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Nothing is more frightening to SEOs than the possibility of a Google update hitting their sites. This is all the more true as Semrush data shows Google is rolling out updates to its algorithm more than it ever has before! Mordy and Crystal dive into Google algorithm updates. Learn how to best respond when your site is negatively impacted by a Google update by understanding how to analyze ranking trends and the significance of ranking losses. It’s insightful advice on how to best deal with Google algorithm updates! Get a contextual understanding of how the Google algorithm has evolved as special guest Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable joins the show. Survey the history of Google algorithm updates and how their scope has changed. Plus, learn how to track Google updates as our hosts run through the various algorithm tracking tools available to you! Back The dreaded Google Update: When to worry Nothing is more frightening to SEOs than the possibility of a Google update hitting their sites. This is all the more true as Semrush data shows Google is rolling out updates to its algorithm more than it ever has before! Mordy and Crystal dive into Google algorithm updates. Learn how to best respond when your site is negatively impacted by a Google update by understanding how to analyze ranking trends and the significance of ranking losses. It’s insightful advice on how to best deal with Google algorithm updates! Get a contextual understanding of how the Google algorithm has evolved as special guest Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable joins the show. Survey the history of Google algorithm updates and how their scope has changed. Plus, learn how to track Google updates as our hosts run through the various algorithm tracking tools available to you! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 03 | September 7, 2022 | 35 MIN 00:00 / 34:51 This week’s guests Barry Schwartz Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick, a New York Web service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. RustyBrick sells custom web software including advanced e-commerce, custom content management systems, social networking sites, CRM applications, custom web-based business software, iPhone applications and much more. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha and Mahalo. Thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happened in SEO. I am Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, the one, the only, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Aloha. Mordy Oberstein: I've never been to Hawaii, by the way, so I feel like such a fraud. Crystal Carter: I lived in Hawaii. I was a [inaudible 00:00:37]. Mordy Oberstein: Did you really? Oh, that's okay. So now we're not a fraud anymore. Okay. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, how long did you live in Hawaii? I didn't know that. How long did you live in Hawaii? Crystal Carter: I lived in Hawaii. I lived in Hawaii when I was in junior high school. I was in the May Day Pageant as the Princess of O'ahu. I learned how to do hula stuff. I used to eat pu pu platters and wear muumuus. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Crystal Carter: Yeah, and Spam musubis and the whole thing. Like, come through. Mordy Oberstein: So for your birthday, I'm going to buy you a hula hoop. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I have a hula hoop. I'm very skilled on a hula hoop. I used to live on the leeward side. Mordy Oberstein: I can't do a hula hoop. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I can't. I tried. Anyway, the SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can add five structured data markups to your Wix pages, whether they be your main Wix pages, your about page, your home page, or product pages, blog pages, booking pages, all sorts of pages. We're structured data friendly here at Wix. As usual, an enormous amount to cover on this episode of the podcast. [00:01:38] What's On This Episode of SERP's UP? I'm just going to start off by saying, scary voice time, nothing scares us more than the dreaded Google update. Crystal Carter: Buh-huh-huh. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. But have no fear, Crystal and I will tell you what you should and shouldn't worry about when Google moves your URLs up and down the SERP with all sorts of rank volatility madness. And we'll do it with a little bit of help from our friends in specific, I call him the godfather of SEO, although he's not nearly as scary as Marlon Brando, as Barry Schwartz drops by to talk about Google updates. We'll also get into tools of the trade. We'll give you some tools that will tell you the SEO weather and how to know when there's pending doom, the pending doom of a Google algorithm update. And you'll know when it is upon thee. It is nigh. It is nigh. Plus we'll share something new on the SERP subdomains. Is it really new? Hey Barry. And of course some snappy SEO news for you and who you should follow for stupendous SEO knowledge. It'll be our follow of the week. 1, 2, 3, let's go. So Crystal, with that introduction out of the way. Crystal Carter: Hi. Mordy Oberstein: Hi there. Crystal Carter: When you said Barry's the godfather, all I could think was, you come to me and you ask me if this is new. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, it's gotten nuts out there in case you have not been following the SEO world lately, which is fine. That's why you're here. It's been nuts. Google has been updating its algorithm literally more than ever. That means your rankings on the SERP are changing more than ever. And it's not hyperbole. This is fact. So some SEMrush data that I pulled a while back shows that over 50%, this is no joke, over 50%, over half. That 50% is half. Over half of all of the days in 2021 exhibited showed some sort of high levels of rank volatility. The majority of the days in 2021 had sites moving up and down the SERP. All around, up and down here and there. And that is crazy, which by the way, some more data for you. That's a 65% increase relative to 2020. Meaning Google is making more and more and more and more updates and it's really kind of crazy. So should you be worried? [00:03:57] Focus Topic of the Week | When to Worry About a Google Algorithm Update When Google messes with your ranking? When to worry, when not to worry about a Google algorithm update, let's dive in. Where do we start with this madness? Crystal Carter: I mean, I think if I can just, again, let's just get us all on the same page, just for the noobs out there, just doing it for the noobs. If anybody's unclear, when we're talking about an algorithm update, essentially what we're talking about is when Google changes the criteria that they set for ranking pages. So sometimes this can be a big thing, like a core update, but sometimes this can be a smaller thing. They might change one part of the SERP. A really good example is when COVID was happening, they changed a lot of the different criterias around things like face masks or around COVID updates, or COVID things where they changed, which results they change. So they make a decision about what they're going to change. And that's when we say volatility, we mean that things are moving around. So they're changing their mind about lots of different things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And what's crazy is that now you have machine learning making those changes, well automatically basically. Even Google doesn't really know what's going on, which is built in on purpose. I'm not saying that they don't know what's going on, that's by design. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And sometimes they have to roll that back. Like title tag geddon, they changed lots of things. And people were like, "This doesn't make sense, Google" and Google was like, "Oh yeah, you're right. That doesn't make sense." And then they have to go back and correct it. But they're dealing with lots of different searches across the thing. And when we're talking about core updates, that's essentially when they do something at all across the board and it normally has to do with the sort of quality and the general approach of SEO. Sometimes with algorithm updates, it might be something very targeted. Sometimes they'll do product review updates, or sometimes they'll change something on the SERP and it has a knock on effect for the positions across the... Mordy Oberstein: Right. Cause when Google says, "Hey, you're a product review page," a product review page is also shown on the same results page as shopping pages. So if this product review page went from ranking number, I don't know, nine to ranking number three, what was ranking number three can no longer rank number three. That's not how it works. It's either got to go up or it's got to go down. And that might not be a product page, that might be a place where you can buy whatever product it is that's in discussion. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So when all of these changes happen, then you have to figure out what to do because you have a client, you have a website, you have money and bills to pay and all of that sort of stuff. So when you're thinking about what's going on, you have to think about what kind of update you're actually dealing with. So we talk about confirmed, unconfirmed. Confirmed is like Google has said, "We have made an algorithm update. We have changed things." And they'll normally publish a statement on Twitter or somewhere else. And then unconfirmed is the volatility you're talking about, where it's just like, things are really spicy out there. Mordy Oberstein: Rank is constantly moving and by the way, so it's a really good point about the unconfirmed updates versus the confirmed updates for a few reasons. One is the confirmed updates, once the updates finished rolling out, which generally takes a week or so, although for the product review updates that can take upwards of a month, which is really interesting. At the end of the day, whenever the update is finished, the ranking changes. If you went up or down, if you went from number two to number 20, you went from number 20 to number two, those usually stick for the most part. You might go up and down a position or two, but that's the new trajectory. So if you see you've lost rankings month after an update's, whatever it is, is fully rolled out, that's not going back until Google does another update. And that's when it might be time to worry as opposed to the unconfirmed updates, which is basically in my opinion, machine learning recalibrating how it understands things, trying something new out. And there you'll notice in your ranking patterns that you went down in the rankings one day for a key... Let's say you're trying to rank for the keywords, I don't know, best place to go on vacation. You were ranking number one and now you're ranking number 20. Well, you might notice a week later that you're back up to ranking number two, and then a week later back down to ranking number 700, and then you're back up to ranking number one. Those kind of things you need to not freak out about because that's just the name of the game now. And also understand that certain kinds of keywords are more volatile than others. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. So I think we mentioned medical can be a very tricky vertical because Google is going through a lot of the different medical SERPs and they're deciding this is a particularly important medical SERP and we are going to take this. So we're going to curate this and make sure that this has the most authoritative like CDC, Mayo Clinic, the NHS, that sort of thing. They'll put that there. And then there's stuff that's a little bit more freeform. If I had a blog about quilting, that's probably not going to be that volatile. Quilting isn't a very spicy topic. So, I think one of the things I always look at with those testing changes that you're talking about, is checking whether or not it's across the vertical or whether it's just you, Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: So there's a couple... Mordy Oberstein: If you see your competitors doing the same thing, everyone's bouncing around, there's probably not much you can do. Google's having either a hard time understanding what people actually want when they search for, what is whatever, whatever. Or something like news content, which it literally changes every single day. So there's obviously going... What was ranking number one day, a week later would make no sense for it to rank number one anymore. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why I think trends matter the most. If the trend is, this is a normal trend, there might be nothing you can do about it. If it's a normal trend that you go up, that you go down, then look at the overall trend. Look at the larger picture. Don't focus, "Oh, this week I went down, oh no." This is just the trend. Crystal Carter: Particularly with algorithm updates. It's not good to panic. It's not good to suddenly just, "Oh, let's throw everything at this keyword. Let's throw everything at that." And then I've seen clients do that. And it just doesn't... You end up wasting a lot of time and effort. So algorithms are like a slow burn. If you think about a soap opera, there's the immediate drama of, so-and-so did this or so-and-so did that. But then there'll be the long burn drama that goes across the whole series that's like, oh, who's the mysterious person who has been hiding in the attic. Mordy Oberstein: Who's been murdering and/or sleeping with so-and-so's white husband's daughter. Crystal Carter: Is it an evil twin? I'm not sure. And that will go all the way across the series. They'll drag that story out. That's the algorithm. The algorithm is the long-term information and you have... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you definitely want to look at the long-term performance of your keywords and you also want to make sure that... Look, there are keywords where you're ranking. Well, I'll be honest with you. I've had this. Yeah. I'm ranking for a great keyword, but guess what was four positions above me? A massive featured snippet. And guess how much traffic I was getting out of it? Not much. So if you lost that keyword, I lost my ranking. I was ranking number five and now I'm ranking number 20, but I wasn't bringing any traffic in way. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Don't get lost in the vanity of this. Ranking is a vanity metric. It really is. Crystal Carter: I think that sometimes it can be important if you are that feature snippet and you lose it. Mordy Oberstein: I'm asking across the board. Crystal Carter: It depends. So I think that there's sometimes where you worry, it's mission critical. You've built your business around ranking for that keyword, for instance, that does happen. And if that happens, then you need to make sure that you aren't putting all of your eggs in one basket. Obviously I'm in SEO. I think organic's super, super important. And I think it's super valuable and I think it's fantastic and great. However, sometimes with algorithms they'll change what the SERP looks like. They'll like, oh, we added Drops by Google. Oh, we added a three 3D model of the tower of London or something. And that will change the SERP. And that will change how people approach your site. Mordy Oberstein: Either they already found the content or that new box that Google added has pushed your site off of the first page. And now you're on page two. You're ranking exactly the same, which is another point for another podcast. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So, I think that it's important to make sure that if you have an algorithm change, because as you said, they'll change and then they might change back. But if you've got your PPC set up, you've got your social setup, you've got your content distro, your emails, all of that sort of stuff. And if your SEO is HQ, but is supported by these other channels, then that can help. I've seen clients who've been hit by an algorithm update. They got slammed on a really important keyword for them. And they pushed out. They did a big PR push out of this and that's a really good way to do it because you get more links. You get more exposure, you get more visibility generally as well. So when they do come back around, Google does another pass around your site to see whether or not they should bump you up for an algorithm. Then you've got that as well. So you've got the algorithm update and you've got the PR as well. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why it's not only important to try other channels as well, but also diversify your keywords. In other words, if you're ranking for one keyword, what happens if you lose it? Right? So you want to make sure that your keyword portfolio, if you want to call it that is diverse. You're not just relying on one keyword for all of your traffic. Now, let's say you do get hit by a core update, you see this is a demotion, I've gone down in the rankings, this is going on, this is not changing. What do you do? (singing) Crystal Carter: So I said, I think looking at other channels is super useful. I think it's also important to isolate what traffic changed, what actually changed. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: One of the things that I've observed, one of the things that you've observed, Mordy, one of the things that Aleyda recently observed, Aleyda Solis, is that there's a lot of junk traffic and Google recently in the last few updates has been pruning a lot of this junk traffic. I've had clients who were ranking for other people's logos. So they had a client, we worked with these clients and they were ranking for that logo. They don't need to rank for that logo. They're not those people. So they lost that position in the algorithm update and so. Aleyda said, if this happens to you, the queries that dropped were not really queries that your site was meant to rank for, and they're not bringing any business value, so you shouldn't have ranked for them. And so you shouldn't do anything in that case. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And I've been saying this forever, I've been saying this literally since the Medic update in August 2018, that Google's profiling your site. That's how machine learning works. It works by profiling. And it's saying, okay, this is who you are, then why do you have this content here if this is who you are? And if you have this content and this is who you are, why do you have this content in here? What does that say about you? Should we trust you? Should we rank you? For the keywords that do matter to you. The example I always give is about, you're going to the doctor and you go to the reception and say, "Hi, I'd like to see the doctor." And they answered back, "About what? About your health or about your car insurance?" Why is a doctor selling car insurance? Would you use that doctor? No way. Crystal Carter: Okay, everybody. Mordy Oberstein: Why would Google rank that site? And if you're talking about one thing and something totally different at the same time, you're just killing your profile, which goes back to our first episode of this podcast. Your homepage is your identity, and that's really important. But also my general suggestion is to take a look at the pages that lost ranking versus the pages that gained ranking and profile them. What is the pages that gain ranking doing differently? Do they take a different tone? Are they less market-y? Do they add some informational content? Do they have an FAQ on there? I'm not saying you have to add an FAQ and just copy what they're doing, but what does it say about what Google's looking for out of this keyword? Crystal Carter: And I think it's also important when you do that to think, not just on their website, but also- Mordy Oberstein: But across. Crystal Carter: ...a whole digital profile. Mordy Oberstein: This quality is a domain level metric. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So let's say this other doctor or whatever also has a YouTube account where they explain everything about, I don't know- Mordy Oberstein: Heart attacks. Crystal Carter: ...gluten-free diets or something like that. Let's say they've got a YouTube that's got all of this different really good content on there. Google's going to know they perform really well on this channel, they perform really well on that channel, they've got back links here, they've got this there. If a user is looking for content on this, they will find good content from this source. Right? Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And this website is a source for this content. And I think that that's important to think about. Google's trying to serve information. So they need to know that you as a general source are a good source for good quality information. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And you could hit by an update and you're really down on the rankings, the best thing I could tell you is, I'll quote, Glenn Gabe was a world renowned SEO, throw the kitchen sink at it, look at what's happening and you see this problem, fix that problem, but you never know what's going to move the needle. So find as many problems as you possibly can and try to fix them, because you never know what's going to move that needle and what's going to stick. Now, you know who knows a lot about algorithm updates? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: The godfather of SEO. That's my Marlin Brando. That's right. Crystal Carter: Hey, did you bring the cannoli? The cannoli? Mordy Oberstein: You came to me on the day of my Google algorithm update. [00:15:40] Focus Topic Guest: Barry Schwartz That's right. The one, the only, RustyBrick himself, Barry Schwartz is here to tell you which Google algorithm updates you should learn more about. Barry Schwartz: So one of the most important Google update folks should know about in research and why. So there's a bunch of Google updates that have happened over the past, I don't know, two decades or so. Probably the most significant one that really sets the tone was the Florida update probably 20 years ago, like 2002, 2003. It really shook the SEO community. It was the first time a Google did an update where it basically said, "Hey, SEOs, stop trying to manipulate us. We know about you and our algorithms will detect what you're doing and you're no longer going to be able to just fool us with easy SEO." And that really kind of shook the industry a lot and it really set a tone for what was going to come next. So then we had many updates after that. Obviously I've written about almost every single update, confirmed or unconfirmed, but then you kind of fast forward to the Panda update and the Panda update, I think in 2011, was probably one of the most significant updates that affected websites out there. It affected sites that were trying to build quality content that were not really building quality content and so forth. And that update really kind of set a tone where Google's like, "You know what? We really want unique, valuable content, not regurgitated or replicated, copied content that doesn't really help the user." And then Google, the next update probably was the penguin update, which kind of focused on links. And that really affected the SEO community more than anything else because SEOs were into buying links and trading links and so forth. And Google's able to go off on off page topics and be like, "Nope, I'm sorry, those links no longer count. They're done in a way that try to manipulate our algorithms and try to boost us artificially." So we have, again, the Florida update then probably 10 years later, the Panda update and a year or two later the Penguin update. And since then, we've had many, many updates after that. Some were niche, some were SPAM specific, some were not. And then obviously we have these core updates, which kind of really do shake the industry, but not as much as the Panda or Penguin or Florida updates. Overall, the important part around these updates is to see where Google's going. Google obviously wants to have unique, useful, rich content that really helps the user complete what they're trying to do and trying to trick Google into other things or to try to manipulate Google, google's not going to stand for that. They have their engineers and they're constantly working to make their algorithms and search results much, much better. And to serve us the best type of quality content. And of course, as the web grows, as more players get involved, that means there's going to be a lot more content on the internet and a lot more people competing for the same type of keywords and Google has that wealth of information on the internet, that wealth and their index and they're able to go ahead and be very, very picky about what they rank and their algorithms are able to handle that. Ultimately you should be thinking about how, not what could I do to go ahead and manipulate the algorithms and why should I research the algorithms in order to try to do better, it's more about what could I do in terms of where do I want to be when the next algorithm update comes out? Where is Google going in the future with these algorithm updates? And what do I need to know about these algorithm updates in terms of making sure that I'm basically future proof with these algorithms and they're all going basically around making the best type of content that's better than your competitors that Google wants to rank because it's useful. And that's what you kind of need to think about it. It's always funny listening to people talking about RankBrain, neural matching, whatever the latest and greatest AI that Google's coming out with. It's all for the basically Google understanding the search query, understanding the searcher and understanding the content on your page, so it knows what to rank better. So again, think about the user of course, and nobody wants to hear that, but think about the user and try to build the best type of website you can because that's where Google's algorithm is going in the future and that's what the history of Google algorithms updates have shown, that Google only cares about ranking the best type of content in their search results. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, Barry. By the way, you can find Barry @rustybrick on Twitter. Also, please read his blog every single day, seroundtable.com. It's literally where I start my day. And he's so right, by the way, it's why I asked him to do this. When you understand the history of the algorithm and you can go... It's so important to do this, it adds so much context. You can understand where Google was, what they were able to do, what they were looking for. And as you understand the new different types of updates coming out over time, you can see where they're going and what they actually want now. And that's so important for you as a content creator to know that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that he talked about Google wanting to reduce people gaming the system essentially. And the reason why people should do that is because people gaming the system aren't necessarily giving the best content, people who are just throwing loads of keywords in there aren't necessarily giving actual valuable content. They're just throwing keywords at a thing. So on all of their algorithms seem to be trying to find the best quality content based on actual metrics for content, not just keywords, not just new tools, but content that actually provides value to users. And they've got lots of metrics to see that. [00:20:45] Tool Time: SEO Weather Tools Mordy Oberstein: And they are not perfect, but I track this really closely and they're able to do some really amazing things, understanding what's good and what's bad content. Which brings us to our next little segment where we're going to teach you how to track the SEO weather out there. That's right. Folks, it's tool time on the SERPs Up podcast. So wouldn't it be nice to know when there's an algorithm update, that's a-brewing? Well, there are plenty of tools out there that tell you. They're called SEO weather tools and there's literally a ton of them. The one I have personal affinity with, cause I used to work for them, is the SEMrush Sensor. So just Google SEMrush Sensor. And what these tools basically do, they're either a bar graph or a line graph and they'll show you like, ranking is pretty normal today. There's always going to be URLs moving up and down the SERP, that's normal, but is there a lot of movement in the rankings? That would indicate an update. And of course Google doesn't announce all of them. So is there nothing happening right now? Good to know, won't freak out if I see my rankings, all of a sudden go off the board. And the tools basically have a baseline and they see more rank volatility than normal, then it shoots up to red and then it shoots back down to green when it's all done. And there are all these tools that tell you this. And it's amazing and it's awesome. Crystal Carter: It's really useful. And certainly if you're trying to understand what happened to you in a Google update, I've recently posted a blog on this and it will be on our Wix SEO learning hub. These tools are really useful when you're trying to get context. So if you're trying to understand if it's just you or if it's the wider SERP as well, the SEMrush Sensor that you mentioned, they break things down into regions. So you can see whether it's the U.S. or the UK or Germany or whatever. They also break it down by verticals. So news or health or law or e-commerce or that sort of thing. They also give you information on SERP features. So for instance, if you had featured snippets and you suddenly saw all your featured snippets go, well if Google reduced the number of featured snippets overall, then that's important information to know. So it's worth checking that for context. MozCast also gives you information on different featured snippets and... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's our Moz. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So, that one's really good. Another one that I use regularly is SISTRIX have a Google update checker where you can plug in your domain and they will tell you historically if the domain has had a lot of activity around Google updates. This is really good when you're crushing it. I had one client who was just like update, update, update. It was just like every time they got a boost like, boost, boost, boost, boost, boost. And then I had another client who, this is good if you're taking on a new client, you can plug in their domain and you can see if they tend to get slammed on Google updates. And that might tell you that there's something in the core of their approach that needs adjusting. So, that one's really useful. Lily Ray also uses SISTRIX to track lots and lots of algorithm updates. I said, Lily Ray there, who's a fantastic SEO. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link her to the show notes. Don't worry. Crystal Carter: Yeah. She tracks lots of different domains via SIZTRIX as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. The point is, there is a ton of these tools, like Rank Ranger has its Rank Risk Index. By the way, if you go to rankranger.com/rank-risk-index–history, you can see two years' worth of updates and see, hey, have the patterns changed? You can see the patterns have changed, which is really interesting. Whatever it is, all of you can use any of these tools, all of these tools, but it's good to know that you're in the middle of an update, even though Google didn't confirm it. So you could understand what's happening around your keywords and why you're losing or gaining rankings. And to understand if it's not an actual official update that whatever gain or loss you may have seen might go away in a week or two. I wanted to mention really quickly. You might notice that the Moz's MozCast and SEMrush's Sensor and this one and that one, don't necessarily always align because they all work... I know this cause I used to work at Rank Ranger. Then I used to work at SEMrush and I used to talk to Dr. Peter Meyers about MozCast. They're tracking different data sets. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They're tracking different keywords. So, for example, Moz tracks very high search volume keywords. So the keywords that they're tracking might see more volatility than the keywords that SEMrush is tracking in their database. There's no right or wrong database. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So if you're looking at different tools like, wow, why don't they match up? They're not supposed to match up. They, in general, align. Crystal Carter: And I think this is the reason why if, like we mentioned Barry, whatever Barry talks about algorithm updates, he always pulls in data from multiple data sets because of this. It's really, really important. And I think he also mentioned the history of algorithms, and there's a few; I think Moz has a list of all of the different updates, which is useful to give you context for what could potentially come ahead as well. So it's important if your domain is targeted for errors in a vertical. So at the moment, e-comm seems to be seeing a lot of activity around most updates. For instance, if you're in that kind of sector, it might be worth spending some time going over that. Barry has a really good video, or he's got a really good talk he did for one of the SMXs about all of the updates that... Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, I remember that one. I got to find that for the show notes, if possible. I'm behind a gate, so I don't know if it's possible or not. Speaking of Barry, in case you don't know, if you're not from the SEO world or you're new to the SEO world, [00:25:51] Is This New? Barry helps people track all of the changes Google makes to the SERP. So they change fonts or they, this new feature that new feature now you can do. Now, Google's showing this, but they're not showing this Barry tracks all of us at seroundtable.com and people like myself will go on Twitter and say, "Hey Barry, I saw this new thing that Google added like a new line over here. Is this new?" Crystal Carter: Is it? Mordy Oberstein: Is it new? I have a whole website dedicated, isthisnew.com where you can check that out. I'll put that in the show notes. Sometimes it's just fun to see what Google's showing and is it new, but sometimes it has real implications. So welcome to the SERPs Up version of is this new. I don't know if this one's new or not, but Crystal, you found something for us. Crystal Carter: So this is something that I mentioned, Lily Ray earlier. She's fantastic. She's amazing. She's super, super smart. And one of the things that she talks about a lot is indented results. And this is essentially when you go on the SERP, the search engine results pages, you type in a query and you see the plain blue link, and then you see an indent and you see another link and another link and another link and they're associated. Mordy Oberstein: Indented results. Crystal Carter: Indented results. Mordy Oberstein: So it's basically like, yeah, it's a result. And then from the same website, two more results. Crystal Carter: This is the thing that I find interesting. What I'm seeing, generally speaking, you see the indented results from the same website, but there's also subdomains. And what I'm starting to see is that Google is pulling the indented results from a mix of subdomains. So things like customer service pages and support notes and things like that. So I looked up like Wix app market, for instance, and Wix is a very big company and has lots of different websites and lots of different web properties. And there's a lot more companies that are like this. So a lot of people are using subdomains just for their menu, for the restaurant or just for their jobs board or just for their appointment scheduling thing. So lots of websites have lots of different properties. So if you look at Wix app market, it shows wix.com blog, which talks about the app market. And then there's an indent that goes to support.wix.com, which talks about the app market. And then there's a separate one that goes to dev.wixs.com, which is our developer portal, which talks about all of the app market and how, if you were building an app, you would go into that. So what I think is interesting here is that Google is, again, this is going back to entities. And this is Google understanding that if I'm talking about the Wixs app market, that is an entity, that is a thing that exists and exists on these properties. And they're also understanding that all of those things are connected to the entity, which is Wixs and that all of those different URLs, all of those different domains are connected to that. And Google used to struggle a bit with subdomains, but I think that this is a really good example of them handling it really well so that they can serve multiple intents with a single sort of related service. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. My major takeaway of this whole thing is SEOs always talk about subdomains are separate from your website. And I always find that amazing though. John Mueller talked about, well, not necessarily, usually not. It depends when it makes sense to treat them separately, we do. You need to tell me, Google can make a self-driving car that knows the difference when a squirrel runs out in front of it and when a person runs out in front of it, but they can't figure out that travel.cnn and CNN are actually related to each other. That's mind blowing to Google. But I think it goes to show that the way Google's able to understand your website in totem to use a Latin word, which means total, which you obviously knew, but I'm going to say that anyway. Crystal Carter: Ergo. Mordy Oberstein: They know what your site is. They know what's related to your site really well. So, that's a great find Crystal. So from what's new to the news, how's that for a pivot, I get a gold star today. Here is the snappy news of the week. [00:29:33] Snappy News Here is the snappy news of the week. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Well, the helpful content update came roaring out of the gate, like a raging ball. Me, not really. In fact, that deal was like, what is this thing on to quote Matt's Southern from Search Engine Journal, Google on why helpful content update seems quiet. Google addresses reports that the helpful content update has a minimal impact on search results or mining everyone. It's still rolling out. Now what's interesting is that this update was first presented as penguin or Panda level, meaning really, really big, but such does not appear to be the case as Google's own search liaison identity Sullivan said on Twitter. But updates don't necessarily mean a big giant shift. If you have good content, you're generally fine. Those who have content with issues, there can be reasons why they might not want to be particularly vocal about a chain. What is interesting because the SEO tools that track algorithm updates haven't seen any shifts either. So I think it's less to do with, um, sites that have been hit being vocal or less vocal about a change. It is still rolling. So by the time you're listening to this, the helpful content update might have more teeth on it. Personally. I doubt it. I'm recording this days after Google made its own statement and still nothing's really going on big things to the SEO, by the way, who was responsible for Google putting this statement out, you know who you are. Article number two from Danny Goodwin over at search engine land, Google test quick, read five. Read labels is search results. So essentially Google has been testing, showing the label under certain results, saying that they are either a quick read or less than a five-minute read. And I am not a big fan of this. Um, I wanted to say this test should not dictate how you write. So if you're worried, oh no. If Google's running this test with a five-minute or less reading read time label, that people will only click on results that have that read time. So I better make sure that my content's really snappy like this snappy news. Don't do that. Don't try to get this label. Even if some speculate it will drive up CTR, which by the way, to me is all dependent on the search intent. For some things, I don't want a quick read. I want a piece that dives deeply into the topic that I can trust. I want a pi ece that I can dive deeply into a piece that I can t rust, even if it's just to pull out a quick bit of info, and with it, that is the snappy news. [00:32:10] Follow of the Week To keep your SEO learning going. Let's now move into who we think you should be following on Twitter this week. I say Twitter because the SEO community predominantly is on Twitter. So if you're not on Twitter, I implore you to create a Twitter account. You don't have to do anything. Just sit there and watch and interact with the one, the only, Aleyda Solis, queen of the SEOs, who Crystal mentioned earlier in the episode, who was literally, I think the unofficial leader of the SEOs, it's @aleyda A-L-E-Y-D-A, link IN the show notes. I don't know where to start Crystal Carter: Aleyda is a gift. Mordy Oberstein: True. Crystal Carter: She shares the best resources. She does an amazing podcast. She does amazing videos. She has a fantastic newsletter called SEOFOMO, which literally sets a tone for the entire week. So you Barry every day, I read SEOFOMO every week. I go through all of these things and she's also super nice. She's also very welcoming to new SEOs and she also runs learningseo.io. Mordy Oberstein: .io. Crystal Carter: And she also remotors.net. She also works with some fantastic clients. Mordy Oberstein: Crawling Mondays. Crystal Carter: Crawling... So many things. Mordy Oberstein: The Twitter space for the newsletter, SEOFOMO, the Twitter space on Mondays. I know what time it is. Hold on. It's Mondays at 12:00 PM Eastern time. I know cause I record EDGE of the Web at the same time. I can never go. And it's really, I have FOMO for SEOFOMO. Crystal Carter: I have FOMO as well, because I have... Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So please, please. We implore you. Please check out... She's the most giving, most amazing, awesome person in the SEO industry. Follow her on Twitter and learn some amazing things. Crystal Carter: [foreign language 00:31:37]. Aleyda also speaks Spanish. So if you are an English-speaking SEO, or you are a Spanish- SEO, also follow Aleyda because she's also involved with Harrison SEO, Latinas en SEO. [foreign language 00:31:52]. Mordy Oberstein: I'll go, the only Spanish that I really know [foreign language 00:31:55]. And on that happy note, thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back again, next week is an all-new episode as we get into the real deal around keyword research. Look for us whenever, wherever you consume your podcast, and on our SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. And obviously look at all the rest of the great content. Webinar's, blog posts we have around learning SEO. So you learn more about SEO. That's keyword stuffing, right there. Learn more about SEO, the wicks SEO learning hub. Keyword stuffing for you at the end of our podcast. So until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Barry Schwartz Lily Ray Aleyda Solis Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Search Engine Roundtable Semrush Sensor Mozcast Rank Risk Index Sistrix Update Tracker Assessing Algorithm Update Impact Crawling Mondays SEOFomo Newsletter Learning SEO News: Google On Why Helpful Content Update Seems Quiet Google tests Quick Read, 5 Min. Read labels in search results Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Barry Schwartz Lily Ray Aleyda Solis Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Search Engine Roundtable Semrush Sensor Mozcast Rank Risk Index Sistrix Update Tracker Assessing Algorithm Update Impact Crawling Mondays SEOFomo Newsletter Learning SEO News: Google On Why Helpful Content Update Seems Quiet Google tests Quick Read, 5 Min. Read labels in search results Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha and Mahalo. Thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happened in SEO. I am Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, the one, the only, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Aloha. Mordy Oberstein: I've never been to Hawaii, by the way, so I feel like such a fraud. Crystal Carter: I lived in Hawaii. I was a [inaudible 00:00:37]. Mordy Oberstein: Did you really? Oh, that's okay. So now we're not a fraud anymore. Okay. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, how long did you live in Hawaii? I didn't know that. How long did you live in Hawaii? Crystal Carter: I lived in Hawaii. I lived in Hawaii when I was in junior high school. I was in the May Day Pageant as the Princess of O'ahu. I learned how to do hula stuff. I used to eat pu pu platters and wear muumuus. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Crystal Carter: Yeah, and Spam musubis and the whole thing. Like, come through. Mordy Oberstein: So for your birthday, I'm going to buy you a hula hoop. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I have a hula hoop. I'm very skilled on a hula hoop. I used to live on the leeward side. Mordy Oberstein: I can't do a hula hoop. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I can't. I tried. Anyway, the SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can add five structured data markups to your Wix pages, whether they be your main Wix pages, your about page, your home page, or product pages, blog pages, booking pages, all sorts of pages. We're structured data friendly here at Wix. As usual, an enormous amount to cover on this episode of the podcast. [00:01:38] What's On This Episode of SERP's UP? I'm just going to start off by saying, scary voice time, nothing scares us more than the dreaded Google update. Crystal Carter: Buh-huh-huh. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. But have no fear, Crystal and I will tell you what you should and shouldn't worry about when Google moves your URLs up and down the SERP with all sorts of rank volatility madness. And we'll do it with a little bit of help from our friends in specific, I call him the godfather of SEO, although he's not nearly as scary as Marlon Brando, as Barry Schwartz drops by to talk about Google updates. We'll also get into tools of the trade. We'll give you some tools that will tell you the SEO weather and how to know when there's pending doom, the pending doom of a Google algorithm update. And you'll know when it is upon thee. It is nigh. It is nigh. Plus we'll share something new on the SERP subdomains. Is it really new? Hey Barry. And of course some snappy SEO news for you and who you should follow for stupendous SEO knowledge. It'll be our follow of the week. 1, 2, 3, let's go. So Crystal, with that introduction out of the way. Crystal Carter: Hi. Mordy Oberstein: Hi there. Crystal Carter: When you said Barry's the godfather, all I could think was, you come to me and you ask me if this is new. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, it's gotten nuts out there in case you have not been following the SEO world lately, which is fine. That's why you're here. It's been nuts. Google has been updating its algorithm literally more than ever. That means your rankings on the SERP are changing more than ever. And it's not hyperbole. This is fact. So some SEMrush data that I pulled a while back shows that over 50%, this is no joke, over 50%, over half. That 50% is half. Over half of all of the days in 2021 exhibited showed some sort of high levels of rank volatility. The majority of the days in 2021 had sites moving up and down the SERP. All around, up and down here and there. And that is crazy, which by the way, some more data for you. That's a 65% increase relative to 2020. Meaning Google is making more and more and more and more updates and it's really kind of crazy. So should you be worried? [00:03:57] Focus Topic of the Week | When to Worry About a Google Algorithm Update When Google messes with your ranking? When to worry, when not to worry about a Google algorithm update, let's dive in. Where do we start with this madness? Crystal Carter: I mean, I think if I can just, again, let's just get us all on the same page, just for the noobs out there, just doing it for the noobs. If anybody's unclear, when we're talking about an algorithm update, essentially what we're talking about is when Google changes the criteria that they set for ranking pages. So sometimes this can be a big thing, like a core update, but sometimes this can be a smaller thing. They might change one part of the SERP. A really good example is when COVID was happening, they changed a lot of the different criterias around things like face masks or around COVID updates, or COVID things where they changed, which results they change. So they make a decision about what they're going to change. And that's when we say volatility, we mean that things are moving around. So they're changing their mind about lots of different things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And what's crazy is that now you have machine learning making those changes, well automatically basically. Even Google doesn't really know what's going on, which is built in on purpose. I'm not saying that they don't know what's going on, that's by design. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And sometimes they have to roll that back. Like title tag geddon, they changed lots of things. And people were like, "This doesn't make sense, Google" and Google was like, "Oh yeah, you're right. That doesn't make sense." And then they have to go back and correct it. But they're dealing with lots of different searches across the thing. And when we're talking about core updates, that's essentially when they do something at all across the board and it normally has to do with the sort of quality and the general approach of SEO. Sometimes with algorithm updates, it might be something very targeted. Sometimes they'll do product review updates, or sometimes they'll change something on the SERP and it has a knock on effect for the positions across the... Mordy Oberstein: Right. Cause when Google says, "Hey, you're a product review page," a product review page is also shown on the same results page as shopping pages. So if this product review page went from ranking number, I don't know, nine to ranking number three, what was ranking number three can no longer rank number three. That's not how it works. It's either got to go up or it's got to go down. And that might not be a product page, that might be a place where you can buy whatever product it is that's in discussion. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So when all of these changes happen, then you have to figure out what to do because you have a client, you have a website, you have money and bills to pay and all of that sort of stuff. So when you're thinking about what's going on, you have to think about what kind of update you're actually dealing with. So we talk about confirmed, unconfirmed. Confirmed is like Google has said, "We have made an algorithm update. We have changed things." And they'll normally publish a statement on Twitter or somewhere else. And then unconfirmed is the volatility you're talking about, where it's just like, things are really spicy out there. Mordy Oberstein: Rank is constantly moving and by the way, so it's a really good point about the unconfirmed updates versus the confirmed updates for a few reasons. One is the confirmed updates, once the updates finished rolling out, which generally takes a week or so, although for the product review updates that can take upwards of a month, which is really interesting. At the end of the day, whenever the update is finished, the ranking changes. If you went up or down, if you went from number two to number 20, you went from number 20 to number two, those usually stick for the most part. You might go up and down a position or two, but that's the new trajectory. So if you see you've lost rankings month after an update's, whatever it is, is fully rolled out, that's not going back until Google does another update. And that's when it might be time to worry as opposed to the unconfirmed updates, which is basically in my opinion, machine learning recalibrating how it understands things, trying something new out. And there you'll notice in your ranking patterns that you went down in the rankings one day for a key... Let's say you're trying to rank for the keywords, I don't know, best place to go on vacation. You were ranking number one and now you're ranking number 20. Well, you might notice a week later that you're back up to ranking number two, and then a week later back down to ranking number 700, and then you're back up to ranking number one. Those kind of things you need to not freak out about because that's just the name of the game now. And also understand that certain kinds of keywords are more volatile than others. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. So I think we mentioned medical can be a very tricky vertical because Google is going through a lot of the different medical SERPs and they're deciding this is a particularly important medical SERP and we are going to take this. So we're going to curate this and make sure that this has the most authoritative like CDC, Mayo Clinic, the NHS, that sort of thing. They'll put that there. And then there's stuff that's a little bit more freeform. If I had a blog about quilting, that's probably not going to be that volatile. Quilting isn't a very spicy topic. So, I think one of the things I always look at with those testing changes that you're talking about, is checking whether or not it's across the vertical or whether it's just you, Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: So there's a couple... Mordy Oberstein: If you see your competitors doing the same thing, everyone's bouncing around, there's probably not much you can do. Google's having either a hard time understanding what people actually want when they search for, what is whatever, whatever. Or something like news content, which it literally changes every single day. So there's obviously going... What was ranking number one day, a week later would make no sense for it to rank number one anymore. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why I think trends matter the most. If the trend is, this is a normal trend, there might be nothing you can do about it. If it's a normal trend that you go up, that you go down, then look at the overall trend. Look at the larger picture. Don't focus, "Oh, this week I went down, oh no." This is just the trend. Crystal Carter: Particularly with algorithm updates. It's not good to panic. It's not good to suddenly just, "Oh, let's throw everything at this keyword. Let's throw everything at that." And then I've seen clients do that. And it just doesn't... You end up wasting a lot of time and effort. So algorithms are like a slow burn. If you think about a soap opera, there's the immediate drama of, so-and-so did this or so-and-so did that. But then there'll be the long burn drama that goes across the whole series that's like, oh, who's the mysterious person who has been hiding in the attic. Mordy Oberstein: Who's been murdering and/or sleeping with so-and-so's white husband's daughter. Crystal Carter: Is it an evil twin? I'm not sure. And that will go all the way across the series. They'll drag that story out. That's the algorithm. The algorithm is the long-term information and you have... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you definitely want to look at the long-term performance of your keywords and you also want to make sure that... Look, there are keywords where you're ranking. Well, I'll be honest with you. I've had this. Yeah. I'm ranking for a great keyword, but guess what was four positions above me? A massive featured snippet. And guess how much traffic I was getting out of it? Not much. So if you lost that keyword, I lost my ranking. I was ranking number five and now I'm ranking number 20, but I wasn't bringing any traffic in way. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Don't get lost in the vanity of this. Ranking is a vanity metric. It really is. Crystal Carter: I think that sometimes it can be important if you are that feature snippet and you lose it. Mordy Oberstein: I'm asking across the board. Crystal Carter: It depends. So I think that there's sometimes where you worry, it's mission critical. You've built your business around ranking for that keyword, for instance, that does happen. And if that happens, then you need to make sure that you aren't putting all of your eggs in one basket. Obviously I'm in SEO. I think organic's super, super important. And I think it's super valuable and I think it's fantastic and great. However, sometimes with algorithms they'll change what the SERP looks like. They'll like, oh, we added Drops by Google. Oh, we added a three 3D model of the tower of London or something. And that will change the SERP. And that will change how people approach your site. Mordy Oberstein: Either they already found the content or that new box that Google added has pushed your site off of the first page. And now you're on page two. You're ranking exactly the same, which is another point for another podcast. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So, I think that it's important to make sure that if you have an algorithm change, because as you said, they'll change and then they might change back. But if you've got your PPC set up, you've got your social setup, you've got your content distro, your emails, all of that sort of stuff. And if your SEO is HQ, but is supported by these other channels, then that can help. I've seen clients who've been hit by an algorithm update. They got slammed on a really important keyword for them. And they pushed out. They did a big PR push out of this and that's a really good way to do it because you get more links. You get more exposure, you get more visibility generally as well. So when they do come back around, Google does another pass around your site to see whether or not they should bump you up for an algorithm. Then you've got that as well. So you've got the algorithm update and you've got the PR as well. Mordy Oberstein: Which is why it's not only important to try other channels as well, but also diversify your keywords. In other words, if you're ranking for one keyword, what happens if you lose it? Right? So you want to make sure that your keyword portfolio, if you want to call it that is diverse. You're not just relying on one keyword for all of your traffic. Now, let's say you do get hit by a core update, you see this is a demotion, I've gone down in the rankings, this is going on, this is not changing. What do you do? (singing) Crystal Carter: So I said, I think looking at other channels is super useful. I think it's also important to isolate what traffic changed, what actually changed. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: One of the things that I've observed, one of the things that you've observed, Mordy, one of the things that Aleyda recently observed, Aleyda Solis, is that there's a lot of junk traffic and Google recently in the last few updates has been pruning a lot of this junk traffic. I've had clients who were ranking for other people's logos. So they had a client, we worked with these clients and they were ranking for that logo. They don't need to rank for that logo. They're not those people. So they lost that position in the algorithm update and so. Aleyda said, if this happens to you, the queries that dropped were not really queries that your site was meant to rank for, and they're not bringing any business value, so you shouldn't have ranked for them. And so you shouldn't do anything in that case. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And I've been saying this forever, I've been saying this literally since the Medic update in August 2018, that Google's profiling your site. That's how machine learning works. It works by profiling. And it's saying, okay, this is who you are, then why do you have this content here if this is who you are? And if you have this content and this is who you are, why do you have this content in here? What does that say about you? Should we trust you? Should we rank you? For the keywords that do matter to you. The example I always give is about, you're going to the doctor and you go to the reception and say, "Hi, I'd like to see the doctor." And they answered back, "About what? About your health or about your car insurance?" Why is a doctor selling car insurance? Would you use that doctor? No way. Crystal Carter: Okay, everybody. Mordy Oberstein: Why would Google rank that site? And if you're talking about one thing and something totally different at the same time, you're just killing your profile, which goes back to our first episode of this podcast. Your homepage is your identity, and that's really important. But also my general suggestion is to take a look at the pages that lost ranking versus the pages that gained ranking and profile them. What is the pages that gain ranking doing differently? Do they take a different tone? Are they less market-y? Do they add some informational content? Do they have an FAQ on there? I'm not saying you have to add an FAQ and just copy what they're doing, but what does it say about what Google's looking for out of this keyword? Crystal Carter: And I think it's also important when you do that to think, not just on their website, but also- Mordy Oberstein: But across. Crystal Carter: ...a whole digital profile. Mordy Oberstein: This quality is a domain level metric. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So let's say this other doctor or whatever also has a YouTube account where they explain everything about, I don't know- Mordy Oberstein: Heart attacks. Crystal Carter: ...gluten-free diets or something like that. Let's say they've got a YouTube that's got all of this different really good content on there. Google's going to know they perform really well on this channel, they perform really well on that channel, they've got back links here, they've got this there. If a user is looking for content on this, they will find good content from this source. Right? Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And this website is a source for this content. And I think that that's important to think about. Google's trying to serve information. So they need to know that you as a general source are a good source for good quality information. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And you could hit by an update and you're really down on the rankings, the best thing I could tell you is, I'll quote, Glenn Gabe was a world renowned SEO, throw the kitchen sink at it, look at what's happening and you see this problem, fix that problem, but you never know what's going to move the needle. So find as many problems as you possibly can and try to fix them, because you never know what's going to move that needle and what's going to stick. Now, you know who knows a lot about algorithm updates? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: The godfather of SEO. That's my Marlin Brando. That's right. Crystal Carter: Hey, did you bring the cannoli? The cannoli? Mordy Oberstein: You came to me on the day of my Google algorithm update. [00:15:40] Focus Topic Guest: Barry Schwartz That's right. The one, the only, RustyBrick himself, Barry Schwartz is here to tell you which Google algorithm updates you should learn more about. Barry Schwartz: So one of the most important Google update folks should know about in research and why. So there's a bunch of Google updates that have happened over the past, I don't know, two decades or so. Probably the most significant one that really sets the tone was the Florida update probably 20 years ago, like 2002, 2003. It really shook the SEO community. It was the first time a Google did an update where it basically said, "Hey, SEOs, stop trying to manipulate us. We know about you and our algorithms will detect what you're doing and you're no longer going to be able to just fool us with easy SEO." And that really kind of shook the industry a lot and it really set a tone for what was going to come next. So then we had many updates after that. Obviously I've written about almost every single update, confirmed or unconfirmed, but then you kind of fast forward to the Panda update and the Panda update, I think in 2011, was probably one of the most significant updates that affected websites out there. It affected sites that were trying to build quality content that were not really building quality content and so forth. And that update really kind of set a tone where Google's like, "You know what? We really want unique, valuable content, not regurgitated or replicated, copied content that doesn't really help the user." And then Google, the next update probably was the penguin update, which kind of focused on links. And that really affected the SEO community more than anything else because SEOs were into buying links and trading links and so forth. And Google's able to go off on off page topics and be like, "Nope, I'm sorry, those links no longer count. They're done in a way that try to manipulate our algorithms and try to boost us artificially." So we have, again, the Florida update then probably 10 years later, the Panda update and a year or two later the Penguin update. And since then, we've had many, many updates after that. Some were niche, some were SPAM specific, some were not. And then obviously we have these core updates, which kind of really do shake the industry, but not as much as the Panda or Penguin or Florida updates. Overall, the important part around these updates is to see where Google's going. Google obviously wants to have unique, useful, rich content that really helps the user complete what they're trying to do and trying to trick Google into other things or to try to manipulate Google, google's not going to stand for that. They have their engineers and they're constantly working to make their algorithms and search results much, much better. And to serve us the best type of quality content. And of course, as the web grows, as more players get involved, that means there's going to be a lot more content on the internet and a lot more people competing for the same type of keywords and Google has that wealth of information on the internet, that wealth and their index and they're able to go ahead and be very, very picky about what they rank and their algorithms are able to handle that. Ultimately you should be thinking about how, not what could I do to go ahead and manipulate the algorithms and why should I research the algorithms in order to try to do better, it's more about what could I do in terms of where do I want to be when the next algorithm update comes out? Where is Google going in the future with these algorithm updates? And what do I need to know about these algorithm updates in terms of making sure that I'm basically future proof with these algorithms and they're all going basically around making the best type of content that's better than your competitors that Google wants to rank because it's useful. And that's what you kind of need to think about it. It's always funny listening to people talking about RankBrain, neural matching, whatever the latest and greatest AI that Google's coming out with. It's all for the basically Google understanding the search query, understanding the searcher and understanding the content on your page, so it knows what to rank better. So again, think about the user of course, and nobody wants to hear that, but think about the user and try to build the best type of website you can because that's where Google's algorithm is going in the future and that's what the history of Google algorithms updates have shown, that Google only cares about ranking the best type of content in their search results. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, Barry. By the way, you can find Barry @rustybrick on Twitter. Also, please read his blog every single day, seroundtable.com. It's literally where I start my day. And he's so right, by the way, it's why I asked him to do this. When you understand the history of the algorithm and you can go... It's so important to do this, it adds so much context. You can understand where Google was, what they were able to do, what they were looking for. And as you understand the new different types of updates coming out over time, you can see where they're going and what they actually want now. And that's so important for you as a content creator to know that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that he talked about Google wanting to reduce people gaming the system essentially. And the reason why people should do that is because people gaming the system aren't necessarily giving the best content, people who are just throwing loads of keywords in there aren't necessarily giving actual valuable content. They're just throwing keywords at a thing. So on all of their algorithms seem to be trying to find the best quality content based on actual metrics for content, not just keywords, not just new tools, but content that actually provides value to users. And they've got lots of metrics to see that. [00:20:45] Tool Time: SEO Weather Tools Mordy Oberstein: And they are not perfect, but I track this really closely and they're able to do some really amazing things, understanding what's good and what's bad content. Which brings us to our next little segment where we're going to teach you how to track the SEO weather out there. That's right. Folks, it's tool time on the SERPs Up podcast. So wouldn't it be nice to know when there's an algorithm update, that's a-brewing? Well, there are plenty of tools out there that tell you. They're called SEO weather tools and there's literally a ton of them. The one I have personal affinity with, cause I used to work for them, is the SEMrush Sensor. So just Google SEMrush Sensor. And what these tools basically do, they're either a bar graph or a line graph and they'll show you like, ranking is pretty normal today. There's always going to be URLs moving up and down the SERP, that's normal, but is there a lot of movement in the rankings? That would indicate an update. And of course Google doesn't announce all of them. So is there nothing happening right now? Good to know, won't freak out if I see my rankings, all of a sudden go off the board. And the tools basically have a baseline and they see more rank volatility than normal, then it shoots up to red and then it shoots back down to green when it's all done. And there are all these tools that tell you this. And it's amazing and it's awesome. Crystal Carter: It's really useful. And certainly if you're trying to understand what happened to you in a Google update, I've recently posted a blog on this and it will be on our Wix SEO learning hub. These tools are really useful when you're trying to get context. So if you're trying to understand if it's just you or if it's the wider SERP as well, the SEMrush Sensor that you mentioned, they break things down into regions. So you can see whether it's the U.S. or the UK or Germany or whatever. They also break it down by verticals. So news or health or law or e-commerce or that sort of thing. They also give you information on SERP features. So for instance, if you had featured snippets and you suddenly saw all your featured snippets go, well if Google reduced the number of featured snippets overall, then that's important information to know. So it's worth checking that for context. MozCast also gives you information on different featured snippets and... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's our Moz. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So, that one's really good. Another one that I use regularly is SISTRIX have a Google update checker where you can plug in your domain and they will tell you historically if the domain has had a lot of activity around Google updates. This is really good when you're crushing it. I had one client who was just like update, update, update. It was just like every time they got a boost like, boost, boost, boost, boost, boost. And then I had another client who, this is good if you're taking on a new client, you can plug in their domain and you can see if they tend to get slammed on Google updates. And that might tell you that there's something in the core of their approach that needs adjusting. So, that one's really useful. Lily Ray also uses SISTRIX to track lots and lots of algorithm updates. I said, Lily Ray there, who's a fantastic SEO. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link her to the show notes. Don't worry. Crystal Carter: Yeah. She tracks lots of different domains via SIZTRIX as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. The point is, there is a ton of these tools, like Rank Ranger has its Rank Risk Index. By the way, if you go to rankranger.com/rank-risk-index–history, you can see two years' worth of updates and see, hey, have the patterns changed? You can see the patterns have changed, which is really interesting. Whatever it is, all of you can use any of these tools, all of these tools, but it's good to know that you're in the middle of an update, even though Google didn't confirm it. So you could understand what's happening around your keywords and why you're losing or gaining rankings. And to understand if it's not an actual official update that whatever gain or loss you may have seen might go away in a week or two. I wanted to mention really quickly. You might notice that the Moz's MozCast and SEMrush's Sensor and this one and that one, don't necessarily always align because they all work... I know this cause I used to work at Rank Ranger. Then I used to work at SEMrush and I used to talk to Dr. Peter Meyers about MozCast. They're tracking different data sets. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They're tracking different keywords. So, for example, Moz tracks very high search volume keywords. So the keywords that they're tracking might see more volatility than the keywords that SEMrush is tracking in their database. There's no right or wrong database. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So if you're looking at different tools like, wow, why don't they match up? They're not supposed to match up. They, in general, align. Crystal Carter: And I think this is the reason why if, like we mentioned Barry, whatever Barry talks about algorithm updates, he always pulls in data from multiple data sets because of this. It's really, really important. And I think he also mentioned the history of algorithms, and there's a few; I think Moz has a list of all of the different updates, which is useful to give you context for what could potentially come ahead as well. So it's important if your domain is targeted for errors in a vertical. So at the moment, e-comm seems to be seeing a lot of activity around most updates. For instance, if you're in that kind of sector, it might be worth spending some time going over that. Barry has a really good video, or he's got a really good talk he did for one of the SMXs about all of the updates that... Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, I remember that one. I got to find that for the show notes, if possible. I'm behind a gate, so I don't know if it's possible or not. Speaking of Barry, in case you don't know, if you're not from the SEO world or you're new to the SEO world, [00:25:51] Is This New? Barry helps people track all of the changes Google makes to the SERP. So they change fonts or they, this new feature that new feature now you can do. Now, Google's showing this, but they're not showing this Barry tracks all of us at seroundtable.com and people like myself will go on Twitter and say, "Hey Barry, I saw this new thing that Google added like a new line over here. Is this new?" Crystal Carter: Is it? Mordy Oberstein: Is it new? I have a whole website dedicated, isthisnew.com where you can check that out. I'll put that in the show notes. Sometimes it's just fun to see what Google's showing and is it new, but sometimes it has real implications. So welcome to the SERPs Up version of is this new. I don't know if this one's new or not, but Crystal, you found something for us. Crystal Carter: So this is something that I mentioned, Lily Ray earlier. She's fantastic. She's amazing. She's super, super smart. And one of the things that she talks about a lot is indented results. And this is essentially when you go on the SERP, the search engine results pages, you type in a query and you see the plain blue link, and then you see an indent and you see another link and another link and another link and they're associated. Mordy Oberstein: Indented results. Crystal Carter: Indented results. Mordy Oberstein: So it's basically like, yeah, it's a result. And then from the same website, two more results. Crystal Carter: This is the thing that I find interesting. What I'm seeing, generally speaking, you see the indented results from the same website, but there's also subdomains. And what I'm starting to see is that Google is pulling the indented results from a mix of subdomains. So things like customer service pages and support notes and things like that. So I looked up like Wix app market, for instance, and Wix is a very big company and has lots of different websites and lots of different web properties. And there's a lot more companies that are like this. So a lot of people are using subdomains just for their menu, for the restaurant or just for their jobs board or just for their appointment scheduling thing. So lots of websites have lots of different properties. So if you look at Wix app market, it shows wix.com blog, which talks about the app market. And then there's an indent that goes to support.wix.com, which talks about the app market. And then there's a separate one that goes to dev.wixs.com, which is our developer portal, which talks about all of the app market and how, if you were building an app, you would go into that. So what I think is interesting here is that Google is, again, this is going back to entities. And this is Google understanding that if I'm talking about the Wixs app market, that is an entity, that is a thing that exists and exists on these properties. And they're also understanding that all of those things are connected to the entity, which is Wixs and that all of those different URLs, all of those different domains are connected to that. And Google used to struggle a bit with subdomains, but I think that this is a really good example of them handling it really well so that they can serve multiple intents with a single sort of related service. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. My major takeaway of this whole thing is SEOs always talk about subdomains are separate from your website. And I always find that amazing though. John Mueller talked about, well, not necessarily, usually not. It depends when it makes sense to treat them separately, we do. You need to tell me, Google can make a self-driving car that knows the difference when a squirrel runs out in front of it and when a person runs out in front of it, but they can't figure out that travel.cnn and CNN are actually related to each other. That's mind blowing to Google. But I think it goes to show that the way Google's able to understand your website in totem to use a Latin word, which means total, which you obviously knew, but I'm going to say that anyway. Crystal Carter: Ergo. Mordy Oberstein: They know what your site is. They know what's related to your site really well. So, that's a great find Crystal. So from what's new to the news, how's that for a pivot, I get a gold star today. Here is the snappy news of the week. [00:29:33] Snappy News Here is the snappy news of the week. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Well, the helpful content update came roaring out of the gate, like a raging ball. Me, not really. In fact, that deal was like, what is this thing on to quote Matt's Southern from Search Engine Journal, Google on why helpful content update seems quiet. Google addresses reports that the helpful content update has a minimal impact on search results or mining everyone. It's still rolling out. Now what's interesting is that this update was first presented as penguin or Panda level, meaning really, really big, but such does not appear to be the case as Google's own search liaison identity Sullivan said on Twitter. But updates don't necessarily mean a big giant shift. If you have good content, you're generally fine. Those who have content with issues, there can be reasons why they might not want to be particularly vocal about a chain. What is interesting because the SEO tools that track algorithm updates haven't seen any shifts either. So I think it's less to do with, um, sites that have been hit being vocal or less vocal about a change. It is still rolling. So by the time you're listening to this, the helpful content update might have more teeth on it. Personally. I doubt it. I'm recording this days after Google made its own statement and still nothing's really going on big things to the SEO, by the way, who was responsible for Google putting this statement out, you know who you are. Article number two from Danny Goodwin over at search engine land, Google test quick, read five. Read labels is search results. So essentially Google has been testing, showing the label under certain results, saying that they are either a quick read or less than a five-minute read. And I am not a big fan of this. Um, I wanted to say this test should not dictate how you write. So if you're worried, oh no. If Google's running this test with a five-minute or less reading read time label, that people will only click on results that have that read time. So I better make sure that my content's really snappy like this snappy news. Don't do that. Don't try to get this label. Even if some speculate it will drive up CTR, which by the way, to me is all dependent on the search intent. For some things, I don't want a quick read. I want a piece that dives deeply into the topic that I can trust. I want a pi ece that I can dive deeply into a piece that I can t rust, even if it's just to pull out a quick bit of info, and with it, that is the snappy news. [00:32:10] Follow of the Week To keep your SEO learning going. Let's now move into who we think you should be following on Twitter this week. I say Twitter because the SEO community predominantly is on Twitter. So if you're not on Twitter, I implore you to create a Twitter account. You don't have to do anything. Just sit there and watch and interact with the one, the only, Aleyda Solis, queen of the SEOs, who Crystal mentioned earlier in the episode, who was literally, I think the unofficial leader of the SEOs, it's @aleyda A-L-E-Y-D-A, link IN the show notes. I don't know where to start Crystal Carter: Aleyda is a gift. Mordy Oberstein: True. Crystal Carter: She shares the best resources. She does an amazing podcast. She does amazing videos. She has a fantastic newsletter called SEOFOMO, which literally sets a tone for the entire week. So you Barry every day, I read SEOFOMO every week. I go through all of these things and she's also super nice. She's also very welcoming to new SEOs and she also runs learningseo.io. Mordy Oberstein: .io. Crystal Carter: And she also remotors.net. She also works with some fantastic clients. Mordy Oberstein: Crawling Mondays. Crystal Carter: Crawling... So many things. Mordy Oberstein: The Twitter space for the newsletter, SEOFOMO, the Twitter space on Mondays. I know what time it is. Hold on. It's Mondays at 12:00 PM Eastern time. I know cause I record EDGE of the Web at the same time. I can never go. And it's really, I have FOMO for SEOFOMO. Crystal Carter: I have FOMO as well, because I have... Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So please, please. We implore you. Please check out... She's the most giving, most amazing, awesome person in the SEO industry. Follow her on Twitter and learn some amazing things. Crystal Carter: [foreign language 00:31:37]. Aleyda also speaks Spanish. So if you are an English-speaking SEO, or you are a Spanish- SEO, also follow Aleyda because she's also involved with Harrison SEO, Latinas en SEO. [foreign language 00:31:52]. Mordy Oberstein: I'll go, the only Spanish that I really know [foreign language 00:31:55]. And on that happy note, thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back again, next week is an all-new episode as we get into the real deal around keyword research. Look for us whenever, wherever you consume your podcast, and on our SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. And obviously look at all the rest of the great content. Webinar's, blog posts we have around learning SEO. So you learn more about SEO. That's keyword stuffing, right there. Learn more about SEO, the wicks SEO learning hub. Keyword stuffing for you at the end of our podcast. So 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

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

Are you using generative AI to help create content yet? Do you wholesale copy and paste its output or use it for inspiration and content organization? Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein welcome special guest Ryan Laws of Animalz to discuss AI writers, SEO, and content creation. Join them as they dive into the right way and the wrong way to use AI for content creation and its potential implications for the web as a whole moving forward. Listen in with us as we discuss how generative AI will change search and the web as we know it on the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Back The ChatGPT episode Are you using generative AI to help create content yet? Do you wholesale copy and paste its output or use it for inspiration and content organization? Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein welcome special guest Ryan Laws of Animalz to discuss AI writers, SEO, and content creation. Join them as they dive into the right way and the wrong way to use AI for content creation and its potential implications for the web as a whole moving forward. Listen in with us as we discuss how generative AI will change search and the web as we know it on the SERP’s Up SEO podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 29 | March 15, 2023 | 45 MIN 00:00 / 44:55 This week’s guests Ryan Laws Ryan Law is VP of Content at Animalz, a content marketing agency for SaaS companies. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're proofing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding at Wix, and I'm joined by the incredible, the fabulous, the absolutely amazing, the incomparable Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people, and thank you, Mordy, for that fantastic introduction. I'm sure that you wrote that entirely yourself and did not get an AI writer to help you craft that introduction. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, more shadowing there. No. No AI writer is as good as me. Which is not saying much, I don't think, at this point yet about me. Crystal Carter: I don't know, you've written so much content, Mordy. I mean, they could have been trained on all those words. You are a wordsmith, sir. You are someone who writes many, many words. Mordy Oberstein: Has it really been me this entire time? We don't know. Crystal Carter: What? What? Where am I? Is this even real? How do I know any of this is happening at all? Mordy Oberstein: It's all a dream and/or a nightmare, depending upon how you look at it. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can add all sorts of variables to your title tags in bulk at the folder level with Wix. It's almost as if you had an AI writer writing them for you. Crystal Carter: Oh, my gosh. I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Oh my gosh, so amazing. Crystal Carter: Put those bots to work, that's what I say. Don't do all these things yourself. Why are we breaking a sweat? Put those bots to work. Set up your syntax so that they do it for you. Mordy Oberstein: They don't mind. That's what they're there for. Crystal Carter: That's what they're there for. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, in case you haven't realized, this week's episode is all about SEO, the web, and AI writers. Perhaps you've heard about them on TV. Perhaps you use an AI writer from the comfort of your own home. The question is, should you? We're diving into everything, AI writers, what AI-written content means for the web, what AI-written content means for SEO, what AI writers should and shouldn't be writing. And to help us navigate all of this, we're going to bring in a very special guest for you shortly, Ryan Laws, the VP of Content over at Animalz, one of the most prestigious content marketing agencies out there, will join us shortly. Plus, we'll dive into the various ways search engines have already integrated AI writers into their result pages. And, of course, with the snappiest of news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. Episode number 29 of the SERP's Up podcast is spinning up right now. So, content is hard. Wouldn't it be amazing if someone came along, and for a very, very low cost, almost free, created a ton of content for you? Wouldn't that free up your time? Wouldn't that save you money? Wouldn't it to help you if writing just isn't your thing? You almost see the temptation there to have a bot write all of your content for you, because it actually solves real pain points, serious pain points that many, many, many of us have. The question is, "Well, what about product quality? What about the quality of that content?" And that's really the crux of the issue here that we're going to explore today because imagine a computer program backed by artificial intelligence is writing content for you. It might seem like a great solution, but is it the right solution? And I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this decision, how we all collectively decide to deal with AI-written content, is going to reshape the web for better or for worse. For worse, spoiler. So it's a serious topic, which is why we thought it would be prudent to bring someone who I've been following for a long time on the content side of things. His blog is amazing. Check it out. Obviously, a link to it in the show notes. It's of incredible quality, which is why we're having him here, because quality is the name of this game. What better person to discuss AI-written content and the future of the web and content than Ryan Laws, VP of Content over at Animalz? Welcome, Ryan. Ryan Laws: You so much for having me in this terrifying post-truth world that we find ourselves in now. Mordy Oberstein: It's an apocalypse. It's apocalyptic. Ryan Laws: Yeah, if I would not have put money on this being the kind of thing I'd be talking about this year a couple of years ago, but hey, that's how technology tends to unfold, I think. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I think there's a lot of people who are saying that if you're speaking at a conference this year, it's almost impossible to plan ahead at all because between the autumn, and I think I saw you talking on a podcast about how ChatGPT was the first time where you were like, "Okay, this is actually a viable thing," and I'm sure you'll get into that a little bit later, but I think that there was somebody who shared a script where somebody was able to write an email, a very, very well formatted email without actually writing it. They just said, "Write this email that says this," and then it just formatted that and it went. And at that point I was like, "Okay, this is something to pay attention to." And I think that so much has changed between then and now. And we're recording this in February time, and, I mean, in the next six months, I imagine it's going to change even more. Ryan Laws: By the time this airs, it will all be completely redundant and nothing we've said will have made any sense whatsoever. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just worried if we'll still exist or not. Using ChatGPT to have an email written or whatever, that seems like a good use of time. I have been using ChatGPT to try to admit to me that it's Skynet trying to take over the world. Crystal Carter: Okay. Ryan Laws: There does seem to be a whole genre of people that are trying to work out, "Is this sentient? Is this artificial general intelligence? Is there something much bigger and more terrifying going on?" And I'm just trying to stay in my lane and think about content and SEO, and that's frying my brain as it is, to be honest. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. I'm staying in my lane trying to break it and trying to get to admit all sorts of horrible things. Crystal Carter: But I think that both of those things are the way to look at this new technology, and I think that's something that SEOs are able to bring to the fore. So within the SEO industry and the content industry and the PPC industry, if you're working in it across any of this digital marketing things, if you've been around the block a few times, you've seen the new fancy toy show up and you've learned how to assess it and how to kick the tires to see what it can do. And so I think that it's important to learn and to find the limitations of whatever the new technology is. And I know that you've been experimenting with it within a few ways. What things have you found ChatGPT and content writers to be good at, and what things have you found it to be terrible at or not so good at? Mordy Oberstein: Writing. Ryan Laws: Oh, yeah. It's good at writing and it's terrible at writing. Yeah. Well, yeah, obviously, as somebody who personally has tried to make a living off of writing and works for a company that makes a living off of writing and helping companies grow through writing, we were very, very interested to see, "What can this do? Are we going to have to replace parts of our workflow? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? How do we add value on top of these things?" So over the past couple of years, actually, since GPT-3 was enclosed beta, we've been trying different use cases for it. We've learned quite a lot about the strengths and weaknesses so far. And probably the most bullish use case we're seeing at the moment that I know lots of people are doing, but not necessarily talking about, is actually trying to scale up search content in increasing publishing frequencies to levels that previously just not tenable when you were using people to do that. I think a lot of it comes down to this question of quality, exactly as you say. Is this stuff good? I think it's really important to remember that quality is a totally subjective piece of terminology. If you think about SEO content, you're going to have something that maybe it's a very non-competitive search, maybe people are looking for very pragmatic, utilitarian information. And you can have something that is very basic, just gets the nuts and bolts information across, and that can be quality, that can do the job, that can meet the intent, and that can help companies rank for it. And in those cases, in those non-competitive SERPs, I basically don't see an issue with trying to get an AI writer involved in that part of the process. Crystal Carter: And I think that some of those things appeal to the kinds of things that Google will generally often replace with a quick answer, like, "What is it distance between the Earth and the sun?" If you're using an AI writer to write that up, maybe you want that as something that's of value on your website so that people don't have to leave your website and so people stay within your ecosystem. But from a search point of view, Google's like, "We can just tell you how many kilometers that is or how many miles that is, or how many light years that is. We can just tell you that in the SERP." So from a search point of view, that doesn't add tons of value, but from a user experience point of view within your website ecosystem, that might add value, in which case an AI writer might be something that might be useful to spin up something that's nice to read that doesn't just go, "This many parsecs." Ryan Laws: Yeah, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: That's how I like thinking about this, where there's so much content out there that I can't, as a person, people in general can't add any more unique value anymore. I don't know, what is a tire? It's been done four million times. You're not going to add anything new that hasn't been, no pun intended, written under the sun before. Crystal Carter: We could reinvent the wheel. