Search Results

Is AI writing for long-form web content the right way to go? We don’t think so. Actually, if you’re not careful, it may illicit action from Google. Mordy and Crystal address the growing use of artificial intelligence in content writing for the web in light of the most recent Google algorithm changes regarding helpful content. Is AI written content really good content? It certainly isn’t differentiated and doesn’t have critical thought. Even if the AI content ranks well, what are you delivering to your audience? You don’t often hear the cheers for generic, mediocre content. Let alone the one thought: Whose content is it, really? Who’s the author? Danny Richman, the founder of Richman SEO Training, clarifies where AI writers can be a legitimate help: classification, transformation, and translation. A key use for GPT3 is for keyword classification, done in seconds! Remember: AI-written content for rank manipulation is against Google's guidelines. To quote Mordy, “with the Helpful Content Update, which, to me, is Google saying, We know AI written content is coming, It's already here. We need to develop an algorithm that's able to find it and weed it out“. Back Is the SEO world ready for AI content writers? Is AI writing for long-form web content the right way to go? We don’t think so. Actually, if you’re not careful, it may illicit action from Google. Mordy and Crystal address the growing use of artificial intelligence in content writing for the web in light of the most recent Google algorithm changes regarding helpful content. Is AI written content really good content? It certainly isn’t differentiated and doesn’t have critical thought. Even if the AI content ranks well, what are you delivering to your audience? You don’t often hear the cheers for generic, mediocre content. Let alone the one thought: Whose content is it, really? Who’s the author? Danny Richman, the founder of Richman SEO Training, clarifies where AI writers can be a legitimate help: classification, transformation, and translation. A key use for GPT3 is for keyword classification, done in seconds! Remember: AI-written content for rank manipulation is against Google's guidelines. To quote Mordy, “with the Helpful Content Update, which, to me, is Google saying, We know AI written content is coming, It's already here. We need to develop an algorithm that's able to find it and weed it out“. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 09 | October 19, 2022 | 32 MIN 00:00 / 32:04 This week’s guests Danny Richman Danny Richman is the founder of Richman SEO Training. He has over 20 years’ experience in search marketing and a regular speaker at many industry events. Danny has been helping businesses and organisations grow their online traffic since the birth of the internet. His clients include the BBC, Bank of England and the John Lewis Partnership. Danny also works as a volunteer mentor to the Prince’s Trust supporting disadvantaged young people to start their own business. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy, new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix and I'm joined by our own head of SEO communications, the one, the only, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, there internet people. I'm always pleased to be here with you on this lovely, fantastic day for podcasting. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, do you think they are internet people like an Oompa-Loompa who lives on the internet? Crystal Carter: Am I not an internet person? Are you not an internet person? Mordy Oberstein: Well, I always thought I lived in real life also. Crystal Carter: I live here. This is where I live. Mordy Oberstein: You're in the internet. Crystal Carter: I'm in the computer. Mordy Oberstein: You're in the computer. Wait, when you order-? Crystal Carter: Delete. Mordy Oberstein: When you order something online and they say address, "In the computer." Crystal Carter: In the computer. I'm already here. We're already there. Mordy Oberstein: You're basically AI, which is kind of what we're going to get at today. Crystal Carter: That is what we will talk about. Mordy Oberstein: Before we do that, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where if you want to add product structured data markups so that you could be eligible for Google shopping results, since now product markup makes you eligible, you have to do nothing. Crystal Carter: Nothing. Mordy Oberstein: Nothing. You have to literally do nothing. Crystal Carter: I love it. Mordy Oberstein: If you want, you can totally rely on the automated structure data markup Wix creates for you on your product pages out of the box. Crystal Carter: This is one of those times where it's just stay ready so you don't have to get ready. I love when these updates happen and they're like, "Oh, what do we...? Oh, nothing. We already did it. We already did it." It's like finding money in your pocket. I just love it. Mordy Oberstein: But good money, not like a penny. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: 20 bucks. Crystal Carter: You got like 20 bucks, 20 bucks to your pocket, you're like, "I'm going to give myself a latte. This is nice." Mordy Oberstein: "Should I tell my spouse I'm just going to get another...? No, they're just-" Crystal Carter: No. Buy myself a latte. I'm going to get whipped cream. I'm going to get a pastry or something. It's going to be pumpkin spiced. Lovely. Mordy Oberstein: You know what's going to be lovely? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: This show. This show is going to be lovely. Crystal Carter: Oh, you segue's galore. Mordy Oberstein: Oh good. Because the AI writers are coming, or conversely, guess who's coming to dinner? AI writers. Crystal Carter: They only have the megabytes. Mordy Oberstein: They only care about dinner. They're not coming for lunch, just for dinner. But should you let them into the henhouse, where I guess you would eat dinner... I don't know why you- Crystal Carter: These have so many metaphors. I don't even know where you're going with this. Mordy Oberstein: We're talking about the value of content created by AI writers and if the content they create is good or bad for your SEO. And to that, Danny Richman stops by to give his take on where AI writers can actually be truly helpful for SEO and the answer may surprise you. Plus a new form of image preview on the SERP. But is it really new? And why does it matter, even if it's not? And of course, some snappy SEO news on who you should be following on social for some SEO awesomeness. It's episode number nine of the SERP's Up podcast. So creating content is really hard. Crystal Carter: It takes a lot of time, especially if you want to do good content. Mordy Oberstein: So that's sort of the problem. So while content is the commodity of your website, it's really an area where many websites struggle by forgetting knowing which piece of content to write or what topics to write or well, who to target and how to optimize it. Who's going to write all this content? Crystal Carter: Yeah, who's going to write it? Who's going to make it? Who's going to make sure that it actually makes sense as well? There's a lot of stuff to think about. Mordy Oberstein: So much. And the worst thing is there's so many things to think about and there's so many options, but none of them are good. Either you can farm the content creation out and some churn and burn content agency or write something really quick, which would be probably really thin. Or you could spend the time, a lot of time, and a lot of money creating a really strong piece of well-crafted content. But who's got time and/or money to do that on a regular basis? So what do you do? Well, then one day along came the AI writer who promised the world with the cheap option to create content in bulk really quickly, that's of good quality. But there's the rub. Is it really good? Is AI written content really good for users? Because in most cases, spoiler, probably isn't. And while it might be tempting to go with an AI writer to write your content, you might as a rule with certain exceptions, want to stay away from it. So let's dive into AI writers' content and Google. What a world we live in! We have AI writers writing content for us. I don't how to start with this. Crystal Carter: Honestly, there's so much to think about here. So I think with AI writers, we are engaging with AI writers regularly in lots of different ways, but in sort of smaller ways and we have been for smaller ways. So your phone has predictive text and that's going to be using the patterns of things that you say. If you say lol a lot, it's going to show up in your phone a lot. They've added it into Gmail, they've added it into the other email platforms. It's also in Google Docs. There's sometimes you can get search predictive texts, for instance. I use Grammarly a lot. We will help you with your grammar. We'll also say maybe you should mix up some of your words here. So I think that lots of people are using a little bit of AI as a sort of assist, kind of an e-bike. Maybe you don't want to do the whole hill, maybe you just want to put the e-bike on. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. This is exactly what it is. Crystal Carter: So you can get up the hill but without sweating. So I think that's fine and I think that that's something that's useful, but it's very, very tricky. There are options. There are options where you can just let the e-bike do the whole thing, where you can let the machine do the whole thing. And I think a lot of people are thinking, "Oh, that looks good. That sounds great. That does the job." Mordy Oberstein: Does sound great. It sounds like the panacea. This is great. It's a solution that solves all the problems. But like most panaceas, they solve nothing. And I think you're right on spot. There are cases like oh, every time you run an email, you write something and Google's like, "No, no, here's the suggested text and it has the comma in the right place." By the way, it's how if someone's using the AI in Gmail because they have all the commas in the right place. Crystal Carter: Honestly, that Oxford comma gets me every time. Mordy Oberstein: Every time. Crystal Carter: Every single time. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. That is legitimately great. But then when it comes to okay, now we're going to write entire blog post written by AI writers, and I think that is an absolute mistake. I know there are people out there listening to this who think, "No, no, no. You can absolutely do that." And I'm sure you can use an AI writer with a little bit of editing and get a readable blog post. There's not a lot of mistakes. It's a usable piece of content. But is it really good? Is it differentiated in any way? Does it have actual critical thought put into it? Because as great as AI writers are, and I say this as a matter of philosophy, you can disagree with me, you cannot replicate human thought. We don't even understand human thought. So how are we going to create an AI writer that replicates human thought? It makes no sense to me. Crystal Carter: Also, I think sometimes it is the idiosyncrasies about a writer that makes them fantastic. So I' mean, the person that I think of is Tony Morrison. I remember reading a book of Tony Morrison's, and the whole page was one sentence. An AI writer would never do that. Grammarly would tell you that's a terrible, awful idea. But I definitely read that and thought, "This is beautiful. It's pretty much a poem." And it was one sentence and sometimes I go, "And this, and that, and that," in my sentences, and I do that for effect. I don't do that for grammar, I do that for effect. And sometimes you repeat. I repeat words in my writing and I do that, again, for effect. You want rhythm, you want different things when you're doing your writing. And AI will do something different there. So I think that the uniqueness that comes with some of human idiosyncrasies not only provides some of the flavor, some of the things that make something pleasurable to read, but can also be a USP. So if lots of people are using AI writers and if you are able to do something that is unique with your actual personal tone of voice, I remember this, a play about Sondheim, Sunday in The Park With George, and I remember watching that and they said, "Oh, everything's already been painted before." And somebody's like, "But painted by you George, has it been painted by you?" Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Crystal Carter: So it's important to think about how you would phrase something, how you would think about your content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, leave the SEO aside for one quick second. We'll get back to it. Just from a branding point of view, imagine this, imagine any serious writer. I'll say, I think I'm a serious writer for the most part. I have been offered by people, "Hey, well, we'll ghostwrite this blog post for you. We'll just put your name on there." Absolutely not. First off, I have a unique writing style. I have a unique way of phrasing things. I think there's a level of nuance and detail and substance that I offer on the topics I know about that other people just don't have that same perspective as I do. I wouldn't entrust my name with another human being. And then you want to entrust it, as a writer, to a bot? That makes no sense. And by the way, that brings up a real SEO question of who's the author of the content? Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Is the content owned by the AI tool and could they just farm it out to someone else? I mean it's a potential risk. What does it say? A million monkeys writing on a typewriter will suddenly make Shakespeare. I think there's a potential risk. This is me spitballing, but there's a potential risk that your content could end up being very, very similar to somebody else- Mordy Oberstein: Oh sure. Crystal Carter: Who's using the same prompt from the same tool. For instance, let's say you're looking at a tool and tool says that you should ask, "What different the earrings should I wear with a ball gown or something?" And that's the prompt that it tells you. And then the same person puts in the same prompt and gets the same response out of that. Mordy Oberstein: Even if it's not exactly the same, there's not going to be any differentiation or any significant differentiation. And that's kind of the point. When you think what the algorithms are trying to do, they're trying to find unique, really helpful content, you're not going to be differentiated. And that goes into things like, I don't know, the helpful content update, which to me by the way, is Google basically saying, "We know AI content is coming, it's already here. We need to develop an algorithm that's able to find it and weed it out." Crystal Carter: Yeah. And in their Google Search Central, there are SEO guidelines, they have a section under Quality Guidelines called Automatically Generated Content. And they state their automatically generated content, which is AI content, essentially, it's content that's been generated programmatically and cases where it's intended to manipulate search rankings and not users, Google may take action against such content. And this is something that they expanded upon when they were talking about the helpful content update. So it's something that you've got to be very, very careful with if it is something that you're thinking about. And it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as the update rolls out and becomes more entrenched. Mordy Oberstein: And long and short, it's a really good point because it's important to remember, AI written content is against Google's guidelines. So whether or not you think it's a good solution, not a good solution, it's against their guidelines. So I don't recommend ever going against Google's own guidelines with this. And I do think, by the way, as time goes on, I think John Mueller's talked about this, John Mueller from Google, that in the future yeah, you can have an AI writer maybe write a headline for you or a title tag. Those sort of things I think are going to be legitimately fine going forward. At some point, Google's going to have to adjust it's guideline and say, "Yeah, you can have a header written by an AI. That's fine." I think having an AI writer write a line or take your line that you wrote and rewrite it in different ways to give you some ideas. I know so much has it in their SEO writing assistant, they're connected to GPT-3. You can feed a very small snippet of content in and it will reword it for you in two or three different ways. Meaning if you're stuck on something, "I don't like the way this sounds. I have writer's block, can I get a different version of it to stimulate me? Or maybe I'll just kind of tweak this one a little bit," that's fine. I think AI writing makes sense for that. But for writing an actual thing of substance, I don't ever see that being okay in my opinion. Crystal Carter: And I think that if you're writing for people, then yeah, there should be people involved. If you've ever had those chat bots, those AI chat bots and you try to talk to them, they will eventually end up in nonsense. Mordy Oberstein: That's a joke. Crystal Carter: And sometimes they work for very simple questions like, "What time do you open?" They can be like, "Three o'clock, we open at three o'clock." And you're like, "Thank you AI bot thing that I didn't really need." Mordy Oberstein: That's not a content strategy. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Running that kind of content... If you are writing content, then AI can actually really legitimately answer those questions, well, that's not a content strategy. Hot take right there. Crystal Carter: You could be right. You could be right. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let me ask you then, what do you do? Because again, we mentioned before, none of the options are great. Crystal Carter: Right. Here's the thing that's tricky. On the one hand, you don't want to use AI content. You want to do unique content, you want to do interesting content. On the other hand, everybody's time poor, everybody's time stretched. So what do you do? I think that we mentioned Ross Simmons, who talks a lot about content distribution. And I think that that approach is a really good way to think about it. So there are loads of people that do this, Disney does it all the time where they will have the Little Mermaid, for instance, and they will do it as the animated one, they'll do it as the live action one. They'll do it on DVD, they'll do it on VHS, they'll do it on- Mordy Oberstein: Ice. They'll do it on ice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, on ice. Frozen, little mermaid. Poor, frozen mermaid. Mordy Oberstein: Salmon, frozen up on those- Crystal Carter: That's so grim. So they'll repackage it in lots of different ways. So basically what I think you should do is to sort of focus on making one piece of very good content at a time and then roll it out, repackage it, make it more accessible to lots of different audiences, but use that as a sort of linchpin. Another good example of this is Beyonce. I talk about a lot about Beyonce, but for instance, Beyonce was in the Lion King reboot as an actress. She also did the soundtrack. Then later on, a year later she did another movie called Black is King, which is essentially the story of the Lion King where she wrote it, direct it, and starred in it. And it was the album that she'd done for the movie before as a visual thing. And so she's just reusing the same content over and over again. So essentially you can change around the same piece of good content. So it means that you're not spreading yourself super thin and doing lots and lots of things poorly or lots and lots of things halfheartedly. You can do one thing really well and then just add value to it in lots of different ways. Mordy Oberstein: I couldn't agree more. First off, leave SEO aside. Okay, let's say it works. Okay, Yeah, you rank. You use the AI and it ranks and whatever. You fooled Google, you did it. Then a user clicks on the page, they show up and they read it. You're not fooling anybody. They aren't going to be like, "Oh, I really like this brand. This seems like very generic content. I love generic content. Let me give you all my money." Crystal Carter: Right. What are you going to do? Mordy Oberstein: I know we don't think of the second step. We rank, we got it, we're done. Crystal Carter: Right, job done. Yeah, absolutely, you should think about it holistically. And I think that when people make content that actually connects with people, that's something that lasts a long time. So if you are making content that people ask you for, you're making content that is responding to a need, then that's something that will last and will help build your brand much further after the content is or isn't ranking many years down the line. Mordy Oberstein: Truth in that. Let's turn it over to someone who's done a lot with AI writers, some of the really fun things that GPT-3 created John Mueller bot, if you don't know what that is, Google it, find it. Basically you asked the question to this bot and it gave you a John Mueller like response back and it was amazing and hilarious and it's great. One of the funniest things I've ever seen in the SEO space. He's the founder of Richman SEO training, and again, he's done a ton with AI writers and he's here to answer what are ways AI writing technology is actually applicable to a website now that we've totally trashed them. So here's Danny. Danny Richman: So what is the most surprising thing you've seen an AI writer be able to do? Well, first of all, I'm assuming when you say AI writer, what you really mean is a machine learning language model such as GPT-3. And I think one of the most common misconceptions with that technology is that it was never really designed for writing long form content and that isn't what it's best at doing. The areas where I found it most useful and surprising was kind of three different categories. One is around classification, then transformation, and then in translation. So for example, let's imagine you're doing some keyword research for a criminal law firm and you are looking at all keywords that are searched for on Google that include the word conspiracy because you're interested in creating some content around the offense of conspiracy to murder or conspiracy to defraud, those kind of offenses. Now, if you go and put a term like that into a keyword research tool, you're going to get a whole load of keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with the area of criminal law. You're going to get UFO conspiracies, Princess Diana conspiracies. So one of the things you often have to do when you're doing keyword research is to filter out all the noise and just find the keywords that are relevant and applicable to the website you are working with. And that's one of the areas where a tool like GPT-3 really excels because you can very easily upload a whole load of keyword research data into a Google sheet and then using a very simple script, you can then get GPT-3 to classify all those keywords in a matter of seconds according to whether they are in the context of a criminal law firm. So that's something that would've taken just hours or days of work for somebody to have to do. And then you can use the same process if you've got a bunch of keywords and you want to categorize them according to how likely they are to result in a conversion for your client's website. Again, that's a really good way of doing that. And I'm not just talking about keyword intent, there are tools already out there that will do that, this can intelligently look at the keywords with an understanding of the business that you are working with and then classify those keywords according to how likely it is to lead to somebody making an inquiry or buying a product that that particular business offers. One final example would be if you have access to a tool like SparkToro where you can put in something that's going to help you identify your audience. So say for example, a social media account that they follow or a website they visit. That will then show you a list of all the hashtags that your target audience use most frequently whenever they're posting things online. And so using GPT-3, what you can do is then upload that list of most frequently used hashtags and get the machine learning model to generate content topics and article titles that you know are going to appeal to that audience because it's what they're talking about most when they're posting on social media. So those are just kind of a few of the areas where I found these tools to be really surprising and exceptionally useful. Mordy Oberstein: That is actually a really good point. I think there's tremendous value in AI writers and AI backed technology helping you to refine things, as tools to better understand opportunities, to help you filter things out, to help you understand where you could focus your content, all those sort of things. I would definitely keep an eye on the AI tool space when it comes to content generation, those sort of things. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. There's a tool that I've seen that allows you to sort of enter content that you have and sort of see which entities and things it's understanding, which can help you to refine what you're doing there. I think that AI used as a tool and AI used as something that helps you to understand what you're doing is absolutely valuable because I think one of the reasons why people are interested in AI is because it's time saving and the research process of putting together content, research, and filling through keywords and understanding the topics and understanding what people are interested in with regards to the content can take time. And so if you're able to use AI to help you to find the content that you need to make your content better, then that's super valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. So I want to tell you a story, dear audience, and you, Crystal, obviously. Crystal Carter: I don't know where this is going so audience here, it's important. Mordy Oberstein: Only good places. Only good places. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: So the other day I saw that you Crystal were asking the godfather of SEO, Barry Schwartz, if something was new, which I knew it wasn't by the way. And like a good AI writer, I immediately plugged in my site isthisnew.com in a snarky tweet reply because this is what I do on Twitter, but many folks don't realize that Google made this change and I think maybe it could be significant. So today we're looking at the image preview overlay on the results page to see is this new? Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: So we already said it's kind of not new, but it's not old either. But what changed basically... I know, spoiler, I ruined it. I completely ruined it. Crystal Carter: I didn't know. Mordy Oberstein: No. But we're still asking if it's new, but we're going to show why it's significant, which is way more important, is this new, which is why the whole segment's kind of sarcastic. Anyway- Crystal Carter: Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: You know when you search for something, you get a box at the top of the results page with the whole group of images, an image pack or an image box depending on your vernacular. So clicking them used to take you from the main results page to the special image result page, all full of images, but not so anymore or not as often anymore. Now often enough, a panel appears to the right of the organic results on the main SERP itself. So no more going to the image search results per se. And I think it's actually significant, especially if you rely on image traffic. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that I think that Google's starting to try to move away from having images, videos, and other media content on the SERP as standalone elements. So for instance, they recently introduced something within Google Search Console where you have information about your video content and it will tell you how your video page is performing. And within the report it gives you the information about the page itself and also the video that's listed on the page. And also very often when you go to the images tab on Google SERP, they will show both the website that it's embedded on and also the YouTube link. So they'll show them at the same time. So this I think is another evolution of that sort of concept of making sure that the images aren't sort of seen as standalone, but rather as part of the website. Because when you click on it, so on the sort of image carousel sort of area, I'm not sure if you call it a carousel, but on the image sort of area, you click on it and then it shows you a preview of the page and the sort of summary around it, a little bit, as well as more similar images. So it's something that I think will allow people to see a bit more about the website before they go to it, and also to sort keep them on the main page of the SERP so that they can see more information about the query as well as the image. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think from a directional point of view, this is Google... I always kind of say Google's trying to go more portal, trying to show you multiple types of information all in one spot, so a little more immersive than, "Here's a bunch of results, and then here's another bunch of images on a separate SERP." And like you're saying, or a bunch of videos on another SERP. It's all kind of one holistic content experience. And I think there's going to be a lot of that coming down the pipe, and this is just one small peak into that future. But also just simply now, when you're looking at an image, first off, there's not as many images. When you see the related images show under the panel on the main results page, you don't have 50 million images like you have on image SERP results. So those image impressions you might have been getting before just don't happen anymore, and you're still competing intent-wise with the actual other results on the page. You might say, "Yeah, I see all these images here," but you know what? It's an organic result with an image thumbnail and I like that one better. I'm just going to click on that page. So it's a totally different construct. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think that this makes the SERP a bit richer with regards to images. I talked a lot about images and media and things, and the reason why I think it's because they say a picture's worth a thousand words, and you can get a lot of information off of a single image, you can get a brand sentiment from it. You can describe something very quickly in the amount of space that a thumbnail takes up. You can add more description about a product or about a concept, or whatever it may be than if you had the same number of texts. I think we looked up purple carrots, for instance. In some of the images you see a crosscut where it's white inside and some of them you see an orange inside. And I can just see that from the picture and I can understand that from the picture, whereas I'd have to explain all of that in words and it would take up a lot more space than that single picture, which is something that's really, really valuable for Google. Mordy Oberstein: And if you want just a little plug with Crystal, if you want to check out more images, Crystal has a ton of SEO content all around images and image search and reverse image search or- Crystal Carter: Visual search, Mordy Oberstein: Visual search. I was looking to find it. I knew I got it right. So we'll link to all of those in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Lovely. I also just want to shout out like Bing, because we say this isn't new. This is really not new for Bing. Mordy Oberstein: True. Crystal Carter: Bing has these overlays all over their SERP. Mordy Oberstein: It's very immersive. Crystal Carter: It's extremely immersive. I think looking at things six months ago, I was like, "Ah, this is busy." There's a lot of stuff going on there, but Google is looking more and more like what Bing looked like six months ago. And this is another prime example. On Bing, if you look up a query like purple carrots or whatever, for every SERP result, they have a little light bulb. You click on the little light bulb and then they give you an overlay that gives you lots of information about that search result, will give you more images, will give you more links, will give you a Wikipedia thing. Lots of stuff like that. So it's interesting, and I think we talk a lot about MUM and I think again, the stuff around images and media is partly Google trying to get to grips with MUM and their multimodal search. And I think that Bing is also doing that, and they very much lay their cards on the table with regards to how they manage multi-modal search, and it's definitely worth looking at. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and by the way, Google has been taking things from the Bing SERP for a long time. If you look at what's going on now where there's Google's testing out multiple URLs and featured snippets, Bing has been doing that for a long time. We actually just covered that on the news the other week, which by the way, speaking of news, so nailed that pivot. That's two. I get a gold star. Here's the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news, some changes to the results page for you this week. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, "Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in search results." Oh, my. Oh, the "Oh, my," wasn't a quote, that was me saying, "Oh, my." But in a nutshell, what it means is above the URL in mobile will be the name of the site on the Google Results page. So if you Google best website builder and you see the result for Wix, it will now say Wix above the URL to wix.com, more prominently displayed than it was before, more individually displayed than it was before. To me, where this matters is where you have some brand awareness tied to a website. Why? Well, because with the change, this site name is more prominent. So if the site slash brand name has some recognition, to me, it means you might actually get some additional clicks, even if you rank a position or two below a website result, without that kind of recognition, which just goes to show you that all aspects of digital strategy do converge at some point. In this case, brand marketing and SEO intersect. You have to think about the full picture and user experience on the SERP. Of course, much of this was tested at various points in the recent past. So who says paying attention to all sorts of changes to the SERP doesn't pay off? Is this new? No, it's the news, the snappy news, and now it's over. That's all I have to... Oh wait, the ad label. You know where it says ad on the Google results page next to ads on the SERP? Now it's going to say sponsored. And that's the snappy news. All right, news is done. Wonderful. But before we go, we have one more thing we have to do. Crystal Carter: What is that? Mordy Oberstein: What might that be, y'all? This is episode number nine so if you've been listening to the other eight episodes, you already know, but if you don't know, we like to give shout-outs to people from our own community so that you could have more people to follow across social for more awesome SEO insights, because there's nothing like getting SEO insights from other SEOs. So here is our follow of the week, which is drum roll please, Ann Smarty. Crystal Carter: Ann Smarty. Ann Smarty is an amazing SEO to follow. She is such a phenomenon with regards to content. She writes content on lots of different elements of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: She does not use an AI writer. Crystal Carter: She does not use an AI writer, but she's incredibly prolific. She's written lots of different content and she's also runs something called- Mordy Oberstein: VC Buzz, Viral Content Buzz. Crystal Carter: Which is a great resource for anyone who's looking to learn more about content and how to manage it and SEO stuff. So if you see anything written by Ann Smarty across the web, doing SEO things, you should absolutely read it and you'll very, very likely see many things written by Ann Smarty because she's written on lots of great topics. I come across her work a lot. Mordy Oberstein: Everywhere. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And it's always really, really valuable. So I would absolutely recommend following her and reading lots of her content. Mordy Oberstein: Truly one of the SEO veterans, SEO OGs of the industry. You could find her on Twitter at @seosmarty, S-E-O-S-M-A-R-T-Y or just look at the show notes and find her Twitter link there. And that's it. We did it. Crystal Carter: That's it? Mordy Oberstein: That's it. It's in the bag. We got it. Crystal Carter: Number nine. Mordy Oberstein: And we use no artificial content written by some bot either. Crystal Carter: That's what you think. Mordy Oberstein: This whole time, you've been a cyborg. You've shattered my world, Crystal. Crystal Carter: I am a cyborg. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, are you a friendly cyborg or a world destroying cyborg? Crystal Carter: I haven't decided yet. Mordy Oberstein: It's be nice to Crystal day. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We'll be back next week with an all new episode as we dive into are links everything SEOs make them out to be. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO learning hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content all written by human beings and our webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guested it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. But until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Danny Richman Ann Smarty Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Richman SEO Training Viral Content Bee News: Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in search results Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Danny Richman Ann Smarty Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Richman SEO Training Viral Content Bee News: Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in 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 pushing out some groovy, new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix and I'm joined by our own head of SEO communications, the one, the only, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, there internet people. I'm always pleased to be here with you on this lovely, fantastic day for podcasting. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, do you think they are internet people like an Oompa-Loompa who lives on the internet? Crystal Carter: Am I not an internet person? Are you not an internet person? Mordy Oberstein: Well, I always thought I lived in real life also. Crystal Carter: I live here. This is where I live. Mordy Oberstein: You're in the internet. Crystal Carter: I'm in the computer. Mordy Oberstein: You're in the computer. Wait, when you order-? Crystal Carter: Delete. Mordy Oberstein: When you order something online and they say address, "In the computer." Crystal Carter: In the computer. I'm already here. We're already there. Mordy Oberstein: You're basically AI, which is kind of what we're going to get at today. Crystal Carter: That is what we will talk about. Mordy Oberstein: Before we do that, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where if you want to add product structured data markups so that you could be eligible for Google shopping results, since now product markup makes you eligible, you have to do nothing. Crystal Carter: Nothing. Mordy Oberstein: Nothing. You have to literally do nothing. Crystal Carter: I love it. Mordy Oberstein: If you want, you can totally rely on the automated structure data markup Wix creates for you on your product pages out of the box. Crystal Carter: This is one of those times where it's just stay ready so you don't have to get ready. I love when these updates happen and they're like, "Oh, what do we...? Oh, nothing. We already did it. We already did it." It's like finding money in your pocket. I just love it. Mordy Oberstein: But good money, not like a penny. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: 20 bucks. Crystal Carter: You got like 20 bucks, 20 bucks to your pocket, you're like, "I'm going to give myself a latte. This is nice." Mordy Oberstein: "Should I tell my spouse I'm just going to get another...? No, they're just-" Crystal Carter: No. Buy myself a latte. I'm going to get whipped cream. I'm going to get a pastry or something. It's going to be pumpkin spiced. Lovely. Mordy Oberstein: You know what's going to be lovely? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: This show. This show is going to be lovely. Crystal Carter: Oh, you segue's galore. Mordy Oberstein: Oh good. Because the AI writers are coming, or conversely, guess who's coming to dinner? AI writers. Crystal Carter: They only have the megabytes. Mordy Oberstein: They only care about dinner. They're not coming for lunch, just for dinner. But should you let them into the henhouse, where I guess you would eat dinner... I don't know why you- Crystal Carter: These have so many metaphors. I don't even know where you're going with this. Mordy Oberstein: We're talking about the value of content created by AI writers and if the content they create is good or bad for your SEO. And to that, Danny Richman stops by to give his take on where AI writers can actually be truly helpful for SEO and the answer may surprise you. Plus a new form of image preview on the SERP. But is it really new? And why does it matter, even if it's not? And of course, some snappy SEO news on who you should be following on social for some SEO awesomeness. It's episode number nine of the SERP's Up podcast. So creating content is really hard. Crystal Carter: It takes a lot of time, especially if you want to do good content. Mordy Oberstein: So that's sort of the problem. So while content is the commodity of your website, it's really an area where many websites struggle by forgetting knowing which piece of content to write or what topics to write or well, who to target and how to optimize it. Who's going to write all this content? Crystal Carter: Yeah, who's going to write it? Who's going to make it? Who's going to make sure that it actually makes sense as well? There's a lot of stuff to think about. Mordy Oberstein: So much. And the worst thing is there's so many things to think about and there's so many options, but none of them are good. Either you can farm the content creation out and some churn and burn content agency or write something really quick, which would be probably really thin. Or you could spend the time, a lot of time, and a lot of money creating a really strong piece of well-crafted content. But who's got time and/or money to do that on a regular basis? So what do you do? Well, then one day along came the AI writer who promised the world with the cheap option to create content in bulk really quickly, that's of good quality. But there's the rub. Is it really good? Is AI written content really good for users? Because in most cases, spoiler, probably isn't. And while it might be tempting to go with an AI writer to write your content, you might as a rule with certain exceptions, want to stay away from it. So let's dive into AI writers' content and Google. What a world we live in! We have AI writers writing content for us. I don't how to start with this. Crystal Carter: Honestly, there's so much to think about here. So I think with AI writers, we are engaging with AI writers regularly in lots of different ways, but in sort of smaller ways and we have been for smaller ways. So your phone has predictive text and that's going to be using the patterns of things that you say. If you say lol a lot, it's going to show up in your phone a lot. They've added it into Gmail, they've added it into the other email platforms. It's also in Google Docs. There's sometimes you can get search predictive texts, for instance. I use Grammarly a lot. We will help you with your grammar. We'll also say maybe you should mix up some of your words here. So I think that lots of people are using a little bit of AI as a sort of assist, kind of an e-bike. Maybe you don't want to do the whole hill, maybe you just want to put the e-bike on. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. This is exactly what it is. Crystal Carter: So you can get up the hill but without sweating. So I think that's fine and I think that that's something that's useful, but it's very, very tricky. There are options. There are options where you can just let the e-bike do the whole thing, where you can let the machine do the whole thing. And I think a lot of people are thinking, "Oh, that looks good. That sounds great. That does the job." Mordy Oberstein: Does sound great. It sounds like the panacea. This is great. It's a solution that solves all the problems. But like most panaceas, they solve nothing. And I think you're right on spot. There are cases like oh, every time you run an email, you write something and Google's like, "No, no, here's the suggested text and it has the comma in the right place." By the way, it's how if someone's using the AI in Gmail because they have all the commas in the right place. Crystal Carter: Honestly, that Oxford comma gets me every time. Mordy Oberstein: Every time. Crystal Carter: Every single time. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. That is legitimately great. But then when it comes to okay, now we're going to write entire blog post written by AI writers, and I think that is an absolute mistake. I know there are people out there listening to this who think, "No, no, no. You can absolutely do that." And I'm sure you can use an AI writer with a little bit of editing and get a readable blog post. There's not a lot of mistakes. It's a usable piece of content. But is it really good? Is it differentiated in any way? Does it have actual critical thought put into it? Because as great as AI writers are, and I say this as a matter of philosophy, you can disagree with me, you cannot replicate human thought. We don't even understand human thought. So how are we going to create an AI writer that replicates human thought? It makes no sense to me. Crystal Carter: Also, I think sometimes it is the idiosyncrasies about a writer that makes them fantastic. So I' mean, the person that I think of is Tony Morrison. I remember reading a book of Tony Morrison's, and the whole page was one sentence. An AI writer would never do that. Grammarly would tell you that's a terrible, awful idea. But I definitely read that and thought, "This is beautiful. It's pretty much a poem." And it was one sentence and sometimes I go, "And this, and that, and that," in my sentences, and I do that for effect. I don't do that for grammar, I do that for effect. And sometimes you repeat. I repeat words in my writing and I do that, again, for effect. You want rhythm, you want different things when you're doing your writing. And AI will do something different there. So I think that the uniqueness that comes with some of human idiosyncrasies not only provides some of the flavor, some of the things that make something pleasurable to read, but can also be a USP. So if lots of people are using AI writers and if you are able to do something that is unique with your actual personal tone of voice, I remember this, a play about Sondheim, Sunday in The Park With George, and I remember watching that and they said, "Oh, everything's already been painted before." And somebody's like, "But painted by you George, has it been painted by you?" Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Crystal Carter: So it's important to think about how you would phrase something, how you would think about your content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, leave the SEO aside for one quick second. We'll get back to it. Just from a branding point of view, imagine this, imagine any serious writer. I'll say, I think I'm a serious writer for the most part. I have been offered by people, "Hey, well, we'll ghostwrite this blog post for you. We'll just put your name on there." Absolutely not. First off, I have a unique writing style. I have a unique way of phrasing things. I think there's a level of nuance and detail and substance that I offer on the topics I know about that other people just don't have that same perspective as I do. I wouldn't entrust my name with another human being. And then you want to entrust it, as a writer, to a bot? That makes no sense. And by the way, that brings up a real SEO question of who's the author of the content? Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Is the content owned by the AI tool and could they just farm it out to someone else? I mean it's a potential risk. What does it say? A million monkeys writing on a typewriter will suddenly make Shakespeare. I think there's a potential risk. This is me spitballing, but there's a potential risk that your content could end up being very, very similar to somebody else- Mordy Oberstein: Oh sure. Crystal Carter: Who's using the same prompt from the same tool. For instance, let's say you're looking at a tool and tool says that you should ask, "What different the earrings should I wear with a ball gown or something?" And that's the prompt that it tells you. And then the same person puts in the same prompt and gets the same response out of that. Mordy Oberstein: Even if it's not exactly the same, there's not going to be any differentiation or any significant differentiation. And that's kind of the point. When you think what the algorithms are trying to do, they're trying to find unique, really helpful content, you're not going to be differentiated. And that goes into things like, I don't know, the helpful content update, which to me by the way, is Google basically saying, "We know AI content is coming, it's already here. We need to develop an algorithm that's able to find it and weed it out." Crystal Carter: Yeah. And in their Google Search Central, there are SEO guidelines, they have a section under Quality Guidelines called Automatically Generated Content. And they state their automatically generated content, which is AI content, essentially, it's content that's been generated programmatically and cases where it's intended to manipulate search rankings and not users, Google may take action against such content. And this is something that they expanded upon when they were talking about the helpful content update. So it's something that you've got to be very, very careful with if it is something that you're thinking about. And it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as the update rolls out and becomes more entrenched. Mordy Oberstein: And long and short, it's a really good point because it's important to remember, AI written content is against Google's guidelines. So whether or not you think it's a good solution, not a good solution, it's against their guidelines. So I don't recommend ever going against Google's own guidelines with this. And I do think, by the way, as time goes on, I think John Mueller's talked about this, John Mueller from Google, that in the future yeah, you can have an AI writer maybe write a headline for you or a title tag. Those sort of things I think are going to be legitimately fine going forward. At some point, Google's going to have to adjust it's guideline and say, "Yeah, you can have a header written by an AI. That's fine." I think having an AI writer write a line or take your line that you wrote and rewrite it in different ways to give you some ideas. I know so much has it in their SEO writing assistant, they're connected to GPT-3. You can feed a very small snippet of content in and it will reword it for you in two or three different ways. Meaning if you're stuck on something, "I don't like the way this sounds. I have writer's block, can I get a different version of it to stimulate me? Or maybe I'll just kind of tweak this one a little bit," that's fine. I think AI writing makes sense for that. But for writing an actual thing of substance, I don't ever see that being okay in my opinion. Crystal Carter: And I think that if you're writing for people, then yeah, there should be people involved. If you've ever had those chat bots, those AI chat bots and you try to talk to them, they will eventually end up in nonsense. Mordy Oberstein: That's a joke. Crystal Carter: And sometimes they work for very simple questions like, "What time do you open?" They can be like, "Three o'clock, we open at three o'clock." And you're like, "Thank you AI bot thing that I didn't really need." Mordy Oberstein: That's not a content strategy. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Running that kind of content... If you are writing content, then AI can actually really legitimately answer those questions, well, that's not a content strategy. Hot take right there. Crystal Carter: You could be right. You could be right. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let me ask you then, what do you do? Because again, we mentioned before, none of the options are great. Crystal Carter: Right. Here's the thing that's tricky. On the one hand, you don't want to use AI content. You want to do unique content, you want to do interesting content. On the other hand, everybody's time poor, everybody's time stretched. So what do you do? I think that we mentioned Ross Simmons, who talks a lot about content distribution. And I think that that approach is a really good way to think about it. So there are loads of people that do this, Disney does it all the time where they will have the Little Mermaid, for instance, and they will do it as the animated one, they'll do it as the live action one. They'll do it on DVD, they'll do it on VHS, they'll do it on- Mordy Oberstein: Ice. They'll do it on ice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, on ice. Frozen, little mermaid. Poor, frozen mermaid. Mordy Oberstein: Salmon, frozen up on those- Crystal Carter: That's so grim. So they'll repackage it in lots of different ways. So basically what I think you should do is to sort of focus on making one piece of very good content at a time and then roll it out, repackage it, make it more accessible to lots of different audiences, but use that as a sort of linchpin. Another good example of this is Beyonce. I talk about a lot about Beyonce, but for instance, Beyonce was in the Lion King reboot as an actress. She also did the soundtrack. Then later on, a year later she did another movie called Black is King, which is essentially the story of the Lion King where she wrote it, direct it, and starred in it. And it was the album that she'd done for the movie before as a visual thing. And so she's just reusing the same content over and over again. So essentially you can change around the same piece of good content. So it means that you're not spreading yourself super thin and doing lots and lots of things poorly or lots and lots of things halfheartedly. You can do one thing really well and then just add value to it in lots of different ways. Mordy Oberstein: I couldn't agree more. First off, leave SEO aside. Okay, let's say it works. Okay, Yeah, you rank. You use the AI and it ranks and whatever. You fooled Google, you did it. Then a user clicks on the page, they show up and they read it. You're not fooling anybody. They aren't going to be like, "Oh, I really like this brand. This seems like very generic content. I love generic content. Let me give you all my money." Crystal Carter: Right. What are you going to do? Mordy Oberstein: I know we don't think of the second step. We rank, we got it, we're done. Crystal Carter: Right, job done. Yeah, absolutely, you should think about it holistically. And I think that when people make content that actually connects with people, that's something that lasts a long time. So if you are making content that people ask you for, you're making content that is responding to a need, then that's something that will last and will help build your brand much further after the content is or isn't ranking many years down the line. Mordy Oberstein: Truth in that. Let's turn it over to someone who's done a lot with AI writers, some of the really fun things that GPT-3 created John Mueller bot, if you don't know what that is, Google it, find it. Basically you asked the question to this bot and it gave you a John Mueller like response back and it was amazing and hilarious and it's great. One of the funniest things I've ever seen in the SEO space. He's the founder of Richman SEO training, and again, he's done a ton with AI writers and he's here to answer what are ways AI writing technology is actually applicable to a website now that we've totally trashed them. So here's Danny. Danny Richman: So what is the most surprising thing you've seen an AI writer be able to do? Well, first of all, I'm assuming when you say AI writer, what you really mean is a machine learning language model such as GPT-3. And I think one of the most common misconceptions with that technology is that it was never really designed for writing long form content and that isn't what it's best at doing. The areas where I found it most useful and surprising was kind of three different categories. One is around classification, then transformation, and then in translation. So for example, let's imagine you're doing some keyword research for a criminal law firm and you are looking at all keywords that are searched for on Google that include the word conspiracy because you're interested in creating some content around the offense of conspiracy to murder or conspiracy to defraud, those kind of offenses. Now, if you go and put a term like that into a keyword research tool, you're going to get a whole load of keywords that have absolutely nothing to do with the area of criminal law. You're going to get UFO conspiracies, Princess Diana conspiracies. So one of the things you often have to do when you're doing keyword research is to filter out all the noise and just find the keywords that are relevant and applicable to the website you are working with. And that's one of the areas where a tool like GPT-3 really excels because you can very easily upload a whole load of keyword research data into a Google sheet and then using a very simple script, you can then get GPT-3 to classify all those keywords in a matter of seconds according to whether they are in the context of a criminal law firm. So that's something that would've taken just hours or days of work for somebody to have to do. And then you can use the same process if you've got a bunch of keywords and you want to categorize them according to how likely they are to result in a conversion for your client's website. Again, that's a really good way of doing that. And I'm not just talking about keyword intent, there are tools already out there that will do that, this can intelligently look at the keywords with an understanding of the business that you are working with and then classify those keywords according to how likely it is to lead to somebody making an inquiry or buying a product that that particular business offers. One final example would be if you have access to a tool like SparkToro where you can put in something that's going to help you identify your audience. So say for example, a social media account that they follow or a website they visit. That will then show you a list of all the hashtags that your target audience use most frequently whenever they're posting things online. And so using GPT-3, what you can do is then upload that list of most frequently used hashtags and get the machine learning model to generate content topics and article titles that you know are going to appeal to that audience because it's what they're talking about most when they're posting on social media. So those are just kind of a few of the areas where I found these tools to be really surprising and exceptionally useful. Mordy Oberstein: That is actually a really good point. I think there's tremendous value in AI writers and AI backed technology helping you to refine things, as tools to better understand opportunities, to help you filter things out, to help you understand where you could focus your content, all those sort of things. I would definitely keep an eye on the AI tool space when it comes to content generation, those sort of things. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. There's a tool that I've seen that allows you to sort of enter content that you have and sort of see which entities and things it's understanding, which can help you to refine what you're doing there. I think that AI used as a tool and AI used as something that helps you to understand what you're doing is absolutely valuable because I think one of the reasons why people are interested in AI is because it's time saving and the research process of putting together content, research, and filling through keywords and understanding the topics and understanding what people are interested in with regards to the content can take time. And so if you're able to use AI to help you to find the content that you need to make your content better, then that's super valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. So I want to tell you a story, dear audience, and you, Crystal, obviously. Crystal Carter: I don't know where this is going so audience here, it's important. Mordy Oberstein: Only good places. Only good places. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: So the other day I saw that you Crystal were asking the godfather of SEO, Barry Schwartz, if something was new, which I knew it wasn't by the way. And like a good AI writer, I immediately plugged in my site isthisnew.com in a snarky tweet reply because this is what I do on Twitter, but many folks don't realize that Google made this change and I think maybe it could be significant. So today we're looking at the image preview overlay on the results page to see is this new? Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: So we already said it's kind of not new, but it's not old either. But what changed basically... I know, spoiler, I ruined it. I completely ruined it. Crystal Carter: I didn't know. Mordy Oberstein: No. But we're still asking if it's new, but we're going to show why it's significant, which is way more important, is this new, which is why the whole segment's kind of sarcastic. Anyway- Crystal Carter: Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: You know when you search for something, you get a box at the top of the results page with the whole group of images, an image pack or an image box depending on your vernacular. So clicking them used to take you from the main results page to the special image result page, all full of images, but not so anymore or not as often anymore. Now often enough, a panel appears to the right of the organic results on the main SERP itself. So no more going to the image search results per se. And I think it's actually significant, especially if you rely on image traffic. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that I think that Google's starting to try to move away from having images, videos, and other media content on the SERP as standalone elements. So for instance, they recently introduced something within Google Search Console where you have information about your video content and it will tell you how your video page is performing. And within the report it gives you the information about the page itself and also the video that's listed on the page. And also very often when you go to the images tab on Google SERP, they will show both the website that it's embedded on and also the YouTube link. So they'll show them at the same time. So this I think is another evolution of that sort of concept of making sure that the images aren't sort of seen as standalone, but rather as part of the website. Because when you click on it, so on the sort of image carousel sort of area, I'm not sure if you call it a carousel, but on the image sort of area, you click on it and then it shows you a preview of the page and the sort of summary around it, a little bit, as well as more similar images. So it's something that I think will allow people to see a bit more about the website before they go to it, and also to sort keep them on the main page of the SERP so that they can see more information about the query as well as the image. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think from a directional point of view, this is Google... I always kind of say Google's trying to go more portal, trying to show you multiple types of information all in one spot, so a little more immersive than, "Here's a bunch of results, and then here's another bunch of images on a separate SERP." And like you're saying, or a bunch of videos on another SERP. It's all kind of one holistic content experience. And I think there's going to be a lot of that coming down the pipe, and this is just one small peak into that future. But also just simply now, when you're looking at an image, first off, there's not as many images. When you see the related images show under the panel on the main results page, you don't have 50 million images like you have on image SERP results. So those image impressions you might have been getting before just don't happen anymore, and you're still competing intent-wise with the actual other results on the page. You might say, "Yeah, I see all these images here," but you know what? It's an organic result with an image thumbnail and I like that one better. I'm just going to click on that page. So it's a totally different construct. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. I think that this makes the SERP a bit richer with regards to images. I talked a lot about images and media and things, and the reason why I think it's because they say a picture's worth a thousand words, and you can get a lot of information off of a single image, you can get a brand sentiment from it. You can describe something very quickly in the amount of space that a thumbnail takes up. You can add more description about a product or about a concept, or whatever it may be than if you had the same number of texts. I think we looked up purple carrots, for instance. In some of the images you see a crosscut where it's white inside and some of them you see an orange inside. And I can just see that from the picture and I can understand that from the picture, whereas I'd have to explain all of that in words and it would take up a lot more space than that single picture, which is something that's really, really valuable for Google. Mordy Oberstein: And if you want just a little plug with Crystal, if you want to check out more images, Crystal has a ton of SEO content all around images and image search and reverse image search or- Crystal Carter: Visual search, Mordy Oberstein: Visual search. I was looking to find it. I knew I got it right. So we'll link to all of those in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Lovely. I also just want to shout out like Bing, because we say this isn't new. This is really not new for Bing. Mordy Oberstein: True. Crystal Carter: Bing has these overlays all over their SERP. Mordy Oberstein: It's very immersive. Crystal Carter: It's extremely immersive. I think looking at things six months ago, I was like, "Ah, this is busy." There's a lot of stuff going on there, but Google is looking more and more like what Bing looked like six months ago. And this is another prime example. On Bing, if you look up a query like purple carrots or whatever, for every SERP result, they have a little light bulb. You click on the little light bulb and then they give you an overlay that gives you lots of information about that search result, will give you more images, will give you more links, will give you a Wikipedia thing. Lots of stuff like that. So it's interesting, and I think we talk a lot about MUM and I think again, the stuff around images and media is partly Google trying to get to grips with MUM and their multimodal search. And I think that Bing is also doing that, and they very much lay their cards on the table with regards to how they manage multi-modal search, and it's definitely worth looking at. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and by the way, Google has been taking things from the Bing SERP for a long time. If you look at what's going on now where there's Google's testing out multiple URLs and featured snippets, Bing has been doing that for a long time. We actually just covered that on the news the other week, which by the way, speaking of news, so nailed that pivot. That's two. I get a gold star. Here's the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news, some changes to the results page for you this week. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land, "Google rolling out site names and updated favicon logos in search results." Oh, my. Oh, the "Oh, my," wasn't a quote, that was me saying, "Oh, my." But in a nutshell, what it means is above the URL in mobile will be the name of the site on the Google Results page. So if you Google best website builder and you see the result for Wix, it will now say Wix above the URL to wix.com, more prominently displayed than it was before, more individually displayed than it was before. To me, where this matters is where you have some brand awareness tied to a website. Why? Well, because with the change, this site name is more prominent. So if the site slash brand name has some recognition, to me, it means you might actually get some additional clicks, even if you rank a position or two below a website result, without that kind of recognition, which just goes to show you that all aspects of digital strategy do converge at some point. In this case, brand marketing and SEO intersect. You have to think about the full picture and user experience on the SERP. Of course, much of this was tested at various points in the recent past. So who says paying attention to all sorts of changes to the SERP doesn't pay off? Is this new? No, it's the news, the snappy news, and now it's over. That's all I have to... Oh wait, the ad label. You know where it says ad on the Google results page next to ads on the SERP? Now it's going to say sponsored. And that's the snappy news. All right, news is done. Wonderful. But before we go, we have one more thing we have to do. Crystal Carter: What is that? Mordy Oberstein: What might that be, y'all? This is episode number nine so if you've been listening to the other eight episodes, you already know, but if you don't know, we like to give shout-outs to people from our own community so that you could have more people to follow across social for more awesome SEO insights, because there's nothing like getting SEO insights from other SEOs. So here is our follow of the week, which is drum roll please, Ann Smarty. Crystal Carter: Ann Smarty. Ann Smarty is an amazing SEO to follow. She is such a phenomenon with regards to content. She writes content on lots of different elements of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: She does not use an AI writer. Crystal Carter: She does not use an AI writer, but she's incredibly prolific. She's written lots of different content and she's also runs something called- Mordy Oberstein: VC Buzz, Viral Content Buzz. Crystal Carter: Which is a great resource for anyone who's looking to learn more about content and how to manage it and SEO stuff. So if you see anything written by Ann Smarty across the web, doing SEO things, you should absolutely read it and you'll very, very likely see many things written by Ann Smarty because she's written on lots of great topics. I come across her work a lot. Mordy Oberstein: Everywhere. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And it's always really, really valuable. So I would absolutely recommend following her and reading lots of her content. Mordy Oberstein: Truly one of the SEO veterans, SEO OGs of the industry. You could find her on Twitter at @seosmarty, S-E-O-S-M-A-R-T-Y or just look at the show notes and find her Twitter link there. And that's it. We did it. Crystal Carter: That's it? Mordy Oberstein: That's it. It's in the bag. We got it. Crystal Carter: Number nine. Mordy Oberstein: And we use no artificial content written by some bot either. Crystal Carter: That's what you think. Mordy Oberstein: This whole time, you've been a cyborg. You've shattered my world, Crystal. Crystal Carter: I am a cyborg. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, are you a friendly cyborg or a world destroying cyborg? Crystal Carter: I haven't decided yet. Mordy Oberstein: It's be nice to Crystal day. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We'll be back next week with an all new episode as we dive into are links everything SEOs make them out to be. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO learning hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content all written by human beings and our webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guested it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. But 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 successfully rank your site’s content at the top of the SERP… and then keep it there for the long haul? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by RicketyRoo’s, Melissa Popp, to discuss tactics for maintaining your rankings on the SERP. Discover how you can overcome volatility on Google and competitor targeting by taking a content-first approach to maintain rankings. Join us this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as we pay tribute to the unsung heroes of SEO… those who can maintain their rankings! Back The hard work of maintaining your Google rankings How do you successfully rank your site’s content at the top of the SERP… and then keep it there for the long haul? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by RicketyRoo’s, Melissa Popp, to discuss tactics for maintaining your rankings on the SERP. Discover how you can overcome volatility on Google and competitor targeting by taking a content-first approach to maintain rankings. Join us this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as we pay tribute to the unsung heroes of SEO… those who can maintain their rankings! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 93 | June 26, 2024 | 58 MIN 00:00 / 58:13 This week’s guests Melissa Popp Melissa Popp is the Content Strategy Director for RicketyRoo. With two decades of experience helping businesses amplify their online presence, Melissa brings knowledge, innovative ideas, and actionable strategies tailored to today's competitive landscape. Her expertise is backed by successful collaborations with diverse businesses, from small local shops to larger enterprises, proving the effectiveness of well-crafted content strategies in driving tangible results. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, we're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO brand here at Wix. Today, I'm joined by she who doesn't wear a cape, but maybe she should wear a cape. But either way, she is an SEO hero, our Head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: But the good ones do like, yeah, the Flash doesn't wear one, but Batman does. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I had a plumber who really helped me out. He didn't wear a cape, that would be very impractical. Mordy Oberstein: But it would've covered up his crack. Crystal Carter: My plumber has it under control. I'll just tell you that right now. Mordy Oberstein: Plumber crack is a real thing. My stepfather's an electrician. Electrician crack is also a real thing. Crystal Carter: Wow, this is wow, that's a great start to the podcast. Thanks listeners for hanging in there with us. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, it's not my fault, it's a full moon tonight. Anyway, 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 get inbuilt Google Search Console insights to help you maintain those rankings. Look for within our SEO dashboard, because today we pay homage to the unsung heroes of SEO, those who maintain rank, how Google updates bring maintaining rank into focus in all new ways. The content connection, why a content first focus can be your best friend when looking to keep your rankings, and how sites of all sizes can go about maintaining their rankings. To help us RicketyRoo's own, Melissa Popp will be here in just a few minutes to share what's in her utility belt as she goes about keeping her rankings. Plus, we look at how search engines try to maintain their market share by borrowing from other search engines. And of course, we have snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, put on your capes and proudly wear your underwear on the outside as we pay tribute to you, the unsung hero of SEO, AKA, Captain Rank Maintainer on this, the 93rd episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Maintaining rank is hard. It's not easy. Crystal Carter: Maintaining rank is hard. Mordy Oberstein: Because everyone's gunning for you now. Crystal Carter: Yes, everyone can see you. You were completely exposed. If you're number two or if you're number 37, you can sneak in, right? You can sneak in on the cut, you can be like, okay, I see you number one, I see what you're doing, but you can bide your time, like a sneak attack kind of thing. But if you are number one, everyone can see you and everybody knows what's going on and people will study you and get all in there. A great tool for looking at your competitors is Semrush has a great tool for that, looking at keywords and looking at competitors. One of the ones that Ross Simmons, friend of the podcast, friend of the SEO Hub has talked about is CRM. Salesforce has an article called, What is A CRM, and I'm looking at there, and that has a traffic volume, the keyword, what is a CRM has a traffic volume of 22,000. According to Semrush, they're getting 5,000 of those clicks every month. They've ranked number one in that position since May, 2023, possibly even longer. And they spend time making sure that that does not move. Why? Because that's 5,000. That's that much coming through straight away, and that's something that's really important. They're also ranked, they recently have had a tussle with HubSpot. