beyonce is a performer, right? She's almost less a musician and more of an artist, right? She does so much. Crystal Carter: She's everything. She's all of it. Rand Fishkin: She's everything. Yeah. That's an incomparable thing. I think Springsteen and Dylan and Jelly Bowl or whoever, those people are singer-songwriter bands, right? They're a band that's going to get up and do a set and Beyonce is like Uh-huh. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of music and hitting the notes on this podcast and what we do, who might be some other marketers, thought leaders, folks out there, that our audience can check out across social media to expand their minds a little bit? Rand Fishkin: What a great, great question. This used to be easy. I would go to look at who I followed on Twitter. I used to follow a very small subset of people on Twitter, and of course that platform is now nearly useless. But I do follow some great folks on Mastodon. I suspect in a year I'm going to be telling you about Threads. That's probably where I'd tell you to follow people. But for right now, yeah, Mastodon is great. LinkedIn is also good too. A couple of people that I have found their work to be extraordinary, they don't post all that often, but one is Asia Orangio from DemandMaven. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's got a great podcast. Rand Fishkin: Asia's so good, so smart, so talented that we actually hired her at SparkToro. She's helping us build V 2. She's doing our audience research and helping us with wire framing and prototyping this new version that's launching soon. So obviously I think the world of her and I would recommend you follow her anywhere. She's just terrific. Let's see. I have also gotten a lot of value from following, well, okay, this is an obvious one, but I hired Amanda because I was going to say her social media presence. She's on every platform, and she's fantastic on all of them. Crystal Carter: She's amazing. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, she's incomparable, right? I think if you want to see what social media marketing done right looks like, you just follow her. Crystal Carter: She shared this great piece about her exterminator's newsletter and how her exterminator sends a newsletter and is always super valuable and how he's just like, Hey, it's mosquito time. You should get all of the water out of your back garden so that the mosquitoes don't lay eggs in the standing water in your back garden. I was like, what? So I did that this summer based on her tweets about her exterminator, and guess what? It worked. So it's fantastic. She's amazing. I met her last year and she's just as warm and wonderful and clever in person as she is online. So yeah. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, yeah. She's an incredible human being. I'm so lucky to work with her. Do you know she pitched us? Crystal Carter: What? Rand Fishkin: So Geraldine and I, we were traveling through Southern California. This is 2021, and Amanda DMed me and said, oh, well, when you come to California, let me know and we'll go out to lunch. Great. Sure. Sounds fun. It'd be fun to meet up in person. Usually people on Twitter who DM and are like, Hey, let's have lunch, I was a little bit skeptical, but you can just tell from Amanda's thing. She's so authentic. She's so a hundred percent real. So we had lunch and at the end of lunch she's like, let me tell you why I think I should be SparkToro's first employee. Crystal Carter: Wow, love it. Rand Fishkin: And it was so, so good. Her pitch was outstanding. I called Casey later that day and was like, Hey man, I think we should hire this woman. He's like, no, we're not hiring anybody. I want to keep costs slow. I'm like, okay, just take a phone call with her. And then two weeks later he calls me up, okay, let's hire her. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, just great. So those two folks, if you are in SaaS and you're scaling, I think Chris Savage and what he posts about Wistia's growth, internal dynamics, all that kind of stuff, Chris Savage, fantastic follow. He's almost exclusively on LinkedIn. In Agency world, I think what Wil Reynolds is doing with Seer Interactive is an absolute must follow. He's quite active on Mastodon and LinkedIn, and maybe he'll make it over to Threads at some point a little bit. We'll see. He and I are both like maybe we'll go over there. And then I was going to say, if you're looking for Startup World follows, so there's a guy, I like him so much that even though Geraldine and I do very little investing, we invested in this company. His name's Francisco Baptista. He is the founder of TeamSportz in the UK, and their journey has been incredibly rocky and hard and tough, but they've built an incredible product and now it's finally getting adoption and it's so cool to see this human being's will. He was born during the Angola Civil War and moved to the UK with his dad, and he'll talk about it occasionally, be like, oh yeah, when I grew up, it was like a Tarantino movie every day. And now he has this business that is beautiful. It brings so many wonderful things to all these communities in the UK where he is participating. It's for a lot of basketball teams, soccer teams, intramural and amateur leagues. Anyway, phenomenal follow. He's almost exclusively active on LinkedIn. It sucks that we have to use the platforms now. Remember, it is just follow at so-and-so. Follow at so-and-so. Mordy Oberstein: You're helping me out because we're get a link to all these profiles in the show notes. Now I know where to go find them. Half of them already follow, so we're good. But thank you so much for joining us, Rand. Rand Fishkin: Crystal, Mordy, thank you so much for having me. Please, when you're in Seattle, drop a line. We'll see if my cocktail and cooking game is on point. Crystal Carter: I'll take you up on that. Rand Fishkin: All right, take care of yourselves friends. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Well, thanks for joining us on the SERPs Up plus podcast. Make sure to come back next week with a new episode of SERPs Up, a regular SEO podcast and back next month with a new SERPs up plus for more marketing talk. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO Learning at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO and marketing? 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 marketing. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Rand Fishkin Amanda Natvidad Asia Orangio Chris Savage Wil Reynolds Francisco Baptista Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sparktoro Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Rand Fishkin Amanda Natvidad Asia Orangio Chris Savage Wil Reynolds Francisco Baptista Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sparktoro Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of marketing podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up+! Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up+ Podcast, where we give you guys some groovy new insights around what's happening in digital marketing. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the authentic,, the actual, the original, the bonafide Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello internet, SEO and marketing, and PPC, and social media, and PR, and all of the other people. Mordy Oberstein: Name all the verticals. Crystal Carter: Every single vertical. There's also going to be AI people as well now, doing things or something. Mordy Oberstein: Is there prompt optimization? Is that a thing now? Prompt optimization. Crystal Carter: AI management, content people, stuff as well. I don't know. There's lots of things, they're all of the people. The people, the people everywhere, welcome. You're all welcome here on our brand new version of our podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's right, because normally we have our SERPs Up Podcast, our weekly SEO podcast. But this is our monthly bonus series, where we talk about all sorts of digital marketing topics. Which brings us to the SERPs Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can use the app we built together with Trustpilot, to help build credibility with your audience, and do things like automatically trigger service review invitations to customers, using the Trustpilot app in the Wix app marketplace. Which ties into our topic of the day. I mean, what are the chances of that happening? I'm genuinely surprised. Okay, the truth is, I plan that out every time. I shall not lie. Because today we're talking about the power of authenticity in marketing. We're looking at why you should forget the phony baloney, and be real with your audience and true to yourself, both for business success, and so that you can tolerate yourself at night. And to do that, one of the greatest marketers of our lifetime, the founder of SparkToro, Rand Fishkin will be by in just a few moments to share why being and how being one's true self, is the epitome of marketing Zen. So close your eyes, meditate, say a few ohms. And if that's not your thing, crank up the tunes, have a cup of chai or kick back a glass of single malt. That is, do whatever it is that is the voodoo that you do, as the SERP's Up+ Podcast helps you find your true marketing self. I'm out of breath. Crystal Carter: You could have just said, be like Jenny from the block. She was like, I'm real. Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got. These are the things that you have to remember. Mordy Oberstein: She's so real, she dropped A-rod like it was hot. Crystal Carter: Oh, we're coming in, we're just straight off the bat. Mordy Oberstein: When you say real, I don't think A-rod... as a salty, salty Yankee fan, that man cheated. He got suspended for... we're going on another rant. I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: I was talking about JLo. I don't know what you're talking about. She had her and Ja Rule or something. I don't know, everyone, it's all good. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. One of, I think, the greatest things that is us, is the inner depth of our personality, and our persona and who we are. So to share a bit of my personal philosophy on life, I'm somebody who thinks that philosophy and marketing are really connected. I don't want to get too mushy gushy with it, but I think there's something very deep and very powerful, almost like buried within the recesses of who we are that's entirely unique, and that's special, and that if we can tap into that part of who we are, you can do some pretty cool special marketing things. I know I'm getting a little bit sappy. However, it's rare in a world that's filled with marketing fluff and cliches, to feel that connection. But someone I always thought who did that really, really well, someone for years, when you listened to him talk, you felt there was something real emanating from his core, and you could really grab onto it. And that has been Rand Fishkin. So who better to help us talk about the value of being authentic in your marketing, than the founder of SparkToro, Rand Fishkin. Welcome. Rand Fishkin: Thanks for having me, Mordy. Thanks for having me, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us. It's an absolute pleasure, honor, delight. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I hope you caught my pithy commentary in our meeting chat about specifically, A-rod. Mordy Oberstein: A-rod, yes. Rand Fishkin: Many negative thoughts about him. Mordy Oberstein: I can't stand that he's part of the pre-game coverage on some of the games. It's terrible. So inauthentic, by the way. Rand Fishkin: I think one of the problems functionally speaking in, I'm going to say modern capitalist culture, is you were good at your job, therefore we should pay attention to you about other things. And that's just not true, right? Crystal Carter: Right, right. Rand Fishkin: Fundamentally, this is one of the values of authenticity, is that you don't listen to someone just because of what they could do for you. We were talking before the official podcast kicked off, about how you might have opinions on businesses of various sizes. And I was telling you guys that I love small businesses, and I'm not a big fan of helping big businesses. And very frequently, I get this, "But they have so much money, they could do so much." For whatever, for your career, or your company or what about M and A? And I was always like, well, sorry. If you're valued at over a billion, I'm kind of the inverse of a VC. I kind of hate unicorns. Okay, well, your valuation's too high. I don't like you anymore. You used to be cool, now you're not cool anymore. I think it's because I grew up with Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, and Nirvana, and it's like the pre-sellout culture stuck. Mordy Oberstein: So not a Stone Temple Pilot fan, because they were considered to be like a fake grunge band. They weren't really a grunge band, in my honest opinion, but whatever. Rand Fishkin: Honestly, I'm okay with it. I'm fine. I think they were talented musicians, and not despicably evil people. And so if a studio whatever wants to form a... I'm like this with the Monkees too. I don't completely hate it. Whatever. You want to put together an NSYNC, you want to put together a... fine, it's none of my business. Mordy Oberstein: But Billy Joel? Because I saw, I saw the thread. Billy Joel, no. No Billy Joel. Rand Fishkin: He's not talented. Mordy Oberstein: Oh my goodness. Crystal Carter: Oh man, we're dropping bombs everywhere. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get into marketing, for a second, I'm literally from the border of Queens on Long Island. You cross the street and you're on Long Island. And there's three fundamental truths about Long Island: Bagel Boss, Adventureland and Billy Joel. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, Long Island has problems. Crystal Carter: They have great iced tea though. The iced tea is delicious. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, all right. I'll have to check that out. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. I'm moving out. Crystal Carter: I think it's really interesting though, that you referenced some folks from the nineties and nineties music culture. Because when we're talking about authenticity, I was also thinking in the nineties there was a lot of stuff in hip hop culture about keeping it real, keep it real here, and people being called out for not keeping it real, for being fake and being that sort of thing. And I feel like that sentiment seems to have dissipated from the general popular culture, that people are doing it for the gram and that's fine. And that people don't... there's a lot of people who, like you were saying, have terrible opinions based on nothing to do with the topic necessarily, and they spread them across everywhere. Why do you think that that shift has happened, and how do you think we can try to rectify it? Or do you think we should? Rand Fishkin: Yeah, let's see. I'm torn. I have the half of me that is the things that I value are authenticity, and transparency, and whatever you want to call it. Not selling out, keeping it real. But at the same time, it is impossible for me to begrudge, whatever, younger generations who are doing things that might not be true to themselves or their personality, but they're doing it for, whatever, social media attention and awareness, or they're doing it for their career. Because fundamentally, I think that one of the biggest shifts that's happened in our lifetimes, especially in the United States, is we've gone from a world where you could work a part-time job, and put yourself through college, and pay your rent, to a world where that is impossible. And so when I was born, there's this classic concept of the American dream. You come from nothing, you have nothing, but economic mobility is so high in this country that over the course of even just one generation, a family can transform themselves through not even that hard work, a little bit of work and attention, into a middle class or a totally getting by family. And now that's completely not true. Almost all the wealth gain, obviously in the last 50 years, has gone to the top 10th of a percent of Americans, leaving everyone else behind. Obviously, inflation and affordability of everything has gone down. And so now I'm kind of like, God, you know what? Maybe keeping it real is selling out. To keep it real, you have to sell out. I'm not sure that these cultural ideas that we attribute to, whatever, hip hop artists, or grunge artists, or popular music, or television, or film or whatever it is, I'm not sure that that's where it comes from. I think it comes from economics, and I think it comes from the reality of where people are. So hey, you're doing it for the Gram. Maybe you're doing it for your career. Maybe you're doing it so you can afford Goddamn healthcare. So, who am I to judge? Mordy Oberstein: On the opposite side though, you have the big companies, or bigger brands, or not even bigger brands, just your established companies. And I was doing some research for a landing page I was writing, and I went through a couple of hundred different landing pages. And after a while I'm like, wow, I don't think I've read anything real for the last five hours. It's all like ultimate power, unlimited, whatever. And I walked away feeling, in five years from now, I hope and I think it's going to sound like a used car sales ad, like, "Come on down to Bob's." There's nothing real there. I get people feel maybe that they have to put on that front of really driving the sale, because they're nervous they're not going to get the sale. But I think in the end you come off, just in my personal opinion, as not really connecting in a real way. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I think what's going on is the difference between judging people harshly for their willingness to compromise the creative, artistic, human side of who they are in order to make money, versus hey, when you do that, why don't you do marketing, and sales, and copywriting, and content creation in ways that resonate with real people? And those are two different things. One is at the macro level, and one is at the micro level. And at the micro level, I think this is where authenticity still works wonders. You can feel brands that resonate with people, even if they are... I think one of my favorite examples that I bring up regularly, is the Mars Corporation's Snickers campaign of the last 15 years. Snickers sort of had this, I think they worked with an agency, but I can't remember the agency's name, this is back in the early 2000s. They worked with an agency who uncovers through audience research, they talk to a bunch of people who buy Snickers, people who don't buy Snickers, people who eat it regular... the candy bar, for anyone who's not familiar. And they talked to a lot of people, and found that they were using Snickers as a tastier alternative to a meal replacement. Essentially it was, Snickers was almost competing more with Power Bars in people's minds, or Luna Bars, which at the time, early 2000s Power Bar was sort of, if you're a dude, you have to eat this. Luna Bar was, if you're a woman, you have to eat this. And so, of course my pantry is stacked with Luna Bars, because F the gender paradigm. The reality was, they discovered lots of people are essentially eating Snickers in lieu of a meal or whatever. So therefore, we should position Snickers as the one candy bar that's a solution to hunger, as opposed to a reward or a treat. And the campaign was ludicrously successful. You can see even to this day, they haven't gone away from it. It's been 17 years, 18 years or something that they've been running with this. You're not you when you're hungry. Let's keep playing on that for forever. I'm not sure they should ever give it up. Because I think that that positioning is incredibly valuable. It's also authentic. For better or worse, I can't explain exactly why the combination of Snickers ingredients, which is no healthier- Rand Fishkin: The combination of Snickers ingredients, which is no healthier for you than anything else. Crystal Carter: No. Rand Fishkin: Right? Absolutely not. But if I eat a, I don't know, a Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or a bag of M&M's, I do not feel like, okay, I've had my calories. I'm okay. I can go on with my day. But I do feel that way with the Snickers. Crystal Carter: I mean, yeah, that's totally true. I mean, another similar campaign that I've seen is Marmite, which folks who've been to the UK will know about that, and Marmite is like, some people love us, some people hate us. That's just how it is. And they run with that throughout their campaigns, and they run with that for years. And in fact, it's to the point where it's like it's idiomatic. People are like, "Oh yeah, it's a bit of a Marmite kind of thing." It's a saying that people say and they know what that means, and that is extremely ingrained, authentic branding, but they're just sort of like, "That's who we are." Like, "Pick one." Rand Fishkin: What's tough is, and this goes back to Mordy's original point, translating the success that campaigns like this have had in plenty of consumer sectors to B2B where it's so hard, so hard in B2B to find examples of campaigns that resonate. I think part of it is how B2B is perceived, how it's bought and sold. I think part of it is the long marketing and sales cycle of B2B. Part of it is the expected professionalism. And so a lot of these companies feel like they can't play toward their brand positioning. And many of them, most of them also don't make incredibly obvious products. So you have to explain what you do and the features. Snickers does not have to be like, "What you hold in your hands is what's called a candy bar." They can dispense with all that BS. Everybody knows exactly what it is. And the same thing is true if you, whatever, go to a waterpark or buy Marmite at the store or see a bottle of wine. Consumer products are just a known variable, known quantity. Whereas B2B, there's so much. Wix, right? Okay, Wix has to explain, "Hey, we are a CMS, but we're this kind of CMS for this kind of person. These are the features, these are the reasons you would choose us." All that kind of stuff. If you could see CMSs, whatever, at the drugstore on the counter, the way you see candy bars, Wix would probably do a very different kind of branding campaign and positioning. And so I think this goes, Mordy, to the challenge around authenticity and sales language that you're finding. Mordy Oberstein: If Wix were a candy bar, by the way, we would have caramel and peanuts on this for the record. Rand Fishkin: Caramel and peanuts. Is that a PAYDAY? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's like a PAYDAY, right? It's like a Snickers, but there's no nougat. It just... Right, yeah. Rand Fishkin: PAYDAY is a peanut caramel bar and yet somehow when I'm hungry, I don't want a PAYDAY. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that it's the nougat that does it. It's definitely that. But I think also, I think sometimes with authenticity, particularly with products, I think if I see a product and they're like, "We don't do this. We do do this really, really well, but we don't do that," that there's a certain amount of confidence to that. One of the classics examples, and I know this is a consumer product, but for instance, Domino's Pizza says, "We will get you a pizza in 30 minutes or less." That's one of the things that they say they're able to do. They don't say, "We will get you the best pizza you've ever had in your life in 30 minutes or less." They don't say that it will have everything you ever wanted in a pizza. No. They say, "This is what we can do for you, and if you would like this, we have that. That's what we can promise you. We can promise you that." And the stuff in between, you make your choices. Sometimes you want a pizza that takes longer than that. Sometimes you want to go to this artisanal place around the corner and get something that, what's the Long Island pizza place there, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: There are so many. Crystal Carter: So many. It's like, I don't even know where to start. Mordy Oberstein: Well, a famous one. It’s a whole different story Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. But I think you mentioned value propositions, and I think it's really important to understand what is your genuine actual USP for why you started your business. There must've been some point where you thought to yourself, "You know what? Lots of people are making pizza or doing whatever it is they're doing or making whatever SaaS products they are, but it's missing something and it's missing this, and I think that I can fill that gap, and I think that being able to understand your USP is really, really important. Rand Fishkin: We had on the SparkToro homepage a video that was relatively expensive to make, and we worked with a professional video company and we went to a wedding venue that has sort of a hedge maze up north of Seattle. Mordy Oberstein: I remember that. I remember that video. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. So Casey and I went up there with a video crew and we filmed this whole thing. Took 10 hours of filming, nine hours of filming, something like that, and then lots of editing work to get it down to, I think it was about a 40-second, 45-second video, and we put it on our homepage. We were very proud of it. It was quite authentic. It even started off, Crystal, with a, I think the line was like, "I'm Rand Fishkin and I spent my career trying to return data that big tech steals and hides away to marketers who deserve to have it," which is fundamentally like, that's why we created SparkToro. I was like, pre 2016, Facebook would tell you all this data about your audience, and pre Elon Twitter would show you all this interesting information in Audience Insights. I think they actually took it away even before he bought it, but then it started this world of like, whoa, whoa, walled gardens, let's keep people in. Don't let people out. Google hiding keyword data, all this stuff. And I was like, "That sucks." That sucks and it's dumb, and screw big tech, hate those guys. Let's return this data to people. We have a big free version that a 100,000 people use and we've got our paid version. But telling that story interestingly, I think made us resonate a little bit better with a very small group, but it hurt our conversion rate, it didn't help it. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, so I think it was one of those interesting experiences. We kept the video there for a year because we were like, "Well, let's keep trying. Maybe we put it below the call to action. Maybe we keep it over here." But no, it really was, it was a detractor because it was a second call to action on the homepage from just try the product, put in your keywords or your search terms or whatever. And yeah, we finally pulled it recently, and I don't think we're going to bring it back for the V2 that we're building. So it's a tough thing, and maybe the video didn't do what it was supposed to do, maybe it wasn't resonating the way we hoped it would, but certainly I think it's a hard thing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think a lot of businesses struggle with this. So one of the classic cases where people do all these beauty shots of their products and they do all these amazing, amazing, beautiful shots of the crème brulée in the restaurant and the hotel room all sorted out like that. If I'm somebody who's looking in the business, I'm going to TripAdvisor, I'm going to TripAdvisor, and I'm going to go and have a look at what the people who went in and took a picture on their terrible old iPhone that's got a crack on the screen, what they took a picture of and what the room actually looks like. If their holiday snaps still look okay, then I'm like, "Cool." If the restaurant still looks all right, then cool. If the reviews similarly of your fantastic, amazing SaaS product or whatever kind of product still say roughly the same kinds of things that you're promising on your website, then that's going to resonate with me. So I think that companies invest a lot of time in making all these beauty shots and making all this beautiful copy and all of that sort of stuff, but making sure that people have something that connects with how they are interacting with it and how they are experiencing the product is really important. Like you were saying that it was distracting from actually being able to try the tool. Like with a tool like an online thing, being able to try the tool is really the bread and butter. That's the proof in the pudding as it were, to name many other food metaphors. I don't know. I could talk about pies or something or... Mordy Oberstein: I love pies. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, I mean, the hotels thing is really interesting. I've talked to a few hoteliers about this and the website, the photography, all of this kind of stuff. There's two fascinating things that I learned that were sort of going on there. One is pure positioning. So when you get to a website that looks and feels like small luxury hotels of the world, you get in the mindset of what you expect the price to be, what you expect the service to be like, blah, blah, blah. You probably will go to TripAdvisor and look at the reviews and dah, dah, dah, dah. But if you're visiting that area and you're that kind of consumer, the difference between a 4.1 and a 4.5 and a 4.9 out of five doesn't mean that much to you. You're probably going to choose that location anyway if it's your kind of hotel and your kind of place. And then the second one was apparently, interestingly enough, a huge part of the visual aesthetic, design, all the website stuff is like a local ecosystem contribution. For example, I was talking to a hotelier in Puglia in Italy, the south, the heel of the boot of Italy, and the hotelier was explaining that, "Oh, well, when we make our website, of course we want to hire the best local photographers, and then they also will want to work with us when someone has a wedding here, they also work with us when someone had their engagement and they're coming here for their trip or their honeymoon or something like that. And we work with those people. We work with the florist for the flowers for the photo shoot, and then that promotes their business, which... " Like it's all this, I don't know what you want to call it, relationship building, relationship building through craft, creation of these kinds of things, versus the Holiday Inn where it is, boom, this is exactly... Like you know exactly what you're going to get the same thing over and over again. Hilton is the same way and Marriott and Radisson and all the big brands. They have their system, but for these small local ones, again, it's that we want to show to the consumer and the potential buyer who we are and we're also trying to create relationships inside our local community with the people who, if you're a wedding photographer, we want you to recommend to your event planner that all the couples that you work with should come to our hotel, so we hire you. Mordy Oberstein: That's something that's interesting to me because something that you do so well, I feel like, and you're a SaaS platform, is that you come across, SparkToro comes across, all the things you guys are doing over there, Amanda, it comes across very boutique, it comes across very genuine, it comes across very connective, and it's so interesting because it's so peculiar for a SaaS platform to be able to pull that off and I'm wondering how you do that. Rand Fishkin: So I think that it sort of goes back to what are you allowed to do based on the design of your business. So from the building blocks level, I think this is the wonderful and terrible thing about entrepreneurship and whatever, the funding ecosystem and how capitalism has sort of evolved for entrepreneurship, especially in tech. And that is we get to be very peculiar. And peculiar is a beautiful world because to me, it has this connotation of weird, for the sake of being weird. You are doing this different thing because not just you want to stand out from the crowd in a way that gets you money, but you want to stand out from the crowd in a way that's like a Wes Anderson movie. You're sort of being particular for the sake of being particular because this is just who you are. And one of my favorite facts about Wes Anderson movies, apparently everybody gets paid like a thousand bucks a day to work on the movie. It doesn't matter if you're Scarlett Johansson. You make the lowest rate and the same rate as all the background actors. There's no, I can't remember what they call it, scale. They call it scale in the industry. So everybody makes that money because you want to work on a Wes Anderson movie and it's super weird and the project's going to be weird, and the movie's going to look beautiful, and the plot's going to make no sense and all those kinds of things. And clearly he's built this reputation, and I think that's great. And SparkToro, we have this like, our funding structure lets us, so long as we're alive and profitable, we can really do what we want. We do not have to grow. I mean, I'd like to grow, Casey wants to grow, Amanda wants to grow, but we don't have to. We're doing a nice amount of revenue, a very nice amount of revenue per person. There's only three of us. So we're super different from other SaaS platforms in that we just don't have the same motivation and incentive to, okay, how do we maximize revenue? We better build a sales team, we better get people on board. Like, no, we don't build the sales team not because it wouldn't be good for the business, we don't build the sales team because I don't like managing salespeople. And a ton of what you feel from SparkToro and a lot of boutiques and indie brands and indie startups is, oh, they're doing this because they like doing this and they're not doing this because they don't like doing this. And I don't think you can build competitive advantage fundamentally with something that isn't your strength and something that's not your passion. So- Rand Fishkin: ... fundamentally with something that isn't your strength and something that's not your passion. So I'm trying to build a life, not a business that maximizes the amount of revenue it takes from customers, and that's already real. That's already a real thing. You're talking about how I decide to live my life because your work life, your business life is part of your life. The biggest reason that I hope SparkToro is successful on a bigger scale than it is now and that I hope in 10 years, it's like a company that lots of people point to and talk about is so that this fundamental idea will trickle down into the broader world of tech and entrepreneurship, that maybe you should not optimize for maximizing revenue growth and investor returns, but instead you should build something that gives you and your employees and team and customers the life that they want and the solutions that they want. And I think frankly, that's a very un-American way to live, but a really beautiful one. Mordy Oberstein: It's a very existential way to live. It's the meaningful life versus the life. Rand Fishkin: I want to be clear: I also do stuff for the brand. I'm not trying to paint myself as like everything Rand does is authentic... Behind me, I have this whiteboard, I film these weekly whiteboard videos, the five-minute whiteboards for SparkToro now, and part of that is like a, "Gosh, well, I tried coming up with some other video formats and trying some other things," but you know what? I saw that the old classic resonated with people: my 17 years of doing Whiteboard Friday at Moz really stuck with folks: they missed that, they wanted it again. When I do them, they get high engagement. Okay, I'm going to give the people what they want. And also, a five-minute whiteboard is not a terrible challenge or anything, and I enjoy the experience, so it's not completely inauthentic. But I absolutely will do things for whatever personal and professional gain. I am not against that, right? I'm not Kurt Cobain, and, "Oh my God, I'm making money. It's the end," but I have a little bit more of that in me than most venture-backed entrepreneurs. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that comes back to the confidence of having the confidence to say, "We are going to grow in ways that are valuable to us and in ways that enrich us," because you say haven't got a sales team that's going and getting more sales, doing all of that, I think that it does give you an opportunity to be more creative, and more flexible, and to try new things. And certainly one of the things that's fundamental and to the core of Wix, and one of the things I love about our team here at Wix is that people try new things. People try new things and people will be like, "Hey, I tried a thing," and they go, "Oh, you did what?", and, "Oh, that's cool. I like that. Hey, check out this thing that this person made." We have hackathons, we have markathon with marketing things where everybody just gets together and has ideas. Mordy Oberstein: And it goes into the product. We can see it at least on the inside like, "Oh, that's, from that," that's from hackathon. Crystal Carter: Right. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I think at a larger... How many people is Wix now? Mordy Oberstein: 5,000, something like that. I should know that. It's around 5,000. Rand Fishkin: I think in an environment like that, one of the biggest things I hear from folks who work in larger companies, and when I say larger, I mean 200 plus, nevermind 2,000 plus, but is, "I do work and I don't know how it contributes to the business." To the end of the day, "Customers get more value," or whatever, "Our investors make more money and my stock price goes up," or whatever, "This is valued and recognized by people in leadership," that visibility goes away really early in a company's growth cycle. I think people felt that way at Moz at 210 people when I was there, and that sucks. Fundamentally, it is terrible, I think to do work and not know how that work contributes or to feel like it doesn't contribute. When I look at people who are, I saw an old friend of Geraldine's yesterday posting on LinkedIn that it was their last day at Google. They were leaving Google after 13, 14 years. And it was subtly written, but one of the things in there was, "For the last few years I've been working on a project that never went live, but now I'm going to a smaller company where I...", And I had this, yeah, I get it. I get that, "I'm well paid, I have a cushy job, things are going really great in my professional career, I've been promoted, whatever, but I just spent years working on a project that no one will ever know about. I'm going somewhere where my work actually contributes to society." Mordy Oberstein: I think it's almost divine: you want to feel like you're having an impact on something, somehow. Rand Fishkin: Yeah. I think it can be purely capitalist, purely financial, but if it's nothing, that's just brutal. So, I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense, I'm very proud to hear, glad to hear that Wix is investing in a, "Hey, do this stuff," and then that stuff will be in the live version of the product that customers are using, and you'll be able to see how many people used it and you'll hear, "Oh man, that thing I contributed to, it turned into something real." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Rand Fishkin: And beautiful. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, if you're listening to this podcast, you're a marketer and you're working with a product team, I feel like it's your role as a marketer to tell the product team, "Hey, so-and-so was talking about this product that you made and they loved it." We had that today in our WhatsApp group like, "Hey, yo, some SEO was saying that they love what you all are doing." And the product people were like, "Awesome. We're having an impact. They just made our day, legit." Crystal Carter: It's such a big deal working as a tech SEO, tell the devs that if you asked the devs for this ticket and that ticket and that ticket and this ticket, and you saw your SEO go off the charts, tell them. Tell them that, "That work that you did helped us get 15% ROI uplift," or whatever it may be, because that will make getting the dev tickets actioned quicker the next time because they'll want to get that feedback from you. Similarly, if you're working on a campaign and you asked for a favor from somebody in a different team to do the thing, you asked for somebody to be in this video that you were going to put on the whatever, tell them that it had an impact. It makes such a big difference and costs you nothing. Sending an email, sending a Slack message costs you nothing and can make such a big difference to the cohesion of your team, and to how these enthusiastic people are going forward as well. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, absolutely. I think a huge part of this for folks who do consulting and agency work, one of the biggest frustrations that I hear over and over again is, "We did this big deep dive on the client's website and we looked at all the problems that they need to solve, we did this audit, we presented all these findings, we tried to get approval to go make the changes and improve things, and they were like, okay, thanks for the audit, and it's two years later, nothing's happened." It's mind-blowing from an agency perspective to be like, "Gosh, but when this other client we worked with actually did the things we said, they got way more business and money, so why are you doing nothing?" Crystal Carter: And you sometimes never find out. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, but the answer is complicated. When you dig in, it's almost never the case that there's some, I don't know, evil mid-level manager- Crystal Carter: Mu-ah-ha. Rand Fishkin: ... who's like, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hire an agency, going to pay them money, and then I'm going to do none of the work they recommend. Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha." That cartoon villain just doesn't exist, right? Crystal Carter: "I'm going to wait until they do the PowerPoint. I'm going to ask lots of questions. Lots of them,". Rand Fishkin: Yeah, but I do think it pays as an agency, as a marketer who's contributing even in-house on a team, when you have that conversation about like, "Okay, well these findings, they're going to translate into these actions," and those actions are going to translate directly into, whatever, financial gain, or improvements in conversion rate, or improvements in whatever this metric is. And if that thing is not fundamentally tied to the incentives, the directives, and the goals that leadership has defined for whatever the second tier or the third tier of management that you're working with, well probably it's not going to get done. And even if is, even if it is beautifully and perfectly aligned, if they don't have the resources or if those resources have projects that are sitting with even higher priorities or those resources have capability and competence problems, many times these things won't happen. Crystal Carter: To bring it back to the realness, to the depths of the real, I think that this is incredibly important. We talk about realness in your marketing, authenticity in your marketing, as we're thinking about outbound communications and things like that. When you are talking to your teams and when you are talking to your stakeholders in your campaigns, being able to be a straight-shooter, being able to actually answer the questions in plain English without jargon, and to be able to address, like you said, the actual concerns that they have, the actual goals that they have, not, "I'm so smart. Look at my beautiful pie charts. I'm so clever. This is a fantastic pie chart," and it is hitting all of the best practices for all of the things that you are expected to do. It's like, "That's great: we have two people in our team and we can't do any of that." So when you're thinking about your authenticity, when you're talking to clients about your marketing campaign, your SEO campaign, your audience research, whatever, being authentic with them, of being like, "Hey guys, what can you actually achieve? What can you actually do?", before you start the audit, "What can you actually do? How many hours do you have to do this? What kind of resources do you have to actually achieve this?", can make such a difference, and also can mean that they're more likely to tell you and be honest with you and be clear with you when they need help. When they're like, "We don't know how to do this. Can you help us?", and then maybe you get more billable hours or whatever it may be. Rand Fishkin: I also highly recommend to folks that before you start your audit or your deep dive, find out what the resourcing is: like, "Oh, do we have capability to do this, to do this, do this? What if I come up with suggestions that need this or this or this?", and then if the client or the team or the person, whatever, tells you, "Oh yeah, we can definitely do this. We can't do this. These things are kind in the middle," you can structure your findings that way. You can be like, "All right, I found a lot of opportunities. Many of them sit in the, we can't fix it bucket, but I'm presenting them anyway in the hopes that someday we will be able to fix them. These sit in the maybe bucket. And these are the ones we said we could fix right away, and I prioritize them by importance," and then it's like, all right, now we're talking about action. Crystal Carter: Right, because you're real and they were real. You're speaking like a real human person. Rand Fishkin: The transparency inside organizations and the alignment between people in teams is hugely important. I fundamentally believe to my core that Elon Musk is a piece of shit, but I say that in all sincerity and in every way. But he does have this concept of people as vectors in an organization, and if you point them all in the same direction along the same lines, you get the full power of their impact. And so, simply aligning people all to go in the same direction, even in very large organizations, if the leader of that organization, the CEO themselves says, "We are all working on this. Everyone is going to get us to here. You tell me what you need to do to get there," I think there's one of the reasons, probably one of the biggest reasons why several of his companies have been very successful. And then obviously Twitter, he's chosen very poorly which things to do, no surprise. And also, his awfulness bleeds into the attractiveness of the platform generally. But I think there's lessons to be learned even from terrible people, and this is a great one where that alignment allows SpaceX and Tesla to do things well and fast that are very hard for more complex, less transparently, "Everyone's on the same page, moving toward the same goals," organizations in the engineering and tech field. Mordy Oberstein: I generally pride in myself on my pivots, but I don't have one here... And I do have a slight pivot actually because I guess we were talking about tech and not being seen in the greatest light. Something I've been meaning to ask you this entire podcast is these big tech companies end up front of Congress for whatever particular reason, whether it's Google, whether it's Facebook, whatever it is, TikTok most recently, I guess, and we as digital marketers sometimes sit back and laugh like, "Oh, the Congress asks the most ridiculous question to that person. They know clearly know nothing about Google or TikTok or whatever, or technology. They've never used a computer in their life. It's quite obvious," but- Mordy Oberstein: They've never used a computer in their life. It's quite obvious. But my dad, who also has hardly used a computer in his life, will look at that and be like, wait a second. Should I be trusting this stuff that's on my phone? You're telling me to go to the Google, to go to the Facebook. Do I trust this stuff now? Because now I saw the CEO of Facebook sitting in front of Congress. It must mean he's not trustworthy. And I wonder, going back to our previous conversation, I know we're running out of time, and so you don't have to get too deep into it, but I really just wanted to ask it. Do you think that that has an impact of when we as marketers talk to consumers or to other businesses and try to sell a product or a service? If people are looking at the web more skeptically, does it mean that we're going to end up moving to a more conversational model? Because when they look and see that landing page, where you're writing that marketing schlock, are people going to start to see through that because they're starting to think of the webinar in a more skeptical kind of way? Rand Fishkin: I think on the whole, I completely disagree. I think people are more trusting today of things that they see on the web than they ever have been. And a huge part of that is because these big tech companies have made the web such a relatively safe place to go. The late nineties, the early two thousands, you could get malware, spam, stuff that would just destroy your computer and then trying to fix it in whatever early versions of Windows or like Windows 98, I remember debugging my grandfather's computer in Windows 98, Jesus Christ, oh my God, he visited the wrong internet website and clicked the wrong thing. But today, that experience is so curated. It's so relatively safe that I actually fundamentally would say no. I think people trust the web like never before they believe it's safe to put in their credit card. They'll give you their social security number over the internet, they'll digitally sign things over to the internet, they'll sell their house on the internet. It has gotten to a really different place. Where I would say you drag Zuckerberg in front of Congress or you bring Sundar Pichai in front of Congress. And what surprises me the most is that Congress has no teeth. So Sundar Pichai, for example, when in front of Congress, I believe this was 2019, and talked about Google sending more and more traffic to the open web. Maybe it was 2020. And it was an obvious lie, provable with data. You just go out there and get it. So I remember I wrote an article, I think on SparkToro that was like, Hey, I don't know why Congress is unwilling to hold Google CEO's feet to the fire, but I'll do it. Here you go. And I think I had a call with Lina Khan who now Biden is appointed as the head of the FTC, and she was like, okay, can you walk me through this? I'm trying to understand exactly what's going on here, but basically no action from Congress. I had a call with David Cicilline, who's the congressman in charge of the committee looking into Google, and they were like their hands are tied. There's not a lot that they can do. And so I'm going to say this also Mordy to defend, no American has ever defended Congress to my knowledge. But I will say I talk to a lot of people in government, even during the Trump administration, which you can probably tell, I obviously disliked and disagreed with most of that. But I talked to people inside the administration. I think these are mostly appointees who were appointed for their knowledge and skills rather than political appointees. But they seemed good-natured and good-hearted doing the best that they could. They seemed smart and talented and capable. I will say one of the things that frustrates me about media is that the most ridiculous, silly, you know nothing and it's obvious, those are the quotes that make it to the top of Reddit. The ones where it's like Congress is an idiot, they know nothing about technology. And then if you listen to the hearings, you're like, oh, got it. Four hours of good questions and then 15 minutes from this one idiot. Like, all right, I see how sort of media is shaped. If you watch the whole C-SPAN thing, you're like, huh, these people are pretty savvy. Crystal Carter: Then one person's like, what is Finsta? And they're like, it's not a thing. No, but what is Finsta? It's fake Instagram. But how do I get to it? Rand Fishkin: Yeah, and those are the quotes, right? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had an hour of super spectacularly, good question, but it got no attention. It was kind of like a, okay, yeah, she's knowledgeable, she knows her stuff and she's asking good questions, and these are all smart things and all right, good, good, good. Fine. Ignore it. Don't air it. But how do I get to my cousin's Finsta? Like, oh, geez. Look at this, Congress are a bunch of idiots. Okay. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That conversation did not go where I thought it was. That's really interesting. To quote Bob Dylan, the Hour is getting late. It's actually not a Jimi Hendrix quote because Dylan wrote it. Hendrix covered it, but Dylan said he wrote it for Hendrix, metaphorically obviously. Crystal Carter: Find some way out of here. Rand Fishkin: I saw Bob Dylan perform maybe 20 years ago. Mordy Oberstein: I walked out. Rand Fishkin: Oh, man. I mean obviously phenomenal songwriter, singer, but geez, that guy, he can barely hold a tune. Mordy Oberstein: All I can say is thank God Tom Petty went on first and not Dylan. Rand Fishkin: I did just see Bruce Springsteen when we were in Italy in April, and holy crap, let me tell you, the E Street Band, there was not a note out of tune. There was not a beat missed. He didn't take a sip of water in a four-hour show. It was just song, song, song, song, song. No breaks, nothing. It's the most professional performance I've ever seen, and my mind was blown. I was like, oh, I guess I like Springsteen. It was great. Mordy Oberstein: What a thunk. I actually saw Springsteen at Giant Stadium like, this is boring. I'd rather be at Billy Joel. Crystal Carter: I'm a Beyonce fan. I saw her in the Renaissance tour. It was amazing. So on that note, thank you very much. Rand Fishkin: Beyonce is a performer, right? She's almost less a musician and more of an artist, right? She does so much. Crystal Carter: She's everything. She's all of it. Rand Fishkin: She's everything. Yeah. That's an incomparable thing. I think Springsteen and Dylan and Jelly Bowl or whoever, those people are singer-songwriter bands, right? They're a band that's going to get up and do a set and Beyonce is like Uh-huh. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of music and hitting the notes on this podcast and what we do, who might be some other marketers, thought leaders, folks out there, that our audience can check out across social media to expand their minds a little bit? Rand Fishkin: What a great, great question. This used to be easy. I would go to look at who I followed on Twitter. I used to follow a very small subset of people on Twitter, and of course that platform is now nearly useless. But I do follow some great folks on Mastodon. I suspect in a year I'm going to be telling you about Threads. That's probably where I'd tell you to follow people. But for right now, yeah, Mastodon is great. LinkedIn is also good too. A couple of people that I have found their work to be extraordinary, they don't post all that often, but one is Asia Orangio from DemandMaven. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's got a great podcast. Rand Fishkin: Asia's so good, so smart, so talented that we actually hired her at SparkToro. She's helping us build V 2. She's doing our audience research and helping us with wire framing and prototyping this new version that's launching soon. So obviously I think the world of her and I would recommend you follow her anywhere. She's just terrific. Let's see. I have also gotten a lot of value from following, well, okay, this is an obvious one, but I hired Amanda because I was going to say her social media presence. She's on every platform, and she's fantastic on all of them. Crystal Carter: She's amazing. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, she's incomparable, right? I think if you want to see what social media marketing done right looks like, you just follow her. Crystal Carter: She shared this great piece about her exterminator's newsletter and how her exterminator sends a newsletter and is always super valuable and how he's just like, Hey, it's mosquito time. You should get all of the water out of your back garden so that the mosquitoes don't lay eggs in the standing water in your back garden. I was like, what? So I did that this summer based on her tweets about her exterminator, and guess what? It worked. So it's fantastic. She's amazing. I met her last year and she's just as warm and wonderful and clever in person as she is online. So yeah. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, yeah. She's an incredible human being. I'm so lucky to work with her. Do you know she pitched us? Crystal Carter: What? Rand Fishkin: So Geraldine and I, we were traveling through Southern California. This is 2021, and Amanda DMed me and said, oh, well, when you come to California, let me know and we'll go out to lunch. Great. Sure. Sounds fun. It'd be fun to meet up in person. Usually people on Twitter who DM and are like, Hey, let's have lunch, I was a little bit skeptical, but you can just tell from Amanda's thing. She's so authentic. She's so a hundred percent real. So we had lunch and at the end of lunch she's like, let me tell you why I think I should be SparkToro's first employee. Crystal Carter: Wow, love it. Rand Fishkin: And it was so, so good. Her pitch was outstanding. I called Casey later that day and was like, Hey man, I think we should hire this woman. He's like, no, we're not hiring anybody. I want to keep costs slow. I'm like, okay, just take a phone call with her. And then two weeks later he calls me up, okay, let's hire her. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Rand Fishkin: Yeah, just great. So those two folks, if you are in SaaS and you're scaling, I think Chris Savage and what he posts about Wistia's growth, internal dynamics, all that kind of stuff, Chris Savage, fantastic follow. He's almost exclusively on LinkedIn. In Agency world, I think what Wil Reynolds is doing with Seer Interactive is an absolute must follow. He's quite active on Mastodon and LinkedIn, and maybe he'll make it over to Threads at some point a little bit. We'll see. He and I are both like maybe we'll go over there. And then I was going to say, if you're looking for Startup World follows, so there's a guy, I like him so much that even though Geraldine and I do very little investing, we invested in this company. His name's Francisco Baptista. He is the founder of TeamSportz in the UK, and their journey has been incredibly rocky and hard and tough, but they've built an incredible product and now it's finally getting adoption and it's so cool to see this human being's will. He was born during the Angola Civil War and moved to the UK with his dad, and he'll talk about it occasionally, be like, oh yeah, when I grew up, it was like a Tarantino movie every day. And now he has this business that is beautiful. It brings so many wonderful things to all these communities in the UK where he is participating. It's for a lot of basketball teams, soccer teams, intramural and amateur leagues. Anyway, phenomenal follow. He's almost exclusively active on LinkedIn. It sucks that we have to use the platforms now. Remember, it is just follow at so-and-so. Follow at so-and-so. Mordy Oberstein: You're helping me out because we're get a link to all these profiles in the show notes. Now I know where to go find them. Half of them already follow, so we're good. But thank you so much for joining us, Rand. Rand Fishkin: Crystal, Mordy, thank you so much for having me. Please, when you're in Seattle, drop a line. We'll see if my cocktail and cooking game is on point. Crystal Carter: I'll take you up on that. Rand Fishkin: All right, take care of yourselves friends. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Well, thanks for joining us on the SERPs Up plus podcast. Make sure to come back next week with a new episode of SERPs Up, a regular SEO podcast and back next month with a new SERPs up plus for more marketing talk. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO Learning at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO and marketing? 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 marketing. 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

Simon Schnieders is the founder of Blue Array, the UK’s largest specialist organic search agency. Simon Schnieders Founder of Blue Array Simon Schnieders is the founder of Blue Array, the UK’s largest specialist organic search agency. With a background in leading SEO at Zoopla, MailOnline, and Yell, he’s a recognized authority in the industry. Simon frequently speaks at major search conferences and contributes thought leadership on SEO/GEO strategy. Articles & Resources 15 Oct 2025 How to rebrand your SEO agency for the new world of search 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

Are you an SEO with clients? Want to reduce churn and improve retention? On this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein share how you can do both successfully. Join them and their guests as they talk about building trust through communication, the importance of listening, having patience, using candor, and being open and honest with clients. Guest Lucy Dodds, a Senior SEO Strategist at Evolved, discusses how to leverage a content hub on your website to improve client and pre-client communication. Now let’s jump into how to retain your SEO clients on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Back How to keep your SEO clients Are you an SEO with clients? Want to reduce churn and improve retention? On this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein share how you can do both successfully. Join them and their guests as they talk about building trust through communication, the importance of listening, having patience, using candor, and being open and honest with clients. Guest Lucy Dodds, a Senior SEO Strategist at Evolved, discusses how to leverage a content hub on your website to improve client and pre-client communication. Now let’s jump into how to retain your SEO clients on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 28 | March 8, 2023 | 40 MIN 00:00 / 40:02 This week’s guests Lucy Dodds Lucy Dodds is a Senior SEO Strategist at Evolved, where she creates meaningful goals for clients and ensures all SEO efforts are aligned to meet business objectives. Lucy’s a big fan of building E-E-A-T and learning how to better communicate with users. Clay Kemp Spending a good chunk of my SEO career in the eCommerce space doing in house SEO for various brands, I was lucky to get some great industry exposure early on in my career. I've also had the pleasure of working in a small agency, doing agency contract work, and now I get the pleasure to work with agencies right here at Wix! In the few years I've spent at Wix it has been a thrill to see the company's growth on the SEO front, and I'm beyond excited to see where we're headed. Sean Del Galdo I have spent the last 6+ years working in SEO across many different positions. Starting out as a content writer, I worked my way up to becoming a Digital Marketing Manager where I helped my team develop and implement SEO strategies for clients. Now, as an SEO Product Advisor at Wix, I get to use my knowledge and experience to educate and help Partners understand what Wix SEO has to offer. Getting the chance to work closely with Wix users and show them all of the incredible SEO tools Wix provides has been a real treat, and I am looking forward to the bright future Wix has ahead. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPS Up. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO over here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the incredible, the fantastically fabulous, the ever so awesome head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Hey, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Hi, Mordy. That's a very nice intro, as usual. Thank you very much. And hello to all the internet friends out there. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: Hi. Well, it's what they pay me to say. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. It reminds me of a little bit of the "Let's get Ready to Rumble" thing. That guy is a legend. Mordy Oberstein: What ever happened to that guy? Does he still do that? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I think he just walks around in a tuxedo looking for things that might rumble. Maybe he goes to building sites and just before they stir the cement he goes, "Let's get ready to rumble." Mordy Oberstein: That's a dude who made a whole living doing just one thing. Crystal Carter: One thing. One thing. To be fair... Mordy Oberstein: Maybe he does more, I don't know. Crystal Carter: Possibly, but I mean, who cares? It's the rumble that everybody's there for. Mordy Oberstein: Who cares. "I do so many things." Who cares. Crystal Carter: Who cares? Just Rumble. Mordy Oberstein: Just rumble Crystal Carter: Do the Rumble. But I think there's also the Rock. The Rock. There's a clip of him on a UK late night show explaining the whole thing of the, "Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?" And he breaks it down entirely. He's like, "Can you smell?" Mordy Oberstein: I remember watching it, not as a teenager guess. My brother at the time was really into wrestling, and I would watch it with him. That was very entertaining, even though I didn't like wrestling at the time, but it was entertaining. Crystal Carter: He was very good at it. Yeah, he's pivoted amazingly. Mordy Oberstein: He's really good. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And shout to all the wrestling SERPS Up fans. I know there are a few. Shout out to Jack Shaffer's Ward and all of them folks. So there's a lot of Wix wrestling. Mordy Oberstein: All Elite Wrestling. All Elite Wrestling. Crystal Carter: All Elite Wrestling. Mordy Oberstein: Is a Wix website. Crystal Carter: Is a Wix website. And they crush it every week. Mordy Oberstein: They do. I don't watch it. I don't even know so much about what it is. I know that it's wrestling and that it's on Wix. Crystal Carter: And they put the smack down on SEO. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's the wrong league. Is that a league? Crystal Carter: Is that the wrong one? Mordy Oberstein: I think so. Again, the SERPS Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can schedule analytics reports to show up in whoever's inbox you want. It's right there with Wix Analytics. Send Rick your client, if that's what you want, and do it automatically so that you can retain those clients really easily. Since today we're talking about how do I retain clients in 10 days. By the way, is a reference to... what is it? How to Lose a Guy in 10 days? That's where they got that from. It's a movie. Crystal Carter: Oh, I see. I see. That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I never even saw the movie though. I don't why. Crystal Carter: I'm not sure I've seen the movie either, but if you want to talk about romcoms, Dr. Pete is the romcom dude. Mordy Oberstein: Is he really? Crystal Carter: Yeah. He's been spending a lot of time writing AI romcom plot lines and it's incredibly amusing. So check out Dr. Pete's thread on that. Mordy Oberstein: I'm using Chat PT to write prompts using the Twilight Zone intro. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Write a essay about astrophysics in the tone of a Twilight Zone intro. Crystal Carter: Nice. Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's great. Anyway, today we're talking about how to ensure you keep your clients. We do have some simple steps for you, though often disregarded steps, that'll help you keep your SEO clients happy. Things like why the first 90 days are so important, the absolute importance of good SEO communications, and client churn prevention, what to do and what to learn from it. Plus, Lucy Dodds will stop buying and share her tips on building trust with SEO clients. We'll also travel across the Wixverse to talk to two client management aficionados, Wix's own Clay Kemp and Sean Delgado. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO News with you and who usually be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Don't lose us, as episode 28 of the SURPS Up podcast is on a retainer for the next 30 plus minutes. Crystal Carter: I like that. We love a retainer. A retainer is exactly what we need. Mordy Oberstein: It's a holy grail of SEO agencies, the retainer. Crystal Carter: yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that it's really important. The retainers are good for two reasons, they're good for the clients and they're good for the SEOs. Having worked agency side, I can tell you that when you have a good retainer client it really gives you the scope to plan and grow. I think people talk about quick wins and low-hanging fruit and all of that sort of stuff, but that stuff gets done very quickly, hopefully within the sort of first 10 days, first 90 days. But then what do you do after that? The retainer allows you to plan for your SEO growth and allows the agency to plan for that and to plan effectively. So it's really, really useful for people to be able to service their clients really well and to build in the scope to do some of the really fancy, really high value SEO deliverables. So yeah, retainer is great because it gets you great results as a client and it also is great for the agency cause it allows you to plan. Thinking about the first few days of an SEO client though and how you get to maintaining those lovely retainers. Having worked agency side, I can tell you that those first few days are really crucial and it's really important for people to understand how they relate to the agency and how the agency relates to the client and to sort of make sure that you've got good relationships there. The relationships are really, really important. Sometimes what I find with relationship building, there's a lot of some of the soft skills of finding out the kinds of things that they like, finding out the kinds of references that are very relatable. For me, I talk in metaphors all the time and... Mordy Oberstein: I love your metaphors. They're so good sometimes. Crystal Carter: My favorite is my nacho cheese internal linking metaphor. That's my favorite one. But anyway, I talk in metaphors all the time, but the reason why I do that is for relatability and depending on who you're talking to. A sports metaphor will work well for somebody who's really into sports, but something else like a film metaphor or sewing even or something might work better for a different audience. So it's really important to think about that and to make sure that you've got good foundations for your relationship going forward because what's really important in the first few days as demonstrators is being able to convey trust. That comes with being honest with your clients about your capabilities and about the things that you can do for them, and also being honest with them about what you can expect from them and what they can expect from their team. So for instance, if you're working with, let's say an owner operator and maybe a marketing manager, let's say it's a small business. The amount of SEO stuff they're going to be able to achieve is going to be smaller than if it was a massive team with developers, and a graphic design department, and a film team, and all that sort of stuff. It's going to be different, so they need to set some real expectations for what they can achieve and what you can achieve with what you're doing there. So that's really, really important. I think also making sure that they've got clear understanding of your reporting, so reporting is also really important for that. Also being able to get some of those quick wins. Quick wins can be part of making sure that you've got some client trust there, because what will then tend to happen before a client comes on is there'll be some kind of audit. It might be a really deep dive audit that goes into every single element, or it might be just a quick audit just to sort of say whether or not there's some possibilities, what kind of growth we might expect. Generally speaking, from that audit there'll be a couple of things where it's like, "Oh, you don't have this tag. You haven't enabled this. You haven't set up your Google business profile." For instance. And if you're able to deliver some of those and get things moving in the first few days and actually get some things that will show some good results, then that will help you to retain your client, to build trust with your client to get some momentum, and to get the kind of enthusiasm that helps SEO projects stay at the forefront of the marketing mix, which is what you want as a client manager, as a project manager, and to make sure that you've got all of the things that you want set up for the months, weeks ahead. Mordy Oberstein: So I think a lot of what we're going to be discussing today is not, "Wow, that's brilliant." There are things you didn't know. I think in when you learn something, there are things like this, there are topics like this where it's not that I didn't know that, but you need to bring it out to the conscious level and bringing that out to the conscious level really helps you solidify it and then be able to act on it. I think that's a lot of what we're going to be doing today, what you just did there. One of those things is, yeah, a great communication I'll get to in a second, but it's not a brilliant idea where you know that when you have a new client and any new relationship, it's one of those periods where there's a lot of uncertainty and skepticism around the relationship. I don't think we're saying anything earth sharing or brilliant in that, but bringing that out to the conscious forefront when you're thinking about it in the context of SEO clients is really important because if you're not consciously aware, then you won't consciously act on it. A great strategy, I was talking to Jacob Clark from Nerd Wilder about this recently, not on the keeping client context, but getting buy-in from clients, so a very similar kind of context. Where a quick win gets them to trust you, see that what you're doing, see that this process is going to work, see this is worth investing, everything you just said, and it doesn't have to be super complicated. It's not manipulative, you are just laying the foundation with that client, with that person so that you can move ahead forward because they might be very skeptical of you for nothing to do with you. SEO, sometimes, has a bad repetition as being snake oil or being about tricks. Crystal Carter: Consultants. Some people really are hesitant about getting consultancy, and certainly sometimes with consultants people will tell you something you already know and they'll spend lots of money telling you something you already know and maybe won't give you actionables or something from that, for instance. I think that can make people skeptical. We've spoken recently about how to speak to the C-suite, and I think this is something that overlaps with that. Again, this is why I use metaphors. If you're speaking in jargon all the time, if you're speaking in words that are difficult for a normal person to understand, then that can breed distrust. So quick wins are something that people can see, but also it allows people to have more conversations with you about getting involved with the process because you'll say, "Okay, we did this quick win. Are you seeing results?" And they can say, "Yes, we did." Or "No, we didn't." I think also the checking in about the process as you go along is really important. I remember when I first started working with clients, we get them on a retainer and I would say, "Hi, this month we're going to do this and this and this." I do my deliverables for six months, and then the beginning of the month would come, then I would say, "Okay, we did this to this blog and we did this to this, and we did that to that." And then I wouldn't talk to them for another month until we did the report. People of the internet, that was a terrible thing. That was terrible. That was terrible and that was awful. Don't do that. Don't do that. If you have clients or if you're working on a project in-house, for instance, if you're working on something talk to them as you go. Talk to them, as you go talk to them as you're working through the project. Don't leave it a month between speaking to people. That was terrible. As soon as I started speaking more regularly with clients, I started seeing the retention grow