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, but not the tire. You can't reinvent the tire. Ryan Laws: Well, I think that's a good point, and that brings us to the other end of the quality spectrum, which is a hyper-competitive search where maybe they're big behemoth brands slogging it out with their 10,000 word meticulously optimized skyscraper posts. And in those cases, anyone that is pumping out a very utilitarian, largely unedited AI output are just going to lose. There's nothing more to be added there. So I think a good way of thinking about this technology is a bifurcation of search generally. What is the really simple utilitarian, non-competitive stuff that you can and probably should outsource and just have AI handle? And where should you actually focus your energy and your skill and your expertise? What are the handful of really competitive, really important topics that you should be adding opinion or original research and data and perspective and matter analysis to? Because I think pretty much every company will have both ends of those spectrum they will need to create content for. Mordy Oberstein: So I have a theory about this. What's inevitably going to happen is let's say, for example, everyone writes a piece about, "What is a tire?" And they're using the same AI writers, putting out the same thing. How is Google going to know what to rank at that point for "What is a tire?" And what I think what it's going to do is it's going to look at the domain overall and say, "Hey, you know what? This website is about donuts. It happens to talk about a donut tire. This website is about tires and not about donuts. It's the same snippet of content. Let's take it from the one that's more authoritative topically and show that snippet from that website." So it won't be about the snippet of content anymore, but it'll be about all the other pages and all the other human-created content that you did that builds up the authority so you can rank for that top level keyword like, "What is a tire?" Ryan Laws: I totally agree with that, and I think basically, Google's only method of response to this ... I think as we've seen, it's not hugely tenable to plug every bit of content into a machine to say whether it's AI generated or not. I don't think that's doable. So actually, we're going to see even more emphasis placed on the non-word parts of search, like domain authority, topical authority, those kinds of things, which I think is perhaps slightly problematic because there is a big incumbent's advantage if you're a big established brand. It's probably going to make dominating even easier, and it might make it harder for new entrant into the market. But ultimately, yeah, I don't really see what other choice Google has. You just have to devalue the importance of the words on the page when you can create words on the page so easily, I think. Crystal Carter: So there's a couple of things that occur to me about this, like QA. I think that quality assessment, quality control and content curation, I think will potentially not necessarily be a ranking factor, but I think will be a point of differentiation because, essentially, while we're talking about general knowledge topics, for instance, that you could spin up, like let's say you had a knowledge hub that was a dictionary or something of terms about tires. Let's say we're thinking about terms. This is a hubcap and this is a tread. I don't know. I don't know anything about tires. But anyway, so let's say you have a knowledge hub all about tires for those people who really love tires, and let's say you use an AI writer to write that. One of the tricky things and one of the challenges that I've seen are from my use of AI writers and looking at some of the results that we've seen from being AI's beta and from ChatGPT, and also I was looking at You.com as well, which is a really good one as well, is even for simple things, the facts that they put out sometimes are just nonsense. And the word "AI hallucinations" is now in common parlance because AI writers will just make these things up. I asked it to write a meta description, and I said, "I would like you to summarize this piece of text in a meta description that is 150 characters." And it summarized it in 244 characters, but at the end of it, it said it was 155 characters. And I was like, "That is not 155 characters. That is 244," because I read it through another tool that told me that. And then they said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I will adjust." And then it made another one that was even longer, and I was like, "Okay, that is not what I asked you for. That's wrong." Ryan Laws: It's my Skynet theory. Crystal Carter: Right, so then I asked it another one. So You.com is a generative search tool and it's a lower level of doing what Bing AI is trying to do, but it's doing it now. And I said to it, I said, "Can you name some of the guests from the SERP's Up SEO Podcast?" And what it does is on the side, it generates search results, and then it has the chat, and it will give you comments and it will even provide links as well. But it was saying like, "Oh, Bill Slosky was on our podcast." And with all due respect to Bill Slosky, we started the podcast after he had dearly departed, and so that is not true. That is fundamentally not true, and there's ways that you can verify that just from dates. So the content curation and understanding the limitations of the tools that you're using is really important. How do you advise that people can, at scale ... Because that's the other thing is that you can do lots at once. So how do you check all of that at once? Ryan Laws: Yeah, it's a wonderful point, and I think probably the biggest mistake I see people make thinking about this technology is assuming that it is designed to serve as facts, and that is fundamentally not what it is designed to do. It's basically designed to take whatever disparate prompts or information you give it, smooth them together and create an output that sounds coherent. So in that instance, having somebody that's well known for SEO on a podcast about SEO, that makes sense within its understanding of what should be expected there. But at no point has it gone to try and find what actually happened. And that's just not what this technology does, and that's not something I think it is going to do because who has the resources to vet billions of generated outputs almost every day at this point? You can't do it. So I can't say this is something I've solved at grand scale, not like programmatic SEO where you're publishing hundreds, thousands of articles at once, but we're working at a slightly smaller scale where we are basically having a human in the loop using generative AI as a force multiplier for their already great writing. So we basically think to get the most out of this technology you need a subject matter expert who can review, who can structure, who can critically evaluate what is being generated from the generative AI, and that process is still faster than it would otherwise be. I think sometimes it's a lot more fun for the writer because you get to outsource parts of your thinking, and it can even be better in some instances because it can recommend ideas that you might not otherwise have. It doesn't have the same mental ruts and creative bottlenecks that humans do. But I think to your point, exactly that, having a person to evaluate that and actually stand behind and be willing to put their name to a piece of generated content is absolutely crucial. Otherwise, yeah, we will just very quickly descend into dystopian Wild West if we're just all publishing the outputs of these models wholesale. Mordy Oberstein: What's interesting there is that there's so much talk about AI writers and how it'll impact the content writing job market, and what you're basically describing is a new workflow of how writers will come into the process, which makes me wonder, just to zoom even out from there, how do you feel this whole advent of the AI writer is going to impact, forget SEO for a second, but the web as a whole? Ryan Laws: I think the thought experiment we have to run is we basically have to assume, "What if everything on the internet has in some way been touched by AI generation? How do we navigate that? How do we work forward?" Because I think that is just how we're going to have to think about this. I think it's a dead end trying to work out what is and what isn't AI generated. We have to assume everything is, and at that point, I think provenance becomes the most important thing. When you've got 100 people saying the same thing, you will generally seek out the person you think is most credible on that topic, and that is what we're going to do. I think that is what search engines are going to encourage, and I think we're starting to see that with the addition of extra ease to Google's E-A-T acronym as well. Crystal Carter: They should pick other letters. They could make it a nice acronym, because at the moment it's just E-A-T. Tasty. It's just like, "Come on." Mordy Oberstein: They're just screwing with us because now they know we're going to say that, and now we're going to be stuck, like, "What are you saying?" They're like, "Ah, look at all these SEOs walking around going 'E-A-T' anything." Ryan Laws: Oh, you mean eat or do you mean E-A-T? Mordy Oberstein: There's some Googler laughing at all this, like, "Ah, see what I did there? Ha ha ha!" Crystal Carter: I think that there's still going to be people who are making high quality content, but people who are high authority, I think we might end up in a situation like what we've seen with big scale publishers, with people like the New York Times, like The Atlantic, et cetera, where they gate their content. And this happens on YouTube as well. A lot of YouTubers have gone to a subscription model where you have to pay for their content or you have to sponsor them on Patreon or that sort of thing. So yeah, I think that it's likely to see that sort of thing. When we talk about AI, everybody's using AI in lots of ways already. I use Grammarly all the time. I cannot spell without Grammarly. I use Grammarly all the time. We use visual search tools to generate tags that's just built into Wix. There's lots of things like that. So I think we're using them in lots of different ways. I think it's just a lot more mainstream. Mordy Oberstein: Well, yeah, also more narrow. I don't think if you gave an AI writer, "Here's a paragraph. Regurgitate it, re-summarize it, or write a heading for it," that, to me, seems like a no-brainer. It's a quick thing. It's just taking a very closed input and putting out a very closed output. So those kind of tasks, like no-brainer, go for them. Obviously, you need to check it. I think now that we're seeing things like ChatGPT where we're talking about, "It's an ocean." It's not an enclosed environment anymore, and that's a huge qualitative shift. Crystal Carter: There's so much AI art at the moment, and I think from your perspective, you were saying that we should all assume that everything's AI written. Well, I mean, as somebody who writing for me can sometimes take a long time, it doesn't come naturally to me necessarily, it can sometimes take a long time. So the idea that thing that took me hours and hours and hours to do will now be perceived as being AI-written even though that was blood, sweat and tears for me. I'll be honest, I have some feelings about that. I have some feelings about that. But if that's how things are going forward, I guess that's how things are going forward. But I feel that this must be how artists have felt for the last, I don't know, six, 12 months where a lot of the dolly stuff and mid-journey stuff has been coming to the fore because if I see a picture now, I'm like, "Did you do that or did an AI do that?" I'm not sure. Ryan Laws: Yeah. Probably the thing I hear most from people that are writers or artists is, "We didn't choose this. We've been forced into a world that has ..." in some cases, people think devalued the thing they have invested their entire lives in. There's a lot of that personal meaning imbued in writing and creativity, and I find that, and if I could put this technology back in the bottle, I would be tempted to do it. But again, that's generally not how technology operates, and at least in my capacity as somebody that helps growing companies, I have to use this if there's an advantage to be had. On the art point, though, I do think something can still be beautiful and meaningful and incredible even if it has been generated by AI because there is still a lot of human involvement and curation and process that has gone into that. And actually, I'm sure people felt very skeptical about, "Oh, I can't believe that printing press. This wasn't written by hand. This is devalued. Content should be smaller scale." Or even the emergence of the internet. This democratizing thing of writing where anyone could suddenly write. There was a big influx of terrible writing in addition to great writing as well, and I think it just changes our experience and our perception of it. I don't necessarily think it has to be better or worse in some cases. This is just the new world we find ourselves in, and the composition of what art and creativity means will probably change on the back of that. Crystal Carter: I think there's opportunity there as well. So for instance, speaking on the art point, I've seen people who paint live. They'll paint live in the street as a street performer. They'll paint live, and you know that thing has been created by hand. So if that's something that you value, then you can create that by values. And I think there's potentially opportunities for people to connect in a live setting to- Mordy Oberstein: Watch me write. Pay five dollars to watch me write. Crystal Carter: Well, not necessarily what I was saying. Right. But to connect with that knowledge because the written word, for instance, is a vehicle for a conveying knowledge, and that's what people fundamentally want is knowledge. So the publishing industry, similarly in books, had a decline in people buying non-fiction books. Well, part of that was because people were getting that on YouTube because why would you buy ... You wouldn't buy a book on how to change a tire if you can see a video that you can pause that shows you how to change the tire and has more information even if there was no words on it than if somebody writing and you trying to understand what they're explaining from what they're saying. So I think that there are potentially additional opportunities that come from the way that people are changing how they are accessing information. Mordy Oberstein: I also think it'll create an opportunity for brands to really stick out. If a brand is really dedicating the resources to create really good content, which is even the new space now happening the same way, just at a different angle, you'll start seeing people realize, "Hey, wait a second. While this website, it counted probably a bunch of AI's content, this website looks like really they're putting in the effort to create really unique content," and that'll be a branding asset. Ryan Laws: I'll say on that point, I do think even at that top end of the spectrum, the incredible, unique, amazing content, AI is still going to be involved in that. Probably a different part of the process, probably in terms of ideation and brainstorming and that kind of thing, but I think this technology is just too good. It's going to touch every part of writing that exists within a company within the world. I think it's just too good to not use and not find its way into those processes. Mordy Oberstein: True. Before we have to let you go, I'm curious, with all that, with it's not going anywhere, it's going to touch the process, are we looking at a scenario where at least temporarily the quality of the web's content is going to fall off a cliff? Ryan Laws: My instinct is to say yes, but then I'm reminded of the status quo, and I think we talk about the perils of AI-generated content, but actually it is pretty much the same problems, the same issues that most of the world's current SEO content written by humans has already. Mordy Oberstein: You're saying it can't get much worse. Ryan Laws: No, I think we're already there. We're already at that point. This is going to exacerbate the existing traits of search content, and search content today generally is pretty bad and pretty unhelpful and pretty faceless and very duplicative. Mordy Oberstein: I have ways to build backlinks . Crystal Carter: The content mill model has definitely created a lot of repetitive content with limited value. So I feel like there's opportunities to differentiate, and it's very interesting that also one of the ways that Google can tell whether or not a piece of content is written by AI, or one of the ways they say they can, is whether or not there are videos and other assets to verify some of the content that they have there. So these are things we should see. Ryan Laws: Give me a few days to spin up an AI video workflow, and I can add that into the process and job done. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Ryan, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you? Ryan Laws: I spend too much time on Twitter @thinking_slow and The Animalz blog. That's where I channel all of the writing, all the energies and creative output of our team into talking about content search and AI at the moment as well. Mordy Oberstein: Real human insights on the Animalz blog. Ryan Laws: There's a little bit of machine creeping in there, not going to lie. Crystal Carter: Have you named your AI for your Animalz blogs? I feel like everybody should have a name for the AI tool that they use. Obviously, not how obviously they think they be a nice robot name. Ryan Laws: I haven't yet. No, no. It's probably naming me at this point. Crystal Carter: Was it Sydney? Was that what Chat- Mordy Oberstein: Good morning, Bob. Crystal Carter: I think Bing's AI says it's called Sydney. That's the- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? That's- Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's sentiment. It has named itself. Crystal Carter: I know Barry said that that's what he's called. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, if Barry said, then it must be true. Awesome. Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate it. Ryan Laws: Yeah, thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Talk to you soon. So thank you again, Ryan, for stopping by and sharing your really cool insights about what's going on in the world of AI and content and SEO. Again, follow Ryan on Twitter @thinking_slow, that's thinking_slow on Twitter. Of course, we'll link to Ryan's profile in the show notes. Well, now that we're talking about AI and search engines, did you know there's multiple search engines that have incorporated AI writers or AI chat, rather, into their own results pages? So wouldn't you care to explore what they look like, what they're doing? You would? Yes. Yay! With that, let's dive into search engines integrating with AI chat as we go into so many search engines. Automated: Google's latest update. Popular search engine, Bing. Duck, Duck, Go. Yahoo. AltaVista. Jeeves. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get started, imagine a world where machines have the ability to craft words, to tell stories, and to paint pictures with language where the very essence of human creativity is at the mercy of code and circuitry. Welcome to the world of AI writers, a place where the line between man and machine blurs and the outcomes are both strange and wondrous. You are entering the Twilight Zone. That was the intro I asked ChatGPT to write for this segment. Crystal Carter: Oh my God. Mordy Oberstein: I said, "Write a segment for the SERP's Up Podcast where we talk about AI writers in this tone of the Twilight Zone," and that's what it gave me. Crystal Carter: Okay. Thanks, Gene Roddenberry. Mordy Oberstein: Hm? Gene Roddenberry? That's not Gene Roddenberry, that's Rod Serling or whatever his name is. Crystal Carter: Rod Serling. My bad. No, ChatGPT told me it was Gene. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, ChatGPT. Right, right, right. ChatGPT was wrong. No, anytime I'm wrong about something, I be like, "Oh, AI told me. AI said. The AI was wrong. I would've been right." Crystal Carter: That's what the AI said. They told me that. Mordy Oberstein: So while that intro was incomprehensible, thank you ChatGPT, what essentially we're they're going to do here is there's a bunch of search engines that have integrated AI chats into their SERP's. Google announced they're going to be introducing Bard at some point. Bing already has one. NEVA already has one. You.com already has one, and they all function a little bit differently. So we thought we'd just share with you what we're seeing out there. For example, if I'm on NEVA and I type in SEO, I get a whole thing, "A search engine optimization as a set of practices, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and it has footnotes where it tells me where these pieces of information came from. So for example, as part of its writeup, it says, "SEO involves making small modifications to a part of a website." It got that from Google's documentation in Spanish. Crystal Carter: Oh, wow. It got it in Spanish? Mordy Oberstein: I think so because it's giving me ... Well, actually, it's pulling in ... So when you hover over, so what it does is it gives you a footnote to the corresponding sentence. So every sentence has a footnote, and when you highlight the sentence, where you hover over the sentence, it brings up an aside panel, like Google where the knowledge panel is, it brings up the full link and it says, "Photo number three. Here's a link," and it's in a giant box. And it pulls up an image from that blog also, from that URL also. And the URL is showing me here is from Google, but the image is of Google's search central in Spanish. Crystal Carter: Right. Very interesting. So I did a similar query. So I went into You.com, which is a tool that has a lot of different options, actually. So they have options for using AI for content generation, they have it for generating images, they also have it for queries. And I typed in, "What is SEO," and they gave me a featured snippet paragraph, so a short paragraph describing what SEO is. And they've also referenced an article. So in this case they referenced AA Trusts as well, and as they're generating that content, as they're answering the query, they give you a list of links on the side of that particular query. So on the top, you can see something from Search Engine Land, then from Moz, then from Semrush, then from Mailchimp, then from You. And then also underneath of that, they also put a link to a Wikipedia article that references what SEO is. So in that case, I think on that particular one, I think they've done a good job for that particular query, and I've seen this for other ones. I think we discussed this earlier with Ryan. I've seen mixed results from You.com, but they have explained that the product is in beta and they have a disclaimer underneath their chat. It says, "This product is in beta and its accuracy may be limited. You.com is not liable for content generated." So I think that's important to remember as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's totally true. The answers you're going to get, for example, I asked NEVA, "Is SEO good?" And it gave me pretty much the same answer as "What is SEO?" The last line was, "SEO is an important tool for improving visibility of a website and can be beneficial for a businesses looking to increase our online presence." So it's pretty generic. The first half is totally irrelevant. They gave me a whole thing of "SEO is a practice." It's the same thing as the other one when I asked, "What is SEO?" So it's all going to be improving, I hope. A lot of it's pretty generic, I find. It's not super deep. I think the URLs are pulling from at this point are not super deep. If you're going anything SEO wise, it's basically pulling from Search Engine Land to Moz, at least on the NEVA side. And what's interesting is on the second half of the answer where I'm asking, "Is SEO good?" and it gives me that first part where it tells me what SEO is, there are three citations, two from Moz, one from Backlinko. Where it tells me, "SEO is an important tool, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," there's no citation. I don't know where it got that from. So even though there is citation, it's not citing everything. Crystal Carter: Right. So yeah, that's a similar ... So You.com, I said, "Is SEO good?" It says, "SEO is generally considered to be a good practice as it helps increase visibility, et cetera, et cetera," and goes along those lines. And then they've got a similar sort of thing. So they're pulling from Digital Marketing Institute, from SEJ, from Google, from Forbes. So that's top there. Then they also have a panel that's pulling from Reddit that has some Reddit examples saying, "Is it a good career investment? Is it worth it these days? Is it good for this or that?" So when I compare those search results for "Is SEO good?" on Google, I get roughly the same results that showed up in the sidebar of You.com, which was using generative, and if I go into Bing- Mordy Oberstein: Well, while you're doing that, I do like the way that You.com is putting in the URLs one is you see the organic results. There's a set of results right there. It's not like it's below the fold, underneath the chat box. Also, it does the footnotes, but it has the actual URLs there. On NEVA, it just tells you the name of the site. You.com is giving you, basically, the title tag and the URL, and it's much more prominent. You really notice it that much more. And again, you have the thing on the side, also. Crystal Carter: Right. I was playing around this the other day, and I was like, "Actually, this is pretty good." And again, they're in beta, they're still working things through. But the thing that I found interesting about it was that I think that this is a really good opportunity to see an expansion in a differentiation of search capabilities. So generally speaking, if you wanted to get video searches, you would go on YouTube. But what we're seeing right now is an explosion of people creating their own search engines, using different configurations in order to surface information. And I think that we're living in a really fascinating time for search. It would be interesting to see which ones come out of the end of it and how it all works out, but it's very fascinating. Mordy Oberstein: It is super interesting. I do speculate or wonder that NEVA and You, they have the search, they have the chat, the AI chats, I don't know how much more relevant that makes them the search engine. I saw, for example, someone did a poll in the SEO industry, I forgot who it was, I apologize. But does Bing having a really seemingly good AI experience, does that make Bing more relevant to you as a search engine? And the numbers weren't great. It is interesting, by the way, on the Bing side, and this is going to be something to keep an eye on, I think, again, and we've been focusing on this in the last few minutes, to me this citation is the most important part of all this from an SEO point of view. without the citation, your links are not there, it's a bad practice in general, I don't think it's necessarily an ethical practice. But without it, you don't have traffic coming to the site from those AI experiences, and I do think you will. It's the same thing as a feature snippet. The same thing as direct answer. I type in, "How many home runs did Babe Ruth have?" 714. Let's say there was this part of a featured snippet and there's a URL there. If I feel curious now to learn more about those 714 home runs that Babe Ruth hit, I will click on the URL. If not, not. It's the same thing here. For example, one of the templated answers that Bing has, because I don't have access yet to the beta, if you're listening from Bing, please could I? But one of them is- Crystal Carter: Yes, same. Mordy Oberstein: ... they give you a sample. They give you samples, you can see it. And it's about creating a dinner menu for six people who are vegetarian. And it is cool. It has a whole list of what you should start with as a starter or main and a desert, and it has a bunch of footnotes. And I saw Barry Schwartz report on this recently. Who knows if it'll change or not, but you can't actually see the URLs now until you click, "See more." Crystal Carter: Right, right. You say this is from an SEO point of view, but literally from a skeptical and just from a knowledge base, if I want to know something about something, I want to know where you got that information from, I mean, I need somebody to be able to answer that. And so you say like, "Oh, Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs." Mordy Oberstein: How do you know that? Crystal Carter: How do you know that? Like, "Oh, well, I've got this card, or I read it on this or I saw it on that," because there's lots of people who spout lots of facts and it's important to have a trail for that information in order to qualify how somebody knows one thing or another. So I asked the Babe Ruth question, for instance, into You.com and they pulled up Quora, and that said it was this much. And I could say, "Well, I don't think that's a valid source, for instance. There must be a better source than Quora for a query like that." But to be fair, they've got that ... Oh, and to be fair to them, to You.com, they have an article, they have the SERP showing next to them that says, "Did he actually hit 715 home runs?" Mordy Oberstein: Aha. Aha. Crystal Carter: So is this a debate? Is there something to think about? Mordy Oberstein: By the way, to that point, the chats could be the starting point for a click. So for example, I just searched for, "How many home runs did Aaron Judge hit?" And it without any citations from You.com, "Aaron Judge hit a total of six C2 home runs in the 2022 season." Now I didn't tell You.com I wanted the last season. I really wanted his whole career. So there's a link right next to it from Aaron Judge Statcast and Visuals, blah blah blah. It's a stat website. I'm going to go click on that next. So just because there's no URL or entry point from the chat itself, it could lead to, "Okay, now I need to go to the website that you're showing me right next to it because the AI chat didn't answer the question." Crystal Carter: Right, and I think that the UX here is important. So for the Bing, lots of people have been sharing screenshots and videos and things around and also doing tear-downs of some of the answers. So for instance, Bing previewed their chat bot, their Bing AI, and there was somebody who did an article, Lily Ray shared it recently, and they talked about fact checking some of the things. So I think one of the things they demoed was like, "Oh, plan a trip to Mexico and some great night spots in a town in Mexico." And somebody went through all of these places and they're like, "This place hasn't had any reviews since 2014. This place seems to be completely closed. This place is not a place that a tourist should go to at all." And so they went through and they were like, "That's doesn't really work." But when you look at the way that Bing AI is planning to showcase some of the links that would help you to verify some of the things that they're talking about, from what I've seen, they seem to be putting it below the chat and potentially outside of You or showing the conversation above the search results. And I think this is turning into a You.com love letter, but I think that what You is doing with the side panel I think is working really well. And I think that there- Mordy Oberstein: Showing the results on the side- Crystal Carter: I think is good. Mordy Oberstein: ... next to the chat is great. I love the You. Crystal Carter: I think that's great. And I think also Bing is planning to do side panel, I think, as well with their chat where you're allowed to do that, and I think Google also has a pop-out side panel or something. Mordy Oberstein: There's going to have be something because you're absolutely right, and I think especially in the beginning when people are still skeptical of the answers they're getting from these AI chats, you need to have the URLs there so people can be like, "You know what? Before I actually go ahead and click pay or do this, I'm just going to go to the website." And if it's annoying to get to the URLs, it's going to make your search engine annoying to use. So there's incentive to have the URLs there. I don't think we're heading to 100% zero-click universe because of the AI chat experience on search engine. So don't worry. Check out You.com. Check out NEVA.com. They have some really cool experiences there. You can see what's happening. It's going to get better. I think what you see there now is only the beginning. So it's like, "Oh, this is not good," I think it's only the beginning of all these things. You can check out. If you're using Edge, you can see the examples that Bing has also and interact with them, and you can sign up for the wait list, unless they already opened it up for everyone by the time this comes out. But that will be news. That'll be new. Crystal Carter: And the people that I've been following who've been chatting about this consistently, Barry's been talking a lot about this, Brady Clark as well. Glenn Gabe has also been talking about some of the different features that he's seen on ThinkChat. So if you ask them very nicely, they might query something for you, maybe. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Not to put them to work. Mordy Oberstein: Follow them first. "Hey, I followed you." Crystal Carter: Follow them first. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Now, if Bing did open up its AI chat experience for everybody, that would be in the news. Would it be in this week's news? I don't know. But there most likely will be something related to AI in the news. Most likely. Who knows? Well, let's find out as we get into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, this is the AI episode of the SERP's Up SEO Podcast. So what better time than now? And to let you know that GPT-4 is coming. If you love AI writers, then yay! If you hate AI writers, then the sky is about to fall. For Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal, open AI is about to release ChatGPT 4, or GPT-4, rather. What makes GPT-4 better than GPT-3? Well, it has a four, and four is higher than three. Also, it's a multi-modal model, which means that the one area of AI where most of us still saw Google as visibly ahead, i.e, MUM, multimodal unified model, will now be part of the Bing-verse. What is multimodal? What is this multimodal thing that I speak of? Well, usually with machine learning, which by the way, all this stuff is not AI, all of it is machine learning. But why split hairs anyway? The usual case with machine learning is you have one input and one output. So you input text, you get back text, much like ChatGPT is now. Well, multimodal means you can get back all sorts of media, say video, for instance. Google does this with Lens, if you want to see what this actually looks like in reality. So for example, you take a picture of some bike part that you have no idea what its name is. For me, that's all of the bike parts, other than the pedals and the brakes, and you write a text input, let's say, "How to fix?" Because again, you don't know what the thing is called, so you're taking a picture of it and you're hoping Google can match it up. And Google does match up the image, which it identifies, let's say, as the chain. And then it gives you results on how to fix a bike chain because you didn't know, like me, that that was called the chain. Well, clearly I knew it was called the chain because I just said it was called the chain. How did I know? Fourth walls aside, multimodal means a multimedia synergy. And that's the direction of the new GPT-4. Also, like Google MUM, it'll have a focus on working across multiple languages. I've always wanted Google to do more with MUM, it's multimodal technology. Well, MUM is open source, but Google MUM. Again, splitting hairs. I really hope they will reshape the Google results page and I think it eventually will. But now Microsoft is involved with open AI as well with this whole multimodal thing. So I guess let the multi-modal wars begin. Anyway, on a totally separate note, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, the February 2023 product review update is over. Goodbye and good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, or if your site did well, nice seeing you. Come again. Either way, the chances that your site was impacted with this product of the You update was far greater than with the recent iterations of the more recent product of You updates per a heap of Semrush data that I pulled, which you could see in the article from Barry, which is linked to in the show notes. Personally, I've looked at hundreds of keywords, and the ranking trajectories here, you could see it in the trends, are way more significant. There's way more significant drop-offs. Where you see a page ranking for a keyword, dive 10 or 15 positions down off of page one and onto page two, I tend to see the increases being less drastic here, but that is more than a little anecdotal. So take that as you will. And last up, and again from he, the great Barry in the sky over at Search Engine Land, Google rolled out new site names, Favicon and Sponsor Label on Desktop Search. Barry, if ever a headline set up the entire article, that is it. So you go to Desktop on Google, you will now see favicons, a label that re-sponsored and not ads for the ads, and site names above the URL, meaning the name of the site, or if you've been using the desktop version of the SERP over the last month or so, nothing has changed. It just officially rolled out. For this site name, by the way, Google has a few ways to make the determination, but one way is via website structured data markup, so make sure you have that set up. And with that, that is this week's version of the Snappy News. So was the news, so was the news. And before we do depart, we do need to tell you who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. And because we're talking about AI and AI writers and SEO, you should be following DataChaz on Twitter. That's @DataChaz, and that would be Charly Wargnier, who does an absolute ton around AI and SEO, who's constantly talking about it. He's been all over it. Crystal Carter: He's been on board since as far as ... Since it's broke, as a big thing, he's been all about it. And he's always been about data and things anyway. Mordy Oberstein: And technology. Crystal Carter: And a bit of a technologist. But he's been fully on board. So if you are planning to keep track of how things are developing, he's a great follow. He shares great resources for that, including different kinds of prompts you can try, different tools that are using it, different things that are working. And I think while he's very enthusiastic about the technology, I think he also has a healthy skepticism. So he's aware that there are challenges, and he's very much aware about having those conversations and making sure that we're having conversations that are talking about all of the fantastic things, but also all of the things that are still in the works. So I think he's a good follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And he's one of the forerunners of the SEO Python world. He's got a great website called seopythonistas.com, which happens to be a WIx website where he honors the work that Hamlet Batista of Blessed Memory contributed around Python to the SEO community. There's an enormous amount of resources at seopythonistas on Hamlet's work and other SEOs contributing to the Python conversation. So check out that website, and of course, follow Charly on Twitter @DataChaz. That's D-A-T-A-C-H-A-Z on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So hopefully you'll do that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, do that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And I would have a snazzy outro where I said the AI writer is going to write the outro, but I don't feel like that would be fair to our audience because they didn't do a great job with the ... The Twilight Zone theme was great and hilarious, but I don't think it was the best intro for our last segment. Crystal Carter: How did they used to end The Twilight Zone? Mordy Oberstein: They just had the music. Pick out to music. Do, do, do! Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into building a solid SEO team with a very special guest contribution. Who will it be? You'll have to see. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to a learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a reading on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Ryan Law Charly Wargnier Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Animalz Content Marketing SEO Pythonistas How AI will impact SEO News: OpenAI GPT-4 Arriving Mid-March 2023 Google February 2023 product reviews update more volatile than previous updates, say data providers Google rolled out new site names, favicon and sponsored label on desktop search Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Ryan Law Charly Wargnier Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Animalz Content Marketing SEO Pythonistas How AI will impact SEO News: OpenAI GPT-4 Arriving Mid-March 2023 Google February 2023 product reviews update more volatile than previous updates, say data providers Google rolled out new site names, favicon and sponsored label on desktop search Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're proofing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding at Wix, and I'm joined by the incredible, the fabulous, the absolutely amazing, the incomparable Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people, and thank you, Mordy, for that fantastic introduction. I'm sure that you wrote that entirely yourself and did not get an AI writer to help you craft that introduction. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, more shadowing there. No. No AI writer is as good as me. Which is not saying much, I don't think, at this point yet about me. Crystal Carter: I don't know, you've written so much content, Mordy. I mean, they could have been trained on all those words. You are a wordsmith, sir. You are someone who writes many, many words. Mordy Oberstein: Has it really been me this entire time? We don't know. Crystal Carter: What? What? Where am I? Is this even real? How do I know any of this is happening at all? Mordy Oberstein: It's all a dream and/or a nightmare, depending upon how you look at it. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can add all sorts of variables to your title tags in bulk at the folder level with Wix. It's almost as if you had an AI writer writing them for you. Crystal Carter: Oh, my gosh. I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Oh my gosh, so amazing. Crystal Carter: Put those bots to work, that's what I say. Don't do all these things yourself. Why are we breaking a sweat? Put those bots to work. Set up your syntax so that they do it for you. Mordy Oberstein: They don't mind. That's what they're there for. Crystal Carter: That's what they're there for. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, in case you haven't realized, this week's episode is all about SEO, the web, and AI writers. Perhaps you've heard about them on TV. Perhaps you use an AI writer from the comfort of your own home. The question is, should you? We're diving into everything, AI writers, what AI-written content means for the web, what AI-written content means for SEO, what AI writers should and shouldn't be writing. And to help us navigate all of this, we're going to bring in a very special guest for you shortly, Ryan Laws, the VP of Content over at Animalz, one of the most prestigious content marketing agencies out there, will join us shortly. Plus, we'll dive into the various ways search engines have already integrated AI writers into their result pages. And, of course, with the snappiest of news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. Episode number 29 of the SERP's Up podcast is spinning up right now. So, content is hard. Wouldn't it be amazing if someone came along, and for a very, very low cost, almost free, created a ton of content for you? Wouldn't that free up your time? Wouldn't that save you money? Wouldn't it to help you if writing just isn't your thing? You almost see the temptation there to have a bot write all of your content for you, because it actually solves real pain points, serious pain points that many, many, many of us have. The question is, "Well, what about product quality? What about the quality of that content?" And that's really the crux of the issue here that we're going to explore today because imagine a computer program backed by artificial intelligence is writing content for you. It might seem like a great solution, but is it the right solution? And I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that this decision, how we all collectively decide to deal with AI-written content, is going to reshape the web for better or for worse. For worse, spoiler. So it's a serious topic, which is why we thought it would be prudent to bring someone who I've been following for a long time on the content side of things. His blog is amazing. Check it out. Obviously, a link to it in the show notes. It's of incredible quality, which is why we're having him here, because quality is the name of this game. What better person to discuss AI-written content and the future of the web and content than Ryan Laws, VP of Content over at Animalz? Welcome, Ryan. Ryan Laws: You so much for having me in this terrifying post-truth world that we find ourselves in now. Mordy Oberstein: It's an apocalypse. It's apocalyptic. Ryan Laws: Yeah, if I would not have put money on this being the kind of thing I'd be talking about this year a couple of years ago, but hey, that's how technology tends to unfold, I think. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I think there's a lot of people who are saying that if you're speaking at a conference this year, it's almost impossible to plan ahead at all because between the autumn, and I think I saw you talking on a podcast about how ChatGPT was the first time where you were like, "Okay, this is actually a viable thing," and I'm sure you'll get into that a little bit later, but I think that there was somebody who shared a script where somebody was able to write an email, a very, very well formatted email without actually writing it. They just said, "Write this email that says this," and then it just formatted that and it went. And at that point I was like, "Okay, this is something to pay attention to." And I think that so much has changed between then and now. And we're recording this in February time, and, I mean, in the next six months, I imagine it's going to change even more. Ryan Laws: By the time this airs, it will all be completely redundant and nothing we've said will have made any sense whatsoever. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just worried if we'll still exist or not. Using ChatGPT to have an email written or whatever, that seems like a good use of time. I have been using ChatGPT to try to admit to me that it's Skynet trying to take over the world. Crystal Carter: Okay. Ryan Laws: There does seem to be a whole genre of people that are trying to work out, "Is this sentient? Is this artificial general intelligence? Is there something much bigger and more terrifying going on?" And I'm just trying to stay in my lane and think about content and SEO, and that's frying my brain as it is, to be honest. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. I'm staying in my lane trying to break it and trying to get to admit all sorts of horrible things. Crystal Carter: But I think that both of those things are the way to look at this new technology, and I think that's something that SEOs are able to bring to the fore. So within the SEO industry and the content industry and the PPC industry, if you're working in it across any of this digital marketing things, if you've been around the block a few times, you've seen the new fancy toy show up and you've learned how to assess it and how to kick the tires to see what it can do. And so I think that it's important to learn and to find the limitations of whatever the new technology is. And I know that you've been experimenting with it within a few ways. What things have you found ChatGPT and content writers to be good at, and what things have you found it to be terrible at or not so good at? Mordy Oberstein: Writing. Ryan Laws: Oh, yeah. It's good at writing and it's terrible at writing. Yeah. Well, yeah, obviously, as somebody who personally has tried to make a living off of writing and works for a company that makes a living off of writing and helping companies grow through writing, we were very, very interested to see, "What can this do? Are we going to have to replace parts of our workflow? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? How do we add value on top of these things?" So over the past couple of years, actually, since GPT-3 was enclosed beta, we've been trying different use cases for it. We've learned quite a lot about the strengths and weaknesses so far. And probably the most bullish use case we're seeing at the moment that I know lots of people are doing, but not necessarily talking about, is actually trying to scale up search content in increasing publishing frequencies to levels that previously just not tenable when you were using people to do that. I think a lot of it comes down to this question of quality, exactly as you say. Is this stuff good? I think it's really important to remember that quality is a totally subjective piece of terminology. If you think about SEO content, you're going to have something that maybe it's a very non-competitive search, maybe people are looking for very pragmatic, utilitarian information. And you can have something that is very basic, just gets the nuts and bolts information across, and that can be quality, that can do the job, that can meet the intent, and that can help companies rank for it. And in those cases, in those non-competitive SERPs, I basically don't see an issue with trying to get an AI writer involved in that part of the process. Crystal Carter: And I think that some of those things appeal to the kinds of things that Google will generally often replace with a quick answer, like, "What is it distance between the Earth and the sun?" If you're using an AI writer to write that up, maybe you want that as something that's of value on your website so that people don't have to leave your website and so people stay within your ecosystem. But from a search point of view, Google's like, "We can just tell you how many kilometers that is or how many miles that is, or how many light years that is. We can just tell you that in the SERP." So from a search point of view, that doesn't add tons of value, but from a user experience point of view within your website ecosystem, that might add value, in which case an AI writer might be something that might be useful to spin up something that's nice to read that doesn't just go, "This many parsecs." Ryan Laws: Yeah, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: That's how I like thinking about this, where there's so much content out there that I can't, as a person, people in general can't add any more unique value anymore. I don't know, what is a tire? It's been done four million times. You're not going to add anything new that hasn't been, no pun intended, written under the sun before. Crystal Carter: We could reinvent the wheel. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, but not the tire. You can't reinvent the tire. Ryan Laws: Well, I think that's a good point, and that brings us to the other end of the quality spectrum, which is a hyper-competitive search where maybe they're big behemoth brands slogging it out with their 10,000 word meticulously optimized skyscraper posts. And in those cases, anyone that is pumping out a very utilitarian, largely unedited AI output are just going to lose. There's nothing more to be added there. So I think a good way of thinking about this technology is a bifurcation of search generally. What is the really simple utilitarian, non-competitive stuff that you can and probably should outsource and just have AI handle? And where should you actually focus your energy and your skill and your expertise? What are the handful of really competitive, really important topics that you should be adding opinion or original research and data and perspective and matter analysis to? Because I think pretty much every company will have both ends of those spectrum they will need to create content for. Mordy Oberstein: So I have a theory about this. What's inevitably going to happen is let's say, for example, everyone writes a piece about, "What is a tire?" And they're using the same AI writers, putting out the same thing. How is Google going to know what to rank at that point for "What is a tire?" And what I think what it's going to do is it's going to look at the domain overall and say, "Hey, you know what? This website is about donuts. It happens to talk about a donut tire. This website is about tires and not about donuts. It's the same snippet of content. Let's take it from the one that's more authoritative topically and show that snippet from that website." So it won't be about the snippet of content anymore, but it'll be about all the other pages and all the other human-created content that you did that builds up the authority so you can rank for that top level keyword like, "What is a tire?" Ryan Laws: I totally agree with that, and I think basically, Google's only method of response to this ... I think as we've seen, it's not hugely tenable to plug every bit of content into a machine to say whether it's AI generated or not. I don't think that's doable. So actually, we're going to see even more emphasis placed on the non-word parts of search, like domain authority, topical authority, those kinds of things, which I think is perhaps slightly problematic because there is a big incumbent's advantage if you're a big established brand. It's probably going to make dominating even easier, and it might make it harder for new entrant into the market. But ultimately, yeah, I don't really see what other choice Google has. You just have to devalue the importance of the words on the page when you can create words on the page so easily, I think. Crystal Carter: So there's a couple of things that occur to me about this, like QA. I think that quality assessment, quality control and content curation, I think will potentially not necessarily be a ranking factor, but I think will be a point of differentiation because, essentially, while we're talking about general knowledge topics, for instance, that you could spin up, like let's say you had a knowledge hub that was a dictionary or something of terms about tires. Let's say we're thinking about terms. This is a hubcap and this is a tread. I don't know. I don't know anything about tires. But anyway, so let's say you have a knowledge hub all about tires for those people who really love tires, and let's say you use an AI writer to write that. One of the tricky things and one of the challenges that I've seen are from my use of AI writers and looking at some of the results that we've seen from being AI's beta and from ChatGPT, and also I was looking at You.com as well, which is a really good one as well, is even for simple things, the facts that they put out sometimes are just nonsense. And the word "AI hallucinations" is now in common parlance because AI writers will just make these things up. I asked it to write a meta description, and I said, "I would like you to summarize this piece of text in a meta description that is 150 characters." And it summarized it in 244 characters, but at the end of it, it said it was 155 characters. And I was like, "That is not 155 characters. That is 244," because I read it through another tool that told me that. And then they said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I will adjust." And then it made another one that was even longer, and I was like, "Okay, that is not what I asked you for. That's wrong." Ryan Laws: It's my Skynet theory. Crystal Carter: Right, so then I asked it another one. So You.com is a generative search tool and it's a lower level of doing what Bing AI is trying to do, but it's doing it now. And I said to it, I said, "Can you name some of the guests from the SERP's Up SEO Podcast?" And what it does is on the side, it generates search results, and then it has the chat, and it will give you comments and it will even provide links as well. But it was saying like, "Oh, Bill Slosky was on our podcast." And with all due respect to Bill Slosky, we started the podcast after he had dearly departed, and so that is not true. That is fundamentally not true, and there's ways that you can verify that just from dates. So the content curation and understanding the limitations of the tools that you're using is really important. How do you advise that people can, at scale ... Because that's the other thing is that you can do lots at once. So how do you check all of that at once? Ryan Laws: Yeah, it's a wonderful point, and I think probably the biggest mistake I see people make thinking about this technology is assuming that it is designed to serve as facts, and that is fundamentally not what it is designed to do. It's basically designed to take whatever disparate prompts or information you give it, smooth them together and create an output that sounds coherent. So in that instance, having somebody that's well known for SEO on a podcast about SEO, that makes sense within its understanding of what should be expected there. But at no point has it gone to try and find what actually happened. And that's just not what this technology does, and that's not something I think it is going to do because who has the resources to vet billions of generated outputs almost every day at this point? You can't do it. So I can't say this is something I've solved at grand scale, not like programmatic SEO where you're publishing hundreds, thousands of articles at once, but we're working at a slightly smaller scale where we are basically having a human in the loop using generative AI as a force multiplier for their already great writing. So we basically think to get the most out of this technology you need a subject matter expert who can review, who can structure, who can critically evaluate what is being generated from the generative AI, and that process is still faster than it would otherwise be. I think sometimes it's a lot more fun for the writer because you get to outsource parts of your thinking, and it can even be better in some instances because it can recommend ideas that you might not otherwise have. It doesn't have the same mental ruts and creative bottlenecks that humans do. But I think to your point, exactly that, having a person to evaluate that and actually stand behind and be willing to put their name to a piece of generated content is absolutely crucial. Otherwise, yeah, we will just very quickly descend into dystopian Wild West if we're just all publishing the outputs of these models wholesale. Mordy Oberstein: What's interesting there is that there's so much talk about AI writers and how it'll impact the content writing job market, and what you're basically describing is a new workflow of how writers will come into the process, which makes me wonder, just to zoom even out from there, how do you feel this whole advent of the AI writer is going to impact, forget SEO for a second, but the web as a whole? Ryan Laws: I think the thought experiment we have to run is we basically have to assume, "What if everything on the internet has in some way been touched by AI generation? How do we navigate that? How do we work forward?" Because I think that is just how we're going to have to think about this. I think it's a dead end trying to work out what is and what isn't AI generated. We have to assume everything is, and at that point, I think provenance becomes the most important thing. When you've got 100 people saying the same thing, you will generally seek out the person you think is most credible on that topic, and that is what we're going to do. I think that is what search engines are going to encourage, and I think we're starting to see that with the addition of extra ease to Google's E-A-T acronym as well. Crystal Carter: They should pick other letters. They could make it a nice acronym, because at the moment it's just E-A-T. Tasty. It's just like, "Come on." Mordy Oberstein: They're just screwing with us because now they know we're going to say that, and now we're going to be stuck, like, "What are you saying?" They're like, "Ah, look at all these SEOs walking around going 'E-A-T' anything." Ryan Laws: Oh, you mean eat or do you mean E-A-T? Mordy Oberstein: There's some Googler laughing at all this, like, "Ah, see what I did there? Ha ha ha!" Crystal Carter: I think that there's still going to be people who are making high quality content, but people who are high authority, I think we might end up in a situation like what we've seen with big scale publishers, with people like the New York Times, like The Atlantic, et cetera, where they gate their content. And this happens on YouTube as well. A lot of YouTubers have gone to a subscription model where you have to pay for their content or you have to sponsor them on Patreon or that sort of thing. So yeah, I think that it's likely to see that sort of thing. When we talk about AI, everybody's using AI in lots of ways already. I use Grammarly all the time. I cannot spell without Grammarly. I use Grammarly all the time. We use visual search tools to generate tags that's just built into Wix. There's lots of things like that. So I think we're using them in lots of different ways. I think it's just a lot more mainstream. Mordy Oberstein: Well, yeah, also more narrow. I don't think if you gave an AI writer, "Here's a paragraph. Regurgitate it, re-summarize it, or write a heading for it," that, to me, seems like a no-brainer. It's a quick thing. It's just taking a very closed input and putting out a very closed output. So those kind of tasks, like no-brainer, go for them. Obviously, you need to check it. I think now that we're seeing things like ChatGPT where we're talking about, "It's an ocean." It's not an enclosed environment anymore, and that's a huge qualitative shift. Crystal Carter: There's so much AI art at the moment, and I think from your perspective, you were saying that we should all assume that everything's AI written. Well, I mean, as somebody who writing for me can sometimes take a long time, it doesn't come naturally to me necessarily, it can sometimes take a long time. So the idea that thing that took me hours and hours and hours to do will now be perceived as being AI-written even though that was blood, sweat and tears for me. I'll be honest, I have some feelings about that. I have some feelings about that. But if that's how things are going forward, I guess that's how things are going forward. But I feel that this must be how artists have felt for the last, I don't know, six, 12 months where a lot of the dolly stuff and mid-journey stuff has been coming to the fore because if I see a picture now, I'm like, "Did you do that or did an AI do that?" I'm not sure. Ryan Laws: Yeah. Probably the thing I hear most from people that are writers or artists is, "We didn't choose this. We've been forced into a world that has ..." in some cases, people think devalued the thing they have invested their entire lives in. There's a lot of that personal meaning imbued in writing and creativity, and I find that, and if I could put this technology back in the bottle, I would be tempted to do it. But again, that's generally not how technology operates, and at least in my capacity as somebody that helps growing companies, I have to use this if there's an advantage to be had. On the art point, though, I do think something can still be beautiful and meaningful and incredible even if it has been generated by AI because there is still a lot of human involvement and curation and process that has gone into that. And actually, I'm sure people felt very skeptical about, "Oh, I can't believe that printing press. This wasn't written by hand. This is devalued. Content should be smaller scale." Or even the emergence of the internet. This democratizing thing of writing where anyone could suddenly write. There was a big influx of terrible writing in addition to great writing as well, and I think it just changes our experience and our perception of it. I don't necessarily think it has to be better or worse in some cases. This is just the new world we find ourselves in, and the composition of what art and creativity means will probably change on the back of that. Crystal Carter: I think there's opportunity there as well. So for instance, speaking on the art point, I've seen people who paint live. They'll paint live in the street as a street performer. They'll paint live, and you know that thing has been created by hand. So if that's something that you value, then you can create that by values. And I think there's potentially opportunities for people to connect in a live setting to- Mordy Oberstein: Watch me write. Pay five dollars to watch me write. Crystal Carter: Well, not necessarily what I was saying. Right. But to connect with that knowledge because the written word, for instance, is a vehicle for a conveying knowledge, and that's what people fundamentally want is knowledge. So the publishing industry, similarly in books, had a decline in people buying non-fiction books. Well, part of that was because people were getting that on YouTube because why would you buy ... You wouldn't buy a book on how to change a tire if you can see a video that you can pause that shows you how to change the tire and has more information even if there was no words on it than if somebody writing and you trying to understand what they're explaining from what they're saying. So I think that there are potentially additional opportunities that come from the way that people are changing how they are accessing information. Mordy Oberstein: I also think it'll create an opportunity for brands to really stick out. If a brand is really dedicating the resources to create really good content, which is even the new space now happening the same way, just at a different angle, you'll start seeing people realize, "Hey, wait a second. While this website, it counted probably a bunch of AI's content, this website looks like really they're putting in the effort to create really unique content," and that'll be a branding asset. Ryan Laws: I'll say on that point, I do think even at that top end of the spectrum, the incredible, unique, amazing content, AI is still going to be involved in that. Probably a different part of the process, probably in terms of ideation and brainstorming and that kind of thing, but I think this technology is just too good. It's going to touch every part of writing that exists within a company within the world. I think it's just too good to not use and not find its way into those processes. Mordy Oberstein: True. Before we have to let you go, I'm curious, with all that, with it's not going anywhere, it's going to touch the process, are we looking at a scenario where at least temporarily the quality of the web's content is going to fall off a cliff? Ryan Laws: My instinct is to say yes, but then I'm reminded of the status quo, and I think we talk about the perils of AI-generated content, but actually it is pretty much the same problems, the same issues that most of the world's current SEO content written by humans has already. Mordy Oberstein: You're saying it can't get much worse. Ryan Laws: No, I think we're already there. We're already at that point. This is going to exacerbate the existing traits of search content, and search content today generally is pretty bad and pretty unhelpful and pretty faceless and very duplicative. Mordy Oberstein: I have ways to build backlinks . Crystal Carter: The content mill model has definitely created a lot of repetitive content with limited value. So I feel like there's opportunities to differentiate, and it's very interesting that also one of the ways that Google can tell whether or not a piece of content is written by AI, or one of the ways they say they can, is whether or not there are videos and other assets to verify some of the content that they have there. So these are things we should see. Ryan Laws: Give me a few days to spin up an AI video workflow, and I can add that into the process and job done. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Ryan, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you? Ryan Laws: I spend too much time on Twitter @thinking_slow and The Animalz blog. That's where I channel all of the writing, all the energies and creative output of our team into talking about content search and AI at the moment as well. Mordy Oberstein: Real human insights on the Animalz blog. Ryan Laws: There's a little bit of machine creeping in there, not going to lie. Crystal Carter: Have you named your AI for your Animalz blogs? I feel like everybody should have a name for the AI tool that they use. Obviously, not how obviously they think they be a nice robot name. Ryan Laws: I haven't yet. No, no. It's probably naming me at this point. Crystal Carter: Was it Sydney? Was that what Chat- Mordy Oberstein: Good morning, Bob. Crystal Carter: I think Bing's AI says it's called Sydney. That's the- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? That's- Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's sentiment. It has named itself. Crystal Carter: I know Barry said that that's what he's called. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, if Barry said, then it must be true. Awesome. Thank you, Ryan. Appreciate it. Ryan Laws: Yeah, thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Talk to you soon. So thank you again, Ryan, for stopping by and sharing your really cool insights about what's going on in the world of AI and content and SEO. Again, follow Ryan on Twitter @thinking_slow, that's thinking_slow on Twitter. Of course, we'll link to Ryan's profile in the show notes. Well, now that we're talking about AI and search engines, did you know there's multiple search engines that have incorporated AI writers or AI chat, rather, into their own results pages? So wouldn't you care to explore what they look like, what they're doing? You would? Yes. Yay! With that, let's dive into search engines integrating with AI chat as we go into so many search engines. Automated: Google's latest update. Popular search engine, Bing. Duck, Duck, Go. Yahoo. AltaVista. Jeeves. Mordy Oberstein: Before we get started, imagine a world where machines have the ability to craft words, to tell stories, and to paint pictures with language where the very essence of human creativity is at the mercy of code and circuitry. Welcome to the world of AI writers, a place where the line between man and machine blurs and the outcomes are both strange and wondrous. You are entering the Twilight Zone. That was the intro I asked ChatGPT to write for this segment. Crystal Carter: Oh my God. Mordy Oberstein: I said, "Write a segment for the SERP's Up Podcast where we talk about AI writers in this tone of the Twilight Zone," and that's what it gave me. Crystal Carter: Okay. Thanks, Gene Roddenberry. Mordy Oberstein: Hm? Gene Roddenberry? That's not Gene Roddenberry, that's Rod Serling or whatever his name is. Crystal Carter: Rod Serling. My bad. No, ChatGPT told me it was Gene. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, ChatGPT. Right, right, right. ChatGPT was wrong. No, anytime I'm wrong about something, I be like, "Oh, AI told me. AI said. The AI was wrong. I would've been right." Crystal Carter: That's what the AI said. They told me that. Mordy Oberstein: So while that intro was incomprehensible, thank you ChatGPT, what essentially we're they're going to do here is there's a bunch of search engines that have integrated AI chats into their SERP's. Google announced they're going to be introducing Bard at some point. Bing already has one. NEVA already has one. You.com already has one, and they all function a little bit differently. So we thought we'd just share with you what we're seeing out there. For example, if I'm on NEVA and I type in SEO, I get a whole thing, "A search engine optimization as a set of practices, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and it has footnotes where it tells me where these pieces of information came from. So for example, as part of its writeup, it says, "SEO involves making small modifications to a part of a website." It got that from Google's documentation in Spanish. Crystal Carter: Oh, wow. It got it in Spanish? Mordy Oberstein: I think so because it's giving me ... Well, actually, it's pulling in ... So when you hover over, so what it does is it gives you a footnote to the corresponding sentence. So every sentence has a footnote, and when you highlight the sentence, where you hover over the sentence, it brings up an aside panel, like Google where the knowledge panel is, it brings up the full link and it says, "Photo number three. Here's a link," and it's in a giant box. And it pulls up an image from that blog also, from that URL also. And the URL is showing me here is from Google, but the image is of Google's search central in Spanish. Crystal Carter: Right. Very interesting. So I did a similar query. So I went into You.com, which is a tool that has a lot of different options, actually. So they have options for using AI for content generation, they have it for generating images, they also have it for queries. And I typed in, "What is SEO," and they gave me a featured snippet paragraph, so a short paragraph describing what SEO is. And they've also referenced an article. So in this case they referenced AA Trusts as well, and as they're generating that content, as they're answering the query, they give you a list of links on the side of that particular query. So on the top, you can see something from Search Engine Land, then from Moz, then from Semrush, then from Mailchimp, then from You. And then also underneath of that, they also put a link to a Wikipedia article that references what SEO is. So in that case, I think on that particular one, I think they've done a good job for that particular query, and I've seen this for other ones. I think we discussed this earlier with Ryan. I've seen mixed results from You.com, but they have explained that the product is in beta and they have a disclaimer underneath their chat. It says, "This product is in beta and its accuracy may be limited. You.com is not liable for content generated." So I think that's important to remember as well. Mordy Oberstein: It's totally true. The answers you're going to get, for example, I asked NEVA, "Is SEO good?" And it gave me pretty much the same answer as "What is SEO?" The last line was, "SEO is an important tool for improving visibility of a website and can be beneficial for a businesses looking to increase our online presence." So it's pretty generic. The first half is totally irrelevant. They gave me a whole thing of "SEO is a practice." It's the same thing as the other one when I asked, "What is SEO?" So it's all going to be improving, I hope. A lot of it's pretty generic, I find. It's not super deep. I think the URLs are pulling from at this point are not super deep. If you're going anything SEO wise, it's basically pulling from Search Engine Land to Moz, at least on the NEVA side. And what's interesting is on the second half of the answer where I'm asking, "Is SEO good?" and it gives me that first part where it tells me what SEO is, there are three citations, two from Moz, one from Backlinko. Where it tells me, "SEO is an important tool, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," there's no citation. I don't know where it got that from. So even though there is citation, it's not citing everything. Crystal Carter: Right. So yeah, that's a similar ... So You.com, I said, "Is SEO good?" It says, "SEO is generally considered to be a good practice as it helps increase visibility, et cetera, et cetera," and goes along those lines. And then they've got a similar sort of thing. So they're pulling from Digital Marketing Institute, from SEJ, from Google, from Forbes. So that's top there. Then they also have a panel that's pulling from Reddit that has some Reddit examples saying, "Is it a good career investment? Is it worth it these days? Is it good for this or that?" So when I compare those search results for "Is SEO good?" on Google, I get roughly the same results that showed up in the sidebar of You.com, which was using generative, and if I go into Bing- Mordy Oberstein: Well, while you're doing that, I do like the way that You.com is putting in the URLs one is you see the organic results. There's a set of results right there. It's not like it's below the fold, underneath the chat box. Also, it does the footnotes, but it has the actual URLs there. On NEVA, it just tells you the name of the site. You.com is giving you, basically, the title tag and the URL, and it's much more prominent. You really notice it that much more. And again, you have the thing on the side, also. Crystal Carter: Right. I was playing around this the other day, and I was like, "Actually, this is pretty good." And again, they're in beta, they're still working things through. But the thing that I found interesting about it was that I think that this is a really good opportunity to see an expansion in a differentiation of search capabilities. So generally speaking, if you wanted to get video searches, you would go on YouTube. But what we're seeing right now is an explosion of people creating their own search engines, using different configurations in order to surface information. And I think that we're living in a really fascinating time for search. It would be interesting to see which ones come out of the end of it and how it all works out, but it's very fascinating. Mordy Oberstein: It is super interesting. I do speculate or wonder that NEVA and You, they have the search, they have the chat, the AI chats, I don't know how much more relevant that makes them the search engine. I saw, for example, someone did a poll in the SEO industry, I forgot who it was, I apologize. But does Bing having a really seemingly good AI experience, does that make Bing more relevant to you as a search engine? And the numbers weren't great. It is interesting, by the way, on the Bing side, and this is going to be something to keep an eye on, I think, again, and we've been focusing on this in the last few minutes, to me this citation is the most important part of all this from an SEO point of view. without the citation, your links are not there, it's a bad practice in general, I don't think it's necessarily an ethical practice. But without it, you don't have traffic coming to the site from those AI experiences, and I do think you will. It's the same thing as a feature snippet. The same thing as direct answer. I type in, "How many home runs did Babe Ruth have?" 714. Let's say there was this part of a featured snippet and there's a URL there. If I feel curious now to learn more about those 714 home runs that Babe Ruth hit, I will click on the URL. If not, not. It's the same thing here. For example, one of the templated answers that Bing has, because I don't have access yet to the beta, if you're listening from Bing, please could I? But one of them is- Crystal Carter: Yes, same. Mordy Oberstein: ... they give you a sample. They give you samples, you can see it. And it's about creating a dinner menu for six people who are vegetarian. And it is cool. It has a whole list of what you should start with as a starter or main and a desert, and it has a bunch of footnotes. And I saw Barry Schwartz report on this recently. Who knows if it'll change or not, but you can't actually see the URLs now until you click, "See more." Crystal Carter: Right, right. You say this is from an SEO point of view, but literally from a skeptical and just from a knowledge base, if I want to know something about something, I want to know where you got that information from, I mean, I need somebody to be able to answer that. And so you say like, "Oh, Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs." Mordy Oberstein: How do you know that? Crystal Carter: How do you know that? Like, "Oh, well, I've got this card, or I read it on this or I saw it on that," because there's lots of people who spout lots of facts and it's important to have a trail for that information in order to qualify how somebody knows one thing or another. So I asked the Babe Ruth question, for instance, into You.com and they pulled up Quora, and that said it was this much. And I could say, "Well, I don't think that's a valid source, for instance. There must be a better source than Quora for a query like that." But to be fair, they've got that ... Oh, and to be fair to them, to You.com, they have an article, they have the SERP showing next to them that says, "Did he actually hit 715 home runs?" Mordy Oberstein: Aha. Aha. Crystal Carter: So is this a debate? Is there something to think about? Mordy Oberstein: By the way, to that point, the chats could be the starting point for a click. So for example, I just searched for, "How many home runs did Aaron Judge hit?" And it without any citations from You.com, "Aaron Judge hit a total of six C2 home runs in the 2022 season." Now I didn't tell You.com I wanted the last season. I really wanted his whole career. So there's a link right next to it from Aaron Judge Statcast and Visuals, blah blah blah. It's a stat website. I'm going to go click on that next. So just because there's no URL or entry point from the chat itself, it could lead to, "Okay, now I need to go to the website that you're showing me right next to it because the AI chat didn't answer the question." Crystal Carter: Right, and I think that the UX here is important. So for the Bing, lots of people have been sharing screenshots and videos and things around and also doing tear-downs of some of the answers. So for instance, Bing previewed their chat bot, their Bing AI, and there was somebody who did an article, Lily Ray shared it recently, and they talked about fact checking some of the things. So I think one of the things they demoed was like, "Oh, plan a trip to Mexico and some great night spots in a town in Mexico." And somebody went through all of these places and they're like, "This place hasn't had any reviews since 2014. This place seems to be completely closed. This place is not a place that a tourist should go to at all." And so they went through and they were like, "That's doesn't really work." But when you look at the way that Bing AI is planning to showcase some of the links that would help you to verify some of the things that they're talking about, from what I've seen, they seem to be putting it below the chat and potentially outside of You or showing the conversation above the search results. And I think this is turning into a You.com love letter, but I think that what You is doing with the side panel I think is working really well. And I think that there- Mordy Oberstein: Showing the results on the side- Crystal Carter: I think is good. Mordy Oberstein: ... next to the chat is great. I love the You. Crystal Carter: I think that's great. And I think also Bing is planning to do side panel, I think, as well with their chat where you're allowed to do that, and I think Google also has a pop-out side panel or something. Mordy Oberstein: There's going to have be something because you're absolutely right, and I think especially in the beginning when people are still skeptical of the answers they're getting from these AI chats, you need to have the URLs there so people can be like, "You know what? Before I actually go ahead and click pay or do this, I'm just going to go to the website." And if it's annoying to get to the URLs, it's going to make your search engine annoying to use. So there's incentive to have the URLs there. I don't think we're heading to 100% zero-click universe because of the AI chat experience on search engine. So don't worry. Check out You.com. Check out NEVA.com. They have some really cool experiences there. You can see what's happening. It's going to get better. I think what you see there now is only the beginning. So it's like, "Oh, this is not good," I think it's only the beginning of all these things. You can check out. If you're using Edge, you can see the examples that Bing has also and interact with them, and you can sign up for the wait list, unless they already opened it up for everyone by the time this comes out. But that will be news. That'll be new. Crystal Carter: And the people that I've been following who've been chatting about this consistently, Barry's been talking a lot about this, Brady Clark as well. Glenn Gabe has also been talking about some of the different features that he's seen on ThinkChat. So if you ask them very nicely, they might query something for you, maybe. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Not to put them to work. Mordy Oberstein: Follow them first. "Hey, I followed you." Crystal Carter: Follow them first. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Now, if Bing did open up its AI chat experience for everybody, that would be in the news. Would it be in this week's news? I don't know. But there most likely will be something related to AI in the news. Most likely. Who knows? Well, let's find out as we get into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, this is the AI episode of the SERP's Up SEO Podcast. So what better time than now? And to let you know that GPT-4 is coming. If you love AI writers, then yay! If you hate AI writers, then the sky is about to fall. For Roger Montti over at Search Engine Journal, open AI is about to release ChatGPT 4, or GPT-4, rather. What makes GPT-4 better than GPT-3? Well, it has a four, and four is higher than three. Also, it's a multi-modal model, which means that the one area of AI where most of us still saw Google as visibly ahead, i.e, MUM, multimodal unified model, will now be part of the Bing-verse. What is multimodal? What is this multimodal thing that I speak of? Well, usually with machine learning, which by the way, all this stuff is not AI, all of it is machine learning. But why split hairs anyway? The usual case with machine learning is you have one input and one output. So you input text, you get back text, much like ChatGPT is now. Well, multimodal means you can get back all sorts of media, say video, for instance. Google does this with Lens, if you want to see what this actually looks like in reality. So for example, you take a picture of some bike part that you have no idea what its name is. For me, that's all of the bike parts, other than the pedals and the brakes, and you write a text input, let's say, "How to fix?" Because again, you don't know what the thing is called, so you're taking a picture of it and you're hoping Google can match it up. And Google does match up the image, which it identifies, let's say, as the chain. And then it gives you results on how to fix a bike chain because you didn't know, like me, that that was called the chain. Well, clearly I knew it was called the chain because I just said it was called the chain. How did I know? Fourth walls aside, multimodal means a multimedia synergy. And that's the direction of the new GPT-4. Also, like Google MUM, it'll have a focus on working across multiple languages. I've always wanted Google to do more with MUM, it's multimodal technology. Well, MUM is open source, but Google MUM. Again, splitting hairs. I really hope they will reshape the Google results page and I think it eventually will. But now Microsoft is involved with open AI as well with this whole multimodal thing. So I guess let the multi-modal wars begin. Anyway, on a totally separate note, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, the February 2023 product review update is over. Goodbye and good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, or if your site did well, nice seeing you. Come again. Either way, the chances that your site was impacted with this product of the You update was far greater than with the recent iterations of the more recent product of You updates per a heap of Semrush data that I pulled, which you could see in the article from Barry, which is linked to in the show notes. Personally, I've looked at hundreds of keywords, and the ranking trajectories here, you could see it in the trends, are way more significant. There's way more significant drop-offs. Where you see a page ranking for a keyword, dive 10 or 15 positions down off of page one and onto page two, I tend to see the increases being less drastic here, but that is more than a little anecdotal. So take that as you will. And last up, and again from he, the great Barry in the sky over at Search Engine Land, Google rolled out new site names, Favicon and Sponsor Label on Desktop Search. Barry, if ever a headline set up the entire article, that is it. So you go to Desktop on Google, you will now see favicons, a label that re-sponsored and not ads for the ads, and site names above the URL, meaning the name of the site, or if you've been using the desktop version of the SERP over the last month or so, nothing has changed. It just officially rolled out. For this site name, by the way, Google has a few ways to make the determination, but one way is via website structured data markup, so make sure you have that set up. And with that, that is this week's version of the Snappy News. So was the news, so was the news. And before we do depart, we do need to tell you who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. And because we're talking about AI and AI writers and SEO, you should be following DataChaz on Twitter. That's @DataChaz, and that would be Charly Wargnier, who does an absolute ton around AI and SEO, who's constantly talking about it. He's been all over it. Crystal Carter: He's been on board since as far as ... Since it's broke, as a big thing, he's been all about it. And he's always been about data and things anyway. Mordy Oberstein: And technology. Crystal Carter: And a bit of a technologist. But he's been fully on board. So if you are planning to keep track of how things are developing, he's a great follow. He shares great resources for that, including different kinds of prompts you can try, different tools that are using it, different things that are working. And I think while he's very enthusiastic about the technology, I think he also has a healthy skepticism. So he's aware that there are challenges, and he's very much aware about having those conversations and making sure that we're having conversations that are talking about all of the fantastic things, but also all of the things that are still in the works. So I think he's a good follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And he's one of the forerunners of the SEO Python world. He's got a great website called seopythonistas.com, which happens to be a WIx website where he honors the work that Hamlet Batista of Blessed Memory contributed around Python to the SEO community. There's an enormous amount of resources at seopythonistas on Hamlet's work and other SEOs contributing to the Python conversation. So check out that website, and of course, follow Charly on Twitter @DataChaz. That's D-A-T-A-C-H-A-Z on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So hopefully you'll do that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, do that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And I would have a snazzy outro where I said the AI writer is going to write the outro, but I don't feel like that would be fair to our audience because they didn't do a great job with the ... The Twilight Zone theme was great and hilarious, but I don't think it was the best intro for our last segment. Crystal Carter: How did they used to end The Twilight Zone? Mordy Oberstein: They just had the music. Pick out to music. Do, do, do! Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into building a solid SEO team with a very special guest contribution. Who will it be? You'll have to see. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to a learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a reading 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

Ann Smarty is the co-founder of Smarty.Marketing. She specializes in SEO for AI and Reddit marketing. She is the former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal and writer for prominent digital marketing blogs, including Moz and Mashable. Ann Smarty Co-founder of Smarty Marketing Ann Smarty is the co-founder of Smarty.Marketing . She specializes in SEO for AI and Reddit marketing. She is the former editor-in-chief of Search Engine Journal and writer for prominent digital marketing blogs, including Moz and Mashable. Articles & Resources 19 Jan 2023 Old content, new value: How and why you should refresh content Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Does a topical expert need to write your content in order to rank? Quality content is nuanced content built on experience and expertise. This week, Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter analyze how you can integrate expert authority into your content. Hear insights from none other than Senior SEO Analyst at the Mayo Clinic Will Peters about the ways expert-led content can demonstrate a large scope of knowledge within an organization's brand. Plus, Mordy and Crystal investigate how different engines handle sensitive queries. Learn how to integrate expert-led content into your SEO strategy this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Are expert opinions in your content an SEO must? Does a topical expert need to write your content in order to rank? Quality content is nuanced content built on experience and expertise. This week, Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter analyze how you can integrate expert authority into your content. Hear insights from none other than Senior SEO Analyst at the Mayo Clinic Will Peters about the ways expert-led content can demonstrate a large scope of knowledge within an organization's brand. Plus, Mordy and Crystal investigate how different engines handle sensitive queries. Learn how to integrate expert-led content into your SEO strategy this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 75 | February 21, 2024 | 52 MIN 00:00 / 52:27 This week’s guests Will Peters Will Peters is a seasoned techninal SEO expert and marketing strategist, currently serving as the Senior Search Engine Optimization Analyst at Mayo Clinic. With a knack for developing and implementing effective SEO strategies, Will excels in solving digital challenges and fostering collaboration. His expertise spans SEO, content marketing, web analytics, and more. Passionate about educating stakeholders, he thrives on using the power of search to drive business growth. 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 reporting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by a very authoritative, the very expert, opinionated SEO person, opinionated in the best way possible, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. That didn't come out right. I'm going to say that now. It didn't come out right. Crystal Carter: She's got a lot of opinions, a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: But good ones. Crystal Carter: Yeah, but it's okay to have it. You know when you're digging yourself a hole and you're like, "I don't know how to-" Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that was literally me, like shoveling my own grave. Crystal Carter: That's always the worst when you know you're doing it and you just know that you're shoveling yourself further down the hole. Mordy Oberstein: This is my entire life. Crystal Carter: Sometimes you just have to wave a little flag and just, "Nevermind. I'm just going to keep moving." Mordy Oberstein: Stop. I literally, I'm just going to stop here. Crystal Carter: All I really wanted to say was respect my authority. Which I know nobody remembers where that's from. I'm not even sure if- Mordy Oberstein: I was never a South Park person, but I know that, obviously. I'm not like I don't live under a rock. Crystal Carter: Precisely. There's also, South Park has some classics in... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's like the Blame Canada thing. I know that. Crystal Carter: This is not about respect. Yes, but we don't want to blame Canada. Speaking of digging a hole, like I heart Canada. So let's just make that- Mordy Oberstein: Let's move on. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also automate your content distribution with Wix's deep integration with Zapier. Client has a new event, zap it, set of automated posts across social to get your client's content out there. So zap, zap, zap, zap. As today, we're going into content that is expertly written, which you can distribute your expertly written content with Zapier. Get it? Now it makes sense. We're taking up the very important question, do you need to have actual experts writing your content for you, what an expert voice lends to your content from an SEO point of view, how to integrate expert voices into your content, and when you do and don't need expert created content, and to what degree you do to begin with. To help give us an expert opinion and an expert voice to our own content, Crystal will soon be joined in an interview, the none other, none other than the Mayo Clinic's own senior SEO analyst, Will Peters, who if you've been on the SERP before, knows a thing or two about expert led content. We'll also have a look at how different search engines handle sensitive queries that relate to your money or your life. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So buy yourself some credibility because as John Mellencamp said, "I fight authority. Authority always wins." On this, episode 75 of the SERP's Up Podcast. That's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. I used to be a Mellen head. Crystal Carter: Okay. That's fair enough. Fair enough. Mordy Oberstein: Back when he was John Cougar. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah. John Cougar Mellencamp. Mordy Oberstein: Right. There's John Cougar, then John Cougar Mellencamp. Just, dude, decide on a name and just stick to it. Crystal Carter: Is he Jack & Diane? Is that Jack and- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's Jack & Diane. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Okay. All right. Mordy Oberstein: I'm dating myself here. And calling myself out as being completely lame with my musical taste. Crystal Carter: Hey, man. That's still on the top 40. That's still on the old deal. Like when you hit them radio stations, it's still on there. It's still the rotation. Mordy Oberstein: It's there. It gets a lot of clapping in his songs. Lot of clapping. Crystal Carter: Yeah. It's all good. Oh, I love a soul clap. I like- Mordy Oberstein: Everyone like, yeah. Crystal Carter: There's Dobie Gray has a great song that has the (singing). That's got a great clap in it. And also Wilson Phillips. Mordy Oberstein: You could do a lot with clapping and stomping. That classic John Lennon song, all we're saying, give peace a chance. All of that sound was people stomping on stuff in his hotel room. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. There's a lot of good things you can do there. And I mean, it's something that if you were an expert in the field of musical recording, then you might be able to harness that to add more human experience and demonstrate the human experience of that song with those claps. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. So before we get into Crystal's wonderful chat with Will Peters from the Mayo Clinic, let's just have a little bit of background on why we're even talking about this. So I always go back to 2018 and the Medic Update, which was officially termed the August 2018 Core Update. And out of that, because we saw that Google tended to impact content that was in the medical field, hence it was Medic Update, it really sparked a lot of change in the SEO conversation about Google being much more critical of what they call your money your life content, YMYL content, content that actually impacts your life or your money. And for some people, their money is their life, which is not a good thing. But all those kinds of queries, Google rightfully so. You don't want bad advice about investing in whatever stock. You don't want bad advice about how to deal with, I don't know, a heart problem. It's certainly not the same as looking up a sports score. Crystal Carter: There's a great article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub written by George Wynn, our editor in chief, and he gets into some of those things, like that you might think about which things may or may not be a YMYL topic. So like if you're an information query, we'd ask say like, "Could significant harm result from an inaccurate information?" for instance. And let's say for thinking about evacuation rates for a tsunami, that's A YMYL topic. That's one example. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Right there. A lot of stuff that you wouldn't think is. Even stuff related to your pet's health, that's considered YMYL. There are categories, for example, shopping is technically your money your life category because of the checkout. But what I've seen over years of looking at is that Google doesn't treat that algorithmically the same thing as a piece of content about, I don't know... I don't know, you getting a colonoscopy, bad example, got a heart attack. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So because it's technically YMYL, but the content itself in that case is not YMYL. Crystal Carter: But I think that they do other things for that shopping content. So for instance, so in order to be eligible on Google Merchant, they have a lot of YMYL checks, for instance. So they make sure that your business details are correct, that you have all of your shipping information that you're clearly able to trade in that region. There's lots of criteria that are associated with that. Also, if you're doing e-commerce, a lot of people are doing ads and a lot of the ads requirements for different sectors will have YMYL requirements in them. One of the things that I always tell people is if you're working in a sensitive sector in something that's regulated, have a look at what the ad requirements are and that can give you a steer- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point Crystal Carter: ... as to whether or not it's a YMYL category and the kinds of things that Google are expecting. Because if you are trying to advertise on Google and you don't have your who you are and what your shipping details are and all of those sorts of things, or if you don't have clear credentials or you're not registered with the appropriate regulating body, they won't let you advertise. They will flag your advertisements, they will stop your advertisements. So if they're doing that on the ad site, then that can also give you a steer on the search side as well. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Which is why people look at things like also looking at the Quality Raters guidelines, which may not be algorithmically implemented, but it does show you what Google is looking for fundamentally, which is why the Quality Raters guidelines have become such a big part of the SEO conversation as it pertains to YMYL. By the way, on the ad side, if you are running, let's say a YMYL website, you have to be much more careful with the ads that you were running or how many ads you're running, or how promotional your content is because of that. So all of this stuff brings up the question of EEAT, experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. So today we're focused on the second E, which used to be the first E, which is expertise. If you're trying to build content that's trustworthy, that's actually not harmful and actually helpful, then in a lot of these scenarios, because they're very technical or they're very important or the lightest little detail can really mess you up, you really need that level of expertise. And I'll give you a classic, or a great example of this. I forgot which update it was. I used to have them all memorized the May 2020 Core Update. It's all a giant mush in my brain at this point. As I get older, the numbers, they don't stick the same way. But one of the updates I was looking at, there was a page, I believe it was from Healthline, and it was about there was a variation of bipolar disorder that is debated whether or not it is part of the bipolar disorder spectrum or it's not, and it's up for question, it's up for debate. And all of the content from, for example, the Mayo Clinic was pretty transparent about that term. I forgot the name, the medical name. And when they talked about it, they would say, "Medical experts question whether or not this is or is not part of the bipolar disorder spectrum." The Healthline content didn't. It just said that it was, and that page got killed on one of the updates because it didn't have that level, I think in my mind, I'm speculating just a bit, obviously, we don't 100% know, that level of expertise was not as nuanced as Google would've liked it to be for that particular query. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that that nuance and that those caveats are things that show that you are an expert. I think about when I was studying physics in high school. First they tell you Newtonian physics, yes. What goes up must come down. They tell an object traveling in motion, and then they tell you the speed of light is consistent all across the universe. Then as you get older or then as you progress through it, they tell you those things first of all. Then as you progress through it, they're like, "Sometimes it gets a little bit... Sometimes there are some cases where those things like Newtonian physics doesn't do…" Mordy Oberstein: Right. Like the national debt- Crystal Carter: All the time. Mordy Oberstein: ... it doesn't seem to come down. It just keeps going up. Crystal Carter: So there are some things where like, "Oh, this is a rule all the time." And then as you become more experienced, it's like, "We told you that rule so that you could get to the next stage, and if you don't know that next stage, then it's a sign that you don't know, that you're not an expert." And so sometimes caveats are important. I think I recently had somebody come and help me fix a shed. I was like, "Oh, I want to fix my shed." And the guy came over, he looked at it and he was like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." Then he looked at it again and he actually came back and was like, "We can't fix this shed because this will come down in six months because of this, this, this, this and this." Right? And he's an expert. I can tell that he's an expert because he went through those extra checks and didn't just go straight through it and just go, "Yeah, I can fix this and do a terrible job." So I think that sometimes people worry about adding in those caveats, people worry about adding in the elements that maybe make it not such a hard sell, but I think that it often is more of a sign of strength. So if you say that like, "This product is great for this, this, this and this, but it's not great for this, this and this," then that means that you've thought about that. Mordy Oberstein: I've talked about this a lot. If you ask me what's my definition of quality content, it's nuanced content. And nuanced content has to be either built on actual experience or expertise. And those two kind of overlap because experience is a form of expertise. Crystal Carter: So for instance, medical content, for instance... And I'm so pleased that we're talking to the Mayo Clinic because they do some incredible content across the web. But I think that one of the things that you see with medical stuff, and particularly with medical products, they always have to put the side effects. They always have to put the potential- Mordy Oberstein: Even in commercials. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Right. Half the commercial is all that. Mordy Oberstein: Is that. Crystal Carter: Right. They're like, "Oh, this will be wonderful for you." They're like, "Oh, your leg might fall off as well." And you're like, "what? What'd you say that?" And there's like somebody skipping through a meadow. Mordy Oberstein: And people are smiling in the commercial while they're saying it. It's fine. Crystal Carter: It's like slow motion, skipping through a stream. Mordy Oberstein: Right, skipping. "Your leg might fall off, your head might fall off, all of your hair will fall off." The person's like so happy and like rowing. Crystal Carter: Blowing a dandelion. Yeah, I know it's not like... But I do think that you need to tell people the full range of information, and that again, comes from a point of strength because then somebody can make an accurate decision about whatever it is that they want do. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And that's good for... Right. It's good for your users. Forget the SEO part. It's just good for the people consuming your content. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's also good for customer service things and stuff as well, because then it's the stair, it's on the thing. So you won't have somebody coming back going, "Oh, hey, but I used my laptop underwater and it didn't work." It's like, "We said on the website that you shouldn't be using this laptop-" Mordy Oberstein: There you go. You can't hide from reality. Reality always come back to bite you somehow. So just be real. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. And I think that that's particularly important for YMYL. On the Hubs article, they talk about a few different categories. So for instance, like health and safety, if it's something to do with something like a car seat or something like that, or any of those financial security topics that could damage a person's ability to support themselves or their families, this is totally true. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I mean, there's so much content that you think is not YMYL, but it actually is. Crystal Carter: Right. And then they say it's society, topics that can negatively impact groups of people, issues of public interest, trust or in public institutions. And I think that this can be something that people don't think about with like opinion pieces on political things that are happening, for instance, or historic things that are happening. If you were to write an article about a historical event, you would need to have a bibliography. That's good practice or copious links. That's good practice for lots of reasons, but also so that people can trace where you got that information from. Mordy Oberstein: I always say links are also not just like, "Okay, links." Links are a citation. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: It's a new footnote. It's a link. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Precisely. And it's why like Wikipedia is full of links and it's full of things. Mordy Oberstein: Truly. Crystal Carter: And it's why people... If you're on Wikipedia and you claim something and you don't have a link, people will take it off. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: Wikipedians will take it down. Like you can't just make up links. Mordy Oberstein: The Wikipedians. Crystal Carter: The Wikipedians.. Mordy Oberstein: They live on a special magical land. Crystal Carter: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: It is true. Okay. So we have an absolute treat for you. If you're from the SEO world, you know what a treat this is because there is no super authority in the YMYL space like the Mayo Clinic. They understand producing expert-led content like none other. They rank for it like none other. So you're going to get an inside scoop on creating expert-led content from... no one could be possibly better than this, the senior SEO analyst at the Mayo Clinic, Will Peters. Here's Crystal's chat with Will. Crystal Carter: I am so pleased to be joined here today by Will Peters, who is the senior search engine optimization analyst over at the Mayo Clinic, who is joining us here today. And he's going to be talking to us about how you can engage experts, real actual experts in your content creation process. Thank you so much for joining us today, Will. Will Peters: Thanks for having me. Crystal Carter: I mean, Will can attest to you that I basically followed him all over brightonSEO because I was so excited to meet you and things. I think most SEOs have seen the content from the Mayo Clinic and what y'all are doing over there, and it's kind of the gold standard. So I think it's great to be able to get some insights on how you do what you do, especially around EEAT. I might kick that off with that one. Is that something that you as an SEO think about a lot, EEAT and YMYL, and all those sort of things? Will Peters: Oh, absolutely, is part of the framework and the Bible we must do. So it's one of those things where those terms are pretty much the SEO jargon that we use when we're talking to the content writers and we're talking to the physicians and whoever else, is getting them to really understand the impact of it. But yeah, it's a lot of evangelism at Mayo for SEO. So it was kind of, they hear SEO, they know, "Oh yeah, we've got SEO, we got to put some SEO on this thing." It becomes this kind of thing that you just put it, "Let's put some SEO on this content. Let's just throw it in there after we've done our thing. Hey guys, can you get in here and do some SEO?" But what we've done is really just start to build a framework of content development. So SEO is considered from the beginning of topic selection through the end of actual. And then we may still do a review at the end just to make sure it is fulfilling, but it's a mindset of thinking EEAT from the beginning through the entire process that really makes it more of embedded within the Mayo Clinic culture. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that that process of the evangelism that you mentioned there, I think is really key. So when you're thinking about how you engage experts, like real topic knowledge, the physicians you mentioned in the process, are you engaging them with training or with an all team session where you're getting them engaged with that process? Because I think that that's something that certainly when I've worked in YMYL topics, getting people who are like, they're the physicians, they're the doctors, they're the lawyers, they're out there doing the stuff. Sometimes it can be difficult to get them on board with the process of content and SEO. So what is your process for doing that? Will Peters: They are super busy. Crystal Carter: I mean, they do- Will Peters: And it's probably not even on their list of priorities, right? They're dealing with tumors and some real things and SEO- Crystal Carter: Let me just talk to you about these keywords. I know you're trying to save lives, but- Will Peters: Yeah. Right. They are totally... So there's several different layers between where I sit and where the physician is sitting, and we rarely cross paths unless it's like a quick five minutes of even... So we've got some layers. So I typically engage with the layers of the content writers, the editors, the ones that actually run the taxonomy of our content. So those are the folks I really engage with, and they engage me from a, "Okay, we want to make sure we're keeping an SEO in mind as we're developing the content." But with the content, it still has a medical review. So at some point, the physician and/or the medical experts will review the content just to make sure it's in line. And so I say that to say time, it's a huge constraint, right? Priorities when they're thinking about SEO versus, "I'm working on this tumor." Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Will Peters: But they would like to share the knowledge that they've learned from a procedure. So we do have peer learnings where... And it's real peer community. It may appear competitive between different hospitals and different clinics, but as we learn, it's a shared wisdom that they want to share with the peers. So as they're going through procedures, they're documenting. So we want to take that documentation and share it in a careful way. So the overall medical community learns from each procedure. It's a tedious process, but they're open to sharing the wisdom, which makes it totally fascinating. Crystal Carter: And I think that speaks to the value of genuinely expertly-led content is that you are helping to improve the whole corpus of professional content around what you're doing in your space. And it helps to drive the conversation, which is beyond SEO, but it obviously benefits SEO because people who are wanting to learn the latest techniques or the most effective way to manage that particular medical situation are going to be coming to you because they know that you have really knowledgeable content there. And I think that you also spoke to time, and certainly in my experience of working with experts, they don't have a lot of time. If you have a question, you need to be ready with the specific. Will Peters: Absolutely, absolutely. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think for that process, is that something where you have a very clear set of like, "I've got five minutes and I need to tick off this, this and this, or I've got this piece of content. Can you just tell me, have I paraphrased this correctly?" What's your general way of making sure that you're mindful of people's time, but also getting good value? Will Peters: One of the things I've done in the past that has worked well is I have to be convenient and flexible. I need to be open to the movements of their schedules. So they may say, "Yeah, I have some time," but when that time is, we don't know. So I've got to be flexible. It's like, "Okay, I've got these slots here. Here are the various slots that we can work with, but we're open to move that around as well." And they're pretty open to sharing because one of the founding of the Mayo brothers, and I don't know if the audience knows the history of Mayo Clinic. Crystal Carter: I don't. I'm interested. Will Peters: So it was founded by two brothers. And essentially one brother was tasked with working onsite, and one was tasked with going out, discovering new medical procedures, new science, new technology, new ways of completing procedures or new ailments or new solutions, et cetera. And one brother was tasked with being onsite, working and discovering himself and sharing that wisdom. So from the beginning, it's kind of interesting that they've built within the culture of sharing what they've learned with the overall medical community as well as patients and health information seeker. So it's built into the fabric of Mayo Clinic to go out to seek wisdom and share the wisdom that we learn. But yeah, totally being flexible and convenient for what they're working on is the key of we know what the mission and kind of vision is. We have to be flexible to receive that. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. I think that's really, really interesting. And I think that it helps you to get great value from people in a time that's respectful of their time. Will Peters: Right? Yeah. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit about some of the sort of more on page kind of stuff. So what are some of the things that you do on an SEO level to demonstrate expertise, authority, and trust? One of the things that I've found with clients is they sometimes they're like, "Oh, but we are good at this thing. But we do have this." I'm like, "Yeah, but it doesn't say it on your website. We can't see it on your website and we need to evidence it." What's your general approach to that? Do you have any tips you could share with somebody? Will Peters: So currently what's happening, I mean with the SEO process is really, it's one of the expert, like the actual author, but then do you have some data-driven diagrams, proof backed by some expert sources? And being Mayo Clinic, we have a lot of the expertise in-house. We've got writers, we've got physicians, we've got, I mean, some really smart people on the team. So we do have a medical school as well, so it's kind of like we've got research, we've got education, we've got actual procedures, so we've got a ton of expertise in-house that we source from. But even these experts, they're sourcing and they're learning consistently to become better experts within their field. So we absolutely do not have an issue with finding experts within each domain. We can go into neurology, we can go into orthopedics, and we have research, we have education, and then we have actual procedures. So we are not short on expertise. It only just boils down to time. Crystal Carter: Right. But I think also, I think there's a lot of companies, particularly companies that have been working for... And even outside of a core YMYL space, so even outside of a medical space, I think there's a lot of companies that have a lot of resources that they are not tapping into. Like you mentioned people who are in the core of your business, but you also mentioned the medical school, you also mentioned folks doing other stuff, and I very often find that companies' websites will have untapped resources that they're not engaging with in order to demonstrate a breadth of knowledge. And I think it's a real missed opportunity, I think. Will Peters: Yeah. One other thing is really to engage them. You've got to share with them what's the goal and purpose. What are we really doing? Is it built into... Is this something that's built into the overall company fabric? Who are we when we position ourselves? So Mayo has always positioned themselves as a resource. So not only a resource to patients, but also a resource to other physicians, to other peers within the community. So when you start to look at your brand and how you want to lead, I think many times... Even having this conversation, I had to kind of run it by Mayo and say, "Is this okay?" And the leadership was like, "This is built into our fabric of sharing with the peers and the community, so totally open to sharing how we do things and why we do things and the mission and vision of Mayo." So yeah, they were totally open to it. And I think other companies can learn from that is if you build that type of the brands of the future will be positioned as resources. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Will Peters: Because how do we further whatever industry that you're in, if each company is not sharing what they've learned, what they've discovered with others, and as they grow, they share. And as they learn, they share. We learn and we share, right? So I think with other companies, engaging your experts is helping them to understand that type of culture is trust building because now the patients and your peers start to look to you as, "Oh, wow, let's partner. That's where I want to go for in my procedure. That's where I want to go for." Different companies, it could be a car dealership. "That's where I want to go for my next car because I hear them always sharing expertise on vehicles, on the buying process, how to find the best financing for your vehicle." I think there's a disconnect with companies that want to hide a lot of things and it doesn't further grow the community. And I just went through a car buying experience, and so that's why that suddenly popped up. But I think there's a lot to be shared from a car buying experience, but it seems like it's very secretive, right? It's like when you find third parties sharing the wisdom when a car dealership could be the leader in sharing how to actually pick out the vehicle, how to actually get the best financing deal, what type of profile do you need to build and have, and then competitors can look. So you can either be a competitor or a peer, but we're moving forward the car buying experience for all, but we're also building trust. Crystal Carter: Right. I think the other thing is that people think, "Oh, well, we don't want to show them all this stuff." Nine times out of 10, somebody can look it up on some Reddit thread somewhere or somebody else shares it anyway. So all it does is it makes you look like you're hiding something. And like you said, that doesn't build trust. I think that what you're saying about companies of the future, I think you're absolutely right that brands that are sharing and brands that are leading the conversation with high quality, high grade authoritative information, like the kind that's built into the fabric of your company, I think that that is going to make the difference when there's so much noise from so many players, adding so much content that they may or may not be experts in. I think that if you're able to demonstrate a breadth of knowledge, that's going to make a really, really big difference. And I think that you get a lot of people that say, "Oh, I don't want to give it away for free. I don't want to write all my stuff on the blog." You've heard this before in your SEO career, I'm sure. Will Peters: Right. Yeah. Crystal Carter: And it's very strange. It seems counterintuitive, but the more you share, the more you get back. Will Peters: Right. Right. Well, one of the teams I'm on is really the brand Mayo and about Mayo. What is Mayo? What does Mayo stand for? So we're actually actively working on that. There's several segments of... One is we have health information, we have about Mayo, and then we have actual procedures, et cetera. So there's a multifaceted way of how we deliver content from these different spaces, whether it be research, whether it be education, whether it be procedures. But really when we start to talk about the brand, is we look for brand signals. And if our information is in enough places where people start to recognize, we've noticed that the mention of Mayo Clinic starts to grow, whether it be through Google Trends or whether it be just our name mentions when we use our search console and just look and see, "Okay, well how is our brand really looking? Is it growing? Is it decreasing in comparison to our peers that are not sharing that wisdom?" And you can see those that are not sharing their content or their expertise, you can actually see their brands decrease in mentions versus those that's actually sharing great quality, high grade content, you can actually watch their brands grow. Crystal Carter: That's absolutely true, and I think that's a great point to end on. Thank you so, so much for your time today. Will Peters: Oh, no problem. Thank you. Crystal Carter: It's been an absolute joy. We should let you grow your personal brand as well. Where can people find you, Will? Will Peters: Probably LinkedIn. It's my hub. I'm on LinkedIn regularly. I need to do more with my LinkedIn and probably start doing some content, but Mayo keeps me pretty busy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's all good. It's a big job. Will Peters: It is. I'm always happy to have a conversation with individuals that want to talk strategy, talk analysis and actionable insights. I love data and filtering through to find the story within the data and humanizing the data. It's not just search volume, it's not just clicks. These are actual visitors with real needs, real questions, and personalizing that data into something that is meaningful I think will be helpful for all brands. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much again for your time. Will Peters: You too. Crystal Carter: I'm so happy to have you on. Thank you so much, Will Peters. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to say, Crystal, that was phenomenal and it's amazing just to see what goes on behind the scenes. And look, there is no other website like the Mayo Clinic for expert-led content and is a real treat that you were able to bring Will on the show. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it was great speaking with him, and I think that they're a really good example of a website that's been in this space for a while. They've been doing content like that. They think they were one of the first websites that's been doing content like that for a long time, so there's a lot to learn from them. And I think that even if you are a smaller website, even if you are not working in the medical space, there are definitely recommendations and things that you could apply to the work that you're doing to make your content more robust and to make your work with experts more streamlined. Mordy Oberstein: Now, one of the things I like to do in general is to reverse engineer the SERP. If you're looking at how do I handle expert-led content or YMYL kind of content, well go look at how Google handles it and in this case, go look how Bing handles it also, because they also do some really cool things. So we are going to take a little bit of a dive into how different search engines handle YMYL queries differently as we go with our little segment that we like to call So Many Search Engines. Mordy Oberstein: So I just did a little query. Every SEO is the go-to queries. My go-to query for YMYL stuff is heart attack symptoms. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know why. I think maybe I'm unconsciously scared of having a heart attack. I don't know. Crystal Carter: Hey, it's something that affects a lot of people. Mordy Oberstein: It does. I went to the doctor recently. I got my blood checked, everything's good, so I shouldn't have this fear, but I think I have heart disease in my family, I think that's why. Too much information. Crystal Carter: I think a lot of people do. Yeah. Yeah. But donate to a heart charity near you. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, please do. And watch your own heart health, by exercising and eating a balanced diet. Crystal Carter: Team K all over here. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, let's look on Google and Bing say about this. We just ramble off all advice that no one really wants to hear. Crystal Carter: With no expertise. Mordy Oberstein: With absolutely no expertise whatsoever. Crystal Carter: Don't listen to us. Mordy Oberstein: No, I think you should exercise. That's good advice. That's pretty generic. Crystal Carter: I think so. Yeah, I think that's pretty... Yeah, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Probably take my own advice. With that, I just ran heart attack symptoms into Bing, and I ran it into Google, and you get back very different approaches to it. First off, I'll just say Bing's approach to it is very layered and it's very visual, and they're trying to give you multiple layers of information right away. They do some really interesting things I was not expecting. For example, they have a little carousel and it says it's a story that is AI-generated and it goes through heart attack symptoms and preventions. It says, "Story is AI-generated" and it gives you the sources from it and it tells you the most common symptom is X, Y, and Z. Or some people also may experience whatever, whatever symptoms. And it tries to run you through all, I guess, the top level information that you might want to know about heart attack symptoms. But it's AI-generated, which I was very surprised that they would be okay with doing for this because AI sometimes hallucinates. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I can see that. I guess for some things, like the only case I would make for that is that LLMs are using a lot of established content. So I think for something that's a less dynamic query, that's maybe less... I think that the information on heart attacks doesn't change super rapidly, so it could very well be the case that they're more confident with referring to a corpus of information that's fairly solid. Do you know what I mean? Like if you were to talk about- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, I get it. And the information is great. There's nothing wrong or bad about the information. I was just a little bit surprised. But you're right, because the sites that they're quoting are the Mayo Clinic, the CDC, the Heart Association. I guess they're confident enough. I wonder if they've limited their database to say, "Okay, these are the sites you're allowed to pull from for these kind of queries," and that's fine. Crystal Carter: Right. That could very well be the case. I mean, similarly, I looked on Bard for what are heart attack symptoms in women, because I don't think people actually understand that women can tend to have different ones. For instance, Bard is pulling through basically a bullet point. So they've got common symptoms in both men and women, common symptoms with more common with women, important to remember. And they have here a list of sources, helpful resources for further information. Now they're referencing the American Hearts Association, the British Heart Foundation. Okay, here's interesting. So they say, "Reference American Heart Association," but it doesn't go to the American Heart Association website, it goes to CBS news article. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's interesting. Crystal Carter: With the American Heart Association. The British Heart Foundation goes to a static page for them, and then it says, "CDC, Centers for Disease Control Prevention," and then is the reference, but the link says Mayo Clinic. Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Crystal Carter: Do you see... Mordy Oberstein: This is what I mean. But that's important though. The citation is important. Crystal Carter: Right, but there's- Mordy Oberstein: Obviously, the Mayo Clinic, as we said, is a great source- Crystal Carter: It's a great source, but they muddled it. Mordy Oberstein: But it's bad. Crystal Carter: So their heading is CDC, and the link that they have for that heading is going to the Mayo Clinic. Then they have sources underneath and it says, "AC cast some sort of episode in fitpage.in," which I've never heard of. Mordy Oberstein: Never heard either of those before. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. By the way, what kind of stands in a little bit of contradistinction to what Bing is doing. So one of the things that Bing does up top, they have a panel, almost like a knowledge panel-ish kind of thing with the tabs you would see on Google. Has overview of symptoms. If you type in heart attack symptoms, it takes you right to the symptoms to have. Google does the same thing. But at the very, very top of it, it says, "Content medically reviewed by Dr. Kabir Sethi," and it links to his LinkedIn profile, which is interesting, by the way. First off, that's amazing that they're telling you that this content was actually... the content in their knowledge panel was actually reviewed by somebody, is an amazing level of authority and expertise that they're linking... They're so confident they're linking to his LinkedIn profile, but it also speaks this whole conversation, which we got into the news a couple of weeks ago about author bylines. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Bing is focused on author bylines on the fricking SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But the other thing is this also goes to ecosystem, right? So Microsoft owns LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was going to say it owns LinkedIn. It makes sense. Crystal Carter: They own Bing. So they're able to pull those two things together. And when we think about EEAT, one of the things that John Mueller has said, that Google looks at LinkedIn for information about as a source of verifying somebody's EEAT, and it's also the case that Google will regularly pull from LinkedIn in order to pull up biographical entities. So for featured snippets on people and also for knowledge panels. So this goes to ecosystem, and this also goes to the fact that when we're thinking about an AI-led SERP, like an AI-integrated SERP, that the data sets that people have available to them will impact what information they're able to show us. So if Bing is able to pull through more biographical information or more biographical entity information via LinkedIn, then that will work in their favor. If Google is able to pull through other data sets, then that will work in their favor, but it will definitely mean that we have different results. I think the Bing result on this one is really interesting, and it's got a lot of context. It's got a lot of links. Mordy Oberstein: It has a whole little section for the Mayo Clinic also. They're the first result, obviously, and it has different cards that you can scroll through for the Mayo Clinic itself, like symptoms, when to see a doctor. And it gives you some information from the page and then a see more link to go to the actual Mayo Clinic. It is very interactive. It is very dynamic. It is also very different from the Google SERP, and I wonder if that's on purpose. Google SERP is very dynamic sometimes too, but in this case it's pretty linear. On desktop, they give you knowledge panel on the side of the tabs. On mobile, it's right up front. And it's just, "Here's the information." Very straightforward. I don't want to say linear, but very simply presented. It's sourced by... They tell you the source. They source by the Mayo Clinic. Again, adding that layer of expertise in there. But I wonder if Google's doing that on purpose because, "We don't want you to have a complicated user experience here and a complicated UI or a layered UI. We want to make sure you get the information very quickly, very clearly, and without any sort of possible complications or confusion." Crystal Carter: I think it's also a case of maybe Google has more eyes on them, and I think also Google is going to be, might feel less... I don't know. I don't want to say feel less confident, but might want to have full confidence, full, complete confidence in a piece of content before they publish it for those reasons. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't see them ever doing an AI thing like Bing did. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think it might be the case that they want to pull out information that they know to be solid. And sometimes if you're going for something that is 100% solid information, you might have a smaller connection to there. And again, it could also be a question of ecosystem. It may very well be that I think that Bing has certain relationships with certain content creators to pull through some of their knowledge panel sort of things, and it may be that they have agreements with certain people in their spaces. I know that Google absolutely does... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it has. Crystal Carter: ... for certain things. Mordy Oberstein: They absolutely do. Yes. Crystal Carter: So for instance, like for some of their weather things, weather features, and also for instance, for some of their lyrics features they have- Mordy Oberstein: I think here also with the Mayo Clinic, I think there's definitely a partnership. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think that that can affect which ones come through. But yeah, it's definitely worth having a look at those. And I think that the other thing about those features is that they can give you an idea of the kinds of content you might want to create on your own website as well, because if they're filtering them into different sections- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the whole point. Reverse engineer this. Crystal Carter: Right. If they're filtering them into different sections, if they've got different subsections with questions and things like that, then you might consider adding those elements to your site in order to make it more robust for users. Mordy Oberstein: If Google's being very clear, very straightforward, very linear, you should probably do that with your content too, sort of thing. By the way, speaking of information that's 100% reliable, there's none other when it comes to SEO news and SEO information than Barry Schwartz, who is 100% reliable 100% of the time, unless you're asking him to make a butter sandwich, in which case might want to move on. Here is this week's SEO News from the most reliable sources, which obviously includes the great Barry Schwartz. Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News. Two for you this week. First up from Barry Schwartz, over at search engine round table. New Google search DMA, rich results, aggregator units and refinement chips. Ooh, chips. I love chips. Anyway, the DMA. The DMA is the Digital Marketing Act out of the European Union, which basically says, "Hey, Google, don't manipulate the results and not give visibility and access to actual websites, to actual businesses. We don't want you to manipulate the results for your nefarious purposes, that sort of thing. We want to make sure that there's enough visibility to go around for all." Because of this, Google is saying that it's launched a new carousel, it's either based on search data markup or Google said they can actually use the standard text without markup if there is none, for example. And it's basically a way of showing more aggregators or suppliers for travel local and shopping queries. And this is right now in Germany, France, Chechnya and the UK. Google has tested this in the past. You can actually see, Barry has a whole article showing you what this is, but basically is, imagine you search for bike repair in Berlin. What you basically have or will have is a rich result or a carousel that gives you aggregator websites or actual suppliers to tell you where you can get your bike fixed or a place where you could actually get your bike fixed in Berlin in this case. So traditionally you would think websites like TripAdvisor or TimeOut or all these sort of aggregators who take websites from around the web, put them onto a list. Those are the kind of sites that might show up here. You can actually get some actual suppliers as well showing up here. But in this way, what Google is doing is saying, "Hey, we're guaranteeing that businesses are going to be getting traffic and visibility through this new feature." A great way of describing this is the airline option. So underneath the traditional sort of lights box where Google just tells you the airline and the price and that's it, there's also going to be a carousel called Flight Sites where you can see things like site scan or Expedia, Kayak, all those aggregators listed there as well. So you can go to an actual website, which I think what this is all about. So the actual websites are exposed and not just Google's direct answers or Google's own properties. At the same time, there's going to be what we call a chip or a bubble filter added as well. So let's say for example, you're searching for best places to visit in, I don't know, in Paris, which is the example Barry happens to have, which I didn't read it, I wasn't reading at Barry. I happened to come up with Paris on my own, and it'll be a little filter there for places sites, so you can get websites on places and things to do in these places and places to visit and all those other things you want to do when you're on vacation in Paris. This is a big deal. This is Google aligning with the DMA. It's really interesting. I definitely recommend you check out the articles so you can see the actual examples that Barry links off to it. It does a better justice than me trying to explain it verbally to you. Next up from Search Engine Lens and to Goodwin, Reddit's shown excessively, no, really in Google product review search results, study finds. This is a study from Glenn Allsopp who did an amazing job analyzing what SEOs have kind of been complaining about or noticing or talking about for a good while now that Reddit is everywhere. So the data shows that Reddit shows up in 97.5% of product review queries, so things like best microwave or best silicone popcorn maker thing, which is the thing I was looking for. I mentioned on this podcast before, it's super niche, but it's super awesome. You should get one. Anyway, it kind of puts quantitative data to what SEOs have been seeing for a long time, which is almost an excessive amount of Reddit showing up. My personal feeling is what Google did was they actually made an announcement around showing firsthand knowledge on the SERP results, on the SERP, on the search results, and Reddit and forums like Reddit sort of became a default way to do that, as opposed to showing websites that actually offer a blog post or whatever it is that actually offer firsthand knowledge based on a topic, experience-based knowledge. The forums were the easiest way to do that, I think personally, because it doesn't exist in a serious way outside of the forums, which is a different problem that Google, I feel like is going to have to address, and that kind of ties into what Glenn wrote in the article itself. I'll link to both Danny's coverage and Glenn's actual study in the show notes. Glenn wrote, "I'm not the Google police and I'm not going to out anyone, but this SERP feature surely has to change." And what he's talking about is that SERP feature that shows forums, the discussions from Reddit and other forums on the SERP plus, mostly Reddit and a little bit of Quora. It's called discussions and forums, by the way. Makes sense. That's the name of the SERP feature. It does have to change. The information there, I have found personally, is not really what you want it to be. A lot of it's outdated. Some of it's spamish. It's really not what you want to have so prolifically shown on the SERP the way that it is. And Glenn I believe is right. I think everyone knows that it's right. It's going to have to change. My question is how is it going to change? Because what Google wants to do, in my opinion, is to sort of compete with the TikTok of the world and have actual firsthand experience, firsthand knowledge, personal knowledge, personal connection on the SERP itself. Forums are a way to do that, if the content was a little bit better and more targeted, I think, than an actual article or a blog post or informational content would be better. But again, that doesn't actually exist to the way that I think that it should exist, and that has to go through incentive cycles and how Google and others have been incentivizing content for a long time. To the extent that that kind of content that's built on firsthand knowledge, firsthand experience being written in blog posts hasn't been incentivized in the past, so there isn't enough of that content to rank. Then we actually talked about this on a podcast with Nigel Stevens and Jason Dodge, and I wrote an article about this, I believe on the Wix SEO Hub around the future of web content and that sort of thing. It will be interesting to see how Google handles this, but at a certain point, yeah, we're going to have to see a rejection in the amount of forums showing up. Not to say there aren't great forums out there, I just think there needs to be maybe diversification of those forums in a minimum. Anyway, it's a great article, it's a great study. It's very thought-provoking about what's going on in the ecosystem now, and it's certainly something that SEOs have been talking about and addressing. So nice to see some actual data around that to quantify that. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Barry, of course, for your articles. And that is this week's Snappy News. 100% reliable, 100%. There's not many people you can say that about, but I will say that about Barry legitimately. Crystal Carter: That's true. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: Again, except for the butter sandwich. Crystal Carter: And I don't know how he finds the time. I don't know how he finds the time to reply to so many people who are like, "I found this thing. I found this thing. Look at this, Barry," and he's like, "Yes, I will look at that," and I'm like, "How do you find the time?" Mordy Oberstein: Because he's 100% reliable 100% of the time. Crystal Carter: Thank you, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: 100%. Speaking of reliable information, again, it's time for our Follow of the Week. And this week we have a little treat for you. It is the one, it is the only Ian Helms who on X/Twitter is @IanHelms, which is I-A-N-H-E-L-M-S. Follow him over on X/Twitter, whatever you want to call it. Crystal Carter: He's great and he shares some really interesting information about lots of different content. He's somebody who's been working in this space for a long time and is able to give some great information, so yeah, he's a great person to follow. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Okay. So definitely make sure you check out Ian Helms again over at I-A-N-H-E-L-M-S over on Twitter. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. And that's it. That's all I got for you this week. Crystal Carter: That's it. How was the experience? Mordy Oberstein: That's all the expertise I can offer in one episode. Crystal Carter: Well, I had a great experience and I trust that we will be back next week with some- Mordy Oberstein: We are going to be back next week. That's very authoritative declaration you made there. I see what you're doing. Crystal Carter: I'm an expert at podcast scheduling. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Podcast scheduling is something to be an expert in. It's not as easy as it sound to break the fourth wall here, which means 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 the new episode as we dive into evergreen content versus emerging trend content for SEO and beyond. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Please learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, webinars and downloadable resources on the Wix SEO Learning above where you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Will Peters Ian Helms Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube The Mayo Clinic The future of web content: Where AI, user preferences, and SEO meet Why SEOs should watch content trends carefully News: New Google Search DMA Rich Results, Aggregator Units & Refinement Chips Reddit shown excessively in Google product review search results, study finds The Discussion Forums Dominating 10,000 Product Review Search Results Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Will Peters Ian Helms Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube The Mayo Clinic The future of web content: Where AI, user preferences, and SEO meet Why SEOs should watch content trends carefully News: New Google Search DMA Rich Results, Aggregator Units & Refinement Chips Reddit shown excessively in Google product review search results, study finds The Discussion Forums Dominating 10,000 Product Review Search Results 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 reporting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by a very authoritative, the very expert, opinionated SEO person, opinionated in the best way possible, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. That didn't come out right. I'm going to say that now. It didn't come out right. Crystal Carter: She's got a lot of opinions, a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: But good ones. Crystal Carter: Yeah, but it's okay to have it. You know when you're digging yourself a hole and you're like, "I don't know how to-" Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that was literally me, like shoveling my own grave. Crystal Carter: That's always the worst when you know you're doing it and you just know that you're shoveling yourself further down the hole. Mordy Oberstein: This is my entire life. Crystal Carter: Sometimes you just have to wave a little flag and just, "Nevermind. I'm just going to keep moving." Mordy Oberstein: Stop. I literally, I'm just going to stop here. Crystal Carter: All I really wanted to say was respect my authority. Which I know nobody remembers where that's from. I'm not even sure if- Mordy Oberstein: I was never a South Park person, but I know that, obviously. I'm not like I don't live under a rock. Crystal Carter: Precisely. There's also, South Park has some classics in... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's like the Blame Canada thing. I know that. Crystal Carter: This is not about respect. Yes, but we don't want to blame Canada. Speaking of digging a hole, like I heart Canada. So let's just make that- Mordy Oberstein: Let's move on. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also automate your content distribution with Wix's deep integration with Zapier. Client has a new event, zap it, set of automated posts across social to get your client's content out there. So zap, zap, zap, zap. As today, we're going into content that is expertly written, which you can distribute your expertly written content with Zapier. Get it? Now it makes sense. We're taking up the very important question, do you need to have actual experts writing your content for you, what an expert voice lends to your content from an SEO point of view, how to integrate expert voices into your content, and when you do and don't need expert created content, and to what degree you do to begin with. To help give us an expert opinion and an expert voice to our own content, Crystal will soon be joined in an interview, the none other, none other than the Mayo Clinic's own senior SEO analyst, Will Peters, who if you've been on the SERP before, knows a thing or two about expert led content. We'll also have a look at how different search engines handle sensitive queries that relate to your money or your life. Plus, we have the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So buy yourself some credibility because as John Mellencamp said, "I fight authority. Authority always wins." On this, episode 75 of the SERP's Up Podcast. That's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. I used to be a Mellen head. Crystal Carter: Okay. That's fair enough. Fair enough. Mordy Oberstein: Back when he was John Cougar. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah. John Cougar Mellencamp. Mordy Oberstein: Right. There's John Cougar, then John Cougar Mellencamp. Just, dude, decide on a name and just stick to it. Crystal Carter: Is he Jack & Diane? Is that Jack and- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's Jack & Diane. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Okay. All right. Mordy Oberstein: I'm dating myself here. And calling myself out as being completely lame with my musical taste. Crystal Carter: Hey, man. That's still on the top 40. That's still on the old deal. Like when you hit them radio stations, it's still on there. It's still the rotation. Mordy Oberstein: It's there. It gets a lot of clapping in his songs. Lot of clapping. Crystal Carter: Yeah. It's all good. Oh, I love a soul clap. I like- Mordy Oberstein: Everyone like, yeah. Crystal Carter: There's Dobie Gray has a great song that has the (singing). That's got a great clap in it. And also Wilson Phillips. Mordy Oberstein: You could do a lot with clapping and stomping. That classic John Lennon song, all we're saying, give peace a chance. All of that sound was people stomping on stuff in his hotel room. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. There's a lot of good things you can do there. And I mean, it's something that if you were an expert in the field of musical recording, then you might be able to harness that to add more human experience and demonstrate the human experience of that song with those claps. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. So before we get into Crystal's wonderful chat with Will Peters from the Mayo Clinic, let's just have a little bit of background on why we're even talking about this. So I always go back to 2018 and the Medic Update, which was officially termed the August 2018 Core Update. And out of that, because we saw that Google tended to impact content that was in the medical field, hence it was Medic Update, it really sparked a lot of change in the SEO conversation about Google being much more critical of what they call your money your life content, YMYL content, content that actually impacts your life or your money. And for some people, their money is their life, which is not a good thing. But all those kinds of queries, Google rightfully so. You don't want bad advice about investing in whatever stock. You don't want bad advice about how to deal with, I don't know, a heart problem. It's certainly not the same as looking up a sports score. Crystal Carter: There's a great article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub written by George Wynn, our editor in chief, and he gets into some of those things, like that you might think about which things may or may not be a YMYL topic. So like if you're an information query, we'd ask say like, "Could significant harm result from an inaccurate information?" for instance. And let's say for thinking about evacuation rates for a tsunami, that's A YMYL topic. That's one example. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Right there. A lot of stuff that you wouldn't think is. Even stuff related to your pet's health, that's considered YMYL. There are categories, for example, shopping is technically your money your life category because of the checkout. But what I've seen over years of looking at is that Google doesn't treat that algorithmically the same thing as a piece of content about, I don't know... I don't know, you getting a colonoscopy, bad example, got a heart attack. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So because it's technically YMYL, but the content itself in that case is not YMYL. Crystal Carter: But I think that they do other things for that shopping content. So for instance, so in order to be eligible on Google Merchant, they have a lot of YMYL checks, for instance. So they make sure that your business details are correct, that you have all of your shipping information that you're clearly able to trade in that region. There's lots of criteria that are associated with that. Also, if you're doing e-commerce, a lot of people are doing ads and a lot of the ads requirements for different sectors will have YMYL requirements in them. One of the things that I always tell people is if you're working in a sensitive sector in something that's regulated, have a look at what the ad requirements are and that can give you a steer- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point Crystal Carter: ... as to whether or not it's a YMYL category and the kinds of things that Google are expecting. Because if you are trying to advertise on Google and you don't have your who you are and what your shipping details are and all of those sorts of things, or if you don't have clear credentials or you're not registered with the appropriate regulating body, they won't let you advertise. They will flag your advertisements, they will stop your advertisements. So if they're doing that on the ad site, then that can also give you a steer on the search side as well. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Which is why people look at things like also looking at the Quality Raters guidelines, which may not be algorithmically implemented, but it does show you what Google is looking for fundamentally, which is why the Quality Raters guidelines have become such a big part of the SEO conversation as it pertains to YMYL. By the way, on the ad side, if you are running, let's say a YMYL website, you have to be much more careful with the ads that you were running or how many ads you're running, or how promotional your content is because of that. So all of this stuff brings up the question of EEAT, experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. So today we're focused on the second E, which used to be the first E, which is expertise. If you're trying to build content that's trustworthy, that's actually not harmful and actually helpful, then in a lot of these scenarios, because they're very technical or they're very important or the lightest little detail can really mess you up, you really need that level of expertise. And I'll give you a classic, or a great example of this. I forgot which update it was. I used to have them all memorized the May 2020 Core Update. It's all a giant mush in my brain at this point. As I get older, the numbers, they don't stick the same way. But one of the updates I was looking at, there was a page, I believe it was from Healthline, and it was about there was a variation of bipolar disorder that is debated whether or not it is part of the bipolar disorder spectrum or it's not, and it's up for question, it's up for debate. And all of the content from, for example, the Mayo Clinic was pretty transparent about that term. I forgot the name, the medical name. And when they talked about it, they would say, "Medical experts question whether or not this is or is not part of the bipolar disorder spectrum." The Healthline content didn't. It just said that it was, and that page got killed on one of the updates because it didn't have that level, I think in my mind, I'm speculating just a bit, obviously, we don't 100% know, that level of expertise was not as nuanced as Google would've liked it to be for that particular query. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that that nuance and that those caveats are things that show that you are an expert. I think about when I was studying physics in high school. First they tell you Newtonian physics, yes. What goes up must come down. They tell an object traveling in motion, and then they tell you the speed of light is consistent all across the universe. Then as you get older or then as you progress through it, they tell you those things first of all. Then as you progress through it, they're like, "Sometimes it gets a little bit... Sometimes there are some cases where those things like Newtonian physics doesn't do…" Mordy Oberstein: Right. Like the national debt- Crystal Carter: All the time. Mordy Oberstein: ... it doesn't seem to come down. It just keeps going up. Crystal Carter: So there are some things where like, "Oh, this is a rule all the time." And then as you become more experienced, it's like, "We told you that rule so that you could get to the next stage, and if you don't know that next stage, then it's a sign that you don't know, that you're not an expert." And so sometimes caveats are important. I think I recently had somebody come and help me fix a shed. I was like, "Oh, I want to fix my shed." And the guy came over, he looked at it and he was like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." Then he looked at it again and he actually came back and was like, "We can't fix this shed because this will come down in six months because of this, this, this, this and this." Right? And he's an expert. I can tell that he's an expert because he went through those extra checks and didn't just go straight through it and just go, "Yeah, I can fix this and do a terrible job." So I think that sometimes people worry about adding in those caveats, people worry about adding in the elements that maybe make it not such a hard sell, but I think that it often is more of a sign of strength. So if you say that like, "This product is great for this, this, this and this, but it's not great for this, this and this," then that means that you've thought about that. Mordy Oberstein: I've talked about this a lot. If you ask me what's my definition of quality content, it's nuanced content. And nuanced content has to be either built on actual experience or expertise. And those two kind of overlap because experience is a form of expertise. Crystal Carter: So for instance, medical content, for instance... And I'm so pleased that we're talking to the Mayo Clinic because they do some incredible content across the web. But I think that one of the things that you see with medical stuff, and particularly with medical products, they always have to put the side effects. They always have to put the potential- Mordy Oberstein: Even in commercials. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Right. Half the commercial is all that. Mordy Oberstein: Is that. Crystal Carter: Right. They're like, "Oh, this will be wonderful for you." They're like, "Oh, your leg might fall off as well." And you're like, "what? What'd you say that?" And there's like somebody skipping through a meadow. Mordy Oberstein: And people are smiling in the commercial while they're saying it. It's fine. Crystal Carter: It's like slow motion, skipping through a stream. Mordy Oberstein: Right, skipping. "Your leg might fall off, your head might fall off, all of your hair will fall off." The person's like so happy and like rowing. Crystal Carter: Blowing a dandelion. Yeah, I know it's not like... But I do think that you need to tell people the full range of information, and that again, comes from a point of strength because then somebody can make an accurate decision about whatever it is that they want do. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And that's good for... Right. It's good for your users. Forget the SEO part. It's just good for the people consuming your content. Crystal Carter: Right. And it's also good for customer service things and stuff as well, because then it's the stair, it's on the thing. So you won't have somebody coming back going, "Oh, hey, but I used my laptop underwater and it didn't work." It's like, "We said on the website that you shouldn't be using this laptop-" Mordy Oberstein: There you go. You can't hide from reality. Reality always come back to bite you somehow. So just be real. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. And I think that that's particularly important for YMYL. On the Hubs article, they talk about a few different categories. So for instance, like health and safety, if it's something to do with something like a car seat or something like that, or any of those financial security topics that could damage a person's ability to support themselves or their families, this is totally true. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I mean, there's so much content that you think is not YMYL, but it actually is. Crystal Carter: Right. And then they say it's society, topics that can negatively impact groups of people, issues of public interest, trust or in public institutions. And I think that this can be something that people don't think about with like opinion pieces on political things that are happening, for instance, or historic things that are happening. If you were to write an article about a historical event, you would need to have a bibliography. That's good practice or copious links. That's good practice for lots of reasons, but also so that people can trace where you got that information from. Mordy Oberstein: I always say links are also not just like, "Okay, links." Links are a citation. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: It's a new footnote. It's a link. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Precisely. And it's why like Wikipedia is full of links and it's full of things. Mordy Oberstein: Truly. Crystal Carter: And it's why people... If you're on Wikipedia and you claim something and you don't have a link, people will take it off. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: Wikipedians will take it down. Like you can't just make up links. Mordy Oberstein: The Wikipedians. Crystal Carter: The Wikipedians.. Mordy Oberstein: They live on a special magical land. Crystal Carter: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: It is true. Okay. So we have an absolute treat for you. If you're from the SEO world, you know what a treat this is because there is no super authority in the YMYL space like the Mayo Clinic. They understand producing expert-led content like none other. They rank for it like none other. So you're going to get an inside scoop on creating expert-led content from... no one could be possibly better than this, the senior SEO analyst at the Mayo Clinic, Will Peters. Here's Crystal's chat with Will. Crystal Carter: I am so pleased to be joined here today by Will Peters, who is the senior search engine optimization analyst over at the Mayo Clinic, who is joining us here today. And he's going to be talking to us about how you can engage experts, real actual experts in your content creation process. Thank you so much for joining us today, Will. Will Peters: Thanks for having me. Crystal Carter: I mean, Will can attest to you that I basically followed him all over brightonSEO because I was so excited to meet you and things. I think most SEOs have seen the content from the Mayo Clinic and what y'all are doing over there, and it's kind of the gold standard. So I think it's great to be able to get some insights on how you do what you do, especially around EEAT. I might kick that off with that one. Is that something that you as an SEO think about a lot, EEAT and YMYL, and all those sort of things? Will Peters: Oh, absolutely, is part of the framework and the Bible we must do. So it's one of those things where those terms are pretty much the SEO jargon that we use when we're talking to the content writers and we're talking to the physicians and whoever else, is getting them to really understand the impact of it. But yeah, it's a lot of evangelism at Mayo for SEO. So it was kind of, they hear SEO, they know, "Oh yeah, we've got SEO, we got to put some SEO on this thing." It becomes this kind of thing that you just put it, "Let's put some SEO on this content. Let's just throw it in there after we've done our thing. Hey guys, can you get in here and do some SEO?" But what we've done is really just start to build a framework of content development. So SEO is considered from the beginning of topic selection through the end of actual. And then we may still do a review at the end just to make sure it is fulfilling, but it's a mindset of thinking EEAT from the beginning through the entire process that really makes it more of embedded within the Mayo Clinic culture. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that that process of the evangelism that you mentioned there, I think is really key. So when you're thinking about how you engage experts, like real topic knowledge, the physicians you mentioned in the process, are you engaging them with training or with an all team session where you're getting them engaged with that process? Because I think that that's something that certainly when I've worked in YMYL topics, getting people who are like, they're the physicians, they're the doctors, they're the lawyers, they're out there doing the stuff. Sometimes it can be difficult to get them on board with the process of content and SEO. So what is your process for doing that? Will Peters: They are super busy. Crystal Carter: I mean, they do- Will Peters: And it's probably not even on their list of priorities, right? They're dealing with tumors and some real things and SEO- Crystal Carter: Let me just talk to you about these keywords. I know you're trying to save lives, but- Will Peters: Yeah. Right. They are totally... So there's several different layers between where I sit and where the physician is sitting, and we rarely cross paths unless it's like a quick five minutes of even... So we've got some layers. So I typically engage with the layers of the content writers, the editors, the ones that actually run the taxonomy of our content. So those are the folks I really engage with, and they engage me from a, "Okay, we want to make sure we're keeping an SEO in mind as we're developing the content." But with the content, it still has a medical review. So at some point, the physician and/or the medical experts will review the content just to make sure it's in line. And so I say that to say time, it's a huge constraint, right? Priorities when they're thinking about SEO versus, "I'm working on this tumor." Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. Will Peters: But they would like to share the knowledge that they've learned from a procedure. So we do have peer learnings where... And it's real peer community. It may appear competitive between different hospitals and different clinics, but as we learn, it's a shared wisdom that they want to share with the peers. So as they're going through procedures, they're documenting. So we want to take that documentation and share it in a careful way. So the overall medical community learns from each procedure. It's a tedious process, but they're open to sharing the wisdom, which makes it totally fascinating. Crystal Carter: And I think that speaks to the value of genuinely expertly-led content is that you are helping to improve the whole corpus of professional content around what you're doing in your space. And it helps to drive the conversation, which is beyond SEO, but it obviously benefits SEO because people who are wanting to learn the latest techniques or the most effective way to manage that particular medical situation are going to be coming to you because they know that you have really knowledgeable content there. And I think that you also spoke to time, and certainly in my experience of working with experts, they don't have a lot of time. If you have a question, you need to be ready with the specific. Will Peters: Absolutely, absolutely. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think for that process, is that something where you have a very clear set of like, "I've got five minutes and I need to tick off this, this and this, or I've got this piece of content. Can you just tell me, have I paraphrased this correctly?" What's your general way of making sure that you're mindful of people's time, but also getting good value? Will Peters: One of the things I've done in the past that has worked well is I have to be convenient and flexible. I need to be open to the movements of their schedules. So they may say, "Yeah, I have some time," but when that time is, we don't know. So I've got to be flexible. It's like, "Okay, I've got these slots here. Here are the various slots that we can work with, but we're open to move that around as well." And they're pretty open to sharing because one of the founding of the Mayo brothers, and I don't know if the audience knows the history of Mayo Clinic. Crystal Carter: I don't. I'm interested. Will Peters: So it was founded by two brothers. And essentially one brother was tasked with working onsite, and one was tasked with going out, discovering new medical procedures, new science, new technology, new ways of completing procedures or new ailments or new solutions, et cetera. And one brother was tasked with being onsite, working and discovering himself and sharing that wisdom. So from the beginning, it's kind of interesting that they've built within the culture of sharing what they've learned with the overall medical community as well as patients and health information seeker. So it's built into the fabric of Mayo Clinic to go out to seek wisdom and share the wisdom that we learn. But yeah, totally being flexible and convenient for what they're working on is the key of we know what the mission and kind of vision is. We have to be flexible to receive that. Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. I think that's really, really interesting. And I think that it helps you to get great value from people in a time that's respectful of their time. Will Peters: Right? Yeah. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I want to talk a little bit about some of the sort of more on page kind of stuff. So what are some of the things that you do on an SEO level to demonstrate expertise, authority, and trust? One of the things that I've found with clients is they sometimes they're like, "Oh, but we are good at this thing. But we do have this." I'm like, "Yeah, but it doesn't say it on your website. We can't see it on your website and we need to evidence it." What's your general approach to that? Do you have any tips you could share with somebody? Will Peters: So currently what's happening, I mean with the SEO process is really, it's one of the expert, like the actual author, but then do you have some data-driven diagrams, proof backed by some expert sources? And being Mayo Clinic, we have a lot of the expertise in-house. We've got writers, we've got physicians, we've got, I mean, some really smart people on the team. So we do have a medical school as well, so it's kind of like we've got research, we've got education, we've got actual procedures, so we've got a ton of expertise in-house that we source from. But even these experts, they're sourcing and they're learning consistently to become better experts within their field. So we absolutely do not have an issue with finding experts within each domain. We can go into neurology, we can go into orthopedics, and we have research, we have education, and then we have actual procedures. So we are not short on expertise. It only just boils down to time. Crystal Carter: Right. But I think also, I think there's a lot of companies, particularly companies that have been working for... And even outside of a core YMYL space, so even outside of a medical space, I think there's a lot of companies that have a lot of resources that they are not tapping into. Like you mentioned people who are in the core of your business, but you also mentioned the medical school, you also mentioned folks doing other stuff, and I very often find that companies' websites will have untapped resources that they're not engaging with in order to demonstrate a breadth of knowledge. And I think it's a real missed opportunity, I think. Will Peters: Yeah. One other thing is really to engage them. You've got to share with them what's the goal and purpose. What are we really doing? Is it built into... Is this something that's built into the overall company fabric? Who are we when we position ourselves? So Mayo has always positioned themselves as a resource. So not only a resource to patients, but also a resource to other physicians, to other peers within the community. So when you start to look at your brand and how you want to lead, I think many times... Even having this conversation, I had to kind of run it by Mayo and say, "Is this okay?" And the leadership was like, "This is built into our fabric of sharing with the peers and the community, so totally open to sharing how we do things and why we do things and the mission and vision of Mayo." So yeah, they were totally open to it. And I think other companies can learn from that is if you build that type of the brands of the future will be positioned as resources. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Will Peters: Because how do we further whatever industry that you're in, if each company is not sharing what they've learned, what they've discovered with others, and as they grow, they share. And as they learn, they share. We learn and we share, right? So I think with other companies, engaging your experts is helping them to understand that type of culture is trust building because now the patients and your peers start to look to you as, "Oh, wow, let's partner. That's where I want to go for in my procedure. That's where I want to go for." Different companies, it could be a car dealership. "That's where I want to go for my next car because I hear them always sharing expertise on vehicles, on the buying process, how to find the best financing for your vehicle." I think there's a disconnect with companies that want to hide a lot of things and it doesn't further grow the community. And I just went through a car buying experience, and so that's why that suddenly popped up. But I think there's a lot to be shared from a car buying experience, but it seems like it's very secretive, right? It's like when you find third parties sharing the wisdom when a car dealership could be the leader in sharing how to actually pick out the vehicle, how to actually get the best financing deal, what type of profile do you need to build and have, and then competitors can look. So you can either be a competitor or a peer, but we're moving forward the car buying experience for all, but we're also building trust. Crystal Carter: Right. I think the other thing is that people think, "Oh, well, we don't want to show them all this stuff." Nine times out of 10, somebody can look it up on some Reddit thread somewhere or somebody else shares it anyway. So all it does is it makes you look like you're hiding something. And like you said, that doesn't build trust. I think that what you're saying about companies of the future, I think you're absolutely right that brands that are sharing and brands that are leading the conversation with high quality, high grade authoritative information, like the kind that's built into the fabric of your company, I think that that is going to make the difference when there's so much noise from so many players, adding so much content that they may or may not be experts in. I think that if you're able to demonstrate a breadth of knowledge, that's going to make a really, really big difference. And I think that you get a lot of people that say, "Oh, I don't want to give it away for free. I don't want to write all my stuff on the blog." You've heard this before in your SEO career, I'm sure. Will Peters: Right. Yeah. Crystal Carter: And it's very strange. It seems counterintuitive, but the more you share, the more you get back. Will Peters: Right. Right. Well, one of the teams I'm on is really the brand Mayo and about Mayo. What is Mayo? What does Mayo stand for? So we're actually actively working on that. There's several segments of... One is we have health information, we have about Mayo, and then we have actual procedures, et cetera. So there's a multifaceted way of how we deliver content from these different spaces, whether it be research, whether it be education, whether it be procedures. But really when we start to talk about the brand, is we look for brand signals. And if our information is in enough places where people start to recognize, we've noticed that the mention of Mayo Clinic starts to grow, whether it be through Google Trends or whether it be just our name mentions when we use our search console and just look and see, "Okay, well how is our brand really looking? Is it growing? Is it decreasing in comparison to our peers that are not sharing that wisdom?" And you can see those that are not sharing their content or their expertise, you can actually see their brands decrease in mentions versus those that's actually sharing great quality, high grade content, you can actually watch their brands grow. Crystal Carter: That's absolutely true, and I think that's a great point to end on. Thank you so, so much for your time today. Will Peters: Oh, no problem. Thank you. Crystal Carter: It's been an absolute joy. We should let you grow your personal brand as well. Where can people find you, Will? Will Peters: Probably LinkedIn. It's my hub. I'm on LinkedIn regularly. I need to do more with my LinkedIn and probably start doing some content, but Mayo keeps me pretty busy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's all good. It's a big job. Will Peters: It is. I'm always happy to have a conversation with individuals that want to talk strategy, talk analysis and actionable insights. I love data and filtering through to find the story within the data and humanizing the data. It's not just search volume, it's not just clicks. These are actual visitors with real needs, real questions, and personalizing that data into something that is meaningful I think will be helpful for all brands. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much again for your time. Will Peters: You too. Crystal Carter: I'm so happy to have you on. Thank you so much, Will Peters. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to say, Crystal, that was phenomenal and it's amazing just to see what goes on behind the scenes. And look, there is no other website like the Mayo Clinic for expert-led content and is a real treat that you were able to bring Will on the show. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it was great speaking with him, and I think that they're a really good example of a website that's been in this space for a while. They've been doing content like that. They think they were one of the first websites that's been doing content like that for a long time, so there's a lot to learn from them. And I think that even if you are a smaller website, even if you are not working in the medical space, there are definitely recommendations and things that you could apply to the work that you're doing to make your content more robust and to make your work with experts more streamlined. Mordy Oberstein: Now, one of the things I like to do in general is to reverse engineer the SERP. If you're looking at how do I handle expert-led content or YMYL kind of content, well go look at how Google handles it and in this case, go look how Bing handles it also, because they also do some really cool things. So we are going to take a little bit of a dive into how different search engines handle YMYL queries differently as we go with our little segment that we like to call So Many Search Engines. Mordy Oberstein: So I just did a little query. Every SEO is the go-to queries. My go-to query for YMYL stuff is heart attack symptoms. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know why. I think maybe I'm unconsciously scared of having a heart attack. I don't know. Crystal Carter: Hey, it's something that affects a lot of people. Mordy Oberstein: It does. I went to the doctor recently. I got my blood checked, everything's good, so I shouldn't have this fear, but I think I have heart disease in my family, I think that's why. Too much information. Crystal Carter: I think a lot of people do. Yeah. Yeah. But donate to a heart charity near you. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, please do. And watch your own heart health, by exercising and eating a balanced diet. Crystal Carter: Team K all over here. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, let's look on Google and Bing say about this. We just ramble off all advice that no one really wants to hear. Crystal Carter: With no expertise. Mordy Oberstein: With absolutely no expertise whatsoever. Crystal Carter: Don't listen to us. Mordy Oberstein: No, I think you should exercise. That's good advice. That's pretty generic. Crystal Carter: I think so. Yeah, I think that's pretty... Yeah, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Probably take my own advice. With that, I just ran heart attack symptoms into Bing, and I ran it into Google, and you get back very different approaches to it. First off, I'll just say Bing's approach to it is very layered and it's very visual, and they're trying to give you multiple layers of information right away. They do some really interesting things I was not expecting. For example, they have a little carousel and it says it's a story that is AI-generated and it goes through heart attack symptoms and preventions. It says, "Story is AI-generated" and it gives you the sources from it and it tells you the most common symptom is X, Y, and Z. Or some people also may experience whatever, whatever symptoms. And it tries to run you through all, I guess, the top level information that you might want to know about heart attack symptoms. But it's AI-generated, which I was very surprised that they would be okay with doing for this because AI sometimes hallucinates. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I can see that. I guess for some things, like the only case I would make for that is that LLMs are using a lot of established content. So I think for something that's a less dynamic query, that's maybe less... I think that the information on heart attacks doesn't change super rapidly, so it could very well be the case that they're more confident with referring to a corpus of information that's fairly solid. Do you know what I mean? Like if you were to talk about- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, I get it. And the information is great. There's nothing wrong or bad about the information. I was just a little bit surprised. But you're right, because the sites that they're quoting are the Mayo Clinic, the CDC, the Heart Association. I guess they're confident enough. I wonder if they've limited their database to say, "Okay, these are the sites you're allowed to pull from for these kind of queries," and that's fine. Crystal Carter: Right. That could very well be the case. I mean, similarly, I looked on Bard for what are heart attack symptoms in women, because I don't think people actually understand that women can tend to have different ones. For instance, Bard is pulling through basically a bullet point. So they've got common symptoms in both men and women, common symptoms with more common with women, important to remember. And they have here a list of sources, helpful resources for further information. Now they're referencing the American Hearts Association, the British Heart Foundation. Okay, here's interesting. So they say, "Reference American Heart Association," but it doesn't go to the American Heart Association website, it goes to CBS news article. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's interesting. Crystal Carter: With the American Heart Association. The British Heart Foundation goes to a static page for them, and then it says, "CDC, Centers for Disease Control Prevention," and then is the reference, but the link says Mayo Clinic. Mordy Oberstein: Oh boy. Crystal Carter: Do you see... Mordy Oberstein: This is what I mean. But that's important though. The citation is important. Crystal Carter: Right, but there's- Mordy Oberstein: Obviously, the Mayo Clinic, as we said, is a great source- Crystal Carter: It's a great source, but they muddled it. Mordy Oberstein: But it's bad. Crystal Carter: So their heading is CDC, and the link that they have for that heading is going to the Mayo Clinic. Then they have sources underneath and it says, "AC cast some sort of episode in fitpage.in," which I've never heard of. Mordy Oberstein: Never heard either of those before. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. By the way, what kind of stands in a little bit of contradistinction to what Bing is doing. So one of the things that Bing does up top, they have a panel, almost like a knowledge panel-ish kind of thing with the tabs you would see on Google. Has overview of symptoms. If you type in heart attack symptoms, it takes you right to the symptoms to have. Google does the same thing. But at the very, very top of it, it says, "Content medically reviewed by Dr. Kabir Sethi," and it links to his LinkedIn profile, which is interesting, by the way. First off, that's amazing that they're telling you that this content was actually... the content in their knowledge panel was actually reviewed by somebody, is an amazing level of authority and expertise that they're linking... They're so confident they're linking to his LinkedIn profile, but it also speaks this whole conversation, which we got into the news a couple of weeks ago about author bylines. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Bing is focused on author bylines on the fricking SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But the other thing is this also goes to ecosystem, right? So Microsoft owns LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I was going to say it owns LinkedIn. It makes sense. Crystal Carter: They own Bing. So they're able to pull those two things together. And when we think about EEAT, one of the things that John Mueller has said, that Google looks at LinkedIn for information about as a source of verifying somebody's EEAT, and it's also the case that Google will regularly pull from LinkedIn in order to pull up biographical entities. So for featured snippets on people and also for knowledge panels. So this goes to ecosystem, and this also goes to the fact that when we're thinking about an AI-led SERP, like an AI-integrated SERP, that the data sets that people have available to them will impact what information they're able to show us. So if Bing is able to pull through more biographical information or more biographical entity information via LinkedIn, then that will work in their favor. If Google is able to pull through other data sets, then that will work in their favor, but it will definitely mean that we have different results. I think the Bing result on this one is really interesting, and it's got a lot of context. It's got a lot of links. Mordy Oberstein: It has a whole little section for the Mayo Clinic also. They're the first result, obviously, and it has different cards that you can scroll through for the Mayo Clinic itself, like symptoms, when to see a doctor. And it gives you some information from the page and then a see more link to go to the actual Mayo Clinic. It is very interactive. It is very dynamic. It is also very different from the Google SERP, and I wonder if that's on purpose. Google SERP is very dynamic sometimes too, but in this case it's pretty linear. On desktop, they give you knowledge panel on the side of the tabs. On mobile, it's right up front. And it's just, "Here's the information." Very straightforward. I don't want to say linear, but very simply presented. It's sourced by... They tell you the source. They source by the Mayo Clinic. Again, adding that layer of expertise in there. But I wonder if Google's doing that on purpose because, "We don't want you to have a complicated user experience here and a complicated UI or a layered UI. We want to make sure you get the information very quickly, very clearly, and without any sort of possible complications or confusion." Crystal Carter: I think it's also a case of maybe Google has more eyes on them, and I think also Google is going to be, might feel less... I don't know. I don't want to say feel less confident, but might want to have full confidence, full, complete confidence in a piece of content before they publish it for those reasons. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't see them ever doing an AI thing like Bing did. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think it might be the case that they want to pull out information that they know to be solid. And sometimes if you're going for something that is 100% solid information, you might have a smaller connection to there. And again, it could also be a question of ecosystem. It may very well be that I think that Bing has certain relationships with certain content creators to pull through some of their knowledge panel sort of things, and it may be that they have agreements with certain people in their spaces. I know that Google absolutely does... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it has. Crystal Carter: ... for certain things. Mordy Oberstein: They absolutely do. Yes. Crystal Carter: So for instance, like for some of their weather things, weather features, and also for instance, for some of their lyrics features they have- Mordy Oberstein: I think here also with the Mayo Clinic, I think there's definitely a partnership. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think that that can affect which ones come through. But yeah, it's definitely worth having a look at those. And I think that the other thing about those features is that they can give you an idea of the kinds of content you might want to create on your own website as well, because if they're filtering them into different sections- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the whole point. Reverse engineer this. Crystal Carter: Right. If they're filtering them into different sections, if they've got different subsections with questions and things like that, then you might consider adding those elements to your site in order to make it more robust for users. Mordy Oberstein: If Google's being very clear, very straightforward, very linear, you should probably do that with your content too, sort of thing. By the way, speaking of information that's 100% reliable, there's none other when it comes to SEO news and SEO information than Barry Schwartz, who is 100% reliable 100% of the time, unless you're asking him to make a butter sandwich, in which case might want to move on. Here is this week's SEO News from the most reliable sources, which obviously includes the great Barry Schwartz. Snappy News. Snappy News. Snappy News. Two for you this week. First up from Barry Schwartz, over at search engine round table. New Google search DMA, rich results, aggregator units and refinement chips. Ooh, chips. I love chips. Anyway, the DMA. The DMA is the Digital Marketing Act out of the European Union, which basically says, "Hey, Google, don't manipulate the results and not give visibility and access to actual websites, to actual businesses. We don't want you to manipulate the results for your nefarious purposes, that sort of thing. We want to make sure that there's enough visibility to go around for all." Because of this, Google is saying that it's launched a new carousel, it's either based on search data markup or Google said they can actually use the standard text without markup if there is none, for example. And it's basically a way of showing more aggregators or suppliers for travel local and shopping queries. And this is right now in Germany, France, Chechnya and the UK. Google has tested this in the past. You can actually see, Barry has a whole article showing you what this is, but basically is, imagine you search for bike repair in Berlin. What you basically have or will have is a rich result or a carousel that gives you aggregator websites or actual suppliers to tell you where you can get your bike fixed or a place where you could actually get your bike fixed in Berlin in this case. So traditionally you would think websites like TripAdvisor or TimeOut or all these sort of aggregators who take websites from around the web, put them onto a list. Those are the kind of sites that might show up here. You can actually get some actual suppliers as well showing up here. But in this way, what Google is doing is saying, "Hey, we're guaranteeing that businesses are going to be getting traffic and visibility through this new feature." A great way of describing this is the airline option. So underneath the traditional sort of lights box where Google just tells you the airline and the price and that's it, there's also going to be a carousel called Flight Sites where you can see things like site scan or Expedia, Kayak, all those aggregators listed there as well. So you can go to an actual website, which I think what this is all about. So the actual websites are exposed and not just Google's direct answers or Google's own properties. At the same time, there's going to be what we call a chip or a bubble filter added as well. So let's say for example, you're searching for best places to visit in, I don't know, in Paris, which is the example Barry happens to have, which I didn't read it, I wasn't reading at Barry. I happened to come up with Paris on my own, and it'll be a little filter there for places sites, so you can get websites on places and things to do in these places and places to visit and all those other things you want to do when you're on vacation in Paris. This is a big deal. This is Google aligning with the DMA. It's really interesting. I definitely recommend you check out the articles so you can see the actual examples that Barry links off to it. It does a better justice than me trying to explain it verbally to you. Next up from Search Engine Lens and to Goodwin, Reddit's shown excessively, no, really in Google product review search results, study finds. This is a study from Glenn Allsopp who did an amazing job analyzing what SEOs have kind of been complaining about or noticing or talking about for a good while now that Reddit is everywhere. So the data shows that Reddit shows up in 97.5% of product review queries, so things like best microwave or best silicone popcorn maker thing, which is the thing I was looking for. I mentioned on this podcast before, it's super niche, but it's super awesome. You should get one. Anyway, it kind of puts quantitative data to what SEOs have been seeing for a long time, which is almost an excessive amount of Reddit showing up. My personal feeling is what Google did was they actually made an announcement around showing firsthand knowledge on the SERP results, on the SERP, on the search results, and Reddit and forums like Reddit sort of became a default way to do that, as opposed to showing websites that actually offer a blog post or whatever it is that actually offer firsthand knowledge based on a topic, experience-based knowledge. The forums were the easiest way to do that, I think personally, because it doesn't exist in a serious way outside of the forums, which is a different problem that Google, I feel like is going to have to address, and that kind of ties into what Glenn wrote in the article itself. I'll link to both Danny's coverage and Glenn's actual study in the show notes. Glenn wrote, "I'm not the Google police and I'm not going to out anyone, but this SERP feature surely has to change." And what he's talking about is that SERP feature that shows forums, the discussions from Reddit and other forums on the SERP plus, mostly Reddit and a little bit of Quora. It's called discussions and forums, by the way. Makes sense. That's the name of the SERP feature. It does have to change. The information there, I have found personally, is not really what you want it to be. A lot of it's outdated. Some of it's spamish. It's really not what you want to have so prolifically shown on the SERP the way that it is. And Glenn I believe is right. I think everyone knows that it's right. It's going to have to change. My question is how is it going to change? Because what Google wants to do, in my opinion, is to sort of compete with the TikTok of the world and have actual firsthand experience, firsthand knowledge, personal knowledge, personal connection on the SERP itself. Forums are a way to do that, if the content was a little bit better and more targeted, I think, than an actual article or a blog post or informational content would be better. But again, that doesn't actually exist to the way that I think that it should exist, and that has to go through incentive cycles and how Google and others have been incentivizing content for a long time. To the extent that that kind of content that's built on firsthand knowledge, firsthand experience being written in blog posts hasn't been incentivized in the past, so there isn't enough of that content to rank. Then we actually talked about this on a podcast with Nigel Stevens and Jason Dodge, and I wrote an article about this, I believe on the Wix SEO Hub around the future of web content and that sort of thing. It will be interesting to see how Google handles this, but at a certain point, yeah, we're going to have to see a rejection in the amount of forums showing up. Not to say there aren't great forums out there, I just think there needs to be maybe diversification of those forums in a minimum. Anyway, it's a great article, it's a great study. It's very thought-provoking about what's going on in the ecosystem now, and it's certainly something that SEOs have been talking about and addressing. So nice to see some actual data around that to quantify that. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Barry, of course, for your articles. And that is this week's Snappy News. 100% reliable, 100%. There's not many people you can say that about, but I will say that about Barry legitimately. Crystal Carter: That's true. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: Again, except for the butter sandwich. Crystal Carter: And I don't know how he finds the time. I don't know how he finds the time to reply to so many people who are like, "I found this thing. I found this thing. Look at this, Barry," and he's like, "Yes, I will look at that," and I'm like, "How do you find the time?" Mordy Oberstein: Because he's 100% reliable 100% of the time. Crystal Carter: Thank you, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: 100%. Speaking of reliable information, again, it's time for our Follow of the Week. And this week we have a little treat for you. It is the one, it is the only Ian Helms who on X/Twitter is @IanHelms, which is I-A-N-H-E-L-M-S. Follow him over on X/Twitter, whatever you want to call it. Crystal Carter: He's great and he shares some really interesting information about lots of different content. He's somebody who's been working in this space for a long time and is able to give some great information, so yeah, he's a great person to follow. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Okay. So definitely make sure you check out Ian Helms again over at I-A-N-H-E-L-M-S over on Twitter. We'll link to his profile in the show notes. And that's it. That's all I got for you this week. Crystal Carter: That's it. How was the experience? Mordy Oberstein: That's all the expertise I can offer in one episode. Crystal Carter: Well, I had a great experience and I trust that we will be back next week with some- Mordy Oberstein: We are going to be back next week. That's very authoritative declaration you made there. I see what you're doing. Crystal Carter: I'm an expert at podcast scheduling. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Podcast scheduling is something to be an expert in. It's not as easy as it sound to break the fourth wall here, which means 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 the new episode as we dive into evergreen content versus emerging trend content for SEO and beyond. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Please learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, webinars and downloadable resources on the Wix SEO Learning above where 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

Does influencer marketing lead to leads and converting conversions?  What type of influencer marketing gets signups and clicks, and which don't? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter welcome Nicole Ponce from Semrush, an expert in navigating the complex waters of B2B influencer marketing. Sara Adam, Head of Partnerships and Influencer Marketing at Wix Studio, also joins in on the conversation to discuss the importance of engagement metrics, the power of TikTok and LinkedIn, and the art of curating the perfect influencer partnership. From nano-influencers to micro-influencers, understand how partners can amplify your brand’s voice far beyond mere follower counts. Be sure to smash that button and like episode 115 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back How to drive conversions with influencer marketing Does influencer marketing lead to leads and converting conversions?  What type of influencer marketing gets signups and clicks, and which don't? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter welcome Nicole Ponce from Semrush, an expert in navigating the complex waters of B2B influencer marketing. Sara Adam, Head of Partnerships and Influencer Marketing at Wix Studio, also joins in on the conversation to discuss the importance of engagement metrics, the power of TikTok and LinkedIn, and the art of curating the perfect influencer partnership. From nano-influencers to micro-influencers, understand how partners can amplify your brand’s voice far beyond mere follower counts. Be sure to smash that button and like episode 115 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 115 | December 18, 2024 | 51 MIN 00:00 / 50:52 This week’s guests Sarah Adam With a strong passion for Partnerships and Marketing, Sarah has over 10 years experience in various B2C and B2B SaaS Marketing roles, from PR, Field Marketing and Content to Partner Marketing and Influencer Marketing. Today, Sarah heads Partnerships and Influencer Marketing at Wix, focusing on Wix's new end-to-end web creation platform for Agencies and Enterprises, called Wix Studio. Nicole Ponce Nicole Ponce is the Influencer and Communications Lead at Semrush, where she drives global influencer marketing strategies and helps elevate the brand to new audiences. With expertise in social media, communications, and negotiation, she stays at the forefront of industry trends and technologies. Nicole is passionate about diversity in tech and advocates for giving underrepresented voices. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP'S Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP'S Up podcast, where there's some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is quite influential, the Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I don't know who she is. Who is she? I've never heard of her. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal on the web? You never heard crystal on the web? Crystal on the web. Crystal Carter: Oh, that lady. Mordy Oberstein: She's an influencer. Crystal Carter: Who does she influence? I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: All sorts of people. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? I think I once influenced my mom to buy a tiny handbag because I had a tiny handbag and she was jealous that I had this tiny handbag, so. Mordy Oberstein: What do you put inside of a tiny handbag? Crystal Carter: Wasn't super tiny. It was just wallet, keys, phone, that kind of size, because she had this big giant bag and I don't like big giant bags because I just fill them with junk. So if I have a small bag, then I can't fill it with junk and then I can just get on with my life. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, good life lesson. Small bags. Crystal Carter: Small bags. Mordy Oberstein: Unless they're money bags, in which case make them big. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP'S Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search labor at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter and see our great free SEO course, it's also where you can enhance your social strategy and track your social traffic with a wide array of inbuilt analytics and native integrations with Instagram, Facebook, and more, which is great for accelerating and tracking the impact of some of your influencer marketing efforts. As this week, we talk all about influencer marketing and conversions. Does influencer marketing lead to leads and converting conversions? What type of influencer marketing works for signups, clicks, and which don't? How influencer marketing has changed and is changing, and we'll be joined by Semrush's own influencer marketing lead, Nicole Ponce, who will help us dig on in, plus Wix Studio's own Head of Partnerships and Influencer Marketing, Sarah Adam, shares her top influencer marketing tips and her experience with you. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, turn your phone to vertical as we go like, oh my God, you won't even believe, you should totally buy this. Click the link button in the description below on the 115th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast. Subscribe. Crystal Carter: Smash that like button. Mordy Oberstein: Smash that like button. I'm always afraid my kids will go take that, my little one will take it literally and smash. Crystal Carter: Oh man, I love it when you're in the middle of the video and they're like, "Hey, you join this video, you should subscribe to my channel while you're here." And you're like, okay, thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Click the bell for notifications. Crystal Carter: Right? You ding the bell, ding, ding, go. Mordy Oberstein: Can tell you, I never understood that maybe there's a reason. What's the point of subscribing without getting the notifications? Crystal Carter: I subscribe without getting the notifications I have too many- Mordy Oberstein: Me too, all the time, but does it do anything for me? I don't know. Crystal Carter: I don't know, it shows in your feed, but then you don't have... The notifications I sometimes find stressful. Mordy Oberstein: Right, no, I don't like them, but it would show up my feed anyway because I'm watching those videos. Crystal Carter: That's true, that's true. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter: This is true. Mordy Oberstein: You know who might know? Crystal Carter: Who? Mordy Oberstein: Nicole. Crystal Carter: Nicole? Mordy Oberstein: Nicole. Crystal Carter: It's a good thing we've got her on the show. Mordy Oberstein: So let's get right into it. So influencer marketing is one of those things that's kind of weird for me. Everyone kind of talks about it, a lot of people do it, but often not well. Is that spicy? Yeah, it's true, it's true. I'm just going to say because it's true. Everyone's like, oh, we're going to do influencer marketing, but then it's not always so great. So as someone who's done a boatload of influencer marketing over the course of my career, it's easy to get distracted by things that don't actually help you with the influencer. I'll just say, number of followers can be very distracting sometimes, it doesn't always matter the way that you think it does. Anywho, on top of that, there's also the disruption in the space. Over the years this whole thing of like, I'm a famous person, I'll promote your product and everyone will know I've never actually used it. That doesn't work anymore. Stevie Wonder doing a commercial for Zenni doesn't work. You know he's never used it. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Zenni, it's eyeglasses. Stevie Wonder is blind. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I order glasses online. Sorry. So, that whole celebrity thing, they're just going to promote it and just get a famous person on there, and that doesn't work. Everyone kind of sees through that a little bit. So I think that whole thing is the notion of influencer marketing being like, oh, it's about being famous people talking about my product is a bit of a misnomer, which is why I'm very happy, somebody I used to actually have the privilege of working with day in and day out on influencer marketing is here with us right now. Welcome to the show, Semrush's, Nicole Ponce. How are you? Nicole Ponce: Good. Hi, Mordy. Honestly, the pleasure is mine and whoever's listening probably doesn't know this or hopefully now they will know this, but Mordy and I used to work on the same team, so I also had the pleasure of working with Mordy in and out and brainstorm a lot of ideas. So, a lot of my ideas also come from Mordy's really great trajectory, so I give kudos to you back. Mordy Oberstein: That's way too much credit. If no one, an influencer promoting whatever product they never used, no one believes you. Nicole Ponce: Okay, perfect. Crystal Carter: He's going to be insufferable now, Nicole. I don't know what you've done, you're never going to live this down, I was just feel like. Nicole says, Nicole says. Mordy Oberstein: My giant ego just got bigger. Nicole Ponce: I love this, I love this. No, but truly mean it. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here to talk to you both, especially about influencer marketing, the B2B space, because I think B2B is such a new space to talk about influencer marketing and as Mordy was mentioning in the intro, it's hard to really show the impact for something that it's not a physical tangible thing to really showcase of how many people are purchasing it, but something that is a platform and is a service that you really need to showcase. What is the value of it for somebody to pay for it month to month? It's a really enticing, long tail effect of how to do it properly. So we've tested a lot at Semrush. I'm sure you guys have done, you guys do a great job at Wix also. I've had great conversations with Sarah about this, but yeah, it's definitely a different tactic and different strategies that need to be in place, but I'm curious to hear what we are going to talk about today, in terms of what that would look like in the future as well. Mordy Oberstein: So exactly just that. This whole idea of, and I'm curious about your opinion on this, where there's so much demand for influencer marketing and there's also demand for conversions. Does influencer marketing work for conversions? How strong is the connection between the influencer market and conversion? Is there a direct correlation or direct connection? How do you see that whole equation kind of thing? Nicole Ponce: Yeah, so a lot of people actually think about influencer marketing when it goes to conversions, they think affiliate marketing right away, which is not the case because yes, affiliate marketing does help you with conversion based directly. But in terms of the way that we work and the way that I see influencer marketing as impact for campaigns, it should definitely be enticed to conversion based. It doesn't mean that you'll see the conversions right away. I mean, ideally the goal is, because if you're investing some sort of specific budget on a campaign as a whole, if you're working with the right audience of influencer and that their audience is also somebody that is in need of the content that you're producing or what you're advertising, then obviously you did your job well in really looking through in the details of connecting the needs, the product, and how you can help. So I do see it as it should be a conversion based focus. Just measuring on impression says really nothing, especially if you're investing a lot of money, at least for me, right? Just speaking on behalf of what our team is doing, but just showing impression base. Yes, it's great to show brand awareness and I am a very huge believer. And sometimes you really can't quantify emotional connections or emotional value or even brand awareness and aspect of, I know that our brand is everywhere, but how do you put that in a factual number? But I think it definitely does help you showcase the value of influencer marketing if you're focusing as top level conversions and then obviously other measurable things will be like emotional value, brand awareness, etc, etc. But the answer in short is yes, absolutely. And obviously you need to just nurture the audience very well in order to see those conversions come through. It's not going to be like a one-off, especially when you're working in B2B, and, yeah. Crystal Carter: So B2B is a great point because the lead time on B2B can be very, very long. If you're talking to people, so you work in a SaaS team, if you're talking about people adopting a new SaaS platform, that could be months, negotiation, discussion, deliberation. And when you're talking about the conversions, can you just get into a little bit of the details of some of what a conversion looks like for an influencer marketing campaign? Because I think a lot of people think a conversion is a sale, but that's not necessarily the case, particularly for a long tail campaign or for a long sales cycle, for instance. Are you able to talk about some of the things that might make a conversion? Nicole Ponce: Yeah, so our main top funnel that we would basically measure is traffic. So anybody that lands onto Semrush's website we consider as not obviously a directly conversion, but a conversion for us is a first-time payment. So somebody that is going to, has not used Semrush at all and now is a new Semrush user, or even is potentially a Semrush user and has upgraded to one of our new apps, or is testing a new tool or a new add-on. So anything that converts into a new payment of some sort is considered a conversion for us. So it really depends on the campaign. It really depends on what the focus of the goal is in general for the company and as a whole, but we as a SaaS platform have so much to offer. We have 56 different apps, we have over 20 over tools, we have upgrades, we have add-ons, we have different tiers. And the way that we can see an increase of conversion is understanding your tool in and out and what that audience needs in order to educate them enough to say like, "Hey, you have this problem and we actually have something that can help you fix this," or, "We have something that you potentially might not know that you need, but it'll help you save X amount of time. So maybe upgrade or maybe test it out and see it as something that will help you in your workflow," and maybe they didn't know. And this is what's something that's interesting for me that we've been testing and I've been just talking about, because before we would just really directly work with SEOs, and we still do, but I've been testing working with influencers outside of the SEO space, but that are also in marketing. So they don't actually know the level of different tools and apps that we have to offer. So potentially, let's say they're just content marketers and they've just, I don't know, worked in our content toolkit, and then I share with them different apps that we have to offer and they're like, "Oh, wow, I didn't even know that you guys had this. I've been looking for something like this." So now it's just showing the value of all in one toolkit, which is what we are. But again, we're all marketers. We are so busy, we're just stuck in our every day. Sometimes we need to allocate more time to test something new, but if I'm already there in their face showing and making it easier for them to test it out in an easier, faster, all-in-one solution, it's just going to help that conversion aspect in terms of the life cycle, let's say. So obviously it's going to take a longer time, but it's just mostly like, and we're okay with that and we understand it's kind of like an investment. And we need to just be more present at all times because it's just how it is. We lose now attention with everything, like in a spam. Crystal Carter: One of the things you mentioned was picking up on lots of different parts of your platform. You've worked with Mordy, I worked with you when you were working with Mordy at Semrush, and I've had a relationship with Semrush for a while. I spoke at your fantastic Spotlight event recently. I've done one of your courses, I've done influencer marketing things where we did videos and things like that. We've done a webinar recently with your colleague, Eric, shout-out to Eric. And I think that what you're talking about there is that relationship of that long-term that with an influencer, it might not be just one thing that you're going to be marketing with them, but you might be marketing with them over a long period and you might be evolving with them and they might be evolving with you. Are you able to talk about how you maintain those relationships? Mordy Oberstein: That's right, really quick, that's so interesting because when we were working together that was one of the things we consciously tried to do is say, "Okay, let's not just go bing, bing, bing to all these different people, but let's find people and work with them over the course of many, many, many, many projects." Okay, sorry Nicole. Nicole Ponce: I was going to say, I 100% agree with this, and I think it showcases also not just the impact of the relationship with the actual influencer, but also with our audience. And it's just like now they're embedded as a, hey, they actually are an advocate for Semrush. It's not just, oh, I just see an ad and it removes the importance or the value for me as an audience. It's just seeing an ad one time is just, I'm going to forget about it. But if this person's actually continuously mentioning to their audience like, "Hey, I'm using this for this," or, "Hey, now I found out about this. Oh, look, now they've launched this." It's just now we're both working down the same avenue and it's kind of like an embedment, and now they're considered basically a brand ambassador, in our case. And the trust of them, by them is the audience of the influencer, is definitely what we need in order to see these type of conversions. But the way that we, sorry to answer your question Crystal, but basically the way that we build these long-term relationships is, I'm a huge believer in, if I can help wherever I can, I will. And then hopefully at some point when I need help, hopefully you can help me back. And that has helped in such a great aspect, and I know Mordy believes in this because we're huge advocates of this, but we believe in growing together. Not me running and then hopefully you can jump in the lane when I need to. That does not work at all. We're working with professionals, we're working with people. We're both trying to get at the same end goal. I'm very cautious also of the influencer's audience. There's sometimes I've gotten pushed back with the influencers like, hey, this does not align with my audience even though I love Semrush but we're talking about the PC, but I talk about SEO. By all means, I'm like, please tell me, push back because obviously we want it to be authentic. We want it to be real. We want to make sure that we're giving value to your audience. We don't want you to lower your engagement and the way that you actually interact with your audience because if you lose trust, we lose trust, and that obviously doesn't help me in my results. So, let's both work together to make sure that we keep whatever we need to do in a well road and then everyone wins. That's kind of like my motto. If you win, I win vice versa, so yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It makes the whole thing come off, it's so much more organic, it's so much more natural. And it makes it believable, it makes it that you can probably get a conversion out of it, because the audience, it's all very subtle. If the audience kind of feels like, wait a second... Because they know what's going on, everyone knows what's going on. This is part of, this person and Semrush, they're kind of together. But if it doesn't feel authentic, you focus on that part and not on the actual authentic part of it. So if it's too noticeable, you can't get the message across. So having that relationship, having that whole integration with them is what allows, I think, for eventually there to be a conversion. Nicole Ponce: Yeah, I 100% agree. And again, it goes all back to the basics. I feel sometimes that we overthink about how we can do our job properly when it's just the basics that it's people are going to buy from people. And a lot of people overthink the creative like, we need to make sure that we are like, bam, we need to make sure that we make a lot of noise. Yeah, but just go back to the basics. If you understand the need of the audience and you have a solution because you understand and you believe in your platform, just talk to the influencer. Be honest, like, "Hey, we have Z, Y, and Z. How can we work together? You know your audience best." And sometimes I do have an empty approach to an influencer like, I love what you're doing, I love your content. I don't know if we could potentially work on something together that might help because maybe they know about plans that I don't know about and vice versa. But a lot of people just automatically think like, okay, this person has 1,000 followers, sorry, 100,000 followers, almost a million followers and have great engagement. I'm just going to stick my tool in there and invest my whatever budget I have for influencer marketing and I know it's going to work. And a lot of brands do that when they work with athletes and it's just like, you're not speaking to the right audience/choir. So even though you're spending, I don't know, half a million dropping like a Superbowl ad, let's say in quotations, you really think that you're going to see the conversions if you're actually talking to the right audience? I don't know, it's a question mark. But if you understand how to communicate when get asked the right questions to these influencers to make sure you understand what the right audience that they're speaking to, I think it definitely does help a lot with your plans in terms of seeing these conversions long tail wise. Mordy Oberstein: I'm curious, on the conversion side, do you find that there's certain types of influencers who are better able to get certain types of conversions? Or in general, do different kind of assets convert better with influencer market? Like a sign up versus getting them to click to a blog? What works in terms of the conversion? Is there a difference between what your goal is? Are you trying to get a lead? Are you trying to get a click? What actually works for the conversion or what doesn't work? You're not going to get them obviously to influence a market and spend a million dollars right away, that ask wouldn't work. So what actually works to convert? Nicole Ponce: Right, that's a great question. It really depends on a lot of things obviously, because based on what we've tested, two things. Educational content, obviously because we're a platform and they're able to showcase the value of what they're going to be getting out of it helps a lot. Absolutely. So, educational content really helps. And if you're working with a thought leader that has been talking about this specific topic does help a lot because it just showcase like, hey, I want to be this person. I want to be at this educational value level, and if that means I need to benefit based off this tool that will help me get to that place, then potentially that will help. That's just the content aspect. But in terms of what else helps, it really depends on where we launch the campaign, so on the platform wise, especially because we're a SaaS platform that it's easier for us to work on desktop. And most of the influencer marketing campaigns that we launch our own social platforms. So the way and the user experience, for example, if you see a campaign on TikTok and then they have to actually go on the landing page to trial, and then we see the balance, how they're going to have to use it on Semrush's desktop, it's going to be a little bit harder, of course, as it is opposed to potentially on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn's another whole other story we talked about because of the way that traffic works on there. But yeah, it really depends, and this is why I believe in not just working with an influencer one time and then multiply working multiple content pieces for one specific campaign. And just so you can see the retention of the audience actually going from mobile to desktop. But yeah, it's things that you don't think about, but especially when you're working in SaaS and if you're working with an audience in social media, in order to see the trials come in. Crystal Carter: I think also, one of the things that from my experience of working with Semrush is that you very much take an approach of... I did a course, go check it out in the Semrush Academy on Mobile SEO. And like I was in the platform and I use Semrush regularly and if you are a Wix user and you're listening to this podcast or Wix studio user, then you can also use Semrush because it's built into your CMS, by the way. And basically, as part of it, I was like, well, I need to make sure I've got the latest thing. And so I upgraded, I had an upgrade during the time I was doing the course and so I could do extra stuff on top of that. And the thing that happens with that, when you have somebody who is speaking at conferences regularly, who's writing content regularly, who's doing content regularly, is that because we have the relationship that we are using the product and we're showcasing the product in those spaces with professionals, just again, an organic way. Mordy writes for Semrush regularly and does reports and uses Semrush data very often and has had a couple of things that are both on Semrush and on other platforms as well, where they're talking about things that are happening with Google updates and things that are happening with different keywords and how they're performing and things like that. And that is an ongoing visibility that comes from people using the platform genuinely in a genuine way. How do you identify someone who might have that kind of relationship with your product? And are those particularly valuable for the sort of exercise of working with an influencer? Nicole Ponce: The way that we actually look for potential influencers is, I do a lot of deep dive, and even though I don't post myself, which that's my bad on me, but I'm always everywhere, in the sense of conversations, what's happening, who's talking, what are they talking about? And that's how we recruit new influencers as well. There's a lot of people that they talk about Semrush as just an educational content piece, and I'm like, oh, I'm going to jump in your DMs and ask like, yeah, absolutely. And this is how the relationship starts. And I just, even sometimes people that talk about other competitors and Semrush and I just drop a conversation and say, "What are you lacking that we could potentially maybe have and you don't know about this?" So giving also educational value in terms of conversational wise directly and DMs, doesn't have to be in public, but privately. And also, yeah, being in the search that if your actual customers and users are your number one criteria of influencers, absolutely, they're going to be your advocates forever. And if you potentially help them in the sense of, hey, we have a new update and we can help you get first access and actually get your feedback. I love, love, love, and sometimes I feel like influencers feel bad and they're like, "Hey, sorry to bother you, but this is not working. This doesn't make any sense. You're making my job harder." I love when I get those messages because I'm like, thank you. You're taking time out of your day to make sure that I go back to our developers, make sure that I make your life easier, because if I make your life easier with our product and you're going to talk about your audience and you're also going to have a better relationship with us in sense, wow, they actually listen to me actually speaking out other the feedback and it just goes on. Yeah, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: I literally sent something in yesterday to Anna on the data team, like, "Hey, can we do this in Semrush? They're like, "No, and it might be really good if we could because it be super awesome, super helpful. So there you go. Literally having yesterday. Nicole Ponce: Exactly. I love that. Crystal Carter: I think that comes to something, and we had the SEO board, the Wix SEO board, and we've seen this, and that was lots of people who have influence in the community because that's the other thing. We say influencers, but these are people that have influence in the community and they have influence for a reason. And essentially, if you build a good relationship, then as you're saying, people can help you make do what you do better. So even if you were a restaurant owner and you had some local influencers, they might be like, "Oh my god, there's no place to take a selfie in this restaurant." And the restaurant owner might be like, "Oh, you're right. I should put some plants, fix the lighting, sort myself out," and then that's better for the business overall. So what you're saying is great, that you have a good relationship with people where they can help you make it better for everyone. That's amazing. Nicole Ponce: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's our job in the end. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of making lives better, if people wanted to connect with you and make their lives better by interacting with you on social media, where could they find you? Nicole Ponce: Ah, thank you. Well, best place I would say is LinkedIn. I'm under Nicole C. Ponce. And yeah, I think that's where I'm most active. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Oh, we'll link in the show notes. Nicole, thanks so much for coming on. It was really, really fun to chat with you about this. Nicole Ponce: Thank you both for having me, and it's such a pleasure to always chat with you both. Mordy Oberstein: See you out there on social. Again, thank you so much, Nicole, for coming on. Make sure to give her a big follow on social media. No one is more transparent about their influencing marketing tactics than our own Head of Partnerships and Influencer marketing, Sarah Adam. Just have a look at her LinkedIn profile, it's downright epic, which is why we thought we'd talk to Sarah and pick her brain as we travel across the Wix-verse. Speaker 5: Three, two, one, ignition lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show, Sarah. How are you? Sarah Adam: I'm great. I'm so excited to be here. Crystal Carter: We are so excited to have you. We were doing a piece on influencer marketing and I was like, we have to talk to Sarah because you've become an influencer marketing influencer. Mordy Oberstein: That's so TV inside of TV… Sarah Adam: It's very meta. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Sarah Adam: It is. Yeah, cool. So what are we talking about? Mordy Oberstein: Well, we're talking about, first of all, how did that happen? We're talking about, first we're talking... This is free association where you kind of just go. Sarah Adam: Yeah, okay. Mordy Oberstein: How did that happen? Sarah Adam: What, me becoming an influencer of influencers? Mordy Oberstein: This influencer for the influencers. Sarah Adam: I don't know, somewhere in, actually, no, I do remember now that you asked me. It was January of 2024 and I was sitting on my couch, it was a Friday night, everyone was asleep. And I was going through my LinkedIn feed, refusing to go to bed, and it must have been like midnight. And my LinkedIn feed was full of posts of empty AI new year resolution posts. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Sarah Adam: It just me off and I was like, you know what? I've had it. LinkedIn on one hand has the best audience as far as I'm concerned, if you're in the professional working world. But on the other hand, the content is just so boring, so low. And I thought, you know what? People post about, people are busy telling other people what to do on LinkedIn. You should do this, you should do that, but they don't share what they do. And it could be that what they're talking about is real and it's not from ChatGPT and it's something that's based on a real thing that happened to them and these are their lessons learned, which is cool. But sometimes it's just missing that personal story, that real thing, what actually happened to you. And I always felt that's really missing. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to try and I'm going to post and I'm going to see how it goes. And every post I'm going to give something real, something that people can actually say, "Oh, wow, can relate to, can give credibility to the lessons learned, etc." So then instead of writing a New Year's resolution, I kind of summarized the 2023 and I said, "With numbers data, this is what I did in terms of influencer marketing. These are the numbers of influencers we worked with. We plan to scale in 2024 to X number," I can't even remember now what I wrote. And then I did have lessons, my top lessons learned from that year. And I just pressed publish and I went to bed, which is bad practice. You need to hang around, but I didn't. And then I remember waking up and I saw I had 20 new followers and I was like, oh, this is cool. So then I decided, okay, I'm going to take two weeks and I'm going to dedicate these next two weeks to posting, and after two weeks I'll decide if it's something I want to keep going at and I enjoyed it. So here I am, almost a year later, and I have, yeah, so it's been fun. Crystal Carter: And I think that, so it's one of the reasons why we were so excited to have you on this for the Across the Wix-verse first thing is because we know inside and out. We see the work that you're doing, we know you, we read your feed as well. And what's great- Mordy Oberstein: We're on the same team for a month. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? Sarah Adam: Back in the day. Crystal Carter: What I think is crazy is I'm in a group chat and I remember seeing one of your, somebody shared one of your posts in the group chat. They were like, "Oh, is Wix doing all of this?" And I was like, yeah, Sarah, that's right. Okay. But I think that what I think is really great about the information that you share is you share money. You're like, first deal, I'm looking at one post from a month ago, first deal, 300 or $3,500 for three Instagram reels over one month. Second deal, $20,000, 20 reels over six months, that sort of thing. You're sharing money, you're sharing. You have a great one about LinkedIn versus TikTok. I'd love to hear what you can say about that. So in LinkedIn versus TikTok, you're saying that LinkedIn and TikTok had similar but TikTok had higher views, LinkedIn had higher engagement, things like that. How are you finding TikTok as a channel for B2B influencers? Sarah Adam: So that's exactly why I wrote the post, because I speak to many marketeers that are either already doing B2B influencer marketing or considering it for 2025, and TikTok usually does not come up in conversation. And I always kind of feel a need to prove those people wrong. And I also used to think that back in the day when we just started, I thought, it's not B2B, but it is. I mean, I don't know, I use TikTok. I don't know if, do you guys? Are you on TikTok? Crystal Carter: Yes, I TikTok. Mordy Oberstein: I just got on Instagram, give me some time. Sarah Adam: Okay, so you'll get there too. So many people I know that are B2B use it. And the truth is, and that's what I say to people who are skeptical, I say, "Just go on TikTok and search for the keywords within your niche. Search for your competitors, search for your brand name, and you'll see you're going to get results. You need to be there too." So that's why that specific post was to compare between LinkedIn, which is obviously B2B, to TikTok, which people think is not. And to just show that I kind of think in a way that they complete each other because we are seeing... I mean, and that was just analyzing, I think it was based on a specific month, I can't even remember. But we see the volume in TikTok, which is very valuable, and we see the engagement on LinkedIn, which is very valuable, so. Crystal Carter: Just for people who are curious about this. The stats on it were that they did in September 16% of their B2B influencer posts were on TikTok, 16% were on LinkedIn. Number of views was 960% higher on TikTok, but engagement rates were 20% higher on LinkedIn. Number of comments were 200% higher on LinkedIn. And the sentiment analysis, 55% positive on TikTok versus 80% positive on LinkedIn. And Mordy, I know you've got a question, so I'll let you jump in. Mordy Oberstein: No, I was just going to ask by the great stats, do you find that the overlap between or the unification of LinkedIn and TikTok has to do with the fact that I think that there's a move towards emotive branding B2B? Like what used to be so awkward to do B2B is now kind of okay, right? Sarah Adam: I think that- Mordy Oberstein: If people are not familiar with this, really, really quick. A lot of brands are going very emotive marketing, very emotive branding, B2B, and it's resonating. Okay, now that you've gotten the context, that was the reason why I asked the question. Sarah Adam: Yeah, no, I think it's particularly true with LinkedIn introducing their video feed this year. I think more and more, I mean, I see it among us also internally and with the influencers we're working with. More and more tendency to upload videos to LinkedIn that they wouldn't beforehand. So I can give example, if we are working with an influencer on Instagram and TikTok and I see that they have a LinkedIn and they have a decent following, it doesn't even have to be huge. Like 2,000 followers is enough, really. So we'll often pay them to reshare that same video on LinkedIn and kind of see how that performs. So I think so, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I have 15,000. You can pay me, I'll repost your stuff. Crystal Carter: I think also, I think that there's, in terms of TikTok LinkedIn, TikTok is having a big influence on LinkedIn because LinkedIn has started putting videos really very much in the form of their algorithm, certainly on mobile. They've got a whole video feed that's very, very prominent and so I think that that's helping as well. One of the things, you talked about follower numbers, and you very often share in your information, the number of followers people have and rates and fees. People talk about micro-influencers and macro-influencers. Do you find that there's actually a difference when you're working with influencers for Wix Studio? Sarah Adam: Yeah. Yeah, huge difference. So we actually work with nano-influencers, which is smaller than micro, and micro-influencers. So our influencers can be anywhere between 2K followers to 500K. The thing is, is that followers is not that important. What really matters is the engagement that they're getting, the impressions that they're getting on their content. It's like just the other day I had a call with someone from a FinTech company, someone who works with a friend of mine, and they shared with me a list of people they think are relevant influencers, because they wanted my opinion. And these influencers were all the same. They had a very big following, but when you actually dive into their content, they're not getting any likes or any comments, nothing. So you're not going to pay some... That's just a very bad business decision, you're not going to work with someone like that. And then on the other hand, and I often see this, especially on LinkedIn and on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where you have, let's say you're watching, you've come across a video that's gone viral, and then you're curious to see who the creator is, and you go into their profile to find that they hardly have any following. It doesn't mean following is important. It's some sort of indication that does show that people over time see value in following that individual, which is obviously based on the content that they have produced, but it doesn't mean that they're suitable for your campaign right now. Crystal Carter: Right, right. It's the same with like SEO things. People are like, yeah, we're going to get lots of traffic. It's like, yeah, but is it the right traffic? If you posted a blog that said free chocolate bars- Mordy Oberstein: Where? Crystal Carter: ... for everybody and you sell, I don't know, watches. You might get a lot of traffic but that's not the right traffic. So just because somebody has a big falling doesn't necessarily mean that they're right for you. Mordy Oberstein: Where are the free chocolate bars? I'm so confused. Sarah Adam: You lost him on chocolate. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and free. Sarah Adam: He's not listening anymore. Crystal Carter: I think the other question is, so what about conversions and what about those sorts of things? So when you do an influencer campaign, how do you make sure that it gets tied to some of your business deliverables and things like that? How do you connect those? Sarah Adam: So this is a very interesting and hot topic, right? Because, so we see for us, influencer marketing is for sure and always has been, and I don't see it changing, is a brand awareness play. So we're not measuring conversions, which I know is uncomfortable for people to hear, but it's, that's what it is. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing, right? I've talked about, because we do the same thing on our side, but we're all about the brand and less about the conversion. People looking at me like I'm nuts. Sarah Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially smaller companies with smaller budgets, they don't like that, but it's true. That's what's so beautiful about working with influencers is their impact in terms of brand awareness. So we measure each and every asset that goes live. We measure that success in comparison to the same influencers' previous content, to content from other influencers, maybe from the same campaign. So we get some sort of idea. We're able to look at a piece of content and say, "Did it serve the goal or not? Did it meet the KPIs that we set or not?" And also if it did, and if the influencer was professional and fun to work with, then that's the reason to work with them again. But then we also look at results at a much higher level where it's another, what we do, what my team does, the content that goes live, how it performs is another kind of piece of a bigger puzzle for brand awareness where we check things like search. We want to see that month over month, more and more people are searching for Wix Studio. So scaling influencers is aligned with the other very many brand awareness activities that we do. So it's very difficult. It's impossible even to just select one piece of content and say, "Hey, did this work or not?" It depends. It depends what you're measuring and etc, etc. So, it's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good point because influencer marketing, to me, partnerships of which influencer marketing is a type of, to me it's all about generating cadence, momentum, and it's a way of distributing yourself. It's a way of getting yourself out there to new people in new ways and leveraging all of that to get a certain kind of cadence and inertia or momentum. So looking at it from a conversion point of view, to me, looks at influencer marketing as not really what it's really all about, which is, you expanding out of your own self to create new possibilities based on the momentum that you didn't have before. Sarah Adam: Yeah, although there are, there are many companies that use it for conversion, and they're not measuring. They're just measuring the sales they get from those specific things. Mordy Oberstein: There's also a lot of people who watch cricket, so. Sarah Adam: Exactly. Crystal Carter: Cricket's a great game, though. Cricket's a great game. Mordy Oberstein: Of course you could hit the ball though. The bat's flat. If I had a flat bat, I could hit anything too. Crystal Carter: Cricket's an amazing game. It goes on for three weeks. You can be like, I'm sorry, I'm busy for three weeks because you're playing cricket. And also, they have a- Mordy Oberstein: And with that, our audience has gone cricket, cricket. Crystal Carter: Okay, so my question to you, Sarah, is if you were say, managing cricket brand and you were looking for an influencer for your cricket brand or your cricket team and you were going to knock it for six with a new influencer, what are the signs that it's a good influencer for your project? You open up their page and you're like, no, or okay, what do you look for? Sarah Adam: So I always look for, it's naturally in the order of the page almost of the profile. The first thing I look at is the bio, the title, the bio. What's this person's profession? What do they do? Have they played cricket before? Do they cricket? Is it cricket coach, train? I don't know what the right terminology is. Do maybe they somehow specialize in the world of cricket? Maybe they're like a cricket therapist. So that's the first thing, and that's like a deal breaker or maker if it's someone who's not in cricket, so I'm just going to move on to the next person because if they are, then okay, chances are their content is as well, which could also not be... it maybe you'll have a great potential influencer that looks great, but their content is about their personal life or about politics. We don't want that. So we want to see that the actual content is consistent and relevant and of decent quality. It doesn't have to be... We all know what TikTok and Instagram looks like these days. It doesn't have to be something high quality. It has to be good enough. And the most important thing, which is a deal breaker or maker are the, how is that content performing until today? Not even until today, just to look at their last, say, five, eight posts. What's the engagement like? What are the views like? And the most critical thing for me is the bio and the performance. If those two match, then that's enough to reach out. Mordy Oberstein: So if people want to reach out to you and they're not just on LinkedIn, where else besides LinkedIn, might they find you, if anywhere? Sarah Adam: Yeah, I'm only on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, wow, wow. Crystal Carter: You said you were on TikTok. You've got an account somewhere. Sarah Adam: So I tried. I tried TikTok, and there's too much maintenance. I couldn't take it, it was stressing me out. Mordy Oberstein: That's how I feel about my kids. Tried that, it's too much maintenance. Crystal Carter: See that candor, that is what we come to appreciate about Sarah Adam content. That's what we like. Real talk. Mordy Oberstein: Follow and connect or just follow, whatever Sarah wants, on LinkedIn. Sarah Adam: Yes, I'll be waiting. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much and see you there. Speaker 5: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift off. Life off. Mordy Oberstein: Again, thanks so much, Sarah, and make sure to give her a big follow on social media to be influenced by all of her marketing. You know who's really influential in my life. Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry, legitimately. Barry has been very influential in my life. Crystal Carter: Aw. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No, I didn't mean in a good way. No, I'm kidding. Barry has actually helped my life tremendously. He helps me each and every day with his coverage of the SEO news, which means it's time. Very valuable and very concise, which is why we're moving into this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News. Snappy News. So the November 2024 core update is over and now, and now there's a December 2024 core update. Okay, so from Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable, December, Google, December 2024 core update is live. What we're seeing, what we're seeing is madness. That's what we're seeing. So Google, this is on December 13th, Barry is writing an SE Roundtable. Google announced the 2024 core update. They said it'll take two weeks. And then they wrote, "If you're wondering why there's a core update this month after one last month, but technically still this month because November one ended in December. We have different core systems. We're always improving. This past blog post explains more." Well, that clarifies everything. I have no more questions. I have a lot of questions. People in the industry, Barry covers it in his article. We're not exactly happy. He covers the charts showing the increase in ring volatility. Greg Finn from It's New, which used to do Monday through Thursday to get the SEO news and we'll talk a lot about that this week, has a whole segment on his podcast Marketing O’Clock, going through Barry's charts that I found very insightful. Anywho, there's been a lot of chatter. I mean, Willie Ray, SEO, great SEO legend, wrote WTAF. That kind of sums it up for me. It's interesting. Okay, so part of this, Google announces they had some kind of meetup in Zurich and Danny Sullivan came on the screen and they announced this as something's kind of big moment. I don't know, it's not a big moment, it's kind of confusing moment. And they said expect more core updates this year. Something I would've liked to known yesterday. My issue with this is, okay, if there's going to be more updates, it's very confusing to now go through and analyze and see what was impacted and when it was impacted. Sidebar, Barry covered on searchengineland.com, what the data providers said about the November 2024 core update, one of which of those providers was Semrush, and the person who handled the Semrush data for Semrush was me. So I sent Barry the data and Semrush, and I said to Barry, I think he quotes it in the article that also linked to it in the show notes. "It's very confusing to try to analyze these updates because forget two core updates. The baseline period where you're trying to compare what happened during the update to a normal period of rank volatility, normal doesn't exist anymore. It's all bonkers and high. So how do you compare?" All right, there it is. I wrote, "As with the August 20 24 core update, this update saw an extensive period of high levels of rank volatility proceeded. This makes analyzing the update relative to its proceeding baseline period almost impossible, Mordy Oberstein told us." And Mordy Oberstein is telling you now the same thing. There are a bunch of charts in there also. You have a look at it, but now it's even more confusing because now you have a second core update all on top of this. I think this first off, it's really bad timing because you had a core update go over Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Now you're having one going over the holiday shopping season itself. Over the holidays probably, itself. It's going to make it to understand what exactly happened to who and when and where, which was the culprit, which may or may not makes such a practical difference, I guess, very difficult. And the optics are just really bad. And I usually don't put my thumb on the scale on this podcast this way, but if you knew there's going to be more updates coming, I think the better way to have communicated would've been before the November update saying, "Hey-o, listen up," it's my inner big man, "Hey-o, listen up, everybody. We're going to have a whole bunch of updates. So yes, the November one's rolling out, but don't be surprised if there's more to follow this." That's kind of getting ahead of the narrative. I feel Google sometimes loses the narrative because they don't get ahead of the narrative and narratives are important. Narratives are important, and on that, I'm going to end the news. If you're looking for more commentary on this, have a look back by the time this episode comes out, and what we covered on It's New, over on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub, or on the RustyBrick YouTube channel, probably on Monday the 16th, because I'm recording this on Sunday the 15th. We are definitely going to cover this then. I can't imagine is not covering it, and there'll probably be some interesting takes from myself, Greg Finn, Barry Schwartz himself, and Chris LaCarter. So until that time, this is the Snappy News. You know what's funny? On SMX, one of the recent SMXs, Barry wasn't on the banner. I'm like, dude's got 100 and gazillion followers, put him on the banner. So I fixed it, I added it in into like, here's Search Engine Land. I fixed it, here's Barry on the banner. Crystal Carter: Nice, nice. Totally. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, everyone just forgets about Barry. How do you forget about Barry? Crystal Carter: People shouldn't forget about Barry. Barry's like, you know he's that dude. Mordy Oberstein: No. No one puts Barry in a corner. Crystal Carter: He does have a corner office though. He kind of, he prefers it. Mordy Oberstein: He does. His whole setup is very corner-y looking. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, if you want to take a look at it and take a look at It's New every day, you can see Barry's corner-y set up. Crystal Carter: Right and his collection of button down shirts as well. Mordy Oberstein: Is it a collection or is it one he watches every day? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I've never seen him wear a T-shirt, let's just put it that way. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if he sleeps in them. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Now we're getting too far down the rabbit hole of Barry. What we should be doing is going down the rabbit hole of who you should be following this week, and your follow of the week is Mary-Anne Da'Marzo, who runs Firebelly Media and has a massive TikTok Instagram account. You should absolutely follow for some great information. On SEO marketing in general, tons of stuff. We've worked with her before with the Wix team a bunch of times. She's really, really, really, really a great follow. Crystal Carter: She's a great follow. She's really, really active and she has some great grasp on her audience and what her audience needs from her, and she's really, really good at connecting with them. And I think that that's something that shouldn't be underestimated when you're thinking about working with influencers, is whether or not they have a good understanding of their audience and a really strong respect for their audience, which I think she absolutely does. Mordy Oberstein: She did a cool thing, I think she wrote about or posted about and wrote about it, you don't write anything on Instagram, really. She deleted her LinkedIn account and made a new one because her audience, for that reason, I think she felt her audience on LinkedIn and wasn't aligned. She wanted to redo it and restart from scratch. Super interesting. Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, have a look at it. It's somewhere either on TikTok or Instagram or maybe even on LinkedIn if she talks about it. So we'll link to her profiles in the show notes, so you can go check it out. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'm really feeling influenced. I'm under the influence. Crystal Carter: Don't drive anywhere, please. Find a designated driver or server or whatever. Whatever you need to do for your things. Mordy Oberstein: I need to write a bunch of emails. Crystal Carter: Yes. Don't write emails under the influence. Mordy Oberstein: My social media posts. Crystal Carter: And certainly don't call any of your exes under the influence, that's not a good idea either. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think, I know I do not have any. I've been married for 17 years. I don't have exes anymore. Crystal Carter: What happened to them? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Maybe they deleted their LinkedIn accounts. Who knows? I remember one time years ago on Facebook, one popped up trying to friend me, I'm like, nope. Crystal Carter: That's healthy. That's also good life advice. Can we just say that? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What? Are you serious? Why? Nope. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's good life advice. Just let it go. Mordy Oberstein: Well, if you want more life advice, tune in for next week SERP'S Up podcast, because are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, can you ever have too much SEO data and/or marketing data? The answer is, yes, I think. Anyway, we'll talk about it next week. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. To get a little more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guess it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Nicole Ponce Sarah Adam Mary-Anne Da'Marzo Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course It's New: Daily SEO News Series Semrush Spotlight Conference News: Google December 2024 Core Update Is Live - What Are We Seeing Data providers: Google November 2024 core update was less volatile Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Nicole Ponce Sarah Adam Mary-Anne Da'Marzo Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course It's New: Daily SEO News Series Semrush Spotlight Conference News: Google December 2024 Core Update Is Live - What Are We Seeing Data providers: Google November 2024 core update was less volatile Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP'S Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP'S Up podcast, where there's some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is quite influential, the Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I don't know who she is. Who is she? I've never heard of her. Mordy Oberstein: Crystal on the web? You never heard crystal on the web? Crystal on the web. Crystal Carter: Oh, that lady. Mordy Oberstein: She's an influencer. Crystal Carter: Who does she influence? I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: All sorts of people. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? I think I once influenced my mom to buy a tiny handbag because I had a tiny handbag and she was jealous that I had this tiny handbag, so. Mordy Oberstein: What do you put inside of a tiny handbag? Crystal Carter: Wasn't super tiny. It was just wallet, keys, phone, that kind of size, because she had this big giant bag and I don't like big giant bags because I just fill them with junk. So if I have a small bag, then I can't fill it with junk and then I can just get on with my life. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, good life lesson. Small bags. Crystal Carter: Small bags. Mordy Oberstein: Unless they're money bags, in which case make them big. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP'S Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search labor at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter and see our great free SEO course, it's also where you can enhance your social strategy and track your social traffic with a wide array of inbuilt analytics and native integrations with Instagram, Facebook, and more, which is great for accelerating and tracking the impact of some of your influencer marketing efforts. As this week, we talk all about influencer marketing and conversions. Does influencer marketing lead to leads and converting conversions? What type of influencer marketing works for signups, clicks, and which don't? How influencer marketing has changed and is changing, and we'll be joined by Semrush's own influencer marketing lead, Nicole Ponce, who will help us dig on in, plus Wix Studio's own Head of Partnerships and Influencer Marketing, Sarah Adam, shares her top influencer marketing tips and her experience with you. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, turn your phone to vertical as we go like, oh my God, you won't even believe, you should totally buy this. Click the link button in the description below on the 115th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast. Subscribe. Crystal Carter: Smash that like button. Mordy Oberstein: Smash that like button. I'm always afraid my kids will go take that, my little one will take it literally and smash. Crystal Carter: Oh man, I love it when you're in the middle of the video and they're like, "Hey, you join this video, you should subscribe to my channel while you're here." And you're like, okay, thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Click the bell for notifications. Crystal Carter: Right? You ding the bell, ding, ding, go. Mordy Oberstein: Can tell you, I never understood that maybe there's a reason. What's the point of subscribing without getting the notifications? Crystal Carter: I subscribe without getting the notifications I have too many- Mordy Oberstein: Me too, all the time, but does it do anything for me? I don't know. Crystal Carter: I don't know, it shows in your feed, but then you don't have... The notifications I sometimes find stressful. Mordy Oberstein: Right, no, I don't like them, but it would show up my feed anyway because I'm watching those videos. Crystal Carter: That's true, that's true. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter: This is true. Mordy Oberstein: You know who might know? Crystal Carter: Who? Mordy Oberstein: Nicole. Crystal Carter: Nicole? Mordy Oberstein: Nicole. Crystal Carter: It's a good thing we've got her on the show. Mordy Oberstein: So let's get right into it. So influencer marketing is one of those things that's kind of weird for me. Everyone kind of talks about it, a lot of people do it, but often not well. Is that spicy? Yeah, it's true, it's true. I'm just going to say because it's true. Everyone's like, oh, we're going to do influencer marketing, but then it's not always so great. So as someone who's done a boatload of influencer marketing over the course of my career, it's easy to get distracted by things that don't actually help you with the influencer. I'll just say, number of followers can be very distracting sometimes, it doesn't always matter the way that you think it does. Anywho, on top of that, there's also the disruption in the space. Over the years this whole thing of like, I'm a famous person, I'll promote your product and everyone will know I've never actually used it. That doesn't work anymore. Stevie Wonder doing a commercial for Zenni doesn't work. You know he's never used it. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Zenni, it's eyeglasses. Stevie Wonder is blind. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I order glasses online. Sorry. So, that whole celebrity thing, they're just going to promote it and just get a famous person on there, and that doesn't work. Everyone kind of sees through that a little bit. So I think that whole thing is the notion of influencer marketing being like, oh, it's about being famous people talking about my product is a bit of a misnomer, which is why I'm very happy, somebody I used to actually have the privilege of working with day in and day out on influencer marketing is here with us right now. Welcome to the show, Semrush's, Nicole Ponce. How are you? Nicole Ponce: Good. Hi, Mordy. Honestly, the pleasure is mine and whoever's listening probably doesn't know this or hopefully now they will know this, but Mordy and I used to work on the same team, so I also had the pleasure of working with Mordy in and out and brainstorm a lot of ideas. So, a lot of my ideas also come from Mordy's really great trajectory, so I give kudos to you back. Mordy Oberstein: That's way too much credit. If no one, an influencer promoting whatever product they never used, no one believes you. Nicole Ponce: Okay, perfect. Crystal Carter: He's going to be insufferable now, Nicole. I don't know what you've done, you're never going to live this down, I was just feel like. Nicole says, Nicole says. Mordy Oberstein: My giant ego just got bigger. Nicole Ponce: I love this, I love this. No, but truly mean it. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here to talk to you both, especially about influencer marketing, the B2B space, because I think B2B is such a new space to talk about influencer marketing and as Mordy was mentioning in the intro, it's hard to really show the impact for something that it's not a physical tangible thing to really showcase of how many people are purchasing it, but something that is a platform and is a service that you really need to showcase. What is the value of it for somebody to pay for it month to month? It's a really enticing, long tail effect of how to do it properly. So we've tested a lot at Semrush. I'm sure you guys have done, you guys do a great job at Wix also. I've had great conversations with Sarah about this, but yeah, it's definitely a different tactic and different strategies that need to be in place, but I'm curious to hear what we are going to talk about today, in terms of what that would look like in the future as well. Mordy Oberstein: So exactly just that. This whole idea of, and I'm curious about your opinion on this, where there's so much demand for influencer marketing and there's also demand for conversions. Does influencer marketing work for conversions? How strong is the connection between the influencer market and conversion? Is there a direct correlation or direct connection? How do you see that whole equation kind of thing? Nicole Ponce: Yeah, so a lot of people actually think about influencer marketing when it goes to conversions, they think affiliate marketing right away, which is not the case because yes, affiliate marketing does help you with conversion based directly. But in terms of the way that we work and the way that I see influencer marketing as impact for campaigns, it should definitely be enticed to conversion based. It doesn't mean that you'll see the conversions right away. I mean, ideally the goal is, because if you're investing some sort of specific budget on a campaign as a whole, if you're working with the right audience of influencer and that their audience is also somebody that is in need of the content that you're producing or what you're advertising, then obviously you did your job well in really looking through in the details of connecting the needs, the product, and how you can help. So I do see it as it should be a conversion based focus. Just measuring on impression says really nothing, especially if you're investing a lot of money, at least for me, right? Just speaking on behalf of what our team is doing, but just showing impression base. Yes, it's great to show brand awareness and I am a very huge believer. And sometimes you really can't quantify emotional connections or emotional value or even brand awareness and aspect of, I know that our brand is everywhere, but how do you put that in a factual number? But I think it definitely does help you showcase the value of influencer marketing if you're focusing as top level conversions and then obviously other measurable things will be like emotional value, brand awareness, etc, etc. But the answer in short is yes, absolutely. And obviously you need to just nurture the audience very well in order to see those conversions come through. It's not going to be like a one-off, especially when you're working in B2B, and, yeah. Crystal Carter: So B2B is a great point because the lead time on B2B can be very, very long. If you're talking to people, so you work in a SaaS team, if you're talking about people adopting a new SaaS platform, that could be months, negotiation, discussion, deliberation. And when you're talking about the conversions, can you just get into a little bit of the details of some of what a conversion looks like for an influencer marketing campaign? Because I think a lot of people think a conversion is a sale, but that's not necessarily the case, particularly for a long tail campaign or for a long sales cycle, for instance. Are you able to talk about some of the things that might make a conversion? Nicole Ponce: Yeah, so our main top funnel that we would basically measure is traffic. So anybody that lands onto Semrush's website we consider as not obviously a directly conversion, but a conversion for us is a first-time payment. So somebody that is going to, has not used Semrush at all and now is a new Semrush user, or even is potentially a Semrush user and has upgraded to one of our new apps, or is testing a new tool or a new add-on. So anything that converts into a new payment of some sort is considered a conversion for us. So it really depends on the campaign. It really depends on what the focus of the goal is in general for the company and as a whole, but we as a SaaS platform have so much to offer. We have 56 different apps, we have over 20 over tools, we have upgrades, we have add-ons, we have different tiers. And the way that we can see an increase of conversion is understanding your tool in and out and what that audience needs in order to educate them enough to say like, "Hey, you have this problem and we actually have something that can help you fix this," or, "We have something that you potentially might not know that you need, but it'll help you save X amount of time. So maybe upgrade or maybe test it out and see it as something that will help you in your workflow," and maybe they didn't know. And this is what's something that's interesting for me that we've been testing and I've been just talking about, because before we would just really directly work with SEOs, and we still do, but I've been testing working with influencers outside of the SEO space, but that are also in marketing. So they don't actually know the level of different tools and apps that we have to offer. So potentially, let's say they're just content marketers and they've just, I don't know, worked in our content toolkit, and then I share with them different apps that we have to offer and they're like, "Oh, wow, I didn't even know that you guys had this. I've been looking for something like this." So now it's just showing the value of all in one toolkit, which is what we are. But again, we're all marketers. We are so busy, we're just stuck in our every day. Sometimes we need to allocate more time to test something new, but if I'm already there in their face showing and making it easier for them to test it out in an easier, faster, all-in-one solution, it's just going to help that conversion aspect in terms of the life cycle, let's say. So obviously it's going to take a longer time, but it's just mostly like, and we're okay with that and we understand it's kind of like an investment. And we need to just be more present at all times because it's just how it is. We lose now attention with everything, like in a spam. Crystal Carter: One of the things you mentioned was picking up on lots of different parts of your platform. You've worked with Mordy, I worked with you when you were working with Mordy at Semrush, and I've had a relationship with Semrush for a while. I spoke at your fantastic Spotlight event recently. I've done one of your courses, I've done influencer marketing things where we did videos and things like that. We've done a webinar recently with your colleague, Eric, shout-out to Eric. And I think that what you're talking about there is that relationship of that long-term that with an influencer, it might not be just one thing that you're going to be marketing with them, but you might be marketing with them over a long period and you might be evolving with them and they might be evolving with you. Are you able to talk about how you maintain those relationships? Mordy Oberstein: That's right, really quick, that's so interesting because when we were working together that was one of the things we consciously tried to do is say, "Okay, let's not just go bing, bing, bing to all these different people, but let's find people and work with them over the course of many, many, many, many projects." Okay, sorry Nicole. Nicole Ponce: I was going to say, I 100% agree with this, and I think it showcases also not just the impact of the relationship with the actual influencer, but also with our audience. And it's just like now they're embedded as a, hey, they actually are an advocate for Semrush. It's not just, oh, I just see an ad and it removes the importance or the value for me as an audience. It's just seeing an ad one time is just, I'm going to forget about it. But if this person's actually continuously mentioning to their audience like, "Hey, I'm using this for this," or, "Hey, now I found out about this. Oh, look, now they've launched this." It's just now we're both working down the same avenue and it's kind of like an embedment, and now they're considered basically a brand ambassador, in our case. And the trust of them, by them is the audience of the influencer, is definitely what we need in order to see these type of conversions. But the way that we, sorry to answer your question Crystal, but basically the way that we build these long-term relationships is, I'm a huge believer in, if I can help wherever I can, I will. And then hopefully at some point when I need help, hopefully you can help me back. And that has helped in such a great aspect, and I know Mordy believes in this because we're huge advocates of this, but we believe in growing together. Not me running and then hopefully you can jump in the lane when I need to. That does not work at all. We're working with professionals, we're working with people. We're both trying to get at the same end goal. I'm very cautious also of the influencer's audience. There's sometimes I've gotten pushed back with the influencers like, hey, this does not align with my audience even though I love Semrush but we're talking about the PC, but I talk about SEO. By all means, I'm like, please tell me, push back because obviously we want it to be authentic. We want it to be real. We want to make sure that we're giving value to your audience. We don't want you to lower your engagement and the way that you actually interact with your audience because if you lose trust, we lose trust, and that obviously doesn't help me in my results. So, let's both work together to make sure that we keep whatever we need to do in a well road and then everyone wins. That's kind of like my motto. If you win, I win vice versa, so yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It makes the whole thing come off, it's so much more organic, it's so much more natural. And it makes it believable, it makes it that you can probably get a conversion out of it, because the audience, it's all very subtle. If the audience kind of feels like, wait a second... Because they know what's going on, everyone knows what's going on. This is part of, this person and Semrush, they're kind of together. But if it doesn't feel authentic, you focus on that part and not on the actual authentic part of it. So if it's too noticeable, you can't get the message across. So having that relationship, having that whole integration with them is what allows, I think, for eventually there to be a conversion. Nicole Ponce: Yeah, I 100% agree. And again, it goes all back to the basics. I feel sometimes that we overthink about how we can do our job properly when it's just the basics that it's people are going to buy from people. And a lot of people overthink the creative like, we need to make sure that we are like, bam, we need to make sure that we make a lot of noise. Yeah, but just go back to the basics. If you understand the need of the audience and you have a solution because you understand and you believe in your platform, just talk to the influencer. Be honest, like, "Hey, we have Z, Y, and Z. How can we work together? You know your audience best." And sometimes I do have an empty approach to an influencer like, I love what you're doing, I love your content. I don't know if we could potentially work on something together that might help because maybe they know about plans that I don't know about and vice versa. But a lot of people just automatically think like, okay, this person has 1,000 followers, sorry, 100,000 followers, almost a million followers and have great engagement. I'm just going to stick my tool in there and invest my whatever budget I have for influencer marketing and I know it's going to work. And a lot of brands do that when they work with athletes and it's just like, you're not speaking to the right audience/choir. So even though you're spending, I don't know, half a million dropping like a Superbowl ad, let's say in quotations, you really think that you're going to see the conversions if you're actually talking to the right audience? I don't know, it's a question mark. But if you understand how to communicate when get asked the right questions to these influencers to make sure you understand what the right audience that they're speaking to, I think it definitely does help a lot with your plans in terms of seeing these conversions long tail wise. Mordy Oberstein: I'm curious, on the conversion side, do you find that there's certain types of influencers who are better able to get certain types of conversions? Or in general, do different kind of assets convert better with influencer market? Like a sign up versus getting them to click to a blog? What works in terms of the conversion? Is there a difference between what your goal is? Are you trying to get a lead? Are you trying to get a click? What actually works for the conversion or what doesn't work? You're not going to get them obviously to influence a market and spend a million dollars right away, that ask wouldn't work. So what actually works to convert? Nicole Ponce: Right, that's a great question. It really depends on a lot of things obviously, because based on what we've tested, two things. Educational content, obviously because we're a platform and they're able to showcase the value of what they're going to be getting out of it helps a lot. Absolutely. So, educational content really helps. And if you're working with a thought leader that has been talking about this specific topic does help a lot because it just showcase like, hey, I want to be this person. I want to be at this educational value level, and if that means I need to benefit based off this tool that will help me get to that place, then potentially that will help. That's just the content aspect. But in terms of what else helps, it really depends on where we launch the campaign, so on the platform wise, especially because we're a SaaS platform that it's easier for us to work on desktop. And most of the influencer marketing campaigns that we launch our own social platforms. So the way and the user experience, for example, if you see a campaign on TikTok and then they have to actually go on the landing page to trial, and then we see the balance, how they're going to have to use it on Semrush's desktop, it's going to be a little bit harder, of course, as it is opposed to potentially on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn's another whole other story we talked about because of the way that traffic works on there. But yeah, it really depends, and this is why I believe in not just working with an influencer one time and then multiply working multiple content pieces for one specific campaign. And just so you can see the retention of the audience actually going from mobile to desktop. But yeah, it's things that you don't think about, but especially when you're working in SaaS and if you're working with an audience in social media, in order to see the trials come in. Crystal Carter: I think also, one of the things that from my experience of working with Semrush is that you very much take an approach of... I did a course, go check it out in the Semrush Academy on Mobile SEO. And like I was in the platform and I use Semrush regularly and if you are a Wix user and you're listening to this podcast or Wix studio user, then you can also use Semrush because it's built into your CMS, by the way. And basically, as part of it, I was like, well, I need to make sure I've got the latest thing. And so I upgraded, I had an upgrade during the time I was doing the course and so I could do extra stuff on top of that. And the thing that happens with that, when you have somebody who is speaking at conferences regularly, who's writing content regularly, who's doing content regularly, is that because we have the relationship that we are using the product and we're showcasing the product in those spaces with professionals, just again, an organic way. Mordy writes for Semrush regularly and does reports and uses Semrush data very often and has had a couple of things that are both on Semrush and on other platforms as well, where they're talking about things that are happening with Google updates and things that are happening with different keywords and how they're performing and things like that. And that is an ongoing visibility that comes from people using the platform genuinely in a genuine way. How do you identify someone who might have that kind of relationship with your product? And are those particularly valuable for the sort of exercise of working with an influencer? Nicole Ponce: The way that we actually look for potential influencers is, I do a lot of deep dive, and even though I don't post myself, which that's my bad on me, but I'm always everywhere, in the sense of conversations, what's happening, who's talking, what are they talking about? And that's how we recruit new influencers as well. There's a lot of people that they talk about Semrush as just an educational content piece, and I'm like, oh, I'm going to jump in your DMs and ask like, yeah, absolutely. And this is how the relationship starts. And I just, even sometimes people that talk about other competitors and Semrush and I just drop a conversation and say, "What are you lacking that we could potentially maybe have and you don't know about this?" So giving also educational value in terms of conversational wise directly and DMs, doesn't have to be in public, but privately. And also, yeah, being in the search that if your actual customers and users are your number one criteria of influencers, absolutely, they're going to be your advocates forever. And if you potentially help them in the sense of, hey, we have a new update and we can help you get first access and actually get your feedback. I love, love, love, and sometimes I feel like influencers feel bad and they're like, "Hey, sorry to bother you, but this is not working. This doesn't make any sense. You're making my job harder." I love when I get those messages because I'm like, thank you. You're taking time out of your day to make sure that I go back to our developers, make sure that I make your life easier, because if I make your life easier with our product and you're going to talk about your audience and you're also going to have a better relationship with us in sense, wow, they actually listen to me actually speaking out other the feedback and it just goes on. Yeah, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: I literally sent something in yesterday to Anna on the data team, like, "Hey, can we do this in Semrush? They're like, "No, and it might be really good if we could because it be super awesome, super helpful. So there you go. Literally having yesterday. Nicole Ponce: Exactly. I love that. Crystal Carter: I think that comes to something, and we had the SEO board, the Wix SEO board, and we've seen this, and that was lots of people who have influence in the community because that's the other thing. We say influencers, but these are people that have influence in the community and they have influence for a reason. And essentially, if you build a good relationship, then as you're saying, people can help you make do what you do better. So even if you were a restaurant owner and you had some local influencers, they might be like, "Oh my god, there's no place to take a selfie in this restaurant." And the restaurant owner might be like, "Oh, you're right. I should put some plants, fix the lighting, sort myself out," and then that's better for the business overall. So what you're saying is great, that you have a good relationship with people where they can help you make it better for everyone. That's amazing. Nicole Ponce: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's our job in the end. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of making lives better, if people wanted to connect with you and make their lives better by interacting with you on social media, where could they find you? Nicole Ponce: Ah, thank you. Well, best place I would say is LinkedIn. I'm under Nicole C. Ponce. And yeah, I think that's where I'm most active. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Oh, we'll link in the show notes. Nicole, thanks so much for coming on. It was really, really fun to chat with you about this. Nicole Ponce: Thank you both for having me, and it's such a pleasure to always chat with you both. Mordy Oberstein: See you out there on social. Again, thank you so much, Nicole, for coming on. Make sure to give her a big follow on social media. No one is more transparent about their influencing marketing tactics than our own Head of Partnerships and Influencer marketing, Sarah Adam. Just have a look at her LinkedIn profile, it's downright epic, which is why we thought we'd talk to Sarah and pick her brain as we travel across the Wix-verse. Speaker 5: Three, two, one, ignition lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show, Sarah. How are you? Sarah Adam: I'm great. I'm so excited to be here. Crystal Carter: We are so excited to have you. We were doing a piece on influencer marketing and I was like, we have to talk to Sarah because you've become an influencer marketing influencer. Mordy Oberstein: That's so TV inside of TV… Sarah Adam: It's very meta. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Sarah Adam: It is. Yeah, cool. So what are we talking about? Mordy Oberstein: Well, we're talking about, first of all, how did that happen? We're talking about, first we're talking... This is free association where you kind of just go. Sarah Adam: Yeah, okay. Mordy Oberstein: How did that happen? Sarah Adam: What, me becoming an influencer of influencers? Mordy Oberstein: This influencer for the influencers. Sarah Adam: I don't know, somewhere in, actually, no, I do remember now that you asked me. It was January of 2024 and I was sitting on my couch, it was a Friday night, everyone was asleep. And I was going through my LinkedIn feed, refusing to go to bed, and it must have been like midnight. And my LinkedIn feed was full of posts of empty AI new year resolution posts. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Sarah Adam: It just me off and I was like, you know what? I've had it. LinkedIn on one hand has the best audience as far as I'm concerned, if you're in the professional working world. But on the other hand, the content is just so boring, so low. And I thought, you know what? People post about, people are busy telling other people what to do on LinkedIn. You should do this, you should do that, but they don't share what they do. And it could be that what they're talking about is real and it's not from ChatGPT and it's something that's based on a real thing that happened to them and these are their lessons learned, which is cool. But sometimes it's just missing that personal story, that real thing, what actually happened to you. And I always felt that's really missing. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to try and I'm going to post and I'm going to see how it goes. And every post I'm going to give something real, something that people can actually say, "Oh, wow, can relate to, can give credibility to the lessons learned, etc." So then instead of writing a New Year's resolution, I kind of summarized the 2023 and I said, "With numbers data, this is what I did in terms of influencer marketing. These are the numbers of influencers we worked with. We plan to scale in 2024 to X number," I can't even remember now what I wrote. And then I did have lessons, my top lessons learned from that year. And I just pressed publish and I went to bed, which is bad practice. You need to hang around, but I didn't. And then I remember waking up and I saw I had 20 new followers and I was like, oh, this is cool. So then I decided, okay, I'm going to take two weeks and I'm going to dedicate these next two weeks to posting, and after two weeks I'll decide if it's something I want to keep going at and I enjoyed it. So here I am, almost a year later, and I have, yeah, so it's been fun. Crystal Carter: And I think that, so it's one of the reasons why we were so excited to have you on this for the Across the Wix-verse first thing is because we know inside and out. We see the work that you're doing, we know you, we read your feed as well. And what's great- Mordy Oberstein: We're on the same team for a month. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? Sarah Adam: Back in the day. Crystal Carter: What I think is crazy is I'm in a group chat and I remember seeing one of your, somebody shared one of your posts in the group chat. They were like, "Oh, is Wix doing all of this?" And I was like, yeah, Sarah, that's right. Okay. But I think that what I think is really great about the information that you share is you share money. You're like, first deal, I'm looking at one post from a month ago, first deal, 300 or $3,500 for three Instagram reels over one month. Second deal, $20,000, 20 reels over six months, that sort of thing. You're sharing money, you're sharing. You have a great one about LinkedIn versus TikTok. I'd love to hear what you can say about that. So in LinkedIn versus TikTok, you're saying that LinkedIn and TikTok had similar but TikTok had higher views, LinkedIn had higher engagement, things like that. How are you finding TikTok as a channel for B2B influencers? Sarah Adam: So that's exactly why I wrote the post, because I speak to many marketeers that are either already doing B2B influencer marketing or considering it for 2025, and TikTok usually does not come up in conversation. And I always kind of feel a need to prove those people wrong. And I also used to think that back in the day when we just started, I thought, it's not B2B, but it is. I mean, I don't know, I use TikTok. I don't know if, do you guys? Are you on TikTok? Crystal Carter: Yes, I TikTok. Mordy Oberstein: I just got on Instagram, give me some time. Sarah Adam: Okay, so you'll get there too. So many people I know that are B2B use it. And the truth is, and that's what I say to people who are skeptical, I say, "Just go on TikTok and search for the keywords within your niche. Search for your competitors, search for your brand name, and you'll see you're going to get results. You need to be there too." So that's why that specific post was to compare between LinkedIn, which is obviously B2B, to TikTok, which people think is not. And to just show that I kind of think in a way that they complete each other because we are seeing... I mean, and that was just analyzing, I think it was based on a specific month, I can't even remember. But we see the volume in TikTok, which is very valuable, and we see the engagement on LinkedIn, which is very valuable, so. Crystal Carter: Just for people who are curious about this. The stats on it were that they did in September 16% of their B2B influencer posts were on TikTok, 16% were on LinkedIn. Number of views was 960% higher on TikTok, but engagement rates were 20% higher on LinkedIn. Number of comments were 200% higher on LinkedIn. And the sentiment analysis, 55% positive on TikTok versus 80% positive on LinkedIn. And Mordy, I know you've got a question, so I'll let you jump in. Mordy Oberstein: No, I was just going to ask by the great stats, do you find that the overlap between or the unification of LinkedIn and TikTok has to do with the fact that I think that there's a move towards emotive branding B2B? Like what used to be so awkward to do B2B is now kind of okay, right? Sarah Adam: I think that- Mordy Oberstein: If people are not familiar with this, really, really quick. A lot of brands are going very emotive marketing, very emotive branding, B2B, and it's resonating. Okay, now that you've gotten the context, that was the reason why I asked the question. Sarah Adam: Yeah, no, I think it's particularly true with LinkedIn introducing their video feed this year. I think more and more, I mean, I see it among us also internally and with the influencers we're working with. More and more tendency to upload videos to LinkedIn that they wouldn't beforehand. So I can give example, if we are working with an influencer on Instagram and TikTok and I see that they have a LinkedIn and they have a decent following, it doesn't even have to be huge. Like 2,000 followers is enough, really. So we'll often pay them to reshare that same video on LinkedIn and kind of see how that performs. So I think so, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I have 15,000. You can pay me, I'll repost your stuff. Crystal Carter: I think also, I think that there's, in terms of TikTok LinkedIn, TikTok is having a big influence on LinkedIn because LinkedIn has started putting videos really very much in the form of their algorithm, certainly on mobile. They've got a whole video feed that's very, very prominent and so I think that that's helping as well. One of the things, you talked about follower numbers, and you very often share in your information, the number of followers people have and rates and fees. People talk about micro-influencers and macro-influencers. Do you find that there's actually a difference when you're working with influencers for Wix Studio? Sarah Adam: Yeah. Yeah, huge difference. So we actually work with nano-influencers, which is smaller than micro, and micro-influencers. So our influencers can be anywhere between 2K followers to 500K. The thing is, is that followers is not that important. What really matters is the engagement that they're getting, the impressions that they're getting on their content. It's like just the other day I had a call with someone from a FinTech company, someone who works with a friend of mine, and they shared with me a list of people they think are relevant influencers, because they wanted my opinion. And these influencers were all the same. They had a very big following, but when you actually dive into their content, they're not getting any likes or any comments, nothing. So you're not going to pay some... That's just a very bad business decision, you're not going to work with someone like that. And then on the other hand, and I often see this, especially on LinkedIn and on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where you have, let's say you're watching, you've come across a video that's gone viral, and then you're curious to see who the creator is, and you go into their profile to find that they hardly have any following. It doesn't mean following is important. It's some sort of indication that does show that people over time see value in following that individual, which is obviously based on the content that they have produced, but it doesn't mean that they're suitable for your campaign right now. Crystal Carter: Right, right. It's the same with like SEO things. People are like, yeah, we're going to get lots of traffic. It's like, yeah, but is it the right traffic? If you posted a blog that said free chocolate bars- Mordy Oberstein: Where? Crystal Carter: ... for everybody and you sell, I don't know, watches. You might get a lot of traffic but that's not the right traffic. So just because somebody has a big falling doesn't necessarily mean that they're right for you. Mordy Oberstein: Where are the free chocolate bars? I'm so confused. Sarah Adam: You lost him on chocolate. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and free. Sarah Adam: He's not listening anymore. Crystal Carter: I think the other question is, so what about conversions and what about those sorts of things? So when you do an influencer campaign, how do you make sure that it gets tied to some of your business deliverables and things like that? How do you connect those? Sarah Adam: So this is a very interesting and hot topic, right? Because, so we see for us, influencer marketing is for sure and always has been, and I don't see it changing, is a brand awareness play. So we're not measuring conversions, which I know is uncomfortable for people to hear, but it's, that's what it is. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing, right? I've talked about, because we do the same thing on our side, but we're all about the brand and less about the conversion. People looking at me like I'm nuts. Sarah Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, especially smaller companies with smaller budgets, they don't like that, but it's true. That's what's so beautiful about working with influencers is their impact in terms of brand awareness. So we measure each and every asset that goes live. We measure that success in comparison to the same influencers' previous content, to content from other influencers, maybe from the same campaign. So we get some sort of idea. We're able to look at a piece of content and say, "Did it serve the goal or not? Did it meet the KPIs that we set or not?" And also if it did, and if the influencer was professional and fun to work with, then that's the reason to work with them again. But then we also look at results at a much higher level where it's another, what we do, what my team does, the content that goes live, how it performs is another kind of piece of a bigger puzzle for brand awareness where we check things like search. We want to see that month over month, more and more people are searching for Wix Studio. So scaling influencers is aligned with the other very many brand awareness activities that we do. So it's very difficult. It's impossible even to just select one piece of content and say, "Hey, did this work or not?" It depends. It depends what you're measuring and etc, etc. So, it's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good point because influencer marketing, to me, partnerships of which influencer marketing is a type of, to me it's all about generating cadence, momentum, and it's a way of distributing yourself. It's a way of getting yourself out there to new people in new ways and leveraging all of that to get a certain kind of cadence and inertia or momentum. So looking at it from a conversion point of view, to me, looks at influencer marketing as not really what it's really all about, which is, you expanding out of your own self to create new possibilities based on the momentum that you didn't have before. Sarah Adam: Yeah, although there are, there are many companies that use it for conversion, and they're not measuring. They're just measuring the sales they get from those specific things. Mordy Oberstein: There's also a lot of people who watch cricket, so. Sarah Adam: Exactly. Crystal Carter: Cricket's a great game, though. Cricket's a great game. Mordy Oberstein: Of course you could hit the ball though. The bat's flat. If I had a flat bat, I could hit anything too. Crystal Carter: Cricket's an amazing game. It goes on for three weeks. You can be like, I'm sorry, I'm busy for three weeks because you're playing cricket. And also, they have a- Mordy Oberstein: And with that, our audience has gone cricket, cricket. Crystal Carter: Okay, so my question to you, Sarah, is if you were say, managing cricket brand and you were looking for an influencer for your cricket brand or your cricket team and you were going to knock it for six with a new influencer, what are the signs that it's a good influencer for your project? You open up their page and you're like, no, or okay, what do you look for? Sarah Adam: So I always look for, it's naturally in the order of the page almost of the profile. The first thing I look at is the bio, the title, the bio. What's this person's profession? What do they do? Have they played cricket before? Do they cricket? Is it cricket coach, train? I don't know what the right terminology is. Do maybe they somehow specialize in the world of cricket? Maybe they're like a cricket therapist. So that's the first thing, and that's like a deal breaker or maker if it's someone who's not in cricket, so I'm just going to move on to the next person because if they are, then okay, chances are their content is as well, which could also not be... it maybe you'll have a great potential influencer that looks great, but their content is about their personal life or about politics. We don't want that. So we want to see that the actual content is consistent and relevant and of decent quality. It doesn't have to be... We all know what TikTok and Instagram looks like these days. It doesn't have to be something high quality. It has to be good enough. And the most important thing, which is a deal breaker or maker are the, how is that content performing until today? Not even until today, just to look at their last, say, five, eight posts. What's the engagement like? What are the views like? And the most critical thing for me is the bio and the performance. If those two match, then that's enough to reach out. Mordy Oberstein: So if people want to reach out to you and they're not just on LinkedIn, where else besides LinkedIn, might they find you, if anywhere? Sarah Adam: Yeah, I'm only on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, wow, wow. Crystal Carter: You said you were on TikTok. You've got an account somewhere. Sarah Adam: So I tried. I tried TikTok, and there's too much maintenance. I couldn't take it, it was stressing me out. Mordy Oberstein: That's how I feel about my kids. Tried that, it's too much maintenance. Crystal Carter: See that candor, that is what we come to appreciate about Sarah Adam content. That's what we like. Real talk. Mordy Oberstein: Follow and connect or just follow, whatever Sarah wants, on LinkedIn. Sarah Adam: Yes, I'll be waiting. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much and see you there. Speaker 5: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift off. Life off. Mordy Oberstein: Again, thanks so much, Sarah, and make sure to give her a big follow on social media to be influenced by all of her marketing. You know who's really influential in my life. Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry, legitimately. Barry has been very influential in my life. Crystal Carter: Aw. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. No, I didn't mean in a good way. No, I'm kidding. Barry has actually helped my life tremendously. He helps me each and every day with his coverage of the SEO news, which means it's time. Very valuable and very concise, which is why we're moving into this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News. Snappy News. So the November 2024 core update is over and now, and now there's a December 2024 core update. Okay, so from Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable, December, Google, December 2024 core update is live. What we're seeing, what we're seeing is madness. That's what we're seeing. So Google, this is on December 13th, Barry is writing an SE Roundtable. Google announced the 2024 core update. They said it'll take two weeks. And then they wrote, "If you're wondering why there's a core update this month after one last month, but technically still this month because November one ended in December. We have different core systems. We're always improving. This past blog post explains more." Well, that clarifies everything. I have no more questions. I have a lot of questions. People in the industry, Barry covers it in his article. We're not exactly happy. He covers the charts showing the increase in ring volatility. Greg Finn from It's New, which used to do Monday through Thursday to get the SEO news and we'll talk a lot about that this week, has a whole segment on his podcast Marketing O’Clock, going through Barry's charts that I found very insightful. Anywho, there's been a lot of chatter. I mean, Willie Ray, SEO, great SEO legend, wrote WTAF. That kind of sums it up for me. It's interesting. Okay, so part of this, Google announces they had some kind of meetup in Zurich and Danny Sullivan came on the screen and they announced this as something's kind of big moment. I don't know, it's not a big moment, it's kind of confusing moment. And they said expect more core updates this year. Something I would've liked to known yesterday. My issue with this is, okay, if there's going to be more updates, it's very confusing to now go through and analyze and see what was impacted and when it was impacted. Sidebar, Barry covered on searchengineland.com, what the data providers said about the November 2024 core update, one of which of those providers was Semrush, and the person who handled the Semrush data for Semrush was me. So I sent Barry the data and Semrush, and I said to Barry, I think he quotes it in the article that also linked to it in the show notes. "It's very confusing to try to analyze these updates because forget two core updates. The baseline period where you're trying to compare what happened during the update to a normal period of rank volatility, normal doesn't exist anymore. It's all bonkers and high. So how do you compare?" All right, there it is. I wrote, "As with the August 20 24 core update, this update saw an extensive period of high levels of rank volatility proceeded. This makes analyzing the update relative to its proceeding baseline period almost impossible, Mordy Oberstein told us." And Mordy Oberstein is telling you now the same thing. There are a bunch of charts in there also. You have a look at it, but now it's even more confusing because now you have a second core update all on top of this. I think this first off, it's really bad timing because you had a core update go over Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Now you're having one going over the holiday shopping season itself. Over the holidays probably, itself. It's going to make it to understand what exactly happened to who and when and where, which was the culprit, which may or may not makes such a practical difference, I guess, very difficult. And the optics are just really bad. And I usually don't put my thumb on the scale on this podcast this way, but if you knew there's going to be more updates coming, I think the better way to have communicated would've been before the November update saying, "Hey-o, listen up," it's my inner big man, "Hey-o, listen up, everybody. We're going to have a whole bunch of updates. So yes, the November one's rolling out, but don't be surprised if there's more to follow this." That's kind of getting ahead of the narrative. I feel Google sometimes loses the narrative because they don't get ahead of the narrative and narratives are important. Narratives are important, and on that, I'm going to end the news. If you're looking for more commentary on this, have a look back by the time this episode comes out, and what we covered on It's New, over on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub, or on the RustyBrick YouTube channel, probably on Monday the 16th, because I'm recording this on Sunday the 15th. We are definitely going to cover this then. I can't imagine is not covering it, and there'll probably be some interesting takes from myself, Greg Finn, Barry Schwartz himself, and Chris LaCarter. So until that time, this is the Snappy News. You know what's funny? On SMX, one of the recent SMXs, Barry wasn't on the banner. I'm like, dude's got 100 and gazillion followers, put him on the banner. So I fixed it, I added it in into like, here's Search Engine Land. I fixed it, here's Barry on the banner. Crystal Carter: Nice, nice. Totally. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, everyone just forgets about Barry. How do you forget about Barry? Crystal Carter: People shouldn't forget about Barry. Barry's like, you know he's that dude. Mordy Oberstein: No. No one puts Barry in a corner. Crystal Carter: He does have a corner office though. He kind of, he prefers it. Mordy Oberstein: He does. His whole setup is very corner-y looking. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, if you want to take a look at it and take a look at It's New every day, you can see Barry's corner-y set up. Crystal Carter: Right and his collection of button down shirts as well. Mordy Oberstein: Is it a collection or is it one he watches every day? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I've never seen him wear a T-shirt, let's just put it that way. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if he sleeps in them. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Now we're getting too far down the rabbit hole of Barry. What we should be doing is going down the rabbit hole of who you should be following this week, and your follow of the week is Mary-Anne Da'Marzo, who runs Firebelly Media and has a massive TikTok Instagram account. You should absolutely follow for some great information. On SEO marketing in general, tons of stuff. We've worked with her before with the Wix team a bunch of times. She's really, really, really, really a great follow. Crystal Carter: She's a great follow. She's really, really active and she has some great grasp on her audience and what her audience needs from her, and she's really, really good at connecting with them. And I think that that's something that shouldn't be underestimated when you're thinking about working with influencers, is whether or not they have a good understanding of their audience and a really strong respect for their audience, which I think she absolutely does. Mordy Oberstein: She did a cool thing, I think she wrote about or posted about and wrote about it, you don't write anything on Instagram, really. She deleted her LinkedIn account and made a new one because her audience, for that reason, I think she felt her audience on LinkedIn and wasn't aligned. She wanted to redo it and restart from scratch. Super interesting. Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, have a look at it. It's somewhere either on TikTok or Instagram or maybe even on LinkedIn if she talks about it. So we'll link to her profiles in the show notes, so you can go check it out. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'm really feeling influenced. I'm under the influence. Crystal Carter: Don't drive anywhere, please. Find a designated driver or server or whatever. Whatever you need to do for your things. Mordy Oberstein: I need to write a bunch of emails. Crystal Carter: Yes. Don't write emails under the influence. Mordy Oberstein: My social media posts. Crystal Carter: And certainly don't call any of your exes under the influence, that's not a good idea either. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think, I know I do not have any. I've been married for 17 years. I don't have exes anymore. Crystal Carter: What happened to them? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Maybe they deleted their LinkedIn accounts. Who knows? I remember one time years ago on Facebook, one popped up trying to friend me, I'm like, nope. Crystal Carter: That's healthy. That's also good life advice. Can we just say that? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What? Are you serious? Why? Nope. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's good life advice. Just let it go. Mordy Oberstein: Well, if you want more life advice, tune in for next week SERP'S Up podcast, because are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, can you ever have too much SEO data and/or marketing data? The answer is, yes, I think. Anyway, we'll talk about it next week. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. To get a little more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guess 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