and the trust grow. Also, when that happens, then people will come to you with more projects, right? Because they know that you're somebody that they can have a regular conversation with. They know that you're somebody who they can speak to consciously and solve problems and things like that. So I'd have people come to say, "Oh, well what about this? Do you know about that?" And I'd say, "Well, I know something about that, but I could recommend somebody else who knows more about that." For instance. That works really, really well. So I think having the ongoing conversation. Sometimes it's a question of, let's say, you've got something really technical that's going through, try to find ways to get them involved, even if it's on a lower level. Sort of like, "Hey, we're doing this. Would you like it to be like this? Or would you like it to be like that?" Mordy Oberstein: It all goes back to the foundation which is the outright start of really crisp, clear communication and expectations. Which is the foundation for all of it. This is where I see a lot of people get messed up, because you are anxious and don't want to undersell. You want to show, "I'm going to get you so much. You're going to get so much." I don't think that that's the right way to go about that, because inevitably you're going to hit roadblocks, you're going to hit complications. For lack of a better way of putting it, it's going to hit the fan at some point and the growth that you anticipate is not going to be as quick and easy as you perhaps anticipated for this website. Even though it looks on paper, there's no way. There's no way it's not going to work. Then you've created a situation where the expectations are not aligned to reality. That's just a recipe for disaster because again, underlying all of this, I think it's true for most business relationships, is a degree of skepticism. You're just letting that come out to the forefront, it's there already for multiple reasons, more so I think in SEO than even in other places. And because you're not setting up the expectations to be fully transparent you're breeding a situation that's going to end up biting you in the rear end later on. There's nothing wrong in setting realistic expectations, telling the client that this is going to be hard, it's not going to be easy. I think most people, that will probably add a degree of credibility to what you're selling, versus "It's going to be so easy. Everyone's going to see this. Everyone's going to love this. You're going to get it done so quickly." Crystal Carter: Exactly. If you're like, "Oh yeah. Soon as we do this, we're going to be this, this, and this." Now sometimes, sometimes you can have a look at it and you can go, "I mean, this is a slam dunk." Sometimes you can do that, but you should do that cautiously. Sometimes hold those cards closer to your chest, because you can give them realistic expectations of what you're absolutely sure that you can do. For instance, you can say, "We can do this implementation, which will make you more eligible for rich results." And that you can guarantee, right? Certain implementation will make you more eligible for rich results. You can't guarantee how many rich results they will get. You can't guarantee what they will rank for. You can't guarantee necessarily the traffic because there are many, many variables outside of that. But you can say, "We will get you this, which will increase your visibility and rich results." You can say that. So say that. That's fine. But caveat what you're saying and things. I used to do forecast for PPC stuff, and we would hedge them. We would hedge. We'd be like, "Look, if we can bring the cost per acquisition down to five pounds, then if we spend this much we should expect to see this much. But if the cost per acquisition is 10 pounds and if we spend this much, we should expect to see this much." So you can hedge, and having the sort of understanding of what the best case scenario is, what the worst case scenario is, what your potential plan B might be, is also really important. It's not a negative to be aware of the negatives. So if you're telling the client that there's a potential that this might go wrong, that's useful, and that shows that you've thought it all the way through. Mordy Oberstein: And that's also a great point, because if it does go wrong you've already laid down the foundation of good communication. I'll tell you from an interesting point of view, because a lot of my work with the agency has come in where someone comes to me and said, "Hey, I'm working with an agency and this doesn't look right to me. Have a look at this." So I've multiple times have. "Okay, we're going to fact check or check up on." And clients will do this. They'll hire a consultant to check on what an agency's doing."Does this sound right to you?" And it's inevitably when they hit a problem. One case I had was someone came to me and said, "Hey, a bunch of my local listings got suspended from Google Business Profile, and the agency is telling me X." I'm like, "That makes absolutely no sense. This is absolutely their fault. They should have known that." When you don't have those lines of communication set up at the outset, it's really easy to get into big problems once things go a little bit sou. A point to that is, when they go sour, be upfront. Things happen, people generally understand. Nothing is ever a hundred percent simple. Nothing ever goes a hundred percent the way you think it's going to. You're going to have problems, and it's all about communication and communicating about those problems and being upfront, because the thing you don't want is for the trust to erode. Problems are fine. Trust eroding is not fine. If you can keep a level of trust up while dealing with the problem, then you should be fine assuming you know how to handle that problem. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think, again, this is one of the reasons why it's worth spending some time getting to know your clients generally as well as getting to know your clients professionally. You don't have to be hanging out with them every weekend or whatever, but it's sometimes useful to be able to speak to them in a sort of casual way because in those moments where you're talking about what happened at the football game over the weekend, or what your kids did at the thing or whatever, in those moments you understand the nuances and the ways that they talk about maybe sensitive topics, which can help you to talk about sensitive topics in other spaces. I think that, yeah, it can be tricky, but it's really, really worth it. It's really, really worth it. I've had conversations where clients have come to me and they maybe weren't happy about something, that can happen happens. It happens. Sometimes a client can come to you and they say, "Well, I'm not happy about this. I don't like this." And I remember having one conversation and I was like, "Thank you for your candor." And they were like, "What?" I was like, "Thank you for your candor, thank you for telling." I think that in those moments, if you have clients who are unhappy or something, be grateful that they're telling you because, like you were saying how somebody comes to you and says, "Hey, this agency told me this. Or this consultant told me that." And they're asking you to double check them. Be grateful that they're talking to you about whatever the issue is, because it takes a lot for someone to come and say, "Hey. Actually, I'm not happy about this." So listen to them. Mordy Oberstein: Being respectful and normal about it. Which by the way, if they're not, and this is okay also, you are allowed to drop clients. Crystal Carter: I think this is important. I think that when you're thinking about clients, when you're onboarding clients, for instance, and your onboarding process should be paying attention to this as well, but when you're onboarding clients, make sure that you're onboarding them for a good fit. Somebody might be a good fit for somebody and might not be such a good fit for another person, but pay attention to how they operate, how you operate. For instance, if they're the kind of person who expects you to reply back to an email in the next hour or something and maybe you don't have the capacity for that, then maybe they're not the best client for you, or maybe that particular way of working isn't the best for you. Maybe they might not be a good fit for a retainer client, but maybe they might be a good fit for a project client, for instance. If you have other things, then that's something. I can see that you wanted to come in there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, I wanted to say what you could do there, by the way, is if you have a friend who owns another agency or somebody you know owns another agency that does that kind of whatever work that you don't want to do, and you do the work that they don't want to do, you can refer your clients back and forth to each other. You don't have to feel like you're losing out. This could just be part of a relationship where that makes you win, just later on. Crystal Carter: Right. And again, that's something that doesn't make you look less valuable to the client. That still keeps you as the person who is able to solve their problems, because at the end of the day, that's what the client wants you to do. They want you to help them solve the problem. They want to find business solutions. So if you're able to facilitate that with either a tool, or a contact, or a whatever, then that's something that's really, really valuable for them. I think that there's lots of nuances to it, but there's a really good piece of content on the Wix Partners blog called The No Surprises Doctrine of Building Trust Through Better Communication, which talks about a lot of this and it's really well written. I would also recommend, with regards to additional reading, on the Wix SEO hub, we have something from Sophie Brannan talking about SEO reporting. She talks about how to report to clients, and I think that that's a really important part of building trust and making sure that they understand. When I work with clients, I build their reports bespoke. So we talk to them about what things they want to see, what things are most valuable to them, will work with them. Before I've had clients who maybe the project ended it, they wanted me to make them a new report separately even though I wasn't working on the project anymore because it's really important. Mordy Oberstein: With that, we have Lucy Dodds, who's a Senior SEO Strategist over at Evolved Search to share with us her top tips for building trust, cause that's what we're talking about. This whole episode basically is building trust. Keeping your clients, if you want to boil it down to it, it's building trust with your SEO clients. So here's Lucy Dodds and her top tips to build trust with SEO clients. Lucy Dodds: For me, the best way to build trust is through a content hub. These hubs give you a great opportunity to become a trusted resource for your users. In fact, the only resource they'll ever need to use when they're researching your products or services. Your content hub is there to satisfy your audiences every need of the marketing funnel, including pre and post purchase stages. So you can embed yourselves in their sales journey. The best content hubs put the brand at the forefront of their customer's minds by building that trust, which in the long-term results in sales and repeat business. And although we call it a content hub, it actually encompasses all parts of SEO, which means your technical on-site content and digital PR records are all aligned working together towards that one goal. But let's break that down. So the technical SEOs will start out and build the foundations for your content hub. They ensure that all the content is housed in the correct sub folders coming from your commercial page, and not just left in a blog forgotten about. This helps to ensure any value from traffic or link building is only funneled into that one commercial pitch, which they'll also be managing through some very controlled internal linking. Then we have the onsite content itself. We're going to be answering long-tail queries about the products or services that this business offers with more unique and informative content. We're integrating product experience, we're using internal statistics, we're creating genuine video reviews. Building trust by using authentic contact that's much better than any AI can scrape from another source. Users can find the content through search when looking up the long-tail query, and it's your job to ensure they leave your site feeling like you are the best and most trustworthy resource, so when the time comes to buy they remember you. And finally, the digital PRs are going to make this content, and therefore your brand, more visible. Of course, there's always room for big creative link building campaigns, but actually you can get a lot of value from outreaching this informational helpful content. With the rising cost of living, pandemic, and other global worries, many journalists are looking for ways to support their readership with helpful content. So say we have a piece of informational guide content on cleaning a mattress. The digital PR can still make some headlines from that, like "How to Cheaply Clean your Mattress", or how to do it naturally with household goods. Probably not an award-winning campaign sure, but does it genuinely help users? Absolutely. Reactive commentary works in the same way. When your sites in-house expert offers insight into an event that's happening in the world, that allows the digital PR to get your brand out there while helping users and forming trust with them at the same time. So, we have the best informational content which strengthens our sites authority on the products or services we offer, and also means we don't look overly salesy. We have our brand building efforts through digital PR to pose in-house experts as the most knowledgeable people on a topic. And then we have the optimal technical setup to ensure all value from backlinks and organic traffic is being passed to our key commercial page, so we'll rank better too. And that's what a content hub is a great way to build trust because it gives you the opportunity to bring your SEO efforts together to become the greatest resource for your audience. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Lucy. That was really interesting and quite insightful for our audience. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's starting from a really good place. Lucy comes from an agency which is renowned for SEO. Evolve Search is an award-winning agency, and so she knows exactly how to work with clients and how to keep clients happy. Wise words from Lucy, she's a great follower as well, so follow her @lucyalicedodds on Twitter. She's got some great information about client management, about SEO, and she's worth checking out. Mordy Oberstein: So with that client management, as you just mentioned, one, is obviously not easy, but two, it's obviously not unique to SEO. A lot of the principle, like client management, have nothing to do with SEO, just being good at managing clients. So with that, we're privileged to know some really amazing folks here at Wix, and in this particular case, these folks, we have to meet with them quite often so I know firsthand that they're awesome. They do also have an amazing SEO background, so we thought, wouldn't it be cool to learn more about client management, and client success, and driving client success, and having clients feel valued and taken care of, and how to do all of that from people who also know the SEO world all at the same time. It's all coming together. One magnificent storm of perfect awesomeness. So let's explore our client success with an all product advisement team as we go across the Wixverse with our own Clay Kemp and Sean Delgado. Speaker 6: 3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Hey Clay. Hey Sean. Thanks for coming on to the podcast, guys. Clay Kemp: How's it going, Mordy? Sean Delgado: How's it going? Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: So you both work to help our clients feel, I'll call it valued and taken care of. What goes into what y'all do and how do you approach it? Clay Kemp: Yeah. So on the product advisor team, we actually have a bunch of our top partners, top users, some of our best users on the Wix platform. We really jump into help our team Account Managers when certain users on Wix need to learn more about SEO, or even have some troubleshooting issues. So if they need help doing some redirects, they're doing a site migration, or if we're just getting them up to speed on all the new changes that are constantly rolling out with the Wix platform, like the new SEO home dashboard or whatever it might be. We kind of have those two arms to our team. So whether it's making them successful through product and education, or that troubleshooting side that's kind of where we step in. Mordy Oberstein: So the troubleshooting side is interesting to me, because I feel at that point the client's on the fence. It can go either really, really well or any second it can break out into all sorts of frustration and chaos. Clay Kemp: Indeed. Sean Delgado: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: I think Sean was like, "Yes." And it's understandable, because it's something that's complicated, it's something that's frustrating that you're trying to get your business going, your site going. So what's important to keep in mind in those moments, Sean, when you are dealing with something that it's really complicated, it's really frustrating, and you just want to make sure that the person understands that you have them, you have their back, and no matter how complicated it's going to get, you're going to be there for them. How do you walk that line? Sean Delgado: Yeah. It's a tough line to walk, but I think patience comes into play and also just being open and honest comes into play. I think it's important to really get as much information from the user as you can, just having a good backstory and a good background from where the problem started, what issues they're facing, what these issues are causing for them, the troubles that they're causing, whether it's just on the website or their business itself. I think understanding that is really, really important, but then taking the time to go through everything that they brought up and everything that might be the issue. Doing really good audits on the website and audits on troubleshooting things on your own time, just making copies of websites, going through things, making sure that things are working properly. I think it's really important to make sure that you listen to them, talk it through, show them what you're doing. If in that session we don't get a full answer, reassuring them that, "Listen, we will do our work on our end. Make sure that you know are heard, you are understood, and you're not going to be forgotten just because that our session is up. It's a continuous thing and we're going to keep working to make sure that that issue is solved." Crystal Carter: Certainly with some of the discussions with partners I know that you have some bespoke communication