Back SEO client retention checklist A roadmap for developing long-lasting partnerships with your SEO clients. Get resource Full name* Agency name Business email* I want to receive news and updates from the Wix SEO team. * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix’s Privacy Policy . Get resource Use this SEO checklist to: Create an effective onboarding process that sets out mutually agreed KPIs Understand how to outline a communication flow that works for you and your client Ensure you compile meaningful reports for your client Help craft a narrative around metrics that align with your client’s goals Nick LeRoy Freelance SEO Consultant, Nick LeRoy Consulting LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram Nick LeRoy is a freelance SEO consultant, podcaster and newsletter author based in St. Paul, Minnesota. He specializes in SEO strategy, technical SEO, editorial strategy, and website migrations. Nick is the author of the SEOForLunch newsletter and owner of SEOjobs.com . More about this topic Listen to this episode of the SERPs Up podcast for a deeper dive into SEO client retention. Share this resource Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Get the knowledge you need to avoid falling for SEO falsehoods! We take common SEO myths head on! When it comes to SEO, misconceptions can wreak havoc on your strategies if you don’t know what sources are reliable. So, what are the common myths that need to be smashed? Tune in as Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter kick the door in on prevalent SEO myths. Move your clients beyond the falsehoods. Andi Jarvis joins the podcast to share how he convinces clients and others to break free from their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, see what Google has cooking with their Perspectives SERP feature and how it's changing user experience on the SERP. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast as we help you uncover SEO truths! Back Be gone SEO myths! Get the knowledge you need to avoid falling for SEO falsehoods! We take common SEO myths head on! When it comes to SEO, misconceptions can wreak havoc on your strategies if you don’t know what sources are reliable. So, what are the common myths that need to be smashed? Tune in as Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter kick the door in on prevalent SEO myths. Move your clients beyond the falsehoods. Andi Jarvis joins the podcast to share how he convinces clients and others to break free from their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, see what Google has cooking with their Perspectives SERP feature and how it's changing user experience on the SERP. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast as we help you uncover SEO truths! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 55 | September 13, 2023 | 44 MIN 00:00 / 44:16 This week’s guests Andi Jarvis Andi is the Founder and Strategy Director of Eximo Marketing, a marketing strategy consultancy based in Belfast and Liverpool. Andi also hosts the Strategy Sessions podcast, a show that interviews some of the best marketers in the world. He holds an MSc in Marketing and the Marketing Week Mini MBA in Marketing. He also runs a fundraising project, Eximo & Friends with Barnardo’s, where marketers volunteer to provide consultations to small businesses in return for a donation to support refugees. You should also know that Andi likes to talk, at length, about: being a dad, his BBQ, rugby league, boxing and cricket 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 putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I am joined by the always true, the always accurate, the never mythological head of SEO branding here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: What do you mean I'm mythological? I'm a mermaid. I didn't tell you I'm from- Mordy Oberstein: But you are real. Crystal Carter: ...mermaid mythology? Mordy Oberstein: You're the most real person I've ever met. Crystal Carter: I'm telling you, I'm a mermaid and I like to swim in the sea and it's amazing and it's sparkly and everything's good. Mordy Oberstein: Merman. To quote Zoolander, one of my favorite movies of all time. Crystal Carter: It was mermazing. Mordy Oberstein: So good. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also find your true SEO competitors with the SE ranking app inside of Wix. Look for it today inside of the Wix app market. Why do I say true SEO competitors as opposed to just SEO competitors? Because so much about what you hear about SEO is not true. Today, we are set to set the record straight. We are busting SEO myths like a backup dancer busts a move. Does word count matter? Are LSI keywords real? Do I really need strong DA? We're kicking in the door on these SEO myths and more. And we will be joined by the great Andi Jarvis who shares how he convinces clients and others to break free of their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, we'll dive into Google's perspectives feature to see how the search engine is trying to find accuracy and harmony on the SERP. Plus, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness across social media. So sit back as we take a saw to Pinocchio's nose of SEO lies as episode number 55 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find your SEO truth. Take a saw to that nose, Pinocchio. Your nose is coming off in this episode. Crystal Carter: Coming in hot. Mordy Oberstein: Liar. That little liar, Pinocchio. Crystal Carter: He's always making stuff up and acting like he's not going to get caught. You ain't slick, Pinocchio. We know what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: You know how you know he is a real boy? Because he's lying all the time. My kids always lie. Crystal Carter: Kids are like, "No, I didn't do that." I'm like, "It's obvious." Mordy Oberstein: "Did you eat the cookies?" "No, I didn't eat cookies. Crystal Carter: You're covered in cookie dust. You're covered in the residue. It's all over your hands. I know a story of someone who made up a baddy, a villain or something, who did all of their things. So they'd be like, "Oh, who ate all the cookies?" "Oh, it was Billy Butlin." "What?" He was this fictional person. Doesn't exist, but apparently gets up to all sorts of shenanigans. Mordy Oberstein: Lovely child. Crystal Carter: Lovely child. Mordy Oberstein: You know who else is full of shenanigans? A lot of the people talking about a lot of SEO stuff. SEO, for whatever reason. Whether it be just how SEO used to work back in the day and the notions that never evolved from that. For whatever reason, there's been this fostering of many SEO myths within the SEO sphere. We hear them all the time. People propagate them, Google ranks them. And we felt it was our duty to sit back, talk about, some of these more common SEO myths. I'll say this off the bat. We can never ever hit all of the SEO myths in one show because there are just too many. Crystal Carter: Right. So many. Mordy Oberstein: So many of them. And before we dive in, I want to thank one of our listeners. Brindle Blanca reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, I was wondering about content length. Is that a ranking factor?" And I'm like, "Oh, no. It's not a thing. In fact, Google just came out again for the 800th time and Barry Schwarz covered it on SEO Roundtable for the 800th time. How the length of your content is not an actual ranking factor. Here you go." And then she said, "Hey, it'd be great if we went through some of these myths on the podcast. I love your podcast. If you could go through some of the myths and break them down for us." I'm like, "That's an actual brilliant idea. We are going to do this episode." So now we are like a radio show. We take requests. Crystal Carter: First time caller, long time listener. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Ding. We appreciate you reaching out, Brindle. Loved the idea, so we're doing it right here, right now. Let's get into breaking down some mess here. Where do we start? I have a list here. Crystal Carter: You have got a list here. It's a big list. Mordy Oberstein: We'll start with word because that's how this whole episode got started. Based on word count. People think, for whatever reason, that Google looks at the number of... Now I just want to say things on the outset. If you believe some of these myths, and you're new to SEO or you're not an SEO, you are not to blame. Crystal Carter: Right. I was just going to say that actually. I think that SEOs can be forgiven, partially because Google doesn't tell everyone. Some people describe it, the ranking factors, as a bit of a black box sort of thing. And so it's a bit of a power vacuum, or a knowledge vacuum anyway, where you don't know all of the things. So people are looking at correlation and they're assuming a causation and things. So there are some people who deep dive into some of the patents that you know... Rest his soul, Bill Slosky spent a lot of time going through a lot of patents trying to figure out and unpack and reverse engineer a lot of that stuff, and I think that Glenn Gabe picked up a little bit of that mantle recently. But I think that's one of the reasons why some of these myths become more prevalent is because we don't have necessarily a gospel of all of these things. There is a good piece of documentation within the Google documentation about their ranking systems, but it doesn't necessarily go into every single detail of every single algorithm. And even today, as we're looking at how the SGE works in AI on Google. They've said. Sundar Pichai has said, "I don't know. I don't know all of the things that it does. It's AI." So it's working with new information, it's taking a new data, all of that sort of stuff. So some of it they know, some of they don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Every SEO who's been around for a long time will tell you this. When they first started in SEO, they're researching, reading blog posts, trying Googling, getting information, and you don't always know who to trust. We actually have an episode about how do you learn SEO, and how do you sift through bad SEO advice versus good SEO advice. We'll link to that in the show notes. And oftentimes you're reading articles that are... You don't realize they're not actual experts. Or they may be experts in one area of marketing, but talking about SEO and don't really understand SEO. For example, if you Google LSI keywords and SEO, a lot of the top ranking content are basically titles like LSI keywords, how to find and use them to improve your SEO. What are LSI keywords and do they help with SEO? They don't, and they're not a thing. And you who are new to SEO, or you're a business owner, or you're whoever you are listening to this podcast. Welcome. And you might be Googling LSI keywords in SEO. You see it, you've heard about them, and you're not necessarily getting results and saying... No, not a thing. So you are not to blame. I don't know who is and we don't care. What we do care about is breaking down the myth, so let's start with word count. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Many people have talked about this idea that Google's looking at your content. Let's say a blog post. And they're saying, "Oh, it's above 2000 keywords. It is good now because you checked the box. You've hit the number." And the truth is, and Google has said this many times, and Barry on the SEO Roundtable blog as covered it many times, there's no set number they're looking at. In fact, it varies. If I'm searching for how do I tie my shoe, I'm probably not looking for War and Peace. I just want a quick little snippet of "Hey." And that's probably what's going to rank. Who invented the tying of the shoe and the full history of tying of the shoe? I'm probably looking for a much longer piece of content. So it depends. Crystal Carter: Right. I've read the quality rater guidelines. They don't talk about that. They don't say, "You got it. Oh, everything has to be over 500 words. Everything has to be over this, that or the other." And John Mueller has said, and he said again, and he said many times. One quote that he has is, "From our point of view, the number of words on a page is not a quality factor and not a ranking factor. So just blindly adding more and more text to a page doesn't make it better. Be exact. John." Thanks, John. Mordy Oberstein: As Crystal mentioned to me before the show, we're going to get into a lot of pithy John Muellerisms on this episode. Crystal Carter: Some of my favorite moments from John. Completely honest, and he's completely right. We have pages on the hub, which we didn't necessarily intend to rank. We just have them. So we have a video collection for instance, just so it's easy for users to find them. And it literally just says how to do this, and there's a video, and there's a link to a larger article. We don't expect them to rank. Google's ranking them anyway. I can canoncalize them. Google's ranking anyway because they wanted to. And it's just because sometimes you don't need a big long thing. I saw one. My favorite, it was a featured snippet. I was talking to Darth Na on Twitter about this. And he was like, "Who's got a good example of a short one?" The best one I found when I was doing some research for a... It was a veterinarian's app, and I was looking at research of this. And a competitor of the company that I was researching for, they were ranking for do male cats have nipples? And this page was the ranking for them. Mordy Oberstein: Important question. Crystal Carter: Apparently lots of people are asking this question. They were ranking for it, getting tons of traffic, and I think it was under 200 words. I think a lot of times people will say, "Oh, it should be around 500 words for a blog." But part of that is that's how long it takes to cover that topic. If it's going to take you a little bit of time to actually cover a topic, well then yeah. You are going to need to actually do the work to cover the topic. If you can cover the topic in 250 words, cover the topic in 250 words. Do male cats have nipples? Yes or no or whatever it is. I can't remember what the answer was. Mordy Oberstein: I'll Google it now. Crystal Carter: But whatever it is, yes or no. And then maybe a little bit of explanation and keep it moving. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. So bottom line, word count is not a ranking factor. You should write the amount of words that you need to address what your audience wants out of your content. And that could be five words, it could be 5 million words. I don't know the answer, only you do. Let's move on to LSI Keywords. It's like the bane of a lot of SEO's existence. So LSI keywords are basically... Think of it like synonyms. So let's say my page is about air conditioning installation. So the idea of LSI keywords is that by having other words related to installation, like air conditioning repair, air conditioning maintenance, air conditioning... I don't know another word for that. Renovation. Crystal Carter: Or home cooling- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: ...or something like that. They're semantically relevant. Mordy Oberstein: HVAC repair, HVAC installation. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That Google will now have a more contextual understanding because of all these related, synonym keywords, and they'll understand that your page should rank for air conditioning repair. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Google has said, I don't know like a gazillion times, it's not a thing. Crystal Carter: So another funny... Mordy Oberstein: It's not a thing. I don't have anything better for you outside of the fact that LSI keywords or LSI has been around. Semantic indexing has been around since the '80s. Crystal Carter: Right. This is one that people got confused about. So people started calling it LSI keywords and things like that. And I think that this is something that people have gotten confused about because the idea of talking about not just the literal keywords, but things that are in the general vicinity of that. Mordy Oberstein: Topically related. Crystal Carter: Topically related. That is a good thing to do, and that is a... That will give you better writing. Will give the user a better reading experience. And I think they're essentially confusing it with semantic generally. Mordy Oberstein: Semantic. Crystal Carter: Semantically related content. So Semrush has a great article titled What are LSI Keywords and Why They Don't Matter. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So you do want to build topical relevance. Wait, let's talk English. You want to create context. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: And when you're writing for a user, a person, you want to have contextual knowledge imparted so they understand what you're talking about. So if you're talking about air conditioning repair, you might also talk about heating system repair because heating and air conditioners are topically related. If you're talking about tables, perhaps you want to talk about chairs because they're topically, semantically, contextually, related. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. These are going to make sense. If you're talking about a record player, you might also talk about music. These things make sense. They go together. Mordy Oberstein: You talk about Bob Dylan? You're going to talk about harmonicas. LSI keywords, not a thing. Crystal Carter: Not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: So if you see it out there, ignore it. Crystal Carter: And to quote John Mueller on this one, "There is no such thing as LSI keywords. Anyone who's telling you otherwise is mistaken. Sorry." Mordy Oberstein: Is he really sorry? Crystal Carter: I don't think he is. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think he's really sorry. I think sorry was sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I think that's a sorry, not sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Can we move on now to DA? Crystal Carter: DA? Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: DA and poor Moz. DA is a metric called domain authority that Moz, which is an SEO tool, created. And what it basically does, it's a score that tries to mimic how Google might perhaps understand how authoritative a website is. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It is not a metric that Google uses. It is a simulation based on their algorithms. Not Google's algorithms. Moz' algorithm and how they're trying to determine the balance of things like rankings and backlinks to say how authoritative is this website. Basically, it's a representation. If you go to a website and you're like, "Oh, wow, this is a really great website. They really know what they're talking about this topic." DA is a way for you to simulate understanding that without visiting a million websites. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's a shorthand. It's a helpful shorthand. It's something like... If you think about something like BMI. BMI is a nonsense metric. BMI is... They go, "You're this tall, you weigh this much, you are overweight and you're underweight and you are appropriate weight." Mordy Oberstein: Right. So Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day probably had a terrible BMI because he was so muscled up. Crystal Carter: Terrible BMI. Exactly. So it's a bit of a garbage metrics, but it is as a shorthand. As a helpful shorthand before you get into the details. It's a helpful shorthand to help you keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's a very top level kind of thing. And all the different SEO tools have their own version of it. Ahrefs has DR. Semrush has AS, which is authority score. So every tool has their own version of this, but what you'll generally see out there in the ether of SEO talk is DA. And people will say to you, "I would like to sell you high DA authority links." Crystal Carter: Right. And the thing about that is that... Another quote from John that it's a helpful metric. But to quote from John, "Google doesn't use it at all. Not at all." So it's really important to bear that in mind. And also, one of the things he points out in the... There's an SEO Roundtable article where he talks about it and well... Sorry, where someone's recording him talking about it. And we can guess who that is who's recording it. And when he is discussing it, he says, "Again, they all have different metrics. So you don't know exactly how Ahrefs is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Moz is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Semrush is measuring it." So maybe treat it in the same way as your BMI. Treat it as a tracker to track progress to see if there's some movement in how they're measuring it. So if you see it go up in whatever way, maybe that's a sign that good things are happening. If you see it stay the same, that could be a sign that things are changing. It could be the sign that things aren't changing. But one of the things that's really tricky about DA is that a lot of these tools have a really tricky way of measuring subdomains. So you can see someone who's using something like... I saw a soccer club. And there was a soccer club and they had signed up to, I don't know, soccerclub.com and they got their own little subsite as part of that. So it was amazingsoccerclub.soccerclub.com or whatever it is. I'm sure there's some website called soccerclub.com. Anyway, according to all of these tools, this tiny little soccer club had a DA of 97. Why? Because the domain of soccerclub.com, which has all of these other subdomains, has tons of back links from various different things across the domain. So sometimes... Mordy Oberstein: They're all very link heavy anyway. All of these. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So there's lots of different factors that can misconstrue how those things are. So don't stress yourself out about it. And I've heard Barry Schwartz talk about it before. When you're talking about getting backlinks and things. Don't necessarily worry about the DA of something. Mordy Oberstein: No, don't. It's all about relevance of the website to what you're doing. And not only the website or the webpage is linking to you. It's way more about relevance than it is about DA. Honestly, if you're an SEO professional and you're working with thousands of sites. You're looking at thousands of sites, and you'd really need a top level understanding real quick about what this website... Where are they at? Then DA is for you. If you're not that person, don't even think about it. Trust your gut when you go to a website. This looks like a good website to you, they're running good content, they're trustworthy, they're authoritative. That's probably way more effective than DA. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Chill. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, let's try this one. Big name websites always beat smaller niche websites. And there's a ton of myths around this one. There's myths within myths within myths around this one. One myth is that Google automatically ranks big name brands above smaller niche websites. Or another myth that falls under this umbrella is domain age is a ranking factor. How old your domain is. So if my domain is 1 million years old, 1 billion years old, it'll beat out Crystal's website because Crystal's website is only 1000 years old. Crystal Carter: Again, I think this is something that comes from a little bit of confusion. Because this goes back to page rank, which is one of Google's oldest algorithms, and it was very much linked to links. Mordy Oberstein: Links. Crystal Carter: So some of the earliest information about SEO will be links. Links are really important. Don't get me wrong, links are important. It's how... When Google crawls from one page, they'll find a link. They'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page. But it is not the only thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my gosh. It's like a myth within a myth within a myth. Wow, that's a lot of mythology. That's how you use the word mythology. I understand that. You understand that. Crystal Carter: And I think that it's very much something that is super valuable. Getting links is good, but it's not all about it. And it can definitely make a big difference. But part of that isn't just because of the link itself. Part of that can have to do with how often the page that you're getting the link from is being crawled. For instance, if you get a link from a news publisher. They're publishing hundreds of articles a day, they're going to be getting crawled really regularly. That means you're more likely to have your link be discovered, you're more likely to be seen by lots of people, you're more likely to have traffic come to your website. There's lots of things that are going to be a causation of getting that link. So it's super important, don't get me wrong. But it's not everything, Mordy Oberstein: No. And Google's talked about it more recently than not trying to downplay the importance of links. John Mueller's gone on record a bunch of times saying links are not the be all end all. Barry's covered SEO Roundtable a bunch of times that Google's downplaying. Google says, "Links are not as important as you think they are because of all of this." But going back to domain age, that is not a ranking factor. If you have a great website. And I think this comes about from something that does make sense a little bit. If you've got an amazing website. You sat there, you planned the whole website out, you wrote 4 million blog posts, and then you launched the website. It's going to take Google a little bit of time to realize that you have an amazing website. And a website that it's already familiar with. They're already familiar with it, so that's going to rank already. Meaning domain age is not a thing. In fact, Google said about that, "No, not a thing at all." What is a thing though is Google being familiar with the website, understanding the website, and trusting the website. So obviously a website that's around for a while has accrued trust. And if you're a new player on the block, Google doesn't know you yet. But once Google realizes that you have awesome toys at your house, Google's going to be over there all the time trying to hang out with you. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. So, yeah. There's a lot of, again, contributing factors on this. So you're going to have more links. They're going to have more data on the kinds of traffic that normally goes to your website because they've been sending traffic to your website for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years or something. They're going to know the kinds of questions that you're able to answer. They're going to know the kinds of content that you have on your page. Most of your pages will probably be indexed by the time they've gone through all of these many years of seeing your content. Things like that. They're also going to have a lot of things that are already stored in their cache. All of that sort of stuff is going to... There's lots of things that they already know that they can bring to the table. And I think that there's ways that new domains can definitely make a big splash, and sometimes that can include a mix of marketing activity, including other channels outside of organic. But another fantastic quote from John. Someone asked, "Does domain age still matter in today's SEO in comparison to domain versus subdomain?" And John Mueller said, "No, domain age helps nothing." It helps nothing. So I think it's just really important to remember that you've got every chance in the world. I posted recently that in tennis, you show up on the match and you've got just as much chance as the other person in winning. And recently at Wimbledon, somebody who was unseeded won the women's Wimbledon. And somebody who was not ranked number one, who went up against the number one ranking men's tennis player at Wimbledon, and won. If you've got good content, then there's no reason why your new content can't do well if you send lots of signals and make sure that Google knows. That has lots of ways of knowing what you're about and what you do and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, on the subdomains versus subfolder. You kind of alluded to it a second ago. We did an episode about that a little while ago. There's, again, too many myths to get into. There's a whole bunch of myths around that. Check out that episode. We'll link to it in the show notes. We also covered duplicated content penalties. That's also a myth on another episode. We'll link to that in the show notes. Let's do one more. Okay, let's do... This is one of my favorites. Low code to HTML ratio. Crystal Carter: Oh, no. Don't get him started. Mordy Oberstein: I see that all the time. I've been asked about this a gazillion times. Basically, a lot of the SEO tools, when they run an audit, they have a category or a warning called low code to HTML ratio. Meaning you give a lot of... Or is it low HTML to code ratio? I don't even know anymore. I think I got it backwards. It's basically saying you have a lot of code on the page, but not a lot of content. And Google will not rank you well. I've talked to John about this. It's not real. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: In fact, John has called on the SEO tools to please take that out. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think this is one of the things where when you... You need to use your brain. You need to use your noggin actually. Mordy Oberstein: Just because you added a bunch of JavaScript functionality to your page does not make it spam. Because that's where this myth comes from. Back in the day there was a lot of janky code added onto websites. I keep using that word because you've used it and I've love it, and I've stolen it, and I've made it my own, Crystal. My word now. You can use it, but it's my word. Crystal Carter: You jacked it. Mordy Oberstein: I did. I'll mail you a check. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Back in the day, people would add all sorts of stuff to their page, and a lot of... It was a practice a lot of spammy pages would do. So that's where this whole thing of having a lot of code to a low text or HTML ratio came from. But today, in the world of JavaScript, you can have all sorts of carousels and expandable tabs and functionality animations that would add a lot of code to your page, and it does not mean that it's spammy. It just means that you like functionality and interaction on your webpage. Crystal Carter: This is what I'm saying. Use your brain. Look at the page and go... If you see a wording like that. Sometimes, for instance, I get people... This is another one where people are looking at schema markup, and they go into a Google Search Console and it says, "You have a warning for this." And I don't have that information on that page, so that's not necessarily relevant to me. It's like, "You haven't included reviews." I was like, "This product doesn't have reviews." It's a warning. And people are like, "What do I do?" And I'm like, "Nothing." Are you going to put reviews on there? Okay, you can look at whether or not you can add reviews to your website. Or if you're not going to do them, don't worry about it. If you are going to do it, great. That's great. Reviews are great. But don't freak out about every little thing. Look at it. Look at it with your eyes. Mordy Oberstein: If I'm not mistaken, I think it was Ahrefs who did this. They went through and said, "We're taking a bunch of these warnings out because they're really not relevant anymore." Crystal Carter: Right. So have a look, and if you see that on there... I'll be honest. I would normally have a look at the low text to what's it called or whatever. I have a look just to see. And if I can see that everything's working fine, everything's good, everything is functioning as it should, then I'm probably going to set that warning to ignore. I'm going to redo my audit and keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Move on. We're going to have to move on because, again, there are so many myths. If you feel like there's a myth that we didn't cover that you still have a question about or think, "Hey, your audience should probably know about that myth, and you should tell them that's a myth." Then let us know. Reach out to us on social, comment. We'll cover it on a future episode. Maybe we'll do round two or then maybe a round three. Again, we can probably do a round four or five also. So let us know. Crystal Carter: Too many. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway. With this, if you're working with clients or you're working with anybody and they may have all sorts of SEO myths. Or even just marketing myths because there's probably a whole episode we could do about marketing myths in general. How do you convince them to abandon those misconceptions and even often unreasonable expectations that come along with those myths? We spoke with Andi Jarvis, and here's his take on how to help your clients, your folks, abandon misconceptions and have reasonable expectations. Andi Jarvis: Hi, my name is Andi Jarvis. I am the strategy director at XMO Marketing. I should point out that I am not, and I repeat, I am not an SEO. But hopefully I can help with this SEO question because it's not really an SEO question. It's an SEO PPC, whatever marketing, topic. How do you convince clients and stakeholders to abandon misconceptions and unreasonable expectations about the marketing thing that you want to get through? So firstly, let me start by telling you how not to do it. Because if you are on social media, you will know that a lot of the time arguments these days are held by one camp shouting at the other camp, hoping that the other camp is going to accept that they are wrong and the first camp's opinion's correct. But weirdly, life doesn't work like that, does it? Because the Camp B who are being shouted at are standing there going, "I don't understand why they're shouting that because they're wrong." And then they shout their opinion back. And all that happens is you just end up with two idiots shouting at each other, banging heads like rutting bison instead of actually trying to move things forward. So you don't ever convince anyone to change their mind by basically just telling them they're wrong. Because effectively, when you say that, what people tend to hear is that I'm stupid. You say, "Oh, you're wrong." They hear, "I'm stupid." It's just a cognitive bias. So you have to walk people through and you have to use a language they understand. So the first thing I would say is stop talking about the technical part of your discipline because nobody cares. You care, that's why you have that job. Because you are great at SEO and PPC, graphic design, web design, whatever it is. That's why you've got that job. The person you're talking to, if you're talking to a boss or a director or whatever, they really don't care. Tell you what they do care about. Often it's money. Something starting with a pound sign or a dollar sign or a Euro sign or whatever sign it is. That often bothers people at the top of an organization. So if you want to get them to believe in the thing you are doing, and you want to get them to understand about the thing you're doing, you have to speak to them in their language, which means that you have to talk to them about the financial impact. "Ah, but Andi. It's SEO. It's quite hard to quantify the impact." PPC, they go, "Well, give us one. ROAS is eight, so we'll give you eight back. Yay." that's why PPC gets the investment. SEO can be quite different. Web design, good graphic design, can be really difficult to quantify. Advertising. You want to do traditional advertising. I hate that phrase. But if you want to do that, you say, "We need to spend this upfront and we hope that it might deliver this in a little bit of time." That's quite difficult to do. So sometimes you have to go to history. Past performance can sometimes be an indicator of future performance. Sometimes, and I know this is a dirty word in marketing, you can go to academia. Because amazingly, people have been studying marketing since the 1950s. And most of the problems like recessions and interest rate cuts, inflation going up, this has all happened before. It might be the first time it's happened to your generation, but this has all happened before, and there is loads of great evidence as to why you should carry on doing the thing you're doing. So look at the past and sometimes use that as a way to guide the future. Ask a lot of questions. Ask lots of questions before you start telling people anything. Ask them questions to understand what they're worried about, and then they can then take that and go... You can then go, "Right. Okay, if you're worried about this thing, here's how we can help you." So rather than just going, "SEO." And people are going, "I'm not listening." You can go, "Oh, you have this problem. Here's how we can help with that." Unreasonable expectations are slightly different, but I think that starts by right at the beginning. Good planning, scope of works. That type of thing that they call it in IT. What are we going to do? What do we think the impact's going to be? Don't over promise to get the budget, because these two things often work together. "Oh, yeah. We can do all of this if you give us the budget." You don't get the budget, then it looks like you're making it up. Be honest, talk their language, and that should help you. Hope that helps. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andi. Really appreciate you contributing to the podcast and see you around at some of the conferences out there in the upcoming months. By the way, you can follow Andi over at Andi Jarvis. That's at A-N-D-I J-A-R-V-I-S. Andi Jarvis. Follow him. He is fantastic, if you haven't realized that already. But it's a great point, by the way. As a former teacher, I'll say this. If you're trying to educate people and engage them, you have to educate them. You can't speak at them, you can't try to berate them, you can't try to make them feel bad about it. You have to really be conscious of giving them the tools to make their own decision autonomously, so that hopefully you lead them to the correct decision that they'll make autonomously. Crystal Carter: And I think also to understand why they might have had that information in the first place. Where did they get that from and why was it so convincing to them? How can you help them to... Because if you can understand how they got that information or how they came to that conclusion, then you can help them to unpack it a little bit. So again, like we were talking about. "Oh, everybody thinks that backlinks are the most important thing." Well, there'll be a reason why they thought that. So again, it'll have to do with page rank. It'll have to do with lots of the emails that they're getting all the time and the way that... Maybe some of the things they've been reading. So bridge that gap and be respectful of people who are curious and trying to learn. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. So you want to foster real learning experiences. You don't want to just win the argument. I think that's what it all comes down to at the end. Okay. With that, so Google has been trying to do some of their own truth searching. Fundamentally speaking, Google does a lot of truth searching. Their whole business model is based on showing you the most accurate, most relevant results possible. But the truth is hard. I feel like somebody has said that before me, but I'll take that as my own saying. My own idiom. And to help Google get at the multiple layers of truth that are out there, Google has launched a little new feature on mobile called perspectives. So what we're going to do is take a look at the direction that Google is going in with this new perspective as we take a directional look at the SERP as we are going Google. And it's Going, Going Google. It's out of here. So back at Google I/O. I'm terrible with time. When was that? May? Crystal Carter: May, I think? I think it's May. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: One of the M months. Mordy Oberstein: Something with an M. It was an M Month. Crystal Carter: 50-50 chance there. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: We could look it up, but we're not going to. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'd rather just say it's March. I'm pretty sure it was March, actually. So they announced a little feature called perspectives, and what it basically is. When you go search on mobile in the US, I'm not sure if it's in any other market, you get a little set of filters up top. You can look for images, shopping, news, and one of those little filters in the little carousel up top is called perspectives. And Google helps you try to get perspective, and they try to offer you all sorts of different angles and takes on that topic. So for example, if you search for something like, "Are the Beatles a good band?" You'll hopefully get some perspectives from whatever sources helping you understand the multiple takes. That's a complicated question. Are the Beatles good? I don't know. It depends. Historically speaking, they were really significant. Do I enjoy their music? I don't know. Sometimes I do. I used to be a bigger Beatles fan than I'm now. Crystal Carter: They're a mixed bag. They've got... They have some... Mordy Oberstein: They are a mixed bag. That's a good way of putting it. They are a mixed bag. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they got a mixed bag. Some of their stuff... Mordy Oberstein: That's our perspective. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: This is our perspective. You might want someone else's perspective. And what Google's basically doing is showing you a tab full of perspectives. And it's interesting because... Okay, let's break one down. I searched for "Is Aaron Judge good?" Aaron Judge is a baseball player. Aaron Judge, for some context, holds the American League Home Run record in a single season with 62 home runs in a season. That's actually the real home run record because the people who broke it beforehand were on drugs. Steroids. So in my mind, "Yeah, he's got the real record." But anyway, you break it down. Is Aaron Judge good? And it tries to give you a lot of social media stuff like Reddit threads, some Twitter stuff, there's a bunch of YouTube stuff, and it's interesting. And with any relatively new product, you're always going to have some kinks to work out in the system. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think what you're looking at now. We're recording this. There are still kinks in the system. A lot of it is outdated. It's months old. Nine months old. Which is great for the Beatles, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Are The Beatles a good band? Yeah, that question has been going on since the '60s. So I don't care if it's nine months ago or nine years ago, that perspective is still going to be the same. But on things that are more current event related. Because you can have a great season and the next season not be a good player. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: What happened before? Not in Aaron's case. Aaron's wonderful. But nine months is a long time. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, and also what good is can change. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So yeah. Okay. That's been a little bit of a hangup of mine. Let's take the Beatles one. If I were to ask you, "Are the Beatles a good band?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So I would think there's multiple... Or let me ask... Let's take it a different way. Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: Who's the best Beatle? Mordy Oberstein: Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: It's not Ringo. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Well, let's not be offensive here. But yeah, it's definitely not Ringo. Crystal Carter: Not Ringo. Bless his heart, but it's not Ringo. And I don't know. I think that all of these things will depend on the songs that connect with you and things like that. You might not even... I'm not even sure if I would agree with that as a question because you can't Beatle on your own. It's not like you can show up... Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's great. So that's one perspective. Then you have... Maybe there's... You break it down in terms of songwriting. When you say who's the best Beatle, does best mean in terms of songwriting out of all of them? Does it mean who had the best career? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity in the context of best? And there's multiple ways to break it down, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. Go back to Aaron Judge, a baseball player. If I'm asking whatever baseball player is the best. Is it best at offense, best at defense, best at promoting themselves? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity according to best? So there's multiple ways to break down an entity, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. You're just getting a social source. Twitter or YouTube. Crystal Carter: Right. So for instance, Glenn Gabe did a really big deep dive on the perspectives panel. The only thing that... I think where they're trying to make up for the nuance is with volume, so having lots and lots of perspectives, for instance, on it. But I feel like that creates noise. So for instance, Glenn showed the example of best gaming chair perspectives. And then it's just lots of YouTube things, lots of people writing about what's the best gaming chair, and lots of things from Reddit about what the best gaming chair is. And to my mind, that's the same as just going onto one of these platforms and trolling through all of the things to find it. And I think that the trickiness of wading into some of those forums and trying to curate it is that those forums tend to be a bit raw and they tend to be a bit difficult to wrangle. So if you're trying to organize that information, which never wanted to be organized in the first place- Mordy Oberstein: Good point. Crystal Carter: ...you're going to get some complex results. And I think that part of the reason why they're leading on this perspectives tab is in order to counteract the amount of AI content that we're getting. So the perspective stuff is more raw human. "Ah, this chair was terrible." Which did they tell you? The chair that I'm sitting in right now, the review for it, where someone was like, "Is this a hobbit chair? I would not wish this chair on my worst enemy." And I was like, "My guy. That's some strong experience. Strong feelings about a chair. Very strong feelings." Mordy Oberstein: That guy really likes chairs a lot. Crystal Carter: He was really upset. The chair is fine. It's a chair. And so I think trying to curate those things, they're trying to bring those perspectives literally into the SERP because I think they expect for there to be a lot of AI content coming from more traditional publishers. So I think they're trying to balance that- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Crystal Carter: ...kind of content on the web so that you can see the more curated content and you can see more, "Yeah, this is how I feel about this." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And Google knows that there's a trend out there that people are looking towards social media for information because you trust people versus search engines kind of thing. So they're trying to incorporate that into the search engines, so that you feel the search engine is a place where you can go to get that trust. I think directionally speaking, that's what this segment Going, Going Google is all about, it makes total sense. I feel like we're at the beginning of a technology, or the beginning of the product rather. And I think it has a tremendous amount of value. I think they just got to take it to the next level. Spice it up a notch. Kick it up a notch. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think... Mordy Oberstein: Look forward to that, actually. Crystal Carter: Yeah. We'll see how it all plays out. Mordy Oberstein: Now to see how it all played out in the SEO news this week, which always plays out itself with some sort of drama. Let's dive into this week's Snappy News. Snappy News. Two for you this week, both from he that is Barry Schwartz over at SEORoundtable.com. First up, Google's search language mashing systems released two weeks ago. So a few weeks back, it turns out Google released an update that better matched the language being searched for and the actual results on the results page. I will tell you, as an expat, I search in English and would often get the language of the country I'm in, especially in Google Discover. Which by the way, I'm not sure it's part of this update or not. I've seen it with folks I consult with and their sites, and it can be a very big deal if the wrong language shows up for your sites. If you have a site and you have pages in multiple languages, and let's say somebody's searching in, I don't know, Mexico. But they're searching in English and the Spanish version comes back. Highly unlikely that you're going to get a click because I don't want the Spanish version. I don't speak Spanish, I just happen to be on vacation in Mexico. So Google getting this right can be a very big deal, and it's nothing to sneeze at. Also from Barry Schwartz, and also from SEORoundtable.com, and also nothing to sneeze at. Google, August 2023. Broad core update finished rolling out. It is done. A little bit longer than usual to finish this update. Now is the time to go and look at any changes in your ranking trajectory and see what is what. It's hard to do during the update itself because there's always a little kick at the end that could reverse what you initially saw during the outset of the core update. So now is the time to go in and see what, if anything, has changed. Hopefully for the better. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. So snappy, so informative, so much news. I actually love covering news. Crystal Carter: We know you do. Mordy Oberstein: I love news. I love the SEO news. I don't like regular news. I don't listen, watch or do anything with regular news anymore. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: But SEO news, I'm all about the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Right. Read all about it, people. Mordy Oberstein: Read all about it. You know what else you should be reading all about is Pedro Dias, who is our follower of the week. Pedro Dias is an SEO OG. Former Googler, major SEO OG, technical SEO, and SEO product manager. Founder of multiple companies, I believe. He's over at Pedro Dias on Twitter. That's P-E-D-R-O D-I-A-S on Twitter. So check out Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro is great. He's a super knowledgeable SEO who's been working for ages, and is a very good follow if you want some clear no nonsense SEO stuff that is not full of myths. Mordy Oberstein: That's why he's our... Literally why he's our follow of the week. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We sat down. Who is somebody who does not tolerate myths? And it's Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro Dias. Pedro speaks... Mordy Oberstein: Zero tolerance policy for myths. SEO Myths. Crystal Carter: Right. He's speaking some truth where he can. So, yeah. He's a great fellow. Nice guy. Funny as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So definitely follow Pedro. Mordy Oberstein: Beat my butt at cornhole over at Brighton. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he did. I was there. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I got hoodwinked. I got hustled. Crystal Carter: You got hustled? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because he's like, "Oh, I never played a cornhole before." And he was like, "All right." And we go over and 1, 2, 3, 4. Boom, boom, boom. I'm like, "You never played cornhole before? Yeah, right." Crystal Carter: I saw it. That was pretty devastating. I don't know how you came back from that, Mordy. It was pretty conclusive. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm still down on myself ever since then. Really shook my confidence. Crystal Carter: You'll live to cornhole another day. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, "I have to." I've been practicing my cornhole game. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Oh, right. Mordy Oberstein: Now I'm ready. Crystal Carter: I didn't realize there was a rematch. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. In my mind there is. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I haven't talked to Pedro about it, but we should. Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, with that, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to set SEO priorities. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts 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 we have 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 a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Andi Jarvis John Mueller Pedro Dias Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Eximo News: Google August 2023 Broad Core Update Finished Rolling Out Google Search Language Matching Systems Update Released Two Weeks Ago Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Andi Jarvis John Mueller Pedro Dias Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Eximo News: Google August 2023 Broad Core Update Finished Rolling Out Google Search Language Matching Systems Update Released Two Weeks Ago 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 putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I am joined by the always true, the always accurate, the never mythological head of SEO branding here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: What do you mean I'm mythological? I'm a mermaid. I didn't tell you I'm from- Mordy Oberstein: But you are real. Crystal Carter: ...mermaid mythology? Mordy Oberstein: You're the most real person I've ever met. Crystal Carter: I'm telling you, I'm a mermaid and I like to swim in the sea and it's amazing and it's sparkly and everything's good. Mordy Oberstein: Merman. To quote Zoolander, one of my favorite movies of all time. Crystal Carter: It was mermazing. Mordy Oberstein: So good. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also find your true SEO competitors with the SE ranking app inside of Wix. Look for it today inside of the Wix app market. Why do I say true SEO competitors as opposed to just SEO competitors? Because so much about what you hear about SEO is not true. Today, we are set to set the record straight. We are busting SEO myths like a backup dancer busts a move. Does word count matter? Are LSI keywords real? Do I really need strong DA? We're kicking in the door on these SEO myths and more. And we will be joined by the great Andi Jarvis who shares how he convinces clients and others to break free of their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, we'll dive into Google's perspectives feature to see how the search engine is trying to find accuracy and harmony on the SERP. Plus, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness across social media. So sit back as we take a saw to Pinocchio's nose of SEO lies as episode number 55 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find your SEO truth. Take a saw to that nose, Pinocchio. Your nose is coming off in this episode. Crystal Carter: Coming in hot. Mordy Oberstein: Liar. That little liar, Pinocchio. Crystal Carter: He's always making stuff up and acting like he's not going to get caught. You ain't slick, Pinocchio. We know what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: You know how you know he is a real boy? Because he's lying all the time. My kids always lie. Crystal Carter: Kids are like, "No, I didn't do that." I'm like, "It's obvious." Mordy Oberstein: "Did you eat the cookies?" "No, I didn't eat cookies. Crystal Carter: You're covered in cookie dust. You're covered in the residue. It's all over your hands. I know a story of someone who made up a baddy, a villain or something, who did all of their things. So they'd be like, "Oh, who ate all the cookies?" "Oh, it was Billy Butlin." "What?" He was this fictional person. Doesn't exist, but apparently gets up to all sorts of shenanigans. Mordy Oberstein: Lovely child. Crystal Carter: Lovely child. Mordy Oberstein: You know who else is full of shenanigans? A lot of the people talking about a lot of SEO stuff. SEO, for whatever reason. Whether it be just how SEO used to work back in the day and the notions that never evolved from that. For whatever reason, there's been this fostering of many SEO myths within the SEO sphere. We hear them all the time. People propagate them, Google ranks them. And we felt it was our duty to sit back, talk about, some of these more common SEO myths. I'll say this off the bat. We can never ever hit all of the SEO myths in one show because there are just too many. Crystal Carter: Right. So many. Mordy Oberstein: So many of them. And before we dive in, I want to thank one of our listeners. Brindle Blanca reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, I was wondering about content length. Is that a ranking factor?" And I'm like, "Oh, no. It's not a thing. In fact, Google just came out again for the 800th time and Barry Schwarz covered it on SEO Roundtable for the 800th time. How the length of your content is not an actual ranking factor. Here you go." And then she said, "Hey, it'd be great if we went through some of these myths on the podcast. I love your podcast. If you could go through some of the myths and break them down for us." I'm like, "That's an actual brilliant idea. We are going to do this episode." So now we are like a radio show. We take requests. Crystal Carter: First time caller, long time listener. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Ding. We appreciate you reaching out, Brindle. Loved the idea, so we're doing it right here, right now. Let's get into breaking down some mess here. Where do we start? I have a list here. Crystal Carter: You have got a list here. It's a big list. Mordy Oberstein: We'll start with word because that's how this whole episode got started. Based on word count. People think, for whatever reason, that Google looks at the number of... Now I just want to say things on the outset. If you believe some of these myths, and you're new to SEO or you're not an SEO, you are not to blame. Crystal Carter: Right. I was just going to say that actually. I think that SEOs can be forgiven, partially because Google doesn't tell everyone. Some people describe it, the ranking factors, as a bit of a black box sort of thing. And so it's a bit of a power vacuum, or a knowledge vacuum anyway, where you don't know all of the things. So people are looking at correlation and they're assuming a causation and things. So there are some people who deep dive into some of the patents that you know... Rest his soul, Bill Slosky spent a lot of time going through a lot of patents trying to figure out and unpack and reverse engineer a lot of that stuff, and I think that Glenn Gabe picked up a little bit of that mantle recently. But I think that's one of the reasons why some of these myths become more prevalent is because we don't have necessarily a gospel of all of these things. There is a good piece of documentation within the Google documentation about their ranking systems, but it doesn't necessarily go into every single detail of every single algorithm. And even today, as we're looking at how the SGE works in AI on Google. They've said. Sundar Pichai has said, "I don't know. I don't know all of the things that it does. It's AI." So it's working with new information, it's taking a new data, all of that sort of stuff. So some of it they know, some of they don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Every SEO who's been around for a long time will tell you this. When they first started in SEO, they're researching, reading blog posts, trying Googling, getting information, and you don't always know who to trust. We actually have an episode about how do you learn SEO, and how do you sift through bad SEO advice versus good SEO advice. We'll link to that in the show notes. And oftentimes you're reading articles that are... You don't realize they're not actual experts. Or they may be experts in one area of marketing, but talking about SEO and don't really understand SEO. For example, if you Google LSI keywords and SEO, a lot of the top ranking content are basically titles like LSI keywords, how to find and use them to improve your SEO. What are LSI keywords and do they help with SEO? They don't, and they're not a thing. And you who are new to SEO, or you're a business owner, or you're whoever you are listening to this podcast. Welcome. And you might be Googling LSI keywords in SEO. You see it, you've heard about them, and you're not necessarily getting results and saying... No, not a thing. So you are not to blame. I don't know who is and we don't care. What we do care about is breaking down the myth, so let's start with word count. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Many people have talked about this idea that Google's looking at your content. Let's say a blog post. And they're saying, "Oh, it's above 2000 keywords. It is good now because you checked the box. You've hit the number." And the truth is, and Google has said this many times, and Barry on the SEO Roundtable blog as covered it many times, there's no set number they're looking at. In fact, it varies. If I'm searching for how do I tie my shoe, I'm probably not looking for War and Peace. I just want a quick little snippet of "Hey." And that's probably what's going to rank. Who invented the tying of the shoe and the full history of tying of the shoe? I'm probably looking for a much longer piece of content. So it depends. Crystal Carter: Right. I've read the quality rater guidelines. They don't talk about that. They don't say, "You got it. Oh, everything has to be over 500 words. Everything has to be over this, that or the other." And John Mueller has said, and he said again, and he said many times. One quote that he has is, "From our point of view, the number of words on a page is not a quality factor and not a ranking factor. So just blindly adding more and more text to a page doesn't make it better. Be exact. John." Thanks, John. Mordy Oberstein: As Crystal mentioned to me before the show, we're going to get into a lot of pithy John Muellerisms on this episode. Crystal Carter: Some of my favorite moments from John. Completely honest, and he's completely right. We have pages on the hub, which we didn't necessarily intend to rank. We just have them. So we have a video collection for instance, just so it's easy for users to find them. And it literally just says how to do this, and there's a video, and there's a link to a larger article. We don't expect them to rank. Google's ranking them anyway. I can canoncalize them. Google's ranking anyway because they wanted to. And it's just because sometimes you don't need a big long thing. I saw one. My favorite, it was a featured snippet. I was talking to Darth Na on Twitter about this. And he was like, "Who's got a good example of a short one?" The best one I found when I was doing some research for a... It was a veterinarian's app, and I was looking at research of this. And a competitor of the company that I was researching for, they were ranking for do male cats have nipples? And this page was the ranking for them. Mordy Oberstein: Important question. Crystal Carter: Apparently lots of people are asking this question. They were ranking for it, getting tons of traffic, and I think it was under 200 words. I think a lot of times people will say, "Oh, it should be around 500 words for a blog." But part of that is that's how long it takes to cover that topic. If it's going to take you a little bit of time to actually cover a topic, well then yeah. You are going to need to actually do the work to cover the topic. If you can cover the topic in 250 words, cover the topic in 250 words. Do male cats have nipples? Yes or no or whatever it is. I can't remember what the answer was. Mordy Oberstein: I'll Google it now. Crystal Carter: But whatever it is, yes or no. And then maybe a little bit of explanation and keep it moving. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. So bottom line, word count is not a ranking factor. You should write the amount of words that you need to address what your audience wants out of your content. And that could be five words, it could be 5 million words. I don't know the answer, only you do. Let's move on to LSI Keywords. It's like the bane of a lot of SEO's existence. So LSI keywords are basically... Think of it like synonyms. So let's say my page is about air conditioning installation. So the idea of LSI keywords is that by having other words related to installation, like air conditioning repair, air conditioning maintenance, air conditioning... I don't know another word for that. Renovation. Crystal Carter: Or home cooling- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: ...or something like that. They're semantically relevant. Mordy Oberstein: HVAC repair, HVAC installation. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That Google will now have a more contextual understanding because of all these related, synonym keywords, and they'll understand that your page should rank for air conditioning repair. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Google has said, I don't know like a gazillion times, it's not a thing. Crystal Carter: So another funny... Mordy Oberstein: It's not a thing. I don't have anything better for you outside of the fact that LSI keywords or LSI has been around. Semantic indexing has been around since the '80s. Crystal Carter: Right. This is one that people got confused about. So people started calling it LSI keywords and things like that. And I think that this is something that people have gotten confused about because the idea of talking about not just the literal keywords, but things that are in the general vicinity of that. Mordy Oberstein: Topically related. Crystal Carter: Topically related. That is a good thing to do, and that is a... That will give you better writing. Will give the user a better reading experience. And I think they're essentially confusing it with semantic generally. Mordy Oberstein: Semantic. Crystal Carter: Semantically related content. So Semrush has a great article titled What are LSI Keywords and Why They Don't Matter. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So you do want to build topical relevance. Wait, let's talk English. You want to create context. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: And when you're writing for a user, a person, you want to have contextual knowledge imparted so they understand what you're talking about. So if you're talking about air conditioning repair, you might also talk about heating system repair because heating and air conditioners are topically related. If you're talking about tables, perhaps you want to talk about chairs because they're topically, semantically, contextually, related. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. These are going to make sense. If you're talking about a record player, you might also talk about music. These things make sense. They go together. Mordy Oberstein: You talk about Bob Dylan? You're going to talk about harmonicas. LSI keywords, not a thing. Crystal Carter: Not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: So if you see it out there, ignore it. Crystal Carter: And to quote John Mueller on this one, "There is no such thing as LSI keywords. Anyone who's telling you otherwise is mistaken. Sorry." Mordy Oberstein: Is he really sorry? Crystal Carter: I don't think he is. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think he's really sorry. I think sorry was sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I think that's a sorry, not sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Can we move on now to DA? Crystal Carter: DA? Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: DA and poor Moz. DA is a metric called domain authority that Moz, which is an SEO tool, created. And what it basically does, it's a score that tries to mimic how Google might perhaps understand how authoritative a website is. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It is not a metric that Google uses. It is a simulation based on their algorithms. Not Google's algorithms. Moz' algorithm and how they're trying to determine the balance of things like rankings and backlinks to say how authoritative is this website. Basically, it's a representation. If you go to a website and you're like, "Oh, wow, this is a really great website. They really know what they're talking about this topic." DA is a way for you to simulate understanding that without visiting a million websites. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's a shorthand. It's a helpful shorthand. It's something like... If you think about something like BMI. BMI is a nonsense metric. BMI is... They go, "You're this tall, you weigh this much, you are overweight and you're underweight and you are appropriate weight." Mordy Oberstein: Right. So Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day probably had a terrible BMI because he was so muscled up. Crystal Carter: Terrible BMI. Exactly. So it's a bit of a garbage metrics, but it is as a shorthand. As a helpful shorthand before you get into the details. It's a helpful shorthand to help you keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's a very top level kind of thing. And all the different SEO tools have their own version of it. Ahrefs has DR. Semrush has AS, which is authority score. So every tool has their own version of this, but what you'll generally see out there in the ether of SEO talk is DA. And people will say to you, "I would like to sell you high DA authority links." Crystal Carter: Right. And the thing about that is that... Another quote from John that it's a helpful metric. But to quote from John, "Google doesn't use it at all. Not at all." So it's really important to bear that in mind. And also, one of the things he points out in the... There's an SEO Roundtable article where he talks about it and well... Sorry, where someone's recording him talking about it. And we can guess who that is who's recording it. And when he is discussing it, he says, "Again, they all have different metrics. So you don't know exactly how Ahrefs is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Moz is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Semrush is measuring it." So maybe treat it in the same way as your BMI. Treat it as a tracker to track progress to see if there's some movement in how they're measuring it. So if you see it go up in whatever way, maybe that's a sign that good things are happening. If you see it stay the same, that could be a sign that things are changing. It could be the sign that things aren't changing. But one of the things that's really tricky about DA is that a lot of these tools have a really tricky way of measuring subdomains. So you can see someone who's using something like... I saw a soccer club. And there was a soccer club and they had signed up to, I don't know, soccerclub.com and they got their own little subsite as part of that. So it was amazingsoccerclub.soccerclub.com or whatever it is. I'm sure there's some website called soccerclub.com. Anyway, according to all of these tools, this tiny little soccer club had a DA of 97. Why? Because the domain of soccerclub.com, which has all of these other subdomains, has tons of back links from various different things across the domain. So sometimes... Mordy Oberstein: They're all very link heavy anyway. All of these. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So there's lots of different factors that can misconstrue how those things are. So don't stress yourself out about it. And I've heard Barry Schwartz talk about it before. When you're talking about getting backlinks and things. Don't necessarily worry about the DA of something. Mordy Oberstein: No, don't. It's all about relevance of the website to what you're doing. And not only the website or the webpage is linking to you. It's way more about relevance than it is about DA. Honestly, if you're an SEO professional and you're working with thousands of sites. You're looking at thousands of sites, and you'd really need a top level understanding real quick about what this website... Where are they at? Then DA is for you. If you're not that person, don't even think about it. Trust your gut when you go to a website. This looks like a good website to you, they're running good content, they're trustworthy, they're authoritative. That's probably way more effective than DA. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Chill. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, let's try this one. Big name websites always beat smaller niche websites. And there's a ton of myths around this one. There's myths within myths within myths around this one. One myth is that Google automatically ranks big name brands above smaller niche websites. Or another myth that falls under this umbrella is domain age is a ranking factor. How old your domain is. So if my domain is 1 million years old, 1 billion years old, it'll beat out Crystal's website because Crystal's website is only 1000 years old. Crystal Carter: Again, I think this is something that comes from a little bit of confusion. Because this goes back to page rank, which is one of Google's oldest algorithms, and it was very much linked to links. Mordy Oberstein: Links. Crystal Carter: So some of the earliest information about SEO will be links. Links are really important. Don't get me wrong, links are important. It's how... When Google crawls from one page, they'll find a link. They'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page. But it is not the only thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my gosh. It's like a myth within a myth within a myth. Wow, that's a lot of mythology. That's how you use the word mythology. I understand that. You understand that. Crystal Carter: And I think that it's very much something that is super valuable. Getting links is good, but it's not all about it. And it can definitely make a big difference. But part of that isn't just because of the link itself. Part of that can have to do with how often the page that you're getting the link from is being crawled. For instance, if you get a link from a news publisher. They're publishing hundreds of articles a day, they're going to be getting crawled really regularly. That means you're more likely to have your link be discovered, you're more likely to be seen by lots of people, you're more likely to have traffic come to your website. There's lots of things that are going to be a causation of getting that link. So it's super important, don't get me wrong. But it's not everything, Mordy Oberstein: No. And Google's talked about it more recently than not trying to downplay the importance of links. John Mueller's gone on record a bunch of times saying links are not the be all end all. Barry's covered SEO Roundtable a bunch of times that Google's downplaying. Google says, "Links are not as important as you think they are because of all of this." But going back to domain age, that is not a ranking factor. If you have a great website. And I think this comes about from something that does make sense a little bit. If you've got an amazing website. You sat there, you planned the whole website out, you wrote 4 million blog posts, and then you launched the website. It's going to take Google a little bit of time to realize that you have an amazing website. And a website that it's already familiar with. They're already familiar with it, so that's going to rank already. Meaning domain age is not a thing. In fact, Google said about that, "No, not a thing at all." What is a thing though is Google being familiar with the website, understanding the website, and trusting the website. So obviously a website that's around for a while has accrued trust. And if you're a new player on the block, Google doesn't know you yet. But once Google realizes that you have awesome toys at your house, Google's going to be over there all the time trying to hang out with you. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. So, yeah. There's a lot of, again, contributing factors on this. So you're going to have more links. They're going to have more data on the kinds of traffic that normally goes to your website because they've been sending traffic to your website for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years or something. They're going to know the kinds of questions that you're able to answer. They're going to know the kinds of content that you have on your page. Most of your pages will probably be indexed by the time they've gone through all of these many years of seeing your content. Things like that. They're also going to have a lot of things that are already stored in their cache. All of that sort of stuff is going to... There's lots of things that they already know that they can bring to the table. And I think that there's ways that new domains can definitely make a big splash, and sometimes that can include a mix of marketing activity, including other channels outside of organic. But another fantastic quote from John. Someone asked, "Does domain age still matter in today's SEO in comparison to domain versus subdomain?" And John Mueller said, "No, domain age helps nothing." It helps nothing. So I think it's just really important to remember that you've got every chance in the world. I posted recently that in tennis, you show up on the match and you've got just as much chance as the other person in winning. And recently at Wimbledon, somebody who was unseeded won the women's Wimbledon. And somebody who was not ranked number one, who went up against the number one ranking men's tennis player at Wimbledon, and won. If you've got good content, then there's no reason why your new content can't do well if you send lots of signals and make sure that Google knows. That has lots of ways of knowing what you're about and what you do and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, on the subdomains versus subfolder. You kind of alluded to it a second ago. We did an episode about that a little while ago. There's, again, too many myths to get into. There's a whole bunch of myths around that. Check out that episode. We'll link to it in the show notes. We also covered duplicated content penalties. That's also a myth on another episode. We'll link to that in the show notes. Let's do one more. Okay, let's do... This is one of my favorites. Low code to HTML ratio. Crystal Carter: Oh, no. Don't get him started. Mordy Oberstein: I see that all the time. I've been asked about this a gazillion times. Basically, a lot of the SEO tools, when they run an audit, they have a category or a warning called low code to HTML ratio. Meaning you give a lot of... Or is it low HTML to code ratio? I don't even know anymore. I think I got it backwards. It's basically saying you have a lot of code on the page, but not a lot of content. And Google will not rank you well. I've talked to John about this. It's not real. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: In fact, John has called on the SEO tools to please take that out. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think this is one of the things where when you... You need to use your brain. You need to use your noggin actually. Mordy Oberstein: Just because you added a bunch of JavaScript functionality to your page does not make it spam. Because that's where this myth comes from. Back in the day there was a lot of janky code added onto websites. I keep using that word because you've used it and I've love it, and I've stolen it, and I've made it my own, Crystal. My word now. You can use it, but it's my word. Crystal Carter: You jacked it. Mordy Oberstein: I did. I'll mail you a check. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Back in the day, people would add all sorts of stuff to their page, and a lot of... It was a practice a lot of spammy pages would do. So that's where this whole thing of having a lot of code to a low text or HTML ratio came from. But today, in the world of JavaScript, you can have all sorts of carousels and expandable tabs and functionality animations that would add a lot of code to your page, and it does not mean that it's spammy. It just means that you like functionality and interaction on your webpage. Crystal Carter: This is what I'm saying. Use your brain. Look at the page and go... If you see a wording like that. Sometimes, for instance, I get people... This is another one where people are looking at schema markup, and they go into a Google Search Console and it says, "You have a warning for this." And I don't have that information on that page, so that's not necessarily relevant to me. It's like, "You haven't included reviews." I was like, "This product doesn't have reviews." It's a warning. And people are like, "What do I do?" And I'm like, "Nothing." Are you going to put reviews on there? Okay, you can look at whether or not you can add reviews to your website. Or if you're not going to do them, don't worry about it. If you are going to do it, great. That's great. Reviews are great. But don't freak out about every little thing. Look at it. Look at it with your eyes. Mordy Oberstein: If I'm not mistaken, I think it was Ahrefs who did this. They went through and said, "We're taking a bunch of these warnings out because they're really not relevant anymore." Crystal Carter: Right. So have a look, and if you see that on there... I'll be honest. I would normally have a look at the low text to what's it called or whatever. I have a look just to see. And if I can see that everything's working fine, everything's good, everything is functioning as it should, then I'm probably going to set that warning to ignore. I'm going to redo my audit and keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Move on. We're going to have to move on because, again, there are so many myths. If you feel like there's a myth that we didn't cover that you still have a question about or think, "Hey, your audience should probably know about that myth, and you should tell them that's a myth." Then let us know. Reach out to us on social, comment. We'll cover it on a future episode. Maybe we'll do round two or then maybe a round three. Again, we can probably do a round four or five also. So let us know. Crystal Carter: Too many. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway. With this, if you're working with clients or you're working with anybody and they may have all sorts of SEO myths. Or even just marketing myths because there's probably a whole episode we could do about marketing myths in general. How do you convince them to abandon those misconceptions and even often unreasonable expectations that come along with those myths? We spoke with Andi Jarvis, and here's his take on how to help your clients, your folks, abandon misconceptions and have reasonable expectations. Andi Jarvis: Hi, my name is Andi Jarvis. I am the strategy director at XMO Marketing. I should point out that I am not, and I repeat, I am not an SEO. But hopefully I can help with this SEO question because it's not really an SEO question. It's an SEO PPC, whatever marketing, topic. How do you convince clients and stakeholders to abandon misconceptions and unreasonable expectations about the marketing thing that you want to get through? So firstly, let me start by telling you how not to do it. Because if you are on social media, you will know that a lot of the time arguments these days are held by one camp shouting at the other camp, hoping that the other camp is going to accept that they are wrong and the first camp's opinion's correct. But weirdly, life doesn't work like that, does it? Because the Camp B who are being shouted at are standing there going, "I don't understand why they're shouting that because they're wrong." And then they shout their opinion back. And all that happens is you just end up with two idiots shouting at each other, banging heads like rutting bison instead of actually trying to move things forward. So you don't ever convince anyone to change their mind by basically just telling them they're wrong. Because effectively, when you say that, what people tend to hear is that I'm stupid. You say, "Oh, you're wrong." They hear, "I'm stupid." It's just a cognitive bias. So you have to walk people through and you have to use a language they understand. So the first thing I would say is stop talking about the technical part of your discipline because nobody cares. You care, that's why you have that job. Because you are great at SEO and PPC, graphic design, web design, whatever it is. That's why you've got that job. The person you're talking to, if you're talking to a boss or a director or whatever, they really don't care. Tell you what they do care about. Often it's money. Something starting with a pound sign or a dollar sign or a Euro sign or whatever sign it is. That often bothers people at the top of an organization. So if you want to get them to believe in the thing you are doing, and you want to get them to understand about the thing you're doing, you have to speak to them in their language, which means that you have to talk to them about the financial impact. "Ah, but Andi. It's SEO. It's quite hard to quantify the impact." PPC, they go, "Well, give us one. ROAS is eight, so we'll give you eight back. Yay." that's why PPC gets the investment. SEO can be quite different. Web design, good graphic design, can be really difficult to quantify. Advertising. You want to do traditional advertising. I hate that phrase. But if you want to do that, you say, "We need to spend this upfront and we hope that it might deliver this in a little bit of time." That's quite difficult to do. So sometimes you have to go to history. Past performance can sometimes be an indicator of future performance. Sometimes, and I know this is a dirty word in marketing, you can go to academia. Because amazingly, people have been studying marketing since the 1950s. And most of the problems like recessions and interest rate cuts, inflation going up, this has all happened before. It might be the first time it's happened to your generation, but this has all happened before, and there is loads of great evidence as to why you should carry on doing the thing you're doing. So look at the past and sometimes use that as a way to guide the future. Ask a lot of questions. Ask lots of questions before you start telling people anything. Ask them questions to understand what they're worried about, and then they can then take that and go... You can then go, "Right. Okay, if you're worried about this thing, here's how we can help you." So rather than just going, "SEO." And people are going, "I'm not listening." You can go, "Oh, you have this problem. Here's how we can help with that." Unreasonable expectations are slightly different, but I think that starts by right at the beginning. Good planning, scope of works. That type of thing that they call it in IT. What are we going to do? What do we think the impact's going to be? Don't over promise to get the budget, because these two things often work together. "Oh, yeah. We can do all of this if you give us the budget." You don't get the budget, then it looks like you're making it up. Be honest, talk their language, and that should help you. Hope that helps. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andi. Really appreciate you contributing to the podcast and see you around at some of the conferences out there in the upcoming months. By the way, you can follow Andi over at Andi Jarvis. That's at A-N-D-I J-A-R-V-I-S. Andi Jarvis. Follow him. He is fantastic, if you haven't realized that already. But it's a great point, by the way. As a former teacher, I'll say this. If you're trying to educate people and engage them, you have to educate them. You can't speak at them, you can't try to berate them, you can't try to make them feel bad about it. You have to really be conscious of giving them the tools to make their own decision autonomously, so that hopefully you lead them to the correct decision that they'll make autonomously. Crystal Carter: And I think also to understand why they might have had that information in the first place. Where did they get that from and why was it so convincing to them? How can you help them to... Because if you can understand how they got that information or how they came to that conclusion, then you can help them to unpack it a little bit. So again, like we were talking about. "Oh, everybody thinks that backlinks are the most important thing." Well, there'll be a reason why they thought that. So again, it'll have to do with page rank. It'll have to do with lots of the emails that they're getting all the time and the way that... Maybe some of the things they've been reading. So bridge that gap and be respectful of people who are curious and trying to learn. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. So you want to foster real learning experiences. You don't want to just win the argument. I think that's what it all comes down to at the end. Okay. With that, so Google has been trying to do some of their own truth searching. Fundamentally speaking, Google does a lot of truth searching. Their whole business model is based on showing you the most accurate, most relevant results possible. But the truth is hard. I feel like somebody has said that before me, but I'll take that as my own saying. My own idiom. And to help Google get at the multiple layers of truth that are out there, Google has launched a little new feature on mobile called perspectives. So what we're going to do is take a look at the direction that Google is going in with this new perspective as we take a directional look at the SERP as we are going Google. And it's Going, Going Google. It's out of here. So back at Google I/O. I'm terrible with time. When was that? May? Crystal Carter: May, I think? I think it's May. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: One of the M months. Mordy Oberstein: Something with an M. It was an M Month. Crystal Carter: 50-50 chance there. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: We could look it up, but we're not going to. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'd rather just say it's March. I'm pretty sure it was March, actually. So they announced a little feature called perspectives, and what it basically is. When you go search on mobile in the US, I'm not sure if it's in any other market, you get a little set of filters up top. You can look for images, shopping, news, and one of those little filters in the little carousel up top is called perspectives. And Google helps you try to get perspective, and they try to offer you all sorts of different angles and takes on that topic. So for example, if you search for something like, "Are the Beatles a good band?" You'll hopefully get some perspectives from whatever sources helping you understand the multiple takes. That's a complicated question. Are the Beatles good? I don't know. It depends. Historically speaking, they were really significant. Do I enjoy their music? I don't know. Sometimes I do. I used to be a bigger Beatles fan than I'm now. Crystal Carter: They're a mixed bag. They've got... They have some... Mordy Oberstein: They are a mixed bag. That's a good way of putting it. They are a mixed bag. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they got a mixed bag. Some of their stuff... Mordy Oberstein: That's our perspective. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: This is our perspective. You might want someone else's perspective. And what Google's basically doing is showing you a tab full of perspectives. And it's interesting because... Okay, let's break one down. I searched for "Is Aaron Judge good?" Aaron Judge is a baseball player. Aaron Judge, for some context, holds the American League Home Run record in a single season with 62 home runs in a season. That's actually the real home run record because the people who broke it beforehand were on drugs. Steroids. So in my mind, "Yeah, he's got the real record." But anyway, you break it down. Is Aaron Judge good? And it tries to give you a lot of social media stuff like Reddit threads, some Twitter stuff, there's a bunch of YouTube stuff, and it's interesting. And with any relatively new product, you're always going to have some kinks to work out in the system. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think what you're looking at now. We're recording this. There are still kinks in the system. A lot of it is outdated. It's months old. Nine months old. Which is great for the Beatles, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Are The Beatles a good band? Yeah, that question has been going on since the '60s. So I don't care if it's nine months ago or nine years ago, that perspective is still going to be the same. But on things that are more current event related. Because you can have a great season and the next season not be a good player. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: What happened before? Not in Aaron's case. Aaron's wonderful. But nine months is a long time. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, and also what good is can change. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So yeah. Okay. That's been a little bit of a hangup of mine. Let's take the Beatles one. If I were to ask you, "Are the Beatles a good band?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So I would think there's multiple... Or let me ask... Let's take it a different way. Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: Who's the best Beatle? Mordy Oberstein: Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: It's not Ringo. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Well, let's not be offensive here. But yeah, it's definitely not Ringo. Crystal Carter: Not Ringo. Bless his heart, but it's not Ringo. And I don't know. I think that all of these things will depend on the songs that connect with you and things like that. You might not even... I'm not even sure if I would agree with that as a question because you can't Beatle on your own. It's not like you can show up... Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's great. So that's one perspective. Then you have... Maybe there's... You break it down in terms of songwriting. When you say who's the best Beatle, does best mean in terms of songwriting out of all of them? Does it mean who had the best career? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity in the context of best? And there's multiple ways to break it down, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. Go back to Aaron Judge, a baseball player. If I'm asking whatever baseball player is the best. Is it best at offense, best at defense, best at promoting themselves? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity according to best? So there's multiple ways to break down an entity, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. You're just getting a social source. Twitter or YouTube. Crystal Carter: Right. So for instance, Glenn Gabe did a really big deep dive on the perspectives panel. The only thing that... I think where they're trying to make up for the nuance is with volume, so having lots and lots of perspectives, for instance, on it. But I feel like that creates noise. So for instance, Glenn showed the example of best gaming chair perspectives. And then it's just lots of YouTube things, lots of people writing about what's the best gaming chair, and lots of things from Reddit about what the best gaming chair is. And to my mind, that's the same as just going onto one of these platforms and trolling through all of the things to find it. And I think that the trickiness of wading into some of those forums and trying to curate it is that those forums tend to be a bit raw and they tend to be a bit difficult to wrangle. So if you're trying to organize that information, which never wanted to be organized in the first place- Mordy Oberstein: Good point. Crystal Carter: ...you're going to get some complex results. And I think that part of the reason why they're leading on this perspectives tab is in order to counteract the amount of AI content that we're getting. So the perspective stuff is more raw human. "Ah, this chair was terrible." Which did they tell you? The chair that I'm sitting in right now, the review for it, where someone was like, "Is this a hobbit chair? I would not wish this chair on my worst enemy." And I was like, "My guy. That's some strong experience. Strong feelings about a chair. Very strong feelings." Mordy Oberstein: That guy really likes chairs a lot. Crystal Carter: He was really upset. The chair is fine. It's a chair. And so I think trying to curate those things, they're trying to bring those perspectives literally into the SERP because I think they expect for there to be a lot of AI content coming from more traditional publishers. So I think they're trying to balance that- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Crystal Carter: ...kind of content on the web so that you can see the more curated content and you can see more, "Yeah, this is how I feel about this." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And Google knows that there's a trend out there that people are looking towards social media for information because you trust people versus search engines kind of thing. So they're trying to incorporate that into the search engines, so that you feel the search engine is a place where you can go to get that trust. I think directionally speaking, that's what this segment Going, Going Google is all about, it makes total sense. I feel like we're at the beginning of a technology, or the beginning of the product rather. And I think it has a tremendous amount of value. I think they just got to take it to the next level. Spice it up a notch. Kick it up a notch. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think... Mordy Oberstein: Look forward to that, actually. Crystal Carter: Yeah. We'll see how it all plays out. Mordy Oberstein: Now to see how it all played out in the SEO news this week, which always plays out itself with some sort of drama. Let's dive into this week's Snappy News. Snappy News. Two for you this week, both from he that is Barry Schwartz over at SEORoundtable.com. First up, Google's search language mashing systems released two weeks ago. So a few weeks back, it turns out Google released an update that better matched the language being searched for and the actual results on the results page. I will tell you, as an expat, I search in English and would often get the language of the country I'm in, especially in Google Discover. Which by the way, I'm not sure it's part of this update or not. I've seen it with folks I consult with and their sites, and it can be a very big deal if the wrong language shows up for your sites. If you have a site and you have pages in multiple languages, and let's say somebody's searching in, I don't know, Mexico. But they're searching in English and the Spanish version comes back. Highly unlikely that you're going to get a click because I don't want the Spanish version. I don't speak Spanish, I just happen to be on vacation in Mexico. So Google getting this right can be a very big deal, and it's nothing to sneeze at. Also from Barry Schwartz, and also from SEORoundtable.com, and also nothing to sneeze at. Google, August 2023. Broad core update finished rolling out. It is done. A little bit longer than usual to finish this update. Now is the time to go and look at any changes in your ranking trajectory and see what is what. It's hard to do during the update itself because there's always a little kick at the end that could reverse what you initially saw during the outset of the core update. So now is the time to go in and see what, if anything, has changed. Hopefully for the better. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. So snappy, so informative, so much news. I actually love covering news. Crystal Carter: We know you do. Mordy Oberstein: I love news. I love the SEO news. I don't like regular news. I don't listen, watch or do anything with regular news anymore. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: But SEO news, I'm all about the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Right. Read all about it, people. Mordy Oberstein: Read all about it. You know what else you should be reading all about is Pedro Dias, who is our follower of the week. Pedro Dias is an SEO OG. Former Googler, major SEO OG, technical SEO, and SEO product manager. Founder of multiple companies, I believe. He's over at Pedro Dias on Twitter. That's P-E-D-R-O D-I-A-S on Twitter. So check out Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro is great. He's a super knowledgeable SEO who's been working for ages, and is a very good follow if you want some clear no nonsense SEO stuff that is not full of myths. Mordy Oberstein: That's why he's our... Literally why he's our follow of the week. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We sat down. Who is somebody who does not tolerate myths? And it's Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro Dias. Pedro speaks... Mordy Oberstein: Zero tolerance policy for myths. SEO Myths. Crystal Carter: Right. He's speaking some truth where he can. So, yeah. He's a great fellow. Nice guy. Funny as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So definitely follow Pedro. Mordy Oberstein: Beat my butt at cornhole over at Brighton. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he did. I was there. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I got hoodwinked. I got hustled. Crystal Carter: You got hustled? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because he's like, "Oh, I never played a cornhole before." And he was like, "All right." And we go over and 1, 2, 3, 4. Boom, boom, boom. I'm like, "You never played cornhole before? Yeah, right." Crystal Carter: I saw it. That was pretty devastating. I don't know how you came back from that, Mordy. It was pretty conclusive. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm still down on myself ever since then. Really shook my confidence. Crystal Carter: You'll live to cornhole another day. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, "I have to." I've been practicing my cornhole game. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Oh, right. Mordy Oberstein: Now I'm ready. Crystal Carter: I didn't realize there was a rematch. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. In my mind there is. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I haven't talked to Pedro about it, but we should. Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, with that, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to set SEO priorities. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts 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 we have 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 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

George Nguyen is an SEO editorial expert and the former Director of SEO Editorial at Wix. He creates content to help users and marketers better understand how search works. He was formerly a search news journalist and is known to speak at the occasional industry event. George Nguyen Founder of George Edits George Nguyen is an SEO editorial expert and the former Director of SEO Editorial at Wix. He creates content to help users and marketers better understand how search works. He was formerly a search news journalist and is known to speak at the occasional industry event. Articles & Resources 22 Jan 2026 How to use Wix’s Aria AI assistant to save time and improve SEO 23 Apr 2025 What is vector embedding for SEO: Insights from Mike King 16 Apr 2025 SEO tools for conquering the HCU and boosting E-E-A-T 14 Jan 2025 From the experts: 25 SEO tips for 2025 28 Aug 2024 How we use the Wix Studio CMS to improve E-E-A-T and manage content at scale 1 Aug 2024 Elevate your branding to attract more leads: Takeaways from Wix Studio & SEJ’s digital marketing meetup in NYC 8 Jul 2024 5 of my best editing tips for content marketers 17 Jun 2024 Future-forward techniques for SEO teams from MozCon 2024 2 Jun 2024 SEO in the newsroom: Tips from the SEO for News meetup 2 May 2024 Agency takeaways and tips from BrightonSEO (April 2024) 22 Apr 2024 Google’s SGE: Insights from SEOFOMO x Wix 16 Jan 2024 6 steps to perfect your SEO webinar & conference Q&A sessions Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Google Gemini is here but what does it mean for SEO? How does Gemini factor into Search and what does it even mean for the evolution of AI in general? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Search Engine Land’s Editor-in-Chief, Danny Goodwin, to evaluate what Gemini is and might become from an SEO point of view. Plus, The Neuron’s Pete Huang takes a look at what Gemini means for the overall evolution of AI. Look up at the stars, and tune in to episode 74 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as today we are all Geminis! Back How will Google's most powerful AI, Gemini, impact SEO? Google Gemini is here but what does it mean for SEO? How does Gemini factor into Search and what does it even mean for the evolution of AI in general? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Search Engine Land’s Editor-in-Chief, Danny Goodwin, to evaluate what Gemini is and might become from an SEO point of view. Plus, The Neuron’s Pete Huang takes a look at what Gemini means for the overall evolution of AI. Look up at the stars, and tune in to episode 74 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as today we are all Geminis! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 74 | February 14, 2024 | 48 MIN 00:00 / 47:44 This week’s guests Danny Goodwin Danny Goodwin is the Managing Editor of Search Engine Land & SMX (Search Marketing Expo). Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest search marketing news and updates since 2007. He joined Search Engine Land in 2022, where he manages the Search Engine Land SME (Subject Matter Expert) program and oversees the programming of U.S. SMX events. Pete Huang Pete Huang is an AI futurist and artificial intelligence leader with a global following that relies on his technological expertise to run their businesses. He created The Neuron, a daily newsletter tracking the latest AI trends, products and research making an impact, with over 250,000+ business leaders relying on their coverage to stay informed about AI. Pete has spoken about AI around the world and is regularly tapped as a consultant to enterprises investing in AI. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by She who searches the stars for SEO answers, the one, the only, Head of Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. My name is Crystal Carter. I'm a Pisces and I am a stargazer. I've been enjoying Jupiter being in the Northern Hemisphere for the last few months. It keeps hanging out by the moon. We're going to talk about lots of things like that. So yeah, welcome to our podcast about SEO. Mordy Oberstein: I'm also a Pisces. What does that mean though? Crystal Carter: I know you're a Pisces. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, because of my personality or because you know what my birthday is? Crystal Carter: Actually, a lot of SEOs are Pisces. I think it's because we like to jump around and we like to go with the flow of the algorithm and things. Mordy Oberstein: I always thought it was my traumatic childhood, but now you're telling me it's really... Okay. Got it. Crystal Carter: Definitely your star sign. Mordy Oberstein: That's just- Crystal Carter: I mean, I think I am definitely... I'm a Pisces rising in a Taurus. No, I'm kidding. I don't know how that works. Literally, I'm very top level on my astrology. I'm completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: I know Taurus, I know Pisces, and I know Gemini, and that's all I know. Crystal Carter: Okay, well, we'll leave it at that. Mordy Oberstein: A little foreshadowing there. Now, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter Searchlight over Wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also automate the heck out of your client's site with Wix's revamped integration with Zapier. Connect your client's site and take advantage of thousands of marketing automations. You know what else can automate a heck of a lot of things? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Google's Gemini. Oh. They're taking a play out of the back pages of a newspaper, as our horoscope says AI technology is on the horizon. We'll get into what is Google Gemini, what has Google said about Gemini in search, and what are some possible ways Gemini may impact SEO in the future. To help us see the future of search, we'll soon chat with the one, the only, editor of Search Engine Land, that's Barry Schwartz's boss. Danny Goodwin will join us in just a few moments. We'll also talk to the co-founder of The Neuron, Peter Huang, about what Gemini means, not just for SEO, but beyond SEO, and of course we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So let's see what's in the stars today and what the horoscope of the SERP is, as episode number 74 of the SERP's Up podcast. It's all playful, perceptive, and intellectually curious as we go all Gemini on you. Crystal Carter: You know, there are a lot of sides to a Gemini. It's like they have twin personality. Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea. I have literally no clue. Crystal Carter: That's what they say about all of that sort of thing, and I mean that kind of tracks with what we've heard about it so far. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Nicely done. I've never actually read a horoscope in my life before. Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: No, I've never really like- Crystal Carter: I love horoscopes. It's like a fortune cookie. That's how I treat it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fortune cookies. They tastes good. Can you eat a horoscope? Crystal Carter: I mean... Mordy Oberstein: I don't care. Okay, so before we bring in Danny, let's talk a little bit what just very, very quickly is catch everybody up. What is Google Gemini? It's a new AI model that allegedly solves very complex tasks. It could understand all sorts of media and mediums, from text, to code, to audio, et cetera. It's extremely powerful and it's meant to compete with Google... With Google's. With OpenAI's GPT-4, and according to certain tests, it seems to outperform GPT-4, which is interesting. So there are all sorts of possible implications about what this means for Google search. Google has kind of talked a little bit about it, which is why we thought we would bring Danny Goodwin on, because Danny wrote a whole article about this. So welcome to SERP's Up, Danny. Danny Goodwin: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Mordy, and Crystal, I guess I should disclose I'm a Scorpio. So- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right. Scorpio. Right, right, right. Okay. I know that one. Crystal Carter: Right? Okay. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Danny Goodwin: It depends. Mordy Oberstein: It depends. Crystal Carter: Although Scorpios I know are very, very loyal people. Very loyal- Danny Goodwin: Very true. Crystal Carter: Very, like, ride or die. That's my homie. Danny Goodwin: Very much. Crystal Carter: That's the end of that. Danny Goodwin: That's some people saying and it's some people, not their thing. But yes, that's a very good assessment. Loyal, ambitious, all that stuff. Crystal Carter: Well, welcome to the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like competing personality traits, loyal and ambitious. Danny Goodwin: Well, I don't know. I tend to look at as I like to do my absolute best for whatever company I work for. But in doing so, I also grow my own brand, so to speak. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, okay. That works. Danny Goodwin: I think they work together. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's cool. Okay. I get it. Crystal Carter: I think so. Danny Goodwin: It's like... You think back on my earliest days in search was at Search Engine Watch. A lot of the work I did there sort of built my reputation for the rest of my career. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Danny Goodwin: So I thought... Yeah, I think just generally doing hard work and showcasing your talent is incredibly valuable for advancing your career. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And advancing the company you're with. So I've heard people who are like, "Oh, should I let my team go out and do speaking and stuff? What if they go somewhere else?" I'm like, "Yeah, but they're letting you shine by shining. I shine, you shine, we all shine." It's good for everybody. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: Agree. Danny Goodwin: And we all love shining happy people. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let's talk Gemini. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: You wrote a whole article about covering... When Google came out with their big Gemini announcement covering what Google has said about it and what it is. So what has Google said about Gemini in search and what is Gemini exactly? Danny Goodwin: The easiest way to think about it is Gemini is basically the equivalent to GPT from OpenAI. It's sort of the backend large language model that is powering a lot of the things that Google wants to do in search in the future. I don't think they have all the capabilities yet. And basically they came out with three flavors, I guess, of Gemini, initially, and this is 1.0. So we're going to see advancements in it. They have Ultra, Pro, and Nano. We're getting a taste of the Pro model now in Bard, and I believe... The rumor is they're going to have a paid version of Bard in the future, and I think that will be powered by the Ultra version. So we'll see how that shakes out. That's just all rumor at this point. But basically, yeah. So right now they're testing Gemini for SGE. They've said that in addition to reducing the time it takes to generate the SGE responses, the AI answers, they claim that it basically has resulted in other search quality improvements. But they didn't really explain what those are. It's in testing now and they said that it is coming to search and ads in the future, in the next few months. So that will be interesting and I don't think they're going to announce it before it comes out. I imagine it'll be sort of RankBrain or some of the other things they've just deployed. It will be there and then at some point later they'll go, "Oh, by the way, we launched this two months ago." So we will see. I could be wrong. And I think this just ultimately gets Google closer to that model it's sort of been at for the... They've had this long-term vision. If you go back to some of the earliest interviews, Marie Haynes uncovered this really great old interview with Larry Page. It's just like, ultimately AI is search. "When someone comes to Google and asks a question, we give them the right answer. That's AI. That's search." It's sort of always been the model. I've been comparing it recently... I'll give credit, too, to Michael King for this one. He had this great video from a few years ago where he compared where Google's going to the movie Her, which I don't know if you guys have seen. It was a 2013 movie, I believe. Scarlett Johansson... Really good cast, actually. Amy Adams and some other good people. But it's basically like Her was an operating system. It's a virtual assistant. It adapts to you. It learns from you. I think that's where Google's going. It's just you talk to Google and it will- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I did see this movie. Okay. I did see this. Danny Goodwin: ... Respond to you. Yeah, it's basically it learns from you and responds to you and anticipates your needs. It's basically your virtual assistant. And I think we're going to start seeing that first when they incorporate Bard into the assistant on Google phones. Mordy Oberstein: So where do you think, based upon what Google has said, what they're trying to do, where do you think they're going, what are they trying to use Gemini for exactly? It's simply to generate answers as better answers, faster answers? Or are they going to expand what AI means? Or do you think... Because we don't really know what they're going to do. But do you think they're going to expand what AI means on the SERP, beyond what we're currently seeing in the form of SGE? Danny Goodwin: I think right now, my guess is a lot of it, because... I'm sure you remember when they first launched SGE, it took a really long time to generate those answers, and I have definitely... We've reported, Michael King did research on it, Authoritas did some research on it, and that time has definitely reduced. So I think that's the biggest area right now. Quality wise, I still don't see perfect answers or they're just very surfacey, generic. I don't know if they're going to make... I'd love to see a bit more depth if they're going to really go all in on this, but they're not there. It's kind of like a fourth grade book report on, "Tell me about this thing." So I don't know if that's going to improve. That'll be interesting to see. But I ultimately think they have so much data that they collected on you, on me... They know the story you clicked on in Google News and what videos you watch on YouTube. I just imagine them connecting all these dots together ultimately, and Gemini is going to be that kind of backend for connecting all these dots and trying to figure out what you want, click on what you want, what content you want to consume, what do you want to read, what videos you want to see, all these things and just be like a real recommendation engine. Best way to compare it to what TikToks doing. Mordy Oberstein: So Google Discover on steroids? Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yes. That's what it feels like. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting. Yeah. Crystal Carter: And do you think that this is a play to put them back ahead of the game? I think that when ChatGPT broke more for the mainstream, and particularly when Bing was like, "We've put this into New Bing," I think Google, it seemed anyway, they were a little bit on the back foot. Not that they haven't been progressing with AI. They've had tons of AI for years. But for a public facing product, they seem to be a little bit trying to pull something together. Do you think that this is a play to move to be the forerunners, and do you think this puts them there? Danny Goodwin: I think it's definitely... There's definitely a PR aspect to a lot of what we're seeing. Going all the way back to SGE, it was kind of like vaporware announcements. It's like, "We have this really awesome thing. You can't see it yet though." And that seems to be how they've been going with us. And it was even the same with Gemini to an extent, because they had that video. Mordy Oberstein: The video was interesting. Danny Goodwin: The video was very interesting and was also very fake, and I called out on it. So it's like they're taking a couple steps forward and back. But it's like when they flubbed their initial introduction of Bard, when they had that wrong answer, and they got called out on it and their stock took a dive. Remember that way back in the day? And all these things have consequences. So from big perspective, Bing is honestly... The game is over for Microsoft. This was, to me, I thought their kind of the last chance because they had all this hype going with GPT, but we've followed the numbers. They've gained no market share since launching this, despite all the hoopla. Despite like, "Oh my God, this is the shiny new thing. ChatGPT is awesome." Hasn't helped them a bit. Mordy Oberstein: Which is interesting because Google went doubled down and said, "Oh, you're going to do that? We'll do that better." But was that really what users really want in the end? And I think... We don't like talking about this on the podcast, but the money aspect is fascinating and the PR aspect is fascinating, because a lot of this does have to do with stock prices. And a lot of it is, "Hey, let's put this out there. Let's show us... Position ourselves at a certain way." But at a certain point, you do have to actually address what users want. Otherwise, your fundamental product will not work and that's also impact the stock price. And I wonder if it goes back to what you were saying before about offering deeper answers because I find it... It's novel, it's interesting. It's really not that helpful. It's a featured snippet with citations. Like, okay, that's interesting. But one of the things that I thought was interesting when Google announced Gemini was they were showing, if you can ask it something like... I think the example they gave had to do was "I want to plan a birthday party for my kid." And it gave you one format of results that kind of aligned to the information. Maybe there's a lot of videos there, maybe there's a lot of lists or whatever. And they formatted the result to meet the need of that query, so that you can better explore what you wanted to learn about whatever is about a birthday party for your kid. Then they asked about a recipe and the format was very different because the type of exploration you're going to do when you're looking for a recipe requires a different visual format to be able to explore those results. I thought that was fascinating, and I wondered if maybe they would bring something like that to SGE. I think where SGE, to me, at least where it's novel is... Not it's pitting out an answer. It's novel in being able to facilitate exploration. "Here's a bunch of little tidbit of information. Here's a bunch of information that I'll give you the TLDR and you can now go explore this." And it'll be really interesting to me if they were able to bring in the custom formatting that they discussed in the Gemini demo, we'll link to that in the show notes, and bring that to SGE because that would really allow you to explore like a mad person. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that Google hasn't figured this thing out. I think they'll dispute it. They'll say they didn't rush this out. I feel like they felt like they had to rush it out. It's an imperfect product. It's an experiment. They keep reiterating, "It's still an experiment." So yeah, I feel like this is just going to be one of those things. They're really all in on this. I know a lot of people are like, "Oh, they think that SGE is not going to end up being launched." It is going to be launched. Mordy Oberstein: No, it's going to be launched. Just what will it be? Danny Goodwin: Right? Yeah. And that's the big question. So yeah, if they can do that and they can really nail that user intent, that is going to be, I think, the major change. We've already talked about there are certain niches that are really going to be hammered hard by SGE. There's been lots of discussion about that. Informational searches. What is this thing? What is that thing? Those are going to be hurt. They're going to lose a lot of traffic. Yes. And I remember Ryan Jones... I don't know if everyone watching knows who Ryan Jones is, but he is in SEO. He's been around for a long time. At Pubcon, he basically said, when I was watching his presentations, "When the web launched, you have to think about... " People were looking for answers, but webpages were the only way at that time you could get an answer. Since that time, 25 years later now, the web has evolved a lot. So there are other ways to get answers now, especially with these deep learning systems that Google's using, passage ranking, all these things, and users really expect more. Even Google has admitted that they're seeing the Gen Z, the younger people, they're going to TikTok, they're going Instagram when they're looking for a restaurant or other things, and that is a threat to them. So it's like they have to adapt, especially... Maybe the three of us have searched a certain way. We've done so for many years, but maybe we're not the core audience anymore. I know I'm probably outside the key demographic for them at this point, but- Mordy Oberstein: Are we old? Danny Goodwin: It could be. I know I am, but I don't know how old you two are, but- Crystal Carter: I do not identify as old. Mordy Oberstein: I do, and I have for a long time, even though I was young. Danny Goodwin: You both look much younger than me. Crystal Carter: Thank you! Danny Goodwin: SEO is aged for me very much. Crystal Carter: Like when you see those presidents at the beginning of their term and then at the end, and they're like, "Wow." Danny Goodwin: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you see Obama on a jet ski and you're like, "Oh, he looks great now. He suddenly doesn't have the way to the world." But one thing that I think is interesting, with Gemini, for instance. With the release, they also talked about Vertex AI, which is one of their product things. And essentially, they talk about other people being able to build with it and to be able to create with it. How much do you think that's going to affect how this develops and who adopts and what they adopt and how they integrate? Danny Goodwin: That part is very interesting. I've been reading a lot of stuff that's kind of outside of SEO. It almost seems like to me we're heading toward this weird future, too, where Crystal has her own AI persona. Like Mordy has his own AI persona. And your persona exists separate of you on the web, goes out, and does things that Mordy would want or figure out things that you would be interested in and finds it. Mordy Oberstein: I already have this. It's called my Twitter account. Danny Goodwin: Well, yes. But imagine you just took and trained your model on your Twitter account. You went out there. Boom, there you go. Now you don't even have to do it. Mordy Oberstein: Don't let that happen. Crystal Carter: Too late. Danny Goodwin: It's kind of scary. It's like the whole web at some point in the future could just be the AIs talking to other AIs. And that was another part of that movie Her. It's like the main AI in that movie, the Her character is talking to all these other AIs and they're coming up with these solutions to things and doing things all on their own, separate from humans. So it's really interesting to think about. Is the Web even going to be human-centric 10 years from now? I know we're already overrun and we're already overrun by bots. We know that too. Bot traffic too. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Danny Goodwin: So that's only going to get worse. Crystal Carter: I definitely know what you mean though, because I've seen people saying, "Oh yeah, you can have your AI read your emails." And then somebody else being like, "You can have AI write your emails." So who is actually reading the emails? But I also have this sort of thing where I'm regularly thinking, "Oh, that's how we ended... How that movie ended up like that." I feel like we're in a lot of times these days, I just find myself like, "Oh, that's how that movie starts. That's how we ended in that futurescape." Danny Goodwin: Totally. I know. Yeah, just don't let it take over the defense system is all I know. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Someone cue up the Terminator music. Danny Goodwin: Right. That's when all the trouble really starts. Crystal Carter: But I do think it's important to look at the Google Cloud stuff as well, because when I found... Particularly when I was looking at visual search a few years ago. When I was doing the research for it, I was looking at all of the Google Cloud product drops. Basically, that's where they tell you how the AI actually works, is that they're at the Google Cloud product drop things. That's where a lot of the magic happens, and I think that it'll be interesting to see who adopts the APIs for Gemini and how that rolls out to see... Because Google very often gets ideas from users, from large scale users for these kinds of products, for how we might see it applied in search, I think. Danny Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's definitely a To-Be-Determined area. I couldn't claim specialization in that area or expertise, so I won't. But yeah, I definitely agree. Definitely watch whatever Google Cloud is doing. I've seen that many times, especially the stuff around... All the entity SEO stuff. There's so much to learn in that area too, from Google Cloud and all those tools. So yes. Mordy Oberstein: It does, to me, kind of come down to what you were talking about before as to how we consume content and how that changes. To piggyback off of Ryan, I'll oftentimes... I don't live in the US anymore, but I follow NFL football. So most of the games are in the middle of the night for me. So if it's a game that I want to catch up on, I'll watch the highlights in the morning. I'm like, "All right, I'll watch the highlights. I don't want to know the score yet." And before I even go to Google or anything, I turn my phone on and there's a little card that says the score. I'm like, "Damn it." And that's not a feature snippet on the service. Not a direct answer on the service. This is a push notification. And the way we consume content and people talk about, "Oh, it's taking away clicks." But it's not just Google doing it. It's just a whole ecosystem is built and designed... That quick information is not meant for websites anymore. I know it sounds horrible to say, but to a certain extent, it's not. It's meant for a push notification. It's meant for an AI answer. It's meant for whatever. And I feel like however content consumption evolves is how AI is going to evolve to match it and to supplement it and to drive that need or that desire that people have in what they consume and how they consume it. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, I remember there was all kinds of outrage at one point. I don't remember the year. It was probably early 2010s, and everybody got so upset. I think it was a search on Google for the temperature was literally a one answer result. I don't know if you remember this. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I remember this. I remember freaking out about it. Danny Goodwin: Everybody freaked out about it. Mordy Oberstein: Every once in a while still shows up that way. There's nothing else on the SERP, but the direct answer. Danny Goodwin: Exactly. And it's just like, well, yeah, because you can find the temperature on weather channels, on the news, on various... It's just a thing. You shouldn't base your monetary model around getting organic traffic for the current temperature. Mordy Oberstein: Basing your business strategy on something that someone's able to understand by literally sticking their hand out the window- Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: ... Is probably not the best thing. Danny Goodwin: Also, yes. But one interesting thing that, just going really quickly back to the sports thing, which I found very interesting. I don't know if this could be rolled out in some way to search, but I just signed up for YouTube TV. They have an option on the TV now where you can hide sports scores before you watch the game, which I had not seen before. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Danny Goodwin: That would be very interesting if they could roll that out into search somehow where it's like a spoiler free version. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. That'd be great because it's happened so many times. Okay, I'm looking forward to that. Danny Goodwin: So anyway. I don't know if that, but if YouTube's doing it now on YouTube TV. Who knows? It could come to search someday. We'll see. Crystal Carter: I think that comes back to what you were talking about before. You mentioned that Google has all these different data sets and they have all this different amount of data on us, just as Google users and all of that. And I think it's interesting, because you were saying with Bing while they were trying to push ChatGPT and while they were trying to push New Bing, they were like, "Hey, if you want new Bing, you've got to make Edge your default browser." And I was like, "What?" They were like, "You got to put it on your phone." And I was like, "Huh?" My first response was like, "Why are they doing this?" And then I realized, "Oh, they don't have the same amount of data that Google has on me for being a Chrome user for years and years and years, and that everybody who has a Google Pixel has and everybody who has Gmail and all that sort of stuff. That whole ecosystem." And I think that that's going to be the linchpin for Google being able to drive Gemini forward and more of their other tech is how much data that they're able to collect on a daily basis about search and things like that. And like you said, being able to pull the dots together. Danny Goodwin: I mean, yeah, there are cases where being the first mover matters. I don't think in search it does, because Google can wait. And from the beginning, I was almost like, "Google's going to sit and watch Bing for a little while, see what they screw up, and not do that." That was my thinking from the beginning. I was just like, "Let Bing be the first one through the wall. Let them make all the mistakes. And it's one less thing that they'll have to worry about maybe from a feature antitrust thing, because I can go, oh, well, Microsoft did that first." Mordy Oberstein: Well, that is coming back to bite. There are lawsuits now. Danny Goodwin: Well, this is true, yes. But it's just... Again, goes back to the PR angle, which I know probably isn't most interesting to your listeners. Mordy Oberstein: No, I find that part the most interesting, because it's like the puppet and the string kind of thing. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, ultimately... And I said this... I did my keynote at SMX. It's like when you think about these AI companies, behind everything, you always have to remember it's monetary. They're not in this... I mean, yes, they want to give users a good experience, blah, blah, blah, because it makes them money. Like, yes. Okay, you're going to get good results. But ultimately they're making money on these great results and they don't want to upset that model. So that's why I say people who are saying SGE won't launch, just give that up. It's launching. They're going to figure it out and I kind of compared it to a casino. It's like, the House always wins. They just got to figure out where to put the big money slot machines on the right location on the floor, and they're going to stack the deck and they're going to figure it out. And they're probably going to end up, too, with ads. It's going to be less inventory, which means prices are going to go up for PPC advertisers. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing is that they've got a lot of, in terms of the house always wins or whatever, they've got a lot of cards in their hand. Danny Goodwin: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: They call it SGE now. It might be that it feeds into a different part of the SERP. That it might be that it shows up in a different way. It might be that it's just a shopping assistant or something and that sort of stuff. So they have a lot of different levers they can pull in terms of AI integration. So yeah, I think it is absolutely important that people pay attention to what they're doing there and how it all moves around. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So if people wanted to connect the dots and find you, Danny, where could they find you? Danny Goodwin: They can find me on Search Engine Land. Probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Just search for me. I'm Mr. Danny Goodwin on socials. I am on X, but not as much as I used to be. But yes, mainly, writing daily on Search Engine Land or near daily. And we also have our two big SMX shows twice a year, SMX Advanced and SMX next. And you just spoke Next and Mordy got rave reviews. Everybody should know, because he is awesome as a presenter. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: So thank you for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: One good thing I'm good at. Presenting. I'm very presentable. Danny Goodwin: You are. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Yeah, the people love you in our community. Well, some of them. Mordy Oberstein: No, well. The SMX site are a classic... Some people do. SMX are a classic SEO conference. They moved to digital a couple of years ago. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: And they're free. Are they... Right? I'm correct to say that? Danny Goodwin: They're totally free. Yep. Yeah, we moved online, unfortunately due to covid, but they've actually ended up working out really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I spoke at SMX during Covid, and it was lovely. I think I spoke with, I remember chatting to Barry actually during a session. Danny Goodwin: That must have been fun. Crystal Carter: Which was great. Mordy Oberstein: I hope you two had fun. Barry loves fun. Crystal Carter: Oh yes, we did have fun. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. So yeah, definitely please, you're listening to this. Check out the SMX conference series. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's free. Sign up. You can learn an absolute ton. Danny Goodwin: And yeah, read Search Engine Land every day. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Danny Goodwin: All spam. That was my spam plug. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. We're all- Danny Goodwin: Sign up for the newsletter. Follow us on social. Mordy Oberstein: No, we're all for plugging. Crystal Carter: Like and subscribe. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, like and subscribe. Mordy Oberstein: So say thank you to Barry and say hi to Barry, rather. Say hi to Barry for us. Barry looms large over our show. He's a part of our show every week, but he is not actually on it. Crystal Carter: Should we have him on it one day? Mordy Oberstein: We had him once. You forgot? We had Barry. See? We- Crystal Carter: Yes, that's true. That's true. But we didn't have him as an interview. That's why. Mordy Oberstein: For those of you, it's your first time listening to the podcast, we cover the SEO news. Often we'll cover Danny's articles. But we also often inevitably cover at least one of Barry Schwartz's articles. So Barry is a very much part of our podcast each and every week, and he looms over it. Danny Goodwin: Have you had the Standee behind you for an entire podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I need to get that. It's still in England, I think. Danny Goodwin: That was fantastic. So I just remember... I don't... Which conference was it? Was that BrightonSEO, where you went- Mordy Oberstein: It was Brighton, yeah. We had a giant cut out of Barry Schwartz and it was a cornhole game too. Danny Goodwin: That was epic. I remember seeing that and just laughing when I saw that on social. I was like, "That's awesome." I wanted that. Mordy Oberstein: People, we have to get it. It's still somewhere in England. People came up and thought, "Wait, is that actually Barry?" And didn't realize it was a cutout. Crystal Carter: Like a foot taller than him as well. It was a giant Barry. Mordy Oberstein: He was a great sport. He took a picture just for that. I didn't pull that picture offline. He actually took a picture for the thing. He's a great sport, Barry. Danny Goodwin: Yes, yes he is. And he is been doing it 20 years, which is insane. His productivity, I don't know... If you don't mind me plugging one more thing. JR Oakes did this really awesome article on Search Engine Land. I don't know if you saw that one. But yeah, it was just sort of recapping the history through the lens of Barry Schwartz, which was... There was so many amazing insights of how productive Barry is and just all the... So many topics he's covered through 20 years and how his growth of... His writing has gone up into the right curve over the years, which is insane. He just gets more and more productive. So I don't know how he does it. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. JR is also amazing. I will- Crystal Carter: Do you think it's AI? Danny Goodwin: No. Definitely not. Mordy Oberstein: Barry's not a robot. Danny Goodwin: BI? Barry intelligence? Mordy Oberstein: Barry... Danny Goodwin: But we do need to... Yeah, we should download his brain. Mordy Oberstein: We should save it in the ether forever. Danny Goodwin: Yes, absolutely. If for nothing else, just the sarcasm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. A thousand percent. Thank you so much, Danny. Really appreciate you coming on, and we'll see you out there. Thanks for all you do for Search Engine Land and the industry. Danny Goodwin: Thank you, Mordy. Thank you, Crystal. It's been great to be here. Mordy Oberstein: So limiting the conversation around AI just to SEO will not be doing Gemini justice. And because it is something of influence in the stars, I want to do Gemini justice, and I don't want to get my horoscope ruined and my life destroyed because I didn't do justice. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So we're going to take a look at what Gemini means for the evolution of AI with a little help from the co-founder of The Neuron, Pete Huang, as we move out of SEO per se and into a segment we call the Great Beyond. So Pete is a masterful expert around all things AI. Said a lot about the topic. So we asked him, "Hey Pete, why is Chip and I a big deal for the evolution of AI?" And here's what Pete had to say. Pete Huang: Gemini is really a catch-up moment for Google this time. Last year, people had two thoughts when it came to this sector, AI, if you rewind to just two months after ChatGPT got released. The first one is OpenAI might just run away with it and nobody's ever going to catch up. And two, where the heck is Google? I mean, after all, they have everything on their side. Money, computing, resources, talent, and they seem to have no answer to what OpenAI has done. And so every time Google would make an announcement, it would just be one or two steps behind where people thought they needed to be for them to catch up. So Google releases Gemini and makes a very pointed statement that their best model Gemini Ultra beats OpenAI's GPT-4. And if this holds up after people get access to Gemini Ultra, we would now have two models at this level, which is more choice and more capabilities on the market that performs as well as GPT-4 does, which is currently what powers ChatGPT on the backend, especially if you upgrade to ChatGPT Plus. The main way this has shown up so far is in Google Bard, which is like Google's version of ChatGPT. It had always been lagging ChatGPT and was sort of unusable when it first launched. When we first used it, we would ask it for basic integration stuff, which is, "Can you find me three restaurants near this area?" And all the information would be wrong. Since then, they've swapped out the model behind Bard to use Gemini, and it's gotten a whole lot better. It's become good enough to recommend, in fact, especially if you use Google products. So in summary, Gemini is really Google saying, "We're here now and we've taken a year to do this." I mean, Gemini was released in the tail end of 2023. "But we're finally here." And in the grand scheme of these sort of races to build technology one year really isn't all that much. But it does paint a contrast to what was going on earlier in the year in 2023, where it felt like every day, every week, every month, there was something happening. And so therefore, it made Google's relative silence feel like there was nothing real or tangible or productive going on there, or at least that they were very much falling behind in the race. So from my perspective, it is good for developers, good for businesses who want more choice, and certainly good for the consumer who wants to use Google products even more. As for SEO, I think this is the part where the SGE generated results might get a little bit better. The question I think is whether or not SGE is the form factor, is the product that makes users more engaged. That is ultimately the question that decides how far a new feature gets rolled out. So we might see SGE results improve, especially if they share that Gemini is powering those results. But that is all TBD and I think more immediately we're seeing the impact in products that Google Bard for now. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Pete. Make sure you check out Pete's newsletter, The Neuron Daily at TheNeuronDaily.com, and we'll link to Pete's social media profiles in the show notes. So make sure to give them a follow. Really, really interesting. First off, I want to take up the SGE thing really quick. I don't want to get too hung up on the SEO side. We said it's the great beyond. We're beyond SEO for a minute. But if you look at what happened with Bing and their version of SGE, it did nothing for them in terms of market share. And I think we talked about this in the podcast multiple times. The SGE, as you see it now, was part of the great AI race to keep up with Bing. And I don't think it's fundamentally what users actually need or want and that what will move the needle for Google. So I do see, to Pete's point, I do see SGE morphing to something else and not being what it is now. In terms of the overall picture, if I could sum up what I took away from that, there was a lot of daily noise for the last year or so, and then things went quiet. And now we're finally looking at the real developments in AI as opposed to all of the noise around AI, which is so ironic because you see the interest in ChatGPT falling off a little bit over the last few months. So it's sort of ironic as now things actually ramp up and things develop people's interest in it, it's sort of gone down just a bit. We're all past the hype part of it. But ironically now we're getting to the real stuff. Maybe it's now when you should be paying attention. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that that's the case. I think that when a lot of people are like, "Oh, AI is magical." It's not magical. Basically- Mordy Oberstein: No. Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Crystal Carter: It's not magical. Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was at the end of a rainbow was an pot full of AI? Crystal Carter: No, no. And the other thing is that we've had AI in our lives for ages. What we've have now is the ability to harness it directly ourselves in a way that we were not able to do before. And I agree with Pete when he says that Google was playing catch up and this is now them trying to get into it. Because I think that ChatGPT has made AI more accessible. It's very user-friendly. It's very easily accessible. But to get real good nuanced, sophisticated benefit from these tools, you still have to know stuff. You can't just be like any schmo off the street and just walk in and get something that's particularly amazing because literally everyone has access to it. So the smart people still have access to the same thing as the people who are maybe moving along and making their way. So I think that we are seeing, like you said, the real... More sophisticated, more nuanced, and people who have been working with these tools for years, because they have been available for years, are able to do more than they were able to do before. And I think that, yeah, I agree that Bard is going to... I think at the moment they've got a lot of things running. They've got Bard running, they've got the SGE running, they've got Gemini running, they've got lots of different things running, and I think that we're probably going to see convergence. Mordy Oberstein: Bet their knees hurt from all the running. Crystal Carter: We're probably going to see a convergence of some of these AI tools at the same time, because the other thing that they have running as well is Lens. I've talked about Lens a lot across when I was talking about visual search a lot. And Lens is becoming very, very sophisticated. So you can use it for QR codes. You can use it for it for- Mordy Oberstein: Translation of images. I use it all the time for that. Crystal Carter: Right? It's super useful for that. You just hold it up in the thing and it translates multiple languages at once. Mordy Oberstein: It's so good. Crystal Carter: So if you're looking at ingredients and you're trying to figure out whether or not it has peanuts and it's going to give you an allergic reaction, you can see it in English and French and Spanish, and it can translate all of those different languages at once. And I think that we're probably going to see a convergence of those tools into something that changes search significantly. And Gemini, I think, like Pete is saying, is going to be the backbone of that. Mordy Oberstein: And you see that reflected in the fact that Gemini has multiple pricing models and multiple models are not for the average person. Crystal Carter: Right? And like I said, in our discussion earlier as well, we are going to see more players that are making use of Gemini, the quicker Google's going to be able to learn from that. It's the same reason why they made ChatGPT available to people in the first place for pretty much for free. And then the plus is because they are learning. They're learning from every single interaction that we're having with it, and they're learning what people value from it, what people can do with it, and all of that. So as Gemini is more available to enterprise level clients, they're going to be able to learn what it's able to do and they're going to be able to make more advance, more advancements more quickly. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I would like? I would like to have some sort of chatGPT version of Barry. BarryGPT. It's like you ask Siri. "Hey Siri, what's happening with the NFL today?" And Siri gives you an answer back. "Hey Barry, what's happening in the SEO news today?" And it would be Barry talking and telling you what's happening. BarryGPT. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, you've put that down. Now that... You now ideate that. Mordy Oberstein: If anyone takes it, I want, some kind of finder's fee for it. Crystal Carter: I'm sure there's a technical term. Technical legal term for it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't know what it is, but give me the money. It was my idea first. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, here's Barry and other people talking about the SEO news and possibly about AI. Let's find out. Mordy Oberstein: Now for this week's snappy news. Barry Schwartz reports on SEL that Google has dropped web stories from the image results, Google Discover carousel, and reduced the grid view to carousel view in Google search. Web stories have had a mixed reception amongst search marketers due to their complex implementation, effect on Google Discover traffic, and what Lily Ray referred to as the ability of folks to have used the feature by spamming the hell out of web stories. Glenn Gabe, who shared a great thread on the news, predicts that this change is the start of a full scale deprecation and that web stories could be completely gone in a year or so. Time will tell. Over on Search Engine Land, Danny Goodwin reports that Yandex search engine has been sold in a $5.2 billion deal. The Dutch parent company of what is effectively Russia's version of Google has just agreed on the sale of their search engine to a conglomerate of Russian based companies and business leaders. It is used by more than 60% of people in Russia and could result in some changes to how the search engine performs in the not too distance feature. So keep an eye on this one. In a post from blog.google, Google has announced that they are merging their Google Bard product into Gemini. This signals a move to streamline their AI offering and is illustrated by the fact that they are adding Gemini into the Google Assistant tool. This means that those who opt-in can use Google Gemini on their phone simply by saying, "Hey, Google." This, combined with a subscription-based model, should help them become more direct competitors, which ChatGPT, and might make voice search more of a thing. Maybe this year is the year. This week, there was also some great discussion on core web vitals as Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan, doubled down on a previous statement saying, "We don't confirm any core web vitals as a direct ranking factor." As reported by Barry Schwartz in Search Engine Roundtable, Sullivan shared an article saying, "While not all aspects may be directly used to inform ranking, they do generally align with success in search ranking and are worth attention." And in a lively Twitter discussion, he shared that. It doesn't say it's a ranking factor. SEOs continue to be confused by this, but as Danny explains, "Is there a single page experience signal that Google uses for ranking? There is no single signal. Our core systems look at a variety of signals that align with overall page experience." So in the end, I think if we can all agree that it depends, and that's this week's snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think now that Barry heard this idea, because Barry does listen to the podcast, if he'll create, if Barry created BarryGPT himself, does he still owe me a finder's fee thing? Crystal Carter: I don't know. You'd have to discuss that with Barry. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. It's all right, Barry, I'll just take a bread and butter sandwich instead as payment. Crystal Carter: Sounds good. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. Mordy Oberstein: For Halloween, I want to dress up as the butter and Barry can be the bread. This is, by the way, an inside joke about Barry's ability to make butter sandwiches, which is not as great as his ability to make news. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "Why didn't you toast it?" And he's like, "No, I just thought I'd mangle the bread." Mordy Oberstein: "There's no time." Just to explain, Barry, a year ago and somehow it resurfaced, posted a picture of his butter sandwich that he made, and it's mutilated. It's like the bread is torn. The butters in chunks. Crystal Carter: It's what happens when you put cold butter on soft bread and just smear it. Mordy Oberstein: Just force it. Crystal Carter: Right? It's not going to work. Mordy Oberstein: Spread, damn it. Spread. It's unbelievable. But he's like, "I didn't have any time to make a sandwich." I'm like, "All right." Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to the tweet in the show notes. That's how... Yeah, this is pathetic, but we'll link to it in the show notes. We've gotten way off the rails. Speaking of other people who are AI tools, or love AI tools rather, our follow of the week this week is a very special person. He happens to be one of the producers of this very podcast. It is the one, the only, host of EDGE of the web radio. Erin Sparks over at E-R-I-N-S-P-A-R-K-S Sparks on X, formerly known as Twitter. Twitter, formerly known as X, in my mind. Erin does a podcast called EDGE of the Web. It's a great podcast. Listen to it after you listen to this one. And he does the SEO news every week, which I co-host with him, which is full of shenanigans. It's not like anything like this podcast at all. Pure shenanigans. Crystal Carter: With the occasional guest star from yours truly as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I do appreciate you, Crystal filling in for me when I can't. Crystal Carter: Mordy's like, "I can't. Can you?" And I'm like, "Sure. Great." Love Erin. Love Jacob. Mordy Oberstein: They're great. Jacob, Jacob Mann. They're fabulous people. And Erin loves his AI tools. And every week on the SEO... On the EDGE of the web news rather, he'll cover his favorite AI tools, which makes me completely check out, by the way. Crystal Carter: Okay. So every time I guest host, and this is the reason why Erin is our follow of the week... If you're not following Erin, do. But every time we go on there, he's always like, "Oh, I found this new thing." I'm like, "But that's so cool." Mordy Oberstein: Some of it is really cool. Okay, I gave him a hard time. But there are some really cool ones in there. Crystal Carter: There's some cool ones. The best one I found, or the one that he showed me last time, was one that was around AI image generators. And I've tried AI generator- Mordy Oberstein: You showed me this hack, by the way. Crystal Carter: ... And my prompts are... It's good, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very good. Okay, explain, please. Crystal Carter: So my prompts are janky. I've tried and people are like, "Yeah, it's great." And I was like, "What?" And all the images that I get are terrible. My prompts, I do my best. They don't really work. So then he showed me something called freeflow.ai, and basically they have a bank of prompts that did work. And you can go in- Mordy Oberstein: And you just steal them. Crystal Carter: ... And you can copy, you can adapt, you can remix, you can update the prompts for it. I used this to redecorate my office. So I found a design prompt and stuff. But for instance, there's one that's like a selfie one, for instance, and you can see the prompt. And the prompt is selfie shot, iPhone 12 Pro Max of subject taking a selfie, et cetera, et cetera. It's got all these different things that whoever's done these prompts actually understands the way, the syntax that the bots prefer in order to give them the best thing. Anyway, it's really great, and he has tons of these and he shares them a lot. And Erin's also super nice and funny and knowledgeable and does a great podcast. And yeah, follow Erin. Mordy Oberstein: Him, Jacob, the whole EDGE of the web crew, really wonderful people. A lot of SEO knowledge. A lot of AI knowledge. So definitely please give them a follow and tell them we said hi when you follow them. "Crystal and Mordy sent us to follow you." That's... I'm all out of predictions from the stars this week. I have nothing else to add. Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, I think that means Mercury's in retrograde or something. Is that what it means? Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Mercury. It's in tuna fish also. Crystal Carter: I'm done. That ended me. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. Anyway, thank you for joining us on The SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into do you really need experts to write the content for you to actually be expert content by experts? Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO Learning over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinar resources on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Danny Goodwin Pete Huang Erin Sparks Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Search Engine Land Google Gemini Google Gemini is here – and it’s already being tested in Search The Neuron Barry Schwartz's Famous Butter Sandwich Edge of the Web Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Danny Goodwin Pete Huang Erin Sparks Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Search Engine Land Google Gemini Google Gemini is here – and it’s already being tested in Search The Neuron Barry Schwartz's Famous Butter Sandwich Edge of the Web Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by She who searches the stars for SEO answers, the one, the only, Head of Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. My name is Crystal Carter. I'm a Pisces and I am a stargazer. I've been enjoying Jupiter being in the Northern Hemisphere for the last few months. It keeps hanging out by the moon. We're going to talk about lots of things like that. So yeah, welcome to our podcast about SEO. Mordy Oberstein: I'm also a Pisces. What does that mean though? Crystal Carter: I know you're a Pisces. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, because of my personality or because you know what my birthday is? Crystal Carter: Actually, a lot of SEOs are Pisces. I think it's because we like to jump around and we like to go with the flow of the algorithm and things. Mordy Oberstein: I always thought it was my traumatic childhood, but now you're telling me it's really... Okay. Got it. Crystal Carter: Definitely your star sign. Mordy Oberstein: That's just- Crystal Carter: I mean, I think I am definitely... I'm a Pisces rising in a Taurus. No, I'm kidding. I don't know how that works. Literally, I'm very top level on my astrology. I'm completely honest. Mordy Oberstein: I know Taurus, I know Pisces, and I know Gemini, and that's all I know. Crystal Carter: Okay, well, we'll leave it at that. Mordy Oberstein: A little foreshadowing there. Now, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter Searchlight over Wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also automate the heck out of your client's site with Wix's revamped integration with Zapier. Connect your client's site and take advantage of thousands of marketing automations. You know what else can automate a heck of a lot of things? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Google's Gemini. Oh. They're taking a play out of the back pages of a newspaper, as our horoscope says AI technology is on the horizon. We'll get into what is Google Gemini, what has Google said about Gemini in search, and what are some possible ways Gemini may impact SEO in the future. To help us see the future of search, we'll soon chat with the one, the only, editor of Search Engine Land, that's Barry Schwartz's boss. Danny Goodwin will join us in just a few moments. We'll also talk to the co-founder of The Neuron, Peter Huang, about what Gemini means, not just for SEO, but beyond SEO, and of course we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following a social media for more SEO awesomeness. So let's see what's in the stars today and what the horoscope of the SERP is, as episode number 74 of the SERP's Up podcast. It's all playful, perceptive, and intellectually curious as we go all Gemini on you. Crystal Carter: You know, there are a lot of sides to a Gemini. It's like they have twin personality. Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea. I have literally no clue. Crystal Carter: That's what they say about all of that sort of thing, and I mean that kind of tracks with what we've heard about it so far. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Nicely done. I've never actually read a horoscope in my life before. Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: No, I've never really like- Crystal Carter: I love horoscopes. It's like a fortune cookie. That's how I treat it. Mordy Oberstein: I like fortune cookies. They tastes good. Can you eat a horoscope? Crystal Carter: I mean... Mordy Oberstein: I don't care. Okay, so before we bring in Danny, let's talk a little bit what just very, very quickly is catch everybody up. What is Google Gemini? It's a new AI model that allegedly solves very complex tasks. It could understand all sorts of media and mediums, from text, to code, to audio, et cetera. It's extremely powerful and it's meant to compete with Google... With Google's. With OpenAI's GPT-4, and according to certain tests, it seems to outperform GPT-4, which is interesting. So there are all sorts of possible implications about what this means for Google search. Google has kind of talked a little bit about it, which is why we thought we would bring Danny Goodwin on, because Danny wrote a whole article about this. So welcome to SERP's Up, Danny. Danny Goodwin: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Mordy, and Crystal, I guess I should disclose I'm a Scorpio. So- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right. Scorpio. Right, right, right. Okay. I know that one. Crystal Carter: Right? Okay. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Danny Goodwin: It depends. Mordy Oberstein: It depends. Crystal Carter: Although Scorpios I know are very, very loyal people. Very loyal- Danny Goodwin: Very true. Crystal Carter: Very, like, ride or die. That's my homie. Danny Goodwin: Very much. Crystal Carter: That's the end of that. Danny Goodwin: That's some people saying and it's some people, not their thing. But yes, that's a very good assessment. Loyal, ambitious, all that stuff. Crystal Carter: Well, welcome to the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It sounds like competing personality traits, loyal and ambitious. Danny Goodwin: Well, I don't know. I tend to look at as I like to do my absolute best for whatever company I work for. But in doing so, I also grow my own brand, so to speak. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, okay. That works. Danny Goodwin: I think they work together. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's cool. Okay. I get it. Crystal Carter: I think so. Danny Goodwin: It's like... You think back on my earliest days in search was at Search Engine Watch. A lot of the work I did there sort of built my reputation for the rest of my career. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Danny Goodwin: So I thought... Yeah, I think just generally doing hard work and showcasing your talent is incredibly valuable for advancing your career. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And advancing the company you're with. So I've heard people who are like, "Oh, should I let my team go out and do speaking and stuff? What if they go somewhere else?" I'm like, "Yeah, but they're letting you shine by shining. I shine, you shine, we all shine." It's good for everybody. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: Agree. Danny Goodwin: And we all love shining happy people. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let's talk Gemini. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: You wrote a whole article about covering... When Google came out with their big Gemini announcement covering what Google has said about it and what it is. So what has Google said about Gemini in search and what is Gemini exactly? Danny Goodwin: The easiest way to think about it is Gemini is basically the equivalent to GPT from OpenAI. It's sort of the backend large language model that is powering a lot of the things that Google wants to do in search in the future. I don't think they have all the capabilities yet. And basically they came out with three flavors, I guess, of Gemini, initially, and this is 1.0. So we're going to see advancements in it. They have Ultra, Pro, and Nano. We're getting a taste of the Pro model now in Bard, and I believe... The rumor is they're going to have a paid version of Bard in the future, and I think that will be powered by the Ultra version. So we'll see how that shakes out. That's just all rumor at this point. But basically, yeah. So right now they're testing Gemini for SGE. They've said that in addition to reducing the time it takes to generate the SGE responses, the AI answers, they claim that it basically has resulted in other search quality improvements. But they didn't really explain what those are. It's in testing now and they said that it is coming to search and ads in the future, in the next few months. So that will be interesting and I don't think they're going to announce it before it comes out. I imagine it'll be sort of RankBrain or some of the other things they've just deployed. It will be there and then at some point later they'll go, "Oh, by the way, we launched this two months ago." So we will see. I could be wrong. And I think this just ultimately gets Google closer to that model it's sort of been at for the... They've had this long-term vision. If you go back to some of the earliest interviews, Marie Haynes uncovered this really great old interview with Larry Page. It's just like, ultimately AI is search. "When someone comes to Google and asks a question, we give them the right answer. That's AI. That's search." It's sort of always been the model. I've been comparing it recently... I'll give credit, too, to Michael King for this one. He had this great video from a few years ago where he compared where Google's going to the movie Her, which I don't know if you guys have seen. It was a 2013 movie, I believe. Scarlett Johansson... Really good cast, actually. Amy Adams and some other good people. But it's basically like Her was an operating system. It's a virtual assistant. It adapts to you. It learns from you. I think that's where Google's going. It's just you talk to Google and it will- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I did see this movie. Okay. I did see this. Danny Goodwin: ... Respond to you. Yeah, it's basically it learns from you and responds to you and anticipates your needs. It's basically your virtual assistant. And I think we're going to start seeing that first when they incorporate Bard into the assistant on Google phones. Mordy Oberstein: So where do you think, based upon what Google has said, what they're trying to do, where do you think they're going, what are they trying to use Gemini for exactly? It's simply to generate answers as better answers, faster answers? Or are they going to expand what AI means? Or do you think... Because we don't really know what they're going to do. But do you think they're going to expand what AI means on the SERP, beyond what we're currently seeing in the form of SGE? Danny Goodwin: I think right now, my guess is a lot of it, because... I'm sure you remember when they first launched SGE, it took a really long time to generate those answers, and I have definitely... We've reported, Michael King did research on it, Authoritas did some research on it, and that time has definitely reduced. So I think that's the biggest area right now. Quality wise, I still don't see perfect answers or they're just very surfacey, generic. I don't know if they're going to make... I'd love to see a bit more depth if they're going to really go all in on this, but they're not there. It's kind of like a fourth grade book report on, "Tell me about this thing." So I don't know if that's going to improve. That'll be interesting to see. But I ultimately think they have so much data that they collected on you, on me... They know the story you clicked on in Google News and what videos you watch on YouTube. I just imagine them connecting all these dots together ultimately, and Gemini is going to be that kind of backend for connecting all these dots and trying to figure out what you want, click on what you want, what content you want to consume, what do you want to read, what videos you want to see, all these things and just be like a real recommendation engine. Best way to compare it to what TikToks doing. Mordy Oberstein: So Google Discover on steroids? Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yes. That's what it feels like. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting. Yeah. Crystal Carter: And do you think that this is a play to put them back ahead of the game? I think that when ChatGPT broke more for the mainstream, and particularly when Bing was like, "We've put this into New Bing," I think Google, it seemed anyway, they were a little bit on the back foot. Not that they haven't been progressing with AI. They've had tons of AI for years. But for a public facing product, they seem to be a little bit trying to pull something together. Do you think that this is a play to move to be the forerunners, and do you think this puts them there? Danny Goodwin: I think it's definitely... There's definitely a PR aspect to a lot of what we're seeing. Going all the way back to SGE, it was kind of like vaporware announcements. It's like, "We have this really awesome thing. You can't see it yet though." And that seems to be how they've been going with us. And it was even the same with Gemini to an extent, because they had that video. Mordy Oberstein: The video was interesting. Danny Goodwin: The video was very interesting and was also very fake, and I called out on it. So it's like they're taking a couple steps forward and back. But it's like when they flubbed their initial introduction of Bard, when they had that wrong answer, and they got called out on it and their stock took a dive. Remember that way back in the day? And all these things have consequences. So from big perspective, Bing is honestly... The game is over for Microsoft. This was, to me, I thought their kind of the last chance because they had all this hype going with GPT, but we've followed the numbers. They've gained no market share since launching this, despite all the hoopla. Despite like, "Oh my God, this is the shiny new thing. ChatGPT is awesome." Hasn't helped them a bit. Mordy Oberstein: Which is interesting because Google went doubled down and said, "Oh, you're going to do that? We'll do that better." But was that really what users really want in the end? And I think... We don't like talking about this on the podcast, but the money aspect is fascinating and the PR aspect is fascinating, because a lot of this does have to do with stock prices. And a lot of it is, "Hey, let's put this out there. Let's show us... Position ourselves at a certain way." But at a certain point, you do have to actually address what users want. Otherwise, your fundamental product will not work and that's also impact the stock price. And I wonder if it goes back to what you were saying before about offering deeper answers because I find it... It's novel, it's interesting. It's really not that helpful. It's a featured snippet with citations. Like, okay, that's interesting. But one of the things that I thought was interesting when Google announced Gemini was they were showing, if you can ask it something like... I think the example they gave had to do was "I want to plan a birthday party for my kid." And it gave you one format of results that kind of aligned to the information. Maybe there's a lot of videos there, maybe there's a lot of lists or whatever. And they formatted the result to meet the need of that query, so that you can better explore what you wanted to learn about whatever is about a birthday party for your kid. Then they asked about a recipe and the format was very different because the type of exploration you're going to do when you're looking for a recipe requires a different visual format to be able to explore those results. I thought that was fascinating, and I wondered if maybe they would bring something like that to SGE. I think where SGE, to me, at least where it's novel is... Not it's pitting out an answer. It's novel in being able to facilitate exploration. "Here's a bunch of little tidbit of information. Here's a bunch of information that I'll give you the TLDR and you can now go explore this." And it'll be really interesting to me if they were able to bring in the custom formatting that they discussed in the Gemini demo, we'll link to that in the show notes, and bring that to SGE because that would really allow you to explore like a mad person. Danny Goodwin: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that Google hasn't figured this thing out. I think they'll dispute it. They'll say they didn't rush this out. I feel like they felt like they had to rush it out. It's an imperfect product. It's an experiment. They keep reiterating, "It's still an experiment." So yeah, I feel like this is just going to be one of those things. They're really all in on this. I know a lot of people are like, "Oh, they think that SGE is not going to end up being launched." It is going to be launched. Mordy Oberstein: No, it's going to be launched. Just what will it be? Danny Goodwin: Right? Yeah. And that's the big question. So yeah, if they can do that and they can really nail that user intent, that is going to be, I think, the major change. We've already talked about there are certain niches that are really going to be hammered hard by SGE. There's been lots of discussion about that. Informational searches. What is this thing? What is that thing? Those are going to be hurt. They're going to lose a lot of traffic. Yes. And I remember Ryan Jones... I don't know if everyone watching knows who Ryan Jones is, but he is in SEO. He's been around for a long time. At Pubcon, he basically said, when I was watching his presentations, "When the web launched, you have to think about... " People were looking for answers, but webpages were the only way at that time you could get an answer. Since that time, 25 years later now, the web has evolved a lot. So there are other ways to get answers now, especially with these deep learning systems that Google's using, passage ranking, all these things, and users really expect more. Even Google has admitted that they're seeing the Gen Z, the younger people, they're going to TikTok, they're going Instagram when they're looking for a restaurant or other things, and that is a threat to them. So it's like they have to adapt, especially... Maybe the three of us have searched a certain way. We've done so for many years, but maybe we're not the core audience anymore. I know I'm probably outside the key demographic for them at this point, but- Mordy Oberstein: Are we old? Danny Goodwin: It could be. I know I am, but I don't know how old you two are, but- Crystal Carter: I do not identify as old. Mordy Oberstein: I do, and I have for a long time, even though I was young. Danny Goodwin: You both look much younger than me. Crystal Carter: Thank you! Danny Goodwin: SEO is aged for me very much. Crystal Carter: Like when you see those presidents at the beginning of their term and then at the end, and they're like, "Wow." Danny Goodwin: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you see Obama on a jet ski and you're like, "Oh, he looks great now. He suddenly doesn't have the way to the world." But one thing that I think is interesting, with Gemini, for instance. With the release, they also talked about Vertex AI, which is one of their product things. And essentially, they talk about other people being able to build with it and to be able to create with it. How much do you think that's going to affect how this develops and who adopts and what they adopt and how they integrate? Danny Goodwin: That part is very interesting. I've been reading a lot of stuff that's kind of outside of SEO. It almost seems like to me we're heading toward this weird future, too, where Crystal has her own AI persona. Like Mordy has his own AI persona. And your persona exists separate of you on the web, goes out, and does things that Mordy would want or figure out things that you would be interested in and finds it. Mordy Oberstein: I already have this. It's called my Twitter account. Danny Goodwin: Well, yes. But imagine you just took and trained your model on your Twitter account. You went out there. Boom, there you go. Now you don't even have to do it. Mordy Oberstein: Don't let that happen. Crystal Carter: Too late. Danny Goodwin: It's kind of scary. It's like the whole web at some point in the future could just be the AIs talking to other AIs. And that was another part of that movie Her. It's like the main AI in that movie, the Her character is talking to all these other AIs and they're coming up with these solutions to things and doing things all on their own, separate from humans. So it's really interesting to think about. Is the Web even going to be human-centric 10 years from now? I know we're already overrun and we're already overrun by bots. We know that too. Bot traffic too. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Danny Goodwin: So that's only going to get worse. Crystal Carter: I definitely know what you mean though, because I've seen people saying, "Oh yeah, you can have your AI read your emails." And then somebody else being like, "You can have AI write your emails." So who is actually reading the emails? But I also have this sort of thing where I'm regularly thinking, "Oh, that's how we ended... How that movie ended up like that." I feel like we're in a lot of times these days, I just find myself like, "Oh, that's how that movie starts. That's how we ended in that futurescape." Danny Goodwin: Totally. I know. Yeah, just don't let it take over the defense system is all I know. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Someone cue up the Terminator music. Danny Goodwin: Right. That's when all the trouble really starts. Crystal Carter: But I do think it's important to look at the Google Cloud stuff as well, because when I found... Particularly when I was looking at visual search a few years ago. When I was doing the research for it, I was looking at all of the Google Cloud product drops. Basically, that's where they tell you how the AI actually works, is that they're at the Google Cloud product drop things. That's where a lot of the magic happens, and I think that it'll be interesting to see who adopts the APIs for Gemini and how that rolls out to see... Because Google very often gets ideas from users, from large scale users for these kinds of products, for how we might see it applied in search, I think. Danny Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's definitely a To-Be-Determined area. I couldn't claim specialization in that area or expertise, so I won't. But yeah, I definitely agree. Definitely watch whatever Google Cloud is doing. I've seen that many times, especially the stuff around... All the entity SEO stuff. There's so much to learn in that area too, from Google Cloud and all those tools. So yes. Mordy Oberstein: It does, to me, kind of come down to what you were talking about before as to how we consume content and how that changes. To piggyback off of Ryan, I'll oftentimes... I don't live in the US anymore, but I follow NFL football. So most of the games are in the middle of the night for me. So if it's a game that I want to catch up on, I'll watch the highlights in the morning. I'm like, "All right, I'll watch the highlights. I don't want to know the score yet." And before I even go to Google or anything, I turn my phone on and there's a little card that says the score. I'm like, "Damn it." And that's not a feature snippet on the service. Not a direct answer on the service. This is a push notification. And the way we consume content and people talk about, "Oh, it's taking away clicks." But it's not just Google doing it. It's just a whole ecosystem is built and designed... That quick information is not meant for websites anymore. I know it sounds horrible to say, but to a certain extent, it's not. It's meant for a push notification. It's meant for an AI answer. It's meant for whatever. And I feel like however content consumption evolves is how AI is going to evolve to match it and to supplement it and to drive that need or that desire that people have in what they consume and how they consume it. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, I remember there was all kinds of outrage at one point. I don't remember the year. It was probably early 2010s, and everybody got so upset. I think it was a search on Google for the temperature was literally a one answer result. I don't know if you remember this. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I remember this. I remember freaking out about it. Danny Goodwin: Everybody freaked out about it. Mordy Oberstein: Every once in a while still shows up that way. There's nothing else on the SERP, but the direct answer. Danny Goodwin: Exactly. And it's just like, well, yeah, because you can find the temperature on weather channels, on the news, on various... It's just a thing. You shouldn't base your monetary model around getting organic traffic for the current temperature. Mordy Oberstein: Basing your business strategy on something that someone's able to understand by literally sticking their hand out the window- Danny Goodwin: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: ... Is probably not the best thing. Danny Goodwin: Also, yes. But one interesting thing that, just going really quickly back to the sports thing, which I found very interesting. I don't know if this could be rolled out in some way to search, but I just signed up for YouTube TV. They have an option on the TV now where you can hide sports scores before you watch the game, which I had not seen before. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Danny Goodwin: That would be very interesting if they could roll that out into search somehow where it's like a spoiler free version. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. That'd be great because it's happened so many times. Okay, I'm looking forward to that. Danny Goodwin: So anyway. I don't know if that, but if YouTube's doing it now on YouTube TV. Who knows? It could come to search someday. We'll see. Crystal Carter: I think that comes back to what you were talking about before. You mentioned that Google has all these different data sets and they have all this different amount of data on us, just as Google users and all of that. And I think it's interesting, because you were saying with Bing while they were trying to push ChatGPT and while they were trying to push New Bing, they were like, "Hey, if you want new Bing, you've got to make Edge your default browser." And I was like, "What?" They were like, "You got to put it on your phone." And I was like, "Huh?" My first response was like, "Why are they doing this?" And then I realized, "Oh, they don't have the same amount of data that Google has on me for being a Chrome user for years and years and years, and that everybody who has a Google Pixel has and everybody who has Gmail and all that sort of stuff. That whole ecosystem." And I think that that's going to be the linchpin for Google being able to drive Gemini forward and more of their other tech is how much data that they're able to collect on a daily basis about search and things like that. And like you said, being able to pull the dots together. Danny Goodwin: I mean, yeah, there are cases where being the first mover matters. I don't think in search it does, because Google can wait. And from the beginning, I was almost like, "Google's going to sit and watch Bing for a little while, see what they screw up, and not do that." That was my thinking from the beginning. I was just like, "Let Bing be the first one through the wall. Let them make all the mistakes. And it's one less thing that they'll have to worry about maybe from a feature antitrust thing, because I can go, oh, well, Microsoft did that first." Mordy Oberstein: Well, that is coming back to bite. There are lawsuits now. Danny Goodwin: Well, this is true, yes. But it's just... Again, goes back to the PR angle, which I know probably isn't most interesting to your listeners. Mordy Oberstein: No, I find that part the most interesting, because it's like the puppet and the string kind of thing. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, ultimately... And I said this... I did my keynote at SMX. It's like when you think about these AI companies, behind everything, you always have to remember it's monetary. They're not in this... I mean, yes, they want to give users a good experience, blah, blah, blah, because it makes them money. Like, yes. Okay, you're going to get good results. But ultimately they're making money on these great results and they don't want to upset that model. So that's why I say people who are saying SGE won't launch, just give that up. It's launching. They're going to figure it out and I kind of compared it to a casino. It's like, the House always wins. They just got to figure out where to put the big money slot machines on the right location on the floor, and they're going to stack the deck and they're going to figure it out. And they're probably going to end up, too, with ads. It's going to be less inventory, which means prices are going to go up for PPC advertisers. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing is that they've got a lot of, in terms of the house always wins or whatever, they've got a lot of cards in their hand. Danny Goodwin: Oh yeah. Crystal Carter: They call it SGE now. It might be that it feeds into a different part of the SERP. That it might be that it shows up in a different way. It might be that it's just a shopping assistant or something and that sort of stuff. So they have a lot of different levers they can pull in terms of AI integration. So yeah, I think it is absolutely important that people pay attention to what they're doing there and how it all moves around. Danny Goodwin: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So if people wanted to connect the dots and find you, Danny, where could they find you? Danny Goodwin: They can find me on Search Engine Land. Probably the best place to find me is on LinkedIn. Just search for me. I'm Mr. Danny Goodwin on socials. I am on X, but not as much as I used to be. But yes, mainly, writing daily on Search Engine Land or near daily. And we also have our two big SMX shows twice a year, SMX Advanced and SMX next. And you just spoke Next and Mordy got rave reviews. Everybody should know, because he is awesome as a presenter. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: So thank you for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: One good thing I'm good at. Presenting. I'm very presentable. Danny Goodwin: You are. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Yeah, the people love you in our community. Well, some of them. Mordy Oberstein: No, well. The SMX site are a classic... Some people do. SMX are a classic SEO conference. They moved to digital a couple of years ago. Danny Goodwin: Yep. Mordy Oberstein: And they're free. Are they... Right? I'm correct to say that? Danny Goodwin: They're totally free. Yep. Yeah, we moved online, unfortunately due to covid, but they've actually ended up working out really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I spoke at SMX during Covid, and it was lovely. I think I spoke with, I remember chatting to Barry actually during a session. Danny Goodwin: That must have been fun. Crystal Carter: Which was great. Mordy Oberstein: I hope you two had fun. Barry loves fun. Crystal Carter: Oh yes, we did have fun. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. So yeah, definitely please, you're listening to this. Check out the SMX conference series. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's free. Sign up. You can learn an absolute ton. Danny Goodwin: And yeah, read Search Engine Land every day. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Danny Goodwin: All spam. That was my spam plug. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. We're all- Danny Goodwin: Sign up for the newsletter. Follow us on social. Mordy Oberstein: No, we're all for plugging. Crystal Carter: Like and subscribe. Danny Goodwin: Yeah, like and subscribe. Mordy Oberstein: So say thank you to Barry and say hi to Barry, rather. Say hi to Barry for us. Barry looms large over our show. He's a part of our show every week, but he is not actually on it. Crystal Carter: Should we have him on it one day? Mordy Oberstein: We had him once. You forgot? We had Barry. See? We- Crystal Carter: Yes, that's true. That's true. But we didn't have him as an interview. That's why. Mordy Oberstein: For those of you, it's your first time listening to the podcast, we cover the SEO news. Often we'll cover Danny's articles. But we also often inevitably cover at least one of Barry Schwartz's articles. So Barry is a very much part of our podcast each and every week, and he looms over it. Danny Goodwin: Have you had the Standee behind you for an entire podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I need to get that. It's still in England, I think. Danny Goodwin: That was fantastic. So I just remember... I don't... Which conference was it? Was that BrightonSEO, where you went- Mordy Oberstein: It was Brighton, yeah. We had a giant cut out of Barry Schwartz and it was a cornhole game too. Danny Goodwin: That was epic. I remember seeing that and just laughing when I saw that on social. I was like, "That's awesome." I wanted that. Mordy Oberstein: People, we have to get it. It's still somewhere in England. People came up and thought, "Wait, is that actually Barry?" And didn't realize it was a cutout. Crystal Carter: Like a foot taller than him as well. It was a giant Barry. Mordy Oberstein: He was a great sport. He took a picture just for that. I didn't pull that picture offline. He actually took a picture for the thing. He's a great sport, Barry. Danny Goodwin: Yes, yes he is. And he is been doing it 20 years, which is insane. His productivity, I don't know... If you don't mind me plugging one more thing. JR Oakes did this really awesome article on Search Engine Land. I don't know if you saw that one. But yeah, it was just sort of recapping the history through the lens of Barry Schwartz, which was... There was so many amazing insights of how productive Barry is and just all the... So many topics he's covered through 20 years and how his growth of... His writing has gone up into the right curve over the years, which is insane. He just gets more and more productive. So I don't know how he does it. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. JR is also amazing. I will- Crystal Carter: Do you think it's AI? Danny Goodwin: No. Definitely not. Mordy Oberstein: Barry's not a robot. Danny Goodwin: BI? Barry intelligence? Mordy Oberstein: Barry... Danny Goodwin: But we do need to... Yeah, we should download his brain. Mordy Oberstein: We should save it in the ether forever. Danny Goodwin: Yes, absolutely. If for nothing else, just the sarcasm. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: A thousand percent. A thousand percent. Thank you so much, Danny. Really appreciate you coming on, and we'll see you out there. Thanks for all you do for Search Engine Land and the industry. Danny Goodwin: Thank you, Mordy. Thank you, Crystal. It's been great to be here. Mordy Oberstein: So limiting the conversation around AI just to SEO will not be doing Gemini justice. And because it is something of influence in the stars, I want to do Gemini justice, and I don't want to get my horoscope ruined and my life destroyed because I didn't do justice. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So we're going to take a look at what Gemini means for the evolution of AI with a little help from the co-founder of The Neuron, Pete Huang, as we move out of SEO per se and into a segment we call the Great Beyond. So Pete is a masterful expert around all things AI. Said a lot about the topic. So we asked him, "Hey Pete, why is Chip and I a big deal for the evolution of AI?" And here's what Pete had to say. Pete Huang: Gemini is really a catch-up moment for Google this time. Last year, people had two thoughts when it came to this sector, AI, if you rewind to just two months after ChatGPT got released. The first one is OpenAI might just run away with it and nobody's ever going to catch up. And two, where the heck is Google? I mean, after all, they have everything on their side. Money, computing, resources, talent, and they seem to have no answer to what OpenAI has done. And so every time Google would make an announcement, it would just be one or two steps behind where people thought they needed to be for them to catch up. So Google releases Gemini and makes a very pointed statement that their best model Gemini Ultra beats OpenAI's GPT-4. And if this holds up after people get access to Gemini Ultra, we would now have two models at this level, which is more choice and more capabilities on the market that performs as well as GPT-4 does, which is currently what powers ChatGPT on the backend, especially if you upgrade to ChatGPT Plus. The main way this has shown up so far is in Google Bard, which is like Google's version of ChatGPT. It had always been lagging ChatGPT and was sort of unusable when it first launched. When we first used it, we would ask it for basic integration stuff, which is, "Can you find me three restaurants near this area?" And all the information would be wrong. Since then, they've swapped out the model behind Bard to use Gemini, and it's gotten a whole lot better. It's become good enough to recommend, in fact, especially if you use Google products. So in summary, Gemini is really Google saying, "We're here now and we've taken a year to do this." I mean, Gemini was released in the tail end of 2023. "But we're finally here." And in the grand scheme of these sort of races to build technology one year really isn't all that much. But it does paint a contrast to what was going on earlier in the year in 2023, where it felt like every day, every week, every month, there was something happening. And so therefore, it made Google's relative silence feel like there was nothing real or tangible or productive going on there, or at least that they were very much falling behind in the race. So from my perspective, it is good for developers, good for businesses who want more choice, and certainly good for the consumer who wants to use Google products even more. As for SEO, I think this is the part where the SGE generated results might get a little bit better. The question I think is whether or not SGE is the form factor, is the product that makes users more engaged. That is ultimately the question that decides how far a new feature gets rolled out. So we might see SGE results improve, especially if they share that Gemini is powering those results. But that is all TBD and I think more immediately we're seeing the impact in products that Google Bard for now. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Pete. Make sure you check out Pete's newsletter, The Neuron Daily at TheNeuronDaily.com, and we'll link to Pete's social media profiles in the show notes. So make sure to give them a follow. Really, really interesting. First off, I want to take up the SGE thing really quick. I don't want to get too hung up on the SEO side. We said it's the great beyond. We're beyond SEO for a minute. But if you look at what happened with Bing and their version of SGE, it did nothing for them in terms of market share. And I think we talked about this in the podcast multiple times. The SGE, as you see it now, was part of the great AI race to keep up with Bing. And I don't think it's fundamentally what users actually need or want and that what will move the needle for Google. So I do see, to Pete's point, I do see SGE morphing to something else and not being what it is now. In terms of the overall picture, if I could sum up what I took away from that, there was a lot of daily noise for the last year or so, and then things went quiet. And now we're finally looking at the real developments in AI as opposed to all of the noise around AI, which is so ironic because you see the interest in ChatGPT falling off a little bit over the last few months. So it's sort of ironic as now things actually ramp up and things develop people's interest in it, it's sort of gone down just a bit. We're all past the hype part of it. But ironically now we're getting to the real stuff. Maybe it's now when you should be paying attention. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that that's the case. I think that when a lot of people are like, "Oh, AI is magical." It's not magical. Basically- Mordy Oberstein: No. Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Crystal Carter: It's not magical. Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was at the end of a rainbow was an pot full of AI? Crystal Carter: No, no. And the other thing is that we've had AI in our lives for ages. What we've have now is the ability to harness it directly ourselves in a way that we were not able to do before. And I agree with Pete when he says that Google was playing catch up and this is now them trying to get into it. Because I think that ChatGPT has made AI more accessible. It's very user-friendly. It's very easily accessible. But to get real good nuanced, sophisticated benefit from these tools, you still have to know stuff. You can't just be like any schmo off the street and just walk in and get something that's particularly amazing because literally everyone has access to it. So the smart people still have access to the same thing as the people who are maybe moving along and making their way. So I think that we are seeing, like you said, the real... More sophisticated, more nuanced, and people who have been working with these tools for years, because they have been available for years, are able to do more than they were able to do before. And I think that, yeah, I agree that Bard is going to... I think at the moment they've got a lot of things running. They've got Bard running, they've got the SGE running, they've got Gemini running, they've got lots of different things running, and I think that we're probably going to see convergence. Mordy Oberstein: Bet their knees hurt from all the running. Crystal Carter: We're probably going to see a convergence of some of these AI tools at the same time, because the other thing that they have running as well is Lens. I've talked about Lens a lot across when I was talking about visual search a lot. And Lens is becoming very, very sophisticated. So you can use it for QR codes. You can use it for it for- Mordy Oberstein: Translation of images. I use it all the time for that. Crystal Carter: Right? It's super useful for that. You just hold it up in the thing and it translates multiple languages at once. Mordy Oberstein: It's so good. Crystal Carter: So if you're looking at ingredients and you're trying to figure out whether or not it has peanuts and it's going to give you an allergic reaction, you can see it in English and French and Spanish, and it can translate all of those different languages at once. And I think that we're probably going to see a convergence of those tools into something that changes search significantly. And Gemini, I think, like Pete is saying, is going to be the backbone of that. Mordy Oberstein: And you see that reflected in the fact that Gemini has multiple pricing models and multiple models are not for the average person. Crystal Carter: Right? And like I said, in our discussion earlier as well, we are going to see more players that are making use of Gemini, the quicker Google's going to be able to learn from that. It's the same reason why they made ChatGPT available to people in the first place for pretty much for free. And then the plus is because they are learning. They're learning from every single interaction that we're having with it, and they're learning what people value from it, what people can do with it, and all of that. So as Gemini is more available to enterprise level clients, they're going to be able to learn what it's able to do and they're going to be able to make more advance, more advancements more quickly. Mordy Oberstein: You know what I would like? I would like to have some sort of chatGPT version of Barry. BarryGPT. It's like you ask Siri. "Hey Siri, what's happening with the NFL today?" And Siri gives you an answer back. "Hey Barry, what's happening in the SEO news today?" And it would be Barry talking and telling you what's happening. BarryGPT. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, you've put that down. Now that... You now ideate that. Mordy Oberstein: If anyone takes it, I want, some kind of finder's fee for it. Crystal Carter: I'm sure there's a technical term. Technical legal term for it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't know what it is, but give me the money. It was my idea first. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, here's Barry and other people talking about the SEO news and possibly about AI. Let's find out. Mordy Oberstein: Now for this week's snappy news. Barry Schwartz reports on SEL that Google has dropped web stories from the image results, Google Discover carousel, and reduced the grid view to carousel view in Google search. Web stories have had a mixed reception amongst search marketers due to their complex implementation, effect on Google Discover traffic, and what Lily Ray referred to as the ability of folks to have used the feature by spamming the hell out of web stories. Glenn Gabe, who shared a great thread on the news, predicts that this change is the start of a full scale deprecation and that web stories could be completely gone in a year or so. Time will tell. Over on Search Engine Land, Danny Goodwin reports that Yandex search engine has been sold in a $5.2 billion deal. The Dutch parent company of what is effectively Russia's version of Google has just agreed on the sale of their search engine to a conglomerate of Russian based companies and business leaders. It is used by more than 60% of people in Russia and could result in some changes to how the search engine performs in the not too distance feature. So keep an eye on this one. In a post from blog.google, Google has announced that they are merging their Google Bard product into Gemini. This signals a move to streamline their AI offering and is illustrated by the fact that they are adding Gemini into the Google Assistant tool. This means that those who opt-in can use Google Gemini on their phone simply by saying, "Hey, Google." This, combined with a subscription-based model, should help them become more direct competitors, which ChatGPT, and might make voice search more of a thing. Maybe this year is the year. This week, there was also some great discussion on core web vitals as Google search liaison, Danny Sullivan, doubled down on a previous statement saying, "We don't confirm any core web vitals as a direct ranking factor." As reported by Barry Schwartz in Search Engine Roundtable, Sullivan shared an article saying, "While not all aspects may be directly used to inform ranking, they do generally align with success in search ranking and are worth attention." And in a lively Twitter discussion, he shared that. It doesn't say it's a ranking factor. SEOs continue to be confused by this, but as Danny explains, "Is there a single page experience signal that Google uses for ranking? There is no single signal. Our core systems look at a variety of signals that align with overall page experience." So in the end, I think if we can all agree that it depends, and that's this week's snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think now that Barry heard this idea, because Barry does listen to the podcast, if he'll create, if Barry created BarryGPT himself, does he still owe me a finder's fee thing? Crystal Carter: I don't know. You'd have to discuss that with Barry. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. It's all right, Barry, I'll just take a bread and butter sandwich instead as payment. Crystal Carter: Sounds good. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. Mordy Oberstein: For Halloween, I want to dress up as the butter and Barry can be the bread. This is, by the way, an inside joke about Barry's ability to make butter sandwiches, which is not as great as his ability to make news. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "Why didn't you toast it?" And he's like, "No, I just thought I'd mangle the bread." Mordy Oberstein: "There's no time." Just to explain, Barry, a year ago and somehow it resurfaced, posted a picture of his butter sandwich that he made, and it's mutilated. It's like the bread is torn. The butters in chunks. Crystal Carter: It's what happens when you put cold butter on soft bread and just smear it. Mordy Oberstein: Just force it. Crystal Carter: Right? It's not going to work. Mordy Oberstein: Spread, damn it. Spread. It's unbelievable. But he's like, "I didn't have any time to make a sandwich." I'm like, "All right." Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We'll link to the tweet in the show notes. That's how... Yeah, this is pathetic, but we'll link to it in the show notes. We've gotten way off the rails. Speaking of other people who are AI tools, or love AI tools rather, our follow of the week this week is a very special person. He happens to be one of the producers of this very podcast. It is the one, the only, host of EDGE of the web radio. Erin Sparks over at E-R-I-N-S-P-A-R-K-S Sparks on X, formerly known as Twitter. Twitter, formerly known as X, in my mind. Erin does a podcast called EDGE of the Web. It's a great podcast. Listen to it after you listen to this one. And he does the SEO news every week, which I co-host with him, which is full of shenanigans. It's not like anything like this podcast at all. Pure shenanigans. Crystal Carter: With the occasional guest star from yours truly as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I do appreciate you, Crystal filling in for me when I can't. Crystal Carter: Mordy's like, "I can't. Can you?" And I'm like, "Sure. Great." Love Erin. Love Jacob. Mordy Oberstein: They're great. Jacob, Jacob Mann. They're fabulous people. And Erin loves his AI tools. And every week on the SEO... On the EDGE of the web news rather, he'll cover his favorite AI tools, which makes me completely check out, by the way. Crystal Carter: Okay. So every time I guest host, and this is the reason why Erin is our follow of the week... If you're not following Erin, do. But every time we go on there, he's always like, "Oh, I found this new thing." I'm like, "But that's so cool." Mordy Oberstein: Some of it is really cool. Okay, I gave him a hard time. But there are some really cool ones in there. Crystal Carter: There's some cool ones. The best one I found, or the one that he showed me last time, was one that was around AI image generators. And I've tried AI generator- Mordy Oberstein: You showed me this hack, by the way. Crystal Carter: ... And my prompts are... It's good, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's very good. Okay, explain, please. Crystal Carter: So my prompts are janky. I've tried and people are like, "Yeah, it's great." And I was like, "What?" And all the images that I get are terrible. My prompts, I do my best. They don't really work. So then he showed me something called freeflow.ai, and basically they have a bank of prompts that did work. And you can go in- Mordy Oberstein: And you just steal them. Crystal Carter: ... And you can copy, you can adapt, you can remix, you can update the prompts for it. I used this to redecorate my office. So I found a design prompt and stuff. But for instance, there's one that's like a selfie one, for instance, and you can see the prompt. And the prompt is selfie shot, iPhone 12 Pro Max of subject taking a selfie, et cetera, et cetera. It's got all these different things that whoever's done these prompts actually understands the way, the syntax that the bots prefer in order to give them the best thing. Anyway, it's really great, and he has tons of these and he shares them a lot. And Erin's also super nice and funny and knowledgeable and does a great podcast. And yeah, follow Erin. Mordy Oberstein: Him, Jacob, the whole EDGE of the web crew, really wonderful people. A lot of SEO knowledge. A lot of AI knowledge. So definitely please give them a follow and tell them we said hi when you follow them. "Crystal and Mordy sent us to follow you." That's... I'm all out of predictions from the stars this week. I have nothing else to add. Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, I think that means Mercury's in retrograde or something. Is that what it means? Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Mercury. It's in tuna fish also. Crystal Carter: I'm done. That ended me. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. Anyway, thank you for joining us on The SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into do you really need experts to write the content for you to actually be expert content by experts? Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO Learning over at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinar resources on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, at Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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Is it time to expand your SEO outlook? See why taking a holistic approach to SEO works. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter bake up some high-quality holistic SEO goodies with both tactical and strategic advice. Manick Bhan joins to cover the four main holistic SEO pillars: authority, content, technicals, and UX. We explore how SEO involves not only on-page elements and technical aspects but also how these factors integrate into the overall practice of your business and brand in this week's episode of the SERP's Up SEO podcast. Back Holistic SEO: Fact or Fiction? Is it time to expand your SEO outlook? See why taking a holistic approach to SEO works. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter bake up some high-quality holistic SEO goodies with both tactical and strategic advice. Manick Bhan joins to cover the four main holistic SEO pillars: authority, content, technicals, and UX. We explore how SEO involves not only on-page elements and technical aspects but also how these factors integrate into the overall practice of your business and brand in this week's episode of the SERP's Up SEO podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 88 | May 22, 2024 | 46 MIN 00:00 / 46:17 This week’s guests Manick Bhan Manick Bhan is the Founder and CTO of LinkGraph – a digital marketing firm that helps agencies and enterprise brands scale through data-driven SEO, a member of the INC 5000 Awards and winner of the Drum Search Awards. He is also the creator of Search Atlas, an SEO automation platform used by thousands of brands and agencies, ProductHunt product of the day and week, and nominated for the Best SEO Platform by the Global Search Awards. With 10+ years of experience in SEO from the in-house and agency side, Bhan has taught both startups and Fortune 500 companies how to scale their brands with a data-driven SEO strategy that can break into any market with ease and outrank even the biggest of competitors. Bhan’s innovative approach to SEO has helped LinkGraph become a fast-growing digital agency that now works with over 200 clients across all sectors. His thought leadership has appeared in leading publications like Forbes, Search Engine Journal, and VentureBeat and he has spoken at events like TechCrunch Disrupt, Traffic & Conversion Summit, and Ad World. Bhan enjoys writing and speaking on topics that range from digital marketing to artificial intelligence and machine learning to socially conscious brand building. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining us on the SERPs' Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the quite well-rounded head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: You are like a liberal arts degree. First like a, yes. Your enthusiasm is contagious. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. I wanted to mention something because a day before we're recording this episode, we recorded a version of It's New with Barry Schwartz. If you haven't checked that out, check that out on the Wix SEO Hub. It's right there at the top. It's our daily or mostly daily, daily news dive with Barry Schwartz. We kind of spend, you know, 5, 6, 7 minutes going through that day's SEO news. So if you want to catch up on the SEO News, catch up with that each and every day. Except for Fridays, we don't do it on Fridays. And Barry's like-- Crystal Carter: Oh, he has a whole roundup. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, because he has a whole full roundup on Fridays, so you could check that out on Fridays if you really like Jonesing for SEO news. But Barry said, "Every week you guys say it's the new wave of SEO," but you've been doing the podcast for a year and a half. How new is it? Crystal Carter: It's pretty new. Mordy Oberstein: And apparently for Barry, unless it's immediately new, it's not new. Crystal Carter: But these are the standards we've come to expect from Barry. He tells me all the time. I'm like, "Hey, I saw this. This is new." And he's like, "Not new." Mordy Oberstein: Could you imagine his wife gives him a gift for his birthday and says, "Oh, Barry, where's that new shirt I gave you yesterday?" "What new shirt? That's not new, you gave to me yesterday." Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Crystal Carter: Not new, not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Crystal Carter: I've seen this before. I've seen shirts with buttons. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Got completely off the rails. We're barely into the podcast. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can only subscribe to your monthly newsletter Searchlight over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter. But where you can also track rank on Google, Bing, and YouTube, and even Amazon without ever leaving the Wix platform with RankiX. Look for the RankiX app inside of the Wix App Market and start tracking your rank performance a bit more holistically. As today we're taking a holistic look at SEO or a look at holistic SEO by covering topics such as, what the heck is holistic SEO? And why does having a holistic approach to SEO even matter? We're understanding the ecosystem comes into quote-unquote, "Holistic SEO," and is holistic SEO more tactical or is it more strategic? To help us make the holistic connection, Manick Bhan of LinkGraph joins us to answer if you can focus on ranking factors and be holistic in your SEO all at the same time, plus Crystal and I will take a holistic look at how users use Google and what that might mean for the search engine. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news, and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Because SEO is like bread. Sure, you can have a slice, but why have a slice when you can have the entire loaf as episode 88 of the Serp's Up podcast helps you bake up a broad bakery of holistic SEO goodies. Crystal Carter: With whole meal SEO grains. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: You can focus on one slice of the SEO loaf or you can look at the entire loaf when you're doing your SEO and just eat the loaf. Crystal Carter: I have eaten a whole loaf of bread before. This is why I don't have a bread maker. Basically bread maker cooks all night, smells delicious, and then in the morning you're like, "I want the bread." And then you eat it all. And then you still have to go and buy bread even though you had a bread maker make the bread. Mordy Oberstein: Some people will take a bottle of beer put it into a bag and go on the street corner, have a beer? I've eaten loaves of bread on the street corner before. Crystal Carter: Do you know I did that with Yana from our team, from the SEO team? Shout out to Yana. And some delicious rye with caraway seeds bread. Absolutely gorgeous. Also had dill in it. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Holistic SEO. Crystal Carter: Enough about carbs. So yeah, holistic SEO is interesting. It's something that people don't always quantify, but a lot of people do. A lot of people who are very good SEOs will do. And essentially, holistic SEO is what it sounds like. It's thinking about SEO, not from just the tactical point of view, but from a holistic perspective. So you will of course think about your on-page stuff. You'll also think about your technical SEO. You'll also think about your content SEO, but you'll also think about how all of that SEO feeds into the overall practice of your business, the overall practice for your brand and the overall way that people discover your content. One of the things that I'm finding really interesting when I was speaking to people, I was speaking to Jay Cowell from Launch, and she's an agency owner and she was talking about from a paid perspective, they do paid media, but one of the things she was saying is she was saying, "We are platform-agnostic. We are looking to help people to accelerate their discovery whatever platform they need, in whichever way is most advantageous for them to connect with customers." And I think that there's a lot of people who are moving towards that in terms of search as well. I'm going to quote Arish quoting myself, which is basically like we should be optimizing for user discovery, not just on Google, not just on Bing, but if your users are on TikTok, if your users are on Instagram, if your users are on some forum somewhere, then we should be thinking about SEO that supports all of that from a holistic point of view, both with the strategies that we have, but also with which KPIs we're tracking and how we understand how it fits into the wider ecosystem of the site. Because the way that users use the internet is holistically, users aren't on a single platform when they're looking for information, users are bouncing around from different things. So if you get a topic that you're interested in, and I certainly do this, if I decide that I'm going to update my garden, for instance, I'm going to look at some videos on Instagram, I'm going to check out some pictures on Pinterest, I'm going to go and get some top tips from YouTube, I'm going to read some blogs that talk about how to do composting or whatever it may be. So I'm going to go around to lots of different channels. And if you have holistic approach to SEO, then you're going to be better prepared for users who are using the web in that way, and you are going to become much more of an authority. Because if they see you in all of those platforms for instance, then that's going to really solidify your brand for them. And if you were able to back that up with solid SEO, that's going to get you some great results. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to talk more about that brand point, but I want to talk about more on the dynamic segment. So I have many thoughts about that and I want to talk about that later so I'm not ignoring that. But the way you're describing it where people will look at other channels and they'll think about their SEO more holistically, I think that's one of the things that makes it a little more complicated to define holistic SEO because you can look at holistic SEO from that point of view. You can look at a holistic SEO from, okay, I'm going to think about the algorithm more holistically, which is where I think you get a lot of the EAT conversation coming into it and where Google's headed directionally and SEO concepts. That's what makes this a little bit tricky, because holistic SEO can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. But I a million percent agree with what you said before, that a lot of the better SEOs are the ones who are thinking more holistically, whether it be about growth from a platform point of view of how SEO ties into other platforms, or how SEO or how rather growth is tied to thinking about Google a little bit more conceptually and having more SEO concepts that are driving you versus pure SEO checklist things that are driving you. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that's really interesting that you bring up the algorithm because I think the algorithm is more holistic. So when we're talking about the helpful content, when we're talking about EEAT, when we're talking about Google understanding and connecting entities, the algorithm is more holistic than it used to be. It used to be that you could update certain parts of your metadata and you could add the keywords and on all of that sort of stuff, but Google is understanding more the richness of the network of information that you are creating online, including the people who are creating it, including the content you're creating. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's such a great point because even on the social side, you’re saying, okay, I want to talk about the overlap and I'll think holistically about the overlap of SEO and social media. So a lot of the times we'll talk about, oh, social media will help you get links and that'll help you do SEO. Even on that side, you could think a little bit more holistically about it. I like to talk about it in terms of your digital light. Google's a moth, Google goes to whoever's the biggest digital light. And if people are talking about your brand either through branded searches or talking about your brand on social media, I feel like all of that factors into your digital light without the direct link factor. And at the same time, in terms of the algorithm, agree with that also a gazillion percent. If you think about the algorithm in terms of, okay, I see Google doing X and Google doing Y, and I'm going to try to optimize for X and for Y, that's one approach. A more holistic approach would be like I saw Google doing X, conceptually speaking or thematically speaking, what does that mean about the algorithm? What is the algorithm trying to achieve there? What concept is it trying to drive at? Because you're right, and we talked about this before, which podcasts, many podcasts, that Google's trying to really understand and simulate a quality experience for the user with a machine. So yes, Google is a machine, but trying to simulate what a quality experience might actually look like for the user. So it's going to naturally be a little bit more holistic in how it's approaching quality, relevant results on the SERP. And what a holistic SEO will do is say, "I saw Google try to do X with it. It demoted this webpage, it promoted that webpage. I can maybe see why it might have done that. What can I extrapolate out of that?" Crystal Carter: Right, right. And you're essentially looking at overall content and information, understanding trends and how Google is getting better at understanding information and how Google is using its various different tools including machine learning systems like BERT, like MUM, like “ELMO” even, all of these different things. So how they're using all of those tools and how they're layering all those tools, I think it's... I've spoken a bit at a few different events about how people say, "Oh, AI is coming to Search." AI's been in Search, and Google layers all of those AI tools on top of each other. So they have Lens and Lens is also layered with Translate, which is also layered with Search, which is also layered with their weight of understanding natural language processing and things like that. So they're layering all of these things- Mordy Oberstein: It's like an onion. Crystal Carter: With lots of layers. And so they're layering all of this information. And they're also layering the information that they have about your website. We've talked on this podcast about how you can check learn more about this domain. So there's information on the SERP that will tell you what Google knows about the domain. How old it is, what people are saying about it on Wikipedia, what the brand says about themselves, things like that. Google is taking a very holistic approach to this. If you look at the way they approach Google Business Profile, for instance, they look at the reviews, they look at your attributes, they look at your website, look at your images, they're looking at all of these different things. So you can't just expect that you can just put keywords on a page and just update the technical SEO and you will get great results. You can't just expect to just do that, it's not... Doing one particular tactic at a time doesn't necessarily move the needle, you need to think about... And of course, I'm not saying don't do those tactics, but don't do them in a silo. They should be as part of your overall approach to being online. And if they're finding that your website is solid, but your Facebook is never updated or has this consistent, inconsistent information, or your Google Business Profile says opening hours that you haven't had since 1997 and lots of different... I don't know, lots of different things in you. They're finding lots of inconsistencies. Then what Google learns to find about you is that you're inconsistent. Right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And if you don't want that, then you need to think about all of the different touch points that Google has with your website because they will also reflect all the different touch points that you have with your customers overall. And that is a holistic approach. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's interesting about this because what you're basically saying, if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, is like think... Take a look what Google's doing, all the things they're doing in Google Business Profile, all the things they doing over here, and all things over there. And directionally speaking, what does that tell you about what Google's trying to do? Which by the way, we've been doing on this podcast. Ever so subtly, we've been advocating for a more holistic approach. We have a segment, which I think we're doing later, we called Going Going Google, where we're trying to offer directional approach to where Google is directionally heading because we are big advocates for holistic SEO. And that's one of the reasons why some people will say when someone goes on X or whatever and says, "Hey Barry, I found a new line on the SERP. Is it new that?" That's SEO voyeurism? I say no. I say you can learn a lot about that. Especially back in the day, there was a point in time of the good old days where Google was making tons of endless changes. Most of Barry's stories... That's hyperbolic. A lot of Barry's stories on seoroundtable.com were about, "Someone spotted this, someone spotted that" way more than it even is now. And you could really see like, wow, there's a real focus on local at that time. And then you could see the switch. Now all of the changes Google's making are e-comm side, all the testing. It's all e-comm. What does that tell you about what Google's trying to do? You can learn a lot by seeing what Google is doing, the products they're releasing, the changes that they're making, the things that they're testing. You can learn a lot about where they're trying to head. And that as an SEO is invaluable information. Crystal Carter: Right. Another great place to look at is schema markup. So if you are seeing that Google is... Google in the last year or so has released a lot more rich results schema markup guidance, and that can tell you a lot about what they're doing. Similarly, in Google Search Console, they've added some more dedicated features for certain things. So for instance, they added in video pages, which tells you that they're interested in video. They added in discussion forums schema markup, and profile page markup for instance, which also tells you that they're interested in that. Additionally, when you look at that, you can also see some of the designations. So for instance, if you look in your schema markup, and if you need to know what schema markup is, I have a fantastic article in the Wix SEO Hub, please go and look it up. Essentially when you look at that, you can see they have properties and they have different properties and elements and things that you can add into your schema markup, and they will have recommendations. They'll say, "You should say who made this picture. You should say who the author is. You should say the reviews. So if this has reviews." And that's telling you if you don't have reviews on your page, guess what? Guess what? That's your hint. That this product should have reviews. That's your hint that Google's interested in reviews for this product. If you're seeing that, "Oh, they've offered profile pages" and you don't have profile pages on your site, then maybe you should consider profile pages for your site. So there's things that you can see from there. And also schemamarkup.org or Schema.org has a great collection of all the different schema types, and sometimes people find it overwhelming because it's a very ugly website. I find it delightfully ugly, personally. I just love how simple it is. It's pretty much just a spreadsheet, I love that. And basically what it will say... For instance, if you look up a amusement park markup, it will give you lots of the different elements that you could possibly include in amusement park markup. If you were making a page about amusement parks, that would give you a lot of guidance of what should be on their page. It's essentially like a content brief. And I think that that... And that also schema for instance, as a template for a holistic approach, also has all of the connections and all the different things that it's connected to. So is part of this, is related to that, has an alumni of this, is blah blah blah, has all of those sorts of things. And can guide you with some of these elements. So I think with holistic SEO, particularly if you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed maybe, and you're like, "I don't know where to start," what I generally find it's... My general approach to lots of things is lean into the thing you're most comfortable with first and use that to guide how you build on other things. So I really like schema for instance, so Schema.org would be a really good place for me to lean into what are the holistic things that I could think about around that topic? Google Business Profile, if you're in the local space is another good one to tell you the kinds of things that Google expects to know about a local business, whether it's... You can say that it's female-led or you can say that it has wheelchair access or you can say that your opening hours, you can have your menu. This is guiding you for the kinds of things that Google is expecting to see from you from a lot of different angles. And it can also guide where you should expect to see yourself on different websites. Maybe you should have yourself on other websites and have similar attributes, so where TripAdvisor or things like that, but in places where they have reviews. So lean into something that you feel comfortable with, and you said, as the springboard to guide you on your holistic SEO journey. Mordy Oberstein: Just sum this up before we get to our esteemed guest. If you want to sum up, you’re talking about structured markup and looking where Google's going. Directionally, you just want a concrete example of what this might actually look like. When Google announced they are supporting new structured data markup for forums, Aleyda Solís said, "I take that as a signal of Google looking to reward forum content." So she created chat.seofomo.co, forum for SEO. Lo and behold, what did Google start doing soon thereafter? Started ranking Reddit all over the place. That's somebody who saw what's happening, saw what Google announced, looked at the ecosystem and made an SEO strategy decision based off of that. Crystal Carter: Right. And that builds on her brand, builds on the relationship with her audience, includes... And has lots and lots and multiple benefits. It has a tactical approach, but it also has an overall strategic approach, which is great. Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was absolutely, absolutely brilliant on Aleyda's part because Aleyda is absolutely brilliant. Crystal Carter: Just brilliant. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Okay, with this, let's take a step back and see how SEO is getting started or SEO enthusiast trying to up their game can holistically look at Google ranking factors. Here's Manick Bhan, the founder of LinkGraph on just that. Manick Bhan: What does taking a holistic approach to SEO mean when considering ranking factors? Google's ranking factors use thousands of signals when promoting web pages. If you really want to conquer SEO and deliver results for your business, the best thing to do is to memorize those thousands of signals, track them all as they change, and then improve every single one of those signals on your website as soon as possible. Just kidding, who's got time for that? Nobody. SEOs don't have time for that. Plus Google updates its algorithm something like 500 to 600 times per year, so by the time we list out every ranking factor, we have to start over. But as an SEO, I have actually spent a lot of time studying algorithm updates, reading Google's patents, running correlation analyses, and building SEO software. Google's search factors are very sophisticated, but they're also very predictable. SEO is math, not magic. It's built on computer algorithms. All of those thousands of signals really come down to just four main pillars or what I call holistic SEO. The first pillar of SEO is authority. How authoritative is your website? Google determines authority through factors like backlinks, citations, and what those backlinks say about the websites they're pointing to through anchor text and annotation text. Authority is also communicated through signals like branded searches and brand mentions. Factors like this, what some people call off-page SEO, all constitute a website's authority. The second pillar is content, both the depth of your website's content and the relevance of your content to the searcher's intent. And even how your content speaks to other information the searcher may not have even realized that they were looking for. Years ago, adding keywords to content was enough to rank in Google, but now Google looks for content depth, breadth, and topical authority when ranking web pages. It wants to rank websites that really think about what the user is looking for and that create original high quality content and have experience and expertise in their respective industries. For Google Business Profiles on Google Maps, this also includes the contents of your profile such as reviews, Q&As, posts, as well as the landing page linked to from your GBP. The third pillar is technicals. This has to do with your website's meta tags, the internal linking profile of your website distributing your page rank, your HTML code, and things like that. Search engine bots crawl all of those backend elements of our websites and use them to understand what our content is about. The fourth and final pillar is UX or user behavior factors. That's what happens when people land on the page. How long do they spend on the website? Do they scroll, do they click? Do they go back to find other search results? What are they doing while they're on your page? Every Google ranking factor can fit into one of these four pillars. It's that simple. Even as Google's algorithms have evolved and become more sophisticated over the years, they've always pointed to these four pillars as a north star. So although SEO is very complex and can be intimidating at times for beginners, it can be simplified in this way. Holistic SEO is the process of improving websites in those four core areas, and as long as you focus on those four pillars simultaneously, you're going to see your web traffic and organic visibility increase. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Manick. Make sure to follow him on social media links in the show notes. And it is, again, there's so many different ways you can define Holistic SEO. From a foundational fundamental way, those four pillars, those are definitely the four pillars that you want to focus on if you're getting started and trying to learn how to optimize web pages and websites. And it is interesting to see how as you grow that outlook of how you would define holistic SEO will probably change and adopt and become more sophisticated over time. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think that that's partially because Google's evolved over time and they'll keep changing as well. So I think that you have to pay attention to what the state of play is and how things are evolving across the board. And if you aren't keeping pace then you’ll fall behind. But I think that if your overall goal is to connect with users who are interested in what you do, then I think that you should be pretty rock solid. I think that folks who are connecting with their audience and whose focus is their audience will be able to weather... Whatever algorithmic updates, whatever technological updates there are, because at the core of it, your audience is what? Is your focus. And I think that that will help you leaps and bounds. Mordy Oberstein: And it's also Google's focus. They're going and looking at what users want and trying to steer it that way. Now, speaking of user satisfaction and now that you know all about holistic SEO and whatnot, what would happen if people, or as we as marketers call them, users, also known as my extended family, users. What would happen if these users started taking a more holistic approach to Google in how they'd run queries? Oh my, it would be interesting. Which means it's time to take a holistic and directional look and approach with a little segment we call Going Going Google. And it's going going, Google. It's out of here. So I have this whole thing, I'm on a soap box. I am on a soap box. People do not want to be sold to the way that they used to be. In fact, they don't want to be sold to. That's the change. It used to be you could sell, it's okay. Now people are far less willing to be sold to. They don't want to feel like they're being sold to. There's a need for greater consumer autonomy and so forth and so forth and so forth. And that puts performance marketers in a little bit of a corner because if you're going to be overly focused on the conversion and pushing that conversion, you're out of tune just a bit I think with what users are looking for. We talked about as a bit with Glenn Gabe about affiliate marketers taking the foot off the gas, and it's very similar to that. If users or people are going to be looking at a more autonomous approach to buying things and therefore searching things or consuming things and therefore searching things, I personally think it forces a little bit of a change in approach to how we optimize for those folks. So for example, in that particular case, being present at all of the various user touch points becomes much more important. So for example, if someone says, "I'm going to buy a new microwave." As opposed to going, "Okay, I'll go to Google, I'll look at one or two things and I'll buy from one of those two options," I'm oversimplifying that. Sure, they'll do a lot more research, they'll run a lot more nuanced queries. And they may not click on your result, but they may see your result show up there for each one of their queries. And that's very telling to that user, "Oh, I keep seeing that website over... No matter what I'm searching for for microwaves, that website keeps popping up. That is so interesting." And then eventually when they do run the query where they want to convert, they may see you there and click on you or they may say, "Let me check them out because they keep showing up for the microwaves." That's a different approach to what I would call a traditional SEO. It's a little bit more of an holistic SEO strategy approach to SEO because you're trying to align in that case with the user looking to convert based on the brand being top of mind. So you're less interested in ranking for the keyword and getting the conversion on that keyword, and you'd be more interested in this scenario in ranking for all of the keywords and having a brand presence for all of the keywords so that the user knows who the hell you are when they're ready to convert. Crystal Carter: I think the top-of-the-funnel stuff and the bottom-of-the-funnel stuff should have a different approach. So I think that when you're at the top of the funnel, if I'm thinking about buying a car, I bought a car like in the last year. And when I was thinking about that, there are brands that I know that I will not bother with because they're just not on my radar. I'm not a fan of them, of them as a brand. There's other brands that are like... They're on the short list. And in the top-of-the-funnel area, things like sponsorships and influencer engagement, lifestyle blogs of, "This is how I spend my time in my minivan, that sort of thing." And you'd be like, "Oh, okay, that's a cool minivan. They went on a road trip." And I think that for that kind of content, you want it to be brand. You want brand vibes. You want people to be able to understand what your brand is about. You want people to understand the kind of emotive things that people will get from that brand. You want people to be entertained, engaged, educated. You want people to be able to... To educate them on what kinds of things might you need on a road trip, for instance. And that's just good information. If you're taking a family of four on a road trip, you will want information on how to do that without losing your mind, and that's something- Mordy Oberstein: Not possible, but, yeah, okay. Crystal Carter: And if it so happens that... I'm trying to think of a minivan van, like the Picasso. That's a van, isn't it? Or something. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: That's seems very European. I don't know. The Ford Windstar to go back to our childhood. Crystal Carter: Right. Or like a VW van or whatever. I don't know. So you're trying to think of opening doors or sliding doors, which sliding doors are, ooh, very nice. Or how many cup holders need. Anyway, that's something that you can get from a educational, an engaging, entertaining, edutainment kind of piece of content. But thinking about holistically, you also need to think about when people get to the point where they're like, "I would like to buy this minivan." Don't waste their time. Okay. This is something that Amazon is very, very good at. By the time I get to the point where I'm like, "I would like to purchase this item," I want to see nuts and bolts things. I want to see is there a warranty? How many cup holders, how big is the door? How many doors are there? How many rearview mirrors? Does it have a rearview mirror defrosting? If you're looking at clothes, I want to see the sizes and I want to see the size comparisons, and I want to see all of that sort of stuff. I want to see all of the details on that page. Don't waste my time with fluff on the page where I'm going to actually buy the thing. And I think that the way that we think about the funnel should be very distinct. And they should support each other. Still keep some of the stylized photos or whatever, that sort of thing, still give me the vibes, but I want the nuts and bolts stuff by the time I get down to the funnel. So I think it's important to think about when you think about the holistic thing, make sure that you cover every stage that you need to cover, but do it at the right time. I don't need to necessarily see the sizing details when you're showing me the lifestyle stuff. I don't need that stuff at the top of the funnel. But when I get down to it, I do need to know. Because for some people, those are deal-breakers like, "Oh, they don't have the inseam that I need, just not going to buy those pants." Mordy Oberstein: I think what happens is now we're in an era where your consumer trust is at the forefront, especially on digital for so many different reasons, including the influx of AI content, looking for more human experience. The value of what you would traditionally call that brand content leading up to the performance content or the conversion content is there's such a greater overlap. It used to be, and I'm saying this anecdotally, I saw a product, I would investigate it, if I got to one of those pages where there was really great information about the product that would be enough to convince me, "Okay, buy." Now, I feel like I really want to know who you are, what you're all about, what's going on with you? Can I really trust you? Imagine you're on some website and it turns out that that person is really not a great company. They've said a lot of horrible things, whatever it is, you would want to know now. Whereas back in the day, I feel like those questions didn't come up quite the same way with the quite amount of substance to them. So understanding who you are as a brand and what you are and what you represent and all the things about you, it's just more in focus and consumer trust is so much more important. And I think as an SEO or a performance marketer, it's really important to realize that you need that setup to get to those conversions more than ever, in my opinion. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that it's important to understand that that is definitely part of it that's even going to put you in the conversation. I don't think you want to be sold to necessarily. As you were saying, people don't necessarily want to be sold to. I think people want information to make intelligent choices. So this is the information that you need in order to make the decision as to whether you want to buy it. The branding piece should be like... It's more of a like, can you engage with us? Is this a product, is this a brand, is this a company, is this an idea that you want to engage with? And there'll be lots of signals that you can give to people to tell them that like, "Yeah, we can engage with you. We can understand you. We literally speak your language." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, like, "We're alive, we're available, we're here. We're not going to run away." All the things. Crystal Carter: Right. So people, for instance, on social or something, somebody will post a video, post a picture or whatever, and people that... And accounts that are really well engaged with, for instance, the person, if you check the comments, the person who posted is commenting all the time. I was on YouTube the other day and I saw a short, and it was one of those little heartwarming ones, and I was like, "Aw, cute." And literally within a half an hour, the person who posted it was like, "Thanks." And I was like, "Oh, okay. I didn't think you'd reply to this at all." And I think that when you reply to your reviews, when you are creating content that's interesting that people are going to respond to, that's showing people that that's not selling the item, that's not even necessarily selling the brand, but it's demonstrating. And I think going back to... You talked about liberal arts, going back to my liberal arts college degree, shout out Kenyon College. Mordy Oberstein: Very holistic. Crystal Carter: Right. Going back to that... Totally holistic, actually. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the whole point of it. Crystal Carter: So going back to that, and one of the things that was really not necessarily drilled into us, but one of the things that we came up a lot was show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. And I've taken that to heart so much. I could tell you how great the microwave is a million times, but if I show you that I can make really good mac and cheese, or I can make this great stuff in it or that it cleans up really easily after I splattered mac and cheese all over the inside of the microwave or whatever it may be, or that it makes a great sound when it goes ping or that I can also use it as... If I can show you, that's completely different from if I tell you. If I show you, then you again can also see and make the decision. So I show you what I can do and you can make your decisions as to whether or not you think that's good or bad or whatever with your own intelligence... And that I think is really important. Show, don't tell. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. This is why we show you who's great for the SEO news by not just telling you, "Oh, Barry's great for the SEO news," but showing you with our new series It's New where you can... Yeah, show, don't tell. Or both, tell and show. Show and tell. That's why- Show and tell, which is just telling you it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. So much news this week because Google ran their Google I/O event for 2024, which means all sorts of innovation in AI. Gemini, Gemini, Gemini, and Gemini and more Gemini. But there are some things that relate to Search, per Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land. New Google Search AI features to help you plan, research, and learn. So Google did make some big announcements related to Search itself. The biggest one being that the SGE, now known as AI Overviews, will be going live in the US and other countries around the world. What does that mean for rankings? Well, we talked about that on a special episode of this episode podcast specifically about the implications of Google I/O. Look forward in the show notes of this podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. Crystal and I went extensively through it. In a nutshell, no, this is not the end of content as we know it. I still think people will click and try to explore topics in greater depth that the AI Overview can't do fundamentally. It does mean that Google needs to provide citations properly to help facilitate that. I think we are going to see that. I think there are some issues with it as it is now just a bit, but I think it will evolve, and I think Google does realize that there is a need for exploration. Part of what makes me think that is Google has what Barry has termed AI organized search results, and what it's doing there is it's not offering an AI Overview per se. What it's offering is a breakdown of the topic, a custom structured SERP based on an AI output. So in the example that Google gave, there was something around was searching for a place to go for your 20th anniversary, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, and it breaks down the results according to, I don't know, romantic places to go, steak houses, places with patios or rooftop restaurants. It just breaks down the SERP and organizes the information way differently. We actually spoke about that, little pat on my back to myself, during the episode we spoke to Danny Goodwin from Search Engine Land about Google's Gemini release. And I said, "They're going to take the custom output format results that they announced with Gemini and bring that to the SERP." This is that, I believe. So you do see a balance between Google offering the AI Overview and using the AI Overview to offer an exploration of the actual results that are possible to show on the SERP. So I do think there will be a balance. I don't think it's the end of content. I do think, a little bit of a hot take, it might be the end of super top level content that everyone's done before a gazillion times over. But again, check out the episode that Crystal and I did. There were a whole bunch of other parts of the announcement. For example, Google announced multistep reasoning capabilities. So let's say you search find the best yoga or whatever studio in 50 mile radius of where I am right now with pizza place next door and a half hour walk from so-and-so place, and Google breaks down the results by telling you the walking time between the two places, and it gives you maps you can see between the various places. So it's multistep reasoning. I'll be honest with you. It feels that Google has announced multistep reasoning with other names before or has talked about this before and just didn't call it multistep reasoning, things around MUM and so forth. But okay, that's an official announcement that Google made at Google I/O that related to Search. There's planning capabilities, which we've talked about on this new section before. So if we search for plan me a three-day trip in Philadelphia, the AI Overview will produce an itinerary for you. Or now we're talking about create a three-day meal plan for me that's easy to prepare and it'll prepare a meal plan for you. Again, my personal take is that it'll be helpful if I was spending one day in Philadelphia, I wasn't even expecting to be there, I got a couple hours to kill, plan me a day. If I'm dropping 20 grand to fly my family around the world to Paris or whatever it is, I'm not asking the AI Overview to plan out a whole itinerary for me. Maybe I'll get started with the AI, but I would definitely investigate myself there. The same thing with a meal plan. If I'm a casual dieter, make me a meal plan that's low-carb whatever. If I have a real dietary restrictions and needs, I'm going to do the actual research myself. The AI Overview might be a good place to start, but certainly not finish. So again, I don't think it's the end of content. I do think it'll help perhaps refine the targeting of how we think about who we're writing for and what we're writing about just a bit. And there might be some, I'll call it, constriction of the web because of that. And yes, that might hurt a bunch of websites. I'm not saying no. With that, Google also is rolling out a web filter. So again, for Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land, "Google adds a web filter to only show text-based links in Google Search results. So it's a tab at the top of the SERP, or if you click on the More section, you'll see there the More on the menu section above the actual search results, and it'll say web and all you'll get are the 10 blue links," quote-unquote. By the way, friend of the show, friend of a lot of things, friend of everybody, because this is a great guy overall, Andrew Optimisey, he has a Chrome extension where you can automatically default to that web tab. A link to it in the show notes if that's your thing, then check out Andrew's helpful Chrome extension that he has for you there. Lastly, from Barry Schwartz again, but this time from Search Engine Roundtable. Remove Your Content from Google's AI Overviews. This came from Glenn Gabe who actually linked to both Barry's article and to Glenn's original article that goes into in greater depth in the show notes. But Glenn showed how if you want to take your content out of the AI Overview, you can with the no snippet robots meta tag. If you're using Wix by the way, you can have easy access to the robots meta tag controls in the SEO panel. Just click on no snippet and you're done. Glenn tested it. He said after a few hours he saw that the AI Overview no longer contained a link to his results and the actual overview itself changed because they removed his content altogether from it. So the no snippet does seem to work. I will say, caution. Lots of people are talking about, "Oh, get me out of here. I didn't know. Google never asked me if I wanted to be in their AI Overview." If you are not there, your competitor will be. So unless you have a very good reason for doing this, I don't recommend you do it. Yes, it might be angering. You might feel like Google's taking away your traffic and so forth and so forth, but don't let your anger blind you because you might actually get clicks if your card shows up in the AI Overview. You definitely will not get clicks if your card doesn't because you added the no snippet robots meta tag. So caution, word to the wise I guess. And that is this week's snappy news. Barry, by the way, is really good at replying to comments. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he is, actually agree. Mordy Oberstein: I don't mean it's like a simple thing like, "Oh, Barry's good at replying to comments." I didn't mean it like that. It's nice that he takes the time to reply to comments. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's got like 200,000 followers on Twitter, but when people attack him and he's like, "Yeah, cool, thanks." Mordy Oberstein: Everywhere, YouTube. Crystal Carter: It's really good. And also he shouts out when people are like, "Hey, I saw this thing." He's like, "Oh yeah, so-and-so saw this thing and it's really good." Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Many of SEOs, including myself, owe a lot to Barry for their careers. I also owe a lot to some great information I've read throughout the years, our follow of the week, the one, the only, the absolutely brilliant Dawn Anderson. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Dawn Anderson. Dawn Anderson is like hashtag goals in terms of SEO SEO fantasticness, I think she's a great follow for holistic SEO because she approaches it from a really holistic perspective. Not only is she super smart in terms of lots of technical things, but she studies not just SEO, but she also studies information retrieval. But yeah, I've spoken to her and she's saying like, "I study information retrieval. I go to information retrieval conferences." She's not just thinking about necessarily SEO, exactly what's going on with Google, she's thinking about the whole of how information is disseminated across the web, and that is super, super fantastic. And it's a really, really interesting way to approach it because I think sometimes that can put you ahead of the curve in terms of understanding where Search is going and understanding how information will flow through. Also, Dawn is incredibly nice and lovely. Yeah, the last time I saw her was at the UK Search Awards, and she was easily the best dressed. Super smart and yeah, do follow her. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, some of the best articles I've ever read in SEO come from Dawn. You go to Search Engine Land and type in her name and you'll find a collection of really... Just take a cup of tea, cup of coffee, have a beer, sit down with it kind of thing. So definitely give Dawn a follow, a link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes. The connection's there, it was quite holistic. Crystal Carter: I think we covered everything. Mordy Oberstein: It's the whole picture, all of it. A whole loaf of bread. One sitting on the street corner. Me and a couple of drunk hanging out. They're drinking the beer, I’m in the middle of a bread. Crystal Carter: It's all wheat, I suppose. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I guess, yeah. Makes sense. Just one giant carb fest. Crystal Carter: Yay. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we're doing it. So good. I highly recommend just eat plain bread. Get like, a good loaf of bread. Oh, delicious. Crystal Carter: What about with Marmite? I had some bread with Marmite today. It was delicious. Mordy Oberstein: I have a bottle here, on site. "What do I have to do with this thing?" Crystal Carter: You can give it to me- Mordy Oberstein: Some of you don't know someone gave me some Marmite to try and I know some people like this stuff. It's not even food. Crystal Carter: It's delicious. It's full of B vitamins. Mordy Oberstein: It's yeast-smelling glue. Crystal Carter: It's full of B vitamins. It's very umami. That's what it is. Mordy Oberstein: If I want some B vitamins, I'll take a B vitamin. Crystal Carter: To each their own, I suppose. Mordy Oberstein: Well, yeah, it's subjective, but it's also objective. Anyway, thanks for listening to the SERP's US podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into SEO as a team sport live from brightonSEO UK. Look forward ever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning app at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more? Let me try that again. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning App at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Manick Bhan Areej Abuali Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center LinkGraph What does Google I/O 2024 mean for SEOs? Web Results Filter Chrome Extension News: New Google Search AI features to help you plan, research and learn Google rolls out AI Overviews in US with more countries coming soon Remove Your Content From Google's AI Overviews How to remove content and links from Google’s AI Overviews by using ‘preview controls’ like nosnippet, data-nosnippet, and max-snippet [Case Study] Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Manick Bhan Areej Abuali Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center LinkGraph What does Google I/O 2024 mean for SEOs? Web Results Filter Chrome Extension News: New Google Search AI features to help you plan, research and learn Google rolls out AI Overviews in US with more countries coming soon Remove Your Content From Google's AI Overviews How to remove content and links from Google’s AI Overviews by using ‘preview controls’ like nosnippet, data-nosnippet, and max-snippet [Case Study] Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining us on the SERPs' Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the quite well-rounded head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. Thank you for joining us on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: You are like a liberal arts degree. First like a, yes. Your enthusiasm is contagious. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. I wanted to mention something because a day before we're recording this episode, we recorded a version of It's New with Barry Schwartz. If you haven't checked that out, check that out on the Wix SEO Hub. It's right there at the top. It's our daily or mostly daily, daily news dive with Barry Schwartz. We kind of spend, you know, 5, 6, 7 minutes going through that day's SEO news. So if you want to catch up on the SEO News, catch up with that each and every day. Except for Fridays, we don't do it on Fridays. And Barry's like-- Crystal Carter: Oh, he has a whole roundup. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, because he has a whole full roundup on Fridays, so you could check that out on Fridays if you really like Jonesing for SEO news. But Barry said, "Every week you guys say it's the new wave of SEO," but you've been doing the podcast for a year and a half. How new is it? Crystal Carter: It's pretty new. Mordy Oberstein: And apparently for Barry, unless it's immediately new, it's not new. Crystal Carter: But these are the standards we've come to expect from Barry. He tells me all the time. I'm like, "Hey, I saw this. This is new." And he's like, "Not new." Mordy Oberstein: Could you imagine his wife gives him a gift for his birthday and says, "Oh, Barry, where's that new shirt I gave you yesterday?" "What new shirt? That's not new, you gave to me yesterday." Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Crystal Carter: Not new, not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Crystal Carter: I've seen this before. I've seen shirts with buttons. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Got completely off the rails. We're barely into the podcast. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can only subscribe to your monthly newsletter Searchlight over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter. But where you can also track rank on Google, Bing, and YouTube, and even Amazon without ever leaving the Wix platform with RankiX. Look for the RankiX app inside of the Wix App Market and start tracking your rank performance a bit more holistically. As today we're taking a holistic look at SEO or a look at holistic SEO by covering topics such as, what the heck is holistic SEO? And why does having a holistic approach to SEO even matter? We're understanding the ecosystem comes into quote-unquote, "Holistic SEO," and is holistic SEO more tactical or is it more strategic? To help us make the holistic connection, Manick Bhan of LinkGraph joins us to answer if you can focus on ranking factors and be holistic in your SEO all at the same time, plus Crystal and I will take a holistic look at how users use Google and what that might mean for the search engine. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news, and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Because SEO is like bread. Sure, you can have a slice, but why have a slice when you can have the entire loaf as episode 88 of the Serp's Up podcast helps you bake up a broad bakery of holistic SEO goodies. Crystal Carter: With whole meal SEO grains. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: You can focus on one slice of the SEO loaf or you can look at the entire loaf when you're doing your SEO and just eat the loaf. Crystal Carter: I have eaten a whole loaf of bread before. This is why I don't have a bread maker. Basically bread maker cooks all night, smells delicious, and then in the morning you're like, "I want the bread." And then you eat it all. And then you still have to go and buy bread even though you had a bread maker make the bread. Mordy Oberstein: Some people will take a bottle of beer put it into a bag and go on the street corner, have a beer? I've eaten loaves of bread on the street corner before. Crystal Carter: Do you know I did that with Yana from our team, from the SEO team? Shout out to Yana. And some delicious rye with caraway seeds bread. Absolutely gorgeous. Also had dill in it. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Holistic SEO. Crystal Carter: Enough about carbs. So yeah, holistic SEO is interesting. It's something that people don't always quantify, but a lot of people do. A lot of people who are very good SEOs will do. And essentially, holistic SEO is what it sounds like. It's thinking about SEO, not from just the tactical point of view, but from a holistic perspective. So you will of course think about your on-page stuff. You'll also think about your technical SEO. You'll also think about your content SEO, but you'll also think about how all of that SEO feeds into the overall practice of your business, the overall practice for your brand and the overall way that people discover your content. One of the things that I'm finding really interesting when I was speaking to people, I was speaking to Jay Cowell from Launch, and she's an agency owner and she was talking about from a paid perspective, they do paid media, but one of the things she was saying is she was saying, "We are platform-agnostic. We are looking to help people to accelerate their discovery whatever platform they need, in whichever way is most advantageous for them to connect with customers." And I think that there's a lot of people who are moving towards that in terms of search as well. I'm going to quote Arish quoting myself, which is basically like we should be optimizing for user discovery, not just on Google, not just on Bing, but if your users are on TikTok, if your users are on Instagram, if your users are on some forum somewhere, then we should be thinking about SEO that supports all of that from a holistic point of view, both with the strategies that we have, but also with which KPIs we're tracking and how we understand how it fits into the wider ecosystem of the site. Because the way that users use the internet is holistically, users aren't on a single platform when they're looking for information, users are bouncing around from different things. So if you get a topic that you're interested in, and I certainly do this, if I decide that I'm going to update my garden, for instance, I'm going to look at some videos on Instagram, I'm going to check out some pictures on Pinterest, I'm going to go and get some top tips from YouTube, I'm going to read some blogs that talk about how to do composting or whatever it may be. So I'm going to go around to lots of different channels. And if you have holistic approach to SEO, then you're going to be better prepared for users who are using the web in that way, and you are going to become much more of an authority. Because if they see you in all of those platforms for instance, then that's going to really solidify your brand for them. And if you were able to back that up with solid SEO, that's going to get you some great results. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to talk more about that brand point, but I want to talk about more on the dynamic segment. So I have many thoughts about that and I want to talk about that later so I'm not ignoring that. But the way you're describing it where people will look at other channels and they'll think about their SEO more holistically, I think that's one of the things that makes it a little more complicated to define holistic SEO because you can look at holistic SEO from that point of view. You can look at a holistic SEO from, okay, I'm going to think about the algorithm more holistically, which is where I think you get a lot of the EAT conversation coming into it and where Google's headed directionally and SEO concepts. That's what makes this a little bit tricky, because holistic SEO can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. But I a million percent agree with what you said before, that a lot of the better SEOs are the ones who are thinking more holistically, whether it be about growth from a platform point of view of how SEO ties into other platforms, or how SEO or how rather growth is tied to thinking about Google a little bit more conceptually and having more SEO concepts that are driving you versus pure SEO checklist things that are driving you. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that's really interesting that you bring up the algorithm because I think the algorithm is more holistic. So when we're talking about the helpful content, when we're talking about EEAT, when we're talking about Google understanding and connecting entities, the algorithm is more holistic than it used to be. It used to be that you could update certain parts of your metadata and you could add the keywords and on all of that sort of stuff, but Google is understanding more the richness of the network of information that you are creating online, including the people who are creating it, including the content you're creating. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's such a great point because even on the social side, you’re saying, okay, I want to talk about the overlap and I'll think holistically about the overlap of SEO and social media. So a lot of the times we'll talk about, oh, social media will help you get links and that'll help you do SEO. Even on that side, you could think a little bit more holistically about it. I like to talk about it in terms of your digital light. Google's a moth, Google goes to whoever's the biggest digital light. And if people are talking about your brand either through branded searches or talking about your brand on social media, I feel like all of that factors into your digital light without the direct link factor. And at the same time, in terms of the algorithm, agree with that also a gazillion percent. If you think about the algorithm in terms of, okay, I see Google doing X and Google doing Y, and I'm going to try to optimize for X and for Y, that's one approach. A more holistic approach would be like I saw Google doing X, conceptually speaking or thematically speaking, what does that mean about the algorithm? What is the algorithm trying to achieve there? What concept is it trying to drive at? Because you're right, and we talked about this before, which podcasts, many podcasts, that Google's trying to really understand and simulate a quality experience for the user with a machine. So yes, Google is a machine, but trying to simulate what a quality experience might actually look like for the user. So it's going to naturally be a little bit more holistic in how it's approaching quality, relevant results on the SERP. And what a holistic SEO will do is say, "I saw Google try to do X with it. It demoted this webpage, it promoted that webpage. I can maybe see why it might have done that. What can I extrapolate out of that?" Crystal Carter: Right, right. And you're essentially looking at overall content and information, understanding trends and how Google is getting better at understanding information and how Google is using its various different tools including machine learning systems like BERT, like MUM, like “ELMO” even, all of these different things. So how they're using all of those tools and how they're layering all those tools, I think it's... I've spoken a bit at a few different events about how people say, "Oh, AI is coming to Search." AI's been in Search, and Google layers all of those AI tools on top of each other. So they have Lens and Lens is also layered with Translate, which is also layered with Search, which is also layered with their weight of understanding natural language processing and things like that. So they're layering all of these things- Mordy Oberstein: It's like an onion. Crystal Carter: With lots of layers. And so they're layering all of this information. And they're also layering the information that they have about your website. We've talked on this podcast about how you can check learn more about this domain. So there's information on the SERP that will tell you what Google knows about the domain. How old it is, what people are saying about it on Wikipedia, what the brand says about themselves, things like that. Google is taking a very holistic approach to this. If you look at the way they approach Google Business Profile, for instance, they look at the reviews, they look at your attributes, they look at your website, look at your images, they're looking at all of these different things. So you can't just expect that you can just put keywords on a page and just update the technical SEO and you will get great results. You can't just expect to just do that, it's not... Doing one particular tactic at a time doesn't necessarily move the needle, you need to think about... And of course, I'm not saying don't do those tactics, but don't do them in a silo. They should be as part of your overall approach to being online. And if they're finding that your website is solid, but your Facebook is never updated or has this consistent, inconsistent information, or your Google Business Profile says opening hours that you haven't had since 1997 and lots of different... I don't know, lots of different things in you. They're finding lots of inconsistencies. Then what Google learns to find about you is that you're inconsistent. Right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And if you don't want that, then you need to think about all of the different touch points that Google has with your website because they will also reflect all the different touch points that you have with your customers overall. And that is a holistic approach. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's interesting about this because what you're basically saying, if I'm hearing what you're saying correctly, is like think... Take a look what Google's doing, all the things they're doing in Google Business Profile, all the things they doing over here, and all things over there. And directionally speaking, what does that tell you about what Google's trying to do? Which by the way, we've been doing on this podcast. Ever so subtly, we've been advocating for a more holistic approach. We have a segment, which I think we're doing later, we called Going Going Google, where we're trying to offer directional approach to where Google is directionally heading because we are big advocates for holistic SEO. And that's one of the reasons why some people will say when someone goes on X or whatever and says, "Hey Barry, I found a new line on the SERP. Is it new that?" That's SEO voyeurism? I say no. I say you can learn a lot about that. Especially back in the day, there was a point in time of the good old days where Google was making tons of endless changes. Most of Barry's stories... That's hyperbolic. A lot of Barry's stories on seoroundtable.com were about, "Someone spotted this, someone spotted that" way more than it even is now. And you could really see like, wow, there's a real focus on local at that time. And then you could see the switch. Now all of the changes Google's making are e-comm side, all the testing. It's all e-comm. What does that tell you about what Google's trying to do? You can learn a lot by seeing what Google is doing, the products they're releasing, the changes that they're making, the things that they're testing. You can learn a lot about where they're trying to head. And that as an SEO is invaluable information. Crystal Carter: Right. Another great place to look at is schema markup. So if you are seeing that Google is... Google in the last year or so has released a lot more rich results schema markup guidance, and that can tell you a lot about what they're doing. Similarly, in Google Search Console, they've added some more dedicated features for certain things. So for instance, they added in video pages, which tells you that they're interested in video. They added in discussion forums schema markup, and profile page markup for instance, which also tells you that they're interested in that. Additionally, when you look at that, you can also see some of the designations. So for instance, if you look in your schema markup, and if you need to know what schema markup is, I have a fantastic article in the Wix SEO Hub, please go and look it up. Essentially when you look at that, you can see they have properties and they have different properties and elements and things that you can add into your schema markup, and they will have recommendations. They'll say, "You should say who made this picture. You should say who the author is. You should say the reviews. So if this has reviews." And that's telling you if you don't have reviews on your page, guess what? Guess what? That's your hint. That this product should have reviews. That's your hint that Google's interested in reviews for this product. If you're seeing that, "Oh, they've offered profile pages" and you don't have profile pages on your site, then maybe you should consider profile pages for your site. So there's things that you can see from there. And also schemamarkup.org or Schema.org has a great collection of all the different schema types, and sometimes people find it overwhelming because it's a very ugly website. I find it delightfully ugly, personally. I just love how simple it is. It's pretty much just a spreadsheet, I love that. And basically what it will say... For instance, if you look up a amusement park markup, it will give you lots of the different elements that you could possibly include in amusement park markup. If you were making a page about amusement parks, that would give you a lot of guidance of what should be on their page. It's essentially like a content brief. And I think that that... And that also schema for instance, as a template for a holistic approach, also has all of the connections and all the different things that it's connected to. So is part of this, is related to that, has an alumni of this, is blah blah blah, has all of those sorts of things. And can guide you with some of these elements. So I think with holistic SEO, particularly if you are feeling a little bit overwhelmed maybe, and you're like, "I don't know where to start," what I generally find it's... My general approach to lots of things is lean into the thing you're most comfortable with first and use that to guide how you build on other things. So I really like schema for instance, so Schema.org would be a really good place for me to lean into what are the holistic things that I could think about around that topic? Google Business Profile, if you're in the local space is another good one to tell you the kinds of things that Google expects to know about a local business, whether it's... You can say that it's female-led or you can say that it has wheelchair access or you can say that your opening hours, you can have your menu. This is guiding you for the kinds of things that Google is expecting to see from you from a lot of different angles. And it can also guide where you should expect to see yourself on different websites. Maybe you should have yourself on other websites and have similar attributes, so where TripAdvisor or things like that, but in places where they have reviews. So lean into something that you feel comfortable with, and you said, as the springboard to guide you on your holistic SEO journey. Mordy Oberstein: Just sum this up before we get to our esteemed guest. If you want to sum up, you’re talking about structured markup and looking where Google's going. Directionally, you just want a concrete example of what this might actually look like. When Google announced they are supporting new structured data markup for forums, Aleyda Solís said, "I take that as a signal of Google looking to reward forum content." So she created chat.seofomo.co, forum for SEO. Lo and behold, what did Google start doing soon thereafter? Started ranking Reddit all over the place. That's somebody who saw what's happening, saw what Google announced, looked at the ecosystem and made an SEO strategy decision based off of that. Crystal Carter: Right. And that builds on her brand, builds on the relationship with her audience, includes... And has lots and lots and multiple benefits. It has a tactical approach, but it also has an overall strategic approach, which is great. Mordy Oberstein: I thought it was absolutely, absolutely brilliant on Aleyda's part because Aleyda is absolutely brilliant. Crystal Carter: Just brilliant. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Okay, with this, let's take a step back and see how SEO is getting started or SEO enthusiast trying to up their game can holistically look at Google ranking factors. Here's Manick Bhan, the founder of LinkGraph on just that. Manick Bhan: What does taking a holistic approach to SEO mean when considering ranking factors? Google's ranking factors use thousands of signals when promoting web pages. If you really want to conquer SEO and deliver results for your business, the best thing to do is to memorize those thousands of signals, track them all as they change, and then improve every single one of those signals on your website as soon as possible. Just kidding, who's got time for that? Nobody. SEOs don't have time for that. Plus Google updates its algorithm something like 500 to 600 times per year, so by the time we list out every ranking factor, we have to start over. But as an SEO, I have actually spent a lot of time studying algorithm updates, reading Google's patents, running correlation analyses, and building SEO software. Google's search factors are very sophisticated, but they're also very predictable. SEO is math, not magic. It's built on computer algorithms. All of those thousands of signals really come down to just four main pillars or what I call holistic SEO. The first pillar of SEO is authority. How authoritative is your website? Google determines authority through factors like backlinks, citations, and what those backlinks say about the websites they're pointing to through anchor text and annotation text. Authority is also communicated through signals like branded searches and brand mentions. Factors like this, what some people call off-page SEO, all constitute a website's authority. The second pillar is content, both the depth of your website's content and the relevance of your content to the searcher's intent. And even how your content speaks to other information the searcher may not have even realized that they were looking for. Years ago, adding keywords to content was enough to rank in Google, but now Google looks for content depth, breadth, and topical authority when ranking web pages. It wants to rank websites that really think about what the user is looking for and that create original high quality content and have experience and expertise in their respective industries. For Google Business Profiles on Google Maps, this also includes the contents of your profile such as reviews, Q&As, posts, as well as the landing page linked to from your GBP. The third pillar is technicals. This has to do with your website's meta tags, the internal linking profile of your website distributing your page rank, your HTML code, and things like that. Search engine bots crawl all of those backend elements of our websites and use them to understand what our content is about. The fourth and final pillar is UX or user behavior factors. That's what happens when people land on the page. How long do they spend on the website? Do they scroll, do they click? Do they go back to find other search results? What are they doing while they're on your page? Every Google ranking factor can fit into one of these four pillars. It's that simple. Even as Google's algorithms have evolved and become more sophisticated over the years, they've always pointed to these four pillars as a north star. So although SEO is very complex and can be intimidating at times for beginners, it can be simplified in this way. Holistic SEO is the process of improving websites in those four core areas, and as long as you focus on those four pillars simultaneously, you're going to see your web traffic and organic visibility increase. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Manick. Make sure to follow him on social media links in the show notes. And it is, again, there's so many different ways you can define Holistic SEO. From a foundational fundamental way, those four pillars, those are definitely the four pillars that you want to focus on if you're getting started and trying to learn how to optimize web pages and websites. And it is interesting to see how as you grow that outlook of how you would define holistic SEO will probably change and adopt and become more sophisticated over time. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think that that's partially because Google's evolved over time and they'll keep changing as well. So I think that you have to pay attention to what the state of play is and how things are evolving across the board. And if you aren't keeping pace then you’ll fall behind. But I think that if your overall goal is to connect with users who are interested in what you do, then I think that you should be pretty rock solid. I think that folks who are connecting with their audience and whose focus is their audience will be able to weather... Whatever algorithmic updates, whatever technological updates there are, because at the core of it, your audience is what? Is your focus. And I think that that will help you leaps and bounds. Mordy Oberstein: And it's also Google's focus. They're going and looking at what users want and trying to steer it that way. Now, speaking of user satisfaction and now that you know all about holistic SEO and whatnot, what would happen if people, or as we as marketers call them, users, also known as my extended family, users. What would happen if these users started taking a more holistic approach to Google in how they'd run queries? Oh my, it would be interesting. Which means it's time to take a holistic and directional look and approach with a little segment we call Going Going Google. And it's going going, Google. It's out of here. So I have this whole thing, I'm on a soap box. I am on a soap box. People do not want to be sold to the way that they used to be. In fact, they don't want to be sold to. That's the change. It used to be you could sell, it's okay. Now people are far less willing to be sold to. They don't want to feel like they're being sold to. There's a need for greater consumer autonomy and so forth and so forth and so forth. And that puts performance marketers in a little bit of a corner because if you're going to be overly focused on the conversion and pushing that conversion, you're out of tune just a bit I think with what users are looking for. We talked about as a bit with Glenn Gabe about affiliate marketers taking the foot off the gas, and it's very similar to that. If users or people are going to be looking at a more autonomous approach to buying things and therefore searching things or consuming things and therefore searching things, I personally think it forces a little bit of a change in approach to how we optimize for those folks. So for example, in that particular case, being present at all of the various user touch points becomes much more important. So for example, if someone says, "I'm going to buy a new microwave." As opposed to going, "Okay, I'll go to Google, I'll look at one or two things and I'll buy from one of those two options," I'm oversimplifying that. Sure, they'll do a lot more research, they'll run a lot more nuanced queries. And they may not click on your result, but they may see your result show up there for each one of their queries. And that's very telling to that user, "Oh, I keep seeing that website over... No matter what I'm searching for for microwaves, that website keeps popping up. That is so interesting." And then eventually when they do run the query where they want to convert, they may see you there and click on you or they may say, "Let me check them out because they keep showing up for the microwaves." That's a different approach to what I would call a traditional SEO. It's a little bit more of an holistic SEO strategy approach to SEO because you're trying to align in that case with the user looking to convert based on the brand being top of mind. So you're less interested in ranking for the keyword and getting the conversion on that keyword, and you'd be more interested in this scenario in ranking for all of the keywords and having a brand presence for all of the keywords so that the user knows who the hell you are when they're ready to convert. Crystal Carter: I think the top-of-the-funnel stuff and the bottom-of-the-funnel stuff should have a different approach. So I think that when you're at the top of the funnel, if I'm thinking about buying a car, I bought a car like in the last year. And when I was thinking about that, there are brands that I know that I will not bother with because they're just not on my radar. I'm not a fan of them, of them as a brand. There's other brands that are like... They're on the short list. And in the top-of-the-funnel area, things like sponsorships and influencer engagement, lifestyle blogs of, "This is how I spend my time in my minivan, that sort of thing." And you'd be like, "Oh, okay, that's a cool minivan. They went on a road trip." And I think that for that kind of content, you want it to be brand. You want brand vibes. You want people to be able to understand what your brand is about. You want people to understand the kind of emotive things that people will get from that brand. You want people to be entertained, engaged, educated. You want people to be able to... To educate them on what kinds of things might you need on a road trip, for instance. And that's just good information. If you're taking a family of four on a road trip, you will want information on how to do that without losing your mind, and that's something- Mordy Oberstein: Not possible, but, yeah, okay. Crystal Carter: And if it so happens that... I'm trying to think of a minivan van, like the Picasso. That's a van, isn't it? Or something. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: That's seems very European. I don't know. The Ford Windstar to go back to our childhood. Crystal Carter: Right. Or like a VW van or whatever. I don't know. So you're trying to think of opening doors or sliding doors, which sliding doors are, ooh, very nice. Or how many cup holders need. Anyway, that's something that you can get from a educational, an engaging, entertaining, edutainment kind of piece of content. But thinking about holistically, you also need to think about when people get to the point where they're like, "I would like to buy this minivan." Don't waste their time. Okay. This is something that Amazon is very, very good at. By the time I get to the point where I'm like, "I would like to purchase this item," I want to see nuts and bolts things. I want to see is there a warranty? How many cup holders, how big is the door? How many doors are there? How many rearview mirrors? Does it have a rearview mirror defrosting? If you're looking at clothes, I want to see the sizes and I want to see the size comparisons, and I want to see all of that sort of stuff. I want to see all of the details on that page. Don't waste my time with fluff on the page where I'm going to actually buy the thing. And I think that the way that we think about the funnel should be very distinct. And they should support each other. Still keep some of the stylized photos or whatever, that sort of thing, still give me the vibes, but I want the nuts and bolts stuff by the time I get down to the funnel. So I think it's important to think about when you think about the holistic thing, make sure that you cover every stage that you need to cover, but do it at the right time. I don't need to necessarily see the sizing details when you're showing me the lifestyle stuff. I don't need that stuff at the top of the funnel. But when I get down to it, I do need to know. Because for some people, those are deal-breakers like, "Oh, they don't have the inseam that I need, just not going to buy those pants." Mordy Oberstein: I think what happens is now we're in an era where your consumer trust is at the forefront, especially on digital for so many different reasons, including the influx of AI content, looking for more human experience. The value of what you would traditionally call that brand content leading up to the performance content or the conversion content is there's such a greater overlap. It used to be, and I'm saying this anecdotally, I saw a product, I would investigate it, if I got to one of those pages where there was really great information about the product that would be enough to convince me, "Okay, buy." Now, I feel like I really want to know who you are, what you're all about, what's going on with you? Can I really trust you? Imagine you're on some website and it turns out that that person is really not a great company. They've said a lot of horrible things, whatever it is, you would want to know now. Whereas back in the day, I feel like those questions didn't come up quite the same way with the quite amount of substance to them. So understanding who you are as a brand and what you are and what you represent and all the things about you, it's just more in focus and consumer trust is so much more important. And I think as an SEO or a performance marketer, it's really important to realize that you need that setup to get to those conversions more than ever, in my opinion. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think that it's important to understand that that is definitely part of it that's even going to put you in the conversation. I don't think you want to be sold to necessarily. As you were saying, people don't necessarily want to be sold to. I think people want information to make intelligent choices. So this is the information that you need in order to make the decision as to whether you want to buy it. The branding piece should be like... It's more of a like, can you engage with us? Is this a product, is this a brand, is this a company, is this an idea that you want to engage with? And there'll be lots of signals that you can give to people to tell them that like, "Yeah, we can engage with you. We can understand you. We literally speak your language." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, like, "We're alive, we're available, we're here. We're not going to run away." All the things. Crystal Carter: Right. So people, for instance, on social or something, somebody will post a video, post a picture or whatever, and people that... And accounts that are really well engaged with, for instance, the person, if you check the comments, the person who posted is commenting all the time. I was on YouTube the other day and I saw a short, and it was one of those little heartwarming ones, and I was like, "Aw, cute." And literally within a half an hour, the person who posted it was like, "Thanks." And I was like, "Oh, okay. I didn't think you'd reply to this at all." And I think that when you reply to your reviews, when you are creating content that's interesting that people are going to respond to, that's showing people that that's not selling the item, that's not even necessarily selling the brand, but it's demonstrating. And I think going back to... You talked about liberal arts, going back to my liberal arts college degree, shout out Kenyon College. Mordy Oberstein: Very holistic. Crystal Carter: Right. Going back to that... Totally holistic, actually. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the whole point of it. Crystal Carter: So going back to that, and one of the things that was really not necessarily drilled into us, but one of the things that we came up a lot was show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. And I've taken that to heart so much. I could tell you how great the microwave is a million times, but if I show you that I can make really good mac and cheese, or I can make this great stuff in it or that it cleans up really easily after I splattered mac and cheese all over the inside of the microwave or whatever it may be, or that it makes a great sound when it goes ping or that I can also use it as... If I can show you, that's completely different from if I tell you. If I show you, then you again can also see and make the decision. So I show you what I can do and you can make your decisions as to whether or not you think that's good or bad or whatever with your own intelligence... And that I think is really important. Show, don't tell. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. This is why we show you who's great for the SEO news by not just telling you, "Oh, Barry's great for the SEO news," but showing you with our new series It's New where you can... Yeah, show, don't tell. Or both, tell and show. Show and tell. That's why- Show and tell, which is just telling you it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. So much news this week because Google ran their Google I/O event for 2024, which means all sorts of innovation in AI. Gemini, Gemini, Gemini, and Gemini and more Gemini. But there are some things that relate to Search, per Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land. New Google Search AI features to help you plan, research, and learn. So Google did make some big announcements related to Search itself. The biggest one being that the SGE, now known as AI Overviews, will be going live in the US and other countries around the world. What does that mean for rankings? Well, we talked about that on a special episode of this episode podcast specifically about the implications of Google I/O. Look forward in the show notes of this podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub. Crystal and I went extensively through it. In a nutshell, no, this is not the end of content as we know it. I still think people will click and try to explore topics in greater depth that the AI Overview can't do fundamentally. It does mean that Google needs to provide citations properly to help facilitate that. I think we are going to see that. I think there are some issues with it as it is now just a bit, but I think it will evolve, and I think Google does realize that there is a need for exploration. Part of what makes me think that is Google has what Barry has termed AI organized search results, and what it's doing there is it's not offering an AI Overview per se. What it's offering is a breakdown of the topic, a custom structured SERP based on an AI output. So in the example that Google gave, there was something around was searching for a place to go for your 20th anniversary, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, and it breaks down the results according to, I don't know, romantic places to go, steak houses, places with patios or rooftop restaurants. It just breaks down the SERP and organizes the information way differently. We actually spoke about that, little pat on my back to myself, during the episode we spoke to Danny Goodwin from Search Engine Land about Google's Gemini release. And I said, "They're going to take the custom output format results that they announced with Gemini and bring that to the SERP." This is that, I believe. So you do see a balance between Google offering the AI Overview and using the AI Overview to offer an exploration of the actual results that are possible to show on the SERP. So I do think there will be a balance. I don't think it's the end of content. I do think, a little bit of a hot take, it might be the end of super top level content that everyone's done before a gazillion times over. But again, check out the episode that Crystal and I did. There were a whole bunch of other parts of the announcement. For example, Google announced multistep reasoning capabilities. So let's say you search find the best yoga or whatever studio in 50 mile radius of where I am right now with pizza place next door and a half hour walk from so-and-so place, and Google breaks down the results by telling you the walking time between the two places, and it gives you maps you can see between the various places. So it's multistep reasoning. I'll be honest with you. It feels that Google has announced multistep reasoning with other names before or has talked about this before and just didn't call it multistep reasoning, things around MUM and so forth. But okay, that's an official announcement that Google made at Google I/O that related to Search. There's planning capabilities, which we've talked about on this new section before. So if we search for plan me a three-day trip in Philadelphia, the AI Overview will produce an itinerary for you. Or now we're talking about create a three-day meal plan for me that's easy to prepare and it'll prepare a meal plan for you. Again, my personal take is that it'll be helpful if I was spending one day in Philadelphia, I wasn't even expecting to be there, I got a couple hours to kill, plan me a day. If I'm dropping 20 grand to fly my family around the world to Paris or whatever it is, I'm not asking the AI Overview to plan out a whole itinerary for me. Maybe I'll get started with the AI, but I would definitely investigate myself there. The same thing with a meal plan. If I'm a casual dieter, make me a meal plan that's low-carb whatever. If I have a real dietary restrictions and needs, I'm going to do the actual research myself. The AI Overview might be a good place to start, but certainly not finish. So again, I don't think it's the end of content. I do think it'll help perhaps refine the targeting of how we think about who we're writing for and what we're writing about just a bit. And there might be some, I'll call it, constriction of the web because of that. And yes, that might hurt a bunch of websites. I'm not saying no. With that, Google also is rolling out a web filter. So again, for Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land, "Google adds a web filter to only show text-based links in Google Search results. So it's a tab at the top of the SERP, or if you click on the More section, you'll see there the More on the menu section above the actual search results, and it'll say web and all you'll get are the 10 blue links," quote-unquote. By the way, friend of the show, friend of a lot of things, friend of everybody, because this is a great guy overall, Andrew Optimisey, he has a Chrome extension where you can automatically default to that web tab. A link to it in the show notes if that's your thing, then check out Andrew's helpful Chrome extension that he has for you there. Lastly, from Barry Schwartz again, but this time from Search Engine Roundtable. Remove Your Content from Google's AI Overviews. This came from Glenn Gabe who actually linked to both Barry's article and to Glenn's original article that goes into in greater depth in the show notes. But Glenn showed how if you want to take your content out of the AI Overview, you can with the no snippet robots meta tag. If you're using Wix by the way, you can have easy access to the robots meta tag controls in the SEO panel. Just click on no snippet and you're done. Glenn tested it. He said after a few hours he saw that the AI Overview no longer contained a link to his results and the actual overview itself changed because they removed his content altogether from it. So the no snippet does seem to work. I will say, caution. Lots of people are talking about, "Oh, get me out of here. I didn't know. Google never asked me if I wanted to be in their AI Overview." If you are not there, your competitor will be. So unless you have a very good reason for doing this, I don't recommend you do it. Yes, it might be angering. You might feel like Google's taking away your traffic and so forth and so forth, but don't let your anger blind you because you might actually get clicks if your card shows up in the AI Overview. You definitely will not get clicks if your card doesn't because you added the no snippet robots meta tag. So caution, word to the wise I guess. And that is this week's snappy news. Barry, by the way, is really good at replying to comments. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he is, actually agree. Mordy Oberstein: I don't mean it's like a simple thing like, "Oh, Barry's good at replying to comments." I didn't mean it like that. It's nice that he takes the time to reply to comments. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's got like 200,000 followers on Twitter, but when people attack him and he's like, "Yeah, cool, thanks." Mordy Oberstein: Everywhere, YouTube. Crystal Carter: It's really good. And also he shouts out when people are like, "Hey, I saw this thing." He's like, "Oh yeah, so-and-so saw this thing and it's really good." Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Many of SEOs, including myself, owe a lot to Barry for their careers. I also owe a lot to some great information I've read throughout the years, our follow of the week, the one, the only, the absolutely brilliant Dawn Anderson. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Dawn Anderson. Dawn Anderson is like hashtag goals in terms of SEO SEO fantasticness, I think she's a great follow for holistic SEO because she approaches it from a really holistic perspective. Not only is she super smart in terms of lots of technical things, but she studies not just SEO, but she also studies information retrieval. But yeah, I've spoken to her and she's saying like, "I study information retrieval. I go to information retrieval conferences." She's not just thinking about necessarily SEO, exactly what's going on with Google, she's thinking about the whole of how information is disseminated across the web, and that is super, super fantastic. And it's a really, really interesting way to approach it because I think sometimes that can put you ahead of the curve in terms of understanding where Search is going and understanding how information will flow through. Also, Dawn is incredibly nice and lovely. Yeah, the last time I saw her was at the UK Search Awards, and she was easily the best dressed. Super smart and yeah, do follow her. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, some of the best articles I've ever read in SEO come from Dawn. You go to Search Engine Land and type in her name and you'll find a collection of really... Just take a cup of tea, cup of coffee, have a beer, sit down with it kind of thing. So definitely give Dawn a follow, a link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes. The connection's there, it was quite holistic. Crystal Carter: I think we covered everything. Mordy Oberstein: It's the whole picture, all of it. A whole loaf of bread. One sitting on the street corner. Me and a couple of drunk hanging out. They're drinking the beer, I’m in the middle of a bread. Crystal Carter: It's all wheat, I suppose. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I guess, yeah. Makes sense. Just one giant carb fest. Crystal Carter: Yay. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we're doing it. So good. I highly recommend just eat plain bread. Get like, a good loaf of bread. Oh, delicious. Crystal Carter: What about with Marmite? I had some bread with Marmite today. It was delicious. Mordy Oberstein: I have a bottle here, on site. "What do I have to do with this thing?" Crystal Carter: You can give it to me- Mordy Oberstein: Some of you don't know someone gave me some Marmite to try and I know some people like this stuff. It's not even food. Crystal Carter: It's delicious. It's full of B vitamins. Mordy Oberstein: It's yeast-smelling glue. Crystal Carter: It's full of B vitamins. It's very umami. That's what it is. Mordy Oberstein: If I want some B vitamins, I'll take a B vitamin. Crystal Carter: To each their own, I suppose. Mordy Oberstein: Well, yeah, it's subjective, but it's also objective. Anyway, thanks for listening to the SERP's US podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into SEO as a team sport live from brightonSEO UK. Look forward ever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning app at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more? Let me try that again. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning App at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us 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