tools that you use, I know you've got a few dashboards and things that you help to keep people aware of what's going on and how things are progressing. Can you talk a little bit more about communication methods? Certainly I know from my client side working, making bespoke things for communication requirements can be useful. Can you and expand on that or share any stories around that? Clay Kemp: Yeah, so I think keeping clients engaged is really a holistic process, at least where we sit. We sit in a unique spot between, I guess you could say product and then the actual clients themselves, so we come in as the subject matter experts. There's a lot of different channels of communication between. We sometimes help with webinars, we have a lot of different email campaigns that could be highly automated sometimes based on their behavior, even, just to empower them based on what they're doing within the platform. Then also very tailored approaches. It could be something slightly exclusive at times, like if they want to join this specific small group training, that's something that we will do from time to time. If there's a small cohort of partners, for example, like you're talking about Crystal, that I think have a stronger need to get up to speed on this tool to empower their business. I think the most impactful thing, and I don't want to get ahead of myself, but within all this communication is really just continuing to ask those questions when we're in our one-on-one consultations themselves, which is what Sean was referencing, is just doing the discovery. I think the number one way that we make clients successful is just by continuously asking those questions, because everyone's goal is going to be a little different. We can't come in with a totally templated approach or too much automation or anything, but really just asking them, "What are you doing with your agency right now, and what are your goals from let's say 2023? Or what are your goals for the next few months?" And really digging into those on a client by client basis. Mordy Oberstein: Hearing that, and especially in working with both of you, the term that comes to mind is you both seem like advocates of the client. I'll have cases, for example, where Sean will come to me and say, "Hey, what's going on with this on the SEO side? What's happening with that?" And it really feels that you are an advocate for the client. It goes back to what you were talking about before, and we actually talked about this earlier in the show, it's not about avoiding problems. There's going to be problems, but it's a matter of when you're trying to retain clients, about showing the client that even though there is a problem, you're there for them and you're an advocate for them to get the problem solved. I feel both of you do that. Particularly, Sean, we work closely on stuff together where it does legitimately feel like you're an advocate for the client. Sean Delgado: Right. A hundred percent. I think any client feels that, and if it's an actual genuine want to help someone, I think they feel that and understand that. So whether it is something that you're solving in that moment or later on, like you said, me and you work together, I'll reach out to members of different teams if it involves something differently. We go that extra mile because we want to make sure that that client is happy in the end. We want to make sure that they feel heard, feel wanted, and feel needed in everything that they're asking and everything that they want. So, I think it is important to remember that we're here to help, we're not just here to go through our days just to go through them. We're here to help and actually give people the answers and tools that they need to succeed in their business and in their life. Crystal Carter: I think nobody likes feeling like they've asked for help and somebody's ticking a box. "Check, check. Yes" And you're like, "Oh my God." And they're like, "Press number three." And you're like, "I'd like to talk to a human being, please." Clay Kemp: Exactly. We're here to take those in. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. I think that it is something that builds a lot of trust. I think Clay, you also talked about nurturing people and in a sort of education space, training people up on things that they need training on. I think particularly when you're working in a digital space, whether you're working in a B2B space like you are, or working client side, or even if you're working with customers even, where they're trying to learn how to use your product or a complimentary tool, for instance, one of the things you find is that in digital marketing, very often they're working with something completely new. So there's a brand new tool or brand new feature that exists and there isn't training for it so you have to be that trainer, and in order to help make sure that the client is successful with this new tool that you've either advised them to have or that you are giving them you, that should be part of your mix and part of an expected process for your agency or for your client management thing. I don't know, did you ever consider or did you ever expect that you'd end up being a trainer in your job? Clay Kemp: Yeah. Actually, that's one of the things that I love the most about this role, because I've sat at the enterprise in-house side doing the analyst day to day. While I actually really did love it, I kind of realized that I wanted to teach people, cause part of what I was actually doing at the time was doing a lot of cross-departmental trainings or, let's say, more of our content strategy or our copywriter team. I would sit in on blog meetings and then I would give them some those targets for that quarter or that month. Then also just some 100 level and 200 level training, so that SEO became more of a mindset across the company and not just in our little small department over in the corner. I think that's when I realized that I just love teaching people and empowering them to use product, and especially SEO, because I think with SEO there's a lot of at times gray areas, I will say that, and I think debunking some of those and just clearing some of that up is just a really fulfilling thing. It's great to see that among Wix users, and partners, and clients over here as well. Mordy Oberstein: What better way than to end here. That was perfect. Guys, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and keep it up. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Clay. It's great to be able to bring their expertise to the podcast, cause I learn so much from them every time we actually meet. Looking forward to seeing them over at Brighton. So we're going to be at Brighton, by the way, BrightonSEO in April. Clay and Sean just let me know. Crystal is surprised. Yeah, they're coming. Crystal Carter: I'm very surprised. Yay. Mordy Oberstein: Yay, right? Crystal Carter: They're both great folks. Mordy Oberstein: They're awesome. Crystal Carter: Absolutely fantastic and so, so enthusiastic about making sure that Wix partners do amazing things and that clients of Wix do amazing things. It's a very Wix. Mordy Oberstein: So if you'll be there, say hi to Clay, and say hi to Sean. Nice. You know what else is news, is Crystal coughing. Crystal Carter: Sorry. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else might be news for you, Crystal. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: The Snappy News. Crystal Carter: The Snappy N`ews. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News. Here's what's happened in the world of SEO outside of AI writers. Just kidding, this is all about AI writers, because Bing made a few interesting announcements over at Pubcon, the SEO conference, about its AI chat experience. First off, they said SEO is not dead. So thank God, I was worried for a second. They also said impressions, clicks, and so forth that come to your site from their AI chat experience you'll be able to see them inside of Bing's webmaster tools at some point. Meaning you'll have real data about if or if not AI chat is hurting or helping your site from organic traffic point of view. Very cool and very transparent of Bing. Not to worry though, Google's Gary Ilia said, also at Pubcon... Wow, so many things going on at Pubcon about AI chat... That Google's Bard will also have its own unique way of sending traffic to sites, as there were initial concerns about Google's Bard when Google announced Google's Bard as there were no citations to other websites. So have no fear. Less fear? Let's go with no fear. We're going to go with no fear. Have no fear. This comes, by the way, on the heels of Bing saying that they have finished an update to their AI chat systems to make them more likely that the chat will return an answer and reduce what Bing is calling "hallucination answers", which sounds fun, but I'm glad they're gone, I guess. Coming on the heels of this, geez, everyone is stepping on everyone's heels these days. Anyway, on the heels of this Brave announce its own AI powered chat experience is live on its own search engine. AI is everywhere and not a drop of accuracy to spare. I jest, but there are some accuracy issues that I have seen. So please be careful when using the AI chat experiences on the various search engines to make sure that the information they're showing you is up-to-date and as accurate as possible. With that, that is this week's Snappy News. Now, wasn't that jus the snappiest of news for you? Crystal Carter: It was so snappy. The snappiest Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Snap. It was news. Crystal Carter: Oh, Snap! Mordy Oberstein: Which brings us to the last little part of our humble little episode, which is who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness, which brings us to a very, very special person who knows a lot about managing clients because he is the founder of the UK's largest specialist SEO agency, also known as Blue Array. He is Simon Schnieders. Crystal Carter: Simon is fantastic. I spoke at the London SEO Meetup XL last year and met Simon, spent a good amount of time with Simon, and he's just fantastic. Blue Array is a great agency who has a free SEO course available to anyone who would like to check that out. They're a great agency, and Simon at the helm does some amazing things. I think that managing clients, looking after clients, is absolutely crucial to making sure that agencies perform well and grow. I think retaining your clients, whether you're a freelancer or an agency, is absolutely critical. Absolutely crucial. I hope that this episode has been useful to people who are looking to do that, and follow Simon for more. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Simon's on LinkedIn predominantly. He also has a newsletter he puts out with Blue Array, so we'll link to that in the show notes, and is a great follow on LinkedIn. Do you follow on LinkedIn? How does that work? Yeah, you do follow people on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: You can follow. You can follow, you can also connect. Mordy Oberstein: Follow and then connect, yes. I know. I do LinkedIn, but I just repurpose all my Twitter stuff for LinkedIn. Simon does put out a lot of thought-provoking posts on LinkedIn, so he is a wonderful follow on LinkedIn for you. Of course, we'll link to his profile and the newsletter that you have over at Blue Array in the show notes, which means that hopefully we've retained you to this point. Crystal Carter: We have. We have. Mordy Oberstein: We go all the way back around. We've clearly communicated with you so that you feel that we have embedded trust in our listener-host relationship. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And we set expectations that the podcast would end, and now it will. Mordy Oberstein: And now it will. Thank you for joining us on the SERPS Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode and a special guest as we dive into how will chat GPT change search and the web forever. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts, or on the SEO learning over on wix.com/seo/learn. Looking for a little more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning over 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: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Lucy Dodds Clay Kemp Sean Del Galdo Simon Schnieders Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub SEO Reporting for SMBs Evolved Search Blue Array Pubcon News: Bing Webmaster Tools to gain Bing Chat and index coverage reporting Microsoft Bing Chat launches quality improvements Google Has Its Own Way To Send Traffic To Publishers Through Bard/Chat Brave Search launches an AI-powered summarization feature Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Lucy Dodds Clay Kemp Sean Del Galdo Simon Schnieders Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub SEO Reporting for SMBs Evolved Search Blue Array Pubcon News: Bing Webmaster Tools to gain Bing Chat and index coverage reporting Microsoft Bing Chat launches quality improvements Google Has Its Own Way To Send Traffic To Publishers Through Bard/Chat Brave Search launches an AI-powered summarization feature Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPS Up. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO over here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the incredible, the fantastically fabulous, the ever so awesome head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Hey, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Hi, Mordy. That's a very nice intro, as usual. Thank you very much. And hello to all the internet friends out there. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: Hi. Well, it's what they pay me to say. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. It reminds me of a little bit of the "Let's get Ready to Rumble" thing. That guy is a legend. Mordy Oberstein: What ever happened to that guy? Does he still do that? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I think he just walks around in a tuxedo looking for things that might rumble. Maybe he goes to building sites and just before they stir the cement he goes, "Let's get ready to rumble." Mordy Oberstein: That's a dude who made a whole living doing just one thing. Crystal Carter: One thing. One thing. To be fair... Mordy Oberstein: Maybe he does more, I don't know. Crystal Carter: Possibly, but I mean, who cares? It's the rumble that everybody's there for. Mordy Oberstein: Who cares. "I do so many things." Who cares. Crystal Carter: Who cares? Just Rumble. Mordy Oberstein: Just rumble Crystal Carter: Do the Rumble. But I think there's also the Rock. The Rock. There's a clip of him on a UK late night show explaining the whole thing of the, "Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?" And he breaks it down entirely. He's like, "Can you smell?" Mordy Oberstein: I remember watching it, not as a teenager guess. My brother at the time was really into wrestling, and I would watch it with him. That was very entertaining, even though I didn't like wrestling at the time, but it was entertaining. Crystal Carter: He was very good at it. Yeah, he's pivoted amazingly. Mordy Oberstein: He's really good. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And shout to all the wrestling SERPS Up fans. I know there are a few. Shout out to Jack Shaffer's Ward and all of them folks. So there's a lot of Wix wrestling. Mordy Oberstein: All Elite Wrestling. All Elite Wrestling. Crystal Carter: All Elite Wrestling. Mordy Oberstein: Is a Wix website. Crystal Carter: Is a Wix website. And they crush it every week. Mordy Oberstein: They do. I don't watch it. I don't even know so much about what it is. I know that it's wrestling and that it's on Wix. Crystal Carter: And they put the smack down on SEO. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's the wrong league. Is that a league? Crystal Carter: Is that the wrong one? Mordy Oberstein: I think so. Again, the SERPS Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can schedule analytics reports to show up in whoever's inbox you want. It's right there with Wix Analytics. Send Rick your client, if that's what you want, and do it automatically so that you can retain those clients really easily. Since today we're talking about how do I retain clients in 10 days. By the way, is a reference to... what is it? How to Lose a Guy in 10 days? That's where they got that from. It's a movie. Crystal Carter: Oh, I see. I see. That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I never even saw the movie though. I don't why. Crystal Carter: I'm not sure I've seen the movie either, but if you want to talk about romcoms, Dr. Pete is the romcom dude. Mordy Oberstein: Is he really? Crystal Carter: Yeah. He's been spending a lot of time writing AI romcom plot lines and it's incredibly amusing. So check out Dr. Pete's thread on that. Mordy Oberstein: I'm using Chat PT to write prompts using the Twilight Zone intro. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Write a essay about astrophysics in the tone of a Twilight Zone intro. Crystal Carter: Nice. Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's great. Anyway, today we're talking about how to ensure you keep your clients. We do have some simple steps for you, though often disregarded steps, that'll help you keep your SEO clients happy. Things like why the first 90 days are so important, the absolute importance of good SEO communications, and client churn prevention, what to do and what to learn from it. Plus, Lucy Dodds will stop buying and share her tips on building trust with SEO clients. We'll also travel across the Wixverse to talk to two client management aficionados, Wix's own Clay Kemp and Sean Delgado. And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO News with you and who usually be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Don't lose us, as episode 28 of the SURPS Up podcast is on a retainer for the next 30 plus minutes. Crystal Carter: I like that. We love a retainer. A retainer is exactly what we need. Mordy Oberstein: It's a holy grail of SEO agencies, the retainer. Crystal Carter: yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that it's really important. The retainers are good for two reasons, they're good for the clients and they're good for the SEOs. Having worked agency side, I can tell you that when you have a good retainer client it really gives you the scope to plan and grow. I think people talk about quick wins and low-hanging fruit and all of that sort of stuff, but that stuff gets done very quickly, hopefully within the sort of first 10 days, first 90 days. But then what do you do after that? The retainer allows you to plan for your SEO growth and allows the agency to plan for that and to plan effectively. So it's really, really useful for people to be able to service their clients really well and to build in the scope to do some of the really fancy, really high value SEO deliverables. So yeah, retainer is great because it gets you great results as a client and it also is great for the agency cause it allows you to plan. Thinking about the first few days of an SEO client though and how you get to maintaining those lovely retainers. Having worked agency side, I can tell you that those first few days are really crucial and it's really important for people to understand how they relate to the agency and how the agency relates to the client and to sort of make sure that you've got good relationships there. The relationships are really, really important. Sometimes what I find with relationship building, there's a lot of some of the soft skills of finding out the kinds of things that they like, finding out the kinds of references that are very relatable. For me, I talk in metaphors all the time and... Mordy Oberstein: I love your metaphors. They're so good sometimes. Crystal Carter: My favorite is my nacho cheese internal linking metaphor. That's my favorite one. But anyway, I talk in metaphors all the time, but the reason why I do that is for relatability and depending on who you're talking to. A sports metaphor will work well for somebody who's really into sports, but something else like a film metaphor or sewing even or something might work better for a different audience. So it's really important to think about that and to make sure that you've got good foundations for your relationship going forward because what's really important in the first few days as demonstrators is being able to convey trust. That comes with being honest with your clients about your capabilities and about the things that you can do for them, and also being honest with them about what you can expect from them and what they can expect from their team. So for instance, if you're working with, let's say an owner operator and maybe a marketing manager, let's say it's a small business. The amount of SEO stuff they're going to be able to achieve is going to be smaller than if it was a massive team with developers, and a graphic design department, and a film team, and all that sort of stuff. It's going to be different, so they need to set some real expectations for what they can achieve and what you can achieve with what you're doing there. So that's really, really important. I think also making sure that they've got clear understanding of your reporting, so reporting is also really important for that. Also being able to get some of those quick wins. Quick wins can be part of making sure that you've got some client trust there, because what will then tend to happen before a client comes on is there'll be some kind of audit. It might be a really deep dive audit that goes into every single element, or it might be just a quick audit just to sort of say whether or not there's some possibilities, what kind of growth we might expect. Generally speaking, from that audit there'll be a couple of things where it's like, "Oh, you don't have this tag. You haven't enabled this. You haven't set up your Google business profile." For instance. And if you're able to deliver some of those and get things moving in the first few days and actually get some things that will show some good results, then that will help you to retain your client, to build trust with your client to get some momentum, and to get the kind of enthusiasm that helps SEO projects stay at the forefront of the marketing mix, which is what you want as a client manager, as a project manager, and to make sure that you've got all of the things that you want set up for the months, weeks ahead. Mordy Oberstein: So I think a lot of what we're going to be discussing today is not, "Wow, that's brilliant." There are things you didn't know. I think in when you learn something, there are things like this, there are topics like this where it's not that I didn't know that, but you need to bring it out to the conscious level and bringing that out to the conscious level really helps you solidify it and then be able to act on it. I think that's a lot of what we're going to be doing today, what you just did there. One of those things is, yeah, a great communication I'll get to in a second, but it's not a brilliant idea where you know that when you have a new client and any new relationship, it's one of those periods where there's a lot of uncertainty and skepticism around the relationship. I don't think we're saying anything earth sharing or brilliant in that, but bringing that out to the conscious forefront when you're thinking about it in the context of SEO clients is really important because if you're not consciously aware, then you won't consciously act on it. A great strategy, I was talking to Jacob Clark from Nerd Wilder about this recently, not on the keeping client context, but getting buy-in from clients, so a very similar kind of context. Where a quick win gets them to trust you, see that what you're doing, see that this process is going to work, see this is worth investing, everything you just said, and it doesn't have to be super complicated. It's not manipulative, you are just laying the foundation with that client, with that person so that you can move ahead forward because they might be very skeptical of you for nothing to do with you. SEO, sometimes, has a bad repetition as being snake oil or being about tricks. Crystal Carter: Consultants. Some people really are hesitant about getting consultancy, and certainly sometimes with consultants people will tell you something you already know and they'll spend lots of money telling you something you already know and maybe won't give you actionables or something from that, for instance. I think that can make people skeptical. We've spoken recently about how to speak to the C-suite, and I think this is something that overlaps with that. Again, this is why I use metaphors. If you're speaking in jargon all the time, if you're speaking in words that are difficult for a normal person to understand, then that can breed distrust. So quick wins are something that people can see, but also it allows people to have more conversations with you about getting involved with the process because you'll say, "Okay, we did this quick win. Are you seeing results?" And they can say, "Yes, we did." Or "No, we didn't." I think also the checking in about the process as you go along is really important. I remember when I first started working with clients, we get them on a retainer and I would say, "Hi, this month we're going to do this and this and this." I do my deliverables for six months, and then the beginning of the month would come, then I would say, "Okay, we did this to this blog and we did this to this, and we did that to that." And then I wouldn't talk to them for another month until we did the report. People of the internet, that was a terrible thing. That was terrible. That was terrible and that was awful. Don't do that. Don't do that. If you have clients or if you're working on a project in-house, for instance, if you're working on something talk to them as you go. Talk to them, as you go talk to them as you're working through the project. Don't leave it a month between speaking to people. That was terrible. As soon as I started speaking more regularly with clients, I started seeing the retention grow and the trust grow. Also, when that happens, then people will come to you with more projects, right? Because they know that you're somebody that they can have a regular conversation with. They know that you're somebody who they can speak to consciously and solve problems and things like that. So I'd have people come to say, "Oh, well what about this? Do you know about that?" And I'd say, "Well, I know something about that, but I could recommend somebody else who knows more about that." For instance. That works really, really well. So I think having the ongoing conversation. Sometimes it's a question of, let's say, you've got something really technical that's going through, try to find ways to get them involved, even if it's on a lower level. Sort of like, "Hey, we're doing this. Would you like it to be like this? Or would you like it to be like that?" Mordy Oberstein: It all goes back to the foundation which is the outright start of really crisp, clear communication and expectations. Which is the foundation for all of it. This is where I see a lot of people get messed up, because you are anxious and don't want to undersell. You want to show, "I'm going to get you so much. You're going to get so much." I don't think that that's the right way to go about that, because inevitably you're going to hit roadblocks, you're going to hit complications. For lack of a better way of putting it, it's going to hit the fan at some point and the growth that you anticipate is not going to be as quick and easy as you perhaps anticipated for this website. Even though it looks on paper, there's no way. There's no way it's not going to work. Then you've created a situation where the expectations are not aligned to reality. That's just a recipe for disaster because again, underlying all of this, I think it's true for most business relationships, is a degree of skepticism. You're just letting that come out to the forefront, it's there already for multiple reasons, more so I think in SEO than even in other places. And because you're not setting up the expectations to be fully transparent you're breeding a situation that's going to end up biting you in the rear end later on. There's nothing wrong in setting realistic expectations, telling the client that this is going to be hard, it's not going to be easy. I think most people, that will probably add a degree of credibility to what you're selling, versus "It's going to be so easy. Everyone's going to see this. Everyone's going to love this. You're going to get it done so quickly." Crystal Carter: Exactly. If you're like, "Oh yeah. Soon as we do this, we're going to be this, this, and this." Now sometimes, sometimes you can have a look at it and you can go, "I mean, this is a slam dunk." Sometimes you can do that, but you should do that cautiously. Sometimes hold those cards closer to your chest, because you can give them realistic expectations of what you're absolutely sure that you can do. For instance, you can say, "We can do this implementation, which will make you more eligible for rich results." And that you can guarantee, right? Certain implementation will make you more eligible for rich results. You can't guarantee how many rich results they will get. You can't guarantee what they will rank for. You can't guarantee necessarily the traffic because there are many, many variables outside of that. But you can say, "We will get you this, which will increase your visibility and rich results." You can say that. So say that. That's fine. But caveat what you're saying and things. I used to do forecast for PPC stuff, and we would hedge them. We would hedge. We'd be like, "Look, if we can bring the cost per acquisition down to five pounds, then if we spend this much we should expect to see this much. But if the cost per acquisition is 10 pounds and if we spend this much, we should expect to see this much." So you can hedge, and having the sort of understanding of what the best case scenario is, what the worst case scenario is, what your potential plan B might be, is also really important. It's not a negative to be aware of the negatives. So if you're telling the client that there's a potential that this might go wrong, that's useful, and that shows that you've thought it all the way through. Mordy Oberstein: And that's also a great point, because if it does go wrong you've already laid down the foundation of good communication. I'll tell you from an interesting point of view, because a lot of my work with the agency has come in where someone comes to me and said, "Hey, I'm working with an agency and this doesn't look right to me. Have a look at this." So I've multiple times have. "Okay, we're going to fact check or check up on." And clients will do this. They'll hire a consultant to check on what an agency's doing."Does this sound right to you?" And it's inevitably when they hit a problem. One case I had was someone came to me and said, "Hey, a bunch of my local listings got suspended from Google Business Profile, and the agency is telling me X." I'm like, "That makes absolutely no sense. This is absolutely their fault. They should have known that." When you don't have those lines of communication set up at the outset, it's really easy to get into big problems once things go a little bit sou. A point to that is, when they go sour, be upfront. Things happen, people generally understand. Nothing is ever a hundred percent simple. Nothing ever goes a hundred percent the way you think it's going to. You're going to have problems, and it's all about communication and communicating about those problems and being upfront, because the thing you don't want is for the trust to erode. Problems are fine. Trust eroding is not fine. If you can keep a level of trust up while dealing with the problem, then you should be fine assuming you know how to handle that problem. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think, again, this is one of the reasons why it's worth spending some time getting to know your clients generally as well as getting to know your clients professionally. You don't have to be hanging out with them every weekend or whatever, but it's sometimes useful to be able to speak to them in a sort of casual way because in those moments where you're talking about what happened at the football game over the weekend, or what your kids did at the thing or whatever, in those moments you understand the nuances and the ways that they talk about maybe sensitive topics, which can help you to talk about sensitive topics in other spaces. I think that, yeah, it can be tricky, but it's really, really worth it. It's really, really worth it. I've had conversations where clients have come to me and they maybe weren't happy about something, that can happen happens. It happens. Sometimes a client can come to you and they say, "Well, I'm not happy about this. I don't like this." And I remember having one conversation and I was like, "Thank you for your candor." And they were like, "What?" I was like, "Thank you for your candor, thank you for telling." I think that in those moments, if you have clients who are unhappy or something, be grateful that they're telling you because, like you were saying how somebody comes to you and says, "Hey, this agency told me this. Or this consultant told me that." And they're asking you to double check them. Be grateful that they're talking to you about whatever the issue is, because it takes a lot for someone to come and say, "Hey. Actually, I'm not happy about this." So listen to them. Mordy Oberstein: Being respectful and normal about it. Which by the way, if they're not, and this is okay also, you are allowed to drop clients. Crystal Carter: I think this is important. I think that when you're thinking about clients, when you're onboarding clients, for instance, and your onboarding process should be paying attention to this as well, but when you're onboarding clients, make sure that you're onboarding them for a good fit. Somebody might be a good fit for somebody and might not be such a good fit for another person, but pay attention to how they operate, how you operate. For instance, if they're the kind of person who expects you to reply back to an email in the next hour or something and maybe you don't have the capacity for that, then maybe they're not the best client for you, or maybe that particular way of working isn't the best for you. Maybe they might not be a good fit for a retainer client, but maybe they might be a good fit for a project client, for instance. If you have other things, then that's something. I can see that you wanted to come in there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, I wanted to say what you could do there, by the way, is if you have a friend who owns another agency or somebody you know owns another agency that does that kind of whatever work that you don't want to do, and you do the work that they don't want to do, you can refer your clients back and forth to each other. You don't have to feel like you're losing out. This could just be part of a relationship where that makes you win, just later on. Crystal Carter: Right. And again, that's something that doesn't make you look less valuable to the client. That still keeps you as the person who is able to solve their problems, because at the end of the day, that's what the client wants you to do. They want you to help them solve the problem. They want to find business solutions. So if you're able to facilitate that with either a tool, or a contact, or a whatever, then that's something that's really, really valuable for them. I think that there's lots of nuances to it, but there's a really good piece of content on the Wix Partners blog called The No Surprises Doctrine of Building Trust Through Better Communication, which talks about a lot of this and it's really well written. I would also recommend, with regards to additional reading, on the Wix SEO hub, we have something from Sophie Brannan talking about SEO reporting. She talks about how to report to clients, and I think that that's a really important part of building trust and making sure that they understand. When I work with clients, I build their reports bespoke. So we talk to them about what things they want to see, what things are most valuable to them, will work with them. Before I've had clients who maybe the project ended it, they wanted me to make them a new report separately even though I wasn't working on the project anymore because it's really important. Mordy Oberstein: With that, we have Lucy Dodds, who's a Senior SEO Strategist over at Evolved Search to share with us her top tips for building trust, cause that's what we're talking about. This whole episode basically is building trust. Keeping your clients, if you want to boil it down to it, it's building trust with your SEO clients. So here's Lucy Dodds and her top tips to build trust with SEO clients. Lucy Dodds: For me, the best way to build trust is through a content hub. These hubs give you a great opportunity to become a trusted resource for your users. In fact, the only resource they'll ever need to use when they're researching your products or services. Your content hub is there to satisfy your audiences every need of the marketing funnel, including pre and post purchase stages. So you can embed yourselves in their sales journey. The best content hubs put the brand at the forefront of their customer's minds by building that trust, which in the long-term results in sales and repeat business. And although we call it a content hub, it actually encompasses all parts of SEO, which means your technical on-site content and digital PR records are all aligned working together towards that one goal. But let's break that down. So the technical SEOs will start out and build the foundations for your content hub. They ensure that all the content is housed in the correct sub folders coming from your commercial page, and not just left in a blog forgotten about. This helps to ensure any value from traffic or link building is only funneled into that one commercial pitch, which they'll also be managing through some very controlled internal linking. Then we have the onsite content itself. We're going to be answering long-tail queries about the products or services that this business offers with more unique and informative content. We're integrating product experience, we're using internal statistics, we're creating genuine video reviews. Building trust by using authentic contact that's much better than any AI can scrape from another source. Users can find the content through search when looking up the long-tail query, and it's your job to ensure they leave your site feeling like you are the best and most trustworthy resource, so when the time comes to buy they remember you. And finally, the digital PRs are going to make this content, and therefore your brand, more visible. Of course, there's always room for big creative link building campaigns, but actually you can get a lot of value from outreaching this informational helpful content. With the rising cost of living, pandemic, and other global worries, many journalists are looking for ways to support their readership with helpful content. So say we have a piece of informational guide content on cleaning a mattress. The digital PR can still make some headlines from that, like "How to Cheaply Clean your Mattress", or how to do it naturally with household goods. Probably not an award-winning campaign sure, but does it genuinely help users? Absolutely. Reactive commentary works in the same way. When your sites in-house expert offers insight into an event that's happening in the world, that allows the digital PR to get your brand out there while helping users and forming trust with them at the same time. So, we have the best informational content which strengthens our sites authority on the products or services we offer, and also means we don't look overly salesy. We have our brand building efforts through digital PR to pose in-house experts as the most knowledgeable people on a topic. And then we have the optimal technical setup to ensure all value from backlinks and organic traffic is being passed to our key commercial page, so we'll rank better too. And that's what a content hub is a great way to build trust because it gives you the opportunity to bring your SEO efforts together to become the greatest resource for your audience. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Lucy. That was really interesting and quite insightful for our audience. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's starting from a really good place. Lucy comes from an agency which is renowned for SEO. Evolve Search is an award-winning agency, and so she knows exactly how to work with clients and how to keep clients happy. Wise words from Lucy, she's a great follower as well, so follow her @lucyalicedodds on Twitter. She's got some great information about client management, about SEO, and she's worth checking out. Mordy Oberstein: So with that client management, as you just mentioned, one, is obviously not easy, but two, it's obviously not unique to SEO. A lot of the principle, like client management, have nothing to do with SEO, just being good at managing clients. So with that, we're privileged to know some really amazing folks here at Wix, and in this particular case, these folks, we have to meet with them quite often so I know firsthand that they're awesome. They do also have an amazing SEO background, so we thought, wouldn't it be cool to learn more about client management, and client success, and driving client success, and having clients feel valued and taken care of, and how to do all of that from people who also know the SEO world all at the same time. It's all coming together. One magnificent storm of perfect awesomeness. So let's explore our client success with an all product advisement team as we go across the Wixverse with our own Clay Kemp and Sean Delgado. Speaker 6: 3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Hey Clay. Hey Sean. Thanks for coming on to the podcast, guys. Clay Kemp: How's it going, Mordy? Sean Delgado: How's it going? Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: So you both work to help our clients feel, I'll call it valued and taken care of. What goes into what y'all do and how do you approach it? Clay Kemp: Yeah. So on the product advisor team, we actually have a bunch of our top partners, top users, some of our best users on the Wix platform. We really jump into help our team Account Managers when certain users on Wix need to learn more about SEO, or even have some troubleshooting issues. So if they need help doing some redirects, they're doing a site migration, or if we're just getting them up to speed on all the new changes that are constantly rolling out with the Wix platform, like the new SEO home dashboard or whatever it might be. We kind of have those two arms to our team. So whether it's making them successful through product and education, or that troubleshooting side that's kind of where we step in. Mordy Oberstein: So the troubleshooting side is interesting to me, because I feel at that point the client's on the fence. It can go either really, really well or any second it can break out into all sorts of frustration and chaos. Clay Kemp: Indeed. Sean Delgado: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: I think Sean was like, "Yes." And it's understandable, because it's something that's complicated, it's something that's frustrating that you're trying to get your business going, your site going. So what's important to keep in mind in those moments, Sean, when you are dealing with something that it's really complicated, it's really frustrating, and you just want to make sure that the person understands that you have them, you have their back, and no matter how complicated it's going to get, you're going to be there for them. How do you walk that line? Sean Delgado: Yeah. It's a tough line to walk, but I think patience comes into play and also just being open and honest comes into play. I think it's important to really get as much information from the user as you can, just having a good backstory and a good background from where the problem started, what issues they're facing, what these issues are causing for them, the troubles that they're causing, whether it's just on the website or their business itself. I think understanding that is really, really important, but then taking the time to go through everything that they brought up and everything that might be the issue. Doing really good audits on the website and audits on troubleshooting things on your own time, just making copies of websites, going through things, making sure that things are working properly. I think it's really important to make sure that you listen to them, talk it through, show them what you're doing. If in that session we don't get a full answer, reassuring them that, "Listen, we will do our work on our end. Make sure that you know are heard, you are understood, and you're not going to be forgotten just because that our session is up. It's a continuous thing and we're going to keep working to make sure that that issue is solved." Crystal Carter: Certainly with some of the discussions with partners I know that you have some bespoke communication tools that you use, I know you've got a few dashboards and things that you help to keep people aware of what's going on and how things are progressing. Can you talk a little bit more about communication methods? Certainly I know from my client side working, making bespoke things for communication requirements can be useful. Can you and expand on that or share any stories around that? Clay Kemp: Yeah, so I think keeping clients engaged is really a holistic process, at least where we sit. We sit in a unique spot between, I guess you could say product and then the actual clients themselves, so we come in as the subject matter experts. There's a lot of different channels of communication between. We sometimes help with webinars, we have a lot of different email campaigns that could be highly automated sometimes based on their behavior, even, just to empower them based on what they're doing within the platform. Then also very tailored approaches. It could be something slightly exclusive at times, like if they want to join this specific small group training, that's something that we will do from time to time. If there's a small cohort of partners, for example, like you're talking about Crystal, that I think have a stronger need to get up to speed on this tool to empower their business. I think the most impactful thing, and I don't want to get ahead of myself, but within all this communication is really just continuing to ask those questions when we're in our one-on-one consultations themselves, which is what Sean was referencing, is just doing the discovery. I think the number one way that we make clients successful is just by continuously asking those questions, because everyone's goal is going to be a little different. We can't come in with a totally templated approach or too much automation or anything, but really just asking them, "What are you doing with your agency right now, and what are your goals from let's say 2023? Or what are your goals for the next few months?" And really digging into those on a client by client basis. Mordy Oberstein: Hearing that, and especially in working with both of you, the term that comes to mind is you both seem like advocates of the client. I'll have cases, for example, where Sean will come to me and say, "Hey, what's going on with this on the SEO side? What's happening with that?" And it really feels that you are an advocate for the client. It goes back to what you were talking about before, and we actually talked about this earlier in the show, it's not about avoiding problems. There's going to be problems, but it's a matter of when you're trying to retain clients, about showing the client that even though there is a problem, you're there for them and you're an advocate for them to get the problem solved. I feel both of you do that. Particularly, Sean, we work closely on stuff together where it does legitimately feel like you're an advocate for the client. Sean Delgado: Right. A hundred percent. I think any client feels that, and if it's an actual genuine want to help someone, I think they feel that and understand that. So whether it is something that you're solving in that moment or later on, like you said, me and you work together, I'll reach out to members of different teams if it involves something differently. We go that extra mile because we want to make sure that that client is happy in the end. We want to make sure that they feel heard, feel wanted, and feel needed in everything that they're asking and everything that they want. So, I think it is important to remember that we're here to help, we're not just here to go through our days just to go through them. We're here to help and actually give people the answers and tools that they need to succeed in their business and in their life. Crystal Carter: I think nobody likes feeling like they've asked for help and somebody's ticking a box. "Check, check. Yes" And you're like, "Oh my God." And they're like, "Press number three." And you're like, "I'd like to talk to a human being, please." Clay Kemp: Exactly. We're here to take those in. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. I think that it is something that builds a lot of trust. I think Clay, you also talked about nurturing people and in a sort of education space, training people up on things that they need training on. I think particularly when you're working in a digital space, whether you're working in a B2B space like you are, or working client side, or even if you're working with customers even, where they're trying to learn how to use your product or a complimentary tool, for instance, one of the things you find is that in digital marketing, very often they're working with something completely new. So there's a brand new tool or brand new feature that exists and there isn't training for it so you have to be that trainer, and in order to help make sure that the client is successful with this new tool that you've either advised them to have or that you are giving them you, that should be part of your mix and part of an expected process for your agency or for your client management thing. I don't know, did you ever consider or did you ever expect that you'd end up being a trainer in your job? Clay Kemp: Yeah. Actually, that's one of the things that I love the most about this role, because I've sat at the enterprise in-house side doing the analyst day to day. While I actually really did love it, I kind of realized that I wanted to teach people, cause part of what I was actually doing at the time was doing a lot of cross-departmental trainings or, let's say, more of our content strategy or our copywriter team. I would sit in on blog meetings and then I would give them some those targets for that quarter or that month. Then also just some 100 level and 200 level training, so that SEO became more of a mindset across the company and not just in our little small department over in the corner. I think that's when I realized that I just love teaching people and empowering them to use product, and especially SEO, because I think with SEO there's a lot of at times gray areas, I will say that, and I think debunking some of those and just clearing some of that up is just a really fulfilling thing. It's great to see that among Wix users, and partners, and clients over here as well. Mordy Oberstein: What better way than to end here. That was perfect. Guys, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and keep it up. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Clay. It's great to be able to bring their expertise to the podcast, cause I learn so much from them every time we actually meet. Looking forward to seeing them over at Brighton. So we're going to be at Brighton, by the way, BrightonSEO in April. Clay and Sean just let me know. Crystal is surprised. Yeah, they're coming. Crystal Carter: I'm very surprised. Yay. Mordy Oberstein: Yay, right? Crystal Carter: They're both great folks. Mordy Oberstein: They're awesome. Crystal Carter: Absolutely fantastic and so, so enthusiastic about making sure that Wix partners do amazing things and that clients of Wix do amazing things. It's a very Wix. Mordy Oberstein: So if you'll be there, say hi to Clay, and say hi to Sean. Nice. You know what else is news, is Crystal coughing. Crystal Carter: Sorry. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else might be news for you, Crystal. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: The Snappy News. Crystal Carter: The Snappy N`ews. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News. Here's what's happened in the world of SEO outside of AI writers. Just kidding, this is all about AI writers, because Bing made a few interesting announcements over at Pubcon, the SEO conference, about its AI chat experience. First off, they said SEO is not dead. So thank God, I was worried for a second. They also said impressions, clicks, and so forth that come to your site from their AI chat experience you'll be able to see them inside of Bing's webmaster tools at some point. Meaning you'll have real data about if or if not AI chat is hurting or helping your site from organic traffic point of view. Very cool and very transparent of Bing. Not to worry though, Google's Gary Ilia said, also at Pubcon... Wow, so many things going on at Pubcon about AI chat... That Google's Bard will also have its own unique way of sending traffic to sites, as there were initial concerns about Google's Bard when Google announced Google's Bard as there were no citations to other websites. So have no fear. Less fear? Let's go with no fear. We're going to go with no fear. Have no fear. This comes, by the way, on the heels of Bing saying that they have finished an update to their AI chat systems to make them more likely that the chat will return an answer and reduce what Bing is calling "hallucination answers", which sounds fun, but I'm glad they're gone, I guess. Coming on the heels of this, geez, everyone is stepping on everyone's heels these days. Anyway, on the heels of this Brave announce its own AI powered chat experience is live on its own search engine. AI is everywhere and not a drop of accuracy to spare. I jest, but there are some accuracy issues that I have seen. So please be careful when using the AI chat experiences on the various search engines to make sure that the information they're showing you is up-to-date and as accurate as possible. With that, that is this week's Snappy News. Now, wasn't that jus the snappiest of news for you? Crystal Carter: It was so snappy. The snappiest Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Snap. It was news. Crystal Carter: Oh, Snap! Mordy Oberstein: Which brings us to the last little part of our humble little episode, which is who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness, which brings us to a very, very special person who knows a lot about managing clients because he is the founder of the UK's largest specialist SEO agency, also known as Blue Array. He is Simon Schnieders. Crystal Carter: Simon is fantastic. I spoke at the London SEO Meetup XL last year and met Simon, spent a good amount of time with Simon, and he's just fantastic. Blue Array is a great agency who has a free SEO course available to anyone who would like to check that out. They're a great agency, and Simon at the helm does some amazing things. I think that managing clients, looking after clients, is absolutely crucial to making sure that agencies perform well and grow. I think retaining your clients, whether you're a freelancer or an agency, is absolutely critical. Absolutely crucial. I hope that this episode has been useful to people who are looking to do that, and follow Simon for more. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Simon's on LinkedIn predominantly. He also has a newsletter he puts out with Blue Array, so we'll link to that in the show notes, and is a great follow on LinkedIn. Do you follow on LinkedIn? How does that work? Yeah, you do follow people on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: You can follow. You can follow, you can also connect. Mordy Oberstein: Follow and then connect, yes. I know. I do LinkedIn, but I just repurpose all my Twitter stuff for LinkedIn. Simon does put out a lot of thought-provoking posts on LinkedIn, so he is a wonderful follow on LinkedIn for you. Of course, we'll link to his profile and the newsletter that you have over at Blue Array in the show notes, which means that hopefully we've retained you to this point. Crystal Carter: We have. We have. Mordy Oberstein: We go all the way back around. We've clearly communicated with you so that you feel that we have embedded trust in our listener-host relationship. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And we set expectations that the podcast would end, and now it will. Mordy Oberstein: And now it will. Thank you for joining us on the SERPS Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episode and a special guest as we dive into how will chat GPT change search and the web forever. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts, or on the SEO learning over on wix.com/seo/learn. Looking for a little more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning over 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. 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