How should Google address the growing presence of Reddit on the SERP? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss why Reddit is ranking at the top of so many SERPs and the problems it presents. They also survey the wider SEO community for solutions Google should implement to bring balance back to the SERP. Founder of Foundation Marketing, Ross Simmonds, joins the show to discuss the future of Reddit and how marketers can use it to their benefit. Join us as this week as the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast becomes your go-to “forum” to understand the Google SERP! Back What to do about Google's reddit habit? How should Google address the growing presence of Reddit on the SERP? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss why Reddit is ranking at the top of so many SERPs and the problems it presents. They also survey the wider SEO community for solutions Google should implement to bring balance back to the SERP. Founder of Foundation Marketing, Ross Simmonds, joins the show to discuss the future of Reddit and how marketers can use it to their benefit. Join us as this week as the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast becomes your go-to “forum” to understand the Google SERP! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 85 | May 1, 2024 | 53 MIN 00:00 / 53:00 This week’s guests Ross Simmonds Ross Simmonds is the founder of Foundation Marketing, a B2B SaaS Marketing agency that works with some of the worlds most successful brands. He's also the author of Create Once. Distribute Forever: How Great Creators Spread Their Ideas and How You Can Too. 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 on some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the uncompromising, but in a good way, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Mordy Oberstein: Uncompromising on your SEO values and your humanity is what I meant. Crystal Carter: That's right. Upvote for that. Mordy Oberstein: Beat me to this. Beat me to this. I guess that's karma for you. Crystal Carter: Oh, oh, oh. Well, I'm sure if we can make a thread about it or something. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Somebody, by the way, commented on social media, I love how you all hint at the topic before you actually get to it, which we're doing right now. Crystal Carter: As if the person who's listening to the podcast hasn't actually read the title of the podcast- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's possible. Crystal Carter: Is it possible? Mordy Oberstein: No, that's totally possible. Crystal Carter: It's cool. Mordy Oberstein: If you're the regular listener... I listen to this sports podcasts every day, I don't look at the title, I'm, like, oh, I just keep going. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's all good. Do you know what, somebody was like, oh, I summarized your podcast with ChatGPT? I'm like, you're missing the entire point. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I saw that. Crystal Carter: I'm like, what? Mordy Oberstein: You lose all the flavor. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right, right. It's like saying- Mordy Oberstein: You come for the insights, but you stay for the entertainment. Crystal Carter: It's nice. You're missing the vibes, guys. People who are listening to the podcast, you're vibing with us. We're all vibing together. It's like a whole SEO vibe. It's important. Mordy Oberstein: That AI cannot replicate at all. Crystal Carter: No, no. We're definitely real people. This is- Mordy Oberstein: We're beyond AI. It's more like Reddit for your ears. Okay. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter search site each and every month at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our Zapier integration to do things like post a new event from your Wix studio website to a subreddit automatically. This as this week, in case you haven't gotten the hints, we're talking about the problem on the SERP with Reddit. Well, I don't know if it's a problem. Who knows? Because I read it somewhere that perhaps there's too much Reddit on the SERP. I can't recall where I read it, but I did read it or read it somewhere. You know I'm going to keep making that joke the entire time now. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the stars, I read it. Sorry. Okay. That's right. We're taking up the abundance of Reddit on the SERP and what Google should perhaps do about it from the reason why Google has gone Reddit to how it all to LLMs and how to address the reason why Reddit is on the SERP with complaints about Reddit on the SERP. And to help us solve this complex problem, joining the podcast this week is you all. We're going through the comments y'all have left on this issue across the wider social media universe, and we'll also chat with none other than Ross Simmonds about the future of Reddit and how marketers can really leverage it. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media like Reddit, I guess for more SEO awesomeness. So forgo any preconceived notions about forums being at the forefront of the SERP as we attempt to foresee the future of forum formulations on the results page and how it might foreshadow wider marketing trends on this the 85th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Please forgive me. Crystal Carter: That was formidable. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you. It's also like how many dad jokes can I possibly make in one intro? Crystal Carter: I think that's kind of fine. We're talking about Reddit, there's a lot of dads on Reddit. There's also a lot of other folks on Reddit. There must be a dad joke Reddit, right? Mordy Oberstein: I'm sure. Yeah. No, there's definitely got to be a dad joke Reddit, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. There's got to be, I'm sure. Mordy Oberstein: There's definitely inappropriate joke Reddit, so there has to be a counterbalance to that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean, basically all the folks that I know that spend a lot of time on Reddit basically go and look for the worst things on the internet on Reddit. Mordy Oberstein: We'll get into this because we already recorded the section with Ross before recording this section to drop the fourth wall, and I am telling you, I made some heavy comments about my opinions about Reddit. Crystal Carter: Ross is a great person to speak to because Ross has come at this from a very strategic point of view. Because I think some people go to Reddit with a lot of feels like you're talking about, but he's only forever approached it from a strategic point of view, from a, how can we leverage this traffic? How can we engage these audiences? And I think that that's a really, really intelligent way to think about it. So grateful to Ross for joining us for that session, and y'all are for a real treat because he's got nothing but gems. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Okay, so let's get started because there's a lot to cover and why we're talking about this is basically because there's an abundance of Reddit results on Google, at least at the time of this recording. I would imagine it'll still be that way by the time this episode actually is released. But I want to start at the beginning because in the beginning there was content and it was good. Humans consumed printed content on pages made of paper of all kinds, cardstock, A4, glossy, and it was good. But then came the machines and humankind deteriorated into a black hole of five ways to and 10 best things to, and it was not good. Then in 2020, a new day dawned on the horizons of the web when Google announced passage ranking said to impact 7% of search queries, and it was meh. Not really that impactful, not really that big of a deal, but all kidding aside, the story does, I think begin with passage ranking where Google said, "Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right"... Or maybe I'm quoting Barry, Wait, am I quoting Barry? I think I'm quoting Barry quoting Google. No, no, I'm not quoting Barry, I'm quoting Google. So Google said, "Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right since sometimes a single sentence that answers your question might be buried deep in a web page." And this is already years ago, "we've recently made a breakthrough in ranking and are now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the web." They don't actually mean index, they mean rank actual passages from the web. "By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle in a haystack information you're looking for." And this is the first time where Google basically said outright, we want to get past the crap that's out there on the web and reward creators with real expertise who are talking about very specific things that answer very specific questions. And Google's been on this quest for... what, we're in 2024. 4 years. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Google's been on this quest for four years and we haven't exactly gotten there. But then in November 2023, Google came and started to talk about hidden gems, which is to be determined. We're not there yet in terms of seeing the impact of the hidden gems, but Google wrote in November of 2023... Google or no, now I'm quoting Barry. Now I'm quoting Barry, quoting Google. Barry wrote, "Google has rolled out ranking improvements aimed at showcasing more content from social media, blog posts, forums, and more that share personal insights and experience." This is the hidden gems announcement Google made back in May 2023, but this update is not part of the helpful content updates system, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Google's has announced that they're trying to find ways to reward personal experience, real expertise. Kind of what they were talking about with the passage ranking thing, but much more formalized. And they've added this to the core algorithm, and this is where I think Reddit on the SERP was born. Google wants to reward specific answers that have actual expertise based on actual firsthand knowledge and firsthand experiences, but they don't have the content to do it. Most web content, most blog posts are not taken from a first-person experience point of view. If I'm writing about how to create a SEO report for your clients. My default is not going to be, let me tell you my personal experience with my personal clients. I'm going to write a very stoic, generic, almost like cold post about the best ways to create a SEO report for your clients. So there's not a lot of content out there that's taken from that first-person, first-experience point of view. So Google went a little bit too far down the social media rabbit hole, particularly with the Reddit rabbit hole because they don't have anything else. And I think that's how we got here. And that's why there's so much Reddit showing up for so many queries. Crystal Carter: I think it's important to remember that Google has bought into Reddit. They've invested in the company and having access to their database and things like that. And I think the other thing that's important to think about is when you're talking about the passage ranking, one of the things that's really important to that, and I think that was at Search On that they announced that they were doing passage ranking. And the thing that's really important about that is that it also has to do with NLP. So natural language processing and Reddit forums and all forums really are written in natural language because it's someone going, why is my plant dying? I've tried feeding it with this fertilizer, I've tried moving it to this window, and I don't understand why my Monstera plant is struggling. I don't understand. And then someone goes, oh, I had a Monstera that was like that, and it was like dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and this didn't happen, and all that sort of stuff. Or like mom blogs, we were talking about dad jokes, mom forums, places like Mumsnet in the UK for instance, are full of people being like, oh, I've been trying to get my kid to sleep for weeks and he's teething now. And somebody's like, oh yeah, well, my son did this and my daughter did that, and dah, dah, dah, dah. And all of those things are written in natural language, and I think that that's really important to think about because of the bots, right? Because of all the AI content, this is essentially, forum content is kind of a foil to that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's why Google has to do it. They know they have to swing the other way a little bit. They can't be seen as a place where you're getting content that might be too generic because in an AI world, too generic is a real branding problem. And it makes sense, I agree with the notion that you should be going first-person experience on the SERP with content in general. I just think you're saying... and you're hitting on such a great point, but I don't want to spoil it yet because I want to get to it later about the forums and mom forums and SEO forums and all the other forums that are out there. But you're right, they're trying to train the LLMs on this stuff. I think that, by the way, as a separate point, training large language models on places like Reddit I think is problematic at best because I'm not sure you're always getting an unbiased view of whatever it is that you're looking to understand from a place like Reddit. Crystal Carter: So one of the things that's interesting about Reddit is the demographics of Reddit. The demographics of Reddit are very much swinging in the sort of realms of, it's very male, it tends to be fairly young, and that's something that it's real challenge. For instance, if you're talking about mom blogs, if you're talking about the experiences of moms and stuff, what a 20-year-old boy... not a boy, I'm sorry, my apologies, what a 20-year-old young man has... I'm showing my age- Mordy Oberstein: I'm a man. Crystal Carter: I'm showing my age. I'm an old lady, I'm sorry. What a 20-year-old has to say about kids teething or something is going to be different from what somebody who's had three children and is maybe in their 30s, 40s, et cetera is going to say about that. And I think that it's a real challenge with some of those topics because there are biases within certain platforms and also certain platforms are going to lead themselves to certain personality types. I've heard issues that people have had with Reddit where people are kind of mean, which will mean that some people won't go to those kinds of spaces. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: Similarly, a place like Pinterest is going to have a different kind of vibe. And so if there were leaning into Pinterest, that would have a different kind of effect on the kinds of information that we're showing on the SERP. Whereas if you're talking about gaming, Reddit's a great place. Mordy Oberstein: That might be a great place, I agree. Crystal Carter: That's a great place to get information about gaming, but for some topics, it's not great. And so I think Google's trying to patch this gap, but I think that one of the tricky things with Reddit is that demographically speaking, they're going to miss a lot of topics that Reddit just hasn't covered because it just hasn't really necessarily connected with those topics. It's also very American, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. And that I think is sort of the problem. Look, Google has this fire hose from Reddit, they have direct access to it, so they're going to use the Reddit. I think it ends up, you need to create a new incentive cycle in order to create the incentive for people to say, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start a forum, or I'm going to create a microblog, or I'm going to start writing in first-person based on first-person experiences and pivot the entire tone and the entire style and the entire way of writing my content on my actual blog. And then incentive really isn't there yet. Google did announce the structured data markup for forums, and smart people, like Aleyda Solis took advantage of as a signal, like Google does want more forum first-handed content, and if they only had good forums, they would pull that content into the server. Which what I'm saying, they don't really want to pull Reddit all the time. They do want to pull other forums, they're just not there yet. Crystal Carter: Well, I think that this is interesting because Mark Williams-Cook, who's a great person to follow online if you're interested in SEO so do you follow Mark, one of the things he was like, he was saying he's like, is this 2008? Again, because Google was way big into forums since day dot. Mordy Oberstein: Right, it almost is in a way. Crystal Carter: And it always has been. And there's a lot of forums. For instance, like Mumsnet, there's a World of Warcraft forum, there are forums for gardening, there are forums for... I follow Money Saving Expert in the UK. They've got a great forum on things like credit cards and loans and mortgages and all that kind of stuff. And people going, oh, is that worth getting that mortgage? Should I get this account? Is it worth paying the extra for that account? And people just discussing all of that stuff. And that content is round. So I think it's also a question of what tools Google has to access them. And I think that's why you mentioned passage ranking. If they have better tooling for understanding that content, that's really important. I think also, there's a lot of websites that don't even index their UGC stuff. So comments underneath blogs for instance, a lot of people don't index those, but whereas if you look at the reviews on Amazon for instance, not only do they index those, they've got separate pages dedicated specifically for those, which is going to give you that UGC, which is going to give you that sort of forum experience, because they're very forum-esque, like, is this vacuum cleaner good? And people are like, nah. Mordy Oberstein: You're right. It is a re-circling of that kind of content. I think it's a different take on that content and in a new way. I'll go back to Aleyda Solis, she created a forum called chat.seofomo.co, which by the way is on Wix. There's a little plug there. She created a forum where people can ask and answer SEO questions, and there's really good information there. And by the way, I actually asked this question on that forum just to prove the point of what should Google do about the Reddit issue. And I got a bunch of answers back really good answers back. And this is the kind of content that I think Google should be showing on the SERP forums, and not just Reddit. And Aleyda Solis herself wrote back, "Sadly, Google is never able to evolve their own social platform to have firsthand access to that sort of UGC, user-generated content, and now needs to rely on third-party whose quality they don't control. It's tricky. Bigger UGC-focused platforms like Reddit or Quora might facilitate access or scale to obtain that sort of information. However, the level of spam/low-quality information in there can be non-trivial for certain topics." She goes on to say, "This is something they need to identify how to filter or weight to avoid giving so much visibility due to their overall authority to overall UGC generalists with higher levels of spam and give more to niche-specialized one," meaning your point. That's I want to come back to your point, there needs to be more specialized forums like Aleyda's forum, like the mom forum, whatever forum, so they don't have to rely on Reddit all the time, but are much more like... Aleyda's moderating her forum. It's a higher level of control and quality, and it's a great point. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that Aleyda's is a classic example and very similar to the money-saving expert one in that it's attached to a website that has high authority. So Aleyda's, it's a sub-domain of SEO fomo, and she runs a newsletter. People know that brand. People know what's going on there, and people know that Aleyda knows her stuff, right? And so then she's got this forum that's attached to that. Similarly, money-saving expert, he's a great advocate for lots of things, has a great website, and has a forum attached to that. And so you're able to port those two things and say these two things are related, and Google can use the data that they have on the existing website to support how they place that forum in the SERP. And I think that that would create a better, more rich SERP experience because also in terms of people figuring out who's in charge of this and who's looking after this, and in the EAT, people can track that back to something that is more researched, more backed by general sources like you get from the web. Because I'm also here for that content. Can we just say that? People are saying like, oh, we shouldn't have something that's just written by somebody. People say, oh, it is just written by some content writer. Well, a content writer is a skilled writer who can write something coherent and based on research from the web and from whatever, and that's important. That is valuable content, and there's a reason why it ranks. And sometimes I've been on forums before and they're just rambling stuff and it's a bunch of things where somebody says this is the answer, and it's clearly not, and somebody says it's not- Mordy Oberstein: No. That's why the moderation is such an important part of it, but I think there's no immediate answer to this question. It's a slow burn because there has to be an increase in the creation of these kind of forums and this kind of content. And in order for that to happen, you need to change an entire incentive cycle. Gary Kirwan from Traffic Think Tank wrote, "Unless they change their obvious KPI metric to surface X percent more diverse content from forums, this is here to stay and keep growing." And what he's basically, I think saying is Google says, okay, we need to have X percentage... they don't actually say this, but imagine they say, X percentage of results need to be from forums. If Google's going to be very linear about that, then we're stuck with the Reddit for a long time, and I think in long term are dis-incentivizing forums from mom and pop forums from ranking. Because I'm not going to compete with Reddit. So I think they do need to just scale it back and find another solution and address the short-term dissatisfaction of not having that firsthand content with a longer actual substantial, long-term solution that can actually be sustainable. Crystal Carter: I think it's tricky because if you look at the demographic, the demographic is 74% men and 25% women. And 48% of users are from the United States, for instance. If you wanted to get more balanced information about whatever topic, that's not a balanced demographic of humanity. It's just not. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, by the way, Gianluca Fiorelli on Aleyda's forum said literally the same thing, he wrote, Reddit is very popular, but its popularity is not equally distributed worldwide. So what I fear and start seeing is Reddit shadowing the visibility of local forums that are more relevant for local audiences than Reddit. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a problem that you can't just patch with Reddit. So hopefully Reddit is a first step, and hopefully they'll be able to revive some of the forums and things that they've been looking at and that have been thriving for years. If you think about, is it WebmasterWorld or whatever, that's a forum that's been around for a long time, and that's a forum that's got a lot of... Google will have lots of information about the SERP on that, something that Barry references really regularly, Barry Schwartz. And I hope that this is first start of them engaging in more direct user-generated content. That's evidenced by the quality rater guidelines, which have a whole new section all about forums. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Google is all in from the algorithm updates to those things, to the hidden gems, to we're assuming with Reddit, we know what they want. I do think, though, to that point, I know it's not Google's style and I understand why it's not their style, it's a separate conversation, I think they need to just come out and say it. We want to rank more forums. We don't want to rank just Reddit. Go out there folks and create really high-quality forums because we want to rank them. And that's the only way you're going to speed up this process, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they've got some more schema stuff that they've been incentivizing in that way. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but those are very backhanded signals. Unless you're again, super smart, like Aleyda's going to capitalize on that... by the way, another plug, Wix, Wix Studio, we automatically add a markup to your forum for you so you don't have to edit, it's there. Just saying, but unless you're really on the ball, really keeping on top of these things, you're not going to do it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think if people start seeing the traffic, then people will start responding and hopefully it won't just be traffic to Reddit. And Quora's also getting a lot as well. I think people haven't been talking about Quora so much, but Quora's been getting a lot of traffic as well. So I think it's important that when people start seeing the signals, they'll start investing the time. I think the tricky thing is they're just relying on the goodwill of people to make content, and maybe they will, maybe they won't. And I think that that's one of the things that's tricky. Mordy Oberstein: We shall see. Now, again, I don't want to, I have issues. You have issues, we all have issues, and as we discussed, Reddit has many issues, many, many issues, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. In fact, don't throw out the bath water, just let it drain down because a baby can't fit down a drain anyway. You follow what I'm saying? Crystal Carter: I think it's a reference to before there were baths, like indoor plumbing- Mordy Oberstein: Like, why would you throw out the bath water? Crystal Carter: It's like a bath- Mordy Oberstein: Babies can't fit down drains. Crystal Carter: Baby baths are in a bucket. They're like a bucket. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. Crystal Carter: That's what we're talking about- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay, yeah. Okay. Okay. Now it makes more sense. I was like, why throw out the bath water? You just drain it. It never made sense to me. Crystal Carter: It's harder to throw. You can't throw your whole sink out the window. Mordy Oberstein: No. And why would you do it? Take buckets and throw out the bath water. Okay, you've gone way... Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, don't cast Reddit aside. Use it. Use it. And to help us learn how to best leverage and use Reddit, the social media platform we all know and love, now and in the future, special guests to one and only. Ross Simmonds, the founder of Foundation, a content marketing agency is here to join us as we take a look into the future of Reddit with a little segment we call Crystal's Ball. Welcome to SERP's Up, Ross. How are you? Ross Simmonds: Going on. I'm doing well, doing well. No complaints. Things are great in my world. Crystal Carter: Absolutely love it. I've been seeing you doing lots of video stuff online and lots of obviously content distribution and just always speaking absolute sense. Ross Simmonds: Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, I'm pushing hard on the distribution thing right now. I've got a book coming out, so I'm definitely ramping up on the stories around distribution and how powerful it is. And yeah, I'm doubling down for the next little bit. Mordy Oberstein: You're one of the few consistent people that my social algorithm likes across all social media platforms, so that's a big kudos. Ross Simmonds: That is. I appreciate that. I'm glad. That means that I'm doing something right, hopefully. And as long as you don't click those little three dots and then unfollow or mute, I'm doing my job. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no, no don't, follow Ross. The videos are great, by the way. You've been doing them for such a long time. Ross Simmonds: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, video's a lot of fun. It's one of those things that my nickname in high school was Shy Ross, so old me would've never pictured myself being okay with video content. So it's been an internal journey, let's say, to get comfortable with it, but it's been fun. The response has been great. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. So today, we're talking about the world's largest cesspool and how to succeed in it- Crystal Carter: Just jumping right in there. Mordy Oberstein: I don't really get into the world of this podcast and just- Ross Simmonds: There's no bias. You don't hate- Mordy Oberstein: No, I love- Mordy Oberstein: But, those who are still confused, I'm talking about Reddit, obviously. All kidding aside. So this is a good conversation for me because I'm somebody who has a hard time with Reddit. I have a hard time existing on Reddit, navigating Reddit, but you're saying it's a viable channel for people. Ross Simmonds: Yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm a big believer. I've been a Redditor for a long time. Mordy Oberstein: Convince me. Ross Simmonds: Yeah, and I'm going to try. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Ross Simmonds: So here's the thing with Reddit, it's essentially a replication in my opinion of culture. And oftentimes people go down a path where they look at the holistic demographics and psychographics of Redditors and they put them all in one bucket. But what is oftentimes underestimated is the number of subcultures that exist within this massive platform that might skew towards one demographic, but there are subcultures within it that actually might look and seem a little bit more niche than the traditional internet. So there are subreddits, for example, that are dedicated to small little communities and towns all over the world. For example, Halifax, which is where I'm from, small place in Nova Scotia, has a very popular subreddit dedicated to Halifax where there's thousands of people who talk about things happening here. It's not reflective of the entire internet, but it is a very small group. Similar, there's a subreddit that is dedicated to futurology. And again, this might be a little bit more along the lines of what people would expect Redditors to look like, where it's a lot of kind of geeks talking about things in the future. But then you'll also find that there's subreddits about very niche tasks. There could be one about dads learning to braid. And for me as a dad with two girls, and I would love to be able to do cornrows, I can go into a subreddit and learn from people who actually know how to do that, and they will show me tips and tricks on how to do cornrows. So within this major massive community, there are pockets where I think brands can show up, businesses can show up and extract value, but also humans. And for me, I'm a big fantasy football guy. I love the NFL, I love the Philadelphia Eagles. So I go- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the second-best team in Pennsylvania. Ross Simmonds: Oh no, you're a Steelers fan. I have no comments on that one. Mordy Oberstein: Good luck with Kenny. Good luck. Ross Simmonds: That's fair. Good luck with two quarterbacks. Mordy Oberstein: That's also fair. Ross Simmonds: So you can go into these communities and you can learn a ton. And that's my typical advice for anyone is to first find your people because your people are probably on Reddit, they just might not be in a very popular subreddit that is followed by millions and millions of people. There are subreddits that are dedicated to regions, dedicated to things like barbecue, dedicated to plant-based food, dedicated to vegan food, you name it, there's subreddits associated with everything. All that said, is Reddit filled with chaos and things that you don't want to read and consume? No doubt about it, there are subreddits that are super toxic, super ridiculous, say offside things, are offside, and probably shouldn't be on the internet. That exists, too. But also, let's be real, so does culture. Culture has people who are that. So I think it's a blend. It's a reflection of society more than anything. Crystal Carter: So one of the things that comes out of that discussion there and some great fantastic points... just before we were talking about you've been in this space since 2016, you've written a book on it and that sort of thing. And I think that one of the things that comes out from that is sometimes it's a question of quality rather than quantity. So that it might be a question of finding something that is very, very, very relevant rather than something that is very, very, very popular. Is that an approach? Ross Simmonds: That's exactly it. Let's pretend for example that we are a coffee shop or a founder of a coffee shop and we're trying to launch our own coffee store. What I would advise that individual to do is not just become overwhelmed when they log into Reddit and see all of this noise of a viral post in the news and all of the chaos and all of these things, the going into a NSFW subreddit, just let's put on our blinders for a second and go in with an intention to say, okay, I'm starting a coffee shop, what are things that are relevant to me? Entrepreneurship, coffee, beans, best roast, maybe decor, location, things like that. You can go into now, subreddits like r/Entrepreneur, which is a subreddit that is dedicated to entrepreneurs, and you can go into the search bar and you can type in coffee shops. And it's very likely that you are going to find a bunch of threads from entrepreneurs who have written about their experiences running or launching coffee shops. So you can now learn very specific information and insight from someone... and this is where it gets very interesting, from someone who is not creating this content with the intention of capturing organic traffic and then selling you a course, but instead, their own sole intention was to get karma amongst a community where they would get thumbs up in votes. So they're giving as much value as possible. And I think that mechanism is what has made Reddit valuable. People aren't yet... traditionally things have changed now that Google's announced that Reddit's a place for getting traffic and SEO and all that stuff. But traditionally, Reddit was built on in many ways, the buddy system where it's like, I'm going to give as much value to this community as possible, and I might get thumbs up, votes up, and that's going to be good. Or if I give something that's really valuable and now we're getting a little bit into the weeds, I might get Reddit Gold. And Reddit Gold is something that people can pay with their actual credit cards to give someone extra brownie points on the platform that gives them additional perks and benefits when they're using the tool. Crystal Carter: And I think that some of those interactive points are really, really important for a viable forum. If you look in the quality reader's guidelines, they've added additional information about forums specifically, and they talk about upvotes, they talk about interaction, they talk about things like that. And certainly when you look at other forum spaces, like even Google has product expert spaces. So people like Joy Hawkins is a platinum Google business profile expert. And I think that being able to engage with a community that has people that are that active from a business point of view, how important is that to businesses? Ross Simmonds: It's huge. I think right now almost in every industry, there's someone on Reddit who's asking a question or having a dialogue where you could show up and add value and it'd benefit your business. So that is on a local level. If you sell to a specific region, join your community subreddit because there's probably tourists that are commenting and asking questions like, Hey, when I have a trip to Pennsylvania, where should I eat? What should I do? And you as a business owner have a chance and an opportunity to respond there, add a bunch of value by referencing things that aren't you, but then also say, and also check out my restaurant. Check out my coffee shop, check out my gaming group. Whatever it might be that you offer, plug yourself in the mix. Then in addition to that, there's two benefits that are going to happen. One, you've added value in that specific thread, but two, if the value was significant enough, it might start to show up in the SERP and Google might actually start driving traffic to that page when someone asks the question, things to do with kids in Pennsylvania or things to do with kids in New York, whatever it might be that you've answered. So that is what I always advise folks to do is, keep your eyes open for opportunities where questions exist that you can show up and answer those questions and add as much value as possible because you want those upvotes. And then once you get those upvotes, move on to the next one and continue to rinse and repeat. Mordy Oberstein: So three things. One, I retract my earlier statement a little bit. I do find that when I go to Google and Reddit shows up there, if it's something that I really want, that really first person valuable experience, I do get it. I also, by the way, find that sometimes I don't actually click. I just see the little snippet there. I got enough and I move on. That's a different point. Two, pro-tip on Reddit, do not go into a New York Mets subreddit on Bobby Bonilla Day and wish them a happy Bobby Bonilla Day. You'll lose all your karma, I know this from experience. The third thing though is, how do you go about actually doing this? Reddit to me seems like very, very organic. They're going to find you out really quickly if you're just in there plugging away, commenting away just about your business. I want to make sure our audience understands what it actually means to engage and do this. Ross Simmonds: Yeah. I really appreciate that question because a lot of marketers go into Reddit and they think that they should just submit a bunch of links, plug their business, and then leave and call it a day, rinse, and repeat that strategy. I tried it and you get banned and blocked very quickly. I think I've been blocked already about 13 times in my life. Crystal Carter: You're on a list, man. Ross Simmonds: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Did you also wish the Mets fans Happy Bobby Bonilla Day? Ross Simmonds: No, I just plugged in a bunch of my links and hoped that they would get upvoted and it doesn't work that way. But I got banned from technology, from SEO, all the communities, ghost bans, all the bans, bye Felicia, I was kicked out. It was not fun. Crystal Carter: Did you come back with a hat, look, hey guys, it's me. Ross Simmonds: Exactly. Had the giant glasses. Yeah, I came back and I figured out the code to making this stuff work. And to your question, here's what it is, you don't want to go into these communities and spam. You want to go into these communities and add value, but two, you also have to show that you are a little bit of a human and not a robot. And what I mean by that is, go into other communities that might not be exactly your space and your niche and add some comments there, too. So for every one post that I believe is business-oriented and going to potentially benefit me, I'll add two more posts that hopefully are community-oriented and will help people on Reddit in some different way, fashion, or form. It could be as simple as going into a sports subreddit and saying, my pick for next year's MVP is, Jalen Hurts. Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Not Kenny Pickett. Ross Simmonds: Yeah, it's not happening. I hope he doesn't start. That would be very stressful. But dropping a few of those little tidbits of just human combos tends to go afar in these communities because you have to build up a bit of karma to be able to actually publish frequently in some different spaces. So every subreddit has its own rules you have to follow and oblige by those rules. One other pro tip, every subreddit has an ego. So Redditors tend to have ego around their community, and if you're an outsider coming in, there can be a lot of issues. So one of my best things to always recommend people do is when you are going into these communities, always, I don't want to say pretend but act like you are so grateful for all the contributions that everyone in the community has given in the past. So whenever I go into these communities, I start a post by saying, Hey folks, I've been a long-time lurker of this subreddit, and I have gotten so much value out of this community, I want to give value back. And I say that because I don't want to get a bunch of downvotes, people saying, oh, look at you, you're trying to spam us and all that good stuff. I'll come in with that type of a message, then I'll deliver as much value as possible, and then I'll get upvotes all the way to the moon and make it to the front page, and then you win from Reddit. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot of politics for a social media platform. Ross Simmonds: It is, but that's social media these days. Crystal Carter: I mean, it's a community, isn't it? It's kind of like, you wouldn't show up at somebody's house and just start throwing stuff everywhere and just like, well, I've got a space for me, I've got a seat for me. I've got some food on my plate. You guys don't get food on your plate. You wouldn't, like somebody invites you around for dinner and you don't say thank you, you wouldn't do that. Mordy Oberstein: My kids do it all the time. Ross Simmonds: And I think one other piece that I would advise people to do is, before you go into any subreddit, a great hack is to sort the content by top post. So in a subreddit, you can go into a subreddit like r/Entrepreneur or let's say barbecue, and you can click on a button that says sort by. And instead of setting your default to sort by new post, you're going to set your settings to sort by top post. And then there's a section where you have the opportunity to select the amount of time that you want this sort to be applied to, and you're going to select all time. Now, what you're going to do is analyze the types of posts that have generated the most engagement, most comments, most shares, most combos in your subreddit. So if you see that in the barbecue subreddit, the most popular piece is always when people are comparing two different types of smokers, then you can say to yourself, okay, when did that go viral? It went viral three years ago. I'm going to come back to this subreddit with a very similar style post about the best smokers that you should have in 2024, and I'm going to add additional value to my post, and I'm going to share that because I know that this post has content market fit with this subreddit. You rinse and repeat that across every subreddit that is relevant to your niche and your audience, and you will win. We've done this with clients, and the clients have actually had their websites crash because of the amount of traffic that they can get from one subreddit. That's another- Crystal Carter: Was any of your client's game? Ross Simmonds: Right. That's another piece of it. It's like you have to recognize, they call Reddit the front page of the internet. So be ready if you do make the front page to have a ridiculous amount of traffic to your site. Crystal Carter: Okay, so the front page of the internet, it now is kind of going to be kind of the front page of the internet. What's your opinion on the Google Reddit acquisition partnership... not a straight acquisition- Mordy Oberstein: Fire hose of Reddit. Ross Simmonds: Yeah. Crystal Carter: What's your opinion? Ross Simmonds: It's interesting. I think it's interesting. And I know what Google's trying to do, and I can appreciate what they're attempting to do, and I wished that there were more Reddits out there so we could have a more diversified SERP of different forms and communities. But unfortunately, Reddit is one of the last standing forums in a traditional sense that is fully scrapable and digestible, et cetera. So to me, I get what Google is trying to do because oftentimes if I'm asking a question, like what are the must-read books on a certain topic, I will sometimes include in my query Reddit because I want to hear from Redditors or real people what they think. And the reason why we do that is because we don't want to read content that was written by SEOs. We don't want to read a piece that an SEO wrote with the full intention of just ranking. We want to hear from other people who are like us. Now, that's where it gets difficult because everybody on Reddit isn't like us. So while the SERP is so influential, I think the other part of this becomes like, is there a world where content from Facebook groups eventually starts to show up in the SERP or from Pinterest starts to show up in the SERP or where else can it come from? It's going to be a fascinating time. I get what they're trying to do, but I don't know if it's going to fully achieve what they are sending out for it to accomplish. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I feel like they don't have the actual forms that they want. They want the Aleyda Solis' of the world to create a forum at SEO and have all that content there so they can rank that. But there's very few, in case you ever realize, Aleyda Solis' on this planet, so there just isn't enough content, and I feel like they're stuck, so now we're stuck. Ross Simmonds: Right. Crystal Carter: So I've had a situation where I've tried to solve a problem. For instance, there's a lot of IT help desks that have essentially gone to forums, right? They're just like, y'all figure it out. I had problems with my broadband. Mordy knows all about this because it was a whole big drama. I had problems with my broadband, and I was trying to figure out my broadband, and they're like, just go to our help forum. It was literally the blind leading the blind. People were like, oh, I stood on one foot and it worked. Oh, I changed my TV channel and it worked, all this sort of thing. So I think the upvotes are great, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. If it's a question of lots of people who don't know what they're talking about and one person says, oh, you can remove your manual actions by just getting rid of Google search console, and everybody goes, that's great. That's one of the things I worry about. I worry about these things. Mordy Oberstein: You worry. It keeps you up at night worrying about the internet. Crystal Carter: I like smart people. And I'm not saying that there aren't smart people on Reddit, but people don't always qualify what they're saying. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you just lost all your karma. Ross Simmonds: It just evaporated. It's gone. Yeah, it's so true. No, I completely hear you. I agree. I think there is elements of that that is at risk, and I think that's also true though on the internet at scale. I think when you think of the amount of blogs that are being published, yes, Google is trying their hardest to create and rank content that is created by authoritative sources, but we all have recently seen people doing Parasite SEO and showing up on Harvard's domain somehow with content. And when you see that type of thing, it's like, okay, who do we trust? We need to fix some of the fundamental plumbing around the internet first. Mordy Oberstein: That's the real problem. The whole thing is fundamentally flawed. And on that happy note, we're out of time. Ross, where can people find you? Ross Simmonds: Yeah, you can find me at rosssimmonds.com. I'm also on all of your favorite social media channels. You can do a quick search for Ross Simmonds. I'm typically @TheCoolestCool. That was my Twitter handle, also my handle on Instagram, and things like that. But both of you, thank you so much for having me on to chat about Reddit. It's one of my favorite platforms, and I hope folks can learn from it, absorb it, and hopefully not get banned. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure to give Ross a big old following, throw some karma his way in upvotes, and all that good stuff on the Reddit. Ross Simmonds: I'll take it. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Thanks, Ross. Once again, thank you, Ross. Now, it's quite possible, and I don't know, I can't see the future, I don't have a crystal ball because I'm not Crystal and Mordy's Ball is more like a bowling ball than a crystal ball- Crystal Carter: It's a baseball, let's be honest. Mordy Oberstein: It's a baseball. Thank you. I'm literally wearing a baseball jersey and a baseball hat because it's opening day when we're recording this. It's like a holiday for me today. Crystal Carter: Okay. Yeah/ Mordy Oberstein: But it's quite possible that we could be covering something to do with Reddit on the SERP in the news today. Who knows? You'll have to wait and see as we see what the Mysterious Barry has in store for us today on our Snappy SEO News. So here's the Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, turns out that the March 2024 core update finished on April 19th. That's like two weeks ago from when you'll hear this recording. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google March 2024 core update finish, April 19th, a week ago from when Barry wrote this article on April 26th, so almost two weeks ago, the time of this recording. Google has said that they upped the number. They went from saying that the update removed 40% of unhelpful results from the SERP to saying 45 removed, helped reduce rather low quality and unoriginal content in search results by 45% to quote Barry. So they upped it from 40 to 45%. I'm not sure what that means yet. A lot of the big data is still coming out. I'm waiting for a SEMrush poll to come through and see what actually happened, how this update compares to other updates because it's just so different in terms of the rollout and in terms of what Google is saying. I know Glenn Gabe is preparing to write up an article as well. It'll be interesting to see how this all settles and how it all kind of plays out what the analysis sort of is. Very, very curious to see. But in terms of you analyzing your own rankings, the cutoff date is April 19th. That's not to say there can't be tremors and reversals that follow it. I typically find that about a week or so after an update, you could still see reversals coming through a bit. So take the date of April 19th with a little bit of a grain of salt, but that is the official date. It's March 5th through April 19th. Okay, shoot. This from Danny Goodwin, actually two from Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land. They kind of go together in my opinion. One is Google's CEO says, "AI overviews are increasing search usage." This is from Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO... I believe this is from Sundar's statements during or after, rather, their earnings call, basically saying that they're seeing an increase in AI overviews and Google's going to be evolving this experience as Danny says in the article, and yada, yada, yada, and they're going to make sure that there's traffic to actual websites and that this is going to expand and we're exploring more and we're doing more. And they particularly mentioned that there's pathways for monetization for them because again, this is an earnings call, so they want their investors to understand that with the AI advancements coming to the SERP, there is a plan for monetization. The next article is Head of Google Search demands urgency as growth slows. Google's Senior VP blames increasing competition costs and regulation on a new operating reality. This kind of works hand in hand with the other article. You kind of see how Google's saying publicly. I think this came out from an all-hands that kind of leaked out. So in this case, you have Google's Senior VP, Prabhakar Raghavan saying things like, I think we can agree that things are not like they were 15, 20 years ago, things have changed. He's calling for more agileness in how they develop. He's saying there's more competition, which Danny points out is probably talking about OpenAI and Meta and Microsoft, probably Amazon also, and yada, yada yada. They also increased costs. All the AI stuff that Google's doing is very costly. They're spending a lot to generate the SGE. He talks about that and talks about how they need to be different and it's not going to be easy going forward and yada, yada, yada. If you kind of put all the things Google is saying, whether it's from their CEO's public statements around their earnings calls, around SGE, and so forth, and you see what they're saying behind the scenes, it just kind of feels that something is happening at Google. I won't weigh in here what my personal thoughts are. I just want to point out these articles to you. We'll link to them in the show notes so you can read it, form your own opinion. We'll love to chat with you about this on social media because I do have a lot of thoughts about this and what's happening at Google because it is, I think one of the more interesting times, and you should definitely read the statements from both these senior level folks over at Google in the articles that Danny wrote for you. And that's going to do it for this week's Snappy News. Actually, I think by the way, that the news segment that we do is undervalued. Crystal Carter: No, it's not. Whenever I go out, people say, I really love the Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Because there's so much news out there around SEO. Barry produces 30 articles a day in an hour. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know how he does it. Barry, tell us how you do it. I don't know how you type that quickly or maybe voice type. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, but there's a lot of news that we don't cover, that we filter out because some of the things that Barry has to cover are absurd. Like, you should still have an about page, even though it might not be a ranking factor. We don't cover that on this podcast because that's just bonkers. But God bless Barry for covering it so that people know the truth about SEO. And the truth is, by the way, that you should not only read the SEO news, but the truth is you should also be following some great SEOs out there on forums. I guess Reddit, I guess there's some good SEOs on Reddit, but also X or LinkedIn. And that brings us to this week's follow of the week, which is Ori Zilbershtein, who is at O-R-I-Z-I-L-B-E-R-S-H-T-E-I-N. That's a mouthful. So we'll link to his profile in the show notes. Ori's talked a lot about what goes on Reddit. I like Ori as a follow, as a person, as a friend. I've actually interviewed him a few times in my other podcasts. He's brilliant. He takes a very conceptual approach to things. He's got a very cut through the nonsense kind of approach to SEO marketing overall, and he's gone through a ton about the value of Reddit on the SERP and the not value of Reddit on the SERP and where things should be going and how Google should deal with this kind of stuff. So definitely give Ori a big follow and tell him what we sent you. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great follow. Super active on Twitter, so yeah, check in. Tell 'em we sent you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, tell 'em we sent you. Hey, Ori, we're telling people, tell 'em we sent you. We should be a weird post, like, Hey Ori, I heard you on the SERP's Up podcast, they told me to tell you that they sent me. Crystal Carter: I'm here because of Crystal and Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I'm here. I'm not sure what to do now, but they told me to tell you. Crystal Carter: Sometimes I think about what following in real life would be like. People are like, oh yeah, you should follow that person. There's just people literally just following you around. Mordy Oberstein: And they're like saying, I like that. You pull a thing off the shelf of the grocery store, like, oh, I like that, good purchase. Crystal Carter: Right? I do like pop-tarts, and you're like, what? Mordy Oberstein: I'll retweet. I'll grab a box myself. Crystal Carter: Right? Or they go, he just bought pop-tarts. He just bought pop-tarts, everyone. You should also get some. Mordy Oberstein: Dr. Pete from Moz has a thing. If you went into a store and actually asked for things, what you ask on Google, like buy laptop now. You walk in the Best Buy and you just screamed, buy laptop now. Crystal Carter: I literally just enter lowest common denominator terms in sequence. I'm just like laptop, hi-res screen with- Mordy Oberstein: Cheap. Crystal Carter: Not even with, just like, yeah, cheap 35, megabyte. I don't know, that's not that many megabytes, but you know what I mean. I just, literally like, 10 terabytes. Mordy Oberstein: That'd be great. Walk in like, cheap laptop. Crystal Carter: Now. Near me. Mordy Oberstein: Now. Near me. On that happy note, 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 new episodes. We dive into how to reignite and revitalize your SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and downloadable resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ross Simmonds Ori Zilbershtein Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: Google Ends Video Carousel Structured Data Test Google Search Tests Thumbs Up/Down Buttons In Product Grid Results Google Will Fight Site Reputation Abuse Spam Both With Manual Actions & Algorithms Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ross Simmonds Ori Zilbershtein Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: Google Ends Video Carousel Structured Data Test Google Search Tests Thumbs Up/Down Buttons In Product Grid Results Google Will Fight Site Reputation Abuse Spam Both With Manual Actions & Algorithms 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 on some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the uncompromising, but in a good way, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Mordy Oberstein: Uncompromising on your SEO values and your humanity is what I meant. Crystal Carter: That's right. Upvote for that. Mordy Oberstein: Beat me to this. Beat me to this. I guess that's karma for you. Crystal Carter: Oh, oh, oh. Well, I'm sure if we can make a thread about it or something. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Somebody, by the way, commented on social media, I love how you all hint at the topic before you actually get to it, which we're doing right now. Crystal Carter: As if the person who's listening to the podcast hasn't actually read the title of the podcast- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's possible. Crystal Carter: Is it possible? Mordy Oberstein: No, that's totally possible. Crystal Carter: It's cool. Mordy Oberstein: If you're the regular listener... I listen to this sports podcasts every day, I don't look at the title, I'm, like, oh, I just keep going. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's all good. Do you know what, somebody was like, oh, I summarized your podcast with ChatGPT? I'm like, you're missing the entire point. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I saw that. Crystal Carter: I'm like, what? Mordy Oberstein: You lose all the flavor. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right, right. It's like saying- Mordy Oberstein: You come for the insights, but you stay for the entertainment. Crystal Carter: It's nice. You're missing the vibes, guys. People who are listening to the podcast, you're vibing with us. We're all vibing together. It's like a whole SEO vibe. It's important. Mordy Oberstein: That AI cannot replicate at all. Crystal Carter: No, no. We're definitely real people. This is- Mordy Oberstein: We're beyond AI. It's more like Reddit for your ears. Okay. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter search site each and every month at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our Zapier integration to do things like post a new event from your Wix studio website to a subreddit automatically. This as this week, in case you haven't gotten the hints, we're talking about the problem on the SERP with Reddit. Well, I don't know if it's a problem. Who knows? Because I read it somewhere that perhaps there's too much Reddit on the SERP. I can't recall where I read it, but I did read it or read it somewhere. You know I'm going to keep making that joke the entire time now. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's in the stars, I read it. Sorry. Okay. That's right. We're taking up the abundance of Reddit on the SERP and what Google should perhaps do about it from the reason why Google has gone Reddit to how it all to LLMs and how to address the reason why Reddit is on the SERP with complaints about Reddit on the SERP. And to help us solve this complex problem, joining the podcast this week is you all. We're going through the comments y'all have left on this issue across the wider social media universe, and we'll also chat with none other than Ross Simmonds about the future of Reddit and how marketers can really leverage it. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media like Reddit, I guess for more SEO awesomeness. So forgo any preconceived notions about forums being at the forefront of the SERP as we attempt to foresee the future of forum formulations on the results page and how it might foreshadow wider marketing trends on this the 85th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Please forgive me. Crystal Carter: That was formidable. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Thank you. It's also like how many dad jokes can I possibly make in one intro? Crystal Carter: I think that's kind of fine. We're talking about Reddit, there's a lot of dads on Reddit. There's also a lot of other folks on Reddit. There must be a dad joke Reddit, right? Mordy Oberstein: I'm sure. Yeah. No, there's definitely got to be a dad joke Reddit, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. There's got to be, I'm sure. Mordy Oberstein: There's definitely inappropriate joke Reddit, so there has to be a counterbalance to that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean, basically all the folks that I know that spend a lot of time on Reddit basically go and look for the worst things on the internet on Reddit. Mordy Oberstein: We'll get into this because we already recorded the section with Ross before recording this section to drop the fourth wall, and I am telling you, I made some heavy comments about my opinions about Reddit. Crystal Carter: Ross is a great person to speak to because Ross has come at this from a very strategic point of view. Because I think some people go to Reddit with a lot of feels like you're talking about, but he's only forever approached it from a strategic point of view, from a, how can we leverage this traffic? How can we engage these audiences? And I think that that's a really, really intelligent way to think about it. So grateful to Ross for joining us for that session, and y'all are for a real treat because he's got nothing but gems. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Okay, so let's get started because there's a lot to cover and why we're talking about this is basically because there's an abundance of Reddit results on Google, at least at the time of this recording. I would imagine it'll still be that way by the time this episode actually is released. But I want to start at the beginning because in the beginning there was content and it was good. Humans consumed printed content on pages made of paper of all kinds, cardstock, A4, glossy, and it was good. But then came the machines and humankind deteriorated into a black hole of five ways to and 10 best things to, and it was not good. Then in 2020, a new day dawned on the horizons of the web when Google announced passage ranking said to impact 7% of search queries, and it was meh. Not really that impactful, not really that big of a deal, but all kidding aside, the story does, I think begin with passage ranking where Google said, "Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right"... Or maybe I'm quoting Barry, Wait, am I quoting Barry? I think I'm quoting Barry quoting Google. No, no, I'm not quoting Barry, I'm quoting Google. So Google said, "Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right since sometimes a single sentence that answers your question might be buried deep in a web page." And this is already years ago, "we've recently made a breakthrough in ranking and are now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the web." They don't actually mean index, they mean rank actual passages from the web. "By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle in a haystack information you're looking for." And this is the first time where Google basically said outright, we want to get past the crap that's out there on the web and reward creators with real expertise who are talking about very specific things that answer very specific questions. And Google's been on this quest for... what, we're in 2024. 4 years. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Google's been on this quest for four years and we haven't exactly gotten there. But then in November 2023, Google came and started to talk about hidden gems, which is to be determined. We're not there yet in terms of seeing the impact of the hidden gems, but Google wrote in November of 2023... Google or no, now I'm quoting Barry. Now I'm quoting Barry, quoting Google. Barry wrote, "Google has rolled out ranking improvements aimed at showcasing more content from social media, blog posts, forums, and more that share personal insights and experience." This is the hidden gems announcement Google made back in May 2023, but this update is not part of the helpful content updates system, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Google's has announced that they're trying to find ways to reward personal experience, real expertise. Kind of what they were talking about with the passage ranking thing, but much more formalized. And they've added this to the core algorithm, and this is where I think Reddit on the SERP was born. Google wants to reward specific answers that have actual expertise based on actual firsthand knowledge and firsthand experiences, but they don't have the content to do it. Most web content, most blog posts are not taken from a first-person experience point of view. If I'm writing about how to create a SEO report for your clients. My default is not going to be, let me tell you my personal experience with my personal clients. I'm going to write a very stoic, generic, almost like cold post about the best ways to create a SEO report for your clients. So there's not a lot of content out there that's taken from that first-person, first-experience point of view. So Google went a little bit too far down the social media rabbit hole, particularly with the Reddit rabbit hole because they don't have anything else. And I think that's how we got here. And that's why there's so much Reddit showing up for so many queries. Crystal Carter: I think it's important to remember that Google has bought into Reddit. They've invested in the company and having access to their database and things like that. And I think the other thing that's important to think about is when you're talking about the passage ranking, one of the things that's really important to that, and I think that was at Search On that they announced that they were doing passage ranking. And the thing that's really important about that is that it also has to do with NLP. So natural language processing and Reddit forums and all forums really are written in natural language because it's someone going, why is my plant dying? I've tried feeding it with this fertilizer, I've tried moving it to this window, and I don't understand why my Monstera plant is struggling. I don't understand. And then someone goes, oh, I had a Monstera that was like that, and it was like dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and this didn't happen, and all that sort of stuff. Or like mom blogs, we were talking about dad jokes, mom forums, places like Mumsnet in the UK for instance, are full of people being like, oh, I've been trying to get my kid to sleep for weeks and he's teething now. And somebody's like, oh yeah, well, my son did this and my daughter did that, and dah, dah, dah, dah. And all of those things are written in natural language, and I think that that's really important to think about because of the bots, right? Because of all the AI content, this is essentially, forum content is kind of a foil to that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's why Google has to do it. They know they have to swing the other way a little bit. They can't be seen as a place where you're getting content that might be too generic because in an AI world, too generic is a real branding problem. And it makes sense, I agree with the notion that you should be going first-person experience on the SERP with content in general. I just think you're saying... and you're hitting on such a great point, but I don't want to spoil it yet because I want to get to it later about the forums and mom forums and SEO forums and all the other forums that are out there. But you're right, they're trying to train the LLMs on this stuff. I think that, by the way, as a separate point, training large language models on places like Reddit I think is problematic at best because I'm not sure you're always getting an unbiased view of whatever it is that you're looking to understand from a place like Reddit. Crystal Carter: So one of the things that's interesting about Reddit is the demographics of Reddit. The demographics of Reddit are very much swinging in the sort of realms of, it's very male, it tends to be fairly young, and that's something that it's real challenge. For instance, if you're talking about mom blogs, if you're talking about the experiences of moms and stuff, what a 20-year-old boy... not a boy, I'm sorry, my apologies, what a 20-year-old young man has... I'm showing my age- Mordy Oberstein: I'm a man. Crystal Carter: I'm showing my age. I'm an old lady, I'm sorry. What a 20-year-old has to say about kids teething or something is going to be different from what somebody who's had three children and is maybe in their 30s, 40s, et cetera is going to say about that. And I think that it's a real challenge with some of those topics because there are biases within certain platforms and also certain platforms are going to lead themselves to certain personality types. I've heard issues that people have had with Reddit where people are kind of mean, which will mean that some people won't go to those kinds of spaces. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: Similarly, a place like Pinterest is going to have a different kind of vibe. And so if there were leaning into Pinterest, that would have a different kind of effect on the kinds of information that we're showing on the SERP. Whereas if you're talking about gaming, Reddit's a great place. Mordy Oberstein: That might be a great place, I agree. Crystal Carter: That's a great place to get information about gaming, but for some topics, it's not great. And so I think Google's trying to patch this gap, but I think that one of the tricky things with Reddit is that demographically speaking, they're going to miss a lot of topics that Reddit just hasn't covered because it just hasn't really necessarily connected with those topics. It's also very American, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. And that I think is sort of the problem. Look, Google has this fire hose from Reddit, they have direct access to it, so they're going to use the Reddit. I think it ends up, you need to create a new incentive cycle in order to create the incentive for people to say, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start a forum, or I'm going to create a microblog, or I'm going to start writing in first-person based on first-person experiences and pivot the entire tone and the entire style and the entire way of writing my content on my actual blog. And then incentive really isn't there yet. Google did announce the structured data markup for forums, and smart people, like Aleyda Solis took advantage of as a signal, like Google does want more forum first-handed content, and if they only had good forums, they would pull that content into the server. Which what I'm saying, they don't really want to pull Reddit all the time. They do want to pull other forums, they're just not there yet. Crystal Carter: Well, I think that this is interesting because Mark Williams-Cook, who's a great person to follow online if you're interested in SEO so do you follow Mark, one of the things he was like, he was saying he's like, is this 2008? Again, because Google was way big into forums since day dot. Mordy Oberstein: Right, it almost is in a way. Crystal Carter: And it always has been. And there's a lot of forums. For instance, like Mumsnet, there's a World of Warcraft forum, there are forums for gardening, there are forums for... I follow Money Saving Expert in the UK. They've got a great forum on things like credit cards and loans and mortgages and all that kind of stuff. And people going, oh, is that worth getting that mortgage? Should I get this account? Is it worth paying the extra for that account? And people just discussing all of that stuff. And that content is round. So I think it's also a question of what tools Google has to access them. And I think that's why you mentioned passage ranking. If they have better tooling for understanding that content, that's really important. I think also, there's a lot of websites that don't even index their UGC stuff. So comments underneath blogs for instance, a lot of people don't index those, but whereas if you look at the reviews on Amazon for instance, not only do they index those, they've got separate pages dedicated specifically for those, which is going to give you that UGC, which is going to give you that sort of forum experience, because they're very forum-esque, like, is this vacuum cleaner good? And people are like, nah. Mordy Oberstein: You're right. It is a re-circling of that kind of content. I think it's a different take on that content and in a new way. I'll go back to Aleyda Solis, she created a forum called chat.seofomo.co, which by the way is on Wix. There's a little plug there. She created a forum where people can ask and answer SEO questions, and there's really good information there. And by the way, I actually asked this question on that forum just to prove the point of what should Google do about the Reddit issue. And I got a bunch of answers back really good answers back. And this is the kind of content that I think Google should be showing on the SERP forums, and not just Reddit. And Aleyda Solis herself wrote back, "Sadly, Google is never able to evolve their own social platform to have firsthand access to that sort of UGC, user-generated content, and now needs to rely on third-party whose quality they don't control. It's tricky. Bigger UGC-focused platforms like Reddit or Quora might facilitate access or scale to obtain that sort of information. However, the level of spam/low-quality information in there can be non-trivial for certain topics." She goes on to say, "This is something they need to identify how to filter or weight to avoid giving so much visibility due to their overall authority to overall UGC generalists with higher levels of spam and give more to niche-specialized one," meaning your point. That's I want to come back to your point, there needs to be more specialized forums like Aleyda's forum, like the mom forum, whatever forum, so they don't have to rely on Reddit all the time, but are much more like... Aleyda's moderating her forum. It's a higher level of control and quality, and it's a great point. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that Aleyda's is a classic example and very similar to the money-saving expert one in that it's attached to a website that has high authority. So Aleyda's, it's a sub-domain of SEO fomo, and she runs a newsletter. People know that brand. People know what's going on there, and people know that Aleyda knows her stuff, right? And so then she's got this forum that's attached to that. Similarly, money-saving expert, he's a great advocate for lots of things, has a great website, and has a forum attached to that. And so you're able to port those two things and say these two things are related, and Google can use the data that they have on the existing website to support how they place that forum in the SERP. And I think that that would create a better, more rich SERP experience because also in terms of people figuring out who's in charge of this and who's looking after this, and in the EAT, people can track that back to something that is more researched, more backed by general sources like you get from the web. Because I'm also here for that content. Can we just say that? People are saying like, oh, we shouldn't have something that's just written by somebody. People say, oh, it is just written by some content writer. Well, a content writer is a skilled writer who can write something coherent and based on research from the web and from whatever, and that's important. That is valuable content, and there's a reason why it ranks. And sometimes I've been on forums before and they're just rambling stuff and it's a bunch of things where somebody says this is the answer, and it's clearly not, and somebody says it's not- Mordy Oberstein: No. That's why the moderation is such an important part of it, but I think there's no immediate answer to this question. It's a slow burn because there has to be an increase in the creation of these kind of forums and this kind of content. And in order for that to happen, you need to change an entire incentive cycle. Gary Kirwan from Traffic Think Tank wrote, "Unless they change their obvious KPI metric to surface X percent more diverse content from forums, this is here to stay and keep growing." And what he's basically, I think saying is Google says, okay, we need to have X percentage... they don't actually say this, but imagine they say, X percentage of results need to be from forums. If Google's going to be very linear about that, then we're stuck with the Reddit for a long time, and I think in long term are dis-incentivizing forums from mom and pop forums from ranking. Because I'm not going to compete with Reddit. So I think they do need to just scale it back and find another solution and address the short-term dissatisfaction of not having that firsthand content with a longer actual substantial, long-term solution that can actually be sustainable. Crystal Carter: I think it's tricky because if you look at the demographic, the demographic is 74% men and 25% women. And 48% of users are from the United States, for instance. If you wanted to get more balanced information about whatever topic, that's not a balanced demographic of humanity. It's just not. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, by the way, Gianluca Fiorelli on Aleyda's forum said literally the same thing, he wrote, Reddit is very popular, but its popularity is not equally distributed worldwide. So what I fear and start seeing is Reddit shadowing the visibility of local forums that are more relevant for local audiences than Reddit. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a problem that you can't just patch with Reddit. So hopefully Reddit is a first step, and hopefully they'll be able to revive some of the forums and things that they've been looking at and that have been thriving for years. If you think about, is it WebmasterWorld or whatever, that's a forum that's been around for a long time, and that's a forum that's got a lot of... Google will have lots of information about the SERP on that, something that Barry references really regularly, Barry Schwartz. And I hope that this is first start of them engaging in more direct user-generated content. That's evidenced by the quality rater guidelines, which have a whole new section all about forums. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Google is all in from the algorithm updates to those things, to the hidden gems, to we're assuming with Reddit, we know what they want. I do think, though, to that point, I know it's not Google's style and I understand why it's not their style, it's a separate conversation, I think they need to just come out and say it. We want to rank more forums. We don't want to rank just Reddit. Go out there folks and create really high-quality forums because we want to rank them. And that's the only way you're going to speed up this process, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they've got some more schema stuff that they've been incentivizing in that way. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but those are very backhanded signals. Unless you're again, super smart, like Aleyda's going to capitalize on that... by the way, another plug, Wix, Wix Studio, we automatically add a markup to your forum for you so you don't have to edit, it's there. Just saying, but unless you're really on the ball, really keeping on top of these things, you're not going to do it. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think if people start seeing the traffic, then people will start responding and hopefully it won't just be traffic to Reddit. And Quora's also getting a lot as well. I think people haven't been talking about Quora so much, but Quora's been getting a lot of traffic as well. So I think it's important that when people start seeing the signals, they'll start investing the time. I think the tricky thing is they're just relying on the goodwill of people to make content, and maybe they will, maybe they won't. And I think that that's one of the things that's tricky. Mordy Oberstein: We shall see. Now, again, I don't want to, I have issues. You have issues, we all have issues, and as we discussed, Reddit has many issues, many, many issues, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. In fact, don't throw out the bath water, just let it drain down because a baby can't fit down a drain anyway. You follow what I'm saying? Crystal Carter: I think it's a reference to before there were baths, like indoor plumbing- Mordy Oberstein: Like, why would you throw out the bath water? Crystal Carter: It's like a bath- Mordy Oberstein: Babies can't fit down drains. Crystal Carter: Baby baths are in a bucket. They're like a bucket. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay. Crystal Carter: That's what we're talking about- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, okay, yeah. Okay. Okay. Now it makes more sense. I was like, why throw out the bath water? You just drain it. It never made sense to me. Crystal Carter: It's harder to throw. You can't throw your whole sink out the window. Mordy Oberstein: No. And why would you do it? Take buckets and throw out the bath water. Okay, you've gone way... Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, don't cast Reddit aside. Use it. Use it. And to help us learn how to best leverage and use Reddit, the social media platform we all know and love, now and in the future, special guests to one and only. Ross Simmonds, the founder of Foundation, a content marketing agency is here to join us as we take a look into the future of Reddit with a little segment we call Crystal's Ball. Welcome to SERP's Up, Ross. How are you? Ross Simmonds: Going on. I'm doing well, doing well. No complaints. Things are great in my world. Crystal Carter: Absolutely love it. I've been seeing you doing lots of video stuff online and lots of obviously content distribution and just always speaking absolute sense. Ross Simmonds: Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, I'm pushing hard on the distribution thing right now. I've got a book coming out, so I'm definitely ramping up on the stories around distribution and how powerful it is. And yeah, I'm doubling down for the next little bit. Mordy Oberstein: You're one of the few consistent people that my social algorithm likes across all social media platforms, so that's a big kudos. Ross Simmonds: That is. I appreciate that. I'm glad. That means that I'm doing something right, hopefully. And as long as you don't click those little three dots and then unfollow or mute, I'm doing my job. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no, no don't, follow Ross. The videos are great, by the way. You've been doing them for such a long time. Ross Simmonds: Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, video's a lot of fun. It's one of those things that my nickname in high school was Shy Ross, so old me would've never pictured myself being okay with video content. So it's been an internal journey, let's say, to get comfortable with it, but it's been fun. The response has been great. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. So today, we're talking about the world's largest cesspool and how to succeed in it- Crystal Carter: Just jumping right in there. Mordy Oberstein: I don't really get into the world of this podcast and just- Ross Simmonds: There's no bias. You don't hate- Mordy Oberstein: No, I love- Mordy Oberstein: But, those who are still confused, I'm talking about Reddit, obviously. All kidding aside. So this is a good conversation for me because I'm somebody who has a hard time with Reddit. I have a hard time existing on Reddit, navigating Reddit, but you're saying it's a viable channel for people. Ross Simmonds: Yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm a big believer. I've been a Redditor for a long time. Mordy Oberstein: Convince me. Ross Simmonds: Yeah, and I'm going to try. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Ross Simmonds: So here's the thing with Reddit, it's essentially a replication in my opinion of culture. And oftentimes people go down a path where they look at the holistic demographics and psychographics of Redditors and they put them all in one bucket. But what is oftentimes underestimated is the number of subcultures that exist within this massive platform that might skew towards one demographic, but there are subcultures within it that actually might look and seem a little bit more niche than the traditional internet. So there are subreddits, for example, that are dedicated to small little communities and towns all over the world. For example, Halifax, which is where I'm from, small place in Nova Scotia, has a very popular subreddit dedicated to Halifax where there's thousands of people who talk about things happening here. It's not reflective of the entire internet, but it is a very small group. Similar, there's a subreddit that is dedicated to futurology. And again, this might be a little bit more along the lines of what people would expect Redditors to look like, where it's a lot of kind of geeks talking about things in the future. But then you'll also find that there's subreddits about very niche tasks. There could be one about dads learning to braid. And for me as a dad with two girls, and I would love to be able to do cornrows, I can go into a subreddit and learn from people who actually know how to do that, and they will show me tips and tricks on how to do cornrows. So within this major massive community, there are pockets where I think brands can show up, businesses can show up and extract value, but also humans. And for me, I'm a big fantasy football guy. I love the NFL, I love the Philadelphia Eagles. So I go- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the second-best team in Pennsylvania. Ross Simmonds: Oh no, you're a Steelers fan. I have no comments on that one. Mordy Oberstein: Good luck with Kenny. Good luck. Ross Simmonds: That's fair. Good luck with two quarterbacks. Mordy Oberstein: That's also fair. Ross Simmonds: So you can go into these communities and you can learn a ton. And that's my typical advice for anyone is to first find your people because your people are probably on Reddit, they just might not be in a very popular subreddit that is followed by millions and millions of people. There are subreddits that are dedicated to regions, dedicated to things like barbecue, dedicated to plant-based food, dedicated to vegan food, you name it, there's subreddits associated with everything. All that said, is Reddit filled with chaos and things that you don't want to read and consume? No doubt about it, there are subreddits that are super toxic, super ridiculous, say offside things, are offside, and probably shouldn't be on the internet. That exists, too. But also, let's be real, so does culture. Culture has people who are that. So I think it's a blend. It's a reflection of society more than anything. Crystal Carter: So one of the things that comes out of that discussion there and some great fantastic points... just before we were talking about you've been in this space since 2016, you've written a book on it and that sort of thing. And I think that one of the things that comes out from that is sometimes it's a question of quality rather than quantity. So that it might be a question of finding something that is very, very, very relevant rather than something that is very, very, very popular. Is that an approach? Ross Simmonds: That's exactly it. Let's pretend for example that we are a coffee shop or a founder of a coffee shop and we're trying to launch our own coffee store. What I would advise that individual to do is not just become overwhelmed when they log into Reddit and see all of this noise of a viral post in the news and all of the chaos and all of these things, the going into a NSFW subreddit, just let's put on our blinders for a second and go in with an intention to say, okay, I'm starting a coffee shop, what are things that are relevant to me? Entrepreneurship, coffee, beans, best roast, maybe decor, location, things like that. You can go into now, subreddits like r/Entrepreneur, which is a subreddit that is dedicated to entrepreneurs, and you can go into the search bar and you can type in coffee shops. And it's very likely that you are going to find a bunch of threads from entrepreneurs who have written about their experiences running or launching coffee shops. So you can now learn very specific information and insight from someone... and this is where it gets very interesting, from someone who is not creating this content with the intention of capturing organic traffic and then selling you a course, but instead, their own sole intention was to get karma amongst a community where they would get thumbs up in votes. So they're giving as much value as possible. And I think that mechanism is what has made Reddit valuable. People aren't yet... traditionally things have changed now that Google's announced that Reddit's a place for getting traffic and SEO and all that stuff. But traditionally, Reddit was built on in many ways, the buddy system where it's like, I'm going to give as much value to this community as possible, and I might get thumbs up, votes up, and that's going to be good. Or if I give something that's really valuable and now we're getting a little bit into the weeds, I might get Reddit Gold. And Reddit Gold is something that people can pay with their actual credit cards to give someone extra brownie points on the platform that gives them additional perks and benefits when they're using the tool. Crystal Carter: And I think that some of those interactive points are really, really important for a viable forum. If you look in the quality reader's guidelines, they've added additional information about forums specifically, and they talk about upvotes, they talk about interaction, they talk about things like that. And certainly when you look at other forum spaces, like even Google has product expert spaces. So people like Joy Hawkins is a platinum Google business profile expert. And I think that being able to engage with a community that has people that are that active from a business point of view, how important is that to businesses? Ross Simmonds: It's huge. I think right now almost in every industry, there's someone on Reddit who's asking a question or having a dialogue where you could show up and add value and it'd benefit your business. So that is on a local level. If you sell to a specific region, join your community subreddit because there's probably tourists that are commenting and asking questions like, Hey, when I have a trip to Pennsylvania, where should I eat? What should I do? And you as a business owner have a chance and an opportunity to respond there, add a bunch of value by referencing things that aren't you, but then also say, and also check out my restaurant. Check out my coffee shop, check out my gaming group. Whatever it might be that you offer, plug yourself in the mix. Then in addition to that, there's two benefits that are going to happen. One, you've added value in that specific thread, but two, if the value was significant enough, it might start to show up in the SERP and Google might actually start driving traffic to that page when someone asks the question, things to do with kids in Pennsylvania or things to do with kids in New York, whatever it might be that you've answered. So that is what I always advise folks to do is, keep your eyes open for opportunities where questions exist that you can show up and answer those questions and add as much value as possible because you want those upvotes. And then once you get those upvotes, move on to the next one and continue to rinse and repeat. Mordy Oberstein: So three things. One, I retract my earlier statement a little bit. I do find that when I go to Google and Reddit shows up there, if it's something that I really want, that really first person valuable experience, I do get it. I also, by the way, find that sometimes I don't actually click. I just see the little snippet there. I got enough and I move on. That's a different point. Two, pro-tip on Reddit, do not go into a New York Mets subreddit on Bobby Bonilla Day and wish them a happy Bobby Bonilla Day. You'll lose all your karma, I know this from experience. The third thing though is, how do you go about actually doing this? Reddit to me seems like very, very organic. They're going to find you out really quickly if you're just in there plugging away, commenting away just about your business. I want to make sure our audience understands what it actually means to engage and do this. Ross Simmonds: Yeah. I really appreciate that question because a lot of marketers go into Reddit and they think that they should just submit a bunch of links, plug their business, and then leave and call it a day, rinse, and repeat that strategy. I tried it and you get banned and blocked very quickly. I think I've been blocked already about 13 times in my life. Crystal Carter: You're on a list, man. Ross Simmonds: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Did you also wish the Mets fans Happy Bobby Bonilla Day? Ross Simmonds: No, I just plugged in a bunch of my links and hoped that they would get upvoted and it doesn't work that way. But I got banned from technology, from SEO, all the communities, ghost bans, all the bans, bye Felicia, I was kicked out. It was not fun. Crystal Carter: Did you come back with a hat, look, hey guys, it's me. Ross Simmonds: Exactly. Had the giant glasses. Yeah, I came back and I figured out the code to making this stuff work. And to your question, here's what it is, you don't want to go into these communities and spam. You want to go into these communities and add value, but two, you also have to show that you are a little bit of a human and not a robot. And what I mean by that is, go into other communities that might not be exactly your space and your niche and add some comments there, too. So for every one post that I believe is business-oriented and going to potentially benefit me, I'll add two more posts that hopefully are community-oriented and will help people on Reddit in some different way, fashion, or form. It could be as simple as going into a sports subreddit and saying, my pick for next year's MVP is, Jalen Hurts. Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Not Kenny Pickett. Ross Simmonds: Yeah, it's not happening. I hope he doesn't start. That would be very stressful. But dropping a few of those little tidbits of just human combos tends to go afar in these communities because you have to build up a bit of karma to be able to actually publish frequently in some different spaces. So every subreddit has its own rules you have to follow and oblige by those rules. One other pro tip, every subreddit has an ego. So Redditors tend to have ego around their community, and if you're an outsider coming in, there can be a lot of issues. So one of my best things to always recommend people do is when you are going into these communities, always, I don't want to say pretend but act like you are so grateful for all the contributions that everyone in the community has given in the past. So whenever I go into these communities, I start a post by saying, Hey folks, I've been a long-time lurker of this subreddit, and I have gotten so much value out of this community, I want to give value back. And I say that because I don't want to get a bunch of downvotes, people saying, oh, look at you, you're trying to spam us and all that good stuff. I'll come in with that type of a message, then I'll deliver as much value as possible, and then I'll get upvotes all the way to the moon and make it to the front page, and then you win from Reddit. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot of politics for a social media platform. Ross Simmonds: It is, but that's social media these days. Crystal Carter: I mean, it's a community, isn't it? It's kind of like, you wouldn't show up at somebody's house and just start throwing stuff everywhere and just like, well, I've got a space for me, I've got a seat for me. I've got some food on my plate. You guys don't get food on your plate. You wouldn't, like somebody invites you around for dinner and you don't say thank you, you wouldn't do that. Mordy Oberstein: My kids do it all the time. Ross Simmonds: And I think one other piece that I would advise people to do is, before you go into any subreddit, a great hack is to sort the content by top post. So in a subreddit, you can go into a subreddit like r/Entrepreneur or let's say barbecue, and you can click on a button that says sort by. And instead of setting your default to sort by new post, you're going to set your settings to sort by top post. And then there's a section where you have the opportunity to select the amount of time that you want this sort to be applied to, and you're going to select all time. Now, what you're going to do is analyze the types of posts that have generated the most engagement, most comments, most shares, most combos in your subreddit. So if you see that in the barbecue subreddit, the most popular piece is always when people are comparing two different types of smokers, then you can say to yourself, okay, when did that go viral? It went viral three years ago. I'm going to come back to this subreddit with a very similar style post about the best smokers that you should have in 2024, and I'm going to add additional value to my post, and I'm going to share that because I know that this post has content market fit with this subreddit. You rinse and repeat that across every subreddit that is relevant to your niche and your audience, and you will win. We've done this with clients, and the clients have actually had their websites crash because of the amount of traffic that they can get from one subreddit. That's another- Crystal Carter: Was any of your client's game? Ross Simmonds: Right. That's another piece of it. It's like you have to recognize, they call Reddit the front page of the internet. So be ready if you do make the front page to have a ridiculous amount of traffic to your site. Crystal Carter: Okay, so the front page of the internet, it now is kind of going to be kind of the front page of the internet. What's your opinion on the Google Reddit acquisition partnership... not a straight acquisition- Mordy Oberstein: Fire hose of Reddit. Ross Simmonds: Yeah. Crystal Carter: What's your opinion? Ross Simmonds: It's interesting. I think it's interesting. And I know what Google's trying to do, and I can appreciate what they're attempting to do, and I wished that there were more Reddits out there so we could have a more diversified SERP of different forms and communities. But unfortunately, Reddit is one of the last standing forums in a traditional sense that is fully scrapable and digestible, et cetera. So to me, I get what Google is trying to do because oftentimes if I'm asking a question, like what are the must-read books on a certain topic, I will sometimes include in my query Reddit because I want to hear from Redditors or real people what they think. And the reason why we do that is because we don't want to read content that was written by SEOs. We don't want to read a piece that an SEO wrote with the full intention of just ranking. We want to hear from other people who are like us. Now, that's where it gets difficult because everybody on Reddit isn't like us. So while the SERP is so influential, I think the other part of this becomes like, is there a world where content from Facebook groups eventually starts to show up in the SERP or from Pinterest starts to show up in the SERP or where else can it come from? It's going to be a fascinating time. I get what they're trying to do, but I don't know if it's going to fully achieve what they are sending out for it to accomplish. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I feel like they don't have the actual forms that they want. They want the Aleyda Solis' of the world to create a forum at SEO and have all that content there so they can rank that. But there's very few, in case you ever realize, Aleyda Solis' on this planet, so there just isn't enough content, and I feel like they're stuck, so now we're stuck. Ross Simmonds: Right. Crystal Carter: So I've had a situation where I've tried to solve a problem. For instance, there's a lot of IT help desks that have essentially gone to forums, right? They're just like, y'all figure it out. I had problems with my broadband. Mordy knows all about this because it was a whole big drama. I had problems with my broadband, and I was trying to figure out my broadband, and they're like, just go to our help forum. It was literally the blind leading the blind. People were like, oh, I stood on one foot and it worked. Oh, I changed my TV channel and it worked, all this sort of thing. So I think the upvotes are great, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. If it's a question of lots of people who don't know what they're talking about and one person says, oh, you can remove your manual actions by just getting rid of Google search console, and everybody goes, that's great. That's one of the things I worry about. I worry about these things. Mordy Oberstein: You worry. It keeps you up at night worrying about the internet. Crystal Carter: I like smart people. And I'm not saying that there aren't smart people on Reddit, but people don't always qualify what they're saying. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you just lost all your karma. Ross Simmonds: It just evaporated. It's gone. Yeah, it's so true. No, I completely hear you. I agree. I think there is elements of that that is at risk, and I think that's also true though on the internet at scale. I think when you think of the amount of blogs that are being published, yes, Google is trying their hardest to create and rank content that is created by authoritative sources, but we all have recently seen people doing Parasite SEO and showing up on Harvard's domain somehow with content. And when you see that type of thing, it's like, okay, who do we trust? We need to fix some of the fundamental plumbing around the internet first. Mordy Oberstein: That's the real problem. The whole thing is fundamentally flawed. And on that happy note, we're out of time. Ross, where can people find you? Ross Simmonds: Yeah, you can find me at rosssimmonds.com. I'm also on all of your favorite social media channels. You can do a quick search for Ross Simmonds. I'm typically @TheCoolestCool. That was my Twitter handle, also my handle on Instagram, and things like that. But both of you, thank you so much for having me on to chat about Reddit. It's one of my favorite platforms, and I hope folks can learn from it, absorb it, and hopefully not get banned. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure to give Ross a big old following, throw some karma his way in upvotes, and all that good stuff on the Reddit. Ross Simmonds: I'll take it. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Thanks, Ross. Once again, thank you, Ross. Now, it's quite possible, and I don't know, I can't see the future, I don't have a crystal ball because I'm not Crystal and Mordy's Ball is more like a bowling ball than a crystal ball- Crystal Carter: It's a baseball, let's be honest. Mordy Oberstein: It's a baseball. Thank you. I'm literally wearing a baseball jersey and a baseball hat because it's opening day when we're recording this. It's like a holiday for me today. Crystal Carter: Okay. Yeah/ Mordy Oberstein: But it's quite possible that we could be covering something to do with Reddit on the SERP in the news today. Who knows? You'll have to wait and see as we see what the Mysterious Barry has in store for us today on our Snappy SEO News. So here's the Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, turns out that the March 2024 core update finished on April 19th. That's like two weeks ago from when you'll hear this recording. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google March 2024 core update finish, April 19th, a week ago from when Barry wrote this article on April 26th, so almost two weeks ago, the time of this recording. Google has said that they upped the number. They went from saying that the update removed 40% of unhelpful results from the SERP to saying 45 removed, helped reduce rather low quality and unoriginal content in search results by 45% to quote Barry. So they upped it from 40 to 45%. I'm not sure what that means yet. A lot of the big data is still coming out. I'm waiting for a SEMrush poll to come through and see what actually happened, how this update compares to other updates because it's just so different in terms of the rollout and in terms of what Google is saying. I know Glenn Gabe is preparing to write up an article as well. It'll be interesting to see how this all settles and how it all kind of plays out what the analysis sort of is. Very, very curious to see. But in terms of you analyzing your own rankings, the cutoff date is April 19th. That's not to say there can't be tremors and reversals that follow it. I typically find that about a week or so after an update, you could still see reversals coming through a bit. So take the date of April 19th with a little bit of a grain of salt, but that is the official date. It's March 5th through April 19th. Okay, shoot. This from Danny Goodwin, actually two from Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land. They kind of go together in my opinion. One is Google's CEO says, "AI overviews are increasing search usage." This is from Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO... I believe this is from Sundar's statements during or after, rather, their earnings call, basically saying that they're seeing an increase in AI overviews and Google's going to be evolving this experience as Danny says in the article, and yada, yada, yada, and they're going to make sure that there's traffic to actual websites and that this is going to expand and we're exploring more and we're doing more. And they particularly mentioned that there's pathways for monetization for them because again, this is an earnings call, so they want their investors to understand that with the AI advancements coming to the SERP, there is a plan for monetization. The next article is Head of Google Search demands urgency as growth slows. Google's Senior VP blames increasing competition costs and regulation on a new operating reality. This kind of works hand in hand with the other article. You kind of see how Google's saying publicly. I think this came out from an all-hands that kind of leaked out. So in this case, you have Google's Senior VP, Prabhakar Raghavan saying things like, I think we can agree that things are not like they were 15, 20 years ago, things have changed. He's calling for more agileness in how they develop. He's saying there's more competition, which Danny points out is probably talking about OpenAI and Meta and Microsoft, probably Amazon also, and yada, yada yada. They also increased costs. All the AI stuff that Google's doing is very costly. They're spending a lot to generate the SGE. He talks about that and talks about how they need to be different and it's not going to be easy going forward and yada, yada, yada. If you kind of put all the things Google is saying, whether it's from their CEO's public statements around their earnings calls, around SGE, and so forth, and you see what they're saying behind the scenes, it just kind of feels that something is happening at Google. I won't weigh in here what my personal thoughts are. I just want to point out these articles to you. We'll link to them in the show notes so you can read it, form your own opinion. We'll love to chat with you about this on social media because I do have a lot of thoughts about this and what's happening at Google because it is, I think one of the more interesting times, and you should definitely read the statements from both these senior level folks over at Google in the articles that Danny wrote for you. And that's going to do it for this week's Snappy News. Actually, I think by the way, that the news segment that we do is undervalued. Crystal Carter: No, it's not. Whenever I go out, people say, I really love the Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Because there's so much news out there around SEO. Barry produces 30 articles a day in an hour. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know how he does it. Barry, tell us how you do it. I don't know how you type that quickly or maybe voice type. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know, but there's a lot of news that we don't cover, that we filter out because some of the things that Barry has to cover are absurd. Like, you should still have an about page, even though it might not be a ranking factor. We don't cover that on this podcast because that's just bonkers. But God bless Barry for covering it so that people know the truth about SEO. And the truth is, by the way, that you should not only read the SEO news, but the truth is you should also be following some great SEOs out there on forums. I guess Reddit, I guess there's some good SEOs on Reddit, but also X or LinkedIn. And that brings us to this week's follow of the week, which is Ori Zilbershtein, who is at O-R-I-Z-I-L-B-E-R-S-H-T-E-I-N. That's a mouthful. So we'll link to his profile in the show notes. Ori's talked a lot about what goes on Reddit. I like Ori as a follow, as a person, as a friend. I've actually interviewed him a few times in my other podcasts. He's brilliant. He takes a very conceptual approach to things. He's got a very cut through the nonsense kind of approach to SEO marketing overall, and he's gone through a ton about the value of Reddit on the SERP and the not value of Reddit on the SERP and where things should be going and how Google should deal with this kind of stuff. So definitely give Ori a big follow and tell him what we sent you. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's a great follow. Super active on Twitter, so yeah, check in. Tell 'em we sent you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, tell 'em we sent you. Hey, Ori, we're telling people, tell 'em we sent you. We should be a weird post, like, Hey Ori, I heard you on the SERP's Up podcast, they told me to tell you that they sent me. Crystal Carter: I'm here because of Crystal and Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I'm here. I'm not sure what to do now, but they told me to tell you. Crystal Carter: Sometimes I think about what following in real life would be like. People are like, oh yeah, you should follow that person. There's just people literally just following you around. Mordy Oberstein: And they're like saying, I like that. You pull a thing off the shelf of the grocery store, like, oh, I like that, good purchase. Crystal Carter: Right? I do like pop-tarts, and you're like, what? Mordy Oberstein: I'll retweet. I'll grab a box myself. Crystal Carter: Right? Or they go, he just bought pop-tarts. He just bought pop-tarts, everyone. You should also get some. Mordy Oberstein: Dr. Pete from Moz has a thing. If you went into a store and actually asked for things, what you ask on Google, like buy laptop now. You walk in the Best Buy and you just screamed, buy laptop now. Crystal Carter: I literally just enter lowest common denominator terms in sequence. I'm just like laptop, hi-res screen with- Mordy Oberstein: Cheap. Crystal Carter: Not even with, just like, yeah, cheap 35, megabyte. I don't know, that's not that many megabytes, but you know what I mean. I just, literally like, 10 terabytes. Mordy Oberstein: That'd be great. Walk in like, cheap laptop. Crystal Carter: Now. Near me. Mordy Oberstein: Now. Near me. On that happy note, 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 new episodes. We dive into how to reignite and revitalize your SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? 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