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, a tussle, that's a good word, by the way. I just want to stop, point out what a great word tussle is. Sorry. Crystal Carter: Tussle, yes, tussle is a good word. So they're tussling a little bit with HubSpot for CRM, so sometimes they're number one, sometimes HubSpot's number one for just the word CRM, but they've had number one for, what is a CRM, for a very long time. And that's really important because that's core to their business. So if you have terms that are core to your business, it is absolutely worth maintaining that content, maintaining that position over time. And if Google understands that it is core to your business, that everything you do points to that particular keyword, then they will give you that. They'll understand that you are the authority in that, and all of the things on your website should point to that. Now, not only does what does a CRM, rank number one for what is a CRM, but it also ranks number one for loads of other terms as well. So for instance, it also ranks number one for, what is a CRM tool. It ranks number one for, CRM definition, CRM program, all of that sort of stuff. That particular piece of content is pulling in tons of traffic for them. And I think that in terms of maintaining rank, sometimes things can rank number one and get no traffic and not get much traffic at all. But according to this, according to Semrush in May alone, the page, what is a CRM, on Salesforce was getting 43,000 clicks a month. Okay, now that is absolutely, absolutely 100% worth maintaining rank. Now, if you're looking at your keywords and you've got number one but nobody's coming to the page anyway, you want to have as many number one keywords on your site as you can, but maybe don't lose any sleep if you slip a little bit. But if you have something that's coming in and bringing in thousands and thousands every month, then absolutely spend the time. And there's lots of different tools, which I'm sure that Melissa will get into the details of it, but you need to assess when you're assessing whether or not you should fight to maintain your rank, whether or not you should defend yourself from the usurpers. Make sure... I know dropping the vocabulary words. Anybody studying for their SATs, you're welcome. And- Mordy Oberstein: That's our core audience right there. Crystal Carter: Right? But basically anybody who, if you're looking at it and you're trying to think, should they hold the line here? Have a look at the search volume, have a look at how relevant it is to the rest of your content, and then also think about the links. So if you're thinking about that particular page, we have a particular piece of content. We have the SEO Guide, the Wix SEO Guide, for instance, on the Wix SEO Hub, which has lots of links out to other pieces of content, has lots of links into it from lots of other links as well, and gets a fair amount of traffic for us for that particular page. That's worth us maintaining, that's worth us looking after, that's worth us thinking about. And so have a look at which ones are those pivotal, crucial, important pages, and you should probably be monitoring those in terms of ranking. You should probably be monitoring them daily, weekly, at least. And you should be scheduling in and making sure that you're updating them regularly and making sure that you're paying attention to your competitors because sometimes if you're not looking and they can sneak in and you might miss that you lost a keyword that maybe has a knock on effect to some of the other keywords that you're ranking for. Mordy Oberstein: Now, to get more into this, I had a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Popp, because I have a lot to say about this, and we talked a lot about this. Here's a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Pop. So, welcome to this show, Melissa Popp. How are you? Melissa Popp: I'm good. How are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: I'm good, can't complain. I think that you are one of the unsung heroes of SEO. Melissa Popp: Oh, gosh. I just have to throw that feather in my cap, won't I? Mordy Oberstein: Not all heroes wear capes, unless you're wearing a cape. You wear capes? Melissa Popp: That's true. No, not yet, not yet. No, I do have a crown though that I wear sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's close. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I'm a little extra sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: There's a whole... In every SEO conversation, podcast, webinar, article, whatever, it's all about increasing rank, increasing rank, increasing rank. But one of the things that I'll put a little spoiler out there, or I don't know, behind the scenes thing, maybe I'm not allowed to say this, but one of the things we talk about internally at Wix is maintaining rank. We're already ranking, and now we have to keep those rankings because if you don't keep those rankings, then you're back at the square one of trying to get the rankings, but no one ever talks about this. Melissa Popp: No, nobody does. Nobody talks about, what I like to think of as maintenance mode of SEO. You come to a point where depending on how big your site is, what your niche is, that you hit a saturation level where it's like, how much more can you do to continue to boost rankings when you already are in page one, top three results, earning your featured snippets, unfortunately showing up in SGE now, whether that's right or wrong, but there's a maintenance that's involved there and ongoing work that most of us, I would say, probably 60 to 70% of our job is that maintenance mode of maintaining those ranks. And then at the same time, trying to figure out, okay, where do we pivot from here to earn additional rank rankings? If that's even possible, because at some point you reach a level where you own it all, ideally. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, that's one of the, I don't know, thou shall not say this, but sometimes you can't go any higher. You're number three, and that's where you're going to get for this keyword. Melissa Popp: Absolutely, and at RicketyRoo, we do a lot of work with home service clients, and you see that all the time. These businesses are competing with directors like Yelp, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, and other websites that the domain authority and just overall topical authority that they have in those niches because of what powerhouse of websites they are. Your little mom and pop shop is never going to be able to get rank one, two, three, even in some cases when you're going up against powerhouses like that. So it's, what do you do from there? Unless you have millions of dollars to try to compete there, you're never going to maintain that. And nobody talks about that either, of what ranking is good enough before you start carrying the load of ranking right there versus trying to convince clients that you can go higher because you can't. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's fine because sometimes you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggonit, and people click on you and you're ranking number three, and that's fine. Melissa Popp: And as long as you're converting and earning business, and then also you're satisfied as a business owner at what your revenue is from that, you don't have to be number one to make a living and to keep your business growing. And there's so much competition out there, and so many, we're seeing this right now, all the changes. I mean, that could be a whole other episode, right? Talking about Reddit and Quora jumping in rankings, and now you're competing with a whole other subset of websites that shouldn't even be competing with you, but at some point you have to step back and say, okay, this is good enough. We are converting enough. Either, what other channels can we look at? Because that's another thing we don't talk about as part of this maintenance mode. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's life outside of Google? Melissa Popp: Oh my gosh, life outside of SEO, I'm going to get hate mail for saying, and I'm a huge, huge believer in being able to look at, where is your audience? Where are they hanging out? Where are they having discussions? Sometimes it's social media, sometimes it is Reddit. Sometimes, I mean, I was talking to someone the other week about direct mail campaigns and how nobody talks about direct mail, but when you look at certain demographics, that still works. And that's another whole aspect of maintaining not just rankings, but brand awareness. You want to go where people are. You reach a plateau with SEO, you can take that budget and spend it a little bit elsewhere to figure that out, and you're still growing just in a different way. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so spinning back around to all this, because the point about Reddit and Quora is exactly where I want go with this. You were doing just fine, things were okay. You were ranking, I don't know, one, two, or three, and now all of a sudden you're still ranking one, two, or three, but there's a giant discussions, cert feature box above you with a bunch of Reddit URLs. How much of your work is going into changes in the ecosystem, how to combat them, how to deal with them? With the Reddit one, I don't know what you do, but things like that where the SERP is changing, the algorithm is changing, there are updates, there's this or that, and you're trying to just staying out above water because you're doing better than above water. You're ranking the top of the SERP, but you're doing work that keeps you afloat at the very top of the SERP. How much of your time is spent on those kinds of things? Melissa Popp: I mean, I already, as part of my work, and especially on the content marketing side with clients, I am already looking at Reddit and Quora, whether they're ranking on page one or not. When it comes to content ideas, blogging, even updating content, looking at people, also ask boxes, I was already looking at all of this before all of a sudden they all jumped to page one. And I think that's a big problem in our industry, is that a lot of our efforts, there's a lot of people out there doing great work with content that are looking at the big picture and not just the little SEO piece of it. We need to start spending more time looking at this. So Reddit and Quora, I mean, I was doing content briefs a couple of weeks ago for a home services client, and I'm seeing Reddit discussions pop up for transactional keywords. There's no reason they need to be there at all, but I'm like, okay, if people are landing on a page, a service page, and still have that question that is popping up on page one, whether I agree that that Reddit thread should be there or not, I need to be looking at that. There is still, whether Google's algorithm is all jacked up and that is what's happening here or not, I still, if Google is going to rank that there, I need to be aware of that for my client and think, is this Reddit discussion worthy of inclusion on a piece of content I'm creating for? Do I need to update that piece of content? So I think there's two, there's two issues there. One is we're not doing enough to actually understand search intent to begin with, and Reddit in discussion is popping up there is one way to look at that. What are people discussing that they're not getting from "normal" search results, that we need to be including in our content? And not just for SEO purposes, but literally a potential customer is asking that question. And then on the flip side, why are we not doing this to begin with? We only care about it now that Reddit and Quora and other discussions are on page one. So we're already doing a disservice to clients by having not paid attention to this before it simply popped to page one. Mordy Oberstein: But that goes into, so I'll give you an example of this where if you're not paying attention to what people actually want and talking to them in a way that actually speaks to them, while you might be ranking today, I don't think you'll be ranking tomorrow. There was a couple... I'm actually running this up right now for the Wix SEO Hub. By the time this recording comes out, I hope it'll be long published. Looking at two examples from the March 2024 core update. So bankrate.com redid basically an entire folder of their content, and it was previously very, I call it sterile content, like, what is a payday loan? How to get a payday loan, when don't you choose a payday loan, how to finance a payday loan. Every H two was very topical, and it's like each one's trying to rank for a featured snippet, kind of thing. And they redid all of it and the folder went berserk in a good way, just shot up in the rankings with the March 2024 core update, because what they did was they said, okay, let's speak to the topic, but in a way that relates to what the user's going to do with the information. So for example, they added a section on when a payday loan might actually be worthwhile because they realized, okay, we're talking about payday loans and the original content was, what is a payday loan, the risk of a payday loan, and all these very generalized, sterile kind of subtopics. But if we're talking about this, obviously the user is looking to get a payday loan for a reason, so why don't we address that? And they did, and they did it across all of their content, it became very situational like, here's what you need to know about a payday loan, in the context of how it's going to work for you. They talked about just what to expect, the money would take X number of days to get into your account, blah, blah, blah. It was much more user focused. All of a sudden they shot up in the rankings, they replaced somebody. They replaced the page, and that page is now gone and not ranking. And websites, I think are slowly coming around to the idea that they have to update content. What they wrote five years ago and ranked with five years ago is not going to work anymore because the algorithm is changing. Let's change that up. And big content teams are doing that and if you're not worried about maintaining your rank, somebody's going to get after you and replace you. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and why wouldn't they? Especially when you look at bigger websites compared to smaller websites, and that's a whole other player, smaller websites being frozen out of brand dominated topical searches. But that example that you gave with bank rate, how many SEOs listening to this right now, okay, on let's say smaller or medium sized teams and websites, are going to come away from this and go, holy cow, if Bankrate did this, this is absolutely what we should do. Lily Ray, Marie Haynes have been sharing other examples of websites that are skyrocketing after pivoting their content strategy. We have that proof there. Now, can we guarantee 100% certainty that Google's always going to reward that content? Who knows what Google's going to do, but what we know is searchers want information that they can actually act on and use, beyond just whatever their initial search query is. And the problem is, is we spend so much time creating SEO content, focusing on keywords, focusing on page, what backlinks can we get, what internal links can we update? We are so focused on gaining the SEO side of things that we forget the content is the foundation of that growth. And what's even worse is most people know that, but they don't want to spend the time on creating a quality piece of content because holy cow, that's actually really hard, even if it's a topic, what is a payday loan versus how does the payday loan scam work? And so you have a problem that companies don't want to invest the time in creating quality of content. They certainly don't want to pay writers and spend the money to create quality content. I mean, I can imagine how much Wix spends with all the content that you all push out and you have a set budget for that and you can get it and you look at the names you bring on to write for you. But most companies don't have that, nor do they want to invest in it because they feel that their ROI could be better spent elsewhere, whether it's paid advertising, display, something else. They want instant gratification, not realizing that keeping your content updated to match search intent and what your users are actually looking for to make a decision through that top and middle of the funnel content, particularly, you are going to spend less money long-term on ROI than throwing money at the wall with PPC, competing with everyone else driving bids up. And I get it, I understand why this works the way it does. You're always going to try to get the most for the cheapest. But we're now finding with the helpful content update and other things Google are doing that, holy cow, that doesn't work anymore. And now companies are playing catch up and having to spend even more money that they didn't budget. In Bankrate's case, I wonder how much money they spent updating content that if they had approached the correct way to begin with, they wouldn't have had to spend. And that's the conundrum now everybody is in. Mordy Oberstein: That's the whole problem. And to your point about the smaller websites, they also, in my opinion, there's no such thing as one kind of site having a total advantage. There are things that big websites have that smaller websites don't, like we have money for SEO Hub to pay writers, yada, yada, yada, yada. But if you want to make changes, it's very slow. We're a giant brand, there's a lot of guidelines, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. If you're a smaller website and you're like, you know what? And we're more risk averse, so if we see that there's a new trend. I think for example, that content's far more conversational than it ever has been before. Good luck getting a big brand to create a landing page that's conversational, not ultimate, whatever, whatever, sell, buy here. Good luck. If you're a small brand or a small website or a small business or an SME, whatever it is, you can do that. You can take those risks and that's what'll help you maintain the rank, in my opinion. I think you're at an easier advantage to maintain rank to a certain extent. Obviously, the larger websites have that authority and that makes it easier for them but you can do things like, I think that content that Google's looking for X now and I want to pivot to do X, you can do that tomorrow if you wanted to. There's no hoops to jump through. Melissa Popp: Definitely, and the thing with smaller business versus bigger businesses, especially in brands, we're hearing that conversation a lot as well, is how is anybody going to compete with these big brands now dominating search more than ever? And depending on what your business is, especially as a small, medium sized business, you don't need to compete with those. That's not where locally people are looking for. We have these conversations with local clients all the time, that they want number one against Yelp and Angie's List, and it's like, no, you don't, you don't need to. People understand that they're shopping around, they are going to click down through results. That's the whole scary idea of, oh, if you're not at the top of page one, oh no, oh no, the sky is falling. Mordy Oberstein: What's the best place to bury a dead body? On page two of the SERP. Melissa Popp: Listen, you just need to be on page one, and you need to give searchers and actual consumers more power to make that choice, most people are shopping for that. But yeah, I absolutely agree that smaller businesses has the opportunity to make more immediate impact than bigger businesses do, and they are less risk adverse. And it comes down to the priority of changes you're making, whether it's SEO updates, link building, content, you don't have to do it all. You just have to do the right things in the right order to make the most impact and then eventually, you get to all the other things. And that's another thing that gets, I think very missed in our industry is everybody wants a checklist. Let's go through, update title tags and Meta descriptions and headers and blah, blah, blah down the list, where it's like, okay, we know Google rewrites Meta titles and descriptions all the time. Why is that your number one priority? Mordy Oberstein: That's not what's going to move... Sometimes, yes, but my experience, if you had rankings and are slowly seeing a decline, like a consistent slow degradation, it's a quality issue, usually. Melissa Popp: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And that might be, you have terrible headers as part of the quality, but it's usually the quality overall. You need to have a hard look at your content, which is I think what people don't do. I feel like SEOs look at the SERP like I won. It's like I don't know, I'll use a sports reference, like, I scored a basket or I got a goal or I got a hit, now I'm done. Yeah, but in five minutes from now, you're back up in the order, you got to take another swing. It's not, you won and these rankings belong to you. Google doesn't owe you anything. Melissa Popp: No, no, and why we think they do. These conversations and arguments and the vitriol that our industry is showing to one another right now and frankly showing to folks like John Miller and Danny Sullivan. Okay, I'm not saying Google is the enemy, but we are competing against them. That's a realistic fact of what we do. The only thing we can do is do the best we possibly can, starting with the foundation that does everything for SEO and that piece of content. We can only do the best that we can and maybe pray, hope, whatever you want to do, burn a candle, whatever, and hope for everything else to match up and help rankings. But at the end of the day, we start with that piece of content and it's so overlooked. And to circle back to talking about unsung heroes, that's why this maintenance of your rankings is so important. And it always starts with that content. What more could you be doing? How has search intent changed that you need to now update your piece? We see that all the time in local. I feel like local search results, the search intent changes more than anywhere else that I've worked, and I've worked on e-comm brands, I've worked enterprise level national, international. I feel like at the local level, that search intent changes almost on a whim. It's like a whole demographic decides, oh, I'm going to search to buy this or find this service, this is what... And it makes no sense, but it's what happens. And that's one of the first things I do when I'm looking to update a piece of content is, I want to dive deep into SERPs and understand, has this changed? And we don't spend that time. We want to blame Google and we want to point fingers at things. And yes, sometimes, you know what? I've seen some of the cases here that I definitely think this is Google's fault for a particular domain and not what they're doing, absolutely, but those cases are so actually rare. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Yeah, the norm is, Google knows for the most part what he's doing. There are enormous gaps sometimes and there are shifts. I think we're in a point right now where, like an inflection point, where things just like multiple reasons why things are not firing in all cylinders and they're not and- Melissa Popp: No, they're not. Absolutely, I'm not defending Google here at all for any of this. I cannot imagine the algorithmic engineering, especially now that you're adding machine learning and AI into the mix, of how difficult it is to actually do this right. And part of me still believes that they do in fact want to get this right. Losing market share for people switching to AI search engines, to TikTok, to any of these things, depletes their revenue. They want to get this right, but in the meantime, we're all left holding the bag with our clients trying to explain, we have no control over this, so- Mordy Oberstein: But you do have control over, for example, let's talk about bounce rate, and they'll talk about the context of user behavior metrics and nav boost, that kind of thing, which is legit, nav boosts is a really interesting conversation, but they're not talking. We're not talking about it. Oh, you know what? I see my bounce rate has gone up, maybe my content's not what people want anymore. Let me see, maybe I should rework that. We always look for the most immediate, easy way out. Melissa Popp: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: As opposed to taking a hard look, and the only way I feel like to maintain your rankings is to take a hard look at yourself. What are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? What's the data say about how people feel about our content? And it is not just your typical SEO metrics, if you're going on social media and being like, oh, I hate this. Also, you're seeing people talk about your blog in a negative way, that's going at some point to impact search and your rankings. You need to go back, you need to take a hard look, you need to think, okay, I need to rework this because your rankings, again, they're not a given. They're not going to last, no rankings last forever. Melissa Popp: No, nobody, nobody, and you bring up bounce rate, one of the most misunderstood and it's like the bad child of everything. But how many SEOs are either bringing in a content marketer to actually look at content marketing metrics like bounce rate, timeline page, etc? How many of SEOs are actually looking at those metrics at all? And I'd imagine that number is probably staggering low because like you said, a lot of us, well first off, I mean it goes back to our clients. What do our clients care about? They care about rankings, traffic and conversion, and that's usually it. They don't care about anything else, as long as rankings leave the traffic to conversion, boom, you're done, right? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Melissa Popp: But the problem is, is so many have relied on those three types of metrics for so long, they've forgotten about the world of things out there beyond just bounce rate and time on page. It's, how many websites have heat maps and are looking at what elements on a page people are clicking on? Where are they clicking out? Well how... Scroll depth, if you write a 2,000-word blog, let's say it's completely as comprehensive, topically authoritative, it's a perfect, perfect blog ever written on a subject, but nobody's reading past the first third part of it. Something is wrong with that, even if it is the greatest blog ever to be written. But we don't, for the most part, SEOs don't look at metrics outside of their little bubble. And I get it, I understand why that happens, but we're now evolving to how content is relatable, not only to search but to users. We have to be more aware. I really believe in the next couple of years, probably next 15, 18 months really, that design and user experience- Mordy Oberstein: Sure, 100%. Melissa Popp: ... that's going to be the next set of conversations we're having, it's if your user experience is terrible, starting with site speed and page load time, to just how your call to actions. I mean, how many websites do we go to nowadays that, here's a modal popup, boom, right in your face. You're not even there for two seconds and it's like, sign up for this, do this. Or my least favorite thing in the world, you get to a page and a video automatically starts playing and it scares you out of your seat because all of a sudden your screen is yelling at you. Mordy Oberstein: Here's a page I'm sharing. You can't see this audience because it's an audio experience. Melissa Popp: Oh, I already hate this. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, okay, you already hate it. This is a page that lost a lot of rank with the March 2024 core update and it's not hard to see why. There's no white space on the page, there's no spacing, there's no anything. You're looking like, oh my God, it wasn't meant for me to consume the information. The page was designed to rank for whatever keywords. Melissa Popp: No, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And the enterprise is like, you read it, it's not bad information. Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: But it's not usable. Melissa Popp: No, my eyes already hurt. The font is terrible on the page, the image is so tiny. I can tell it's a dude, but I have no idea. Mordy Oberstein: Why is that even there? Is that the author? I don't even know what that is. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I mean, and even look at this, I see the data up here, the published date is 2022. When was the last time that this page was vetted by anybody to determine is this information still accurate? Is it correct? But then also it's like, where is the connection here? Just skimming this first paragraph. There is no connection to get people to even care. The hook is not there. This absolutely to me- Mordy Oberstein: It's very sterile content, it is written topically, it's not written for users, and the problem with this is no one since 2022 has looked at this and said, how can we make this page better? You should be constantly thinking, how can I make my content better? Because your content is never perfect and it's never good enough, and it's never, I don't want to say good enough, but it's never the pinnacle of what you want. And user expectations are always changing. To quote Glenn Gabe, Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned. If the user looks at this and says, oh this... They're never coming back, all of that nav boost interaction data is getting factored and now, and it's all because you thought I wrote the content, I won the rankings and I'm done. And hence, the unsung heroes of SEO are those who are saying, it's never done. Melissa Popp: No, and it's never, it absolutely isn't. And one of the things I do, a lot of the times when we have new clients come on board, no matter it's a 10-page website or a 1,000-page website, is we content audit the heck out of every single page on the website. And I want to understand, it's, are you getting traffic? Do you have any rankings? And then beyond that, what do these pages look like? What information is on there? And anybody on the RicketyRoo team will tell you, I am vicious when it comes to content update. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Melissa Popp: I do not play around, I take a scalpel to websites. I have recommended pruning websites two thirds of the content in cases. There has been recent cases where I've pruned a lot of content and said, no, you know what? We're just going to start over. We probably could use some of this content foundationally, but I don't even want to look at it anymore. It's that bad. And I don't do this, I laugh a little bit about it, I don't do this because I'm a mean person or I want to tick people off. I'm doing this because I see the writing on the wall. We've been saying this for 20 years, that content is king, that has not changed, it hasn't. And why every couple of years we shift back and forth on that and we don't spend the time on even just focusing on our content strategy. Most SEO's content strategy is literally, okay, what long tail keywords in Semrush or Ahrefs do I see that are questions and your when, where, whys, hows? Let's just write that content because it has high search volume and no, and it's like- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Melissa Popp: And I'm not saying that that is incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: No, there's a place for it within. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and you have to look at it bigger than that. I mean, there are lots of topics I recommend because absolutely, I'm like, oh, the search volume is there, but also, it matches search intent. And we talk a lot about a topic clustering as if that is a new thing that somehow magically has appeared. And no, that has been a marketing trend, not just in content marketing, but in other forms of marketing for decades. And when I'm building topic clusters for clients, I absolutely am looking at search volume, but I'm also thinking, okay, what do people actually want to know? And a lot of times I recommend topics that have very low search volume, and sometimes I'll get pushback on that of like, oh, but oh no, nobody's searching for that. And I'm like, listen, search volume numbers are BS, they are guesstimates. They do not necessarily mean that 1,200 people are searching a month for X, Y, Z. Now, that doesn't mean that we should ignore those guesstimates. They do help guide our efforts, but we have to think more outside the box. And especially working with smaller clients, you'll get a lot of zero volume keywords that because the tools are running nationally to aggregate that guesstimate, you actually don't know how many people locally might be searching for that because it's not enough to ping for those tools. And that's another thing people forget about when they're creating content, but also updating content. Just because something has the 1,200 volume search nationally every month doesn't mean that people are actually searching for that to eventually lead to conversion. And so that's why I always go back to the number one thing I'm always looking for when I'm updating content and in this maintenance mode, is search intent. It's the most important part of updating and creating content. And we dance around that because that's a little bit outside the SEO box. We talk about search intent at a very high level, but in the nitty-gritty- Mordy Oberstein: But the micro level, no. Micro intents, what's that? Or we feel like, yeah, we nailed it and don't think, wait, it changed. It's like anything with your content. I want you, if you're listening to this podcast and you write content and you're trying to write content, I want you to go back to something you wrote, I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago, two years ago, and I want you to reread it and I want you to walk away. And how many of you walk away feeling like, that was amazing content? And how many times do you walk away? That's how I used to write and it's good, it's not bad, but- Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: ... you're in a different place and you're a better writer, you're a better SEO, you're a better content person and you look back like, I could have done better with that. That's how Google's looking at your content. That was good, that was good. Melissa Popp: Exactly, that's the missing link, is as Google's algorithm gets smarter, faster and larger, encompassing more items into ranking factors, we have to evolve with that. We can sit here in our discussions and blame Google all we want, but at the end of the day, we are at their mercy of how they want to do things, whether we like it or not, and our clients are at that mercy. So we have to evolve with it. And it's like for writers, absolutely, just go back a year and look at some of the things that you wrote. Go look at where they rank. Go look where they rank now and if you still have access to any analytical data around it, how many people are coming to that page? Where are they going from that page? And I guarantee you, in a lot of cases, you're going to find that it's not performing the way you felt when you finished writing and you hit publish, because we publish pieces of content and we're like, yes, this is it. This is awesome, this is the pinnacle we did, we're at the top of the world, but then nobody comes to see it. Nobody comes, but we pretend like that doesn't exist. We pretend that that's not a thing that we need to care about. The SEO team cares about that now and it's like, no, it's like we should also care about that too, especially if we're continuing to write for that business or we work in-house or whatever our role is, and that's just part of the process. Just like you revisit keyword research, with clients, I like to revisit keyword research every six months to a year. I want to see again, where does the search intent just for on-page change that we need to pivot and change things up? Mordy Oberstein: Totally, totally. Melissa Popp: But we just don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: No, we don't get that that's, it's not a checklist. That's a different snarky point for a different time. If people wanted to revisit their processes and get some advice from you, where can they find you out there in ether? Melissa Popp: Oh gosh, everybody knows I live on Twitter and I'm going down with that ship. You can find me at- Mordy Oberstein: Me too. Melissa Popp: ... Popup writer on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Popup writer, okay, we'll link to that in the show notes. Melissa Popp: And yeah, feel free, anybody on my team will tell you I love ripping content apart and not from a place of negativity, but to help people do better. I ask my team all the time, any RicketyRoo blog that you read that I wrote, I guarantee you, two or three people on the team have told me how terrible it is and helped me make it better. I come from a place where I want to support anybody writing content to do better, not just for their clients, but for themselves. We only grow by putting ourselves out there and that's another scary part of all of this, is we have to admit that maybe we didn't do our best or something changed. That means we have to do better. So, I'm always happy to help people. Slide into my DMs, email me, any of that. I'm always around to help with this because I think these are the conversations we need to be having. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa is not only a great SEO and a great content person, just a great follow altogether, and it is why you were a previous follow of the week on the podcast for that reason. Melissa Popp: I was, I know. Mordy Oberstein: You were. Melissa Popp: I was like, oh. Mordy Oberstein: You're one of the best follows on Twitter out there in the SEO space right now. I don't want to say all of Twitter because if you're sports, maybe you don't talk about sports, but in the SEO space, not many better follows at all. So, please follow Melissa. Melissa Popp: Well, I appreciate that. I just telling it like it is. I love what I do and I love to share knowledge and I want us to have more productive conversations about the things we're doing because we're all going through it. It's not us versus one another, it's we're all in this together. And as cheesey that is, there is light at the end of this tunnel. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa, thank you so much for coming on and really say hi to all the great folks over at RicketyRoo. Melissa Popp: I will, I will. I'm sure they'll all send their love to you too. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, bye. Melissa Popp: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you again, Melissa, she's one of the best people in the whole SEO industry. Crystal Carter: Melissa is, she's just the gold star human being. 10 out of 10 recommend following Melissa. Not only is she amazing at SEO, not only is she super warm and friendly and really nice when you meet her, but she also has fantastic music taste. Mordy Oberstein: And movie taste. Crystal Carter: Right, Melissa is just, she's just the best. And also, she's on team RicketyRoo. Team RicketyRoo are the best, they're so good. Don't get me wrong, lots of love to lots of other agencies as well, but team RicketyRoo are fantastic, I'm not going to lie. Amanda, Celeste, Tess, everybody there is fantastic, they're just a great squad. Mordy Oberstein: On that note, you might be fighting for your rankings and your own market share, but you know what else is fighting for their own rankings and market share? Search engines. Like love is a battlefield, so is search engine market share is a battlefield. So, sometimes they do borrow ideas from each other in order to maintain market share. So here's a look at how search engines maintain their market share with a little segment we call, Going, Going, Going, Google. Well, I guess in this case Going, Going, Going, Search Engines. Going back in the day, multifaceted feature snippets and there was, I think I wrote an article about this on the Wix SEO about Google is moving away from the one true answer to a multifaceted kind of approach, because that's what people expect, they don't want one answer, they want options. And to do that, Google had a whole bunch of formats, has been testing with featured snippets and multiple URLs and feature snippets and multifaceted feature snippets, which is a feature snippet on top of a feature snippet on top of another feature snippet. You know what's doing that forever? Crystal Carter: Who? Mordy Oberstein: Bing. Crystal Carter: Bing. Mordy Oberstein: Bing's been doing that for years before Google was doing it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm pretty sure Google took that from Bing. Crystal Carter: One of the things I love about the team at Bing is that they do a lot of innovation. And we had Fabrice Canel from the search team at Bing on a webinar talking about Index Now, which you should definitely check out that webinar, it was great, but also he talked about that we build new things, we drive change and they do a lot of innovation and they're always coming through with that consistently. And so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking over the shoulder a little bit to see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: No, I mean, look at AI on the SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Bing puts in what's called Copilot now, Google go code red, red alert, whatever it was. Also, now we need to add AI onto the SERP the same way, not different, the exact same thing. Crystal Carter: One of the things that we're talking about, at one point Google was talking about contextual links. Bing has been doing that for ages as well. And one of the other things that Bing does is they'll pull in lots of information from other sources into their knowledge panel type things, but they also cite those sources there really, really clearly. I think that's really interesting. Another thing that you sometimes see on Bing is that sometimes Bing has rich results as well. So we think sometimes that rich results only happen on Google, but rich results happen on Bing as well. And so for instance, FAQ schema is no longer as prominent as it was on Google search, but it is still pretty prominent on Bing search, for instance. So that's something to consider as well. And I think that also, there's been some recent discussion about Bing's market share with some interesting statistics coming from World. Is it World Stat? Mordy Oberstein: Something like that, Stat Counter? Crystal Carter: Stat Counter, that's it. Some interesting statistics coming from them, and I think that it's definitely the case that I've heard a lot of folks using Bing. I've started using Bing a little bit more for different things as well. But yeah, they add in lots of different features and they're really innovative. Sometimes the SERP can be a little bit busy at Bing, but I think they're really innovative and it can sometimes give you an idea. Optimizing for Bing can sometimes give you ideas for optimizing for Google in the future. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm not saying this is bad, this is just the nature of how things go. You would open SERP, anyone can look at it, and Bing structures like, for example, you Google who are the Yankees, you get a big sports box at the top of the Bing SERP, that came from Google. The way they have site links, that came from Google. The way they have a people also ask kind of similar result, the related searches in that little gray box, that came from Google and that's fine, that's how it goes, everyone's kind of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the Googles and the Bings, and that's just the way it is to quote Bruce Hornsby. Crystal Carter: But I think also one of the things, Google has started doing those really rich knowledge panel things like particularly for people. For instance, if you look up Beyonce, you'll get a picture of her, her date of birth, the music video panel, a Spotify panel, that sort of thing. And Bing have been doing things like that, particularly for location for a little while. So, one of the ones was like the Paris catacombs was one of my favorite ones because I've never been there but I'm like, oh, that looks really interesting. But I'm looking at one for the Grand Canyon right now and it's got a real mix of stuff all across it and there's lots of different ways that you can connect with it. One of the other things I find really interesting is the way that they parse things out. So this can help you to understand how search engines are seeing your content as well. So for instance, if you go to look up something like the Grand Canyon, they have these little explore this page button on the side, which is a little light bulb. Mordy Oberstein: Right, yeah, that's why I like that feature. Crystal Carter: Right, and it'll pull out different things from it. So it'll pull out the images that are related to it. It will also pull out some of the topics from it. So for instance, I found one that's like, everything you need to know about Grand Canyon National Park, and it's a National Geographic article, and it says, about this website, which talks about, about this website on the little explore this page. And then it says topics on this page and it pulls out some of the headers from the page. So, there you can see whether or not a search engine is able to parse that, is able to see all of it, is able to understand the topics that you're trying to cover and whether it all makes sense. It also allows you to get a summary of some of that information there. And we talked a little bit about competitors. It also lets you see your competitors at a glance really easily as well. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, on that Grand Canyon SERP, Bing had this really cool 3D exploration tool for seeing the Grand Canyon, it's got nothing to do with anything, but you see, it is just interesting to me how one follows the other, how competitive they are, how they borrow from each other. Just for example, Barry Schwartz covered in searches at Round Table that after Google announced that they're getting rid of their cache link, on April 8th, Bing tests removing cache link from search results. Interesting how that is. So they do follow each other's, it's interesting to see what they find. I find it's interesting to see what they find meaningful, that they follow each other on, what they tend to steal and not steal from each other or borrow from each other. And it's just how it goes, it's not good or bad, I guess it's a good thing. It makes everybody better. Rising tide lifts all ships. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, if you are somebody who's interested in search engine marketing and search engine optimization, it's definitely worth becoming familiar with Bing and also with Bing webmaster tools. So that's something that also drives innovation I think on both sides as well. I've spoken to folks at Google before who said, yeah, I think Bing webmaster tools are pretty solid and I think that they're really great. I think it's worth being familiar with both so that you can understand how search engines work overall. Mordy Oberstein: Yep, and if you're looking to understand how search engines work overall, another great resource for you. It's not Google, it's not Bing, it's the king, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine land. So, that means that we're now about to head into Barry Land, also known as the Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a whole bunch for you this week. So I'll try to keep it snappy, but I also like to talk a lot. So, I'll still try to keep it snappy, but I might not succeed. From Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land, Google Unleashes June 2024, spam update. I like that, Barry, unleashes, it feels so aggressive. Google released it's June 2024 spam update. It is a regular spam update. It's not, I repeat, it's not and do not ask Danny Sullivan on X this question. It is not the algorithmic integration that will result in Google being able to algorithmically go after third party content hosted on websites that should not actually be there, also known as site reputation abuse. That was implemented thus far only with manual actions, this is known as parasite SEO within the SEO industry. The spam update of this June 2024 is not that. I cannot be clearer. It is not that. If you want something clearer, then go to X and look at the search liaison account, it'll be clearer but not much clearer. Perhaps a little bit more aggressive though, unleashes. Anyway, this from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Search bug not indexing or serving new content. So news websites noticed that there are content which they're constantly creating because there's news and they're creating new content for the news wasn't being indexed by Google. This has happened in the past before, it's not the first time, won't be the last time, but it's obviously super, super scary for a publisher. Google said that the problem has been fixed. They said we identified and fixed the issue with indexing. Sites may still experience some delayed indexing until the previously affected URLs have been reprocessed. There will be no more updates, end transmission. They didn't say end transmission, I added that. Crystal pointed out on X, perhaps LinkedIn, I saw it on X. You should make note of this if you are in that category of publisher and make a note because you might see a dip in your search console and traffic data and so forth. And you might go hey, what happened there? But if you make a note, you realize, oh, there was an indexing thing there. So that explains it. Okay, onto Search Engine Land, but not from Barry this time. Barry, you can't have them. This from Danny Goodwin. Google AI overview is showing less often with less Reddit, data shows. We've actually covered a bunch of studies showing there's less AI overviews being produced by Google. In this study by SEO ranking, Danny notes also that Reddit's visibility in the AI overviews is no longer a top 10 most cited domain, which is interesting because on June 19th, Barry Schwartz reported, there's Barry, on seoroundtable.com, report on if Google's showing fewer Reddit links in search. So some guy who's name rhymes with Gordy Boberstein, sent a whole bunch of data from Semrush showing that there's just a little bit of a slight drop off in the Reddit and Quora URLs that Google is showing within its discussion and forms. ERP feature. I'm not talking about, I mean, Gordy Boberstein wasn't talking about the entire SERP on the organic results, only the discussion of form SERP feature, but there's a little bit of a trend from April through June where Reddit URLs used to show in 49% of these SERP features, now is down to 48.56%. Same for Quora and other forums have seen a more noticeable rise in visibility within the platform. The same time, by the way, the Semrush data I looked at, I mean, Gordy looked at, was indicating that there are less instances or fewer instances if I'm going to speak grammatically correctly, of multiple Reddit URLs showing up in the discussion and form SERP feature. So there's less cases of Google using multiple URLs in the same SERP feature box from Reddit. That combined with the data that Danny's showing in the AI overview where Danny's discussing from SEO ranking, creates this picture where we're kind of seeing Reddit being scaled back just a bit. I do think Google realizes that it's a little bit too much on the Reddit front, but I don't see any dramatic shifts, I don't think advantage coming soon, but perhaps it's Google trying to act on that. I don't know, the data story is still to be told. However, continuing on that data story, wow I'm really threading the narratives together. This comes from Lily Ray over Amps of Digital, SEO visibility shifts to review sites to e-commerce and user generated content sites in 2024. What Lily shows is basically, I search for something like best jeans, not bad, or I don't know, I always go blank when I'm trying to figure out query to show an example of, like best cell phone or best mug or best glasses, or I just use Lily's cases, laptops, or bird feeders. There used to be a lot of product review websites showing up. What Lily is showing is that in May 2024, Google seems to have shifted away from the product review site and more to the actual product site, so less URLs being shown in the organic results for, here's my top five best bird feeders and more Homedepot.com, buy a bird feeder. By the way, that's happened in the past in other verticals. One of the cases I used to always study was insurance. So if I search for car insurance. Back in the day, there used to be a lot of informational content about how to buy insurance versus just places to buy insurance. That narrative switched back a little bit, and that's the last time I checked a few months ago, is a little bit more commerce side and less informational side. So, intent does change. But it's interesting to see this considering the fact that Google is not happy with affiliates. We spoke about this on our episode with Glenn Gabe, where we basically asked, is Google at war with affiliate sites? And the answer is yes, Google is at war with affiliate sites. Product review sites tend to be very heavy on the affiliate side, so this makes sense in that context of that narrative. Another thing going, making this full circle that Lily also noticed is that instead of relying on product review sites, she sees a shift from those affiliate review sites to user-generated content like Reddit and Quora and YouTube. So, maybe it's not the end of Reddit on the SERP. It already wasn't, but you get what I'm saying. Do I have another story? No, that's it. Okay. I thought I had another one. Wow. We covered a lot of ground this week. I try to keep each story snappy, so maybe it still is, the snappy news. How was your trip to Barry Land, Crystal? Crystal Carter: It was fantastic. We stand and optimize King. Mordy Oberstein: You have to be this short to ride. Crystal Carter: Leaving that, I have no further comment. Mordy Oberstein: I have another further comment. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: My further comment is that this week you should be following Roxana Stingu as your follow of the week. She's at Roxana, R-O-X-A-N-A S-T-I-N-G-U over on X. Head of SEO over at Alamy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's fantastic. She's so clever and has such a great technical knowledge across lots of different elements, and I think that she works across Alamy, which is trying to maintain brand reputation and maintain ranking across lots of different elements. And I think that it's that in-house play when you're an in-house SEO, you really have to guard your keywords, and she is an in-house SEO, who's been there for a while. And I think that when you've been there for a long time, you're able to, you know your keywords, you know them, and you need to know them inside out, and you need to know who comes for you, who your competitors are, and I think that she does a great job of it. Mordy Oberstein: I can't believe it took us this long to mention how maintaining reign comes into focus when you're in-house, but here we are, took us this long to mention that point. On the ball. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's really, really important in-house. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure to give her a follow over on X and check it out on LinkedIn as well. Links in the show notes. That's all the maintenance I have, I can do today. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Well, we will keep going. We will maintain the podcast for next week. We will also be on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: We'll maintain our rankings on Spotify. Crystal Carter: And anybody who wants to help us with that, please leave a review. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and a rating. Yeah, please. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because maintenance is a team effort. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed. Crystal Carter: And it's so fun. Mordy Oberstein: And a whole bunch of other cliches. Thanks for joining us on The SERPs Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how agency SEO is changing. Look for wherever you consume your podcast 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 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 as Crystal already told you, a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Melissa Popp Roxana Stingu Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter It's New: Daily SEO News Series RicketyRoo SEO Agency Google’s Shifts From Authority to Content Diversity on the SERP Is Google Going After Affiliate Sites News: Google unleashes June 2024 spam update Google Search Bug: Not Indexing or Serving New Content Google AI Overviews showing less often, with less Reddit, data shows Report On If Google Showing Fewer Reddit Links In Search? SEO Visibility Shifts from Review Sites to eCommmerce & User-Generated Content Sites in 2024 Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Melissa Popp Roxana Stingu Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter It's New: Daily SEO News Series RicketyRoo SEO Agency Google’s Shifts From Authority to Content Diversity on the SERP Is Google Going After Affiliate Sites News: Google unleashes June 2024 spam update Google Search Bug: Not Indexing or Serving New Content Google AI Overviews showing less often, with less Reddit, data shows Report On If Google Showing Fewer Reddit Links In Search? SEO Visibility Shifts from Review Sites to eCommmerce & User-Generated Content Sites in 2024 Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, we're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO brand here at Wix. Today, I'm joined by she who doesn't wear a cape, but maybe she should wear a cape. But either way, she is an SEO hero, our Head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: But the good ones do like, yeah, the Flash doesn't wear one, but Batman does. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I had a plumber who really helped me out. He didn't wear a cape, that would be very impractical. Mordy Oberstein: But it would've covered up his crack. Crystal Carter: My plumber has it under control. I'll just tell you that right now. Mordy Oberstein: Plumber crack is a real thing. My stepfather's an electrician. Electrician crack is also a real thing. Crystal Carter: Wow, this is wow, that's a great start to the podcast. Thanks listeners for hanging in there with us. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, it's not my fault, it's a full moon tonight. Anyway, 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 get inbuilt Google Search Console insights to help you maintain those rankings. Look for within our SEO dashboard, because today we pay homage to the unsung heroes of SEO, those who maintain rank, how Google updates bring maintaining rank into focus in all new ways. The content connection, why a content first focus can be your best friend when looking to keep your rankings, and how sites of all sizes can go about maintaining their rankings. To help us RicketyRoo's own, Melissa Popp will be here in just a few minutes to share what's in her utility belt as she goes about keeping her rankings. Plus, we look at how search engines try to maintain their market share by borrowing from other search engines. And of course, we have snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, put on your capes and proudly wear your underwear on the outside as we pay tribute to you, the unsung hero of SEO, AKA, Captain Rank Maintainer on this, the 93rd episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Maintaining rank is hard. It's not easy. Crystal Carter: Maintaining rank is hard. Mordy Oberstein: Because everyone's gunning for you now. Crystal Carter: Yes, everyone can see you. You were completely exposed. If you're number two or if you're number 37, you can sneak in, right? You can sneak in on the cut, you can be like, okay, I see you number one, I see what you're doing, but you can bide your time, like a sneak attack kind of thing. But if you are number one, everyone can see you and everybody knows what's going on and people will study you and get all in there. A great tool for looking at your competitors is Semrush has a great tool for that, looking at keywords and looking at competitors. One of the ones that Ross Simmons, friend of the podcast, friend of the SEO Hub has talked about is CRM. Salesforce has an article called, What is A CRM, and I'm looking at there, and that has a traffic volume, the keyword, what is a CRM has a traffic volume of 22,000. According to Semrush, they're getting 5,000 of those clicks every month. They've ranked number one in that position since May, 2023, possibly even longer. And they spend time making sure that that does not move. Why? Because that's 5,000. That's that much coming through straight away, and that's something that's really important. They're also ranked, they recently have had a tussle with HubSpot. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, a tussle, that's a good word, by the way. I just want to stop, point out what a great word tussle is. Sorry. Crystal Carter: Tussle, yes, tussle is a good word. So they're tussling a little bit with HubSpot for CRM, so sometimes they're number one, sometimes HubSpot's number one for just the word CRM, but they've had number one for, what is a CRM, for a very long time. And that's really important because that's core to their business. So if you have terms that are core to your business, it is absolutely worth maintaining that content, maintaining that position over time. And if Google understands that it is core to your business, that everything you do points to that particular keyword, then they will give you that. They'll understand that you are the authority in that, and all of the things on your website should point to that. Now, not only does what does a CRM, rank number one for what is a CRM, but it also ranks number one for loads of other terms as well. So for instance, it also ranks number one for, what is a CRM tool. It ranks number one for, CRM definition, CRM program, all of that sort of stuff. That particular piece of content is pulling in tons of traffic for them. And I think that in terms of maintaining rank, sometimes things can rank number one and get no traffic and not get much traffic at all. But according to this, according to Semrush in May alone, the page, what is a CRM, on Salesforce was getting 43,000 clicks a month. Okay, now that is absolutely, absolutely 100% worth maintaining rank. Now, if you're looking at your keywords and you've got number one but nobody's coming to the page anyway, you want to have as many number one keywords on your site as you can, but maybe don't lose any sleep if you slip a little bit. But if you have something that's coming in and bringing in thousands and thousands every month, then absolutely spend the time. And there's lots of different tools, which I'm sure that Melissa will get into the details of it, but you need to assess when you're assessing whether or not you should fight to maintain your rank, whether or not you should defend yourself from the usurpers. Make sure... I know dropping the vocabulary words. Anybody studying for their SATs, you're welcome. And- Mordy Oberstein: That's our core audience right there. Crystal Carter: Right? But basically anybody who, if you're looking at it and you're trying to think, should they hold the line here? Have a look at the search volume, have a look at how relevant it is to the rest of your content, and then also think about the links. So if you're thinking about that particular page, we have a particular piece of content. We have the SEO Guide, the Wix SEO Guide, for instance, on the Wix SEO Hub, which has lots of links out to other pieces of content, has lots of links into it from lots of other links as well, and gets a fair amount of traffic for us for that particular page. That's worth us maintaining, that's worth us looking after, that's worth us thinking about. And so have a look at which ones are those pivotal, crucial, important pages, and you should probably be monitoring those in terms of ranking. You should probably be monitoring them daily, weekly, at least. And you should be scheduling in and making sure that you're updating them regularly and making sure that you're paying attention to your competitors because sometimes if you're not looking and they can sneak in and you might miss that you lost a keyword that maybe has a knock on effect to some of the other keywords that you're ranking for. Mordy Oberstein: Now, to get more into this, I had a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Popp, because I have a lot to say about this, and we talked a lot about this. Here's a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Pop. So, welcome to this show, Melissa Popp. How are you? Melissa Popp: I'm good. How are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: I'm good, can't complain. I think that you are one of the unsung heroes of SEO. Melissa Popp: Oh, gosh. I just have to throw that feather in my cap, won't I? Mordy Oberstein: Not all heroes wear capes, unless you're wearing a cape. You wear capes? Melissa Popp: That's true. No, not yet, not yet. No, I do have a crown though that I wear sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's close. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I'm a little extra sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: There's a whole... In every SEO conversation, podcast, webinar, article, whatever, it's all about increasing rank, increasing rank, increasing rank. But one of the things that I'll put a little spoiler out there, or I don't know, behind the scenes thing, maybe I'm not allowed to say this, but one of the things we talk about internally at Wix is maintaining rank. We're already ranking, and now we have to keep those rankings because if you don't keep those rankings, then you're back at the square one of trying to get the rankings, but no one ever talks about this. Melissa Popp: No, nobody does. Nobody talks about, what I like to think of as maintenance mode of SEO. You come to a point where depending on how big your site is, what your niche is, that you hit a saturation level where it's like, how much more can you do to continue to boost rankings when you already are in page one, top three results, earning your featured snippets, unfortunately showing up in SGE now, whether that's right or wrong, but there's a maintenance that's involved there and ongoing work that most of us, I would say, probably 60 to 70% of our job is that maintenance mode of maintaining those ranks. And then at the same time, trying to figure out, okay, where do we pivot from here to earn additional rank rankings? If that's even possible, because at some point you reach a level where you own it all, ideally. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, that's one of the, I don't know, thou shall not say this, but sometimes you can't go any higher. You're number three, and that's where you're going to get for this keyword. Melissa Popp: Absolutely, and at RicketyRoo, we do a lot of work with home service clients, and you see that all the time. These businesses are competing with directors like Yelp, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, and other websites that the domain authority and just overall topical authority that they have in those niches because of what powerhouse of websites they are. Your little mom and pop shop is never going to be able to get rank one, two, three, even in some cases when you're going up against powerhouses like that. So it's, what do you do from there? Unless you have millions of dollars to try to compete there, you're never going to maintain that. And nobody talks about that either, of what ranking is good enough before you start carrying the load of ranking right there versus trying to convince clients that you can go higher because you can't. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's fine because sometimes you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggonit, and people click on you and you're ranking number three, and that's fine. Melissa Popp: And as long as you're converting and earning business, and then also you're satisfied as a business owner at what your revenue is from that, you don't have to be number one to make a living and to keep your business growing. And there's so much competition out there, and so many, we're seeing this right now, all the changes. I mean, that could be a whole other episode, right? Talking about Reddit and Quora jumping in rankings, and now you're competing with a whole other subset of websites that shouldn't even be competing with you, but at some point you have to step back and say, okay, this is good enough. We are converting enough. Either, what other channels can we look at? Because that's another thing we don't talk about as part of this maintenance mode. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's life outside of Google? Melissa Popp: Oh my gosh, life outside of SEO, I'm going to get hate mail for saying, and I'm a huge, huge believer in being able to look at, where is your audience? Where are they hanging out? Where are they having discussions? Sometimes it's social media, sometimes it is Reddit. Sometimes, I mean, I was talking to someone the other week about direct mail campaigns and how nobody talks about direct mail, but when you look at certain demographics, that still works. And that's another whole aspect of maintaining not just rankings, but brand awareness. You want to go where people are. You reach a plateau with SEO, you can take that budget and spend it a little bit elsewhere to figure that out, and you're still growing just in a different way. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so spinning back around to all this, because the point about Reddit and Quora is exactly where I want go with this. You were doing just fine, things were okay. You were ranking, I don't know, one, two, or three, and now all of a sudden you're still ranking one, two, or three, but there's a giant discussions, cert feature box above you with a bunch of Reddit URLs. How much of your work is going into changes in the ecosystem, how to combat them, how to deal with them? With the Reddit one, I don't know what you do, but things like that where the SERP is changing, the algorithm is changing, there are updates, there's this or that, and you're trying to just staying out above water because you're doing better than above water. You're ranking the top of the SERP, but you're doing work that keeps you afloat at the very top of the SERP. How much of your time is spent on those kinds of things? Melissa Popp: I mean, I already, as part of my work, and especially on the content marketing side with clients, I am already looking at Reddit and Quora, whether they're ranking on page one or not. When it comes to content ideas, blogging, even updating content, looking at people, also ask boxes, I was already looking at all of this before all of a sudden they all jumped to page one. And I think that's a big problem in our industry, is that a lot of our efforts, there's a lot of people out there doing great work with content that are looking at the big picture and not just the little SEO piece of it. We need to start spending more time looking at this. So Reddit and Quora, I mean, I was doing content briefs a couple of weeks ago for a home services client, and I'm seeing Reddit discussions pop up for transactional keywords. There's no reason they need to be there at all, but I'm like, okay, if people are landing on a page, a service page, and still have that question that is popping up on page one, whether I agree that that Reddit thread should be there or not, I need to be looking at that. There is still, whether Google's algorithm is all jacked up and that is what's happening here or not, I still, if Google is going to rank that there, I need to be aware of that for my client and think, is this Reddit discussion worthy of inclusion on a piece of content I'm creating for? Do I need to update that piece of content? So I think there's two, there's two issues there. One is we're not doing enough to actually understand search intent to begin with, and Reddit in discussion is popping up there is one way to look at that. What are people discussing that they're not getting from "normal" search results, that we need to be including in our content? And not just for SEO purposes, but literally a potential customer is asking that question. And then on the flip side, why are we not doing this to begin with? We only care about it now that Reddit and Quora and other discussions are on page one. So we're already doing a disservice to clients by having not paid attention to this before it simply popped to page one. Mordy Oberstein: But that goes into, so I'll give you an example of this where if you're not paying attention to what people actually want and talking to them in a way that actually speaks to them, while you might be ranking today, I don't think you'll be ranking tomorrow. There was a couple... I'm actually running this up right now for the Wix SEO Hub. By the time this recording comes out, I hope it'll be long published. Looking at two examples from the March 2024 core update. So bankrate.com redid basically an entire folder of their content, and it was previously very, I call it sterile content, like, what is a payday loan? How to get a payday loan, when don't you choose a payday loan, how to finance a payday loan. Every H two was very topical, and it's like each one's trying to rank for a featured snippet, kind of thing. And they redid all of it and the folder went berserk in a good way, just shot up in the rankings with the March 2024 core update, because what they did was they said, okay, let's speak to the topic, but in a way that relates to what the user's going to do with the information. So for example, they added a section on when a payday loan might actually be worthwhile because they realized, okay, we're talking about payday loans and the original content was, what is a payday loan, the risk of a payday loan, and all these very generalized, sterile kind of subtopics. But if we're talking about this, obviously the user is looking to get a payday loan for a reason, so why don't we address that? And they did, and they did it across all of their content, it became very situational like, here's what you need to know about a payday loan, in the context of how it's going to work for you. They talked about just what to expect, the money would take X number of days to get into your account, blah, blah, blah. It was much more user focused. All of a sudden they shot up in the rankings, they replaced somebody. They replaced the page, and that page is now gone and not ranking. And websites, I think are slowly coming around to the idea that they have to update content. What they wrote five years ago and ranked with five years ago is not going to work anymore because the algorithm is changing. Let's change that up. And big content teams are doing that and if you're not worried about maintaining your rank, somebody's going to get after you and replace you. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and why wouldn't they? Especially when you look at bigger websites compared to smaller websites, and that's a whole other player, smaller websites being frozen out of brand dominated topical searches. But that example that you gave with bank rate, how many SEOs listening to this right now, okay, on let's say smaller or medium sized teams and websites, are going to come away from this and go, holy cow, if Bankrate did this, this is absolutely what we should do. Lily Ray, Marie Haynes have been sharing other examples of websites that are skyrocketing after pivoting their content strategy. We have that proof there. Now, can we guarantee 100% certainty that Google's always going to reward that content? Who knows what Google's going to do, but what we know is searchers want information that they can actually act on and use, beyond just whatever their initial search query is. And the problem is, is we spend so much time creating SEO content, focusing on keywords, focusing on page, what backlinks can we get, what internal links can we update? We are so focused on gaining the SEO side of things that we forget the content is the foundation of that growth. And what's even worse is most people know that, but they don't want to spend the time on creating a quality piece of content because holy cow, that's actually really hard, even if it's a topic, what is a payday loan versus how does the payday loan scam work? And so you have a problem that companies don't want to invest the time in creating quality of content. They certainly don't want to pay writers and spend the money to create quality content. I mean, I can imagine how much Wix spends with all the content that you all push out and you have a set budget for that and you can get it and you look at the names you bring on to write for you. But most companies don't have that, nor do they want to invest in it because they feel that their ROI could be better spent elsewhere, whether it's paid advertising, display, something else. They want instant gratification, not realizing that keeping your content updated to match search intent and what your users are actually looking for to make a decision through that top and middle of the funnel content, particularly, you are going to spend less money long-term on ROI than throwing money at the wall with PPC, competing with everyone else driving bids up. And I get it, I understand why this works the way it does. You're always going to try to get the most for the cheapest. But we're now finding with the helpful content update and other things Google are doing that, holy cow, that doesn't work anymore. And now companies are playing catch up and having to spend even more money that they didn't budget. In Bankrate's case, I wonder how much money they spent updating content that if they had approached the correct way to begin with, they wouldn't have had to spend. And that's the conundrum now everybody is in. Mordy Oberstein: That's the whole problem. And to your point about the smaller websites, they also, in my opinion, there's no such thing as one kind of site having a total advantage. There are things that big websites have that smaller websites don't, like we have money for SEO Hub to pay writers, yada, yada, yada, yada. But if you want to make changes, it's very slow. We're a giant brand, there's a lot of guidelines, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. If you're a smaller website and you're like, you know what? And we're more risk averse, so if we see that there's a new trend. I think for example, that content's far more conversational than it ever has been before. Good luck getting a big brand to create a landing page that's conversational, not ultimate, whatever, whatever, sell, buy here. Good luck. If you're a small brand or a small website or a small business or an SME, whatever it is, you can do that. You can take those risks and that's what'll help you maintain the rank, in my opinion. I think you're at an easier advantage to maintain rank to a certain extent. Obviously, the larger websites have that authority and that makes it easier for them but you can do things like, I think that content that Google's looking for X now and I want to pivot to do X, you can do that tomorrow if you wanted to. There's no hoops to jump through. Melissa Popp: Definitely, and the thing with smaller business versus bigger businesses, especially in brands, we're hearing that conversation a lot as well, is how is anybody going to compete with these big brands now dominating search more than ever? And depending on what your business is, especially as a small, medium sized business, you don't need to compete with those. That's not where locally people are looking for. We have these conversations with local clients all the time, that they want number one against Yelp and Angie's List, and it's like, no, you don't, you don't need to. People understand that they're shopping around, they are going to click down through results. That's the whole scary idea of, oh, if you're not at the top of page one, oh no, oh no, the sky is falling. Mordy Oberstein: What's the best place to bury a dead body? On page two of the SERP. Melissa Popp: Listen, you just need to be on page one, and you need to give searchers and actual consumers more power to make that choice, most people are shopping for that. But yeah, I absolutely agree that smaller businesses has the opportunity to make more immediate impact than bigger businesses do, and they are less risk adverse. And it comes down to the priority of changes you're making, whether it's SEO updates, link building, content, you don't have to do it all. You just have to do the right things in the right order to make the most impact and then eventually, you get to all the other things. And that's another thing that gets, I think very missed in our industry is everybody wants a checklist. Let's go through, update title tags and Meta descriptions and headers and blah, blah, blah down the list, where it's like, okay, we know Google rewrites Meta titles and descriptions all the time. Why is that your number one priority? Mordy Oberstein: That's not what's going to move... Sometimes, yes, but my experience, if you had rankings and are slowly seeing a decline, like a consistent slow degradation, it's a quality issue, usually. Melissa Popp: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And that might be, you have terrible headers as part of the quality, but it's usually the quality overall. You need to have a hard look at your content, which is I think what people don't do. I feel like SEOs look at the SERP like I won. It's like I don't know, I'll use a sports reference, like, I scored a basket or I got a goal or I got a hit, now I'm done. Yeah, but in five minutes from now, you're back up in the order, you got to take another swing. It's not, you won and these rankings belong to you. Google doesn't owe you anything. Melissa Popp: No, no, and why we think they do. These conversations and arguments and the vitriol that our industry is showing to one another right now and frankly showing to folks like John Miller and Danny Sullivan. Okay, I'm not saying Google is the enemy, but we are competing against them. That's a realistic fact of what we do. The only thing we can do is do the best we possibly can, starting with the foundation that does everything for SEO and that piece of content. We can only do the best that we can and maybe pray, hope, whatever you want to do, burn a candle, whatever, and hope for everything else to match up and help rankings. But at the end of the day, we start with that piece of content and it's so overlooked. And to circle back to talking about unsung heroes, that's why this maintenance of your rankings is so important. And it always starts with that content. What more could you be doing? How has search intent changed that you need to now update your piece? We see that all the time in local. I feel like local search results, the search intent changes more than anywhere else that I've worked, and I've worked on e-comm brands, I've worked enterprise level national, international. I feel like at the local level, that search intent changes almost on a whim. It's like a whole demographic decides, oh, I'm going to search to buy this or find this service, this is what... And it makes no sense, but it's what happens. And that's one of the first things I do when I'm looking to update a piece of content is, I want to dive deep into SERPs and understand, has this changed? And we don't spend that time. We want to blame Google and we want to point fingers at things. And yes, sometimes, you know what? I've seen some of the cases here that I definitely think this is Google's fault for a particular domain and not what they're doing, absolutely, but those cases are so actually rare. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Yeah, the norm is, Google knows for the most part what he's doing. There are enormous gaps sometimes and there are shifts. I think we're in a point right now where, like an inflection point, where things just like multiple reasons why things are not firing in all cylinders and they're not and- Melissa Popp: No, they're not. Absolutely, I'm not defending Google here at all for any of this. I cannot imagine the algorithmic engineering, especially now that you're adding machine learning and AI into the mix, of how difficult it is to actually do this right. And part of me still believes that they do in fact want to get this right. Losing market share for people switching to AI search engines, to TikTok, to any of these things, depletes their revenue. They want to get this right, but in the meantime, we're all left holding the bag with our clients trying to explain, we have no control over this, so- Mordy Oberstein: But you do have control over, for example, let's talk about bounce rate, and they'll talk about the context of user behavior metrics and nav boost, that kind of thing, which is legit, nav boosts is a really interesting conversation, but they're not talking. We're not talking about it. Oh, you know what? I see my bounce rate has gone up, maybe my content's not what people want anymore. Let me see, maybe I should rework that. We always look for the most immediate, easy way out. Melissa Popp: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: As opposed to taking a hard look, and the only way I feel like to maintain your rankings is to take a hard look at yourself. What are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? What's the data say about how people feel about our content? And it is not just your typical SEO metrics, if you're going on social media and being like, oh, I hate this. Also, you're seeing people talk about your blog in a negative way, that's going at some point to impact search and your rankings. You need to go back, you need to take a hard look, you need to think, okay, I need to rework this because your rankings, again, they're not a given. They're not going to last, no rankings last forever. Melissa Popp: No, nobody, nobody, and you bring up bounce rate, one of the most misunderstood and it's like the bad child of everything. But how many SEOs are either bringing in a content marketer to actually look at content marketing metrics like bounce rate, timeline page, etc? How many of SEOs are actually looking at those metrics at all? And I'd imagine that number is probably staggering low because like you said, a lot of us, well first off, I mean it goes back to our clients. What do our clients care about? They care about rankings, traffic and conversion, and that's usually it. They don't care about anything else, as long as rankings leave the traffic to conversion, boom, you're done, right? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Melissa Popp: But the problem is, is so many have relied on those three types of metrics for so long, they've forgotten about the world of things out there beyond just bounce rate and time on page. It's, how many websites have heat maps and are looking at what elements on a page people are clicking on? Where are they clicking out? Well how... Scroll depth, if you write a 2,000-word blog, let's say it's completely as comprehensive, topically authoritative, it's a perfect, perfect blog ever written on a subject, but nobody's reading past the first third part of it. Something is wrong with that, even if it is the greatest blog ever to be written. But we don't, for the most part, SEOs don't look at metrics outside of their little bubble. And I get it, I understand why that happens, but we're now evolving to how content is relatable, not only to search but to users. We have to be more aware. I really believe in the next couple of years, probably next 15, 18 months really, that design and user experience- Mordy Oberstein: Sure, 100%. Melissa Popp: ... that's going to be the next set of conversations we're having, it's if your user experience is terrible, starting with site speed and page load time, to just how your call to actions. I mean, how many websites do we go to nowadays that, here's a modal popup, boom, right in your face. You're not even there for two seconds and it's like, sign up for this, do this. Or my least favorite thing in the world, you get to a page and a video automatically starts playing and it scares you out of your seat because all of a sudden your screen is yelling at you. Mordy Oberstein: Here's a page I'm sharing. You can't see this audience because it's an audio experience. Melissa Popp: Oh, I already hate this. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, okay, you already hate it. This is a page that lost a lot of rank with the March 2024 core update and it's not hard to see why. There's no white space on the page, there's no spacing, there's no anything. You're looking like, oh my God, it wasn't meant for me to consume the information. The page was designed to rank for whatever keywords. Melissa Popp: No, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And the enterprise is like, you read it, it's not bad information. Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: But it's not usable. Melissa Popp: No, my eyes already hurt. The font is terrible on the page, the image is so tiny. I can tell it's a dude, but I have no idea. Mordy Oberstein: Why is that even there? Is that the author? I don't even know what that is. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I mean, and even look at this, I see the data up here, the published date is 2022. When was the last time that this page was vetted by anybody to determine is this information still accurate? Is it correct? But then also it's like, where is the connection here? Just skimming this first paragraph. There is no connection to get people to even care. The hook is not there. This absolutely to me- Mordy Oberstein: It's very sterile content, it is written topically, it's not written for users, and the problem with this is no one since 2022 has looked at this and said, how can we make this page better? You should be constantly thinking, how can I make my content better? Because your content is never perfect and it's never good enough, and it's never, I don't want to say good enough, but it's never the pinnacle of what you want. And user expectations are always changing. To quote Glenn Gabe, Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned. If the user looks at this and says, oh this... They're never coming back, all of that nav boost interaction data is getting factored and now, and it's all because you thought I wrote the content, I won the rankings and I'm done. And hence, the unsung heroes of SEO are those who are saying, it's never done. Melissa Popp: No, and it's never, it absolutely isn't. And one of the things I do, a lot of the times when we have new clients come on board, no matter it's a 10-page website or a 1,000-page website, is we content audit the heck out of every single page on the website. And I want to understand, it's, are you getting traffic? Do you have any rankings? And then beyond that, what do these pages look like? What information is on there? And anybody on the RicketyRoo team will tell you, I am vicious when it comes to content update. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Melissa Popp: I do not play around, I take a scalpel to websites. I have recommended pruning websites two thirds of the content in cases. There has been recent cases where I've pruned a lot of content and said, no, you know what? We're just going to start over. We probably could use some of this content foundationally, but I don't even want to look at it anymore. It's that bad. And I don't do this, I laugh a little bit about it, I don't do this because I'm a mean person or I want to tick people off. I'm doing this because I see the writing on the wall. We've been saying this for 20 years, that content is king, that has not changed, it hasn't. And why every couple of years we shift back and forth on that and we don't spend the time on even just focusing on our content strategy. Most SEO's content strategy is literally, okay, what long tail keywords in Semrush or Ahrefs do I see that are questions and your when, where, whys, hows? Let's just write that content because it has high search volume and no, and it's like- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Melissa Popp: And I'm not saying that that is incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: No, there's a place for it within. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and you have to look at it bigger than that. I mean, there are lots of topics I recommend because absolutely, I'm like, oh, the search volume is there, but also, it matches search intent. And we talk a lot about a topic clustering as if that is a new thing that somehow magically has appeared. And no, that has been a marketing trend, not just in content marketing, but in other forms of marketing for decades. And when I'm building topic clusters for clients, I absolutely am looking at search volume, but I'm also thinking, okay, what do people actually want to know? And a lot of times I recommend topics that have very low search volume, and sometimes I'll get pushback on that of like, oh, but oh no, nobody's searching for that. And I'm like, listen, search volume numbers are BS, they are guesstimates. They do not necessarily mean that 1,200 people are searching a month for X, Y, Z. Now, that doesn't mean that we should ignore those guesstimates. They do help guide our efforts, but we have to think more outside the box. And especially working with smaller clients, you'll get a lot of zero volume keywords that because the tools are running nationally to aggregate that guesstimate, you actually don't know how many people locally might be searching for that because it's not enough to ping for those tools. And that's another thing people forget about when they're creating content, but also updating content. Just because something has the 1,200 volume search nationally every month doesn't mean that people are actually searching for that to eventually lead to conversion. And so that's why I always go back to the number one thing I'm always looking for when I'm updating content and in this maintenance mode, is search intent. It's the most important part of updating and creating content. And we dance around that because that's a little bit outside the SEO box. We talk about search intent at a very high level, but in the nitty-gritty- Mordy Oberstein: But the micro level, no. Micro intents, what's that? Or we feel like, yeah, we nailed it and don't think, wait, it changed. It's like anything with your content. I want you, if you're listening to this podcast and you write content and you're trying to write content, I want you to go back to something you wrote, I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago, two years ago, and I want you to reread it and I want you to walk away. And how many of you walk away feeling like, that was amazing content? And how many times do you walk away? That's how I used to write and it's good, it's not bad, but- Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: ... you're in a different place and you're a better writer, you're a better SEO, you're a better content person and you look back like, I could have done better with that. That's how Google's looking at your content. That was good, that was good. Melissa Popp: Exactly, that's the missing link, is as Google's algorithm gets smarter, faster and larger, encompassing more items into ranking factors, we have to evolve with that. We can sit here in our discussions and blame Google all we want, but at the end of the day, we are at their mercy of how they want to do things, whether we like it or not, and our clients are at that mercy. So we have to evolve with it. And it's like for writers, absolutely, just go back a year and look at some of the things that you wrote. Go look at where they rank. Go look where they rank now and if you still have access to any analytical data around it, how many people are coming to that page? Where are they going from that page? And I guarantee you, in a lot of cases, you're going to find that it's not performing the way you felt when you finished writing and you hit publish, because we publish pieces of content and we're like, yes, this is it. This is awesome, this is the pinnacle we did, we're at the top of the world, but then nobody comes to see it. Nobody comes, but we pretend like that doesn't exist. We pretend that that's not a thing that we need to care about. The SEO team cares about that now and it's like, no, it's like we should also care about that too, especially if we're continuing to write for that business or we work in-house or whatever our role is, and that's just part of the process. Just like you revisit keyword research, with clients, I like to revisit keyword research every six months to a year. I want to see again, where does the search intent just for on-page change that we need to pivot and change things up? Mordy Oberstein: Totally, totally. Melissa Popp: But we just don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: No, we don't get that that's, it's not a checklist. That's a different snarky point for a different time. If people wanted to revisit their processes and get some advice from you, where can they find you out there in ether? Melissa Popp: Oh gosh, everybody knows I live on Twitter and I'm going down with that ship. You can find me at- Mordy Oberstein: Me too. Melissa Popp: ... Popup writer on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Popup writer, okay, we'll link to that in the show notes. Melissa Popp: And yeah, feel free, anybody on my team will tell you I love ripping content apart and not from a place of negativity, but to help people do better. I ask my team all the time, any RicketyRoo blog that you read that I wrote, I guarantee you, two or three people on the team have told me how terrible it is and helped me make it better. I come from a place where I want to support anybody writing content to do better, not just for their clients, but for themselves. We only grow by putting ourselves out there and that's another scary part of all of this, is we have to admit that maybe we didn't do our best or something changed. That means we have to do better. So, I'm always happy to help people. Slide into my DMs, email me, any of that. I'm always around to help with this because I think these are the conversations we need to be having. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa is not only a great SEO and a great content person, just a great follow altogether, and it is why you were a previous follow of the week on the podcast for that reason. Melissa Popp: I was, I know. Mordy Oberstein: You were. Melissa Popp: I was like, oh. Mordy Oberstein: You're one of the best follows on Twitter out there in the SEO space right now. I don't want to say all of Twitter because if you're sports, maybe you don't talk about sports, but in the SEO space, not many better follows at all. So, please follow Melissa. Melissa Popp: Well, I appreciate that. I just telling it like it is. I love what I do and I love to share knowledge and I want us to have more productive conversations about the things we're doing because we're all going through it. It's not us versus one another, it's we're all in this together. And as cheesey that is, there is light at the end of this tunnel. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa, thank you so much for coming on and really say hi to all the great folks over at RicketyRoo. Melissa Popp: I will, I will. I'm sure they'll all send their love to you too. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, bye. Melissa Popp: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you again, Melissa, she's one of the best people in the whole SEO industry. Crystal Carter: Melissa is, she's just the gold star human being. 10 out of 10 recommend following Melissa. Not only is she amazing at SEO, not only is she super warm and friendly and really nice when you meet her, but she also has fantastic music taste. Mordy Oberstein: And movie taste. Crystal Carter: Right, Melissa is just, she's just the best. And also, she's on team RicketyRoo. Team RicketyRoo are the best, they're so good. Don't get me wrong, lots of love to lots of other agencies as well, but team RicketyRoo are fantastic, I'm not going to lie. Amanda, Celeste, Tess, everybody there is fantastic, they're just a great squad. Mordy Oberstein: On that note, you might be fighting for your rankings and your own market share, but you know what else is fighting for their own rankings and market share? Search engines. Like love is a battlefield, so is search engine market share is a battlefield. So, sometimes they do borrow ideas from each other in order to maintain market share. So here's a look at how search engines maintain their market share with a little segment we call, Going, Going, Going, Google. Well, I guess in this case Going, Going, Going, Search Engines. Going back in the day, multifaceted feature snippets and there was, I think I wrote an article about this on the Wix SEO about Google is moving away from the one true answer to a multifaceted kind of approach, because that's what people expect, they don't want one answer, they want options. And to do that, Google had a whole bunch of formats, has been testing with featured snippets and multiple URLs and feature snippets and multifaceted feature snippets, which is a feature snippet on top of a feature snippet on top of another feature snippet. You know what's doing that forever? Crystal Carter: Who? Mordy Oberstein: Bing. Crystal Carter: Bing. Mordy Oberstein: Bing's been doing that for years before Google was doing it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm pretty sure Google took that from Bing. Crystal Carter: One of the things I love about the team at Bing is that they do a lot of innovation. And we had Fabrice Canel from the search team at Bing on a webinar talking about Index Now, which you should definitely check out that webinar, it was great, but also he talked about that we build new things, we drive change and they do a lot of innovation and they're always coming through with that consistently. And so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking over the shoulder a little bit to see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: No, I mean, look at AI on the SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Bing puts in what's called Copilot now, Google go code red, red alert, whatever it was. Also, now we need to add AI onto the SERP the same way, not different, the exact same thing. Crystal Carter: One of the things that we're talking about, at one point Google was talking about contextual links. Bing has been doing that for ages as well. And one of the other things that Bing does is they'll pull in lots of information from other sources into their knowledge panel type things, but they also cite those sources there really, really clearly. I think that's really interesting. Another thing that you sometimes see on Bing is that sometimes Bing has rich results as well. So we think sometimes that rich results only happen on Google, but rich results happen on Bing as well. And so for instance, FAQ schema is no longer as prominent as it was on Google search, but it is still pretty prominent on Bing search, for instance. So that's something to consider as well. And I think that also, there's been some recent discussion about Bing's market share with some interesting statistics coming from World. Is it World Stat? Mordy Oberstein: Something like that, Stat Counter? Crystal Carter: Stat Counter, that's it. Some interesting statistics coming from them, and I think that it's definitely the case that I've heard a lot of folks using Bing. I've started using Bing a little bit more for different things as well. But yeah, they add in lots of different features and they're really innovative. Sometimes the SERP can be a little bit busy at Bing, but I think they're really innovative and it can sometimes give you an idea. Optimizing for Bing can sometimes give you ideas for optimizing for Google in the future. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm not saying this is bad, this is just the nature of how things go. You would open SERP, anyone can look at it, and Bing structures like, for example, you Google who are the Yankees, you get a big sports box at the top of the Bing SERP, that came from Google. The way they have site links, that came from Google. The way they have a people also ask kind of similar result, the related searches in that little gray box, that came from Google and that's fine, that's how it goes, everyone's kind of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the Googles and the Bings, and that's just the way it is to quote Bruce Hornsby. Crystal Carter: But I think also one of the things, Google has started doing those really rich knowledge panel things like particularly for people. For instance, if you look up Beyonce, you'll get a picture of her, her date of birth, the music video panel, a Spotify panel, that sort of thing. And Bing have been doing things like that, particularly for location for a little while. So, one of the ones was like the Paris catacombs was one of my favorite ones because I've never been there but I'm like, oh, that looks really interesting. But I'm looking at one for the Grand Canyon right now and it's got a real mix of stuff all across it and there's lots of different ways that you can connect with it. One of the other things I find really interesting is the way that they parse things out. So this can help you to understand how search engines are seeing your content as well. So for instance, if you go to look up something like the Grand Canyon, they have these little explore this page button on the side, which is a little light bulb. Mordy Oberstein: Right, yeah, that's why I like that feature. Crystal Carter: Right, and it'll pull out different things from it. So it'll pull out the images that are related to it. It will also pull out some of the topics from it. So for instance, I found one that's like, everything you need to know about Grand Canyon National Park, and it's a National Geographic article, and it says, about this website, which talks about, about this website on the little explore this page. And then it says topics on this page and it pulls out some of the headers from the page. So, there you can see whether or not a search engine is able to parse that, is able to see all of it, is able to understand the topics that you're trying to cover and whether it all makes sense. It also allows you to get a summary of some of that information there. And we talked a little bit about competitors. It also lets you see your competitors at a glance really easily as well. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, on that Grand Canyon SERP, Bing had this really cool 3D exploration tool for seeing the Grand Canyon, it's got nothing to do with anything, but you see, it is just interesting to me how one follows the other, how competitive they are, how they borrow from each other. Just for example, Barry Schwartz covered in searches at Round Table that after Google announced that they're getting rid of their cache link, on April 8th, Bing tests removing cache link from search results. Interesting how that is. So they do follow each other's, it's interesting to see what they find. I find it's interesting to see what they find meaningful, that they follow each other on, what they tend to steal and not steal from each other or borrow from each other. And it's just how it goes, it's not good or bad, I guess it's a good thing. It makes everybody better. Rising tide lifts all ships. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, if you are somebody who's interested in search engine marketing and search engine optimization, it's definitely worth becoming familiar with Bing and also with Bing webmaster tools. So that's something that also drives innovation I think on both sides as well. I've spoken to folks at Google before who said, yeah, I think Bing webmaster tools are pretty solid and I think that they're really great. I think it's worth being familiar with both so that you can understand how search engines work overall. Mordy Oberstein: Yep, and if you're looking to understand how search engines work overall, another great resource for you. It's not Google, it's not Bing, it's the king, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine land. So, that means that we're now about to head into Barry Land, also known as the Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a whole bunch for you this week. So I'll try to keep it snappy, but I also like to talk a lot. So, I'll still try to keep it snappy, but I might not succeed. From Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land, Google Unleashes June 2024, spam update. I like that, Barry, unleashes, it feels so aggressive. Google released it's June 2024 spam update. It is a regular spam update. It's not, I repeat, it's not and do not ask Danny Sullivan on X this question. It is not the algorithmic integration that will result in Google being able to algorithmically go after third party content hosted on websites that should not actually be there, also known as site reputation abuse. That was implemented thus far only with manual actions, this is known as parasite SEO within the SEO industry. The spam update of this June 2024 is not that. I cannot be clearer. It is not that. If you want something clearer, then go to X and look at the search liaison account, it'll be clearer but not much clearer. Perhaps a little bit more aggressive though, unleashes. Anyway, this from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Search bug not indexing or serving new content. So news websites noticed that there are content which they're constantly creating because there's news and they're creating new content for the news wasn't being indexed by Google. This has happened in the past before, it's not the first time, won't be the last time, but it's obviously super, super scary for a publisher. Google said that the problem has been fixed. They said we identified and fixed the issue with indexing. Sites may still experience some delayed indexing until the previously affected URLs have been reprocessed. There will be no more updates, end transmission. They didn't say end transmission, I added that. Crystal pointed out on X, perhaps LinkedIn, I saw it on X. You should make note of this if you are in that category of publisher and make a note because you might see a dip in your search console and traffic data and so forth. And you might go hey, what happened there? But if you make a note, you realize, oh, there was an indexing thing there. So that explains it. Okay, onto Search Engine Land, but not from Barry this time. Barry, you can't have them. This from Danny Goodwin. Google AI overview is showing less often with less Reddit, data shows. We've actually covered a bunch of studies showing there's less AI overviews being produced by Google. In this study by SEO ranking, Danny notes also that Reddit's visibility in the AI overviews is no longer a top 10 most cited domain, which is interesting because on June 19th, Barry Schwartz reported, there's Barry, on seoroundtable.com, report on if Google's showing fewer Reddit links in search. So some guy who's name rhymes with Gordy Boberstein, sent a whole bunch of data from Semrush showing that there's just a little bit of a slight drop off in the Reddit and Quora URLs that Google is showing within its discussion and forms. ERP feature. I'm not talking about, I mean, Gordy Boberstein wasn't talking about the entire SERP on the organic results, only the discussion of form SERP feature, but there's a little bit of a trend from April through June where Reddit URLs used to show in 49% of these SERP features, now is down to 48.56%. Same for Quora and other forums have seen a more noticeable rise in visibility within the platform. The same time, by the way, the Semrush data I looked at, I mean, Gordy looked at, was indicating that there are less instances or fewer instances if I'm going to speak grammatically correctly, of multiple Reddit URLs showing up in the discussion and form SERP feature. So there's less cases of Google using multiple URLs in the same SERP feature box from Reddit. That combined with the data that Danny's showing in the AI overview where Danny's discussing from SEO ranking, creates this picture where we're kind of seeing Reddit being scaled back just a bit. I do think Google realizes that it's a little bit too much on the Reddit front, but I don't see any dramatic shifts, I don't think advantage coming soon, but perhaps it's Google trying to act on that. I don't know, the data story is still to be told. However, continuing on that data story, wow I'm really threading the narratives together. This comes from Lily Ray over Amps of Digital, SEO visibility shifts to review sites to e-commerce and user generated content sites in 2024. What Lily shows is basically, I search for something like best jeans, not bad, or I don't know, I always go blank when I'm trying to figure out query to show an example of, like best cell phone or best mug or best glasses, or I just use Lily's cases, laptops, or bird feeders. There used to be a lot of product review websites showing up. What Lily is showing is that in May 2024, Google seems to have shifted away from the product review site and more to the actual product site, so less URLs being shown in the organic results for, here's my top five best bird feeders and more Homedepot.com, buy a bird feeder. By the way, that's happened in the past in other verticals. One of the cases I used to always study was insurance. So if I search for car insurance. Back in the day, there used to be a lot of informational content about how to buy insurance versus just places to buy insurance. That narrative switched back a little bit, and that's the last time I checked a few months ago, is a little bit more commerce side and less informational side. So, intent does change. But it's interesting to see this considering the fact that Google is not happy with affiliates. We spoke about this on our episode with Glenn Gabe, where we basically asked, is Google at war with affiliate sites? And the answer is yes, Google is at war with affiliate sites. Product review sites tend to be very heavy on the affiliate side, so this makes sense in that context of that narrative. Another thing going, making this full circle that Lily also noticed is that instead of relying on product review sites, she sees a shift from those affiliate review sites to user-generated content like Reddit and Quora and YouTube. So, maybe it's not the end of Reddit on the SERP. It already wasn't, but you get what I'm saying. Do I have another story? No, that's it. Okay. I thought I had another one. Wow. We covered a lot of ground this week. I try to keep each story snappy, so maybe it still is, the snappy news. How was your trip to Barry Land, Crystal? Crystal Carter: It was fantastic. We stand and optimize King. Mordy Oberstein: You have to be this short to ride. Crystal Carter: Leaving that, I have no further comment. Mordy Oberstein: I have another further comment. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: My further comment is that this week you should be following Roxana Stingu as your follow of the week. She's at Roxana, R-O-X-A-N-A S-T-I-N-G-U over on X. Head of SEO over at Alamy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's fantastic. She's so clever and has such a great technical knowledge across lots of different elements, and I think that she works across Alamy, which is trying to maintain brand reputation and maintain ranking across lots of different elements. And I think that it's that in-house play when you're an in-house SEO, you really have to guard your keywords, and she is an in-house SEO, who's been there for a while. And I think that when you've been there for a long time, you're able to, you know your keywords, you know them, and you need to know them inside out, and you need to know who comes for you, who your competitors are, and I think that she does a great job of it. Mordy Oberstein: I can't believe it took us this long to mention how maintaining reign comes into focus when you're in-house, but here we are, took us this long to mention that point. On the ball. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's really, really important in-house. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure to give her a follow over on X and check it out on LinkedIn as well. Links in the show notes. That's all the maintenance I have, I can do today. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Well, we will keep going. We will maintain the podcast for next week. We will also be on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: We'll maintain our rankings on Spotify. Crystal Carter: And anybody who wants to help us with that, please leave a review. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and a rating. Yeah, please. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because maintenance is a team effort. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed. Crystal Carter: And it's so fun. Mordy Oberstein: And a whole bunch of other cliches. Thanks for joining us on The SERPs Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how agency SEO is changing. Look for wherever you consume your podcast 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 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 as Crystal already told you, a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece and love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

What does good E-E-A-T actually look like? What does E-E-A-T mean for your ability to rank on the Google SERP? Why did Google add ‘Experience’ to E-A-T? On this episode, Wix’s own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter are joined by the fabulous Lily Ray to clarify the significance of Google’s “E-E-A-T ranking factors”, and how to demonstrate these qualifications to Google. We explore the elements laid out in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines that help bolster your website's E-E-A-T foundation, and teach you how to connect the dots when it comes to your brands credentials. Hope you're hungry, because there’s a lot to E-E-A-T today! We’re putting an emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness so you can showcase your website's true value this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back What does good E-E-A-T even mean? What does good E-E-A-T actually look like? What does E-E-A-T mean for your ability to rank on the Google SERP? Why did Google add ‘Experience’ to E-A-T? On this episode, Wix’s own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter are joined by the fabulous Lily Ray to clarify the significance of Google’s “E-E-A-T ranking factors”, and how to demonstrate these qualifications to Google. We explore the elements laid out in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines that help bolster your website's E-E-A-T foundation, and teach you how to connect the dots when it comes to your brands credentials. Hope you're hungry, because there’s a lot to E-E-A-T today! We’re putting an emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness so you can showcase your website's true value this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 62 | November 15, 2023 | 42 MIN 00:00 / 41:59 This week’s guests Lily Ray Lily has been making waves in the SEO industry since 2010. Shifting from start-up to agency–she has helped develop and establish an award-winning SEO department at Amsive Digital, delivering high impact work for a long-list of notable clients, including several Fortune 500 companies. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast and putting on some grouping insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by our always hungry for more SEO knowledge, our head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I'm also always hungry. I'm big into snacks and things. We have a lot of good snacks. We recently found these biscuits that have rosemary in them. They're incredibly what in England, people refer to as Moreish. As in if they say Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop. Similar thing with these particular snacks. Mordy Oberstein: Are they Triscuits? Those are amazing. Crystal Carter: They're not Triscuits, but I love Triscuits. I love me a Triscuit. That is the quality. You get a little cheese on there, oh. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best cracker. I don't know what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world for not being into Triscuits. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Although, to be fair, sometimes Ritz does it. Sometimes it's a Ritz and I'm like, "Oh yeah." Mordy Oberstein: Ritz is fine. It's good with Herring. I know it's an old Jewish thing. Totally lost the audience with that one, but Triscuits are far superior. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. People who are listening, hit us with your favorite cheese accompanying snack tray. Mordy Oberstein: And it'll all makes sense why we're talking about food in a few moments. But first, 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 showcase your years of experience to your clients with the advanced design and clients tools found in Wix Studio. Look for it over at wix.com/studio. Experience? You ask. What can that mean for today's topic? Well, I hope you're as hungry as we have something to eat today. That's right. We're taking off the oddly controversial, though lately less so, topic of experience, expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness also known as EEAT. Was EAT, but now it's EEAT. That's a mouthful, whatever. We'll explore what does good EEAT actually look like? What does EEAT mean for the Google algorithm and your ability to rank? And why did Google add the extra E after all? To help us get two full scoops of EEAT, the world's best, Lily Ray of Amsive Digital will join us as we make our way to the proverbial salad bar in the sky, known as the SERP. Plus, we'll look at how Google goes all in on experience with its own features on the results page. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social. So head over to the buffet and load up on free food like it's a famine. As episode number 63 of the SERP's UP podcast helps you stuff your faces with the lowdown on EEAT. That's EEAT. Crystal Carter: I hooked up a lot to chew on there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice, nice., Nice. I'm really going to digest that for a while. Lily Ray: That was quite an intro and you guys make me laugh so much that I was like, "Should I go on mute? Should I not go on mute?" Because I'm just sitting here cracking up and it's amazing. So thanks for having me. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Lily, thanks for being here. Crystal Carter: So happy to have you here. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. You're a second time guest. You're our second, second time guest. Lily Ray: Isn't that right? Yeah, it was fun the first time, so that's why I said yes again. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I also noticed during our bit of banter in the front, I mentioned Ritz and you were shaking your head no. You were like … Lily Ray: Well, it's more like I love Ritz, but I'm just like, that's such a snack from childhood. So much butter. You know what I mean? But you're right, it's still a guilty pleasure for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's true. It's a little basic, but it does the job. I enjoy it. I enjoy it. But there we go. Lily Ray: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: They used to have a guy who's a kid, like Kosher knockoffs. This wasn't technically Kosher at one point, whatever. Now that I've experienced real Ritz, they were crumbly and not nearly as good. The level of expertise and trustworthiness around the cracker making of the knockoff was not nearly as good as the original. Which brings us to our topic, and I want to give a little bit of background... Pat in the back for that pivot. A little bit of background on what the heck EEAT is. So we're going to go on a little magical SEO history tour, cue up The Beatles, I guess. Because in March of 2018, Google released a medic update. It was I guess the August, 2018 core update, but they weren't calling it that then, which we call it now but it was called a medic update. And it was one of those, I don't know, moments in SEO history where something just started to be different. And one of the things that was different was the conversation around Your Money, Your Life websites, YMYL, and the impact that we saw on health websites and finance sites getting hit really hard during the medic update and the emphasis on site quality, meaning it became apparent that Google was able to assess and profile quality in brand new ways. And back then, literally a few weeks after the update rolled out, yours truly wrote a I'll call a prophetic blog post, which has been since deleted by the place that hosted it, salty point, around Google profiling site identity, a topic you hear a lot more about, and the website's really building upside identity and that sort of thing. And that really started emerging during or after, rather, the medic update and the subsequent core updates that followed and EAT... Well, at the time it was EAT because there was only expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, experience came later, really started becoming a focal point of the SEO dialogue. And eventually EAT became EEAT. But there's always the question of what was Google doing? What were they able to do? EEAT came from Google's quality radar guidelines, which are not part of the algorithm, but we were seeing things that look similar to what Google was talking about and the guidelines happen in the algorithm and EAT at the time and now EEAT really became part of the SEO equation and a little bit controversial because of that. So maybe let's take it from there. The algorithm and EEAT, is EEAT part of the algorithm? Lily Ray: Softball. Softball question. The way that Google talks about this, so they talk about there's many different signals that go into their evaluations, their EEAT evaluations. And those can be many, many different, let's say on page, off page direct, indirect signals about a brand, about a website, about content. And those signals factor into their evaluations of the EEAT, which of course then can impact rankings. So they're not going to tell you that EEAT is a direct ranking factor. In fact, they've said many times it's indirect. But if you think about it as a whole, as a concept, it is essentially a big, huge part of Google's algorithms and it depends on the query itself, how much it matters. So they've been very clear that for certain queries, it's extremely important. For other queries, maybe it's less important. But there's other statements from Google saying this matters for every query. So people like to get into these silly debates about whether or not it's important. But if you read pretty much all of Google's documentation from the last several years, it's by far the most common theme about how SEO works. But they have to keep it really vague for the same reasons they have to keep all of their information about ranking very vague. Because people think that it's something that can be faked and exploited and just like all these spammy approaches are trying to fake EEAT, which people are doing now and with some success in some cases. But yeah, Google's not going to tell us directly how it works. So in my perspective, yes, it's probably the single most important thing you should be thinking about for SEO, but it's not as simple as saying putting a keyword in your title tag is a ranking factor. Right? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that part of this comes from... They had that piece of content that they said, "What site owners should know about Google's August, 2019 core update." And they talk loads about the EEAT and they link to your content there as well, and they talk about how important it is. And I think that, as you say, it's not a one pill sort of thing. It's not like you do one thing and then it's completely fixed. It's a holistic approach. And I think that that's certainly something that you've talked about for many years. I've been on your website, you have a section that says, "I talk about EEAT lot, and the reason why is because it's very complex." Lily Ray: Yeah, it's complex. And it's very hard for a lot of SEOs to wrap their heads around because a lot of SEO in years past has been more like you do one thing and you can see a result of that thing pretty clearly. So you can draw a conclusion, oh, I added this keyword to my title, or I changed my H1, or I improved page speed, and I'm pretty sure it led to these outcomes. With EAT and EEAT, it's hardly ever like that. So a lot of people made the mistake early on of saying, "Oh, I added an author name and I tested adding an author name and nothing happened." Because it's not how it works. Google has all the data in the entire world and they're using it in ways we probably cannot even wrap our heads around. So that in and of itself is probably not going to change how Google evaluates the EEAT of your site and your brand. Mordy Oberstein: That's always been my major hangup with the EEAT. I call it a matter of factor. Yeah, you have all these ranking signals like your keyword and your title tag and blah blah blah blah blah…. But looking at the quality of the website, its ability to transmit information in a expert led manner that results in it being trustworthy, it's very holistic, and it's very meta. It's like, okay, before we even get to a keyword in a title tag, what's the nature of this content? Is it applicable and is it quality? And that's before a ranking factor. It's prior to a ranking factor, and I think that confuses the heck out of SEOs. Lily Ray: Yeah, yeah. It's because they can't understand how Google's doing it, and they also can't imagine what's possible and what's not possible. So a lot of the times it's like Google can't possibly know who these authors are. Meanwhile, literally today, Glenn Gabe just posted, in Google Discover, they're putting author names in the thumbnail, and now you can click on the author name and it takes you to their knowledge graph. And Glenn found it for Barry Barry Schwartz, the author in the SEO community. So I'm like, "Okay, if they can't do it, why are they literally continuing to push products that show that they're trying to do it." Crystal Carter: Right. And they rolled out lots and lots more knowledge panels for people of all different levels of notoriety and the knowledge panels that they have for people who are big names, for instance, are much more robust these days. How have you seen that evolve? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think you're right. I think I've seen a lot more people this year saying, especially SEO people, like, "Hey, I put structured data around my name and now I have a knowledge panel." It's like, okay, well, that's a much easier barrier to entry than it was before. But you're right, Crystal, if you Google prominent people's names, it's like Google's gone so far into making it a beautiful search result with connecting all the different dots. Sometimes when I Google my own name, I'm like, "You chose that YouTube video to display at the very top of the page." It's like curating almost these personal websites for people, and they're absolutely building that out more over time. Mordy Oberstein: No, they're really smart about it. In mine, they show a picture of me when I was a kid that I once posted, I went, "Wow." Lily Ray: You're like, "Take that down." Mordy Oberstein: Really. To be honest to you, I look way better back then than I do now, so I'm going to leave it there. Lily Ray: You're going to keep it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, keep it. So to piggyback off of that, what does good... Because we mentioned, okay, throw the author in there, have an author bio, but I feel like EEAT has... We've SEOed it, it became a checklist. We need to do this, I need to do that and I need to do that. But what does developing good EEAT actually look like? Lily Ray: Yeah, it's doing the hard work that nobody wants to do. Everybody wants a shortcut. A lot of people these days are saying, you'll see these people, "Oh, I created this fake mid-journey person and a fake author bio and got all these fake mentions and all these publications did it, did all these fake things and it's ranking." I'm like, "Yeah, it's ranking for now until Google sees enough of these patterns to the point where they launch another helpful content update and it doesn't work anymore." If you're willing to have something work for a month or three months or whatever, great, good for you. But sustainable long-term marketing and EEAT means all the things that have always contributed to building a trustworthy brand. So we work with our clients to say, who are the legitimate experts at your company? The people that actually know these things, are they looped into the content creation process? And the more that these people go and make themselves public speaking at events, doing interviews, making YouTube videos, doing TikTok, all this stuff, it all gets factored back into EEAT. Google loves those signals. Crystal Carter: So I've worked with clients on this who were in the medical space on one of the things you do a EEAT audit, and I presume that that's something that you do and many think that you do. And when I've done that sort of thing, it's sometimes very difficult to explain to clients what you're actually looking for because they're like, "But I thought you were going to look at the website." And you're like, "Yeah, kind of. Yes, but also your whole digital footprint." How do you talk to clients about that? Because one of the things I think people struggle with, they'll say, "Oh, well, we are qualified. Oh, well, we do have that certification." But they don't necessarily demonstrate it. So do you find it tricky for clients to get their head around that? Lily Ray: It's a great question. I mean, personally, I think it's one of the most fun and exciting areas of SEO when you start to believe in it and understand how it works. Because like you said, if they are truly qualified, then it's just a matter of connecting the dots and making that super easy for search engines to understand and users. All of this is mutually beneficial for search engines and users. That's one of the nice things about it. It's not like, "Oh, let's go buy a million shady links and spam the internet." Because it's good for SEO, but it's terrible for users. No, we're actually doing something that's good for the internet and brands as a whole. But to your question, Crystal, it's like if you go in the search quality rater guidelines, which have finally become trendy, Marie Haynes made this trendy and Olaf Kopp maybe and three other people five years ago, seven years ago. Now, suddenly the SEO industry's like, "Check out this nugget from page 18 of the search quality guidelines." I'm like, "It's no secret. It's been there the whole time." Mordy Oberstein: The main content should be clearly accessible on the page. Lily Ray: Yeah, guys. Found this great hack. Oh my God. Crystal Carter: I'm not going to lie. If you're new to SEO and you're interested in it, look up Google search quality rater guidelines. And honestly, Lily, you hit me to this and you were like, "Oh yeah." This and this. And I was like, "Okay, let me have a look myself." Literally printed it out and was going through that with the highlighter with all of this stuff that I used to carry it around dogeared, but it's a great read and it's super, super useful. It's also worth bookmarking because they just update the link. I was trying to compare one year to the other and it will go. There's a couple of people that do really good line by line what's changed. But yeah, it's a great document. We should link that in the share notes. Lily Ray: Yeah, it's hard to find. And one last thing about that, if you read the guidelines, the whole point of why I brought that up is because the first thing it says for quality raters to do is, which the document is intended for, is to research the reputation of websites outside of what the website says about itself, including a search operator that they can add to Google that literally looks at the website reputation without looking at the website, subtract the website's domain. So they're actually looking directly outside of the website to understand what other people are saying about the website, not the website itself. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's why I feel like there's so much of what goes into EEAT and branding and content marketing, right? You can do very mundane tasks like I mentioned before, but though the real work is really developing the brand. I think the point you made before about getting the people who work at your company involved in the content creation and promoting that content is, first off just leaving SEO aside, is a great brand marketing tactic. You want to show you as the expert and in order to do that, your people need to be out there talking about what makes them an expert. How many times is a random content marketing agency in Wichita, Kansas writing about whatever it is that you actually do and the actual experts are not actually involved in the content? If you're like, "What's the biggest thing you can do to build up your EEAT?" But make sure the content's really actually good. Crystal Carter: And accurate and factual. Lily Ray: Yeah, and beyond good. I think we'll talk about this soon, but now it's just true experience. So another thing the SEO community is trying to do with the onset of the new E, which I think we'll talk about is faking experience. And the amazing thing that Google's done and cornered people into doing, which I think is a great thing, is now you need that to rank. I mean, the data just shows it over and over with different types of algorithm updates or ranking systems. We had the review system, now we have the helpful content system. It's always saying the same thing now, which is, do you have true experience? So people are going into ChatGPT and saying, "Pretend I'm an SEO expert with real SEO experience and say this and this thing." And the answers, I'm like, "If you're a real SEO person with experience, you'll know the answers are not good." So people can tell the difference, right? Crystal Carter: And I think also you talked about being good for users and being good for the algorithm or whatever as well. I heard a radio advert the other day and it was like, "Here are real customers talking about their customer experience with our energy company." And it was literally slightly grainy phone calls of people going, "Oh, I had a great, thank you so much for your help. That was really helpful." And that sort of stuff. And I think TikTok is a classic venue for this. There's a lot of ugly videos on TikTok that are like, "Here's how I fixed the bicycle." Or "Here's how I did this thing." And I think people are really looking for something real that they can quantify as real because there's so much content everywhere. So I think that that experience level, I think that's a response to that. Do you agree? Or you're seeing something else? Lily Ray: Yeah, no, I think it's really clear. It's interesting in the past couple of weeks and months how so many people are so blindsided by what Google's doing because Google's been warning us for years about this. The feedback that Google's been getting about its algorithms and the quality of its results have been in mainstream media for a couple of years now. We think that Google provides a lot of very inauthentic results, a lot of results from brands that don't know what they're talking about. Too many brands are doing affiliate content. This is not authentic but we want to hear from real people. TikTok is the biggest threat to Google search. It has been clear for months and years the challenges that Google's facing. Now they're probably maybe over indexing on real experience with some of their ranking updates, but it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Google searchers in general want that classic old feeling of how Google used to be when you would get Joe Schmoe's website about fixing his bike. They're trying to go back there while still honoring many of the other signals that are important for search. Mordy Oberstein: That to me, by the way, is a mistake that I think people in the SEO industry make. Okay, so Google added an extra E to EEAT where it was originally expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and then they added an E for experience. And SEO's like, "Oh, okay, now we've to optimize for experience." They're out thinking, where did the E come from? They didn't pull it out of a hat. Google realized that there's a new content trend. People are preferring content from actual people with actual experience. And in order for them to stay relevant, they need to figure out a way to include that in the algorithm. So it's not like, oh, I need to optimize for Google. No, you need to give people what they actually want, which is what Google's trying to do. So we've talked about this on Twitter a while back when they started doing the product review updates and now they're called the review updates. And Google said, "Okay, we want you to have actual experience with the toaster oven that you're using." How do they do that? And to me, it's not crazy complicated. The language structure you're going to use if you use the stupid toaster oven is going to be so different than if you didn't. So for example, you would write, great toaster oven, was really good on bread, if you didn't use it. But if you actually used it, you would be like, "I tried to put a steak in there and it did not work. Do not use this on steak." Lily Ray: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I've been looking at sites that got hit by the recent helpful content update. And I'm not the most advanced set of algorithms on the planet. I'm just a person looking at sites one by one. So obviously, whatever Google's capable of doing is going to be a million times more sophisticated than what I'm doing. Okay, first of all, so many of the sites that were impacted have absolutely no experience. That's just obvious. Okay, we get it. You wrote a million pieces of content about all the great places to travel in the world. You've obviously never been there. There's no evidence, there's no author, there's nothing. That's obviously the most extreme example. But then you get these mid-range like, "Oh, I really enjoyed going to the restaurant. The breakfast was excellent. Highly recommend it. Try the pancakes." Okay, did you really go there? Mordy Oberstein: No, you did add the word I and we in a thousand times. I told Crystal this, I took that product review page and I went to the way back machine and it was clear. They try to mimic experience and it was not actual experience. And I went back and they used the word I and we eight times. Fast-forward to now, and they use it 150 times. Lily Ray: It's real experience. If I just put that word there a million times, people will never know. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So note to the audience, and I feel like if you're listening to this podcast and you're a smaller website, this is for you. You have actual experience, you have the ability to really give that experience over to your audience and create something different and valuable. But if you're listening to this and you're on an SEO, stuffing in we and our and I is not optimizing for the experience of EEAT. Lily Ray: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great segue. I have a question. So the way I always describe for our Wix audience, and I know not everybody here is Wix user yet. But the way I like to describe it is Wix folks are doers, we like to do stuff, make websites, do stuff, et cetera. So if somebody was looking for something to do, I don't know if you'd be interested in this, going through each acronym. So a quick tip, is that ridiculous? Or something you could do to demonstrate experience on a website that almost anyone could do, what would be something you could recommend for someone? Lily Ray: Yeah, I mean, this is where it gets fun because presumably if you are making a website and marketing the website, presumably and hopefully it's because you actually like what you're doing, you know about what you're doing, you care about what you're doing. Of course, that's definitely not true for many people that are doing marketing on the internet. But if those things are true, assuming those things are true, share what you know. You know what I mean? What are the unique insights and experiences that you have? Me personally, I think you both as well. I can talk about SEO all day, every day. I have very strong opinions as everybody knows and I like to share them and people like to hear them. So do that. If you're a biker or a bike mechanic, what have you experienced? What frustrates you? What's the cool new bike? What's going on? And then of course you can map that to the different SEO tools that we use to say, okay, how should I write this headline? What keywords should I include on this page? How should I set up my content structure? But when you start from what you know, this is a very different way of thinking about SEO because most people start from the keywords themselves and then try to pretend that they know these things or research what other people have said. But I almost only write SEO content or content about SEO when there's something that I need to say and that's a lot. It's very frequent, but it doesn't happen not because my company's like, "Lily, we haven't heard from you in a while." I'm like, "Guys, it's Sunday night and something really big happened and I have an idea and I'm writing a blog." So think about it that way. Crystal Carter: So this is reminding me. So on Wix SEO hub, I have an article about user first SEO content ideas and I'm sure you must get this a lot as in your experience, you talk to SEOs all over the world. If anyone doesn't know, it's not really a conference if Lily's not there. No, I'm kidding. But every SEO conference is made better by Lily Ray. But yeah, there we go. Anyway, at conferences, you speak to SEOs all over the world and you must have lots of people asking you questions all the time about different things. So again, rather than keywords, if you're hearing people regularly asking you those questions, those are potentially users. That's potentially a place where you can validate your experience or the experiences of other people in order to create the content. So I think that that's something that folks can do as well. Listen to people who are talking to you. Lily Ray: Yeah, or your customers or your calls or your chats, right? Crystal Carter: Right. So we did experience. And expertise, what is a good win for expertise in terms of something that someone could work on, sort of a thing? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think this is when we start to get into things like author bios and building out a personal brand. Every place that one would expect you to be mentioned or recognized in your industry, make sure that you're there or make sure that it's clear that you're there. Here's a random example for me. I'm in Google Scholar. I was included in an academic journal where I've talked about SEO. That's extreme, but that's all the different places that you might expect somebody who's saying they're an expert in something to have expertise. So I just spoke at a recipe blogger conference last week. It's like, where are all the publications where you've been mentioned? Where did you go to culinary school? Right? Just connecting all those dots and making sure that they're all easy for people and search engines to see. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think one thing that I've seen is that, and I think you've mentioned this as well on Twitter, is LinkedIn for instance, even if you're not posting every single day on LinkedIn, if you have your LinkedIn, if you spent an hour going through your LinkedIn profile and making sure that's got your relevant qualifications and has the skill sets and all of that sort of stuff, Google pulls those results into the SERP, for instance. So that can be a good source of that as well. And then with regards to authority, is that one trickier? Lily Ray: Yeah, probably. I mean, the SEO industry will tell you because Gary-ish from Google- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the link thing. Lily Ray: One time said that it's links. Yeah. So Gary in maybe 2018 or 2019 said that page rank and links are the only things we really look at for EAT or something along those lines, and authority is largely driven by links. So of course, the SEO industry likes to misconstrue this into links are the only thing that matters, nothing else matters. Which is not true. But of course, similar to having the right credentials and experience listed in your online profiles, you do want to back up your legitimacy with links and also social media mentions. I can't say enough about when I share an article that I wrote on Twitter, it shows up in Google Discover the next day. So it's like Google's looking at these signals, even if they don't tell you the social media signals are ranking factors, they're looking at them, for sure. Crystal Carter: And what about trust? What's a good opportunity in terms of demonstrating trust online? Lily Ray: Yeah, this is where the trust pilots and the G2s and testimonials and online ratings and online reviews come in. There's so many different sites where you should be listed, building out a knowledge panel using Crunchbase, all these things. Just making sure that your brand is a legitimate brand. Other sites that were impacted by the recent algorithm updates, including the helpful content update, one of the first things that I noticed is a lot of these sites are obviously just blogs that someone bought because of the name. It's just obvious, right? So if you're bestpizzaslices.com, okay, great, you're going to write about the best pizza slices. I'm sure the content is fine, but that's not a brand. There's no evidence that you started a business. Who are you? Why should we trust you? So that's a silly example because I'm sure you can do fine with pizza slices, but you know what I mean? People are just buying domains and not investing any energy into making this a real brand because that's the whole point, they're churn and burn sites. So you have to show that you're a real brand. Mordy Oberstein: And all that bleeds over, right? Even the Google's graphic, the whole diagram, they have a Venn diagram and the E, and the A, and the T they overlap a little bit to make a one overall picture. So one of these things, again, that makes it hard is that it's not very linear. As Lily mentioned before, I just want to harbor on that point for a real quick second. It is a mindset. It is a way of thinking about producing content and websites and working with sites and content. And I think we're done. I think we've exhausted the topic for this particular episode. Lily, if people wanted to experience your expertise and experience in SEO, where could they find you? Lily Ray: Well, my new answer to this question is that Google me and pick wherever you want to follow me because there's a lot of different options. So it's Lily Ray, L-I-L-Y R-A-Y. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best answer I've heard. I know it's... Lily Ray: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good answer in this whole mumble-jumbled world of social media. That is the best answer I've heard in a long time. Lily Ray: Pick your favorite. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we'll link to Lily's various social media profiles and perhaps just the SERP. Lily Ray: Just the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, in the show notes. So look for the link to Lily's SERP in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Such an honor to have you with us. Thank you so much. Lily Ray: Thanks for having me. You guys are the best. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Lily. Bye. Thanks again, Lily. Experience is not just fodder for the algorithm. Google didn't pull it out of a magic hat and say, "Hey, let's focus on experience and expertise." Content trends impact search engines and Google saw experience and expertise are actual content trends that people want. Hence, you all are going to TikTok for information. Thus Google knows it itself needs to show experience and expertise in its own SERP features. So like that, with that, let's dive into what it all looks like on the SERP as we take a directional look at what Google is doing with a little segment we call going, going Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going Google. It's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: Google does a lot of things to help give results within its own SERP feature the little boxes and doohickeys it offers that are not the actual results that pull in expertise and experience. In fact, Crystal, you found one of these and shared it with the great Barry Schwartz. Care to share that with us? Crystal Carter: Yes. So I found a mentioned in drop down, and I found this on the couple of top level searches, so broad search keywords. And essentially, I entered in something and then further down there was a brand and underneath the brand it would say mentioned in, and it mentioned a few different places where people have mentioned this particular topic. These are really useful for providing context. They also provide a little bit of a point of panic potentially if you might have something there where you're mentioned, did he not? So flattering way. So I think it's important for people to think about how their reputation is being managed across the web and to make sure that they're creating some great content that is actually about them. So people talking about them. This is essentially the authority piece. So I tend to say that when we think about authority, it's what other people are saying about you. So if you were applying for a job, you get references. You might say great things about yourself on your resume, but then you have your references. And if your references are your mom or your best friend, that'll give your employer one kind of impression. If your references are somebody that you worked with who also has a good reputation, for instance, that's going to give another impression. And it's the same with some of these online recommendations that Google's trying to get more people more comfortable for. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it really helps Google showcase the result that they're giving is expert driven, right? Other people are mentioning that website, then that website has some sort of expertise on whatever topic is that you're searching for. So it's Google saying, "Hey, let's make sure that you, the searcher, understand that this website is an expert because other people are saying that they are." Crystal Carter: Right. And that when you're looking at the SERP, I mean, it takes up a lot of real estate. So the one that I saw had a couple of different options. And I think that what's interesting is that it takes up probably double the space of a normal plain blue link, which is great because that's saying not only is this somebody who's got content on this, but they've got content and other people think that content is good. So I think that that is an absolute plus for people who have good brand knowledge or good topic knowledge on a particular topic. And I think that it's worth investing time in making yourself be seen as a very clear authority. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and on the flip side of that, from the experience angle, Google has a whole set of results where you can get a perspective from actual people, meaning you search for something like, are The Beatles good? It was the example we used in the previous episode. And you get a set of results of people sharing their opinions about The Beatles. It's really results based on experience. A lot of it coming from social media because that's a great place to see where people have their experiences and their thoughts on that from actual people. Crystal Carter: So one of the examples that I found was Coco Gauff. So after she won the US Open with plastic finish there. Well done Coco. So after she won that, there were people who also had opinions on that as well. So there was something that was specifically an opinion piece, for instance from CNN that was mentioned in The Perspective. But I think it's great to have the content earmarked so that essentially you're saying this is content that's objective or that's a news piece, core news and this is the opinion column area. In a newspaper, you'll have current events, you'll have some people who are making think pieces about what they think it might mean or what context they see in a particular news event, and then you'll have people who are just reporting what happened on that particular occasion. And both ideas are useful for you to get context of what's going on, but they're not exactly the same. So I think it's good that Google's saying, "Okay, these are opinions, they're interesting and things, but they're opinions." And I think that it provides context and provides a great way to get more information on the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The point is, if you look at what Google's doing in their own SERP features, you can get a sense of what they're trying to focus on and what they're trying to do and what direction they're going, and it's the name of the segment going, going Google. So take a look at what Google's doing and take a look at what's changing on the results page and take a look at the change in testing that they're doing because that'll show you what they're looking for and what they're trying to do, what they think is valuable. Crystal Carter: Right. And one of the other ones that Glenn Gabe identified recently was within the Discover tab there, for instance, he found something that was talking about Google, Google search results, and it was an article written by Barry Schwartz and underneath the article it said, "Get the latest on Barry Schwartz." And when you click on it goes to Barry's knowledge graph. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: So that is a good way that you're connecting the dots, and it's something I've talked about in terms of thinking about mobile optimization. I did a course recently for Semrush and I talked about how actually spending some time making sure the people on your team have good knowledge graphs, have good biographical entities, have good information across the web, is actually really useful for mobile, for EEAT, for all of those sorts of things. So Google wants to add citations essentially to the kind of content that they're giving. So they want to add context to the authors. They want to add context to the information the publishers that they're pointing people to. They want to give people more context for the kind of information that they're getting. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of Barry, of course, it is the perfect time for us to dive into this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Google SGE expands through 120 countries per Barry Schwartz override Search Engine Land. Basically, it's what I just said. Google's SGE, it's Search Generative Experience expands to 120 new countries. Which means that if you are in Angola, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil. Just reading off the list. Cambodia. Let's go to E, Ethiopia. G for, I don't know, Guam. In all of these countries, you can, in theory, access the SGE Google Search Generative Experience, which is super interesting. Google has stated that yes, this is still on beta, still being tested, but the expansion obviously indicates that Google is far more comfortable with what it's been doing in the US with its SGE. So look forward at a country or in a country near you. Also in a country near you, per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, it's two berries from two different publications this week as it is with pretty much every week. Google November 2023 reviews update rolls out. So Google said, if you listened to our news last week, Google said they're going to roll out a new review update and that the review update, this one, will be the last of the official announced review updates. What you're basically going to have is a continuously updating ranking system, which means that the review update is essentially real time. I hate using that word because it's not exactly what it means, but it will be out live and changing rankings on a consistent and ongoing basis without specific roll-outs as we have now. So that's super interesting. As I believe I mentioned last time, I think this is the way of the algorithm. This is where I think the Google updates in general are going. We actually cover this in our BrightonSEO session, our live recording of SERP's Up over at BrightonSEO in San Diego. So look for that episode. I believe that one comes out next week. So we get into that there and then. So listen then for that there. Wow, that's so many pronouns. Just so you know, the reviews update is live, at least the beginning of it is live at the same time as the November 2023 core update, which makes picking out ranking movements perhaps a little bit more complex than it usually is, and there's multiple layers of Google updates going on, so that's always fun, right? And with that, that's this week's snappy news. Thank you as always to the great writers of all the great news articles that are out there, and of course, in particular, the great Barry Schwartz. With that, let's dive into who you should be following this week for more SEO awesomeness. And since we're focused so much on experience and expertise and EEAT, we thought this week's follow of the week should be Olaf Kopp. He is on X, but he's more on LinkedIn. So look for Olaf Kopp. However on LinkedIn, we'll link to that in the show notes. Olaf is a EEAT aficionado. He's written many, many articles around it for Search Engine Land. He's got a really, what I like, a really conceptual understanding of EEAT. And it's the kind of content that when you go and look at it, you're learning how to fish and you're not just getting the fish. Crystal Carter: I mean, what fish are we talking about? Mordy Oberstein: Mackerel. Crystal Carter: Mackerel. Mackerel's so pretty. They're such pretty little fish. They're very shiny and cute. I think they're adorable. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. What's an ugly fish? I know, a fluke. Flounder. Crystal Carter: Have you ever seen salmon? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've seen salmon. Crystal Carter: Salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, we're really crapping on the fish here. Crystal Carter: Say it to it's face. But salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: No, I would say salmon cannot hurt you. I would say it to it. I wouldn't say it to a shark though. Crystal Carter: I mean, they jump pretty high. If you ever watch people talk about bears eating salmon. But if you watch a bear eating salmon, I've not seen this personally, but on nature documentaries, they're literally just hanging their mouths open trying to catch the salmon who are jumping upstream. It's not very graceful, but I mean, that's what... You got to do what you got to do if you're a bear and you need a snack. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, bears have to eat too. Crystal Carter: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: Bears have to eat too. Well, I'm that happy note, 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 a very special live episode from BrightonSEO in San Diego live from the conference. So look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at, you got it, wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Lily Ray Olaf Kopp Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Searchlight SEO Newsletter Amsive Digital Lily Ray Website News: Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Google Quality Rater Guidelines Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Lily Ray Olaf Kopp Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Searchlight SEO Newsletter Amsive Digital Lily Ray Website News: Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Google Quality Rater Guidelines Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast and putting on some grouping insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by our always hungry for more SEO knowledge, our head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I'm also always hungry. I'm big into snacks and things. We have a lot of good snacks. We recently found these biscuits that have rosemary in them. They're incredibly what in England, people refer to as Moreish. As in if they say Pringles, once you pop, you can't stop. Similar thing with these particular snacks. Mordy Oberstein: Are they Triscuits? Those are amazing. Crystal Carter: They're not Triscuits, but I love Triscuits. I love me a Triscuit. That is the quality. You get a little cheese on there, oh. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best cracker. I don't know what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world for not being into Triscuits. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Although, to be fair, sometimes Ritz does it. Sometimes it's a Ritz and I'm like, "Oh yeah." Mordy Oberstein: Ritz is fine. It's good with Herring. I know it's an old Jewish thing. Totally lost the audience with that one, but Triscuits are far superior. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. People who are listening, hit us with your favorite cheese accompanying snack tray. Mordy Oberstein: And it'll all makes sense why we're talking about food in a few moments. But first, 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 showcase your years of experience to your clients with the advanced design and clients tools found in Wix Studio. Look for it over at wix.com/studio. Experience? You ask. What can that mean for today's topic? Well, I hope you're as hungry as we have something to eat today. That's right. We're taking off the oddly controversial, though lately less so, topic of experience, expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness also known as EEAT. Was EAT, but now it's EEAT. That's a mouthful, whatever. We'll explore what does good EEAT actually look like? What does EEAT mean for the Google algorithm and your ability to rank? And why did Google add the extra E after all? To help us get two full scoops of EEAT, the world's best, Lily Ray of Amsive Digital will join us as we make our way to the proverbial salad bar in the sky, known as the SERP. Plus, we'll look at how Google goes all in on experience with its own features on the results page. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social. So head over to the buffet and load up on free food like it's a famine. As episode number 63 of the SERP's UP podcast helps you stuff your faces with the lowdown on EEAT. That's EEAT. Crystal Carter: I hooked up a lot to chew on there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice, nice., Nice. I'm really going to digest that for a while. Lily Ray: That was quite an intro and you guys make me laugh so much that I was like, "Should I go on mute? Should I not go on mute?" Because I'm just sitting here cracking up and it's amazing. So thanks for having me. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Lily, thanks for being here. Crystal Carter: So happy to have you here. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. You're a second time guest. You're our second, second time guest. Lily Ray: Isn't that right? Yeah, it was fun the first time, so that's why I said yes again. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I also noticed during our bit of banter in the front, I mentioned Ritz and you were shaking your head no. You were like … Lily Ray: Well, it's more like I love Ritz, but I'm just like, that's such a snack from childhood. So much butter. You know what I mean? But you're right, it's still a guilty pleasure for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's true. It's a little basic, but it does the job. I enjoy it. I enjoy it. But there we go. Lily Ray: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: They used to have a guy who's a kid, like Kosher knockoffs. This wasn't technically Kosher at one point, whatever. Now that I've experienced real Ritz, they were crumbly and not nearly as good. The level of expertise and trustworthiness around the cracker making of the knockoff was not nearly as good as the original. Which brings us to our topic, and I want to give a little bit of background... Pat in the back for that pivot. A little bit of background on what the heck EEAT is. So we're going to go on a little magical SEO history tour, cue up The Beatles, I guess. Because in March of 2018, Google released a medic update. It was I guess the August, 2018 core update, but they weren't calling it that then, which we call it now but it was called a medic update. And it was one of those, I don't know, moments in SEO history where something just started to be different. And one of the things that was different was the conversation around Your Money, Your Life websites, YMYL, and the impact that we saw on health websites and finance sites getting hit really hard during the medic update and the emphasis on site quality, meaning it became apparent that Google was able to assess and profile quality in brand new ways. And back then, literally a few weeks after the update rolled out, yours truly wrote a I'll call a prophetic blog post, which has been since deleted by the place that hosted it, salty point, around Google profiling site identity, a topic you hear a lot more about, and the website's really building upside identity and that sort of thing. And that really started emerging during or after, rather, the medic update and the subsequent core updates that followed and EAT... Well, at the time it was EAT because there was only expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, experience came later, really started becoming a focal point of the SEO dialogue. And eventually EAT became EEAT. But there's always the question of what was Google doing? What were they able to do? EEAT came from Google's quality radar guidelines, which are not part of the algorithm, but we were seeing things that look similar to what Google was talking about and the guidelines happen in the algorithm and EAT at the time and now EEAT really became part of the SEO equation and a little bit controversial because of that. So maybe let's take it from there. The algorithm and EEAT, is EEAT part of the algorithm? Lily Ray: Softball. Softball question. The way that Google talks about this, so they talk about there's many different signals that go into their evaluations, their EEAT evaluations. And those can be many, many different, let's say on page, off page direct, indirect signals about a brand, about a website, about content. And those signals factor into their evaluations of the EEAT, which of course then can impact rankings. So they're not going to tell you that EEAT is a direct ranking factor. In fact, they've said many times it's indirect. But if you think about it as a whole, as a concept, it is essentially a big, huge part of Google's algorithms and it depends on the query itself, how much it matters. So they've been very clear that for certain queries, it's extremely important. For other queries, maybe it's less important. But there's other statements from Google saying this matters for every query. So people like to get into these silly debates about whether or not it's important. But if you read pretty much all of Google's documentation from the last several years, it's by far the most common theme about how SEO works. But they have to keep it really vague for the same reasons they have to keep all of their information about ranking very vague. Because people think that it's something that can be faked and exploited and just like all these spammy approaches are trying to fake EEAT, which people are doing now and with some success in some cases. But yeah, Google's not going to tell us directly how it works. So in my perspective, yes, it's probably the single most important thing you should be thinking about for SEO, but it's not as simple as saying putting a keyword in your title tag is a ranking factor. Right? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that part of this comes from... They had that piece of content that they said, "What site owners should know about Google's August, 2019 core update." And they talk loads about the EEAT and they link to your content there as well, and they talk about how important it is. And I think that, as you say, it's not a one pill sort of thing. It's not like you do one thing and then it's completely fixed. It's a holistic approach. And I think that that's certainly something that you've talked about for many years. I've been on your website, you have a section that says, "I talk about EEAT lot, and the reason why is because it's very complex." Lily Ray: Yeah, it's complex. And it's very hard for a lot of SEOs to wrap their heads around because a lot of SEO in years past has been more like you do one thing and you can see a result of that thing pretty clearly. So you can draw a conclusion, oh, I added this keyword to my title, or I changed my H1, or I improved page speed, and I'm pretty sure it led to these outcomes. With EAT and EEAT, it's hardly ever like that. So a lot of people made the mistake early on of saying, "Oh, I added an author name and I tested adding an author name and nothing happened." Because it's not how it works. Google has all the data in the entire world and they're using it in ways we probably cannot even wrap our heads around. So that in and of itself is probably not going to change how Google evaluates the EEAT of your site and your brand. Mordy Oberstein: That's always been my major hangup with the EEAT. I call it a matter of factor. Yeah, you have all these ranking signals like your keyword and your title tag and blah blah blah blah blah…. But looking at the quality of the website, its ability to transmit information in a expert led manner that results in it being trustworthy, it's very holistic, and it's very meta. It's like, okay, before we even get to a keyword in a title tag, what's the nature of this content? Is it applicable and is it quality? And that's before a ranking factor. It's prior to a ranking factor, and I think that confuses the heck out of SEOs. Lily Ray: Yeah, yeah. It's because they can't understand how Google's doing it, and they also can't imagine what's possible and what's not possible. So a lot of the times it's like Google can't possibly know who these authors are. Meanwhile, literally today, Glenn Gabe just posted, in Google Discover, they're putting author names in the thumbnail, and now you can click on the author name and it takes you to their knowledge graph. And Glenn found it for Barry Barry Schwartz, the author in the SEO community. So I'm like, "Okay, if they can't do it, why are they literally continuing to push products that show that they're trying to do it." Crystal Carter: Right. And they rolled out lots and lots more knowledge panels for people of all different levels of notoriety and the knowledge panels that they have for people who are big names, for instance, are much more robust these days. How have you seen that evolve? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think you're right. I think I've seen a lot more people this year saying, especially SEO people, like, "Hey, I put structured data around my name and now I have a knowledge panel." It's like, okay, well, that's a much easier barrier to entry than it was before. But you're right, Crystal, if you Google prominent people's names, it's like Google's gone so far into making it a beautiful search result with connecting all the different dots. Sometimes when I Google my own name, I'm like, "You chose that YouTube video to display at the very top of the page." It's like curating almost these personal websites for people, and they're absolutely building that out more over time. Mordy Oberstein: No, they're really smart about it. In mine, they show a picture of me when I was a kid that I once posted, I went, "Wow." Lily Ray: You're like, "Take that down." Mordy Oberstein: Really. To be honest to you, I look way better back then than I do now, so I'm going to leave it there. Lily Ray: You're going to keep it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, keep it. So to piggyback off of that, what does good... Because we mentioned, okay, throw the author in there, have an author bio, but I feel like EEAT has... We've SEOed it, it became a checklist. We need to do this, I need to do that and I need to do that. But what does developing good EEAT actually look like? Lily Ray: Yeah, it's doing the hard work that nobody wants to do. Everybody wants a shortcut. A lot of people these days are saying, you'll see these people, "Oh, I created this fake mid-journey person and a fake author bio and got all these fake mentions and all these publications did it, did all these fake things and it's ranking." I'm like, "Yeah, it's ranking for now until Google sees enough of these patterns to the point where they launch another helpful content update and it doesn't work anymore." If you're willing to have something work for a month or three months or whatever, great, good for you. But sustainable long-term marketing and EEAT means all the things that have always contributed to building a trustworthy brand. So we work with our clients to say, who are the legitimate experts at your company? The people that actually know these things, are they looped into the content creation process? And the more that these people go and make themselves public speaking at events, doing interviews, making YouTube videos, doing TikTok, all this stuff, it all gets factored back into EEAT. Google loves those signals. Crystal Carter: So I've worked with clients on this who were in the medical space on one of the things you do a EEAT audit, and I presume that that's something that you do and many think that you do. And when I've done that sort of thing, it's sometimes very difficult to explain to clients what you're actually looking for because they're like, "But I thought you were going to look at the website." And you're like, "Yeah, kind of. Yes, but also your whole digital footprint." How do you talk to clients about that? Because one of the things I think people struggle with, they'll say, "Oh, well, we are qualified. Oh, well, we do have that certification." But they don't necessarily demonstrate it. So do you find it tricky for clients to get their head around that? Lily Ray: It's a great question. I mean, personally, I think it's one of the most fun and exciting areas of SEO when you start to believe in it and understand how it works. Because like you said, if they are truly qualified, then it's just a matter of connecting the dots and making that super easy for search engines to understand and users. All of this is mutually beneficial for search engines and users. That's one of the nice things about it. It's not like, "Oh, let's go buy a million shady links and spam the internet." Because it's good for SEO, but it's terrible for users. No, we're actually doing something that's good for the internet and brands as a whole. But to your question, Crystal, it's like if you go in the search quality rater guidelines, which have finally become trendy, Marie Haynes made this trendy and Olaf Kopp maybe and three other people five years ago, seven years ago. Now, suddenly the SEO industry's like, "Check out this nugget from page 18 of the search quality guidelines." I'm like, "It's no secret. It's been there the whole time." Mordy Oberstein: The main content should be clearly accessible on the page. Lily Ray: Yeah, guys. Found this great hack. Oh my God. Crystal Carter: I'm not going to lie. If you're new to SEO and you're interested in it, look up Google search quality rater guidelines. And honestly, Lily, you hit me to this and you were like, "Oh yeah." This and this. And I was like, "Okay, let me have a look myself." Literally printed it out and was going through that with the highlighter with all of this stuff that I used to carry it around dogeared, but it's a great read and it's super, super useful. It's also worth bookmarking because they just update the link. I was trying to compare one year to the other and it will go. There's a couple of people that do really good line by line what's changed. But yeah, it's a great document. We should link that in the share notes. Lily Ray: Yeah, it's hard to find. And one last thing about that, if you read the guidelines, the whole point of why I brought that up is because the first thing it says for quality raters to do is, which the document is intended for, is to research the reputation of websites outside of what the website says about itself, including a search operator that they can add to Google that literally looks at the website reputation without looking at the website, subtract the website's domain. So they're actually looking directly outside of the website to understand what other people are saying about the website, not the website itself. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's why I feel like there's so much of what goes into EEAT and branding and content marketing, right? You can do very mundane tasks like I mentioned before, but though the real work is really developing the brand. I think the point you made before about getting the people who work at your company involved in the content creation and promoting that content is, first off just leaving SEO aside, is a great brand marketing tactic. You want to show you as the expert and in order to do that, your people need to be out there talking about what makes them an expert. How many times is a random content marketing agency in Wichita, Kansas writing about whatever it is that you actually do and the actual experts are not actually involved in the content? If you're like, "What's the biggest thing you can do to build up your EEAT?" But make sure the content's really actually good. Crystal Carter: And accurate and factual. Lily Ray: Yeah, and beyond good. I think we'll talk about this soon, but now it's just true experience. So another thing the SEO community is trying to do with the onset of the new E, which I think we'll talk about is faking experience. And the amazing thing that Google's done and cornered people into doing, which I think is a great thing, is now you need that to rank. I mean, the data just shows it over and over with different types of algorithm updates or ranking systems. We had the review system, now we have the helpful content system. It's always saying the same thing now, which is, do you have true experience? So people are going into ChatGPT and saying, "Pretend I'm an SEO expert with real SEO experience and say this and this thing." And the answers, I'm like, "If you're a real SEO person with experience, you'll know the answers are not good." So people can tell the difference, right? Crystal Carter: And I think also you talked about being good for users and being good for the algorithm or whatever as well. I heard a radio advert the other day and it was like, "Here are real customers talking about their customer experience with our energy company." And it was literally slightly grainy phone calls of people going, "Oh, I had a great, thank you so much for your help. That was really helpful." And that sort of stuff. And I think TikTok is a classic venue for this. There's a lot of ugly videos on TikTok that are like, "Here's how I fixed the bicycle." Or "Here's how I did this thing." And I think people are really looking for something real that they can quantify as real because there's so much content everywhere. So I think that that experience level, I think that's a response to that. Do you agree? Or you're seeing something else? Lily Ray: Yeah, no, I think it's really clear. It's interesting in the past couple of weeks and months how so many people are so blindsided by what Google's doing because Google's been warning us for years about this. The feedback that Google's been getting about its algorithms and the quality of its results have been in mainstream media for a couple of years now. We think that Google provides a lot of very inauthentic results, a lot of results from brands that don't know what they're talking about. Too many brands are doing affiliate content. This is not authentic but we want to hear from real people. TikTok is the biggest threat to Google search. It has been clear for months and years the challenges that Google's facing. Now they're probably maybe over indexing on real experience with some of their ranking updates, but it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Google searchers in general want that classic old feeling of how Google used to be when you would get Joe Schmoe's website about fixing his bike. They're trying to go back there while still honoring many of the other signals that are important for search. Mordy Oberstein: That to me, by the way, is a mistake that I think people in the SEO industry make. Okay, so Google added an extra E to EEAT where it was originally expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and then they added an E for experience. And SEO's like, "Oh, okay, now we've to optimize for experience." They're out thinking, where did the E come from? They didn't pull it out of a hat. Google realized that there's a new content trend. People are preferring content from actual people with actual experience. And in order for them to stay relevant, they need to figure out a way to include that in the algorithm. So it's not like, oh, I need to optimize for Google. No, you need to give people what they actually want, which is what Google's trying to do. So we've talked about this on Twitter a while back when they started doing the product review updates and now they're called the review updates. And Google said, "Okay, we want you to have actual experience with the toaster oven that you're using." How do they do that? And to me, it's not crazy complicated. The language structure you're going to use if you use the stupid toaster oven is going to be so different than if you didn't. So for example, you would write, great toaster oven, was really good on bread, if you didn't use it. But if you actually used it, you would be like, "I tried to put a steak in there and it did not work. Do not use this on steak." Lily Ray: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I've been looking at sites that got hit by the recent helpful content update. And I'm not the most advanced set of algorithms on the planet. I'm just a person looking at sites one by one. So obviously, whatever Google's capable of doing is going to be a million times more sophisticated than what I'm doing. Okay, first of all, so many of the sites that were impacted have absolutely no experience. That's just obvious. Okay, we get it. You wrote a million pieces of content about all the great places to travel in the world. You've obviously never been there. There's no evidence, there's no author, there's nothing. That's obviously the most extreme example. But then you get these mid-range like, "Oh, I really enjoyed going to the restaurant. The breakfast was excellent. Highly recommend it. Try the pancakes." Okay, did you really go there? Mordy Oberstein: No, you did add the word I and we in a thousand times. I told Crystal this, I took that product review page and I went to the way back machine and it was clear. They try to mimic experience and it was not actual experience. And I went back and they used the word I and we eight times. Fast-forward to now, and they use it 150 times. Lily Ray: It's real experience. If I just put that word there a million times, people will never know. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So note to the audience, and I feel like if you're listening to this podcast and you're a smaller website, this is for you. You have actual experience, you have the ability to really give that experience over to your audience and create something different and valuable. But if you're listening to this and you're on an SEO, stuffing in we and our and I is not optimizing for the experience of EEAT. Lily Ray: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great segue. I have a question. So the way I always describe for our Wix audience, and I know not everybody here is Wix user yet. But the way I like to describe it is Wix folks are doers, we like to do stuff, make websites, do stuff, et cetera. So if somebody was looking for something to do, I don't know if you'd be interested in this, going through each acronym. So a quick tip, is that ridiculous? Or something you could do to demonstrate experience on a website that almost anyone could do, what would be something you could recommend for someone? Lily Ray: Yeah, I mean, this is where it gets fun because presumably if you are making a website and marketing the website, presumably and hopefully it's because you actually like what you're doing, you know about what you're doing, you care about what you're doing. Of course, that's definitely not true for many people that are doing marketing on the internet. But if those things are true, assuming those things are true, share what you know. You know what I mean? What are the unique insights and experiences that you have? Me personally, I think you both as well. I can talk about SEO all day, every day. I have very strong opinions as everybody knows and I like to share them and people like to hear them. So do that. If you're a biker or a bike mechanic, what have you experienced? What frustrates you? What's the cool new bike? What's going on? And then of course you can map that to the different SEO tools that we use to say, okay, how should I write this headline? What keywords should I include on this page? How should I set up my content structure? But when you start from what you know, this is a very different way of thinking about SEO because most people start from the keywords themselves and then try to pretend that they know these things or research what other people have said. But I almost only write SEO content or content about SEO when there's something that I need to say and that's a lot. It's very frequent, but it doesn't happen not because my company's like, "Lily, we haven't heard from you in a while." I'm like, "Guys, it's Sunday night and something really big happened and I have an idea and I'm writing a blog." So think about it that way. Crystal Carter: So this is reminding me. So on Wix SEO hub, I have an article about user first SEO content ideas and I'm sure you must get this a lot as in your experience, you talk to SEOs all over the world. If anyone doesn't know, it's not really a conference if Lily's not there. No, I'm kidding. But every SEO conference is made better by Lily Ray. But yeah, there we go. Anyway, at conferences, you speak to SEOs all over the world and you must have lots of people asking you questions all the time about different things. So again, rather than keywords, if you're hearing people regularly asking you those questions, those are potentially users. That's potentially a place where you can validate your experience or the experiences of other people in order to create the content. So I think that that's something that folks can do as well. Listen to people who are talking to you. Lily Ray: Yeah, or your customers or your calls or your chats, right? Crystal Carter: Right. So we did experience. And expertise, what is a good win for expertise in terms of something that someone could work on, sort of a thing? Lily Ray: Yeah, I think this is when we start to get into things like author bios and building out a personal brand. Every place that one would expect you to be mentioned or recognized in your industry, make sure that you're there or make sure that it's clear that you're there. Here's a random example for me. I'm in Google Scholar. I was included in an academic journal where I've talked about SEO. That's extreme, but that's all the different places that you might expect somebody who's saying they're an expert in something to have expertise. So I just spoke at a recipe blogger conference last week. It's like, where are all the publications where you've been mentioned? Where did you go to culinary school? Right? Just connecting all those dots and making sure that they're all easy for people and search engines to see. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think one thing that I've seen is that, and I think you've mentioned this as well on Twitter, is LinkedIn for instance, even if you're not posting every single day on LinkedIn, if you have your LinkedIn, if you spent an hour going through your LinkedIn profile and making sure that's got your relevant qualifications and has the skill sets and all of that sort of stuff, Google pulls those results into the SERP, for instance. So that can be a good source of that as well. And then with regards to authority, is that one trickier? Lily Ray: Yeah, probably. I mean, the SEO industry will tell you because Gary-ish from Google- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the link thing. Lily Ray: One time said that it's links. Yeah. So Gary in maybe 2018 or 2019 said that page rank and links are the only things we really look at for EAT or something along those lines, and authority is largely driven by links. So of course, the SEO industry likes to misconstrue this into links are the only thing that matters, nothing else matters. Which is not true. But of course, similar to having the right credentials and experience listed in your online profiles, you do want to back up your legitimacy with links and also social media mentions. I can't say enough about when I share an article that I wrote on Twitter, it shows up in Google Discover the next day. So it's like Google's looking at these signals, even if they don't tell you the social media signals are ranking factors, they're looking at them, for sure. Crystal Carter: And what about trust? What's a good opportunity in terms of demonstrating trust online? Lily Ray: Yeah, this is where the trust pilots and the G2s and testimonials and online ratings and online reviews come in. There's so many different sites where you should be listed, building out a knowledge panel using Crunchbase, all these things. Just making sure that your brand is a legitimate brand. Other sites that were impacted by the recent algorithm updates, including the helpful content update, one of the first things that I noticed is a lot of these sites are obviously just blogs that someone bought because of the name. It's just obvious, right? So if you're bestpizzaslices.com, okay, great, you're going to write about the best pizza slices. I'm sure the content is fine, but that's not a brand. There's no evidence that you started a business. Who are you? Why should we trust you? So that's a silly example because I'm sure you can do fine with pizza slices, but you know what I mean? People are just buying domains and not investing any energy into making this a real brand because that's the whole point, they're churn and burn sites. So you have to show that you're a real brand. Mordy Oberstein: And all that bleeds over, right? Even the Google's graphic, the whole diagram, they have a Venn diagram and the E, and the A, and the T they overlap a little bit to make a one overall picture. So one of these things, again, that makes it hard is that it's not very linear. As Lily mentioned before, I just want to harbor on that point for a real quick second. It is a mindset. It is a way of thinking about producing content and websites and working with sites and content. And I think we're done. I think we've exhausted the topic for this particular episode. Lily, if people wanted to experience your expertise and experience in SEO, where could they find you? Lily Ray: Well, my new answer to this question is that Google me and pick wherever you want to follow me because there's a lot of different options. So it's Lily Ray, L-I-L-Y R-A-Y. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best answer I've heard. I know it's... Lily Ray: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: It's such a good answer in this whole mumble-jumbled world of social media. That is the best answer I've heard in a long time. Lily Ray: Pick your favorite. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we'll link to Lily's various social media profiles and perhaps just the SERP. Lily Ray: Just the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, in the show notes. So look for the link to Lily's SERP in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Such an honor to have you with us. Thank you so much. Lily Ray: Thanks for having me. You guys are the best. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Lily. Bye. Thanks again, Lily. Experience is not just fodder for the algorithm. Google didn't pull it out of a magic hat and say, "Hey, let's focus on experience and expertise." Content trends impact search engines and Google saw experience and expertise are actual content trends that people want. Hence, you all are going to TikTok for information. Thus Google knows it itself needs to show experience and expertise in its own SERP features. So like that, with that, let's dive into what it all looks like on the SERP as we take a directional look at what Google is doing with a little segment we call going, going Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going Google. It's out of here. Mordy Oberstein: Google does a lot of things to help give results within its own SERP feature the little boxes and doohickeys it offers that are not the actual results that pull in expertise and experience. In fact, Crystal, you found one of these and shared it with the great Barry Schwartz. Care to share that with us? Crystal Carter: Yes. So I found a mentioned in drop down, and I found this on the couple of top level searches, so broad search keywords. And essentially, I entered in something and then further down there was a brand and underneath the brand it would say mentioned in, and it mentioned a few different places where people have mentioned this particular topic. These are really useful for providing context. They also provide a little bit of a point of panic potentially if you might have something there where you're mentioned, did he not? So flattering way. So I think it's important for people to think about how their reputation is being managed across the web and to make sure that they're creating some great content that is actually about them. So people talking about them. This is essentially the authority piece. So I tend to say that when we think about authority, it's what other people are saying about you. So if you were applying for a job, you get references. You might say great things about yourself on your resume, but then you have your references. And if your references are your mom or your best friend, that'll give your employer one kind of impression. If your references are somebody that you worked with who also has a good reputation, for instance, that's going to give another impression. And it's the same with some of these online recommendations that Google's trying to get more people more comfortable for. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it really helps Google showcase the result that they're giving is expert driven, right? Other people are mentioning that website, then that website has some sort of expertise on whatever topic is that you're searching for. So it's Google saying, "Hey, let's make sure that you, the searcher, understand that this website is an expert because other people are saying that they are." Crystal Carter: Right. And that when you're looking at the SERP, I mean, it takes up a lot of real estate. So the one that I saw had a couple of different options. And I think that what's interesting is that it takes up probably double the space of a normal plain blue link, which is great because that's saying not only is this somebody who's got content on this, but they've got content and other people think that content is good. So I think that that is an absolute plus for people who have good brand knowledge or good topic knowledge on a particular topic. And I think that it's worth investing time in making yourself be seen as a very clear authority. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and on the flip side of that, from the experience angle, Google has a whole set of results where you can get a perspective from actual people, meaning you search for something like, are The Beatles good? It was the example we used in the previous episode. And you get a set of results of people sharing their opinions about The Beatles. It's really results based on experience. A lot of it coming from social media because that's a great place to see where people have their experiences and their thoughts on that from actual people. Crystal Carter: So one of the examples that I found was Coco Gauff. So after she won the US Open with plastic finish there. Well done Coco. So after she won that, there were people who also had opinions on that as well. So there was something that was specifically an opinion piece, for instance from CNN that was mentioned in The Perspective. But I think it's great to have the content earmarked so that essentially you're saying this is content that's objective or that's a news piece, core news and this is the opinion column area. In a newspaper, you'll have current events, you'll have some people who are making think pieces about what they think it might mean or what context they see in a particular news event, and then you'll have people who are just reporting what happened on that particular occasion. And both ideas are useful for you to get context of what's going on, but they're not exactly the same. So I think it's good that Google's saying, "Okay, these are opinions, they're interesting and things, but they're opinions." And I think that it provides context and provides a great way to get more information on the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: The point is, if you look at what Google's doing in their own SERP features, you can get a sense of what they're trying to focus on and what they're trying to do and what direction they're going, and it's the name of the segment going, going Google. So take a look at what Google's doing and take a look at what's changing on the results page and take a look at the change in testing that they're doing because that'll show you what they're looking for and what they're trying to do, what they think is valuable. Crystal Carter: Right. And one of the other ones that Glenn Gabe identified recently was within the Discover tab there, for instance, he found something that was talking about Google, Google search results, and it was an article written by Barry Schwartz and underneath the article it said, "Get the latest on Barry Schwartz." And when you click on it goes to Barry's knowledge graph. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: So that is a good way that you're connecting the dots, and it's something I've talked about in terms of thinking about mobile optimization. I did a course recently for Semrush and I talked about how actually spending some time making sure the people on your team have good knowledge graphs, have good biographical entities, have good information across the web, is actually really useful for mobile, for EEAT, for all of those sorts of things. So Google wants to add citations essentially to the kind of content that they're giving. So they want to add context to the authors. They want to add context to the information the publishers that they're pointing people to. They want to give people more context for the kind of information that they're getting. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of Barry, of course, it is the perfect time for us to dive into this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Google SGE expands through 120 countries per Barry Schwartz override Search Engine Land. Basically, it's what I just said. Google's SGE, it's Search Generative Experience expands to 120 new countries. Which means that if you are in Angola, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil. Just reading off the list. Cambodia. Let's go to E, Ethiopia. G for, I don't know, Guam. In all of these countries, you can, in theory, access the SGE Google Search Generative Experience, which is super interesting. Google has stated that yes, this is still on beta, still being tested, but the expansion obviously indicates that Google is far more comfortable with what it's been doing in the US with its SGE. So look forward at a country or in a country near you. Also in a country near you, per Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable, it's two berries from two different publications this week as it is with pretty much every week. Google November 2023 reviews update rolls out. So Google said, if you listened to our news last week, Google said they're going to roll out a new review update and that the review update, this one, will be the last of the official announced review updates. What you're basically going to have is a continuously updating ranking system, which means that the review update is essentially real time. I hate using that word because it's not exactly what it means, but it will be out live and changing rankings on a consistent and ongoing basis without specific roll-outs as we have now. So that's super interesting. As I believe I mentioned last time, I think this is the way of the algorithm. This is where I think the Google updates in general are going. We actually cover this in our BrightonSEO session, our live recording of SERP's Up over at BrightonSEO in San Diego. So look for that episode. I believe that one comes out next week. So we get into that there and then. So listen then for that there. Wow, that's so many pronouns. Just so you know, the reviews update is live, at least the beginning of it is live at the same time as the November 2023 core update, which makes picking out ranking movements perhaps a little bit more complex than it usually is, and there's multiple layers of Google updates going on, so that's always fun, right? And with that, that's this week's snappy news. Thank you as always to the great writers of all the great news articles that are out there, and of course, in particular, the great Barry Schwartz. With that, let's dive into who you should be following this week for more SEO awesomeness. And since we're focused so much on experience and expertise and EEAT, we thought this week's follow of the week should be Olaf Kopp. He is on X, but he's more on LinkedIn. So look for Olaf Kopp. However on LinkedIn, we'll link to that in the show notes. Olaf is a EEAT aficionado. He's written many, many articles around it for Search Engine Land. He's got a really, what I like, a really conceptual understanding of EEAT. And it's the kind of content that when you go and look at it, you're learning how to fish and you're not just getting the fish. Crystal Carter: I mean, what fish are we talking about? Mordy Oberstein: Mackerel. Crystal Carter: Mackerel. Mackerel's so pretty. They're such pretty little fish. They're very shiny and cute. I think they're adorable. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. What's an ugly fish? I know, a fluke. Flounder. Crystal Carter: Have you ever seen salmon? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I've seen salmon. Crystal Carter: Salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, we're really crapping on the fish here. Crystal Carter: Say it to it's face. But salmon are ugly fish. Mordy Oberstein: No, I would say salmon cannot hurt you. I would say it to it. I wouldn't say it to a shark though. Crystal Carter: I mean, they jump pretty high. If you ever watch people talk about bears eating salmon. But if you watch a bear eating salmon, I've not seen this personally, but on nature documentaries, they're literally just hanging their mouths open trying to catch the salmon who are jumping upstream. It's not very graceful, but I mean, that's what... You got to do what you got to do if you're a bear and you need a snack. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, bears have to eat too. Crystal Carter: It's true. Mordy Oberstein: Bears have to eat too. Well, I'm that happy note, 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 a very special live episode from BrightonSEO in San Diego live from the conference. So look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at, you got it, wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

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

With over 15 years of experience and a focus in large scale website optimization, Nati was the CEO of a prominent SEO agency catering to some of Israel’s biggest brands. As the Head of SEO at Wix, he focuses on helping platforms be search-engine friendly and building SEO products. Nati Elimelech Head of SEO, Wix With over 15 years of experience and a focus in large scale website optimization, Nati was the CEO of a prominent SEO agency catering to some of Israel’s biggest brands. As the Head of SEO at Wix, he focuses on helping platforms be search-engine friendly and building SEO products. Articles & Resources 16 Nov 2023 Rethinking AMP: Is it time for SEOs to let go? 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

Looking to get started with your international SEO strategy? Then who better to tune into than the renowned Aleyda Solis. Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, dive into the ins and outs of international SEO as the one and only Aleyda Solis guest hosts. Take your content strategy global as Giuseppe Caltabiano, VP of Marketing at Rock Content, offers his "Deep Thoughts" on global content marketing initiatives. Adaptability, strategies, and common mistakes in international SEO & content marketing are uncovered on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Get going with international SEO Looking to get started with your international SEO strategy? Then who better to tune into than the renowned Aleyda Solis. Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, dive into the ins and outs of international SEO as the one and only Aleyda Solis guest hosts. Take your content strategy global as Giuseppe Caltabiano, VP of Marketing at Rock Content, offers his "Deep Thoughts" on global content marketing initiatives. Adaptability, strategies, and common mistakes in international SEO & content marketing are uncovered on this week's episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 40 | May 31, 2023 | 49 MIN 00:00 / 49:23 This week’s guests Aleyda Solis Aleyda Solis is an SEO consultant and founder of Orainti, speaker, and author. She shares the latest news and resources in SEO in the #SEOFOMO newsletter with +25K subscribers and Digital Marketing in #MarketingFOMO, SEO tips in the Crawling Mondays video series, and a free SEO Learning Roadmap called LearningSEO.io. Awarded as the European Search Personality of the Year in 2018 and included as one of the 10 Most Influential SEO Experts of 2022 by List Wire from USA Today, she's also co-founder of Remoters.net, a remote work hub, featuring a free remote job board, tools, guides, and more to empower remote work. Giuseppe Caltabiano Giuseppe is a senior global marketing, brand, and content executive with more than 20 years of experience. Today he leads marketing at Rock Content; he has worked for and advised brands in B2B and B2C and has designed global marketing strategies to successfully support growth of B2B SaaS businesses. Giuseppe is a marketing and storytelling instructor at business schools in London and Milan. He was recognised as one of the most influential European B2B marketers in 2018 and 2019. He has an MBA from Milan’s SDA Bocconi and is trained in M&A at the London Business School. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the very international woman of SEO, Head of Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hello, everyone around the world, in all of the different countries and all of the different languages. Bon Jour. Hello, everyone. Mordy Oberstein: Hint! Hint! Well, I didn't do the whole like, the amazing, fantastic ... I only did one. I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's fine. I think you've run out. I think that's it. I think we’re all done. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: It's interesting because when we first joined, people were saying congratulations and I said Thank you a million times and then I moved on to thank you in other languages as well, which is totally up for this podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It is. Crystal Carter: Because we're talking about international SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, spoiler, spoiler. Before we get to that, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can now subscribe to our new monthly newsletter, Searchlight, where you get full coverage of the SEO world with tips, updates, and links to great SEO content from the Wix SEO hub. The same Wix, by the way, that automatically adds HF link to your pages as part of a wider multilingual offering. Of course, you can add custom texts and to the head element as well. Why am I telling you this? Well, Crystal already told you. Because today we're talking about international SEO. Crystal Carter: Worldwide. Mordy Oberstein: Worldwide. Forget going mobile, today we're going global. Well, don't forget going mobile. We're diving into the ins and outs of international SEO with special guest host, a leader of all the SEOs herself. Aleyda Solis will stop by to share about how to get started, international SEO and what you need to know, what to focus on, what not to focus on, and common mistakes and miss from the world of international SEO. Plus, we have a special deep thought for you today as Rock Content's own Giuseppe Caltabiano shares his thoughts on building a global content strategy and of course with the snappies of SEO News for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So [foreign language 00:02:21] and welcome as episode number 40 of the SERP's Up podcast is here to help show you that an SEO, it's a small world after all. Crystal Carter: I wasn't really expecting that reference, but it was entirely worth it. Yes, we're super, super excited to have Aleyda here, Aleyda, the queen of SEO, of all SEO but particularly fantastic at international SEO. I remember using the tool that Aleyda had on her website for HF link back in the day. It's still awesome, so do check that out and it's incredibly useful. So amazingly pleased to have Aleyda here talking about this incredible, super useful, really valuable topic. Mordy Oberstein: So if you have a website and you're trying to grow your business beyond just the region where you exist now you're going to need international SEO, which is kind of complicated. Which is why, if aliens were to come to Earth and say to all the SEOs, take us to your leader, we would take them to Aleyda. With that, here's Aleyda. Hi Aleyda. Aleyda Solis: Hello Mordy. How are you? Hello, crystal. You're too kind and oh my God, Mordy, if this SEO thing goes ever to hell because of AI or whatever, you can definitely become a radio announcer because I am so, so very impressed. Mordy Oberstein: I've always wanted to be a baseball color commentator. That's like my dream job, outside of SEO. Aleyda Solis: You can tell. Mordy Oberstein: I’ll bring Glenn Gabe with me. We'll do it together. Aleyda Solis: You totally should, isn't it? I mean, why not? Mordy please and you can launch definitely- Mordy Oberstein: I already have too many podcasts going on. I don't know if I can handle another. Aleyda Solis: Please. And you can launch our Wix website too. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Really quickly. That's good point. Before we get going in this, we need to do some plugging. There's learning.io, there's the SEOFOMO newsletter, which I freaking love because I don't have time to scour the internet for good SEO resources. So you do it for me. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. Aleyda Solis: Well, you're welcome. You're welcome. No, I'm so very happy that it's read, that it's useful. Learningseo.io, by the way, is getting a refresh look in the following weeks and I'm very excited about that. And yes, hopefully with this I help people to clarify the most... On one hand, the most common doubts about SEO, which I get asked all the time, so I just refer them to the website on one hand. And then on the other hand, with SEOFOMO, it's interesting because the other day, I think it was Cindy Crum, who did this poll over Twitter about why was the reason or main reasons why SEOs had imposter syndrome. Crystal Carter: Yes, I saw that. Aleyda Solis: And one of the top reasons that got most votes was like the fear of missing out. So I can definitely see the how SEO promo definitely address that particular problem, which I have to say I am totally there. That is the reason of why I launch it in the first place. And I can also definitely see how in recent months because of AI, this new launches and the race of search engine engines to trying to be the first ones and all of these updates that Google is right now launching and conflating many, many times. So important to keep up. Mordy Oberstein: And it's so hard. There's so many updates Crystal Carter: And I think particularly one of the things that can be a challenge for somebody who's working across international markets is not only do you have to keep up with it for the general SEO, but you also have to keep up with it for international SEO. And you also have to keep up with it for all the different versions of the same website that you might have and making sure that all of those things work all together. So yeah, it can be a big challenge and we are so appreciative to you for making the effort to help with that. It's incredibly valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Since we're talking about international SEO, what's the first thing you think our audience should know about international SEO before anything else? Aleyda Solis: Yes. Well, the number one thing probably, because I think that that is the main mistake or assumption that many people do when they want to go international, is that it's not only about hreflang annotations, I mean hreflang annotations is a method, is a mechanism. It's a configuration that is helpful to specify and inform Google that we have other versions of our website pages that can be in different languages or the same or different languages targeting other countries. However, is not the only way to specify that. There are many signals that will take into account and it is a must to align them all because at the end of the day, it's the consistency and alignment of all of the signals that will let go realize that, oh yes, this is not a duplication of product A page, but it's actually product A page targeted to the UK, while you have already your version for the US. So it is fundamental that we are all aware about this different signals and it's just not about just hreflang annotations and that's it. And I believe that all the potentially most common issue that I see, most common problem, that I have clients, even larger enterprises, that you will think that they have all of these resources in the world. But at the end of the day, there are always restrictions and always limits of what you can do in your time and where it makes sense to allocate resources to. It's this problem when they end up having too many international versions when you launch a lot because you want to target abroad. Somebody has told you that, oh, there's opportunity to grow, launch in Spanish, in Italian, launch to the UK in English, you already know the language. So you launched the UK to Australia, et cetera. And then you realize you cannot maintain, you cannot support all of these different websites and then all of a sudden it's like, oh yes, I understand that. Then they learn that they need to localize their... Even if it is in the same language, their version for the UK, because they may be sell sneakers in the US and all of a sudden they realize that they are not called sneakers in the UK, but they are called trainers for example, or runners or whatever. So they need to optimize the content accordingly, but they don't have the resources. So it is fundamental to well initially assess the different international markets that actually makes sense for your business. What is the search potential? What is the search demand? If it is worth it for you? The market will be able to generate at some point enough traffic for you to have successful conversions and a successful ROI? And from an investment standpoint, it's something also doable for you? If you have the capacity to localize the content, if you have the capacity to translate it, if it is a market that speak a completely different language, for example. And then be able to give the, let's say a good support for users coming from those countries too, because it's not only like a one-off type of investment too. So all of the things, I believe that these two areas of let's say misunderstanding and I'll say that these are the most to, let's say, think or understand or when starting. And based on that to be able to start with the proper process of yes audience research, keyword research, completion research, to then establish the best web structure to use to tackle the different markets. And start with those markets where there's a much higher potential with less competition, et cetera, et cetera. Crystal Carter: So you talked a lot about assessing whether or not the market's worth it, the ROI from a sort of a monetary point of view, but also the capacity within your team. In the past, I've used PPC as a sort of little bit of a litmus test there because you can sort of do a quick PPC test and see did we get any bites. And if not, then we'll turn the PPC off and come back. I don't know if there's other tools or other things you would recommend for testing a market. Aleyda Solis: 100%. I mean I believe with the most forward is assessing the search volume of the queries, of the top queries that are search of your relevant topic, to describe your product or your services or your content. And then you can do a topological market type of assessment and say, okay, if I end up even getting at some point in a year, like 10% of this potential search volume and traffic and with my current conversion rate, how many conversions and is this going to be ROI positive at that point? But the point of the PPC campaign, I think is very smart to do, especially when there are markets that might look to be very big. But again, it depends on the context and depends on your offering. Because the markets that, for example, like Brazil or India are huge or Indonesia, these are huge market. However, they also have a different type of, let's say capacity of an online investment or buying online their type of behavior and capacity to buying things because of how much they earned et cetera, it's different than in the US or in Europe. For example, I have clients that there might be getting more traffic from a few Latin American markets like Mexico, that is a big, big market. But because of the type of offering or product or sophistication and also price point, most of the conversions happen in Spain. In their case like 60% of the search potential or traffic, but the conversions and revenue is much higher. So it's not only a purely search potential, but also the behavior, the sophistication, the price point. So for that PPC is 100% a very small way to do it. Just launching your top products. Actually, this is also another misunderstanding, right? Thinking that you need to go all in. No, you can launch a pilot project with your homepage and your top three, top five products, those that you have identified that have a higher search potential in that market. And then, yeah, a PPC campaign landing page is well optimized to see what is the buying behavior, the buying journey, and the conversion rate that you get and if it's ROI positive or not, and it's aligned to your expectations or not. Crystal Carter: And I think there's so much there around the cultural understandings as well. So you talked about market capabilities and things like that. I either worked with a client who did a lot of stuff in the... It was a health test and they were working in the UK. They also wanted to do stuff in South Africa because it was a really good market for them. And they were like, we want to put a video on the page. And the team we were working with in South Africa was like, we have the most expensive mobile data in the world. Do not put a video on the page because no one will watch it, for instance. And so I think understanding some of those cultural machinations can be such a big, big player. Aleyda Solis: It's interesting that you mentioned that, because also it's not only about... And I think that in SEO, purely in SEO, we tend to think about how to maximize the signals to the Googlebot at the end and yes, the Googlebot tries to, let's say, simulate the experience of the user. But at the end of the day, depending on the location and depending on the context of what particular product or information or not, users will have their own, let's say, bias or cultural bias. So for example, I have this company right now in France and their offering has to do a lot about healthcare or fitness type of products. And because health, there's a universal search system in France, so they use the French users, visitors, people, they are very used to see whatever health information in with the .Fr ccTLD. So anything that is not in the .Fr ccTLD and it has to do about health, they double question it, if it is really for them and if it's really worthy and if it is really reliable, because they are so used that it is a national thing. So in their case, they were very well optimized, very well ranking already for their core terms, but their conversions and the click rate of the SERPs, you could tell that they were poorer, the ones that should be expected for those positions. So the solution here beyond and before they grow much further is to, okay, let's start doing a few tests with a .Fr ccTLD and if the tests are successful, we will need to migrate. And this is something crazy that for 99% of the cases or scenarios, I will say, are you crazy? Why are you going to migrate just because of this? Migration is the worst case scenario that some of the higher efforts type of actions in SEO. But this one of those edge cases that we can see that from a business standpoint, it actually will make a lot of sense for them in the future. So it is now or never pretty much to assess that. Mordy Oberstein: How do you get ahead of that as opposed to realizing after the fact? Do you have a process? How do you find whether it be something like culturally like that or it's like we don't call sneakers, sneakers, we call them runners, whatever it is. I'm from New York, so we call soda, soda, we're from Brooklyn, it's soda or whatever. If you're from Michigan, it's called pop. I know that because I'm from the US. But if you're coming from say England and you want to target the Michigan soda population, you better call it pop. How do you get ahead of that? Aleyda Solis: The best way to do it is with good old keyword research, competition research, analysis research. Also the more localized, the more granular it can be, the best it will be of course, because there might be variations in the different terms depending on the specific location. And many, many services or products are not launched at a national level either, even if we're targeting countries. So some things might make sense more than others and they change a lot based on the context or industry. It also depends a lot on the, let's say, on your particular business model too. So for example SaaS, you might think about all SaaS have... There are the same type of product, the same business models. So they will tend to have the same type of international targeting and it's not the case. So for example, if you are an accounting SaaS software, it does make sense for you and you can go and take a look at a lot of accounting softwares out there. They will tend to be country targeted. Not because you search necessarily about accounting software or accounting systems in different ways. In English for example, in across the different English-speaking countries, no, but because their offering actually changes for country because their tax solution or accounting solution is integrated with local banking and local taxing and different type of rules and conditions depending on the country taxing and accounting laws. However, if we go to other type of SaaS like productivity SaaS or product management SaaS, you can see that in this other type of offering, most of them are language targeted because most of project management tools are called in the same way, independently of the country. In English for example, you call project management software in the UK, in the US, in Australia. And they're offering, their personality won't change. It's changes is trivial. It's like the pricing and they can change that dynamically and it's not such a big change that is worth it to create different type of versions. So you can see that there's a very... From red it doesn't changes it all to green. It doesn't change to nothing or there's a midpoint that it changes just a bit, but it doesn't compensate to create country versions. And the best way to assess that is really to do very granular keyword competition research. See which are the websites ranking for your top queries in that particular location that you want to run for and see which are the terms that are actually used of those best ranking ones, see how they address and what is their offering, what is their web structure are their ccTLDs? Are they subdomains, subdirectories and how they are explaining, describing, wording the product or the service and take that as an input to assess further. Mordy Oberstein: And that's a really good point about laws, because I think it's multiple times where the laws of Pacific region around them say... I think one of the case I was looking at was car insurance. The laws in different countries around car insurance will create different needs within the market and totally different queries that are now relevant, that won't be relevant in other markets. Let me ask you another question though. What if you're targeting, let's say a country like Belgium, where it's not just, okay, they have different laws, let's say England. It's in the country itself, they speak different languages. Aleyda Solis: Yeah, 100%. It's the same with Canada, right? English and French too. And there are quite a few countries like that. Well, it depends on really the search volume and the search potential that each one of these languages have, right? In the case of Belgium for example, most of the searches are the most popular languages will be French and then also Flemish, which is very, very like Dutch. But again, it's like, okay, again, your capacity where most of the searches for your product are happening in French or in Flemish and based on that to prioritize accordingly. Because indeed, so for example, in Spain actually, you can take that to the very extreme and it might not necessarily be worthy. Spanish is the language that everybody knows internationally about Spain. But the original languages are very well used regionally too. So in Catalonia it's Catalan. I live in the Basque Country actually in Spain and the Basque language is completely different to anything else out there. And then the Galician language. So I mean you can go very granular if you want, but again, this is not about being let's say politically correct or being super granular because of course that will be the ideal work, whatever. But we don't have unlimited resources. What we really want is that this new versions generate money, generate sales, generate traffic, and these are ROI positives. So at the end of the day, just think about what are the languages that your audience in that country are actually searching for your products on services. And here, coincidentally again, speaking about car rentals, is one of those sectors or businesses where it actually makes sense to enable an English version in Spain for your website because of the target market, the audience. These are a lot of international travelers, holiday makers, whatever, coming here, renting cars. So there is a non-trivial search volume about hiring cars in Barcelona, renting cars in Madrid. Actually that is another edge case where it actually makes sense to enable an English version in Spain, in France, in non-speaking English countries, 100%. Crystal Carter: I think it can get very complicated, but I think it's worthwhile because I think it demonstrates trust. So we have a great article from Adriana Stein talking about translation versus localization. And I think that when people can see that... And again, it's worthwhile. So for instance, if you were a hyper-local business that was in the Basque Country and was serving people for traditional Basque Country activities or something like that, it would make sense for you to connect with them in that language. And if you're searching on the SERP and you see that that's written in that language and they know the terms that are related to the thing, then you go, okay, these people know what they're talking about, they actually know what's going on. This isn't somebody who just pressed a button to translate this. They actually know they actually care. And I think that that can be really useful. Aleyda Solis: 100%. I mean if you do really have the capacity and the resources and if it is an important market for you, you should totally go ahead. And if it is a minimum effort too, you should definitely go ahead and do the extra mile and personalize because that can make a complete difference for it. So for example, in my case, I was back in the day, I am originally from Nicaragua. When I was living still in Nicaragua and Nicaragua is such a small country, it's also a poor country. So we were so very used to get all of this marketing actions in TV even or in Billboard or whatever, that we're so obviously not targeted at Nicaragua because we actually speak, like the way that we word things in Spanish is like in Argentina, like with the dos. So we put an accent at the end of each, pretty much conjugation and the verbs. And we don't say two, we say dos. And we had a lot of these billboards and TV ads and whatever with the two and we were like, oh, this was just generic ads for all Latin American people, whatever is not for us. But then it made all, little by little you could tell that they were making more efforts toward things to change things. And it was a minimum thing really pretty much to change up a couple of wordings. The rest was exactly the same, but at least they took care and this is actually really for us. The engagement and I think the connection with the brand or the offering increase. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I've heard SEOs talk about some of the communities where you get sort of hybrid languages. So there was somebody who was from Mexico and she was from the north of Mexico. Ms. Marie White actually was talking about this and she's from the north of Mexico and she was like, we need Spanglish. And they were like, what? She was like, people on the border of the United States and Mexico, everybody speaks Spanglish. And so they started adding in some of that into some of their copy and they started to get a lot of good response from that because also people have phones where they're searching both in English and in Spanish. And this is going to happen in lots of places where there's people who speak multiple languages. I don't know if you have any tips or any examples from sort of hybrid searches and adapting for that. Aleyda Solis: So for example, again, it depends a lot on the industry, but the industry, that can be crazy. Speaking about car rental, car rental in Spanish, you can say in so many different ways. So this is one industry that if you are for in, it really needs to be very well localized, especially because also a lot of the queries are also with location, connected with location, with your current city or the city where you want to go. And you can call “carro”, “coche”, just three terms for the same thing, for car. And the same also where the property... I have had quite a lot of clients across different countries in the property market. And for apartment in Spanish you can call it [foreign language 00:24:35]. So three different ways again for the same thing. And well, it's the same in the UK and the US flats and apartment. But in Spanish I think that because there are so many different countries that have it as a native language, there's so many different correct ways to say it. So especially for this very localized services and products, car rental, property, it's very, very worthy to go very granular, double check and validate how they are the right way or the relevant way to call it in that particular market. Because it's definitely going to change not only the name of the locations or the countries, but the term too, very likely. Crystal Carter: Can I ask you one question about attending technical? So sometimes when I worked on the international SEO campaigns or international SEO projects. I've seen it where sometimes Google can't figure out which one is the main one, even when you canonicalize it. And I don't know if you've seen that and if you have any sort of recommendations for how to address that particular challenge. Aleyda Solis: Yes, thank you very much for asking that. Actually, I think that this scenarios happen when you have a very, very established powerful, popular original version that you had... Usually the US one, that then it perform a little bit also like the global one for a while. And then you have, let's say a UK version or an Indian version, they are also in the same language. However, well they target their own audience. And in those particular scenarios we may see that the copy might be very, very similar because it actually makes sense because in that particular context, the product, the service is actually searched with the same terms. And in general the behavior of the user connecting to them, it's very similar. And so it's harder for Google to understand which is the right version. Even if you implement hreflang, remember that hreflang is one of many signals. So for those particular scenarios, what I highly, highly recommend to do to help Google further, is to add the name of the country in the metadata, add the name of the country or the location or the offices in case you have offices or subsidiaries or partners within the copy. The information that you are targeting those particular markets, personalize the message. So whatever examples or testimonials or information, give additional signals that, oh, this is for India, this is for the UK. And also a typical mistake that I see websites doing all the time is that in the country picker that the menu, the global menu that you may have, many of these are JavaScript generated, they are not crawlable. The links are always going to the homepage of the alternate version. Know your product A page should cross-link to your product A page in India, to your product A page in the US, in the UK. So the product A page in the US that has millions of backlinks can pass that link popularity accordingly to the product page of other countries. Rather than product page in other countries never be able to rank or not showing enough popularity to rule and not ranking because of that, right? So I believe that good crosslinking is critical. Localizing everything, every single signal that you can give to Google. This is especially important when you are targeting different countries with the same language. As examples of indeed like how your product make the life easier for relevant audience within that country. All these additional signals also help a lot. And of course hreflang notations, correct canonicalization too, in each one of these pages, that is also important. And if you have the capacity to promote within the relevant country to attract backlinks of local specific websites that will point to that particular country web version, the best will be, because many, many times the US slash global version was the one that existed before. All of the backlinks from India are still pointing also only to the US and the UK point to the US one rather than the relevant version. So little by little like that, you are able to give the right signals for Google to run the relevant version of the website. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great way to put it. You're helping Google. It's really complicated. I think they have a really hard time as somebody who lives in a non-English speaking country, but only searches for the most part in English. I get all sorts of cross results all the time. Google really does sometimes have a really hard time figuring it out. I've worked on sites where they're showing the wrong page and it was completely on Google's end to understand what was what. Aleyda Solis: Google thinks that I am a British living in Spain. I am all the time shown ads. And in Google discover too, recommend reads for British in Spain because I guess that's because they identified that a lot of British expat here or live in Spain by the way, that since I am searching in English so much, I should be a British living in Spain. Mordy Oberstein: The opposite I have. I only search in English basically, and Google discover will show me stuff in Hebrew now. I never search, I don't know what I'm looking at. Don't show that to me. But I'm getting used to knowledge panels- Aleyda Solis: Opportunity for you to learn Hebrew. Mordy Oberstein: Nati, Head of SEO, he gives me a hard time about knowing Hebrew well enough. So I think it's him behind the scenes pushing Google to let me learn more Hebrew. Aleyda Solis: 100%. Mordy Oberstein: It's a conspiracy. Aleyda, thank you so much for coming on. Don't forget to follow Aleyda on Twitter, on LinkedIn. Aleyda Solis: If you're not following Aleyda Solis. Mordy Oberstein: If you're not already, it's @aleyda on Twitter. We'll link to your profile in the show notes. And of course it's learningseo.io and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe to the SEOFOMO and now the marketing FOMO newsletters. Aleyda Solis: Just reached a thousand subscribers a week ago and I'm actually preparing it for this Wix edition too. I'm so very excited too. Because in SEO we are also sometimes too isolated focusing on it. And there's so much happening in other markets, in other channels of marketing by the way. And we can learn a lot from them and leverage, learn to leverage them and to, yeah... That's definitely interesting. Crystal Carter: As well as Crawling Mondays as well as remoters.net. Aleyda Solis: Oh right. Crystal Carter: As well as Remoters.net SEO. So yes. Mordy Oberstein: Aleyda, thank you for everything you do for the community. Aleyda Solis: No, thank you for the opportunity to share with you and everything what you do too. Really appreciate it. Mordy Oberstein: So one of the things that Aleyda touched on, which as a content person and as an expat myself kind of irks me about international strategies, that sometimes you don't fully appreciate how hard it is to actually localize the content to best align, not with the GEO’s language, but with the cultural idiosyncrasies and so forth. So we thought we get a serious expert on content to share their thoughts on building an international content strategy so that Crystal and I could offer you a very, very special version of a deep thought with Crystal and Mordy. Except this time it's not a deep thought with Crystal and Mordy. Let's get into what Giuseppe had to say first. Take it away, Giuseppe. Giuseppe Caltabiano: Well thank you for having me first of all. That's a very good question. Now let me say, despite the pandemic, my passion for traveling has not changed. In a way, it has been a constant of my life, whether I was on road for business or pleasure. The reason why I'm saying this is that travel really fueled my passion for global marketing, specifically for global content marketing. My travels have given me a better understanding of the world. But the reality is, when I launched my first new global content marketing program for Schneider Electric, that was 10 years ago. I thought I knew the world, but when you have to develop content for different geographies, well it feels like you have never stepped outside your front door, while I've always covered international or global roles. I remember, my first global content marketing journey started 10 years ago, when my team and I began defining Schneider Electric IT division global content strategy. Our goals were two fold: Lead Gen, first of all, marketing opportunities and secondly, increased brand awareness. Now after defining our strategy, we spent eight months preparing for the global launch through multiple pilots. We learned an incredible amount from our success and mistakes. And then one year later I replicated the same model with global clients when I moved to NewsCred, which is now part of Optimizely, at the beginning of 2017 and then later in Contently in 2019. Now the issue I found in most of the cases is that content marketers just try to replicate at global level what they have done in some cases with some success at central or local level. Well that's a big mistake. The thing is that global content marketing is not just content marketing deployed across multiple countries. Enterprise will need to plan, find the right balance between global and local. They have to pilot and then scale at global level. If they fail at one of these steps, of course usually they may fail with the full program. I think there are three main steps global marketers need to follow in order to design a proper content marketing strategy. First of all, finding the optimal balance between central and local. Now in most of the regions, I mean take Asia or Europe for example, there are thousands of countries and languages. It's simply unrealistic to make the same content work for each individual market. For this reason, creating content centrally and allowing countries to fill the gaps may represent a good solution. I've been working with both organizations, centralized and decentralized. Some organization have a very unclear understanding of local markets, which is the reason why involvement of countries or regions in content planning is really key. The role of central teams may shift of course as the program progress. In the early stages of the program, the flow of information is very outwards with the central team leading content production and strategy. And then as global content program flourish and progress, the emphasis on the central team shift to providing guidance and building local content skills and competencies. The second step is establishing local editorial board. While of course the central editorial team will generate content, a global level local editorial board have to be placed. And I mean this is really a key. In each country or on geography to manage proper planning and distribution, the local editorial board will agree with the central team on target personas. They lead the decision for distribution, content distribution, they contract local vendors and so on and so forth. The third and final point is piloting your content market strategy. The thing is piloting means starting small. Large enterprises are running pilot programs across geographies. It's a common practice, great ideas often receive resistance. You need to start small, test if your strategy is working, get results, and then finally create a proper business case, in order to allow a global content marketing program. In a global content marketing model, you ideally need to set up the pilot program as a test in one of two countries and usually no more than two different languages if possible. And then you run the pilot program with a full integration with the existing marketing technologies. And finally, of course if it's successful, you may roll out your program to the other geographies. I realize that this is probably super simplification, but it may give you a good overview of what to do in order to create a global content marketing program. Mordy Oberstein: So I don't know where to start with it, because Giuseppe makes a bunch of really, really, really, really good points. But I guess let's talk about a point that I feel I personally probably gloss over all the time in talking about global content strategies, is that the fact that you have to balance the global with the local. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, entirely. It's something that is really, really important. And I think that it applies to lots of elements of international SEO and even regional SEO. Even if you think about the United States for instance, there's different laws in different states, there's different realities. February in Florida is very different from February in New Hampshire for instance. So there are definitely things to consider about which products to put out, which content to put out, what makes sense, where all of these things are really important. Mordy Oberstein: The same thing with local SEO also. You might have a local presence, you might also have a more international presence or a national presence. So balancing this out is really, really important. Because you don't want to go all in on the global and then ignore the fact you also have a local presence or cannibalize a local presence with your global presence. You really have to think about what pages should exist. It's really about planning. What pages should exist, where do they exist on the domain, what are they trying to do? Where are they trying to target? And how do we keep what they're trying to do somewhat separate from each other. Crystal Carter: There's a section where he discussed planning and some of the work that's gone into planning. He was saying they spent eight months planning a particular campaign and that can take a lot of time. So these things should be well thought out and should take all of the things into account. Because of course it's important to have a global presence. If you think of a company like IKEA for instance, IKEA has global things and actually IKEA's approach to marketing tends to be fairly universal worldwide. But that's a distinct strategy that they've taken, which is really very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: It works for them. Crystal Carter: It works for them. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure it works for others. Crystal Carter: Exactly. But they will understand that. Even I know that... We recently had an IKEA open near us and they ran a specific hyper-local campaign launching the store. And I know that they have general activities there, but the global brand will impact the local brand and vice versa. So it's really important to make sure that they line up. But that also that if part of your brand is making sure that you care about your customers, making sure that it's very clear that you are respectful of your customers, then respecting the local cultural elements is really, really important. And localizing appropriately will help you to demonstrate that. Mordy Oberstein: Which goes to what Aleyda was saying about the advertisement she would see growing up and really speaks to what Giuseppe was talking about, and just another amazing point, in that there's really no way around having a local expert. Giuseppe was talking about they have a board and that local board offers feedback on the overall global camp. How much do you want to automate, especially in the world of AI and ChatGPT. But in general, how much do you want to try to automate or try to template from the global strategy into the local areas, you can't. You have to have somebody who understands what that region's all about, what works, what doesn't work, the interest, the way of talking, all the idiosyncrasies of that region. There's no way around knowing that other than you having some actual integration into that community, which means you need a local expert Crystal Carter: Indeed. And there's idioms that will make people feel more warmly towards your brand. There are particular celebrations or particular things that are important milestones. So for instance, in the Mediterranean you see a lot of these things with the blue eye for instance. That's something that means good luck or prosperity and things like that. If you have the same symbol and somewhere else it would be less recognized. And there are things that visually, for instance, would be really, really recognizable. And that's something to think about as well. And these are things like you said, that you can't get from a bot necessarily. You have to have humans there. Adriana Stein is someone who has worked with us on some localizing projects and she wrote an article on translation versus localization. And she gets into a lot of these details. She talks about the direct translation from English to German of beating around the bush for instance, which... He did the direct translation, it doesn't convey the same sentiment as if you do a localized translation of their idiom for that same sort of thing. And what you want is the sentiment. You want the sentiment of that statement rather than the direct translation because it's an idiom. Mordy Oberstein: And you have cultural biases and there's no way around them. I'll give you a great example. I think I might have talked about it in the podcast at one point, but growing up every day, I used to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I moved to Israel, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at work one day and someone's like, what's that? I'm like, peanut butter and jelly. And they're like, what is that? They do not eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Blew my mind, to this day, absolutely blows my mind. It is the go-to sandwich in America. To this day, I still eat them, because they're so delicious. Crystal Carter: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are suitable for every meal. Mordy Oberstein: Every meal and in between meals, all meals. Crystal Carter: Anytime you eat- Mordy Oberstein: You can live on them. Crystal Carter: You can live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They're quality, quality. Mordy Oberstein: We do not eat them where I currently live. And if you were talking about them, it would be like you if you're trying to target that or if you're using it as a reference and whatever it is, it would be lost because it is not the same thing. Crystal Carter: Yeah, entirely. And I think these are things that you have to get. And I think that it takes... One of the reasons why it takes so long to plan for a sort of global SEO or marketing campaign, is that you have to take those things into account. You have to make sure that you have good experts for wherever you're based. Wix is, we work in 17 different languages and we work in lots of different spaces. Someone that we work with in Japan is someone called Titone. He's fantastic, he's amazing, he's incredible. And we worked with the team at Faber as well to do some SEO webinars. We didn't think like, oh, we should swat in and do the SEO webinar ourselves. From a remote team, we got local experts to help us with that and to help us engage in, because for instance, with search in Japan, for instance, the way that the web is structured is slightly different because they have different kinds of writing. So this is really important to think about. And so there's going to be people who have more experience in that and more experience of the way that the people use the web and the different search engines that they use and the different things that will come up first for that particular audience. And you have to think about the people on your team who are genuine experts and you have to make sure that you build up those relationships. And that takes time. And also I think it's important, particularly from a content point of view, to think about how you get traction an at what point, how much of a foothold you need to have in a market in order to get some traction in a market. Especially if your team isn't specifically based there, but you're trying to connect with an audience in a different place. You have to sort of figure out how much content do we need? What investment do we need? And Aleyda talked about this as well, what investment do you need in order to be able to serve those customers well? And I think that these can take time, but hopefully it's worth it, if that's a market that's good for you. Mordy Oberstein: Now speaking of time, do you know what time it is? Crystal Carter: What time is it? What time is it? Mordy Oberstein: Snappy News. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's here. I mean, snappy news, snappy news, snappy news, but oh my God, it's here. Google has opened its Search Generative Experience, SGE. Two select folks on the wait list, yours truly, not among them. I can't even get on the wait list? Something about it not being open to my account, I don't know. Personal grumblings aside, we got our first look at what Google's Search Generative Experience is going to look like. Follow me here for a second. Danny Goodwin at Search Engine Land covered Barry Schwartz and his covering of his initial experience with the SGE. Barry got access to the SGE or the Search Generative Experience, but had to go offline for a few days. So Danny covered Barry covering the SGE. We'll link to the article in the show notes, because there're already heap of examples and you should definitely look at them. Just looking at it myself, I just want to say, don't panic. It looks like there are plenty of organic link placements all throughout the experience. Mike King from iPullRank, who did a whole webinar with us on AI and SEO, he said quote, "it's basically an interactive feature snippet, but it doesn't feel as threatening to organic search traffic as the original demos made it feel." Good news. All right, who wants some more big news? Yeah, Google held its marketing live event and friend of the show who join us talking about SCOM PPC over at Cypress North, Greg Finn did an amazing job covering all of the updates that Google announced to its ad platform and beyond. Check that out in the show notes as well over at Search Engine Land. Some takeaways, they're personal. When I took a look at the keynote, one of the things I took away was a Google talks about how people search and how it's changing, how they're looking at longer queries and how they're more conversational, what they're looking for, and they're looking for more specific things than ever before. People are being far more specific when they search. Some might say not new. Old, not new. I agree it's not new, but I feel like now this is an official part of the conversation that we as SEOs, the content marketers, the content creators need to get on board with. Also ads will be in the Search Generative Experience, the SGE or as I'm just going to call it the AI box. When Google announced the SGE or the AI box at Google I/O 2023, it made it seem the ads would be above the box itself, not part of the actual Search Generative Experience. But at Marketing Live, they show that yes, it's going to be right there in that whole SGE ecosystem. Also, say goodbye to Google Merchant Center and say hello to Google Merchant Center NEXT. It's next level because it will take a lot of the techier parts of connecting to Google Merchant Center out of the equation by pulling information straight from your site into the Merchant Center feed. Next, well, nothing is next because that's this week's snappy news. And well, that was the news. How newsy was it? So Newsy. Always so newsy. Which brings us to our follow of the week as the episode ebbs away and this week our follow of the week as we're going international SEO is none other than Veruska Anconitano. Crystal Carter: Veruska is fantastic. She's a member of Women in Tech SEO. She's an amazing international SEO- Mordy Oberstein: Contributor to the hub. Crystal Carter: What's this? Mordy Oberstein: Contributor to the hub. Crystal Carter: A contributor to the hub, which I was just going to get to. Yeah, she's a- Mordy Oberstein: Sorry for jumping the gun. Crystal Carter: She's multilingual. And yeah, she wrote an article called Why Cultural Relevance is Key to International SEO Success, and it's absolutely fantastic. So yeah, she speaks many languages and she talks a lot about the different elements that come into play when you're thinking about engaging with international markets that are not just some of the technical SEO elements that can be easy to implement, relatively speaking. But some of the cultural elements in, we're thinking about cultural identity and how that impacts search and what people search for and how people search. It's a great article. She's a great follow. She's also an expert on Rome, so I knew someone who was going to Rome and I tagged her and she was like, oh, let me tell you all of the places that you should eat. Mordy Oberstein: And her Twitter account is really informative. She had a post on skyscraper content the other day that kind of made me laugh. There's a lot of really good content in her feed. It's not just one of these accounts where you're going to file but not really getting SEO value out of it. It's a definite value in the SEO knowledge itself. So it's @LaCuochina on Twitter. We'll link to Veruska's profile in the show notes. But definitely give her a follow. Which means our episode is now over. Crystal Carter: Finito. Mordy Oberstein: Finito. Ooh, very good. Crystal Carter: Finn. Mordy Oberstein: Finn. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, hasta la vista. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know how to say the end in any other language. Crystal Carter: S ayonara! Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Adios. That's really goodbye, not the end. Anyway, thanks for joining us on this SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us, not to worry, we're back next week with the brand new episodes. We dive into how to build a content strategy SEO and beyond. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Aleyda Solis Giuseppe Caltabiano Veruska Anconitano Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Aleyda Solis International SEO Consultant Orainti SEO Learning SEO SEO FOMO Newsletter Rock Content Guide to International SEO Culture Relevance & International SEO How to approach SEO localization and SEO website translations News: Hands-on with Google’s new Search Generative Experience Google Marketing Live 2023: Everything you need to know Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Aleyda Solis Giuseppe Caltabiano Veruska Anconitano Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Aleyda Solis International SEO Consultant Orainti SEO Learning SEO SEO FOMO Newsletter Rock Content Guide to International SEO Culture Relevance & International SEO How to approach SEO localization and SEO website translations News: Hands-on with Google’s new Search Generative Experience Google Marketing Live 2023: Everything you need to know Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, Head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the very international woman of SEO, Head of Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hello, everyone around the world, in all of the different countries and all of the different languages. Bon Jour. Hello, everyone. Mordy Oberstein: Hint! Hint! Well, I didn't do the whole like, the amazing, fantastic ... I only did one. I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's fine. I think you've run out. I think that's it. I think we’re all done. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: It's interesting because when we first joined, people were saying congratulations and I said Thank you a million times and then I moved on to thank you in other languages as well, which is totally up for this podcast. Mordy Oberstein: It is. Crystal Carter: Because we're talking about international SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, spoiler, spoiler. Before we get to that, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can now subscribe to our new monthly newsletter, Searchlight, where you get full coverage of the SEO world with tips, updates, and links to great SEO content from the Wix SEO hub. The same Wix, by the way, that automatically adds HF link to your pages as part of a wider multilingual offering. Of course, you can add custom texts and to the head element as well. Why am I telling you this? Well, Crystal already told you. Because today we're talking about international SEO. Crystal Carter: Worldwide. Mordy Oberstein: Worldwide. Forget going mobile, today we're going global. Well, don't forget going mobile. We're diving into the ins and outs of international SEO with special guest host, a leader of all the SEOs herself. Aleyda Solis will stop by to share about how to get started, international SEO and what you need to know, what to focus on, what not to focus on, and common mistakes and miss from the world of international SEO. Plus, we have a special deep thought for you today as Rock Content's own Giuseppe Caltabiano shares his thoughts on building a global content strategy and of course with the snappies of SEO News for you and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So [foreign language 00:02:21] and welcome as episode number 40 of the SERP's Up podcast is here to help show you that an SEO, it's a small world after all. Crystal Carter: I wasn't really expecting that reference, but it was entirely worth it. Yes, we're super, super excited to have Aleyda here, Aleyda, the queen of SEO, of all SEO but particularly fantastic at international SEO. I remember using the tool that Aleyda had on her website for HF link back in the day. It's still awesome, so do check that out and it's incredibly useful. So amazingly pleased to have Aleyda here talking about this incredible, super useful, really valuable topic. Mordy Oberstein: So if you have a website and you're trying to grow your business beyond just the region where you exist now you're going to need international SEO, which is kind of complicated. Which is why, if aliens were to come to Earth and say to all the SEOs, take us to your leader, we would take them to Aleyda. With that, here's Aleyda. Hi Aleyda. Aleyda Solis: Hello Mordy. How are you? Hello, crystal. You're too kind and oh my God, Mordy, if this SEO thing goes ever to hell because of AI or whatever, you can definitely become a radio announcer because I am so, so very impressed. Mordy Oberstein: I've always wanted to be a baseball color commentator. That's like my dream job, outside of SEO. Aleyda Solis: You can tell. Mordy Oberstein: I’ll bring Glenn Gabe with me. We'll do it together. Aleyda Solis: You totally should, isn't it? I mean, why not? Mordy please and you can launch definitely- Mordy Oberstein: I already have too many podcasts going on. I don't know if I can handle another. Aleyda Solis: Please. And you can launch our Wix website too. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Really quickly. That's good point. Before we get going in this, we need to do some plugging. There's learning.io, there's the SEOFOMO newsletter, which I freaking love because I don't have time to scour the internet for good SEO resources. So you do it for me. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. Aleyda Solis: Well, you're welcome. You're welcome. No, I'm so very happy that it's read, that it's useful. Learningseo.io, by the way, is getting a refresh look in the following weeks and I'm very excited about that. And yes, hopefully with this I help people to clarify the most... On one hand, the most common doubts about SEO, which I get asked all the time, so I just refer them to the website on one hand. And then on the other hand, with SEOFOMO, it's interesting because the other day, I think it was Cindy Crum, who did this poll over Twitter about why was the reason or main reasons why SEOs had imposter syndrome. Crystal Carter: Yes, I saw that. Aleyda Solis: And one of the top reasons that got most votes was like the fear of missing out. So I can definitely see the how SEO promo definitely address that particular problem, which I have to say I am totally there. That is the reason of why I launch it in the first place. And I can also definitely see how in recent months because of AI, this new launches and the race of search engine engines to trying to be the first ones and all of these updates that Google is right now launching and conflating many, many times. So important to keep up. Mordy Oberstein: And it's so hard. There's so many updates Crystal Carter: And I think particularly one of the things that can be a challenge for somebody who's working across international markets is not only do you have to keep up with it for the general SEO, but you also have to keep up with it for international SEO. And you also have to keep up with it for all the different versions of the same website that you might have and making sure that all of those things work all together. So yeah, it can be a big challenge and we are so appreciative to you for making the effort to help with that. It's incredibly valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Since we're talking about international SEO, what's the first thing you think our audience should know about international SEO before anything else? Aleyda Solis: Yes. Well, the number one thing probably, because I think that that is the main mistake or assumption that many people do when they want to go international, is that it's not only about hreflang annotations, I mean hreflang annotations is a method, is a mechanism. It's a configuration that is helpful to specify and inform Google that we have other versions of our website pages that can be in different languages or the same or different languages targeting other countries. However, is not the only way to specify that. There are many signals that will take into account and it is a must to align them all because at the end of the day, it's the consistency and alignment of all of the signals that will let go realize that, oh yes, this is not a duplication of product A page, but it's actually product A page targeted to the UK, while you have already your version for the US. So it is fundamental that we are all aware about this different signals and it's just not about just hreflang annotations and that's it. And I believe that all the potentially most common issue that I see, most common problem, that I have clients, even larger enterprises, that you will think that they have all of these resources in the world. But at the end of the day, there are always restrictions and always limits of what you can do in your time and where it makes sense to allocate resources to. It's this problem when they end up having too many international versions when you launch a lot because you want to target abroad. Somebody has told you that, oh, there's opportunity to grow, launch in Spanish, in Italian, launch to the UK in English, you already know the language. So you launched the UK to Australia, et cetera. And then you realize you cannot maintain, you cannot support all of these different websites and then all of a sudden it's like, oh yes, I understand that. Then they learn that they need to localize their... Even if it is in the same language, their version for the UK, because they may be sell sneakers in the US and all of a sudden they realize that they are not called sneakers in the UK, but they are called trainers for example, or runners or whatever. So they need to optimize the content accordingly, but they don't have the resources. So it is fundamental to well initially assess the different international markets that actually makes sense for your business. What is the search potential? What is the search demand? If it is worth it for you? The market will be able to generate at some point enough traffic for you to have successful conversions and a successful ROI? And from an investment standpoint, it's something also doable for you? If you have the capacity to localize the content, if you have the capacity to translate it, if it is a market that speak a completely different language, for example. And then be able to give the, let's say a good support for users coming from those countries too, because it's not only like a one-off type of investment too. So all of the things, I believe that these two areas of let's say misunderstanding and I'll say that these are the most to, let's say, think or understand or when starting. And based on that to be able to start with the proper process of yes audience research, keyword research, completion research, to then establish the best web structure to use to tackle the different markets. And start with those markets where there's a much higher potential with less competition, et cetera, et cetera. Crystal Carter: So you talked a lot about assessing whether or not the market's worth it, the ROI from a sort of a monetary point of view, but also the capacity within your team. In the past, I've used PPC as a sort of little bit of a litmus test there because you can sort of do a quick PPC test and see did we get any bites. And if not, then we'll turn the PPC off and come back. I don't know if there's other tools or other things you would recommend for testing a market. Aleyda Solis: 100%. I mean I believe with the most forward is assessing the search volume of the queries, of the top queries that are search of your relevant topic, to describe your product or your services or your content. And then you can do a topological market type of assessment and say, okay, if I end up even getting at some point in a year, like 10% of this potential search volume and traffic and with my current conversion rate, how many conversions and is this going to be ROI positive at that point? But the point of the PPC campaign, I think is very smart to do, especially when there are markets that might look to be very big. But again, it depends on the context and depends on your offering. Because the markets that, for example, like Brazil or India are huge or Indonesia, these are huge market. However, they also have a different type of, let's say capacity of an online investment or buying online their type of behavior and capacity to buying things because of how much they earned et cetera, it's different than in the US or in Europe. For example, I have clients that there might be getting more traffic from a few Latin American markets like Mexico, that is a big, big market. But because of the type of offering or product or sophistication and also price point, most of the conversions happen in Spain. In their case like 60% of the search potential or traffic, but the conversions and revenue is much higher. So it's not only a purely search potential, but also the behavior, the sophistication, the price point. So for that PPC is 100% a very small way to do it. Just launching your top products. Actually, this is also another misunderstanding, right? Thinking that you need to go all in. No, you can launch a pilot project with your homepage and your top three, top five products, those that you have identified that have a higher search potential in that market. And then, yeah, a PPC campaign landing page is well optimized to see what is the buying behavior, the buying journey, and the conversion rate that you get and if it's ROI positive or not, and it's aligned to your expectations or not. Crystal Carter: And I think there's so much there around the cultural understandings as well. So you talked about market capabilities and things like that. I either worked with a client who did a lot of stuff in the... It was a health test and they were working in the UK. They also wanted to do stuff in South Africa because it was a really good market for them. And they were like, we want to put a video on the page. And the team we were working with in South Africa was like, we have the most expensive mobile data in the world. Do not put a video on the page because no one will watch it, for instance. And so I think understanding some of those cultural machinations can be such a big, big player. Aleyda Solis: It's interesting that you mentioned that, because also it's not only about... And I think that in SEO, purely in SEO, we tend to think about how to maximize the signals to the Googlebot at the end and yes, the Googlebot tries to, let's say, simulate the experience of the user. But at the end of the day, depending on the location and depending on the context of what particular product or information or not, users will have their own, let's say, bias or cultural bias. So for example, I have this company right now in France and their offering has to do a lot about healthcare or fitness type of products. And because health, there's a universal search system in France, so they use the French users, visitors, people, they are very used to see whatever health information in with the .Fr ccTLD. So anything that is not in the .Fr ccTLD and it has to do about health, they double question it, if it is really for them and if it's really worthy and if it is really reliable, because they are so used that it is a national thing. So in their case, they were very well optimized, very well ranking already for their core terms, but their conversions and the click rate of the SERPs, you could tell that they were poorer, the ones that should be expected for those positions. So the solution here beyond and before they grow much further is to, okay, let's start doing a few tests with a .Fr ccTLD and if the tests are successful, we will need to migrate. And this is something crazy that for 99% of the cases or scenarios, I will say, are you crazy? Why are you going to migrate just because of this? Migration is the worst case scenario that some of the higher efforts type of actions in SEO. But this one of those edge cases that we can see that from a business standpoint, it actually will make a lot of sense for them in the future. So it is now or never pretty much to assess that. Mordy Oberstein: How do you get ahead of that as opposed to realizing after the fact? Do you have a process? How do you find whether it be something like culturally like that or it's like we don't call sneakers, sneakers, we call them runners, whatever it is. I'm from New York, so we call soda, soda, we're from Brooklyn, it's soda or whatever. If you're from Michigan, it's called pop. I know that because I'm from the US. But if you're coming from say England and you want to target the Michigan soda population, you better call it pop. How do you get ahead of that? Aleyda Solis: The best way to do it is with good old keyword research, competition research, analysis research. Also the more localized, the more granular it can be, the best it will be of course, because there might be variations in the different terms depending on the specific location. And many, many services or products are not launched at a national level either, even if we're targeting countries. So some things might make sense more than others and they change a lot based on the context or industry. It also depends a lot on the, let's say, on your particular business model too. So for example SaaS, you might think about all SaaS have... There are the same type of product, the same business models. So they will tend to have the same type of international targeting and it's not the case. So for example, if you are an accounting SaaS software, it does make sense for you and you can go and take a look at a lot of accounting softwares out there. They will tend to be country targeted. Not because you search necessarily about accounting software or accounting systems in different ways. In English for example, in across the different English-speaking countries, no, but because their offering actually changes for country because their tax solution or accounting solution is integrated with local banking and local taxing and different type of rules and conditions depending on the country taxing and accounting laws. However, if we go to other type of SaaS like productivity SaaS or product management SaaS, you can see that in this other type of offering, most of them are language targeted because most of project management tools are called in the same way, independently of the country. In English for example, you call project management software in the UK, in the US, in Australia. And they're offering, their personality won't change. It's changes is trivial. It's like the pricing and they can change that dynamically and it's not such a big change that is worth it to create different type of versions. So you can see that there's a very... From red it doesn't changes it all to green. It doesn't change to nothing or there's a midpoint that it changes just a bit, but it doesn't compensate to create country versions. And the best way to assess that is really to do very granular keyword competition research. See which are the websites ranking for your top queries in that particular location that you want to run for and see which are the terms that are actually used of those best ranking ones, see how they address and what is their offering, what is their web structure are their ccTLDs? Are they subdomains, subdirectories and how they are explaining, describing, wording the product or the service and take that as an input to assess further. Mordy Oberstein: And that's a really good point about laws, because I think it's multiple times where the laws of Pacific region around them say... I think one of the case I was looking at was car insurance. The laws in different countries around car insurance will create different needs within the market and totally different queries that are now relevant, that won't be relevant in other markets. Let me ask you another question though. What if you're targeting, let's say a country like Belgium, where it's not just, okay, they have different laws, let's say England. It's in the country itself, they speak different languages. Aleyda Solis: Yeah, 100%. It's the same with Canada, right? English and French too. And there are quite a few countries like that. Well, it depends on really the search volume and the search potential that each one of these languages have, right? In the case of Belgium for example, most of the searches are the most popular languages will be French and then also Flemish, which is very, very like Dutch. But again, it's like, okay, again, your capacity where most of the searches for your product are happening in French or in Flemish and based on that to prioritize accordingly. Because indeed, so for example, in Spain actually, you can take that to the very extreme and it might not necessarily be worthy. Spanish is the language that everybody knows internationally about Spain. But the original languages are very well used regionally too. So in Catalonia it's Catalan. I live in the Basque Country actually in Spain and the Basque language is completely different to anything else out there. And then the Galician language. So I mean you can go very granular if you want, but again, this is not about being let's say politically correct or being super granular because of course that will be the ideal work, whatever. But we don't have unlimited resources. What we really want is that this new versions generate money, generate sales, generate traffic, and these are ROI positives. So at the end of the day, just think about what are the languages that your audience in that country are actually searching for your products on services. And here, coincidentally again, speaking about car rentals, is one of those sectors or businesses where it actually makes sense to enable an English version in Spain for your website because of the target market, the audience. These are a lot of international travelers, holiday makers, whatever, coming here, renting cars. So there is a non-trivial search volume about hiring cars in Barcelona, renting cars in Madrid. Actually that is another edge case where it actually makes sense to enable an English version in Spain, in France, in non-speaking English countries, 100%. Crystal Carter: I think it can get very complicated, but I think it's worthwhile because I think it demonstrates trust. So we have a great article from Adriana Stein talking about translation versus localization. And I think that when people can see that... And again, it's worthwhile. So for instance, if you were a hyper-local business that was in the Basque Country and was serving people for traditional Basque Country activities or something like that, it would make sense for you to connect with them in that language. And if you're searching on the SERP and you see that that's written in that language and they know the terms that are related to the thing, then you go, okay, these people know what they're talking about, they actually know what's going on. This isn't somebody who just pressed a button to translate this. They actually know they actually care. And I think that that can be really useful. Aleyda Solis: 100%. I mean if you do really have the capacity and the resources and if it is an important market for you, you should totally go ahead. And if it is a minimum effort too, you should definitely go ahead and do the extra mile and personalize because that can make a complete difference for it. So for example, in my case, I was back in the day, I am originally from Nicaragua. When I was living still in Nicaragua and Nicaragua is such a small country, it's also a poor country. So we were so very used to get all of this marketing actions in TV even or in Billboard or whatever, that we're so obviously not targeted at Nicaragua because we actually speak, like the way that we word things in Spanish is like in Argentina, like with the dos. So we put an accent at the end of each, pretty much conjugation and the verbs. And we don't say two, we say dos. And we had a lot of these billboards and TV ads and whatever with the two and we were like, oh, this was just generic ads for all Latin American people, whatever is not for us. But then it made all, little by little you could tell that they were making more efforts toward things to change things. And it was a minimum thing really pretty much to change up a couple of wordings. The rest was exactly the same, but at least they took care and this is actually really for us. The engagement and I think the connection with the brand or the offering increase. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I've heard SEOs talk about some of the communities where you get sort of hybrid languages. So there was somebody who was from Mexico and she was from the north of Mexico. Ms. Marie White actually was talking about this and she's from the north of Mexico and she was like, we need Spanglish. And they were like, what? She was like, people on the border of the United States and Mexico, everybody speaks Spanglish. And so they started adding in some of that into some of their copy and they started to get a lot of good response from that because also people have phones where they're searching both in English and in Spanish. And this is going to happen in lots of places where there's people who speak multiple languages. I don't know if you have any tips or any examples from sort of hybrid searches and adapting for that. Aleyda Solis: So for example, again, it depends a lot on the industry, but the industry, that can be crazy. Speaking about car rental, car rental in Spanish, you can say in so many different ways. So this is one industry that if you are for in, it really needs to be very well localized, especially because also a lot of the queries are also with location, connected with location, with your current city or the city where you want to go. And you can call “carro”, “coche”, just three terms for the same thing, for car. And the same also where the property... I have had quite a lot of clients across different countries in the property market. And for apartment in Spanish you can call it [foreign language 00:24:35]. So three different ways again for the same thing. And well, it's the same in the UK and the US flats and apartment. But in Spanish I think that because there are so many different countries that have it as a native language, there's so many different correct ways to say it. So especially for this very localized services and products, car rental, property, it's very, very worthy to go very granular, double check and validate how they are the right way or the relevant way to call it in that particular market. Because it's definitely going to change not only the name of the locations or the countries, but the term too, very likely. Crystal Carter: Can I ask you one question about attending technical? So sometimes when I worked on the international SEO campaigns or international SEO projects. I've seen it where sometimes Google can't figure out which one is the main one, even when you canonicalize it. And I don't know if you've seen that and if you have any sort of recommendations for how to address that particular challenge. Aleyda Solis: Yes, thank you very much for asking that. Actually, I think that this scenarios happen when you have a very, very established powerful, popular original version that you had... Usually the US one, that then it perform a little bit also like the global one for a while. And then you have, let's say a UK version or an Indian version, they are also in the same language. However, well they target their own audience. And in those particular scenarios we may see that the copy might be very, very similar because it actually makes sense because in that particular context, the product, the service is actually searched with the same terms. And in general the behavior of the user connecting to them, it's very similar. And so it's harder for Google to understand which is the right version. Even if you implement hreflang, remember that hreflang is one of many signals. So for those particular scenarios, what I highly, highly recommend to do to help Google further, is to add the name of the country in the metadata, add the name of the country or the location or the offices in case you have offices or subsidiaries or partners within the copy. The information that you are targeting those particular markets, personalize the message. So whatever examples or testimonials or information, give additional signals that, oh, this is for India, this is for the UK. And also a typical mistake that I see websites doing all the time is that in the country picker that the menu, the global menu that you may have, many of these are JavaScript generated, they are not crawlable. The links are always going to the homepage of the alternate version. Know your product A page should cross-link to your product A page in India, to your product A page in the US, in the UK. So the product A page in the US that has millions of backlinks can pass that link popularity accordingly to the product page of other countries. Rather than product page in other countries never be able to rank or not showing enough popularity to rule and not ranking because of that, right? So I believe that good crosslinking is critical. Localizing everything, every single signal that you can give to Google. This is especially important when you are targeting different countries with the same language. As examples of indeed like how your product make the life easier for relevant audience within that country. All these additional signals also help a lot. And of course hreflang notations, correct canonicalization too, in each one of these pages, that is also important. And if you have the capacity to promote within the relevant country to attract backlinks of local specific websites that will point to that particular country web version, the best will be, because many, many times the US slash global version was the one that existed before. All of the backlinks from India are still pointing also only to the US and the UK point to the US one rather than the relevant version. So little by little like that, you are able to give the right signals for Google to run the relevant version of the website. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great way to put it. You're helping Google. It's really complicated. I think they have a really hard time as somebody who lives in a non-English speaking country, but only searches for the most part in English. I get all sorts of cross results all the time. Google really does sometimes have a really hard time figuring it out. I've worked on sites where they're showing the wrong page and it was completely on Google's end to understand what was what. Aleyda Solis: Google thinks that I am a British living in Spain. I am all the time shown ads. And in Google discover too, recommend reads for British in Spain because I guess that's because they identified that a lot of British expat here or live in Spain by the way, that since I am searching in English so much, I should be a British living in Spain. Mordy Oberstein: The opposite I have. I only search in English basically, and Google discover will show me stuff in Hebrew now. I never search, I don't know what I'm looking at. Don't show that to me. But I'm getting used to knowledge panels- Aleyda Solis: Opportunity for you to learn Hebrew. Mordy Oberstein: Nati, Head of SEO, he gives me a hard time about knowing Hebrew well enough. So I think it's him behind the scenes pushing Google to let me learn more Hebrew. Aleyda Solis: 100%. Mordy Oberstein: It's a conspiracy. Aleyda, thank you so much for coming on. Don't forget to follow Aleyda on Twitter, on LinkedIn. Aleyda Solis: If you're not following Aleyda Solis. Mordy Oberstein: If you're not already, it's @aleyda on Twitter. We'll link to your profile in the show notes. And of course it's learningseo.io and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe to the SEOFOMO and now the marketing FOMO newsletters. Aleyda Solis: Just reached a thousand subscribers a week ago and I'm actually preparing it for this Wix edition too. I'm so very excited too. Because in SEO we are also sometimes too isolated focusing on it. And there's so much happening in other markets, in other channels of marketing by the way. And we can learn a lot from them and leverage, learn to leverage them and to, yeah... That's definitely interesting. Crystal Carter: As well as Crawling Mondays as well as remoters.net. Aleyda Solis: Oh right. Crystal Carter: As well as Remoters.net SEO. So yes. Mordy Oberstein: Aleyda, thank you for everything you do for the community. Aleyda Solis: No, thank you for the opportunity to share with you and everything what you do too. Really appreciate it. Mordy Oberstein: So one of the things that Aleyda touched on, which as a content person and as an expat myself kind of irks me about international strategies, that sometimes you don't fully appreciate how hard it is to actually localize the content to best align, not with the GEO’s language, but with the cultural idiosyncrasies and so forth. So we thought we get a serious expert on content to share their thoughts on building an international content strategy so that Crystal and I could offer you a very, very special version of a deep thought with Crystal and Mordy. Except this time it's not a deep thought with Crystal and Mordy. Let's get into what Giuseppe had to say first. Take it away, Giuseppe. Giuseppe Caltabiano: Well thank you for having me first of all. That's a very good question. Now let me say, despite the pandemic, my passion for traveling has not changed. In a way, it has been a constant of my life, whether I was on road for business or pleasure. The reason why I'm saying this is that travel really fueled my passion for global marketing, specifically for global content marketing. My travels have given me a better understanding of the world. But the reality is, when I launched my first new global content marketing program for Schneider Electric, that was 10 years ago. I thought I knew the world, but when you have to develop content for different geographies, well it feels like you have never stepped outside your front door, while I've always covered international or global roles. I remember, my first global content marketing journey started 10 years ago, when my team and I began defining Schneider Electric IT division global content strategy. Our goals were two fold: Lead Gen, first of all, marketing opportunities and secondly, increased brand awareness. Now after defining our strategy, we spent eight months preparing for the global launch through multiple pilots. We learned an incredible amount from our success and mistakes. And then one year later I replicated the same model with global clients when I moved to NewsCred, which is now part of Optimizely, at the beginning of 2017 and then later in Contently in 2019. Now the issue I found in most of the cases is that content marketers just try to replicate at global level what they have done in some cases with some success at central or local level. Well that's a big mistake. The thing is that global content marketing is not just content marketing deployed across multiple countries. Enterprise will need to plan, find the right balance between global and local. They have to pilot and then scale at global level. If they fail at one of these steps, of course usually they may fail with the full program. I think there are three main steps global marketers need to follow in order to design a proper content marketing strategy. First of all, finding the optimal balance between central and local. Now in most of the regions, I mean take Asia or Europe for example, there are thousands of countries and languages. It's simply unrealistic to make the same content work for each individual market. For this reason, creating content centrally and allowing countries to fill the gaps may represent a good solution. I've been working with both organizations, centralized and decentralized. Some organization have a very unclear understanding of local markets, which is the reason why involvement of countries or regions in content planning is really key. The role of central teams may shift of course as the program progress. In the early stages of the program, the flow of information is very outwards with the central team leading content production and strategy. And then as global content program flourish and progress, the emphasis on the central team shift to providing guidance and building local content skills and competencies. The second step is establishing local editorial board. While of course the central editorial team will generate content, a global level local editorial board have to be placed. And I mean this is really a key. In each country or on geography to manage proper planning and distribution, the local editorial board will agree with the central team on target personas. They lead the decision for distribution, content distribution, they contract local vendors and so on and so forth. The third and final point is piloting your content market strategy. The thing is piloting means starting small. Large enterprises are running pilot programs across geographies. It's a common practice, great ideas often receive resistance. You need to start small, test if your strategy is working, get results, and then finally create a proper business case, in order to allow a global content marketing program. In a global content marketing model, you ideally need to set up the pilot program as a test in one of two countries and usually no more than two different languages if possible. And then you run the pilot program with a full integration with the existing marketing technologies. And finally, of course if it's successful, you may roll out your program to the other geographies. I realize that this is probably super simplification, but it may give you a good overview of what to do in order to create a global content marketing program. Mordy Oberstein: So I don't know where to start with it, because Giuseppe makes a bunch of really, really, really, really good points. But I guess let's talk about a point that I feel I personally probably gloss over all the time in talking about global content strategies, is that the fact that you have to balance the global with the local. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, entirely. It's something that is really, really important. And I think that it applies to lots of elements of international SEO and even regional SEO. Even if you think about the United States for instance, there's different laws in different states, there's different realities. February in Florida is very different from February in New Hampshire for instance. So there are definitely things to consider about which products to put out, which content to put out, what makes sense, where all of these things are really important. Mordy Oberstein: The same thing with local SEO also. You might have a local presence, you might also have a more international presence or a national presence. So balancing this out is really, really important. Because you don't want to go all in on the global and then ignore the fact you also have a local presence or cannibalize a local presence with your global presence. You really have to think about what pages should exist. It's really about planning. What pages should exist, where do they exist on the domain, what are they trying to do? Where are they trying to target? And how do we keep what they're trying to do somewhat separate from each other. Crystal Carter: There's a section where he discussed planning and some of the work that's gone into planning. He was saying they spent eight months planning a particular campaign and that can take a lot of time. So these things should be well thought out and should take all of the things into account. Because of course it's important to have a global presence. If you think of a company like IKEA for instance, IKEA has global things and actually IKEA's approach to marketing tends to be fairly universal worldwide. But that's a distinct strategy that they've taken, which is really very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: It works for them. Crystal Carter: It works for them. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure it works for others. Crystal Carter: Exactly. But they will understand that. Even I know that... We recently had an IKEA open near us and they ran a specific hyper-local campaign launching the store. And I know that they have general activities there, but the global brand will impact the local brand and vice versa. So it's really important to make sure that they line up. But that also that if part of your brand is making sure that you care about your customers, making sure that it's very clear that you are respectful of your customers, then respecting the local cultural elements is really, really important. And localizing appropriately will help you to demonstrate that. Mordy Oberstein: Which goes to what Aleyda was saying about the advertisement she would see growing up and really speaks to what Giuseppe was talking about, and just another amazing point, in that there's really no way around having a local expert. Giuseppe was talking about they have a board and that local board offers feedback on the overall global camp. How much do you want to automate, especially in the world of AI and ChatGPT. But in general, how much do you want to try to automate or try to template from the global strategy into the local areas, you can't. You have to have somebody who understands what that region's all about, what works, what doesn't work, the interest, the way of talking, all the idiosyncrasies of that region. There's no way around knowing that other than you having some actual integration into that community, which means you need a local expert Crystal Carter: Indeed. And there's idioms that will make people feel more warmly towards your brand. There are particular celebrations or particular things that are important milestones. So for instance, in the Mediterranean you see a lot of these things with the blue eye for instance. That's something that means good luck or prosperity and things like that. If you have the same symbol and somewhere else it would be less recognized. And there are things that visually, for instance, would be really, really recognizable. And that's something to think about as well. And these are things like you said, that you can't get from a bot necessarily. You have to have humans there. Adriana Stein is someone who has worked with us on some localizing projects and she wrote an article on translation versus localization. And she gets into a lot of these details. She talks about the direct translation from English to German of beating around the bush for instance, which... He did the direct translation, it doesn't convey the same sentiment as if you do a localized translation of their idiom for that same sort of thing. And what you want is the sentiment. You want the sentiment of that statement rather than the direct translation because it's an idiom. Mordy Oberstein: And you have cultural biases and there's no way around them. I'll give you a great example. I think I might have talked about it in the podcast at one point, but growing up every day, I used to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I moved to Israel, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at work one day and someone's like, what's that? I'm like, peanut butter and jelly. And they're like, what is that? They do not eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Blew my mind, to this day, absolutely blows my mind. It is the go-to sandwich in America. To this day, I still eat them, because they're so delicious. Crystal Carter: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are suitable for every meal. Mordy Oberstein: Every meal and in between meals, all meals. Crystal Carter: Anytime you eat- Mordy Oberstein: You can live on them. Crystal Carter: You can live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They're quality, quality. Mordy Oberstein: We do not eat them where I currently live. And if you were talking about them, it would be like you if you're trying to target that or if you're using it as a reference and whatever it is, it would be lost because it is not the same thing. Crystal Carter: Yeah, entirely. And I think these are things that you have to get. And I think that it takes... One of the reasons why it takes so long to plan for a sort of global SEO or marketing campaign, is that you have to take those things into account. You have to make sure that you have good experts for wherever you're based. Wix is, we work in 17 different languages and we work in lots of different spaces. Someone that we work with in Japan is someone called Titone. He's fantastic, he's amazing, he's incredible. And we worked with the team at Faber as well to do some SEO webinars. We didn't think like, oh, we should swat in and do the SEO webinar ourselves. From a remote team, we got local experts to help us with that and to help us engage in, because for instance, with search in Japan, for instance, the way that the web is structured is slightly different because they have different kinds of writing. So this is really important to think about. And so there's going to be people who have more experience in that and more experience of the way that the people use the web and the different search engines that they use and the different things that will come up first for that particular audience. And you have to think about the people on your team who are genuine experts and you have to make sure that you build up those relationships. And that takes time. And also I think it's important, particularly from a content point of view, to think about how you get traction an at what point, how much of a foothold you need to have in a market in order to get some traction in a market. Especially if your team isn't specifically based there, but you're trying to connect with an audience in a different place. You have to sort of figure out how much content do we need? What investment do we need? And Aleyda talked about this as well, what investment do you need in order to be able to serve those customers well? And I think that these can take time, but hopefully it's worth it, if that's a market that's good for you. Mordy Oberstein: Now speaking of time, do you know what time it is? Crystal Carter: What time is it? What time is it? Mordy Oberstein: Snappy News. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's here. I mean, snappy news, snappy news, snappy news, but oh my God, it's here. Google has opened its Search Generative Experience, SGE. Two select folks on the wait list, yours truly, not among them. I can't even get on the wait list? Something about it not being open to my account, I don't know. Personal grumblings aside, we got our first look at what Google's Search Generative Experience is going to look like. Follow me here for a second. Danny Goodwin at Search Engine Land covered Barry Schwartz and his covering of his initial experience with the SGE. Barry got access to the SGE or the Search Generative Experience, but had to go offline for a few days. So Danny covered Barry covering the SGE. We'll link to the article in the show notes, because there're already heap of examples and you should definitely look at them. Just looking at it myself, I just want to say, don't panic. It looks like there are plenty of organic link placements all throughout the experience. Mike King from iPullRank, who did a whole webinar with us on AI and SEO, he said quote, "it's basically an interactive feature snippet, but it doesn't feel as threatening to organic search traffic as the original demos made it feel." Good news. All right, who wants some more big news? Yeah, Google held its marketing live event and friend of the show who join us talking about SCOM PPC over at Cypress North, Greg Finn did an amazing job covering all of the updates that Google announced to its ad platform and beyond. Check that out in the show notes as well over at Search Engine Land. Some takeaways, they're personal. When I took a look at the keynote, one of the things I took away was a Google talks about how people search and how it's changing, how they're looking at longer queries and how they're more conversational, what they're looking for, and they're looking for more specific things than ever before. People are being far more specific when they search. Some might say not new. Old, not new. I agree it's not new, but I feel like now this is an official part of the conversation that we as SEOs, the content marketers, the content creators need to get on board with. Also ads will be in the Search Generative Experience, the SGE or as I'm just going to call it the AI box. When Google announced the SGE or the AI box at Google I/O 2023, it made it seem the ads would be above the box itself, not part of the actual Search Generative Experience. But at Marketing Live, they show that yes, it's going to be right there in that whole SGE ecosystem. Also, say goodbye to Google Merchant Center and say hello to Google Merchant Center NEXT. It's next level because it will take a lot of the techier parts of connecting to Google Merchant Center out of the equation by pulling information straight from your site into the Merchant Center feed. Next, well, nothing is next because that's this week's snappy news. And well, that was the news. How newsy was it? So Newsy. Always so newsy. Which brings us to our follow of the week as the episode ebbs away and this week our follow of the week as we're going international SEO is none other than Veruska Anconitano. Crystal Carter: Veruska is fantastic. She's a member of Women in Tech SEO. She's an amazing international SEO- Mordy Oberstein: Contributor to the hub. Crystal Carter: What's this? Mordy Oberstein: Contributor to the hub. Crystal Carter: A contributor to the hub, which I was just going to get to. Yeah, she's a- Mordy Oberstein: Sorry for jumping the gun. Crystal Carter: She's multilingual. And yeah, she wrote an article called Why Cultural Relevance is Key to International SEO Success, and it's absolutely fantastic. So yeah, she speaks many languages and she talks a lot about the different elements that come into play when you're thinking about engaging with international markets that are not just some of the technical SEO elements that can be easy to implement, relatively speaking. But some of the cultural elements in, we're thinking about cultural identity and how that impacts search and what people search for and how people search. It's a great article. She's a great follow. She's also an expert on Rome, so I knew someone who was going to Rome and I tagged her and she was like, oh, let me tell you all of the places that you should eat. Mordy Oberstein: And her Twitter account is really informative. She had a post on skyscraper content the other day that kind of made me laugh. There's a lot of really good content in her feed. It's not just one of these accounts where you're going to file but not really getting SEO value out of it. It's a definite value in the SEO knowledge itself. So it's @LaCuochina on Twitter. We'll link to Veruska's profile in the show notes. But definitely give her a follow. Which means our episode is now over. Crystal Carter: Finito. Mordy Oberstein: Finito. Ooh, very good. Crystal Carter: Finn. Mordy Oberstein: Finn. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, hasta la vista. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know how to say the end in any other language. Crystal Carter: S ayonara! Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Adios. That's really goodbye, not the end. Anyway, thanks for joining us on this SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us, not to worry, we're back next week with the brand new episodes. We dive into how to build a content strategy SEO and beyond. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Evergreen content or trending topics? Which has the biggest impact on your organic traffic strategy? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss evergreen & trending content for SEO and how to balance the two strategically. Offering his perspective, the founder of NewzDash, John Shehata, shares how he synchronizes both emerging and evergreen content for SEO. Plus, take a trip over to the top of the SERP to investigate the latest “emerging” SERP feature. Take your training wheels off because, on episode 76 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast, you’ll learn how to balance evergreen and emerging topics for SEO harmony. Back The great balance between evergreen & trending content for SEO & beyond Evergreen content or trending topics? Which has the biggest impact on your organic traffic strategy? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss evergreen & trending content for SEO and how to balance the two strategically. Offering his perspective, the founder of NewzDash, John Shehata, shares how he synchronizes both emerging and evergreen content for SEO. Plus, take a trip over to the top of the SERP to investigate the latest “emerging” SERP feature. Take your training wheels off because, on episode 76 of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast, you’ll learn how to balance evergreen and emerging topics for SEO harmony. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 76 | February 28, 2024 | 50 MIN 00:00 / 50:25 This week’s guests John Shehata John Shehata is the CEO and Founder of NewzDash, the enterprise SEO company specializing in enterprise audience growth, SEO and News-SEO SAAS tools. John is a highly experienced audience growth consultant with over 25 years of expertise in the digital marketing space and search engine optimization (SEO). Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting together 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 ever constant, although sometimes emerging, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello internet, SEO people. Welcome to the podcast. We have emerged, but we are always here in the podcast ecosystem, and you can find us where you find podcasts all the time. It's just an evergreen resource for you to learn and enjoy SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Evergreen, like those trees that just don't care about winter. Crystal Carter: They don't. They're like, "Winter schminter." Mordy Oberstein: Winter schminter. Crystal Carter: I don't care. I got needle leaves. The snow goes right through me. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Not only do they not care about the temperature, but we've got snow covered too. Just be gone, snow. Crystal Carter: Do what I like. Whenever I think of evergreens, I think of the tree that I keep in my garden. Which I have a little evergreen tree, and I bought him a big pot. He's a little lopsided. Bless him, but I like him anyway. We've had him for a while. Mordy Oberstein: Do you talk to him? Crystal Carter: No, no. We bring him inside for Christmas and cover him in junk. And I always think that all the other trees are making fun of him. They're like, "Look at you. You look like an idiot in December." And he's like, "Oh, you know, whatever." Mordy Oberstein: So do you usually have conversations in your mind about various trees talking to each other, or just sometimes? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I used to talk to my kid about how the trees would take a nap at winter time. They take a nap, they get themselves ready for bed, and then they take a nap at wintertime. Then they wake up in the spring. Mordy Oberstein: What do you call it when the tree becomes, I don't know, your chair. That's not a nap. It's like a permanent nap time. Crystal Carter: I mean, there's a book about that. I think that the Giving Tree, or something like that. Mordy Oberstein: The Giving Tree, Shell Silverstein. Crystal Carter: Who is fantastic. And yeah, it touches the old heart right there. Gets you right there. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else touches the heart? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: 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 download SEO checklist templates, toolkits, cheat sheets, and more. Head over to Wix, SEO. But look for our new resource center, it will help you emerge victorious and stay that way forever. Too mas, too much overselling? Crystal Carter: No, I mean, I think I definitely have warm and fuzzy feelings about our resource center. I think it's incredible. I think it makes me feel warm inside and like a lovely mug of cocoa. Mordy Oberstein: Well, speaking of emerging and everlasting, that's precisely our topic today, in case you haven't guessed. I feel like we drop Easter eggs every episode for a good five minutes, about what the episode is going to be about. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We don't need the topic. You should already know by now what it is. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Just take it all in. We're ready. We're ready for you. Mordy Oberstein: But officially, we're taking a hard look at SEO for evergreen topic versus SEO for emerging topics. Which is harder, ranking for emerging or evergreen content? Why would you even want to focus on emerging content versus evergreen content? And how the content formats impact your approach to SEO. Plus an absolute SEO legend, especially for news content, the former global VP of Audience Development at Condé Nast, and the founder of the new SEO tool, NewzDash, John Shehata will stop by to share how he balances focusing on both emerging and evergreen content for SEO. We'll also head to the top of the SERP and look at what's happening for an emerging-ish content feature, or a little SERP feature, that seems to be spreading its wings. 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 put on your fanciest spandex overalls and climb up to the type rope that is this circus, that is all about balancing SEO for evergreen and emerging content on this, the 76th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. I've always wanted one of those spandex overall suits that they used to put on people in the circus, where they used to shoot them out of a canon kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. The strongman sort of suits. Yeah, no- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the strongman suit. Exactly. Crystal Carter: Yeah. They recently bought back gladiators in the UK on the BBC, and there's a lot of that, those sort of- Mordy Oberstein: American Gladiators, where the whole tone is steroids. Crystal Carter: The Netflix documentary on that can confirm. Mordy Oberstein: I didn't watch that. I saw that. Crystal Carter: It will absolutely confirm that. Mordy Oberstein: It looks disturbing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: What do you want from a dude whose name is Nitro? Crystal Carter: I know. I mean, I feel like you could do that for SEOs, but they'd be more like, I don't know- Mordy Oberstein: Markup. Crystal Carter: Right? Markup, here comes Markup. Mordy Oberstein: Here comes Markup. Crystal Carter: SEO gladiators. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no, it's Redirect. Crystal Carter: He's going to disallow the competitor who's coming in. Mordy Oberstein: Well done. Well done. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. Okay. All right. So speaking of IPs that have lasted a long time, we are going to be talking about SEO and for ever evergreen content, and how it differs from other content. I think one of the things that's important to think about is that when we talk about evergreen content, that's essentially the kind of content that you expect to rank for a long time, that you expect to be on your page for a long time. And it's important to think about what that might be for your business. So depending on what business you have, these will be maybe some of your core keywords, and they might be some of the core topics, but it's also worth balancing that with content that's in the now, that's happening regularly, that's being updated. So for instance, if you were to talk about game shows like American Gladiators, or a competitions and things like that, it might be the- Mordy Oberstein: Like the Price is Right. Crystal Carter: Oh, Price is Right. Oh, that's a great show. Mordy Oberstein: Really competitive. $1 Bob. Crystal Carter: $1. Come on down. So for instance, if you were talking about a particular topic, you would want to have a page that ranked for that, but you'd also want to have news coming through there. And this can give you a few different levers for connecting with new customers and for getting different value from the SERP. So for instance, if you were a Beyonce fan club website or Beyonce fan site, you would probably have a general page that was maybe about fun facts about Beyonce, or maybe her discography, or that sort of thing. So you might have something like that, that's a core piece of content that you don't expect to update that often. It ranks for a certain number of core keywords, and it's essentially the top of your pillar. So when you think about content clusters, it will essentially be the top of your pillar. Along with that, you might want to add in trending topics. So let's say Beyonce's in the news. So she was recently in, and I'm a big fan, so I know no way too much about this. But she was recently in the news because she had her film released, and Taylor Swift came to the release. So that's something that you might want to add in. So you might have an evergreen page on your site, that's generally about Taylor Swift and Beyonce's history together, because they have a bit of history. And so you might want to have that there. But then you can add in a webpage that talks about the new thing that happened where Taylor Swift came to the premier in London. Then you might want to have another article that talks about how Beyonce went to Taylor Swift's film release as well. All of these things can be interlinked. I think that's the important thing to think about, about evergreen content. Evergreen content is a really good opportunity to make sure that you have links that last to your content, and that you can link to, and that also that other people can link to. And this is also something that can be really, really useful if you're somebody who does something on an annual basis, or a seasonal basis as well. We talked about seasonality, but for instance, if you have a situation where you are doing an awareness day, and it happens every year, it's worth having an evergreen page that is general information about that awareness day, that you can link to when you're talking about the one for this year, or you're talking about the event, or you're talking about other things that are related to it. But think about evergreen content as being sort of the anchor for some of the other trending topics that you can add into your website, and that you can keep people coming back and being more enthused about the new content. Mordy Oberstein: So to that point, and one of the ways I think about emerging content, and I've been thinking a lot about it lately, just coincidentally, a lot lately. First off, it is a brand play. Like you're saying, if you want to show that you're current, that you're relevant, that you're in the know about this. For example, that they were recording this, I just found out yesterday that Billy Joel was releasing a new song for the first time 17 years. Crystal Carter: Right, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah, just some new song, 17 years, new album would be, I don't know, like 30 years. But anyway, if you have a website about Billy Joel, which that sounds fabulous and super trendy, just like Taylor Swift and Beyonce, the same, a little bit less hair, but anyway. You wouldn't want to add that onto your website so people understand that you actually know what you're talking about, about the topic. But you can also use it as a brand play and even SEOs. First off, as an SEO play, when you're trying to get started. So as you're trying to get your website going and you're trying to get some momentum and some cadence, like we talked about on a previous podcast episode, you need to have a digital presence. And that means people will stay sharing your content in social media, and then maybe eventually taking the content they're seeing on social media being shared, and linking to that. Look at the web as a dark sky. It is pitch black out there, and Google's looking for lights. You want your lights to be big, so that Google goes to it. So having a well-established digital presence is very, very important for getting SEO momentum. Your evergreen topics are not as trendy. They're not as trendy, they're not as cool, and they're not going to get shared as much. They're really meant, in my mind, that's an SEO play. But if you're getting started and you want people to know who you are and look to you, the emerging content, that trendy-ish or emerging kind of topics, that's what's going to get shared on social, that's going to get those initial links, and that's going to let you pull in traffic from evergreen topics as Google starts to recognize that you are a worthwhile digital entity. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that the evergreen topic should be a very strategic, in an effort to establish your authority. So for instance, if you're talking about Billy Joel or whatever, you need to be able to say, "Oh, in his corpus of work," or something, and refer to yourself, right? Mordy Oberstein: It has to be that balance. You have to be able to balance back between the different types of pieces to establish that credibility, 100%. Crystal Carter: So you're showing this to people who are visiting your website and you're showing this to Google as well. So you're able to refer to yourself, here's all of the things that I know about the history of this particular musical artist and the things that they've done. Here's this new cool thing that you found. And so this gives you a couple of different levers. And I think that that's the important thing to think about when you're doing SEO and everybody thinks like, "Oh, I want to get on page one." It's like there are lots of page ones. There's page ones of images, there's page one of news, there's page one of lots of different filters within Google, so think about all of those. And the news items and the trending topics are going to have less competition in the first instance, right? First movers get a value. So there's definitely a first mover advantage in terms of trending topics. But again, if you're able to anchor that with your evergreen content, that will add more effort to that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You have to balance back and forth. It's why we asked John what we asked John in a few moments, we'll get to that. But it's a great point about emerging topics being great places to get started, because there is no search volume. There is no end date, but I'll say you have to be a little bit careful. Let's say, okay, we're recording this three weeks out of the Super Bowl. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, three weeks. Okay. Let's say Lamar Jackson, the quarterback for the Ravens, breaks both of his legs in some sort of miracle and can't play that. I don't like the Ravens. I was going to say that. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I was like, "Miracle?" Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, sorry. I don't know. Let's make it, yeah, let's say he breaks both of his legs. I'm just going to go with it. It's a highly authoritative kind of topic, meaning the websites that generally rank for this kind of stuff are super authorities. It's a high interest topic, it's the Super Bowl. Who's Google going to turn to cover this story on the web? It's going to be things like ESPN, CBS news. So just because it's emerging, doesn't mean that it's not highly competitive. You need to be strategic about what you target for emerging topics. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. There's a fantastic article on the Wix SEO hub called Finding Trending Keywords for SEO, and they talk about this as well. You need to think about that, absolutely. But it's also really, really important to think about where you're getting your trending topics from. We have a section on the podcast that talks about people also ask, fun with people also ask. People also ask updates incredibly quickly. So if there was an accident and somebody said he had a thing, people will also ask, say, "What happened to this person?" And people also ask would update quickly, and Google will be looking for an answer to that question. If you have that answer on your website, then they will send traffic to you. And this is something that, and again, it also demonstrated expertise that you know that that happened just now, and you were that quick to make it happen. Mordy Oberstein: And that people are looking for it. Because this is what gets a little bit tricky with emerging content, you have to have your finger on the pulse. It's not like one of those kind of things in SEO, you're like, "Ah, I'll use a tool. I don't really understand the niche." There's no way around it. You have to understand that niche because you need to know if it's worthwhile. Sure, you can rank for it, but if it's completely obscure and not really the real story, or the story's going to change in a day anyway, and there's really very limited opportunity for this aspect of the story to rank, not worth it necessarily. So you have to have your finger on the pulse because there are no search volumes, there are no historical trends. So seeing something like the people also ask update, will tell you, signal, okay, people are actually looking for this. But you probably want to use social media, obviously. You really just want to have your finger on the pulse and not just rely on the SERP, because the SERP, outside of things like the knowledge panel, people also ask can be very slow. Knowledge panel, by the way, great for seeing things like sports trades, it updates automatically. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. Exactly. And I think that's something to think about with some of the trending topics as well. For some of the new things, sometimes Google offers some instant answers on some of those things, like sports scores for instance, that they have a widget for that. They have a thing that works on that. But I think this also comes to things like trending topics will come and go, and trending topics will happen very quickly, so there might be a lot of news that's coming out. For instance, let's say if we were talking about the World Series or something, there's going to be a lot of news about the World Series. But it would be worthwhile having a page about the World Series and whether it was the World Series for that year, or the World Series in general, but having some core content, some core evergreen content that you can link to all of those things. It's also really important as part of your SEO outreach activity. It's very, very difficult to try to build back links to trending topics, as a sort of long tail activity. So if you're trying to build back links to a news article or something, and the news is changing constantly, that's going to be tricky because you might need to make a new article, you might need to make a new post. It might change the link that you got, might be this, all of this sort of stuff. But if you have a core, like a guide, a core topic, evergreen piece, then you can shape a link building campaign around that. You can build a link building campaign around that. You can build that link building campaign for years. So one of the one things you see really often, is people will do an annual report. So there'll be the state of SEO or something, and I've seen that done really well. Or the state of video marketing, and they will update the report every year, but the back links, all of the links go to the same report. So the link stays the same and you maintain your link equity, and I think that's one of the core elements about evergreen content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that points to something I really wanted to talk about, which is that the strategy, the SEO strategy behind both types of content is very, very, very different. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: In my mind, evergreen content is more of your typical content strategy. It's very paced, it's very strategic, it's very topically-driven. What are the topics? What are the subtopics? What do I need to cover? How do I holistically cover all this? What's the next topic logically, and so forth. Emerging content is very strategic, but it's narrative-driven. Okay, what's the narrative? Not right now, I think it's a very important story in this area, is what's the narrative tomorrow going to be. And getting ahead of that, and then being strategic about where you fit in. Because if you're... Great, you figured out the narrative. You know tomorrow, Beyonce announced whatever today, which means that tomorrow this is going to be a big topic of discussion in this way. But now you're competing with Entertainment Weekly and People, and whatever. What's your angle going to be? What can you bring, because it's an emerging topic, it's trendy. What's your angle going to be? If you can't break the news, maybe you can aggregate the news and put stats together that way. Whatever it is, it's very strategic, but it's very different kind of an SEO and content strategy than evergreen topics, and your mindset needs to be completely different. I'll say one last point on this, if you're doing this and you have both types of content, which you should in general, you might need two different people with two different ways of thinking about things, to handle the different topics. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely true. Because I think that... So one of the things that Abby talks about in her trending topics things, is looking at scaling your social listening. That takes time, that takes time, that takes nuance, takes being aware. And also following everybody, you have to be somebody who's following everybody and who's looking at all of these things. Because sometimes the trending topics, particularly for some of the bigger things, will be things you don't expect at all. So for instance, if there was the BAFTAs, the BAFTAs happened, and there was that Angela Bassett does the thing, went viral all over Twitter. And lots of the bigger publications will have been straight in and had something ready to go, like fill in the blanks of who won the BAFTAs that night, but they would not have expected that particular Angela Bassett does a thing, to go absolutely mad online. So that is something that you won't get from generally scrolling the internet. That's something that you wouldn't necessarily pick up from generally looking at search volume, historical search data, because it's not there. It's not there. It happened then. And so people who are on the ground, people who are in the know, people who are thought leaders will be very well placed for this kind of content, for this kind of topical elements. And it's important to have those kinds of folks within your team for lots of reasons, as well as for some of the evergreen things. Mordy Oberstein: The point is emerging topics and evergreen, you very often need both, but they're very, very, very, very different. From the mindset between SEO and editorial, both types of topics, to the strategy, to the keyword research, to understanding the topics and predicting it, all of it's very, very different. And you need both, but you need to balance it. So how do you balance it? So we asked, he's an absolute SEO legend, especially in the news space like we mentioned, he's the founder of NewzDash, John Shehata. We asked John, how do you combine your evergreen content strategy to help you rank with your emerging content pieces? Take it away, John. John Shehata: One of the biggest questions I faced, or challenges I faced over the last 25 years working in my professional career, is the balancing act between writing about new trending, emerging news content and evergreen content. And it has been always challenging for so many publishers. You see publishers who are fully focused on one or the other. Today, I'm going to tell you it's important to have and maintain a balance. And each content type has its own pros and cons anyway. So if you talk about news, this is fresh, relevant content. It only drive traffic for maybe one to three days, max. It ranks instantly, so you can see your rankings within minutes after publishing content. It depends on your authority and other factors for sure. And all kind of traditional SEO work gets into it, plus freshness, CTR, and few news SEO ranking factors. So it's really good. It drives a lot of traffic, and it drives traffic immediately. And it gives you authority on the topics that you cover a lot. When it comes to evergreen, evergreen is really, it's continuous relevant content for the reader. So it's relevant today, it's relevant tomorrow, it's relevant next year, and so on. The beauty about it is it gets a lot of traffic, and this traffic can last a month, sometimes over a year, choose to last for much longer than that. But with more freshness updates, now we see maybe nine to 16 months of traffic, but it takes more time to rank. All the traditional SEO ranking factors get into it, and so on. So you have these two different types of ranking content types. The beauty about news is you get instant traffic, or almost minutes after posting. It also gets traffic from Discover, so most of the news content do very well in Google Discover, but evergreen on the other hand, provides you with sustainable traffic, especially with low news cycles. So we have seen this many times, the news is very hot and after a while it gets very, very slow and there's not much traffic your site is getting. Evergreen content helps you with that kind of an issue. But evergreen content doesn't appear much in Google Discover, rarely. It's more focused on news. So between these two, the question is how much content should I produce? My answer is always like 20-80 or 30-70 kind of approach, and it doesn't matter which direction. So you may want to produce, if the majority of your content is news. So you want to produce maybe 20% of your content in evergreen, and make sure that you refresh that content periodically, whenever that content goes below a certain threshold. And on the other side, if the majority of your content is evergreen, it might getting into news harder. So again, 80-20 kind of rule, you may want to select a certain topic or vertical, and cover all the news around it. And that will give you more instant traffic, and it help you all the time because the evergreen content takes more time to rank. I hope this was helpful to you guys, and thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, John. Make sure you check out John over on X at J-S-H-E-H-A-T-A, J Shehata. Also, make sure you check out NewzDash. If you're in the SEO space for news, you should definitely check out NewzDash. It's a dashboard to manage all of your news, SEO, getting instant SEO recommendations of visibility, track new search visibility and market share, monitor trends, and spy on the competition with NewzDash, little plug for John and NewzDash. There's so many points to dive into. One point we didn't mention before, is just the emerging content and Discover, that's how you're opening up to so much traffic potential by covering emerging topics and emerging trends. So even if you don't have to necessarily, you may want to. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. And I think that what he was saying was that don't necessarily expect your emerging trending topics to rank all the time, because Discover will come and then it will go. And that's okay. That's fine. That's sort of what we expect. But I think that him talking about the sort of 80-20 rule, I think that's a great rule of thumb. And I think that also, this brings to mind some of the challenges with having that sort of mechanic and organic content, like the content that's responding to different trends and things, is that sometimes you have to be aware of which ones those are because you might also have to call those later on. Because as he says, they'll rank for a while, but then they won't rank for very long. So it might be that next year maybe that trend isn't a thing anymore, maybe people aren't interested in vuvuzelas anymore. Do you remember when vuvuzelas were a thing, when they had the World Cup in South Africa and vuvuzelas were a trending toy around- Mordy Oberstein: That's soccer? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Crystal Carter: But they're not trending here anymore. So if you had content on that back in the day, then you don't necessarily need that content on your site anymore. So that's something that you should think about when you're doing this, trending topics is keeping on top of those as well, because of the way that the ebb and flow and because of the way that the traffic ebb and flows, and- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a whole different paradigm. The ebb and flow, it's relevant one day, and not relevant the next day. If it's something that you're going to depend on, it means you something you're going to very much have to keep up on constantly, to keep on top of things and keep developing new content on a consistent, constant basis. And being in that case, if you're talking about Google Discover and all that kind of things, you need to establish yourself as a relevant entity around that. Which goes back to what you were saying before about establishing that with some of the evergreen content. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Balance. It's all about balance. Mordy Oberstein: All balance. Like Mr. Miyagi said, "First learn balance." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: All comes back to Mr. Miyagi in every way, shape and form. Crystal Carter: I mean, we can wax on or wax off about any of these things, but- Mordy Oberstein: I would, but I have to go paint the fence. Sorry, I'm busy. Tomorrow, I would also, but I have to sand the floor. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay, of course. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, anyway. So anyway, there's a little feature that we wanted to talk about. It's spreading its wings across the SERP. In fact, we'll get to a little bit of data around how it's spreading wings. And sometimes it can appear for some trending-ish or trending adjacent sort of content, sometimes it appears with some evergreen-ish kind of content. It's definitely an interesting thing to know as we go to the top of the SERP. So we're talking about the things to know SERP feature, get it? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Which by the way, according to Rank Ranger's data, it looks like prior to the start of January, it was ranking, or not ranking, it was appearing on 8% of all desktop SERPs. And now it shows that mobile SERPs rather, and now it's appearing as the time of this recording, because it could change by the time we release the episode. Now it's appearing around 10%, so a little two point jump for the things to know feature is spreading. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I think people want to know these things. Mordy Oberstein: They do want to know the things. So just so you know what the things to know thing is, if you're searching for something, I don't know, social media addiction, I was going to search for screen time addiction because my kids are glued to fricking screens all the time. You get on desktop, you get a little panel to the right, that's called Things to Know. And basically, a series of tabs with a header, and then you can open up the tab and it'll show you information. So for example, for social media addiction, it talks about things to know our definition of, or symptoms of, or problems of. And you click a tab, and you basically get a little snippet of content, like a featured snippet that will tell you, "Yes. Why is social media addiction a problem? Social media addiction is a problem because it can lead to issues such as fear of missing out, anxiety and stress, and so forth." And it comes from a website. So it's basically little blurbs of content, little mini-featured snippets, or little people also ask, but they're topically set up. They're almost entity based around the topic. And they're very interesting to me, because again, they break down things topically and they offer you new traffic possibilities, or visibility possibilities. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that in terms of evergreen content, and this sort of more dynamic trending topic, I think it also can give you a steer in terms of the kinds of things that Google understands to be related to that entity, because they're very often associated. When I've seen them, I've seen them very often associated with things that are entity entities- Mordy Oberstein: Very entity-based, yeah. Crystal Carter: Right. So when I see them around, like I've seen them around blogging. The blogging term for instance, and they'll say things to know about blogging, like, oh, how to start a blog, or how long does it take to build one? What does it cost? That sort of thing. These are clues to the kinds of content that users are going to be expecting from somebody who's writing about that topic. They are clues to the kinds of information that is core to that entity. And I think that that's really important to think about. So I think on your social media one, there's definition, symptoms, problems, impact, these are the sort of core topics that are related to this. And I think that it's interesting, it's another example of Google using all the tools in their arsenal to sort of disambiguate, and to sort of offer different user journeys around some of these topics. And I think that it's important because it gives even, sometimes it gives you a clue into something that you might not have even considered. I've had it where I've looked up something, and it was like things to know, and it was like, "Oh, it might also cause these problems." And I say, "Oh, I hadn't even considered that." I would not have even Googled that before, but I'm getting a clue here from this particular feature. So I think that's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So what's interesting, I find interesting about it, first off, just to show you that it's entity-based, meaning that it's looking at the topic as an entity. Like what is this topic? How do we break it down? Conceptually, what is this topic? The format was stolen, not stolen, unless Google is stealing it from itself. From knowledge panels. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And in knowledge panels, maybe a couple of years ago, I'm not good at the timelines. I always forget times. Google started adding tabs to knowledge panels. So I searched for Constitution of the United States, because we're in the middle of an election season so that came up. And it has saying words, rules, written by, all these different tabs. That format from the knowledge panel is essentially the format from things to know. And what it's doing is, like you mentioned, is topically parsing out the topic, which is why it's great to understand what do I need to know about this? Or for example, I looked up on CTE, which is the disease you get for being hit too many times in the head while playing American football. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's football, it's playoff time, right? Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it has number of players, like how many NFL players have CTE, notable players CTE, percentage of NFL players have had CTE, causes. It's really breaking down topically what's relevant, but I also find that sometimes it shows up for things that kind of straddle the line between topics that are evergreen topics and topics that can also be looked at from an emerging topic point of view. So let's take autism education. So you're always going to have advances in that area, in that field. There's always going to be new things coming out. There's always going to be new topics to talk about, but it's also an evergreen sort of topic, because there's historical information, historical knowledge, historical data, all that kind of good stuff. And there's things to know, shows up. It has a tab for programs, autism education programs, has impact of autism on education, how to improve special education schools. So it's one of those things that if you're in an area where you're kind of on the line between, it's an emerging area, but it's also an evergreen area. And you need to create both of those kind of topics, or both of the kind of content. It can help you, A, understand what you need to have for the evergreen, but it can also help you understand how to contextualize- Crystal Carter: Yes, Mordy Oberstein: The emerging topics. Crystal Carter: Yes, that was the word that was rattling around in my head. It's precisely, precisely context. Context. These are topics that people need context on, and that's why it says things to know. So one of the examples you've pulled out is about AI. That's an emerging topic. Mordy Oberstein: Emerging, but it's also not emerging. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But it is emerging. Crystal Carter: It's also not emerging, but it's- Mordy Oberstein: But it's not emerging. It's so confusing. Crystal Carter: It's like a butterfly. Mordy Oberstein: I wish I hadn't bought an AI robot to tell me the answer if it's emerging not. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that's the thing. This is the web, and so sometimes people are coming to a topic completely new. They've never heard of this particular topic, so they need some context. Sometimes people have been working in AI for the whole time, they've been working in this field for the whole time, they don't need all the context or whatever. But I think what's fairly consistent around these things to know, is you tend to see them, and around the entity things, is I tend to see them for big, big head terms. So had term keywords, like shorter words, like AI, or a few words there because they're trying to give you enough context to go deeper, because Google's looking at your search and they're going, "This isn't all you want." You need to know what it is, or you need to know why it's like that, or you need to know something. Here's some context to guide you to get better information. We can give you better information if you give us better inputs. And I think that it's another opportunity for them to do that, and it's super useful for those who are thinking about building clusters around some of these head terms, and who are interested in thinking about how they can build, balance those clusters with some of that emerging topic content. Mordy Oberstein: Now you know what helps me have context for my life as an SEO person? Barry. Crystal Carter: Do you know who covers every emerging topic in SEO? Mordy Oberstein: And also sometimes hits an evergreen topics, like how many awards do I need to rank? Crystal Carter: I mean, I think he's probably one of the most evergreen entities in SEO. Mordy Oberstein: But he's also constantly emerging in all new ways. It's that time of the show where we talk about Barry, and then smoothly transitioned to the SEO news. Here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. We got a lot to sort out this week as the Snappy News is brought to you by the letter C, for a controversy. Let's start with Gisele Navarro, who wrote an article for her brand, HouseFresh, called How Google is Killing Independent Sites Like Ours. In the article, Gisele shows huge publishers trying to rank for review content. So basically, not basically, literally, the Rolling Stone writing content like the Five Best Microwaves for 2024, because the Rolling Stone is now known for not covering Bob Dylan, but for covering the best fridge. She goes through how some of these sites are now out of their lane and dominating the product review space, and how their site's content and the focus on experience and testing all these products like they say they are, isn't exactly 100% trustworthy. And she kind of goes through, "Hey Google, you should be ranking those hidden gems that you've talked about in the past." Then on top of it, or as that's happening, Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Land, title Article Complaining About Being Outranked on Google Being Outranked by Reddit. And that caused a whole firestorm, because of all the Reddit controversy on the SERP. So here's the article now being outranked by Reddit for the query it was meant to target, drama. Then Google did respond back, which Barry Schwartz covered at SE Roundtable with Google, we want to reward the best content no matter site size. And Danny Sullivan, Google search liaison, had a really nice discussion with Gisele, going back and forth. I thought it was a very healthy kind of discussion. Danny sort of explaining how they factor things in and what they're considering, and all that kind of stuff. We'll link to it in the show notes. You can have a look at it yourself. And I thought it was actually one of the more mature SEO conversations out on Twitter, these sort of things in a while. Then a day later, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land wrote an article, quote, "What should a Google rank in search when all the content sucks?" And Danny's right. And he goes through looking at all the content around review of product reviews, basically not being the greatest. I've covered this a few times, more than a few times, that there really isn't a lot of great content out there. So this is basically the foundation of what has been a firestorm within the SEO industry, about big brands who are getting out of their lane, dominating their results. Google, what are you doing? And then people coming and saying, "Well, what's Google supposed to do, because all the content stinks. What's going on?" I have many thoughts, many, many, many, many thoughts. Where to start? One, what these brands are doing, the Rolling Stone, covering the best fridges of 2024, is both logical and nuts. It's nuts for obvious reasons. The Rolling Stone is a 4magazine that's supposed to cover again, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Billy Joel, whatever, not best microwaves in 2024. However, it does kind of make sense for them because publishers are having a very hard time, have been having a very hard time, and they're looking for new sources of revenue, so they're branching out. So that's what I mean, it's logical from a need point of view, but from a topical point of view, it's kind of crazy. Now expecting magic from Google, that Google's going to magically know all these things and Google's going to magically get all the results right, and not looking how Google has improved over time, and having a more balanced look at the idea of, okay, there are things to improve upon, which I'll get to in a second, but things have been progressively better, overall. Yes, there are hiccups, or moments in times where we have a lull in quality while Google figures things out, yes. But overall, things are progressing in the right direction. I think expecting magic from Google is fantastical. So we need to balance what's happening with, I think, a more mature outlook on what a search engine is able to do as technology takes a long time to develop. And Google, and its algorithm, need to rely on technology in order to get results right. Now, I would like to see Google, if I were to be able to point out conceptually what I think would be great for them to be able to focus on if they can, is I think Google looks at quality from a very topical point of view. Is the content quality content from purely, not purely, but from a very heavily focused... Yes, it's quality in terms of how this piece of content deals with the topic. And you say, "As opposed to what? How else would you look at quality?" You will look at quality from an identity point of view. Does it make sense for this website to be talking about this? Does it make sense for this website to cover this? Is it aligned with the website's identity? Why are they writing this? Why are they saying this? Is it that the Rolling Stone wants to build a brand and really become known for and reliant by others, for their content around reviews the way the Wirecutter does? So yes, the Wirecutter has a commercial incentive, but they're also building a brand. And that's a much healthier place to be in terms of the incentive to produce quality content, than just trying to get traffic. So I think Google, if it can, needs to look at why they're saying it, who's saying it, and look at identity a little bit more as part of the quality picture. Just to give you an analogy, let's say I am on, I'm on, I don't know, a politics news show. And I start offering not to talk about whatever the current events of the day are on this news program on CNN or NBC, whatever it is. But instead, I started offering you tips about how to shoot a basketball. And I, myself, am not a basketball expert. I'm a politics expert. That's why I'm on CNN. That would be weird. You would be like, "Okay, you might be making a good point about how to shoot a basketball, but then I'm not absorbing that. I'm not taking that in. I'm not doing anything with that because why are you talking about it, and why are you talking about it here?" It's the same thing. Why is Rolling Stone talking about fridges, and why are they talking about it here, and why are they talking about it now, and why are they talking about it at all? So being able, for the algorithm to be able to better decipher that, I think would be very, very helpful. Okay, onto Danny Goodwin's point, that the content out there is just terrible. That is correct, and Google has been trying to incentivize content, better content for a long time. For example, Google's been talking about hidden gems. They're trying to rank forums, which they've gone a little bit too far, with the whole Reddit thing. They've been trying to democratize the web for a long time, trying to incentivize business owners to write more, because business owners are the actual content topical experts, and not a content marketing agency. So they've been trying to push this for a long time. The problem is it's a very, very slow burn. It takes a long time to do this, if it's even possible for Google to do, and that's a whole other debate. The issue with that is, is that brands look at Google as the incentive, right? They look at it as, "Okay, what does Google reward? What does it not reward, because we are simply trying to get an ROI. We are simply trying to get traffic. We're simply trying to get conversions." So whatever Google is able to do in terms of quality, that is the maximum which we are willing to invest into quality. If Google's quality threshold goes up, we will now have to increase our threshold. That's a very unhealthy dynamic, because again, you're relying on technology to be able to emerge rather quickly, which technology takes a long time to emerge and takes a long time for Google to be able to do things. Look how long it took from Google to go from page rank to focusing on things around personal experience in content, that took years for that to happen. So relying on Google to change the incentive is not healthy. What should happen is, and what I hope happens is, is that brands start looking at their branding as the incentive. So not to pick on the Rolling Stone, but just using it because it's such an obvious example. If the Rolling Stone's branding team said, "Hey, wait a second, we're not known for Bob Dylan anymore. We're not known for covering Led Zeppelin anymore. Now we're known for microwaves. That's not good for our branding, that's not good for our brand recognition. That's not good for our brand perception. It might be good for our immediate conversion and immediate traffic goals, but it's not good for our overall branding. We need to change course." That's a healthy incentive. And that's an incentive, why? Because that's an incentive that's based on users, not on algorithms. So that needs to happen, and brands need to start taking that, I wouldn't even call it a risk, but brands need to start taking that focus off of the immediate ROI and start looking at the long-term conversions. Because I predict what is going to happen is going to be an absolute train wreck of epic... You ever see like a car race and a NASCAR or something, or Formula One, whatever you prefer. I don't prefer any of them. And all the cars get into an accident. That's what's going to happen in my opinion. We're going to see an epic car crash of unprecedented proportions on the web because what users want and what these brands are doing, are so juxtaposed, it's going to end in madness. And if a brand wants to get ahead of this, what I recommend doing is focus on branding, focus on what your users want and how you want to be seen, and not on the immediate traffic conversion, ROI kind of stuff. And it's part of the web maturing. I think in terms of maturity, the web is sort of a teenager. And as a teenager, I have teenagers at home. They're focused on immediate gratification. I want the video game now. We're focused on conversions, we're focused on acquisition, we're focused on traffic, we're focused on all the ROI, and they're not focused on long-term brand perception. So as to when matures, I hope that brands do focus on that, take away the focus on the immediate, which means a little bit of focus off of the algorithms, and more focus onto user perception, and I think that will be the right incentive to create the better content that Danny Goodwin points out in his article, doesn't exist. That was a mouthful. That was a lot. And boy, did we get abstract, and boy was that not very snappy. So apologies for the not so snappy, Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: I always wonder when we do this, I always wonder, we have new listeners, or listeners who are not from the SEO world, coming onto the show, listening to the show, like "Who's this Barry guy?" Crystal Carter: He's an evergreen element in the show. He's like a spruce. Barry Schwartz, that's what we're talking, things you need to know about our show, is we'll talk about Barry Schwartz at some point. Mordy Oberstein: No, for real. If want to, I always say if you want to learn, and we talked about this on previous episode of the podcast, read SEOroundtable.com every day so you can understand where SEO is heading. Even though it might seem like nitty gritty to you, it'll give you a sense of where things are going and where things have been all at the same time. It's evergreen and emerging. It's SEOroundtable.com Crystal Carter: Indeed, and you can understand the pace of things, and Barry shouts out lots of important people to follow. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, also perfect. Crystal Carter: Lots of important entities and things that are going on. So yeah, absolutely. You can't go wrong there. Mordy Oberstein: Can't go wrong with Barry. And you can't go wrong with Claudio Cabrera, who is our follow of the week this week. Who is also, by the way, the VP of Newsroom Strategy and Audience at the Athletic. I'm combining so many worlds here with this follow of the week. I'm combining editorial, we just spoke about emerging content. SEO, we always speak about, and sports. Crystal Carter: It's perfect synergy. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Check out Claudio on X over at CECabrera underscore, C-E-C-A-B-R-E-A-R-A, underscore, he's brilliant, super nice. Crystal Carter: Super nice. Mordy Oberstein: One of the most lovely fellows, and his feed is filled with sports stuff too. Again, right now, a bunch of Lions stuff, go Lions. The mighty underdog, the lovable underdog. Crystal Carter: He's fantastic, and he does a lot of events and outreach as well, so do keep an eye out for opportunities where he's sharing knowledge there. And also, one of the reasons why we wanted to follow him this week is because I think the Athletic do a fantastic job of balancing emerging and evergreen topics. So it's really important. Even if you are a small website and you don't have millions of people coming to your website every week, looking at the ways that some larger websites, like the Athletic, are handling these kinds of challenges, can give you a lot of insight into things you can do. So absolutely, follow Claudio, and check out the work that they're doing over at The Athletic. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Good. Shout out, good strategy, good stuff. And for Claudio's sake, go Lions. By the time this episode airs, we'll know the result, but I'm hoping for the Lions. I really am. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, just to give people context, they haven't won a playoff game until this year, for like, I don't know, since like 1992. They're like blue collar, hardworking kind of team. They got a great coach. You talk about biting people's knee caps off. Crystal Carter: Oh, my God. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he's great though. He's like, "Yeah, what's your philosophy on coaching? I'm going to bite your knee caps off." Love it. Crystal Carter: Sports ball. Mordy Oberstein: Sports ball. One of these underdog kind of stories, they've been losers forever, but now they're winning, and they're fans who've been suffering for 30, 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. Crystal Carter: They're trying to emerge. Mordy Oberstein: They're emerging victorious. Crystal Carter: They're trying to emerge from an evergreen situation. Mordy Oberstein: Their evergreen losing situation. Crystal Carter: They're trying to change their evergreen content and emerge victorious. And we wish them well, and whoever else is doing sports. Yay, sports. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, but not the Ravens. We don't wish them well. Crystal Carter: I have no comment. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, as a Steelers fan, I feel obligated... By the way, I want to tell you my wife's from Baltimore, so I'm a Steelers fan. They're from Pittsburgh. My wife's from Baltimore. Her family are all Ravens fans because they're Baltimore, and she's trying to convince my kids to go for the Ravens in the playoffs because Steelers are out and the Ravens are still in, and I'm not having it. There's like a mutiny in my house, and I'm not having it. Crystal Carter: Are you like, "Never more?" Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm never more, because it'd be an emerging some punishment, if this happens. Crystal Carter: We're basketball fans. Mordy Oberstein: You're all grounded for life. You're evergreen league grounded. I've taken it too far. We've taken it too far. Crystal Carter: I think we're done now. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we're done now here. We'll stop here. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode, as we dive into starting SEO from scratch. You make the dough, you mix the water. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, webinars, and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at 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 John Shehata Claudio E. Cabrera Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Newzdash GDdash News: How Google is killing independent sites like ours Article complaining about being outranked on Google being outranked by Reddit Google: We Want To Reward The Best Content No Matter Site Size What should Google rank in Search when all the content sucks? Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter John Shehata Claudio E. Cabrera Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Newzdash GDdash News: How Google is killing independent sites like ours Article complaining about being outranked on Google being outranked by Reddit Google: We Want To Reward The Best Content No Matter Site Size What should Google rank in Search when all the content sucks? Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting together 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 ever constant, although sometimes emerging, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello internet, SEO people. Welcome to the podcast. We have emerged, but we are always here in the podcast ecosystem, and you can find us where you find podcasts all the time. It's just an evergreen resource for you to learn and enjoy SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Evergreen, like those trees that just don't care about winter. Crystal Carter: They don't. They're like, "Winter schminter." Mordy Oberstein: Winter schminter. Crystal Carter: I don't care. I got needle leaves. The snow goes right through me. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Not only do they not care about the temperature, but we've got snow covered too. Just be gone, snow. Crystal Carter: Do what I like. Whenever I think of evergreens, I think of the tree that I keep in my garden. Which I have a little evergreen tree, and I bought him a big pot. He's a little lopsided. Bless him, but I like him anyway. We've had him for a while. Mordy Oberstein: Do you talk to him? Crystal Carter: No, no. We bring him inside for Christmas and cover him in junk. And I always think that all the other trees are making fun of him. They're like, "Look at you. You look like an idiot in December." And he's like, "Oh, you know, whatever." Mordy Oberstein: So do you usually have conversations in your mind about various trees talking to each other, or just sometimes? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I used to talk to my kid about how the trees would take a nap at winter time. They take a nap, they get themselves ready for bed, and then they take a nap at wintertime. Then they wake up in the spring. Mordy Oberstein: What do you call it when the tree becomes, I don't know, your chair. That's not a nap. It's like a permanent nap time. Crystal Carter: I mean, there's a book about that. I think that the Giving Tree, or something like that. Mordy Oberstein: The Giving Tree, Shell Silverstein. Crystal Carter: Who is fantastic. And yeah, it touches the old heart right there. Gets you right there. Mordy Oberstein: You know what else touches the heart? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: 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 download SEO checklist templates, toolkits, cheat sheets, and more. Head over to Wix, SEO. But look for our new resource center, it will help you emerge victorious and stay that way forever. Too mas, too much overselling? Crystal Carter: No, I mean, I think I definitely have warm and fuzzy feelings about our resource center. I think it's incredible. I think it makes me feel warm inside and like a lovely mug of cocoa. Mordy Oberstein: Well, speaking of emerging and everlasting, that's precisely our topic today, in case you haven't guessed. I feel like we drop Easter eggs every episode for a good five minutes, about what the episode is going to be about. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We don't need the topic. You should already know by now what it is. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Just take it all in. We're ready. We're ready for you. Mordy Oberstein: But officially, we're taking a hard look at SEO for evergreen topic versus SEO for emerging topics. Which is harder, ranking for emerging or evergreen content? Why would you even want to focus on emerging content versus evergreen content? And how the content formats impact your approach to SEO. Plus an absolute SEO legend, especially for news content, the former global VP of Audience Development at Condé Nast, and the founder of the new SEO tool, NewzDash, John Shehata will stop by to share how he balances focusing on both emerging and evergreen content for SEO. We'll also head to the top of the SERP and look at what's happening for an emerging-ish content feature, or a little SERP feature, that seems to be spreading its wings. 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 put on your fanciest spandex overalls and climb up to the type rope that is this circus, that is all about balancing SEO for evergreen and emerging content on this, the 76th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. I've always wanted one of those spandex overall suits that they used to put on people in the circus, where they used to shoot them out of a canon kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. The strongman sort of suits. Yeah, no- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the strongman suit. Exactly. Crystal Carter: Yeah. They recently bought back gladiators in the UK on the BBC, and there's a lot of that, those sort of- Mordy Oberstein: American Gladiators, where the whole tone is steroids. Crystal Carter: The Netflix documentary on that can confirm. Mordy Oberstein: I didn't watch that. I saw that. Crystal Carter: It will absolutely confirm that. Mordy Oberstein: It looks disturbing. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: What do you want from a dude whose name is Nitro? Crystal Carter: I know. I mean, I feel like you could do that for SEOs, but they'd be more like, I don't know- Mordy Oberstein: Markup. Crystal Carter: Right? Markup, here comes Markup. Mordy Oberstein: Here comes Markup. Crystal Carter: SEO gladiators. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no, it's Redirect. Crystal Carter: He's going to disallow the competitor who's coming in. Mordy Oberstein: Well done. Well done. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. Okay. All right. So speaking of IPs that have lasted a long time, we are going to be talking about SEO and for ever evergreen content, and how it differs from other content. I think one of the things that's important to think about is that when we talk about evergreen content, that's essentially the kind of content that you expect to rank for a long time, that you expect to be on your page for a long time. And it's important to think about what that might be for your business. So depending on what business you have, these will be maybe some of your core keywords, and they might be some of the core topics, but it's also worth balancing that with content that's in the now, that's happening regularly, that's being updated. So for instance, if you were to talk about game shows like American Gladiators, or a competitions and things like that, it might be the- Mordy Oberstein: Like the Price is Right. Crystal Carter: Oh, Price is Right. Oh, that's a great show. Mordy Oberstein: Really competitive. $1 Bob. Crystal Carter: $1. Come on down. So for instance, if you were talking about a particular topic, you would want to have a page that ranked for that, but you'd also want to have news coming through there. And this can give you a few different levers for connecting with new customers and for getting different value from the SERP. So for instance, if you were a Beyonce fan club website or Beyonce fan site, you would probably have a general page that was maybe about fun facts about Beyonce, or maybe her discography, or that sort of thing. So you might have something like that, that's a core piece of content that you don't expect to update that often. It ranks for a certain number of core keywords, and it's essentially the top of your pillar. So when you think about content clusters, it will essentially be the top of your pillar. Along with that, you might want to add in trending topics. So let's say Beyonce's in the news. So she was recently in, and I'm a big fan, so I know no way too much about this. But she was recently in the news because she had her film released, and Taylor Swift came to the release. So that's something that you might want to add in. So you might have an evergreen page on your site, that's generally about Taylor Swift and Beyonce's history together, because they have a bit of history. And so you might want to have that there. But then you can add in a webpage that talks about the new thing that happened where Taylor Swift came to the premier in London. Then you might want to have another article that talks about how Beyonce went to Taylor Swift's film release as well. All of these things can be interlinked. I think that's the important thing to think about, about evergreen content. Evergreen content is a really good opportunity to make sure that you have links that last to your content, and that you can link to, and that also that other people can link to. And this is also something that can be really, really useful if you're somebody who does something on an annual basis, or a seasonal basis as well. We talked about seasonality, but for instance, if you have a situation where you are doing an awareness day, and it happens every year, it's worth having an evergreen page that is general information about that awareness day, that you can link to when you're talking about the one for this year, or you're talking about the event, or you're talking about other things that are related to it. But think about evergreen content as being sort of the anchor for some of the other trending topics that you can add into your website, and that you can keep people coming back and being more enthused about the new content. Mordy Oberstein: So to that point, and one of the ways I think about emerging content, and I've been thinking a lot about it lately, just coincidentally, a lot lately. First off, it is a brand play. Like you're saying, if you want to show that you're current, that you're relevant, that you're in the know about this. For example, that they were recording this, I just found out yesterday that Billy Joel was releasing a new song for the first time 17 years. Crystal Carter: Right, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah, just some new song, 17 years, new album would be, I don't know, like 30 years. But anyway, if you have a website about Billy Joel, which that sounds fabulous and super trendy, just like Taylor Swift and Beyonce, the same, a little bit less hair, but anyway. You wouldn't want to add that onto your website so people understand that you actually know what you're talking about, about the topic. But you can also use it as a brand play and even SEOs. First off, as an SEO play, when you're trying to get started. So as you're trying to get your website going and you're trying to get some momentum and some cadence, like we talked about on a previous podcast episode, you need to have a digital presence. And that means people will stay sharing your content in social media, and then maybe eventually taking the content they're seeing on social media being shared, and linking to that. Look at the web as a dark sky. It is pitch black out there, and Google's looking for lights. You want your lights to be big, so that Google goes to it. So having a well-established digital presence is very, very important for getting SEO momentum. Your evergreen topics are not as trendy. They're not as trendy, they're not as cool, and they're not going to get shared as much. They're really meant, in my mind, that's an SEO play. But if you're getting started and you want people to know who you are and look to you, the emerging content, that trendy-ish or emerging kind of topics, that's what's going to get shared on social, that's going to get those initial links, and that's going to let you pull in traffic from evergreen topics as Google starts to recognize that you are a worthwhile digital entity. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that the evergreen topic should be a very strategic, in an effort to establish your authority. So for instance, if you're talking about Billy Joel or whatever, you need to be able to say, "Oh, in his corpus of work," or something, and refer to yourself, right? Mordy Oberstein: It has to be that balance. You have to be able to balance back between the different types of pieces to establish that credibility, 100%. Crystal Carter: So you're showing this to people who are visiting your website and you're showing this to Google as well. So you're able to refer to yourself, here's all of the things that I know about the history of this particular musical artist and the things that they've done. Here's this new cool thing that you found. And so this gives you a couple of different levers. And I think that that's the important thing to think about when you're doing SEO and everybody thinks like, "Oh, I want to get on page one." It's like there are lots of page ones. There's page ones of images, there's page one of news, there's page one of lots of different filters within Google, so think about all of those. And the news items and the trending topics are going to have less competition in the first instance, right? First movers get a value. So there's definitely a first mover advantage in terms of trending topics. But again, if you're able to anchor that with your evergreen content, that will add more effort to that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You have to balance back and forth. It's why we asked John what we asked John in a few moments, we'll get to that. But it's a great point about emerging topics being great places to get started, because there is no search volume. There is no end date, but I'll say you have to be a little bit careful. Let's say, okay, we're recording this three weeks out of the Super Bowl. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, three weeks. Okay. Let's say Lamar Jackson, the quarterback for the Ravens, breaks both of his legs in some sort of miracle and can't play that. I don't like the Ravens. I was going to say that. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I was like, "Miracle?" Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, sorry. I don't know. Let's make it, yeah, let's say he breaks both of his legs. I'm just going to go with it. It's a highly authoritative kind of topic, meaning the websites that generally rank for this kind of stuff are super authorities. It's a high interest topic, it's the Super Bowl. Who's Google going to turn to cover this story on the web? It's going to be things like ESPN, CBS news. So just because it's emerging, doesn't mean that it's not highly competitive. You need to be strategic about what you target for emerging topics. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. There's a fantastic article on the Wix SEO hub called Finding Trending Keywords for SEO, and they talk about this as well. You need to think about that, absolutely. But it's also really, really important to think about where you're getting your trending topics from. We have a section on the podcast that talks about people also ask, fun with people also ask. People also ask updates incredibly quickly. So if there was an accident and somebody said he had a thing, people will also ask, say, "What happened to this person?" And people also ask would update quickly, and Google will be looking for an answer to that question. If you have that answer on your website, then they will send traffic to you. And this is something that, and again, it also demonstrated expertise that you know that that happened just now, and you were that quick to make it happen. Mordy Oberstein: And that people are looking for it. Because this is what gets a little bit tricky with emerging content, you have to have your finger on the pulse. It's not like one of those kind of things in SEO, you're like, "Ah, I'll use a tool. I don't really understand the niche." There's no way around it. You have to understand that niche because you need to know if it's worthwhile. Sure, you can rank for it, but if it's completely obscure and not really the real story, or the story's going to change in a day anyway, and there's really very limited opportunity for this aspect of the story to rank, not worth it necessarily. So you have to have your finger on the pulse because there are no search volumes, there are no historical trends. So seeing something like the people also ask update, will tell you, signal, okay, people are actually looking for this. But you probably want to use social media, obviously. You really just want to have your finger on the pulse and not just rely on the SERP, because the SERP, outside of things like the knowledge panel, people also ask can be very slow. Knowledge panel, by the way, great for seeing things like sports trades, it updates automatically. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. Exactly. And I think that's something to think about with some of the trending topics as well. For some of the new things, sometimes Google offers some instant answers on some of those things, like sports scores for instance, that they have a widget for that. They have a thing that works on that. But I think this also comes to things like trending topics will come and go, and trending topics will happen very quickly, so there might be a lot of news that's coming out. For instance, let's say if we were talking about the World Series or something, there's going to be a lot of news about the World Series. But it would be worthwhile having a page about the World Series and whether it was the World Series for that year, or the World Series in general, but having some core content, some core evergreen content that you can link to all of those things. It's also really important as part of your SEO outreach activity. It's very, very difficult to try to build back links to trending topics, as a sort of long tail activity. So if you're trying to build back links to a news article or something, and the news is changing constantly, that's going to be tricky because you might need to make a new article, you might need to make a new post. It might change the link that you got, might be this, all of this sort of stuff. But if you have a core, like a guide, a core topic, evergreen piece, then you can shape a link building campaign around that. You can build a link building campaign around that. You can build that link building campaign for years. So one of the one things you see really often, is people will do an annual report. So there'll be the state of SEO or something, and I've seen that done really well. Or the state of video marketing, and they will update the report every year, but the back links, all of the links go to the same report. So the link stays the same and you maintain your link equity, and I think that's one of the core elements about evergreen content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that points to something I really wanted to talk about, which is that the strategy, the SEO strategy behind both types of content is very, very, very different. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: In my mind, evergreen content is more of your typical content strategy. It's very paced, it's very strategic, it's very topically-driven. What are the topics? What are the subtopics? What do I need to cover? How do I holistically cover all this? What's the next topic logically, and so forth. Emerging content is very strategic, but it's narrative-driven. Okay, what's the narrative? Not right now, I think it's a very important story in this area, is what's the narrative tomorrow going to be. And getting ahead of that, and then being strategic about where you fit in. Because if you're... Great, you figured out the narrative. You know tomorrow, Beyonce announced whatever today, which means that tomorrow this is going to be a big topic of discussion in this way. But now you're competing with Entertainment Weekly and People, and whatever. What's your angle going to be? What can you bring, because it's an emerging topic, it's trendy. What's your angle going to be? If you can't break the news, maybe you can aggregate the news and put stats together that way. Whatever it is, it's very strategic, but it's very different kind of an SEO and content strategy than evergreen topics, and your mindset needs to be completely different. I'll say one last point on this, if you're doing this and you have both types of content, which you should in general, you might need two different people with two different ways of thinking about things, to handle the different topics. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely true. Because I think that... So one of the things that Abby talks about in her trending topics things, is looking at scaling your social listening. That takes time, that takes time, that takes nuance, takes being aware. And also following everybody, you have to be somebody who's following everybody and who's looking at all of these things. Because sometimes the trending topics, particularly for some of the bigger things, will be things you don't expect at all. So for instance, if there was the BAFTAs, the BAFTAs happened, and there was that Angela Bassett does the thing, went viral all over Twitter. And lots of the bigger publications will have been straight in and had something ready to go, like fill in the blanks of who won the BAFTAs that night, but they would not have expected that particular Angela Bassett does a thing, to go absolutely mad online. So that is something that you won't get from generally scrolling the internet. That's something that you wouldn't necessarily pick up from generally looking at search volume, historical search data, because it's not there. It's not there. It happened then. And so people who are on the ground, people who are in the know, people who are thought leaders will be very well placed for this kind of content, for this kind of topical elements. And it's important to have those kinds of folks within your team for lots of reasons, as well as for some of the evergreen things. Mordy Oberstein: The point is emerging topics and evergreen, you very often need both, but they're very, very, very, very different. From the mindset between SEO and editorial, both types of topics, to the strategy, to the keyword research, to understanding the topics and predicting it, all of it's very, very different. And you need both, but you need to balance it. So how do you balance it? So we asked, he's an absolute SEO legend, especially in the news space like we mentioned, he's the founder of NewzDash, John Shehata. We asked John, how do you combine your evergreen content strategy to help you rank with your emerging content pieces? Take it away, John. John Shehata: One of the biggest questions I faced, or challenges I faced over the last 25 years working in my professional career, is the balancing act between writing about new trending, emerging news content and evergreen content. And it has been always challenging for so many publishers. You see publishers who are fully focused on one or the other. Today, I'm going to tell you it's important to have and maintain a balance. And each content type has its own pros and cons anyway. So if you talk about news, this is fresh, relevant content. It only drive traffic for maybe one to three days, max. It ranks instantly, so you can see your rankings within minutes after publishing content. It depends on your authority and other factors for sure. And all kind of traditional SEO work gets into it, plus freshness, CTR, and few news SEO ranking factors. So it's really good. It drives a lot of traffic, and it drives traffic immediately. And it gives you authority on the topics that you cover a lot. When it comes to evergreen, evergreen is really, it's continuous relevant content for the reader. So it's relevant today, it's relevant tomorrow, it's relevant next year, and so on. The beauty about it is it gets a lot of traffic, and this traffic can last a month, sometimes over a year, choose to last for much longer than that. But with more freshness updates, now we see maybe nine to 16 months of traffic, but it takes more time to rank. All the traditional SEO ranking factors get into it, and so on. So you have these two different types of ranking content types. The beauty about news is you get instant traffic, or almost minutes after posting. It also gets traffic from Discover, so most of the news content do very well in Google Discover, but evergreen on the other hand, provides you with sustainable traffic, especially with low news cycles. So we have seen this many times, the news is very hot and after a while it gets very, very slow and there's not much traffic your site is getting. Evergreen content helps you with that kind of an issue. But evergreen content doesn't appear much in Google Discover, rarely. It's more focused on news. So between these two, the question is how much content should I produce? My answer is always like 20-80 or 30-70 kind of approach, and it doesn't matter which direction. So you may want to produce, if the majority of your content is news. So you want to produce maybe 20% of your content in evergreen, and make sure that you refresh that content periodically, whenever that content goes below a certain threshold. And on the other side, if the majority of your content is evergreen, it might getting into news harder. So again, 80-20 kind of rule, you may want to select a certain topic or vertical, and cover all the news around it. And that will give you more instant traffic, and it help you all the time because the evergreen content takes more time to rank. I hope this was helpful to you guys, and thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, John. Make sure you check out John over on X at J-S-H-E-H-A-T-A, J Shehata. Also, make sure you check out NewzDash. If you're in the SEO space for news, you should definitely check out NewzDash. It's a dashboard to manage all of your news, SEO, getting instant SEO recommendations of visibility, track new search visibility and market share, monitor trends, and spy on the competition with NewzDash, little plug for John and NewzDash. There's so many points to dive into. One point we didn't mention before, is just the emerging content and Discover, that's how you're opening up to so much traffic potential by covering emerging topics and emerging trends. So even if you don't have to necessarily, you may want to. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. And I think that what he was saying was that don't necessarily expect your emerging trending topics to rank all the time, because Discover will come and then it will go. And that's okay. That's fine. That's sort of what we expect. But I think that him talking about the sort of 80-20 rule, I think that's a great rule of thumb. And I think that also, this brings to mind some of the challenges with having that sort of mechanic and organic content, like the content that's responding to different trends and things, is that sometimes you have to be aware of which ones those are because you might also have to call those later on. Because as he says, they'll rank for a while, but then they won't rank for very long. So it might be that next year maybe that trend isn't a thing anymore, maybe people aren't interested in vuvuzelas anymore. Do you remember when vuvuzelas were a thing, when they had the World Cup in South Africa and vuvuzelas were a trending toy around- Mordy Oberstein: That's soccer? Crystal Carter: Yes, yes. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Crystal Carter: But they're not trending here anymore. So if you had content on that back in the day, then you don't necessarily need that content on your site anymore. So that's something that you should think about when you're doing this, trending topics is keeping on top of those as well, because of the way that the ebb and flow and because of the way that the traffic ebb and flows, and- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a whole different paradigm. The ebb and flow, it's relevant one day, and not relevant the next day. If it's something that you're going to depend on, it means you something you're going to very much have to keep up on constantly, to keep on top of things and keep developing new content on a consistent, constant basis. And being in that case, if you're talking about Google Discover and all that kind of things, you need to establish yourself as a relevant entity around that. Which goes back to what you were saying before about establishing that with some of the evergreen content. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Balance. It's all about balance. Mordy Oberstein: All balance. Like Mr. Miyagi said, "First learn balance." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: All comes back to Mr. Miyagi in every way, shape and form. Crystal Carter: I mean, we can wax on or wax off about any of these things, but- Mordy Oberstein: I would, but I have to go paint the fence. Sorry, I'm busy. Tomorrow, I would also, but I have to sand the floor. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay, of course. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, anyway. So anyway, there's a little feature that we wanted to talk about. It's spreading its wings across the SERP. In fact, we'll get to a little bit of data around how it's spreading wings. And sometimes it can appear for some trending-ish or trending adjacent sort of content, sometimes it appears with some evergreen-ish kind of content. It's definitely an interesting thing to know as we go to the top of the SERP. So we're talking about the things to know SERP feature, get it? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Which by the way, according to Rank Ranger's data, it looks like prior to the start of January, it was ranking, or not ranking, it was appearing on 8% of all desktop SERPs. And now it shows that mobile SERPs rather, and now it's appearing as the time of this recording, because it could change by the time we release the episode. Now it's appearing around 10%, so a little two point jump for the things to know feature is spreading. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I think people want to know these things. Mordy Oberstein: They do want to know the things. So just so you know what the things to know thing is, if you're searching for something, I don't know, social media addiction, I was going to search for screen time addiction because my kids are glued to fricking screens all the time. You get on desktop, you get a little panel to the right, that's called Things to Know. And basically, a series of tabs with a header, and then you can open up the tab and it'll show you information. So for example, for social media addiction, it talks about things to know our definition of, or symptoms of, or problems of. And you click a tab, and you basically get a little snippet of content, like a featured snippet that will tell you, "Yes. Why is social media addiction a problem? Social media addiction is a problem because it can lead to issues such as fear of missing out, anxiety and stress, and so forth." And it comes from a website. So it's basically little blurbs of content, little mini-featured snippets, or little people also ask, but they're topically set up. They're almost entity based around the topic. And they're very interesting to me, because again, they break down things topically and they offer you new traffic possibilities, or visibility possibilities. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that in terms of evergreen content, and this sort of more dynamic trending topic, I think it also can give you a steer in terms of the kinds of things that Google understands to be related to that entity, because they're very often associated. When I've seen them, I've seen them very often associated with things that are entity entities- Mordy Oberstein: Very entity-based, yeah. Crystal Carter: Right. So when I see them around, like I've seen them around blogging. The blogging term for instance, and they'll say things to know about blogging, like, oh, how to start a blog, or how long does it take to build one? What does it cost? That sort of thing. These are clues to the kinds of content that users are going to be expecting from somebody who's writing about that topic. They are clues to the kinds of information that is core to that entity. And I think that that's really important to think about. So I think on your social media one, there's definition, symptoms, problems, impact, these are the sort of core topics that are related to this. And I think that it's interesting, it's another example of Google using all the tools in their arsenal to sort of disambiguate, and to sort of offer different user journeys around some of these topics. And I think that it's important because it gives even, sometimes it gives you a clue into something that you might not have even considered. I've had it where I've looked up something, and it was like things to know, and it was like, "Oh, it might also cause these problems." And I say, "Oh, I hadn't even considered that." I would not have even Googled that before, but I'm getting a clue here from this particular feature. So I think that's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So what's interesting, I find interesting about it, first off, just to show you that it's entity-based, meaning that it's looking at the topic as an entity. Like what is this topic? How do we break it down? Conceptually, what is this topic? The format was stolen, not stolen, unless Google is stealing it from itself. From knowledge panels. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And in knowledge panels, maybe a couple of years ago, I'm not good at the timelines. I always forget times. Google started adding tabs to knowledge panels. So I searched for Constitution of the United States, because we're in the middle of an election season so that came up. And it has saying words, rules, written by, all these different tabs. That format from the knowledge panel is essentially the format from things to know. And what it's doing is, like you mentioned, is topically parsing out the topic, which is why it's great to understand what do I need to know about this? Or for example, I looked up on CTE, which is the disease you get for being hit too many times in the head while playing American football. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's football, it's playoff time, right? Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it has number of players, like how many NFL players have CTE, notable players CTE, percentage of NFL players have had CTE, causes. It's really breaking down topically what's relevant, but I also find that sometimes it shows up for things that kind of straddle the line between topics that are evergreen topics and topics that can also be looked at from an emerging topic point of view. So let's take autism education. So you're always going to have advances in that area, in that field. There's always going to be new things coming out. There's always going to be new topics to talk about, but it's also an evergreen sort of topic, because there's historical information, historical knowledge, historical data, all that kind of good stuff. And there's things to know, shows up. It has a tab for programs, autism education programs, has impact of autism on education, how to improve special education schools. So it's one of those things that if you're in an area where you're kind of on the line between, it's an emerging area, but it's also an evergreen area. And you need to create both of those kind of topics, or both of the kind of content. It can help you, A, understand what you need to have for the evergreen, but it can also help you understand how to contextualize- Crystal Carter: Yes, Mordy Oberstein: The emerging topics. Crystal Carter: Yes, that was the word that was rattling around in my head. It's precisely, precisely context. Context. These are topics that people need context on, and that's why it says things to know. So one of the examples you've pulled out is about AI. That's an emerging topic. Mordy Oberstein: Emerging, but it's also not emerging. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But it is emerging. Crystal Carter: It's also not emerging, but it's- Mordy Oberstein: But it's not emerging. It's so confusing. Crystal Carter: It's like a butterfly. Mordy Oberstein: I wish I hadn't bought an AI robot to tell me the answer if it's emerging not. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that's the thing. This is the web, and so sometimes people are coming to a topic completely new. They've never heard of this particular topic, so they need some context. Sometimes people have been working in AI for the whole time, they've been working in this field for the whole time, they don't need all the context or whatever. But I think what's fairly consistent around these things to know, is you tend to see them, and around the entity things, is I tend to see them for big, big head terms. So had term keywords, like shorter words, like AI, or a few words there because they're trying to give you enough context to go deeper, because Google's looking at your search and they're going, "This isn't all you want." You need to know what it is, or you need to know why it's like that, or you need to know something. Here's some context to guide you to get better information. We can give you better information if you give us better inputs. And I think that it's another opportunity for them to do that, and it's super useful for those who are thinking about building clusters around some of these head terms, and who are interested in thinking about how they can build, balance those clusters with some of that emerging topic content. Mordy Oberstein: Now you know what helps me have context for my life as an SEO person? Barry. Crystal Carter: Do you know who covers every emerging topic in SEO? Mordy Oberstein: And also sometimes hits an evergreen topics, like how many awards do I need to rank? Crystal Carter: I mean, I think he's probably one of the most evergreen entities in SEO. Mordy Oberstein: But he's also constantly emerging in all new ways. It's that time of the show where we talk about Barry, and then smoothly transitioned to the SEO news. Here's this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. We got a lot to sort out this week as the Snappy News is brought to you by the letter C, for a controversy. Let's start with Gisele Navarro, who wrote an article for her brand, HouseFresh, called How Google is Killing Independent Sites Like Ours. In the article, Gisele shows huge publishers trying to rank for review content. So basically, not basically, literally, the Rolling Stone writing content like the Five Best Microwaves for 2024, because the Rolling Stone is now known for not covering Bob Dylan, but for covering the best fridge. She goes through how some of these sites are now out of their lane and dominating the product review space, and how their site's content and the focus on experience and testing all these products like they say they are, isn't exactly 100% trustworthy. And she kind of goes through, "Hey Google, you should be ranking those hidden gems that you've talked about in the past." Then on top of it, or as that's happening, Barry Schwartz reported on Search Engine Land, title Article Complaining About Being Outranked on Google Being Outranked by Reddit. And that caused a whole firestorm, because of all the Reddit controversy on the SERP. So here's the article now being outranked by Reddit for the query it was meant to target, drama. Then Google did respond back, which Barry Schwartz covered at SE Roundtable with Google, we want to reward the best content no matter site size. And Danny Sullivan, Google search liaison, had a really nice discussion with Gisele, going back and forth. I thought it was a very healthy kind of discussion. Danny sort of explaining how they factor things in and what they're considering, and all that kind of stuff. We'll link to it in the show notes. You can have a look at it yourself. And I thought it was actually one of the more mature SEO conversations out on Twitter, these sort of things in a while. Then a day later, Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land wrote an article, quote, "What should a Google rank in search when all the content sucks?" And Danny's right. And he goes through looking at all the content around review of product reviews, basically not being the greatest. I've covered this a few times, more than a few times, that there really isn't a lot of great content out there. So this is basically the foundation of what has been a firestorm within the SEO industry, about big brands who are getting out of their lane, dominating their results. Google, what are you doing? And then people coming and saying, "Well, what's Google supposed to do, because all the content stinks. What's going on?" I have many thoughts, many, many, many, many thoughts. Where to start? One, what these brands are doing, the Rolling Stone, covering the best fridges of 2024, is both logical and nuts. It's nuts for obvious reasons. The Rolling Stone is a 4magazine that's supposed to cover again, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Billy Joel, whatever, not best microwaves in 2024. However, it does kind of make sense for them because publishers are having a very hard time, have been having a very hard time, and they're looking for new sources of revenue, so they're branching out. So that's what I mean, it's logical from a need point of view, but from a topical point of view, it's kind of crazy. Now expecting magic from Google, that Google's going to magically know all these things and Google's going to magically get all the results right, and not looking how Google has improved over time, and having a more balanced look at the idea of, okay, there are things to improve upon, which I'll get to in a second, but things have been progressively better, overall. Yes, there are hiccups, or moments in times where we have a lull in quality while Google figures things out, yes. But overall, things are progressing in the right direction. I think expecting magic from Google is fantastical. So we need to balance what's happening with, I think, a more mature outlook on what a search engine is able to do as technology takes a long time to develop. And Google, and its algorithm, need to rely on technology in order to get results right. Now, I would like to see Google, if I were to be able to point out conceptually what I think would be great for them to be able to focus on if they can, is I think Google looks at quality from a very topical point of view. Is the content quality content from purely, not purely, but from a very heavily focused... Yes, it's quality in terms of how this piece of content deals with the topic. And you say, "As opposed to what? How else would you look at quality?" You will look at quality from an identity point of view. Does it make sense for this website to be talking about this? Does it make sense for this website to cover this? Is it aligned with the website's identity? Why are they writing this? Why are they saying this? Is it that the Rolling Stone wants to build a brand and really become known for and reliant by others, for their content around reviews the way the Wirecutter does? So yes, the Wirecutter has a commercial incentive, but they're also building a brand. And that's a much healthier place to be in terms of the incentive to produce quality content, than just trying to get traffic. So I think Google, if it can, needs to look at why they're saying it, who's saying it, and look at identity a little bit more as part of the quality picture. Just to give you an analogy, let's say I am on, I'm on, I don't know, a politics news show. And I start offering not to talk about whatever the current events of the day are on this news program on CNN or NBC, whatever it is. But instead, I started offering you tips about how to shoot a basketball. And I, myself, am not a basketball expert. I'm a politics expert. That's why I'm on CNN. That would be weird. You would be like, "Okay, you might be making a good point about how to shoot a basketball, but then I'm not absorbing that. I'm not taking that in. I'm not doing anything with that because why are you talking about it, and why are you talking about it here?" It's the same thing. Why is Rolling Stone talking about fridges, and why are they talking about it here, and why are they talking about it now, and why are they talking about it at all? So being able, for the algorithm to be able to better decipher that, I think would be very, very helpful. Okay, onto Danny Goodwin's point, that the content out there is just terrible. That is correct, and Google has been trying to incentivize content, better content for a long time. For example, Google's been talking about hidden gems. They're trying to rank forums, which they've gone a little bit too far, with the whole Reddit thing. They've been trying to democratize the web for a long time, trying to incentivize business owners to write more, because business owners are the actual content topical experts, and not a content marketing agency. So they've been trying to push this for a long time. The problem is it's a very, very slow burn. It takes a long time to do this, if it's even possible for Google to do, and that's a whole other debate. The issue with that is, is that brands look at Google as the incentive, right? They look at it as, "Okay, what does Google reward? What does it not reward, because we are simply trying to get an ROI. We are simply trying to get traffic. We're simply trying to get conversions." So whatever Google is able to do in terms of quality, that is the maximum which we are willing to invest into quality. If Google's quality threshold goes up, we will now have to increase our threshold. That's a very unhealthy dynamic, because again, you're relying on technology to be able to emerge rather quickly, which technology takes a long time to emerge and takes a long time for Google to be able to do things. Look how long it took from Google to go from page rank to focusing on things around personal experience in content, that took years for that to happen. So relying on Google to change the incentive is not healthy. What should happen is, and what I hope happens is, is that brands start looking at their branding as the incentive. So not to pick on the Rolling Stone, but just using it because it's such an obvious example. If the Rolling Stone's branding team said, "Hey, wait a second, we're not known for Bob Dylan anymore. We're not known for covering Led Zeppelin anymore. Now we're known for microwaves. That's not good for our branding, that's not good for our brand recognition. That's not good for our brand perception. It might be good for our immediate conversion and immediate traffic goals, but it's not good for our overall branding. We need to change course." That's a healthy incentive. And that's an incentive, why? Because that's an incentive that's based on users, not on algorithms. So that needs to happen, and brands need to start taking that, I wouldn't even call it a risk, but brands need to start taking that focus off of the immediate ROI and start looking at the long-term conversions. Because I predict what is going to happen is going to be an absolute train wreck of epic... You ever see like a car race and a NASCAR or something, or Formula One, whatever you prefer. I don't prefer any of them. And all the cars get into an accident. That's what's going to happen in my opinion. We're going to see an epic car crash of unprecedented proportions on the web because what users want and what these brands are doing, are so juxtaposed, it's going to end in madness. And if a brand wants to get ahead of this, what I recommend doing is focus on branding, focus on what your users want and how you want to be seen, and not on the immediate traffic conversion, ROI kind of stuff. And it's part of the web maturing. I think in terms of maturity, the web is sort of a teenager. And as a teenager, I have teenagers at home. They're focused on immediate gratification. I want the video game now. We're focused on conversions, we're focused on acquisition, we're focused on traffic, we're focused on all the ROI, and they're not focused on long-term brand perception. So as to when matures, I hope that brands do focus on that, take away the focus on the immediate, which means a little bit of focus off of the algorithms, and more focus onto user perception, and I think that will be the right incentive to create the better content that Danny Goodwin points out in his article, doesn't exist. That was a mouthful. That was a lot. And boy, did we get abstract, and boy was that not very snappy. So apologies for the not so snappy, Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: I always wonder when we do this, I always wonder, we have new listeners, or listeners who are not from the SEO world, coming onto the show, listening to the show, like "Who's this Barry guy?" Crystal Carter: He's an evergreen element in the show. He's like a spruce. Barry Schwartz, that's what we're talking, things you need to know about our show, is we'll talk about Barry Schwartz at some point. Mordy Oberstein: No, for real. If want to, I always say if you want to learn, and we talked about this on previous episode of the podcast, read SEOroundtable.com every day so you can understand where SEO is heading. Even though it might seem like nitty gritty to you, it'll give you a sense of where things are going and where things have been all at the same time. It's evergreen and emerging. It's SEOroundtable.com Crystal Carter: Indeed, and you can understand the pace of things, and Barry shouts out lots of important people to follow. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, also perfect. Crystal Carter: Lots of important entities and things that are going on. So yeah, absolutely. You can't go wrong there. Mordy Oberstein: Can't go wrong with Barry. And you can't go wrong with Claudio Cabrera, who is our follow of the week this week. Who is also, by the way, the VP of Newsroom Strategy and Audience at the Athletic. I'm combining so many worlds here with this follow of the week. I'm combining editorial, we just spoke about emerging content. SEO, we always speak about, and sports. Crystal Carter: It's perfect synergy. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Check out Claudio on X over at CECabrera underscore, C-E-C-A-B-R-E-A-R-A, underscore, he's brilliant, super nice. Crystal Carter: Super nice. Mordy Oberstein: One of the most lovely fellows, and his feed is filled with sports stuff too. Again, right now, a bunch of Lions stuff, go Lions. The mighty underdog, the lovable underdog. Crystal Carter: He's fantastic, and he does a lot of events and outreach as well, so do keep an eye out for opportunities where he's sharing knowledge there. And also, one of the reasons why we wanted to follow him this week is because I think the Athletic do a fantastic job of balancing emerging and evergreen topics. So it's really important. Even if you are a small website and you don't have millions of people coming to your website every week, looking at the ways that some larger websites, like the Athletic, are handling these kinds of challenges, can give you a lot of insight into things you can do. So absolutely, follow Claudio, and check out the work that they're doing over at The Athletic. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Good. Shout out, good strategy, good stuff. And for Claudio's sake, go Lions. By the time this episode airs, we'll know the result, but I'm hoping for the Lions. I really am. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, just to give people context, they haven't won a playoff game until this year, for like, I don't know, since like 1992. They're like blue collar, hardworking kind of team. They got a great coach. You talk about biting people's knee caps off. Crystal Carter: Oh, my God. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he's great though. He's like, "Yeah, what's your philosophy on coaching? I'm going to bite your knee caps off." Love it. Crystal Carter: Sports ball. Mordy Oberstein: Sports ball. One of these underdog kind of stories, they've been losers forever, but now they're winning, and they're fans who've been suffering for 30, 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. Crystal Carter: They're trying to emerge. Mordy Oberstein: They're emerging victorious. Crystal Carter: They're trying to emerge from an evergreen situation. Mordy Oberstein: Their evergreen losing situation. Crystal Carter: They're trying to change their evergreen content and emerge victorious. And we wish them well, and whoever else is doing sports. Yay, sports. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, but not the Ravens. We don't wish them well. Crystal Carter: I have no comment. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, as a Steelers fan, I feel obligated... By the way, I want to tell you my wife's from Baltimore, so I'm a Steelers fan. They're from Pittsburgh. My wife's from Baltimore. Her family are all Ravens fans because they're Baltimore, and she's trying to convince my kids to go for the Ravens in the playoffs because Steelers are out and the Ravens are still in, and I'm not having it. There's like a mutiny in my house, and I'm not having it. Crystal Carter: Are you like, "Never more?" Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm never more, because it'd be an emerging some punishment, if this happens. Crystal Carter: We're basketball fans. Mordy Oberstein: You're all grounded for life. You're evergreen league grounded. I've taken it too far. We've taken it too far. Crystal Carter: I think we're done now. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we're done now here. We'll stop here. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode, as we dive into starting SEO from scratch. You make the dough, you mix the water. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, webinars, and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Is social media good for SEO? What are the myths and truths when it comes to ranking signals and social media? Join Wix’s own Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein and learn how social media does and doesn’t impact Google rankings and what you should be doing as a result Christoph Trappe, Director of Content Strategy at Growgetter IO, shares his expertise in content distribution on social media with his top three ways to reach and engage audiences effectively. Lirut Nave, Head of Social Media at Wix.com, joins the show to help you understand how to balance the various goals you have for your activity across social media. What are the ties between Social and SEO? How can you widen your reach on social while keeping your branding in mind? It’s all here with episode #49 of the SERP’s UP SEO podcast. Back Does social media matter for SEO? Is social media good for SEO? What are the myths and truths when it comes to ranking signals and social media? Join Wix’s own Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein and learn how social media does and doesn’t impact Google rankings and what you should be doing as a result Christoph Trappe, Director of Content Strategy at Growgetter IO, shares his expertise in content distribution on social media with his top three ways to reach and engage audiences effectively. Lirut Nave, Head of Social Media at Wix.com, joins the show to help you understand how to balance the various goals you have for your activity across social media. What are the ties between Social and SEO? How can you widen your reach on social while keeping your branding in mind? It’s all here with episode #49 of the SERP’s UP SEO podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 49 | August 2, 2023 | 51 MIN 00:00 / 51:24 This week’s guests Lirut Nave Moving from the advertising world into high-tech, Lirut nave, Head of social media at Wix is leading the company’s brand efforts on social, to increase awareness and visibility across all main channels through an organic-centered strategy. Christoph Trappe Christoph Trappe is a globally known content marketer who helps companies move their marketing content from happening to performing. He authored a series of marketing strategy books including “Is marketing a good career?” and is currently content director at growth marketing agency Growgetter. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. [Hawaiian 00:00:10] for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein and the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fantastic, the absolutely incredible, the always on target, always insightful, always everything you could ever want out of an SEO podcast partner, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Ah shucks. You're a great podcast buddy too. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: You're my podcast buddy, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Buddies. I once worked on a thing and I had an accountability buddy and I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." Like a personal trainer for whatever the project you're working on. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? The only time I had a buddy was in swim class in camp, day camp, back in the day. They have a buddy. Crystal Carter: To make sure you don't drown? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But my buddy could not swim, so I'm like, "If I drown, I feel like this is not going to end well for me, because that buddy's not going to be my buddy." Crystal Carter: Did he have a whistle or something? Was he able to be like, "He's drowning! Help someone! Someone help him!" That would've been useful. Buddies always reminded me of cubby holes. That's another thing from that time of life. Mordy Oberstein: Buddy is very kindergarten-esque. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Crystal Carter: But it's not kindergarten-esque? Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast, which is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, which comes out every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also create all sorts of custom media, from images to banners to videos, and then schedule them for social media posting, all without ever having to leave Wix. It's socialicious. They love social. Crystal Carter: All channels everywhere, all the time. Mordy Oberstein: All the new emerging social media platforms, whatever that is. That's a whole hot mess for another time. Crystal Carter: Oh gosh. Yeah, entirely. Entirely. Everyone's like, "Twitter! I have a new Twitter thing!" And everybody rushes over to it and then they're like, "Oh our servers crashed." Mordy Oberstein: As we're recording, there's another one of these new Twitter things and everyone's like, "Oh, we got to go." I'm not going anywhere. I tried that. It didn't work out well. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: If everybody ends up over there, I'll go there too. Crystal Carter: Sure. Sure. Sure. I think for the moment- Mordy Oberstein: But until then- Crystal Carter: ... most people are just doing their best on LinkedIn. It's like, "What's going on?" Mordy Oberstein: That's a great title. Who are you? I'm doing my best on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Right? Sometimes you got to do that. You got to go where the people are. I want to be where the people are. That one. That thing. Mordy Oberstein: Which is LinkedIn. Which by the way, in case you haven't realized, we're talking about social media today and SEO. Does social media impact SEO? What's true and what's not true. When it comes to social media and organic search, we'll dive into the unexpected impact social has on your SEO. And it's not just links, because that's the expected part. How social media helps the research stage of any SEO campaign, and social media and its relationship to the old EEAT. Plus, the great Christoph Trappe of Growgetter and far beyond joins us to give us his top tips for distributing social media content effectively across all social media channels. And we'll travel across the Wix-verse to speak to Wix's own head of social media, Lirut Nave, so that you can learn how to create a well-balanced social media presence for you and your brand. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news and who should to be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. So, polish up your social media profile picks and put on your finest social media attire as episode number 49 of the SERP's Up podcast brings your social media presence to the great SEO dance in the sky. Crystal Carter: That was quite the intro. And with that, with that, let's get into this. Yeah, we're talking about social for SEO and how social effects SEO. Essentially the way I like to think about this is that when we're doing digital marketing, when we're doing SEO, we need to think about it from an omni-channel approach. That's because we are not just optimizing for search engines, we're optimizing for user discovery. Users use social media, so social's important for SEO because users are there. In fact, recent research from We Are Social and Meltwater shows that globally 30% of time online is spent on social media platforms, and in some countries this can be even higher than 30%. So, this is something that we absolutely need to be thinking about if we want to make sure that our content is being visible and that we are serving our clients and our projects and our teams really, really well. But it's not all just cat pics and sharing videos and doing dances on TikTok and all of that. Mordy Oberstein: Here's what I ate for dinner. Crystal Carter: I'm the queen of that. I’m sorry….if I have a lovely meal. People need to know about it. I take pictures of my burritos all the time. But I think that people are also using it for search. For instance, when we're talking about the burrito, I'm very often found on Instagram looking up the actual pictures that they have for the restaurant that I'm thinking of going to. I want to see whether people had a good time at the restaurant, whether people are wearing formal wear at this place, or whether it's a casual dining situation. Because a lot of times on a website you might just get pictures... on the website, you might just get the beauty shots of the plates of food and you might not be able to get an idea of what the whole place is like. This is something that's useful there. In fact, on Facebook there's something like 1.5 billion searches a day that are happening on Facebook. On Pinterest there's around 2 billion searches that are happening every day. And we all know that TikTok has become a really important tool, not just for search discovery for users, but as Abby Gleason pointed out in her recent article, people are also using TikTok for keyword research. Abby's somebody who's a big fan of trending topics in SEO and getting things that have zero clicks... I was on a podcast with her recently and she was talking about how, whenever someone says, "Oh, this has zero clicks. This keyword has zero clicks," she says, "Yeah. ChatGPT had zero clicks as well in October, November last time. Imagine how many clicks it actually was getting at the time." So, this is something that can be really useful. The thing about social is social can be very quick to respond to some of those trends, so it's a really good place to think about that. But additionally, Google actively ranks content from social media. If you look at keyword rankings for things like Facebook, like Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, there are 900 million keywords that are ranking that are from those domains that are ranking online. People will search for something, and if there isn't a page on a website, they may very well get sent to a Facebook page that talks about this. I've had this happen a number of times, where someone was having an event at a place, or someone is having some sort of promotional sale or offer, and the only thing I could find was a Facebook post about it and Google was showing that. Additionally, it's also driving lots of sessions. Stats that I pulled up from Semrush have said that there's something like 7.5 billion sessions that are going to social media content across the web. Not only that, but also they will show links from social media posts on Google. If you post on Twitter a lot, then you might have a Twitter carousel. I mean, I say this, but Twitter is changing daily with what they do and don't show on the site. Mordy Oberstein: Hourly. Hourly. Crystal Carter: Hourly. Historically speaking, it was the case that if you posted on Twitter a lot, you might get a Twitter carousel on Google and the links that you share from your Twitter posts are live. So people can click on them from Google. Additionally, if you look up a featured snippet in terms of EAT or EEAT, it's very often that you'll get information from LinkedIn about individuals. If you say something like, "What is Crystal Carter known for? Is Crystal Carter good at SEO?" You might actually get a featured snippet that is from a LinkedIn reply. I've seen this from multiple people as well, where actually the information for the featured snippet comes from LinkedIn. So, Google is linking those two. And John Mueller has said, when asked, I think it was at a Google meetup, Google Hangout session, that LinkedIn can be a source for Google to route some of their EEAT understandings of your biographical entity. This is something that's really, really useful. My point is that, when we're thinking about search, I'm not saying that you should necessarily as an SEO be trying to take over the social media accounts, but it's worth coordinating with your social media accounts to understand what they're posting and to be strategic about the kinds of language that you're using in your posts and the kinds of content, and how it supports each other as you're optimizing for user discovery via search, via social, via multiple channels. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. One of the reasons why I think social has maybe not become such a prominent part of the SEO dialogue is because it is true. The number of followers that you have, your reach, all those kind of things, those are not ranking factors. They don't come into the ranking equation at all. There might be a correlation to a big brand doing well with search and also having a great social media account, but that's just correlation not equaling causation. But that doesn't mean that social media as a concept is not a major part of SEO. For example, the Twitter box that you mentioned is a big part of reputation management. If you have, for example, a website talking smack about you and the ranking number like seven or eight on the SERP. If you start tweeting a lot and you get the Twitter box to show up there, it'll knock those results off of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. This is important. And also, if you're thinking about your brand for instance. I love the situation where you have your website, and I've had it before where I have clients and they were big on social. They were not so big on organic, but they were working towards that. That's why they got me involved. But they were big on social. And you take the social media... You can take your social handles and you can add them into your same as schema markup. So, on your scheme of markup about your organization, you can say, "We are also on YouTube, we are also here, we are also there." Google can see those and it will help them to understand that, okay, yeah, maybe this website has 500 visits a month or something, maybe it's a new domain, but this entity has been on YouTube for seven years and they've got 7 million followers. So actually, this is useful. This is important. It also is really useful if you have a name that is varying on different platforms, or if you have a name that's really common. It can help to make sure that people know that you are that person and that you are connected to that person. It also means that when people Google you, you get what I love, which is when the SERP is like, "It's all me." It's so amazing to me. It's like you get the website, the YouTube, the Pinterest, the Facebook, the Instagram, all of those things. So that if you have other people who are trying to find you, they can definitely find you and you don't have other pieces of content popping up in a SERP that should be yours. You should own that SERP entirely. Mordy Oberstein: You should control your name, your brand name, your personal name. You should control that SERP and social media is the way to do that. It goes back to what you were saying before. The knowledge panel does pick up social media profiles. For example, "Oh no, I'll never get a knowledge panel. I don't have a Wikipedia page." Not true. Google will look at LinkedIn, for example, as one of the primary sources of it understanding who you are and pulling that in as your description in the knowledge panel. By the way, it's a little bit different now because the format of a knowledge panel could sometimes be different. Now they have the cards. But when it was the traditional picture, name, maybe website, social profiles, description, whatever it was... For example, Tom Brady, the famous NFL player, retired NFL player, the URL that Google would show in his knowledge panel back in the day was not a website, it was his Instagram. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Because it's probably a place where he was really active. And there's some places where something happens and the celebrity, or whoever it is, makes a statement on Instagram. Mordy Oberstein: Google definitely knows what your social profiles are and when it's a primary part of the site, or the brand, or the person's identity. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And this is, I think, one of the reasons why it's really important to you. Again, I don't think that you should be taking over your social media platforms from your social media managers. They know what they're doing. They are following all of the algorithms. They know all of the things for all of that stuff, and it's a very different skillset. There's a little bit of overlap with general things, but it's a very different skillset, and we will be talking about more of that later. But what is important is making sure that you have good link hygiene and good consistency across your social media platform. It's worth, and I've done this a few times, it's worth doing an audit of your social media platforms just to make sure that your about page, on Facebook for instance, is actually linking to your actual URL. What I see really, really, really, really often is that the domain is on HTTPS and the link on the Facebook is on HTTP, or the domain is on www and the link on the Facebook is not on www. Or the name on the Facebook page is slightly different from the name that's actually in your schema markup or something. Or the address isn't exactly the same, which is something that's really important for local SEO. So, if you're thinking about places where you have your domain name, your business name, your address, maybe even links to who your founders are, make sure that all of those things are consistent with what is on your webpage and what is in your schema markup. And if you're doing local SEO, for instance, and you're doing citations across local SEO, make sure that they're consistent across all of those. Because very often on local SEO citations, they will also be referencing your Facebook page, for instance. Because people know that that's part of the local experience and that Facebook geographically clusters people and that sort of thing as well. So, make sure that you got very consistent information across all of your social media platforms. Because think about how much traffic you're getting from all of those links. You're going to be getting a lot, so make sure that those things are consistent. And it will also help you to concentrate the information, the traffic, and also concentrate the data so that you're not splitting it into direct traffic, for instance, because it's gone to a 301 that had to go to a thing and all that sort of stuff. So, make sure that you've got good consistency across your social media profiles. That will help you, that'll help users, that'll help Google, that'll help all of the things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's the classic example, by the way. If you have the links set up the right way and you're sharing links across, not just in the bio itself, but across social media and posts and tweets and whatever; it's a great way to get links. I've had that a gazillion times with my social media bio, people clicking on the link in there, whatever website I have at the time, I change it every once in a while; and getting traffic that way and getting links that way. But I also want to harp back on something you mentioned earlier about Abby Gleason and using social media as a keyword research tool, especially on emerging topics or when vernacular is changing. I'm a late '80s, early '90s kid, so the way I would phrase things or the catchwords I would say are not what the people today are using. If you're out of touch, you're going to be using vernacular that's just not what people are searching for. And while that may have traditional search volumes, it may not continue to have quality search volumes, because the vernacular is changing, the topics are changing. And social media is a great way to have... if not specifically doing a research through social media, but having your finger on the pulse of, okay, where are things at is equally important. Crystal Carter: Yeah, entirely. And I think that it can sometimes mean that you are able to connect with new audiences. It can also mean that you're not missing things that could be great opportunities for you. For instance, the corn kid was a big trend for a while, a few months back and stuff. If you were a corn business, that's your time to shine. I've been to a corn husking festival in Ohio years and years ago. That's a perfect time to get some content out there. I think that what's going on in social is really, really useful for lots of things. It tells you what your audience is interested in, so you can see which things are really appealing to your audience and can give you ideas about different content that you can make. It can also give you potential opportunities for where you might want to get back links, or where you might want to build partnerships. If you're finding that a lot of the people that are following you are, for instance, say, interested in certain topics or are tagging lots of events in social media, then you can say, "Hey, we should be at this event, because our audience is really interested in this event, or they're really interested in this cause," for instance. It might be that you look on your social media and you see that people are really, really interested in environmental issues, or other social issues. That's been something that's been a big trend across social media, is people being more invested in social issues. And that's something that you can get data for to back up whether or not it's something that you as a business should be investing in in terms of content or positioning when you're thinking about your online presence. Mordy Oberstein: I'll tell you, if there's a keyword research tool that's telling you there's not a lot of search volume around a particular topic and you go to social and it's all over the place, I would trust the social more then with the SEO tool. I'll give you a great example. You know the whole TikTok, Fruit Roll-Up, ice cream thing? You know what I'm talking about, right? No? Crystal Carter: No. No, I don't. Mordy Oberstein: I know. We're so old. You take a Fruit Roll-Up and you put ice cream in it and you wrap the ice cream in the Fruit Roll-Up and I guess it gets crunchy and you eat it together. Supposedly it's delicious. I don't know. Let's say I have a blog about food trends for boomers. Food trends for boomers. Crystal Carter: I'm not a boomer, by the way. Mordy Oberstein: I'm a boomer. It's fine. Crystal Carter: Do not. I'm not a boomer. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to lean right into it. I'm a boomer. I literally went to Google. I'm like, "What is this Fruit Roll-Up, TikTok thing I keep hearing about?" Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's an opportunity for you. You might say, "Okay, I'm on social, I see the TikTok, Fruit Roll-Up, ice cream thing. That's not my audience." Yeah, it is. You just have to spin it the right way. Crystal Carter: Right! I think one of the other things that search marketers are able to do that we are able to add to the social melee as it were, is that sometimes on social it can be a bit chaotic. Sometimes something's trending and you have no idea why. And you try to get in there and there's some people who've just gotten into the hashtag and they've just started posting other stuff that's related to the hashtag. I've seen people. I've seen posts on Twitter, on other things, where I can see that this is trending and I have no idea why. Why is this trending? I don't understand. One of the things that people can do from a search marketer point of view is, if you can see that it's trending and it's really hard to figure out what's actually going on, you can write some content that explains what it is if it's relevant to your audience. Obviously, if we are talking about the Fruit Roll-Up example, if my business is like, I don't know, headphones or something, then maybe I shouldn't be talking about the Fruit Roll-Up thing. But for instance, if I was a food business, if I was an ice cream parlor for instance, I might want to talk about that particular trend and then say, "Hey, maybe we're going to try out this new thing tomorrow. Come and check it out." Mordy Oberstein: There's so many ways these things are relevant to you that you don't even realize. For example, to go back to the Fruit Roll-Up one real quick, importers. It became a whole big thing of importing Fruit Roll-Up into your country. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Just to meet the craze. What happens on social media is, I hate to put it this way, is life in a weird way. Not really, but kind of. There's so many outcomes and impacts that you may not really be aware of initially that can really help you drive a content strategy. Crystal Carter: And I think sometimes people think, they're like, "Oh, the links..." One of the things we both... People who ignore social media when they're doing SEO will be like, "Oh, well the links don't count. The links are no follow links, so they don't count." Mordy Oberstein: Right. Right. Another one. Crystal Carter: I'm just like, "Y'all, first of all, Google have said that they take no follow links as hints," is what they've said. Second of all, if people are clicking on them, if people are clicking on the links- Mordy Oberstein: That's what you want. Crystal Carter: If users are clicking on the links, I don't care if it's follow, no follow. I care that users are clicking on them. Because no follow, follow, that's not what pays the bills. Getting users to engage with your content, to maybe convert on your website, that's what pays the bills. That's what's going to actually get you actual value. So, making sure that you're getting your content seen in the right places, making sure that people know that your brand is relevant to things that they find relevant via social media, via other channels, via wherever they are, is really, really valuable. And I think that, yeah, social media is something that is absolutely a part of everyone's day to day. As I was saying, people spend 30% of their time on social media, so we should absolutely be thinking strategically about how we engage with that for our search activity. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, speaking of links and follow, no follow, which by the way is one of my pet peeves about how we think about links, because links are fundamentally about traffic. But leaving that aside, specifically about the no follow or follow, Google has said, by the way, that if you share content on social media, it will help your content get indexed quicker. Crystal Carter: Yes! I've done this all the time. I've said this before. I say this all the time. When people are saying, "Oh, this page isn't getting indexed," well, one of the things we... We recently did a webinar with Patrick Stox, and Patrick Stox was saying that they did some stats on content that has links or doesn't have links. And he was saying most content has no links. Not no follow, not do follow, just no links at all. So I'm sorry, but if Google is seeing that 3 million people have shared a page, and let's say that it's all no follow links, do you think Google's going to ignore that? No way. Mordy Oberstein: They officially came out that they do that. But also, the way I think about social media real quick, because we have to get to Christoph, is I look at social media and SEO like the brand marketing of SEO. You can't really pinpoint one action and what exactly it'll mean for your SEO. Just like in brand marketing. One positioning, one messaging and what that impact is. But aggregated all together, all that momentum, all of that energy, all of that cadence, all of that oomph, does have a real impact on SEO. I'm glad Google, I think it was last May, actually talked about that from an indexing point of view, because that's an actual thing you can point to. But I think there's so many aspects where having a strong social media presence seeps its way into SEO. That even if you can't pinpoint exactly where it is or exactly how it's going to do it, that you shouldn't ignore it. Crystal Carter: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Mordy Oberstein: And with that, since you're talking about social media and now you're so invested in social media and now you're all gung ho about social media, how do you distribute your content across social media effectively? Crystal Carter: I don't know. How do we do it? How do we do it? We need some help. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. We need help. Christoph, help us. Here's Christoph Trappe all about his top tips on distributing content across social media effectively. Christoph Trappe: SERPers, Christoph Trappe here, director of content strategy at your growth marketing partner, growgetter.io. Let's talk about the three top ways to distribute content on social media. Top three ways in my opinion of course. But let's get started here. The first one is use tidbits from existing content. You see a lot of people, all they do is they share their blog posts. And I do that too. Here's my latest blog post. But it's not like people are sitting there going, "Oh my goodness. Did Christoph publish a new blog post? That's the only reason we follow him on social media." The same is true for many brands. Instead of just pushing out links, share tidbits from an article, share sections from an article, try a LinkedIn newsletter with the content, turn it into a podcast. I mean, the options are endless nowadays. Turn it into a YouTube short, turn it into a TikTok. You may have heard now people search, younger generations, younger people I guess, search on TikTok instead of searching on Google. So, turn little bitty pieces into additional content assets that you can then share on social media. Still share links here and there, still ask people to do certain things, but have a good mix. That's my number one tip. Number two is kind of what you guys are doing right now with me. Quote other people. Interact with them. Because guess what I'm going to be doing? I'm going to share the podcast episode. And depending what you say, what your tips are, I might talk about that on my social media channels. Most everybody that gets quoted does that. So when you quote people in your social media content, in your articles, on your blog, whatever it might be, those people share that content as well. From a distribution perspective that's really helpful. It's also helpful, of course, because they actually give you a unique perspective, so it's not just you talking nonstop. I really like that. Quote people, tag them, engage them, interact with them, and they will actually help you have your content go further. The final tip in the top three from my perspective is to always try different content types. this is very different from just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what works. What I'm talking about is to actually hop on current trends and just ride them for a while. You can change and you can stick with it. I'll give you an example. I hopped on the live streaming and I started live streaming The Business Storytelling Show way back when, and also with the new Growgetter podcast. That's being live streamed. And I'm still on that trend, because in my opinion it does work. Then I turned my shows into a podcast. Another trend that didn't work as well was web stories when they first came out. I thought they could help with SEO. And they do help a little bit, but not as much as just written content, quite frankly. But I did maybe 60 to 80 web stories early on to really kick the tires on that strategy, and then I used that content in other places too, like TikToks and whatnot. So, try different things, see what works, and go from there. Those are my top three tips. Use tidbits, quote people, hop on trending content assets that work. Mordy Oberstein: I loved all of that, Christoph. I loved all of that. Amen to all of that. Especially the point about sharing... No one's waiting for you to share your next blog post. I love that. When I share this podcast, I try to offer a little bit of information in there so that you're at least getting some... you at least learn just a little bit, or you got clued into something just a little bit just by reading the tweet so that I feel like I earned your click. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Not like, "Hey, here's my blog post. Here's our podcast episode. Go ahead and read it, click on it, tweet it." Crystal Carter: I think the other thing that I really took from that was the testing things. You mentioned this a little bit as well, was that you test something, you'd give it a try. If it doesn't work, that's fine. Leave it, let it go. I saw someone who was a social media manager who was saying that one of the things that you learn as a social media manager is that a lot of posts don't work. You just have to test them and try again. And I think that SEOs will do this as well. But I think that sometimes it's really useful to build on the knowledge that you're getting from the different things. We were talking about TikTok and we were talking about other channels as well. But if you're seeing that you get some good traction on the social media posts, then great. Then maybe repurpose that into a blog. If you're seeing that you're getting some good traction on a blog, absolutely repurpose that into some social. And yeah, you're right, not the whole thing maybe. Maybe break it up into a thread and make sure that it's native to the platform. Make sure that it makes sense for that platform. Don't just like copy-paste the same thing from one thing to another, because they're different audiences, which is worth thinking about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll tell you, I'm experimenting on LinkedIn now with different content forms, seeing what works, what doesn't work, and it's learning curve. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: For sure it's a learning curve. And that's fine. That's all part of it. Lean into that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I've worked with Christoph as a podcast guest and he is incredibly organized with how he does that content distribution piece. And yeah, really pleased to get his insights, because he absolutely is dropping some fantastic gems there. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And Christoph, thank you in advance for sharing this, like you mentioned. We always appreciate a good share, as any marketer would, but make sure you follow Christoph on Twitter @CTrappe. It's @C-T-R-A-P-P-E. We'll link to his Twitter profile in the show notes. Make sure you check out christophtrapp.com. Tons of content there around social media, around marketing, around content. And he's got his own podcast called The Business Storytelling Podcast, so check that out as well. We'll link to all of that in the show notes, so you can go ahead and click on it and check out all of what Christoph is up to. Okay. Now it's time to combine three of my favorite things: mint chocolate chip ice cream, baseball, and single malt scotch. No? Not time for that. Crystal Carter: I wasn't ready for that. Mordy Oberstein: No. No? Crystal Carter: Now I'm envisaging having single malt scotch with mint choc chip ice cream. Mordy Oberstein: Watching baseball. Crystal Carter: Yeah. No, the choc chip and the whiskey, that doesn't work. Mordy Oberstein: Works for me. It all goes. Crystal Carter: Does it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Oh, totally. You start with a shot, you watch an inning, you bring out the ice cream, you have another shot- Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: ... you have some more. You don't take a bite and then take a shot. That wouldn't work. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, you could do it. You could do it. Crystal Carter: Okay. This is how we're planning your next birthday party. Mordy Oberstein: Right. I love celebrating birthdays. Just kidding, by the way. My three favorite things in this context would be social media, SEO, and brand marketing. Because SEO and social sort of touch on all of that stuff. To help you balance all of these things, i.e. SEO, social media, and brand marketing, because managing all of that on a social media account and considering all of that on a social media account and dealing with all of that on a social media account; it's a lot of things to consider. Crystal Carter: So many. Mordy Oberstein: So many things to consider, and who better to get a grasp on all of it than she who has a grasp on all of it? Our own head of social media, Lirut Nave, is here as we're traveling across the Wix-verse. Speaker 4: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome, Lirut. How are you? Lirut Nave: I'm great. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: Good. So glad that you can join us today on this fine, lovely... What is it? Morning? Afternoon? Who knows? Afternoon-ish. Crystal Carter: Time means nothing. Time is everything. Mordy Oberstein: The only time we care about today is when we schedule our social media posts. Oh. Lirut Nave: We love social media posts. Mordy Oberstein: First off, Lirut, just tell people what you do here at Wix. Because I know in the intro we gave your title, but I don't think it does justice to what you do at Wix. Lirut Nave: Sure. My team manages all of the social media for the brand, for wix.com's channels, everything. All the content that you see going live on social media from Wix that is not just paid ads, but actually brand content. This is what we're in charge of: strategy, creative, also some promotions. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Crystal Carter: Can I just say, Lirut is being incredibly humble right now. The channels that she manages, this is not a little Facebook page. There are millions of people that she's talking to daily. Mordy Oberstein: Millions and millions. Millions and millions. Crystal Carter: It's immense. If you go to the Wix Facebook page, we're talking something like 4.6 million followers. Lirut Nave: Yeah. Crystal Carter: If you go to the Twitter page, it's like... I'm sorry, hang on. Give me- Mordy Oberstein: Probably half a million, I believe. Crystal Carter: Exactly. This is what I'm talking about. The reach that you have from these channels is immense. And I think that there's some great things that people can learn from you from managing channels like Facebook, like Instagram, like Twitter, like TikTok. I know that the Pinterest account has something like 10 million views a month, or something to that effect. It's big. Lirut Nave: It's crazy. But it kind of runs by itself. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Sure, sure. Sure. Lirut Nave: Its own entity. Crystal Carter: I think also... We have our main Wix channels, but just while we're here, to anyone who's listening, there are additional channels, particularly on Twitter and other ones as well. For instance, Wix Help as well. These are also channels that are run via... So if you have a help question, on Twitter @WixHelp. They will help you. Lirut Nave: Help is like a support channel basically. Anybody who comes to Twitter and has a question about the product, Wix Help is your- Mordy Oberstein: I've literally done it. I've literally gone on Twitter, "Hey Wix, I don't know how to do this. How do you do that?" Lirut Nave: Yeah, the support team is doing an amazing job. Mordy Oberstein: They're awesome. Crystal Carter: And I think that comes to a really good question. When you're running a channel this big for a brand, Wix has like 200 million plus users around the world, how do you manage that channel? Because obviously it's very difficult to speak to 4.5 million, 5 million people or whatever, every day with the same message. How do you decide what to put out when or on which channel, on which platform? Lirut Nave: First, it's optimistic. We're not actually speaking to 4 or 5 million. Let's put it into context. The organic reach that content for brand has is fairly low, so we need to actually make a great effort to reach the big numbers. But it's more about the audience that we at Wix are talking to rather than the audience that we have following us on social. Because sometimes people... maybe they become less relevant as user, maybe we have potential users that are interested in our content, they're not followers. And today really on social, not only followers get your content, especially because we do promote it to the relevant people. So yeah, I think this is how we're looking at it. But it's a lot of technical managing. We have to post, the channel needs to keep going. Every channel has its own best practices. You want to be able to produce enough content that's versatile enough, but not too much so the algorithm doesn't get tired of you and you get decent engagement also. A lot of it for us is really about making database decisions as we go. When something goes live, after a week or so we let it run. What are the numbers? If it's not working and we keep doing the same thing, we're not going to be favored by the algorithm to show our content more. So it really is, if you've tried a piece of content or kind of content once or twice and it's not working for you, you really need to let it go. It's nothing personal, it's just people probably don't favor that information, or the way you framed it or the way you presented it to them is the wrong way to approach them and the relevant audiences for us. So, we do a lot of conclusion making on the go. Mordy Oberstein: With all that content that you're doing, and one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, is because there's so many different topics that come up at Wix. For example, we have the SEO learning hub, which this podcast is a part of, and we're producing a ton of content. But if you were to show and put out all of the content that we're doing all the time, Wix would end up coming off Semrush. It'd be like an SEO company. And we're not like. SEO is a huge part of what we do obviously, but it's one part of what we do and there's a million others. There's eComm, there's design, there's DEJ. How do you balance all of it so that you showcase what we are doing, but at the same time manage the brand overall the right way. Lirut Nave: We're talking to a lot of teams to get information about the different products, the different priorities that we want to talk about at Wix. We also say no to a lot of teams and content that comes our way. We can talk only about SEO, but when you do it in the right amount and you put SEO maybe once a month or twice a month and you have design posts and you have user showcase and features... We're such a big company with so many products that you can talk about, so the work is easier that way for us. Because we do have stuff to talk about and it's not like we need to force one content. Also, once you set up an identity for what the brand is on social, it's very hard to step out of that, so you want to make sure not to do it from the beginning. You want to be balanced. You need to look at the plan as a whole. On a macro level, what are you posting a month? Are you overdoing something? And also remember the audience for each platform and how you're speaking to them, because our following and the people we target and are able to target on each platform, it's a little bit different. Right, we're going to be able to target based on actual interests and job. And so, if we have a post about SEO, we can reach these people. We can't do the same necessarily on TikTok, for example. And we want to take into account that maybe our following there is slightly younger, so how do we tailor the message? If it's an SEO message, how do we tailor that message on Instagram? What formats work best on Instagram? Maybe images work better than video. They don't, but... And then on TikTok, how do we want to talk about it? And really get people where they are. Because if you present the information the wrong way, you're really going to lose them. And it also looks like you don't know what you're doing, because you're speaking to them in the same way. So sometimes, even if we have one piece of advice on SEO but we build it differently for each channel, it looks more interesting to the audience, it works better, and we're able to talk about this topic in the long run and have more pieces without it sounding and feeling like we're really repeating ourselves and only talking about this. Crystal Carter: And I think there's a lot of considerations that I hear there. There's a lot of talking about testing, talking about audience segmentation, talking about targeting. I'm interested in the testing element. You said sometimes something doesn't work and you have to let it go. When you create a post or a few posts, what is the criteria that you set for knowing if something worked or not? Because I think that sometimes people think that it's just shares, or just likes, or just views or something. And that may or may not be the case for every type of social content. So how do you know, yes, this was good? Lirut Nave: We have a benchmark for each channel obviously, and we also have a benchmark for SEO specific content. Because I wouldn't necessarily compare SEO content into some kind of a website showcase or design, because people react differently to it and maybe comment differently. But also, we have our KPIs. For us on social at Wix, we're focusing on brand perception, on awareness. It's not acquisition campaigns. We're looking mainly at reach, at engagement. Video views now is a very big thing. For example, we used to look very closely on engagement, but engagement rates dropped on social for brands. Really dropped. Right now actually reach and video views and average watch time is something that we're putting much more focus on and much more importance on when reviewing our content, and slowly you build your benchmark. You can do it right off the bat. I can't tell you, "Okay, we have maybe 50K reach, organically is great." Maybe this is for my brand. Maybe for yours it's something completely different. You need to post a few pieces of content in order to understand what the right benchmark is for you and what you would consider success. But I can tell you these are the metrics we're mostly focusing on at the moment. Mordy Oberstein: How do, with that, measure brand? I'll tell you something I'll do on my personal social account. There are times I know there are people who just look. They don't interact, they don't engage. They're there. And I want to make sure that they see my content in a certain way. I might put a tweet out there, let's say, that I don't expect to get clicks, I don't expect to get retweets, but I know people are going to see and that's going to position myself a certain way. Do you do that? How do you do that? How do you measure that? Because again, no one's actually interacting, so now what? Lirut Nave: But reach is a big thing and reach is just how many people viewed your content without any kind of interaction. If you used to be considered less valuable, actually for brand it's a very big thing, because it's exposure to the name, to the content that you're doing, to the value that you're giving users, potential users. We take it as a very big sign of success of the content, but it needs to be also who did we reach? If we are promoting this to someone that's irrelevant, the reach is not going to do much for us. So yes, you maybe cannot measure brand in direct acquisition way that you would conversions. Next day someone sees our post, we have a new user. Maybe that's not the way. But we are able to say that if we hit the right target audience and we're being very specific in our targeting and we have a good reach, then this content is working good for us and we're getting brand visibility on social. Crystal Carter: Speaking of brand visibility and content working really well, one of my favorite social moments in the history of Wix social media was Taylor Swift. Her tickets went on sale at Ticketmaster and the Ticketmaster website crashed. One of my favorite moments... I don't know, Lirut, do you want to talk about it? I don't know if I should spoil it. Lirut Nave: I can talk about it a little bit, although it wasn't my team. But this was just like... This for us is more of a real time marketing opportunity. We had these campaigns already made about site stability and crashing and the video was there. And when they saw the content about the Ticketmaster crash, basically it was just a perfect opportunity to run this campaign all over again without actually... They didn't even directly talk about it. They didn't change anything. It was really all about the timing; reaching the right people at the time that something like that is trending and is being talked about really worldwide. I think it was a really super smart move. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There were millions of people, so it's got millions of views. There were lots of people going, "Oh my gosh, Ticketmaster should have been on Wix, because then they wouldn't have crashed," and all of that sort of stuff. I think that you were saying that this was an acquisition campaign that they ran at the same time. Lirut Nave: It was a campaign that we had and then once this happened and we flagged it to the right team, they're like, "Okay. You know what? We have this perfect opportunity. We don't even need to create something from scratch. We had this list. Just run the campaign again." And it's funny, because you didn't say anything about Ticketmaster, anything about Taylor Swift, but people got the reference.. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best, when that happens. When they get it on their own. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think also it's a really good example of how social can work across teams and to highlight values of the business. Like you said, that was something that was already core to the business. We'd already created the campaigns, all of the assets, et cetera. And with acquisition you have an opportunity to use your social posts to increase your reach to the audiences, you were saying to new audiences, potentially targeting certain audiences. I don't know if they did, but they could have potentially been targeting people who've also followed Ticketmaster. Lirut Nave: Exactly. I'm giving them the credit. I'm sure they did. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I think ending off on a win is a great place to end off. Lirut, where can people find you? Lirut Nave: Where can they find me? Crystal Carter: What's your social handles? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a social handle? Lirut Nave: Listen, since I'm in social, my social is a bit- Mordy Oberstein: Shoemaker's kids go shoeless. Crystal Carter: Right? Never trust a bald barber. Lirut Nave: When it becomes work and it's your work passion, it's really hard to keep that passion also in your spare time. You come home and you're like, "Should I post? No, I'm tired." Mordy Oberstein: In that case, you can't find her. She's a mystery. Lirut Nave: Listen, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Lirut Nave: I wouldn't trust my other social to be as exciting. Yeah. It's all mom life and- Crystal Carter: Aww. Mordy Oberstein: That's exciting. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Lirut Nave: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Our pleasure, and we'll see you around. Lirut Nave: Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Speaker 4: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Lirut, and definitely look for Lirut on LinkedIn and connect with her there. You know what pops on my social feed quite often? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Is Barry Schwartz and his sharing of the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Oh, I bet he does. Mordy Oberstein: It's quite, quite often there all the time. And Barry's very efficient and relentless with the In Case You Missed It post. Which, by the way, I appreciate, because I'm in a different time zone, so I see a lot of the In Case You Missed Its. I actually do appreciate those, Barry, if you're listening to this. Crystal Carter: Thanks, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: With that, let's dive into this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two quick little ones for you this week. The first one comes from Search Engine Land's Danny Goodwin. He writes, "OpenAI's AI text classifier no longer available due to low rate of accuracy." Danny writes, "The AI text detector launched in January is meant to evaluate whether text was generated using AI. It failed." He quotes OpenAI as saying, "As of July 2023, the AI classifier's no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy. We are working to incorporate feedback," and so forth and so forth and so forth. The reason why I'm including this here is that AI is amazing, does amazing things. I personally use and love the AI image generator inside of Wix. AI can help you do a lot of things, it can help you do things faster, but AI at the same time is an emerging technology. And in this case, in OpenAI's case in this particular product, it didn't work. So there might be things that AI looks like it can do, but in the end it won't be able to do, or maybe won't be able to do yet. So, point of caution. If you're using AI, which you should be, just make sure you're using it responsibly. Because again, it is a new and emerging technology. What looks like might work might end up not working, as it was in this case. Article number two from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. Google Business Profile's automated FAQs feature. Google's Business Profile is rolling out a feature that will help you automatically create an FAQ based on your Google Business Profile details that you've entered and your website. Barry writes, "Those automated FAQs can be configured by type of automated FAQs. You can specifically tell Google which information it can create FAQs from, such as hours, appointments, contact information, and so forth." My point with this one is, there is already an FAQ section inside of the Google Business Profile. It's called Q&A. And in the Q&A your customers can ask questions and you can reply. You however can also ask questions and reply to your own questions. You can essentially create an FAQ on your own. This may take time to roll out, the automated FAQ option. You may not want an automated FAQ option. But know that Google does see value in there being an FAQ inside of the Google Business Profile, which is why they're releasing an automated version of it. But know that you already have a version of this with the Q&A feature. So, Google's basically telling you, "People are not utilizing the Q&A feature maybe the way that they should be, so we're going to help you here with the automated FAQ." In the meantime, might as well utilize the Q&A section that already exists. And that's this week's snappy news. Always snappy, always newsy. Crystal Carter: Always snappy and newsy. And lately always full of AI. Mordy Oberstein: Always full of AI, but some weeks not. Crystal Carter: Some weeks not. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like the flow of AI is slowly, slowly slowing down. Crystal Carter: We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: We'll see. By the way, before we duly depart, we have to get into who you should be following for more SEO, and in this case content marketing and social media marketing, awesomeness. Crystal, who's this week's follow of the week? Crystal Carter: This week's follow of the week is Jean Wandimi. She's a content marketer and a wine aficionado, so she's got a wine blog. Mordy Oberstein: Got my vote. Crystal Carter: Yeah, indeed. She also has lots of great content on YouTube about creating great content. She has a lot of really accessible information that's really useful for freelancers, those doing DIY. She's got an Instagram account. She's constantly sharing useful tips of how you can improve your content writing and content creation and be more strategic and more programmatic, I guess you would say. But not programmatic with a capital P, but more programmatic like have a system. Have a system for how you make your content. So yeah, she's a great follow. Do check her out. And yeah, she's great. Mordy Oberstein: Give her a follow over @Jeanwandimi on Twitter, @J-E-A-N-W-A-N-D-I-M-I. Of course we'll link to her profile in the show notes, so you don't have to spell on the fly. Because that doesn't make much sense. But I do it anyway. Crystal Carter: O-N T-H-E F-L-Y. Mordy Oberstein: Is it T-I-M-E T-O G-O? Crystal Carter: Y-E-S. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Great. I used to love doing this with my wife and my kids, because they don't know how to spell. But now they know how to spell, so I can't do that anymore. Crystal Carter: Oh no. Mordy Oberstein: They know everything. They're like AI, my kids. They know everything. All the things I don't want them to know, they know. Well, with that happy note, 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... Not telling. I'm not telling you what we're diving into. It's a very special episode next week. That's all I'll say. Surprises. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast, or on our SEO learning hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more but SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Christoph Trappe Lirut Nave Jean Wandimi Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter How to use TikTok for SEO keyword research SEO competitor backlink analysis Christoph Trappe Website Business Storytelling Podcast Growgetter News: OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier no longer available due to ‘low rate of accuracy’ Google Business Profiles Automated FAQs Feature Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Christoph Trappe Lirut Nave Jean Wandimi Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter How to use TikTok for SEO keyword research SEO competitor backlink analysis Christoph Trappe Website Business Storytelling Podcast Growgetter News: OpenAI’s AI Text Classifier no longer available due to ‘low rate of accuracy’ Google Business Profiles Automated FAQs Feature Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. [Hawaiian 00:00:10] for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein and the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fantastic, the absolutely incredible, the always on target, always insightful, always everything you could ever want out of an SEO podcast partner, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Ah shucks. You're a great podcast buddy too. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: You're my podcast buddy, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Buddies. I once worked on a thing and I had an accountability buddy and I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." Like a personal trainer for whatever the project you're working on. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? The only time I had a buddy was in swim class in camp, day camp, back in the day. They have a buddy. Crystal Carter: To make sure you don't drown? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But my buddy could not swim, so I'm like, "If I drown, I feel like this is not going to end well for me, because that buddy's not going to be my buddy." Crystal Carter: Did he have a whistle or something? Was he able to be like, "He's drowning! Help someone! Someone help him!" That would've been useful. Buddies always reminded me of cubby holes. That's another thing from that time of life. Mordy Oberstein: Buddy is very kindergarten-esque. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Definitely, definitely, definitely. Mordy Oberstein: Sure. Crystal Carter: But it's not kindergarten-esque? Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast, which is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, which comes out every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also create all sorts of custom media, from images to banners to videos, and then schedule them for social media posting, all without ever having to leave Wix. It's socialicious. They love social. Crystal Carter: All channels everywhere, all the time. Mordy Oberstein: All the new emerging social media platforms, whatever that is. That's a whole hot mess for another time. Crystal Carter: Oh gosh. Yeah, entirely. Entirely. Everyone's like, "Twitter! I have a new Twitter thing!" And everybody rushes over to it and then they're like, "Oh our servers crashed." Mordy Oberstein: As we're recording, there's another one of these new Twitter things and everyone's like, "Oh, we got to go." I'm not going anywhere. I tried that. It didn't work out well. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: If everybody ends up over there, I'll go there too. Crystal Carter: Sure. Sure. Sure. I think for the moment- Mordy Oberstein: But until then- Crystal Carter: ... most people are just doing their best on LinkedIn. It's like, "What's going on?" Mordy Oberstein: That's a great title. Who are you? I'm doing my best on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Right? Sometimes you got to do that. You got to go where the people are. I want to be where the people are. That one. That thing. Mordy Oberstein: Which is LinkedIn. Which by the way, in case you haven't realized, we're talking about social media today and SEO. Does social media impact SEO? What's true and what's not true. When it comes to social media and organic search, we'll dive into the unexpected impact social has on your SEO. And it's not just links, because that's the expected part. How social media helps the research stage of any SEO campaign, and social media and its relationship to the old EEAT. Plus, the great Christoph Trappe of Growgetter and far beyond joins us to give us his top tips for distributing social media content effectively across all social media channels. And we'll travel across the Wix-verse to speak to Wix's own head of social media, Lirut Nave, so that you can learn how to create a well-balanced social media presence for you and your brand. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news and who should to be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. So, polish up your social media profile picks and put on your finest social media attire as episode number 49 of the SERP's Up podcast brings your social media presence to the great SEO dance in the sky. Crystal Carter: That was quite the intro. And with that, with that, let's get into this. Yeah, we're talking about social for SEO and how social effects SEO. Essentially the way I like to think about this is that when we're doing digital marketing, when we're doing SEO, we need to think about it from an omni-channel approach. That's because we are not just optimizing for search engines, we're optimizing for user discovery. Users use social media, so social's important for SEO because users are there. In fact, recent research from We Are Social and Meltwater shows that globally 30% of time online is spent on social media platforms, and in some countries this can be even higher than 30%. So, this is something that we absolutely need to be thinking about if we want to make sure that our content is being visible and that we are serving our clients and our projects and our teams really, really well. But it's not all just cat pics and sharing videos and doing dances on TikTok and all of that. Mordy Oberstein: Here's what I ate for dinner. Crystal Carter: I'm the queen of that. I’m sorry….if I have a lovely meal. People need to know about it. I take pictures of my burritos all the time. But I think that people are also using it for search. For instance, when we're talking about the burrito, I'm very often found on Instagram looking up the actual pictures that they have for the restaurant that I'm thinking of going to. I want to see whether people had a good time at the restaurant, whether people are wearing formal wear at this place, or whether it's a casual dining situation. Because a lot of times on a website you might just get pictures... on the website, you might just get the beauty shots of the plates of food and you might not be able to get an idea of what the whole place is like. This is something that's useful there. In fact, on Facebook there's something like 1.5 billion searches a day that are happening on Facebook. On Pinterest there's around 2 billion searches that are happening every day. And we all know that TikTok has become a really important tool, not just for search discovery for users, but as Abby Gleason pointed out in her recent article, people are also using TikTok for keyword research. Abby's somebody who's a big fan of trending topics in SEO and getting things that have zero clicks... I was on a podcast with her recently and she was talking about how, whenever someone says, "Oh, this has zero clicks. This keyword has zero clicks," she says, "Yeah. ChatGPT had zero clicks as well in October, November last time. Imagine how many clicks it actually was getting at the time." So, this is something that can be really useful. The thing about social is social can be very quick to respond to some of those trends, so it's a really good place to think about that. But additionally, Google actively ranks content from social media. If you look at keyword rankings for things like Facebook, like Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, there are 900 million keywords that are ranking that are from those domains that are ranking online. People will search for something, and if there isn't a page on a website, they may very well get sent to a Facebook page that talks about this. I've had this happen a number of times, where someone was having an event at a place, or someone is having some sort of promotional sale or offer, and the only thing I could find was a Facebook post about it and Google was showing that. Additionally, it's also driving lots of sessions. Stats that I pulled up from Semrush have said that there's something like 7.5 billion sessions that are going to social media content across the web. Not only that, but also they will show links from social media posts on Google. If you post on Twitter a lot, then you might have a Twitter carousel. I mean, I say this, but Twitter is changing daily with what they do and don't show on the site. Mordy Oberstein: Hourly. Hourly. Crystal Carter: Hourly. Historically speaking, it was the case that if you posted on Twitter a lot, you might get a Twitter carousel on Google and the links that you share from your Twitter posts are live. So people can click on them from Google. Additionally, if you look up a featured snippet in terms of EAT or EEAT, it's very often that you'll get information from LinkedIn about individuals. If you say something like, "What is Crystal Carter known for? Is Crystal Carter good at SEO?" You might actually get a featured snippet that is from a LinkedIn reply. I've seen this from multiple people as well, where actually the information for the featured snippet comes from LinkedIn. So, Google is linking those two. And John Mueller has said, when asked, I think it was at a Google meetup, Google Hangout session, that LinkedIn can be a source for Google to route some of their EEAT understandings of your biographical entity. This is something that's really, really useful. My point is that, when we're thinking about search, I'm not saying that you should necessarily as an SEO be trying to take over the social media accounts, but it's worth coordinating with your social media accounts to understand what they're posting and to be strategic about the kinds of language that you're using in your posts and the kinds of content, and how it supports each other as you're optimizing for user discovery via search, via social, via multiple channels. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. One of the reasons why I think social has maybe not become such a prominent part of the SEO dialogue is because it is true. The number of followers that you have, your reach, all those kind of things, those are not ranking factors. They don't come into the ranking equation at all. There might be a correlation to a big brand doing well with search and also having a great social media account, but that's just correlation not equaling causation. But that doesn't mean that social media as a concept is not a major part of SEO. For example, the Twitter box that you mentioned is a big part of reputation management. If you have, for example, a website talking smack about you and the ranking number like seven or eight on the SERP. If you start tweeting a lot and you get the Twitter box to show up there, it'll knock those results off of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. This is important. And also, if you're thinking about your brand for instance. I love the situation where you have your website, and I've had it before where I have clients and they were big on social. They were not so big on organic, but they were working towards that. That's why they got me involved. But they were big on social. And you take the social media... You can take your social handles and you can add them into your same as schema markup. So, on your scheme of markup about your organization, you can say, "We are also on YouTube, we are also here, we are also there." Google can see those and it will help them to understand that, okay, yeah, maybe this website has 500 visits a month or something, maybe it's a new domain, but this entity has been on YouTube for seven years and they've got 7 million followers. So actually, this is useful. This is important. It also is really useful if you have a name that is varying on different platforms, or if you have a name that's really common. It can help to make sure that people know that you are that person and that you are connected to that person. It also means that when people Google you, you get what I love, which is when the SERP is like, "It's all me." It's so amazing to me. It's like you get the website, the YouTube, the Pinterest, the Facebook, the Instagram, all of those things. So that if you have other people who are trying to find you, they can definitely find you and you don't have other pieces of content popping up in a SERP that should be yours. You should own that SERP entirely. Mordy Oberstein: You should control your name, your brand name, your personal name. You should control that SERP and social media is the way to do that. It goes back to what you were saying before. The knowledge panel does pick up social media profiles. For example, "Oh no, I'll never get a knowledge panel. I don't have a Wikipedia page." Not true. Google will look at LinkedIn, for example, as one of the primary sources of it understanding who you are and pulling that in as your description in the knowledge panel. By the way, it's a little bit different now because the format of a knowledge panel could sometimes be different. Now they have the cards. But when it was the traditional picture, name, maybe website, social profiles, description, whatever it was... For example, Tom Brady, the famous NFL player, retired NFL player, the URL that Google would show in his knowledge panel back in the day was not a website, it was his Instagram. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Because it's probably a place where he was really active. And there's some places where something happens and the celebrity, or whoever it is, makes a statement on Instagram. Mordy Oberstein: Google definitely knows what your social profiles are and when it's a primary part of the site, or the brand, or the person's identity. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And this is, I think, one of the reasons why it's really important to you. Again, I don't think that you should be taking over your social media platforms from your social media managers. They know what they're doing. They are following all of the algorithms. They know all of the things for all of that stuff, and it's a very different skillset. There's a little bit of overlap with general things, but it's a very different skillset, and we will be talking about more of that later. But what is important is making sure that you have good link hygiene and good consistency across your social media platform. It's worth, and I've done this a few times, it's worth doing an audit of your social media platforms just to make sure that your about page, on Facebook for instance, is actually linking to your actual URL. What I see really, really, really, really often is that the domain is on HTTPS and the link on the Facebook is on HTTP, or the domain is on www and the link on the Facebook is not on www. Or the name on the Facebook page is slightly different from the name that's actually in your schema markup or something. Or the address isn't exactly the same, which is something that's really important for local SEO. So, if you're thinking about places where you have your domain name, your business name, your address, maybe even links to who your founders are, make sure that all of those things are consistent with what is on your webpage and what is in your schema markup. And if you're doing local SEO, for instance, and you're doing citations across local SEO, make sure that they're consistent across all of those. Because very often on local SEO citations, they will also be referencing your Facebook page, for instance. Because people know that that's part of the local experience and that Facebook geographically clusters people and that sort of thing as well. So, make sure that you got very consistent information across all of your social media platforms. Because think about how much traffic you're getting from all of those links. You're going to be getting a lot, so make sure that those things are consistent. And it will also help you to concentrate the information, the traffic, and also concentrate the data so that you're not splitting it into direct traffic, for instance, because it's gone to a 301 that had to go to a thing and all that sort of stuff. So, make sure that you've got good consistency across your social media profiles. That will help you, that'll help users, that'll help Google, that'll help all of the things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's the classic example, by the way. If you have the links set up the right way and you're sharing links across, not just in the bio itself, but across social media and posts and tweets and whatever; it's a great way to get links. I've had that a gazillion times with my social media bio, people clicking on the link in there, whatever website I have at the time, I change it every once in a while; and getting traffic that way and getting links that way. But I also want to harp back on something you mentioned earlier about Abby Gleason and using social media as a keyword research tool, especially on emerging topics or when vernacular is changing. I'm a late '80s, early '90s kid, so the way I would phrase things or the catchwords I would say are not what the people today are using. If you're out of touch, you're going to be using vernacular that's just not what people are searching for. And while that may have traditional search volumes, it may not continue to have quality search volumes, because the vernacular is changing, the topics are changing. And social media is a great way to have... if not specifically doing a research through social media, but having your finger on the pulse of, okay, where are things at is equally important. Crystal Carter: Yeah, entirely. And I think that it can sometimes mean that you are able to connect with new audiences. It can also mean that you're not missing things that could be great opportunities for you. For instance, the corn kid was a big trend for a while, a few months back and stuff. If you were a corn business, that's your time to shine. I've been to a corn husking festival in Ohio years and years ago. That's a perfect time to get some content out there. I think that what's going on in social is really, really useful for lots of things. It tells you what your audience is interested in, so you can see which things are really appealing to your audience and can give you ideas about different content that you can make. It can also give you potential opportunities for where you might want to get back links, or where you might want to build partnerships. If you're finding that a lot of the people that are following you are, for instance, say, interested in certain topics or are tagging lots of events in social media, then you can say, "Hey, we should be at this event, because our audience is really interested in this event, or they're really interested in this cause," for instance. It might be that you look on your social media and you see that people are really, really interested in environmental issues, or other social issues. That's been something that's been a big trend across social media, is people being more invested in social issues. And that's something that you can get data for to back up whether or not it's something that you as a business should be investing in in terms of content or positioning when you're thinking about your online presence. Mordy Oberstein: I'll tell you, if there's a keyword research tool that's telling you there's not a lot of search volume around a particular topic and you go to social and it's all over the place, I would trust the social more then with the SEO tool. I'll give you a great example. You know the whole TikTok, Fruit Roll-Up, ice cream thing? You know what I'm talking about, right? No? Crystal Carter: No. No, I don't. Mordy Oberstein: I know. We're so old. You take a Fruit Roll-Up and you put ice cream in it and you wrap the ice cream in the Fruit Roll-Up and I guess it gets crunchy and you eat it together. Supposedly it's delicious. I don't know. Let's say I have a blog about food trends for boomers. Food trends for boomers. Crystal Carter: I'm not a boomer, by the way. Mordy Oberstein: I'm a boomer. It's fine. Crystal Carter: Do not. I'm not a boomer. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to lean right into it. I'm a boomer. I literally went to Google. I'm like, "What is this Fruit Roll-Up, TikTok thing I keep hearing about?" Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's an opportunity for you. You might say, "Okay, I'm on social, I see the TikTok, Fruit Roll-Up, ice cream thing. That's not my audience." Yeah, it is. You just have to spin it the right way. Crystal Carter: Right! I think one of the other things that search marketers are able to do that we are able to add to the social melee as it were, is that sometimes on social it can be a bit chaotic. Sometimes something's trending and you have no idea why. And you try to get in there and there's some people who've just gotten into the hashtag and they've just started posting other stuff that's related to the hashtag. I've seen people. I've seen posts on Twitter, on other things, where I can see that this is trending and I have no idea why. Why is this trending? I don't understand. One of the things that people can do from a search marketer point of view is, if you can see that it's trending and it's really hard to figure out what's actually going on, you can write some content that explains what it is if it's relevant to your audience. Obviously, if we are talking about the Fruit Roll-Up example, if my business is like, I don't know, headphones or something, then maybe I shouldn't be talking about the Fruit Roll-Up thing. But for instance, if I was a food business, if I was an ice cream parlor for instance, I might want to talk about that particular trend and then say, "Hey, maybe we're going to try out this new thing tomorrow. Come and check it out." Mordy Oberstein: There's so many ways these things are relevant to you that you don't even realize. For example, to go back to the Fruit Roll-Up one real quick, importers. It became a whole big thing of importing Fruit Roll-Up into your country. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Just to meet the craze. What happens on social media is, I hate to put it this way, is life in a weird way. Not really, but kind of. There's so many outcomes and impacts that you may not really be aware of initially that can really help you drive a content strategy. Crystal Carter: And I think sometimes people think, they're like, "Oh, the links..." One of the things we both... People who ignore social media when they're doing SEO will be like, "Oh, well the links don't count. The links are no follow links, so they don't count." Mordy Oberstein: Right. Right. Another one. Crystal Carter: I'm just like, "Y'all, first of all, Google have said that they take no follow links as hints," is what they've said. Second of all, if people are clicking on them, if people are clicking on the links- Mordy Oberstein: That's what you want. Crystal Carter: If users are clicking on the links, I don't care if it's follow, no follow. I care that users are clicking on them. Because no follow, follow, that's not what pays the bills. Getting users to engage with your content, to maybe convert on your website, that's what pays the bills. That's what's going to actually get you actual value. So, making sure that you're getting your content seen in the right places, making sure that people know that your brand is relevant to things that they find relevant via social media, via other channels, via wherever they are, is really, really valuable. And I think that, yeah, social media is something that is absolutely a part of everyone's day to day. As I was saying, people spend 30% of their time on social media, so we should absolutely be thinking strategically about how we engage with that for our search activity. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, speaking of links and follow, no follow, which by the way is one of my pet peeves about how we think about links, because links are fundamentally about traffic. But leaving that aside, specifically about the no follow or follow, Google has said, by the way, that if you share content on social media, it will help your content get indexed quicker. Crystal Carter: Yes! I've done this all the time. I've said this before. I say this all the time. When people are saying, "Oh, this page isn't getting indexed," well, one of the things we... We recently did a webinar with Patrick Stox, and Patrick Stox was saying that they did some stats on content that has links or doesn't have links. And he was saying most content has no links. Not no follow, not do follow, just no links at all. So I'm sorry, but if Google is seeing that 3 million people have shared a page, and let's say that it's all no follow links, do you think Google's going to ignore that? No way. Mordy Oberstein: They officially came out that they do that. But also, the way I think about social media real quick, because we have to get to Christoph, is I look at social media and SEO like the brand marketing of SEO. You can't really pinpoint one action and what exactly it'll mean for your SEO. Just like in brand marketing. One positioning, one messaging and what that impact is. But aggregated all together, all that momentum, all of that energy, all of that cadence, all of that oomph, does have a real impact on SEO. I'm glad Google, I think it was last May, actually talked about that from an indexing point of view, because that's an actual thing you can point to. But I think there's so many aspects where having a strong social media presence seeps its way into SEO. That even if you can't pinpoint exactly where it is or exactly how it's going to do it, that you shouldn't ignore it. Crystal Carter: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Mordy Oberstein: And with that, since you're talking about social media and now you're so invested in social media and now you're all gung ho about social media, how do you distribute your content across social media effectively? Crystal Carter: I don't know. How do we do it? How do we do it? We need some help. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. We need help. Christoph, help us. Here's Christoph Trappe all about his top tips on distributing content across social media effectively. Christoph Trappe: SERPers, Christoph Trappe here, director of content strategy at your growth marketing partner, growgetter.io. Let's talk about the three top ways to distribute content on social media. Top three ways in my opinion of course. But let's get started here. The first one is use tidbits from existing content. You see a lot of people, all they do is they share their blog posts. And I do that too. Here's my latest blog post. But it's not like people are sitting there going, "Oh my goodness. Did Christoph publish a new blog post? That's the only reason we follow him on social media." The same is true for many brands. Instead of just pushing out links, share tidbits from an article, share sections from an article, try a LinkedIn newsletter with the content, turn it into a podcast. I mean, the options are endless nowadays. Turn it into a YouTube short, turn it into a TikTok. You may have heard now people search, younger generations, younger people I guess, search on TikTok instead of searching on Google. So, turn little bitty pieces into additional content assets that you can then share on social media. Still share links here and there, still ask people to do certain things, but have a good mix. That's my number one tip. Number two is kind of what you guys are doing right now with me. Quote other people. Interact with them. Because guess what I'm going to be doing? I'm going to share the podcast episode. And depending what you say, what your tips are, I might talk about that on my social media channels. Most everybody that gets quoted does that. So when you quote people in your social media content, in your articles, on your blog, whatever it might be, those people share that content as well. From a distribution perspective that's really helpful. It's also helpful, of course, because they actually give you a unique perspective, so it's not just you talking nonstop. I really like that. Quote people, tag them, engage them, interact with them, and they will actually help you have your content go further. The final tip in the top three from my perspective is to always try different content types. this is very different from just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what works. What I'm talking about is to actually hop on current trends and just ride them for a while. You can change and you can stick with it. I'll give you an example. I hopped on the live streaming and I started live streaming The Business Storytelling Show way back when, and also with the new Growgetter podcast. That's being live streamed. And I'm still on that trend, because in my opinion it does work. Then I turned my shows into a podcast. Another trend that didn't work as well was web stories when they first came out. I thought they could help with SEO. And they do help a little bit, but not as much as just written content, quite frankly. But I did maybe 60 to 80 web stories early on to really kick the tires on that strategy, and then I used that content in other places too, like TikToks and whatnot. So, try different things, see what works, and go from there. Those are my top three tips. Use tidbits, quote people, hop on trending content assets that work. Mordy Oberstein: I loved all of that, Christoph. I loved all of that. Amen to all of that. Especially the point about sharing... No one's waiting for you to share your next blog post. I love that. When I share this podcast, I try to offer a little bit of information in there so that you're at least getting some... you at least learn just a little bit, or you got clued into something just a little bit just by reading the tweet so that I feel like I earned your click. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Not like, "Hey, here's my blog post. Here's our podcast episode. Go ahead and read it, click on it, tweet it." Crystal Carter: I think the other thing that I really took from that was the testing things. You mentioned this a little bit as well, was that you test something, you'd give it a try. If it doesn't work, that's fine. Leave it, let it go. I saw someone who was a social media manager who was saying that one of the things that you learn as a social media manager is that a lot of posts don't work. You just have to test them and try again. And I think that SEOs will do this as well. But I think that sometimes it's really useful to build on the knowledge that you're getting from the different things. We were talking about TikTok and we were talking about other channels as well. But if you're seeing that you get some good traction on the social media posts, then great. Then maybe repurpose that into a blog. If you're seeing that you're getting some good traction on a blog, absolutely repurpose that into some social. And yeah, you're right, not the whole thing maybe. Maybe break it up into a thread and make sure that it's native to the platform. Make sure that it makes sense for that platform. Don't just like copy-paste the same thing from one thing to another, because they're different audiences, which is worth thinking about. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll tell you, I'm experimenting on LinkedIn now with different content forms, seeing what works, what doesn't work, and it's learning curve. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: For sure it's a learning curve. And that's fine. That's all part of it. Lean into that. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I've worked with Christoph as a podcast guest and he is incredibly organized with how he does that content distribution piece. And yeah, really pleased to get his insights, because he absolutely is dropping some fantastic gems there. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And Christoph, thank you in advance for sharing this, like you mentioned. We always appreciate a good share, as any marketer would, but make sure you follow Christoph on Twitter @CTrappe. It's @C-T-R-A-P-P-E. We'll link to his Twitter profile in the show notes. Make sure you check out christophtrapp.com. Tons of content there around social media, around marketing, around content. And he's got his own podcast called The Business Storytelling Podcast, so check that out as well. We'll link to all of that in the show notes, so you can go ahead and click on it and check out all of what Christoph is up to. Okay. Now it's time to combine three of my favorite things: mint chocolate chip ice cream, baseball, and single malt scotch. No? Not time for that. Crystal Carter: I wasn't ready for that. Mordy Oberstein: No. No? Crystal Carter: Now I'm envisaging having single malt scotch with mint choc chip ice cream. Mordy Oberstein: Watching baseball. Crystal Carter: Yeah. No, the choc chip and the whiskey, that doesn't work. Mordy Oberstein: Works for me. It all goes. Crystal Carter: Does it? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Oh, totally. You start with a shot, you watch an inning, you bring out the ice cream, you have another shot- Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: ... you have some more. You don't take a bite and then take a shot. That wouldn't work. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, you could do it. You could do it. Crystal Carter: Okay. This is how we're planning your next birthday party. Mordy Oberstein: Right. I love celebrating birthdays. Just kidding, by the way. My three favorite things in this context would be social media, SEO, and brand marketing. Because SEO and social sort of touch on all of that stuff. To help you balance all of these things, i.e. SEO, social media, and brand marketing, because managing all of that on a social media account and considering all of that on a social media account and dealing with all of that on a social media account; it's a lot of things to consider. Crystal Carter: So many. Mordy Oberstein: So many things to consider, and who better to get a grasp on all of it than she who has a grasp on all of it? Our own head of social media, Lirut Nave, is here as we're traveling across the Wix-verse. Speaker 4: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome, Lirut. How are you? Lirut Nave: I'm great. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: Good. So glad that you can join us today on this fine, lovely... What is it? Morning? Afternoon? Who knows? Afternoon-ish. Crystal Carter: Time means nothing. Time is everything. Mordy Oberstein: The only time we care about today is when we schedule our social media posts. Oh. Lirut Nave: We love social media posts. Mordy Oberstein: First off, Lirut, just tell people what you do here at Wix. Because I know in the intro we gave your title, but I don't think it does justice to what you do at Wix. Lirut Nave: Sure. My team manages all of the social media for the brand, for wix.com's channels, everything. All the content that you see going live on social media from Wix that is not just paid ads, but actually brand content. This is what we're in charge of: strategy, creative, also some promotions. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Crystal Carter: Can I just say, Lirut is being incredibly humble right now. The channels that she manages, this is not a little Facebook page. There are millions of people that she's talking to daily. Mordy Oberstein: Millions and millions. Millions and millions. Crystal Carter: It's immense. If you go to the Wix Facebook page, we're talking something like 4.6 million followers. Lirut Nave: Yeah. Crystal Carter: If you go to the Twitter page, it's like... I'm sorry, hang on. Give me- Mordy Oberstein: Probably half a million, I believe. Crystal Carter: Exactly. This is what I'm talking about. The reach that you have from these channels is immense. And I think that there's some great things that people can learn from you from managing channels like Facebook, like Instagram, like Twitter, like TikTok. I know that the Pinterest account has something like 10 million views a month, or something to that effect. It's big. Lirut Nave: It's crazy. But it kind of runs by itself. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Sure, sure. Sure. Lirut Nave: Its own entity. Crystal Carter: I think also... We have our main Wix channels, but just while we're here, to anyone who's listening, there are additional channels, particularly on Twitter and other ones as well. For instance, Wix Help as well. These are also channels that are run via... So if you have a help question, on Twitter @WixHelp. They will help you. Lirut Nave: Help is like a support channel basically. Anybody who comes to Twitter and has a question about the product, Wix Help is your- Mordy Oberstein: I've literally done it. I've literally gone on Twitter, "Hey Wix, I don't know how to do this. How do you do that?" Lirut Nave: Yeah, the support team is doing an amazing job. Mordy Oberstein: They're awesome. Crystal Carter: And I think that comes to a really good question. When you're running a channel this big for a brand, Wix has like 200 million plus users around the world, how do you manage that channel? Because obviously it's very difficult to speak to 4.5 million, 5 million people or whatever, every day with the same message. How do you decide what to put out when or on which channel, on which platform? Lirut Nave: First, it's optimistic. We're not actually speaking to 4 or 5 million. Let's put it into context. The organic reach that content for brand has is fairly low, so we need to actually make a great effort to reach the big numbers. But it's more about the audience that we at Wix are talking to rather than the audience that we have following us on social. Because sometimes people... maybe they become less relevant as user, maybe we have potential users that are interested in our content, they're not followers. And today really on social, not only followers get your content, especially because we do promote it to the relevant people. So yeah, I think this is how we're looking at it. But it's a lot of technical managing. We have to post, the channel needs to keep going. Every channel has its own best practices. You want to be able to produce enough content that's versatile enough, but not too much so the algorithm doesn't get tired of you and you get decent engagement also. A lot of it for us is really about making database decisions as we go. When something goes live, after a week or so we let it run. What are the numbers? If it's not working and we keep doing the same thing, we're not going to be favored by the algorithm to show our content more. So it really is, if you've tried a piece of content or kind of content once or twice and it's not working for you, you really need to let it go. It's nothing personal, it's just people probably don't favor that information, or the way you framed it or the way you presented it to them is the wrong way to approach them and the relevant audiences for us. So, we do a lot of conclusion making on the go. Mordy Oberstein: With all that content that you're doing, and one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you, is because there's so many different topics that come up at Wix. For example, we have the SEO learning hub, which this podcast is a part of, and we're producing a ton of content. But if you were to show and put out all of the content that we're doing all the time, Wix would end up coming off Semrush. It'd be like an SEO company. And we're not like. SEO is a huge part of what we do obviously, but it's one part of what we do and there's a million others. There's eComm, there's design, there's DEJ. How do you balance all of it so that you showcase what we are doing, but at the same time manage the brand overall the right way. Lirut Nave: We're talking to a lot of teams to get information about the different products, the different priorities that we want to talk about at Wix. We also say no to a lot of teams and content that comes our way. We can talk only about SEO, but when you do it in the right amount and you put SEO maybe once a month or twice a month and you have design posts and you have user showcase and features... We're such a big company with so many products that you can talk about, so the work is easier that way for us. Because we do have stuff to talk about and it's not like we need to force one content. Also, once you set up an identity for what the brand is on social, it's very hard to step out of that, so you want to make sure not to do it from the beginning. You want to be balanced. You need to look at the plan as a whole. On a macro level, what are you posting a month? Are you overdoing something? And also remember the audience for each platform and how you're speaking to them, because our following and the people we target and are able to target on each platform, it's a little bit different. Right, we're going to be able to target based on actual interests and job. And so, if we have a post about SEO, we can reach these people. We can't do the same necessarily on TikTok, for example. And we want to take into account that maybe our following there is slightly younger, so how do we tailor the message? If it's an SEO message, how do we tailor that message on Instagram? What formats work best on Instagram? Maybe images work better than video. They don't, but... And then on TikTok, how do we want to talk about it? And really get people where they are. Because if you present the information the wrong way, you're really going to lose them. And it also looks like you don't know what you're doing, because you're speaking to them in the same way. So sometimes, even if we have one piece of advice on SEO but we build it differently for each channel, it looks more interesting to the audience, it works better, and we're able to talk about this topic in the long run and have more pieces without it sounding and feeling like we're really repeating ourselves and only talking about this. Crystal Carter: And I think there's a lot of considerations that I hear there. There's a lot of talking about testing, talking about audience segmentation, talking about targeting. I'm interested in the testing element. You said sometimes something doesn't work and you have to let it go. When you create a post or a few posts, what is the criteria that you set for knowing if something worked or not? Because I think that sometimes people think that it's just shares, or just likes, or just views or something. And that may or may not be the case for every type of social content. So how do you know, yes, this was good? Lirut Nave: We have a benchmark for each channel obviously, and we also have a benchmark for SEO specific content. Because I wouldn't necessarily compare SEO content into some kind of a website showcase or design, because people react differently to it and maybe comment differently. But also, we have our KPIs. For us on social at Wix, we're focusing on brand perception, on awareness. It's not acquisition campaigns. We're looking mainly at reach, at engagement. Video views now is a very big thing. For example, we used to look very closely on engagement, but engagement rates dropped on social for brands. Really dropped. Right now actually reach and video views and average watch time is something that we're putting much more focus on and much more importance on when reviewing our content, and slowly you build your benchmark. You can do it right off the bat. I can't tell you, "Okay, we have maybe 50K reach, organically is great." Maybe this is for my brand. Maybe for yours it's something completely different. You need to post a few pieces of content in order to understand what the right benchmark is for you and what you would consider success. But I can tell you these are the metrics we're mostly focusing on at the moment. Mordy Oberstein: How do, with that, measure brand? I'll tell you something I'll do on my personal social account. There are times I know there are people who just look. They don't interact, they don't engage. They're there. And I want to make sure that they see my content in a certain way. I might put a tweet out there, let's say, that I don't expect to get clicks, I don't expect to get retweets, but I know people are going to see and that's going to position myself a certain way. Do you do that? How do you do that? How do you measure that? Because again, no one's actually interacting, so now what? Lirut Nave: But reach is a big thing and reach is just how many people viewed your content without any kind of interaction. If you used to be considered less valuable, actually for brand it's a very big thing, because it's exposure to the name, to the content that you're doing, to the value that you're giving users, potential users. We take it as a very big sign of success of the content, but it needs to be also who did we reach? If we are promoting this to someone that's irrelevant, the reach is not going to do much for us. So yes, you maybe cannot measure brand in direct acquisition way that you would conversions. Next day someone sees our post, we have a new user. Maybe that's not the way. But we are able to say that if we hit the right target audience and we're being very specific in our targeting and we have a good reach, then this content is working good for us and we're getting brand visibility on social. Crystal Carter: Speaking of brand visibility and content working really well, one of my favorite social moments in the history of Wix social media was Taylor Swift. Her tickets went on sale at Ticketmaster and the Ticketmaster website crashed. One of my favorite moments... I don't know, Lirut, do you want to talk about it? I don't know if I should spoil it. Lirut Nave: I can talk about it a little bit, although it wasn't my team. But this was just like... This for us is more of a real time marketing opportunity. We had these campaigns already made about site stability and crashing and the video was there. And when they saw the content about the Ticketmaster crash, basically it was just a perfect opportunity to run this campaign all over again without actually... They didn't even directly talk about it. They didn't change anything. It was really all about the timing; reaching the right people at the time that something like that is trending and is being talked about really worldwide. I think it was a really super smart move. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There were millions of people, so it's got millions of views. There were lots of people going, "Oh my gosh, Ticketmaster should have been on Wix, because then they wouldn't have crashed," and all of that sort of stuff. I think that you were saying that this was an acquisition campaign that they ran at the same time. Lirut Nave: It was a campaign that we had and then once this happened and we flagged it to the right team, they're like, "Okay. You know what? We have this perfect opportunity. We don't even need to create something from scratch. We had this list. Just run the campaign again." And it's funny, because you didn't say anything about Ticketmaster, anything about Taylor Swift, but people got the reference.. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best, when that happens. When they get it on their own. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think also it's a really good example of how social can work across teams and to highlight values of the business. Like you said, that was something that was already core to the business. We'd already created the campaigns, all of the assets, et cetera. And with acquisition you have an opportunity to use your social posts to increase your reach to the audiences, you were saying to new audiences, potentially targeting certain audiences. I don't know if they did, but they could have potentially been targeting people who've also followed Ticketmaster. Lirut Nave: Exactly. I'm giving them the credit. I'm sure they did. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I think ending off on a win is a great place to end off. Lirut, where can people find you? Lirut Nave: Where can they find me? Crystal Carter: What's your social handles? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's a social handle? Lirut Nave: Listen, since I'm in social, my social is a bit- Mordy Oberstein: Shoemaker's kids go shoeless. Crystal Carter: Right? Never trust a bald barber. Lirut Nave: When it becomes work and it's your work passion, it's really hard to keep that passion also in your spare time. You come home and you're like, "Should I post? No, I'm tired." Mordy Oberstein: In that case, you can't find her. She's a mystery. Lirut Nave: Listen, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Lirut Nave: I wouldn't trust my other social to be as exciting. Yeah. It's all mom life and- Crystal Carter: Aww. Mordy Oberstein: That's exciting. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Lirut Nave: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Our pleasure, and we'll see you around. Lirut Nave: Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Speaker 4: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Lirut, and definitely look for Lirut on LinkedIn and connect with her there. You know what pops on my social feed quite often? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Is Barry Schwartz and his sharing of the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Oh, I bet he does. Mordy Oberstein: It's quite, quite often there all the time. And Barry's very efficient and relentless with the In Case You Missed It post. Which, by the way, I appreciate, because I'm in a different time zone, so I see a lot of the In Case You Missed Its. I actually do appreciate those, Barry, if you're listening to this. Crystal Carter: Thanks, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: With that, let's dive into this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two quick little ones for you this week. The first one comes from Search Engine Land's Danny Goodwin. He writes, "OpenAI's AI text classifier no longer available due to low rate of accuracy." Danny writes, "The AI text detector launched in January is meant to evaluate whether text was generated using AI. It failed." He quotes OpenAI as saying, "As of July 2023, the AI classifier's no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy. We are working to incorporate feedback," and so forth and so forth and so forth. The reason why I'm including this here is that AI is amazing, does amazing things. I personally use and love the AI image generator inside of Wix. AI can help you do a lot of things, it can help you do things faster, but AI at the same time is an emerging technology. And in this case, in OpenAI's case in this particular product, it didn't work. So there might be things that AI looks like it can do, but in the end it won't be able to do, or maybe won't be able to do yet. So, point of caution. If you're using AI, which you should be, just make sure you're using it responsibly. Because again, it is a new and emerging technology. What looks like might work might end up not working, as it was in this case. Article number two from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. Google Business Profile's automated FAQs feature. Google's Business Profile is rolling out a feature that will help you automatically create an FAQ based on your Google Business Profile details that you've entered and your website. Barry writes, "Those automated FAQs can be configured by type of automated FAQs. You can specifically tell Google which information it can create FAQs from, such as hours, appointments, contact information, and so forth." My point with this one is, there is already an FAQ section inside of the Google Business Profile. It's called Q&A. And in the Q&A your customers can ask questions and you can reply. You however can also ask questions and reply to your own questions. You can essentially create an FAQ on your own. This may take time to roll out, the automated FAQ option. You may not want an automated FAQ option. But know that Google does see value in there being an FAQ inside of the Google Business Profile, which is why they're releasing an automated version of it. But know that you already have a version of this with the Q&A feature. So, Google's basically telling you, "People are not utilizing the Q&A feature maybe the way that they should be, so we're going to help you here with the automated FAQ." In the meantime, might as well utilize the Q&A section that already exists. And that's this week's snappy news. Always snappy, always newsy. Crystal Carter: Always snappy and newsy. And lately always full of AI. Mordy Oberstein: Always full of AI, but some weeks not. Crystal Carter: Some weeks not. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like the flow of AI is slowly, slowly slowing down. Crystal Carter: We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: We'll see. By the way, before we duly depart, we have to get into who you should be following for more SEO, and in this case content marketing and social media marketing, awesomeness. Crystal, who's this week's follow of the week? Crystal Carter: This week's follow of the week is Jean Wandimi. She's a content marketer and a wine aficionado, so she's got a wine blog. Mordy Oberstein: Got my vote. Crystal Carter: Yeah, indeed. She also has lots of great content on YouTube about creating great content. She has a lot of really accessible information that's really useful for freelancers, those doing DIY. She's got an Instagram account. She's constantly sharing useful tips of how you can improve your content writing and content creation and be more strategic and more programmatic, I guess you would say. But not programmatic with a capital P, but more programmatic like have a system. Have a system for how you make your content. So yeah, she's a great follow. Do check her out. And yeah, she's great. Mordy Oberstein: Give her a follow over @Jeanwandimi on Twitter, @J-E-A-N-W-A-N-D-I-M-I. Of course we'll link to her profile in the show notes, so you don't have to spell on the fly. Because that doesn't make much sense. But I do it anyway. Crystal Carter: O-N T-H-E F-L-Y. Mordy Oberstein: Is it T-I-M-E T-O G-O? Crystal Carter: Y-E-S. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Great. I used to love doing this with my wife and my kids, because they don't know how to spell. But now they know how to spell, so I can't do that anymore. Crystal Carter: Oh no. Mordy Oberstein: They know everything. They're like AI, my kids. They know everything. All the things I don't want them to know, they know. Well, with that happy note, 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... Not telling. I'm not telling you what we're diving into. It's a very special episode next week. That's all I'll say. Surprises. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast, or on our SEO learning hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more but SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

What is good content? Mordy and Crystal team up to tackle what it means to create good content for both users and bots. Learn what qualities good content tends to have and how Google responds to it as we dive into real examples of content that ranks and doesn’t rank well. Go deeper into what good content consists of in our Deep Thoughts segment. Is content strictly the words on the page or is it something else? Get a conceptual framework for what content is so that you have the foundation to create the best content possible. We’re joined by Shelby Blackley & Jessie Willms of WTF SEO to get their take on how to get users to not only click on content but ultimately trust the brand and come back for more! Back Uncommonly good content What is good content? Mordy and Crystal team up to tackle what it means to create good content for both users and bots. Learn what qualities good content tends to have and how Google responds to it as we dive into real examples of content that ranks and doesn’t rank well. Go deeper into what good content consists of in our Deep Thoughts segment. Is content strictly the words on the page or is it something else? Get a conceptual framework for what content is so that you have the foundation to create the best content possible. We’re joined by Shelby Blackley & Jessie Willms of WTF SEO to get their take on how to get users to not only click on content but ultimately trust the brand and come back for more! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 02 | August 30, 2022 | 45 MIN 00:00 / 44:55 This week’s guests Shelby Blackley An award-winning journalist, digital marketer and communicator with more than 10 years experience. Specializes in SEO, audience behaviour, data trends and interpersonal connections. Focuses on finding the right audience and platform for your stories, content or ideas. Shelby co-write's a weekly newsletter called, “WTF is SEO?” which explores search engine optimization through the lens of journalism. Jessie Willms Jessie Willms is a Toronto-based audience editor at Canada’s national newspaper. She has developed her data and SEO skills at some of Canada’s top newsrooms. She now runs data and audience workshops for journalists, while teaching data and interactive journalism at Centennial College. In 2021, she – along with Shleby – co-founded WTFisSEO, a newsletter about search for publishers. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP’s Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix. And I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, SERP's people. I'm very happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I thought you were going to say like, hey, all you groovy cats and kittens because- Crystal Carter: I love cool cats and kittens and dogs and- Mordy Oberstein: And gerbils. Crystal Carter: Gerbils. And also- Mordy Oberstein: Hamsters. Crystal Carter: ... hamsters, guinea pigs. I've got a friend who's- Mordy Oberstein: Birds. Crystal Carter: ... He has a lizard. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, forget about lizards, birds. Crystal Carter: Birds. Birds are good. Yeah, that's good. Mordy Oberstein: People who have pets, you are welcome on this podcast. And those of you who don't. Crystal Carter: Yes. Those of you who don't. Those of you who virtual pets or potted plants, potted plants are cool. Mordy Oberstein: Or even just like pets, altogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I have animal friends. I just anthropomorphized the animals in my midst. There are seagulls nesting across the street from my house and I've named them Gerald and Susan. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's wonderful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, the- Mordy Oberstein: That's really lovely. Are you sure it's the same two seagulls every single day? Crystal Carter: Dude, they got a little baby. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: And the baby is like ... Yeah, I can see them. Mordy Oberstein: But you didn't name the baby? Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, we were still deciding on it. But he's really cute. He's really friendly. Mordy Oberstein: You have list of names? Crystal Carter: Yeah, we got a list of names. We're going to have a gender reveal party and everything. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. On that note, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can run a quick and link site audit with our Deepcrawl integration have again during the Wix app market to make your site healthy today with the Deepcrawl app. So much going on in this episode. I feel like we're just going to say that at every episode, but it's true. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of content. We have a lot of content today. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of content. [00:01:59] What are we talking about in this episode? I like what you did there. Because this week, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content for users and for bots. We're going to be covering being uncommon by creating some uncommonly awesome content for both users and bots. Crystal Carter: Users and bots. Bots would like content that is interesting as well, and not just the same as everyone else's content. Mordy Oberstein: You sound like a coneheads consume mass consumptions. Those of you watch Saturday Night Live way back in the day. Anyway, we're going to go into what it means to create good content, how to create good content with guest drops from, Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms. So looking forward to that. We're also going to get lost in the ether of, what is content? That's my William Shatner impersonation, by the way, as we have a deep thought moment for you. Crystal Carter: Deep thoughts. Deep, deep thoughts of the content. Mordy Oberstein: Mm, deep thoughts. We're also going to be taking a hard look at the SERP itself to see what ranks, what doesn't, why it does, why it doesn't as we take a look at the keyword, should I use pastels, pastels, I never get this word right, in my business logo design. Crystal Carter: It's something that we've all considered. Are we going for lavender or powder blue eggshell? Mordy Oberstein: I love pastels. Crystal Carter: What do [inaudible 00:03:14]? Mordy Oberstein: Eggshell. I painted my apartment eggshell one time. Anyways, we're getting ready for some real life lessons on what content is ranking and what Google likes and what it doesn't like, so you can apply that to your own content. Plus, some snappy SEO news and who to follow in the SEO industry for some SEO awesomeness. So much going on. Well, let's snap into it. Content. [00:03:36] Focus Topic of the Week | Content Content is the commodity of your website. People are going to your website to consume something. That thing is pizza. No, content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: Content, not a pizza. It could be content around pizza. It could be content around a product so they can buy it. It could be a podcast episode like this one. It could be a blog post. Whatever it is, it's some form of? Content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: A site without content is basically like a body without bones. It's a giant lump of mush. Crystal Carter: Are you getting into the deep thoughts already? Who are we- Mordy Oberstein: That's right, yeah. Crystal Carter: ... without content Mordy Oberstein: Deep metaphors by Mordy Oberstein. Back in the day, if you've been doing SEO for a while, you'll remember this. But if you haven't been, this is a good lesson for you to learn. Back in the day, when you wrote content for the web, you wanted to rank and pulling traffic from search, so you created content that wasn't, I don't know, call it not exactly natural. Crystal Carter: Mm, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Mm. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we've seen not-good content. Mordy Oberstein: Gee, not good content. You were doing things like making sure your keywords and your title and the first end of the first paragraph, of the first heading, of every single page, and every heading in the last paragraph, keywords here, keywords there, keywords everywhere. The only thing that wasn't actually there, other than the keyword, was actually good content. Crystal Carter: Oh. Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, snap. We're getting salty. By the way, if anybody tells you, if you're listening to this, you need to have your keyword over here and your keyword over there and your keyword in the first end. Do not listen to them. For the love of God, do not listen to them. That's bad SEO advice. Crystal Carter: It can lead to some trouble. Mordy Oberstein: Really bad trouble, really not good for anything. Why? Well, Google's got via machine learning and NLP and a bunch of other things that make me sound well smart when I say that. Google has gotten really good in understanding what content is, what users want. You should now write content that isn't bleh. Which is why today ... By the way, it's the official diagnosis of bad content, it's bleh. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And I think on the machine learning point, it's really important to think about the machine learning is powered by NLP, which is natural- Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Crystal Carter: ... language processing. It's natural language. One of the problems with writing keywords or writing four keywords in the way that people did back in the day is that it wasn't very natural. And that's not how people write and it's not how people talk to their computers anymore. And it's certainly not the way that we should be making content anymore. Mordy Oberstein: No. It's really just bad, which, again, why, today, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content and what that actually means, which is, I guess, where we should begin. What does it actually mean to create good content from an SEO point of view? It sounds like a simple question for the probably simple answer, but it is not. It is not simple. Crystal Carter: It's not. It is not simple and it's very ... Whenever Google has an algorithm update, they always say, oh, just make good content, just make good content. And everyone is like, but what is good? Mordy Oberstein: What does that mean? Crystal Carter: What does it mean? What does good content mean? Mordy Oberstein: What's in the box? What's in the box? Crystal Carter: Just tell us what do you want us to do, Google. Everyone gets very confused. And I think that there's a very interesting thing. And I always think about this as a tech SEO. And I've got a quote here from John Mueller. He is quoted in search engine journal, and he says, "When it comes to the quality of the content, we don't mean just the text of your articles." And we're talking about good content. It's really about the quality of the website overall that includes everything from layout to design, like how you have things presented on your page, how you integrate images, how you work with speed, all of those factors contribute to what is good. Because the thing is, what is good also has to do with the context. If you have a delicious five-star gourmet meal that's presented on a dirty plate, the meal might be good content, but the context of the meal doesn't mean it's not good. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Arghhhh. Arghhhh. Crystal Carter: You need to think about all of those things. And so, I think that when you think about good content, it's important to think about the overall content experience, not just the words. Mordy Oberstein: That's so true, so true. And we'll, hopefully, get to it later. I have a whole sniff test around that. To me, good content is all about ... If you wanted to ask me like, how do I define ... There's multiple ways you could define what is good content. I define good content as nuance content, meaning it's content that you created that you're trying to predict the problems that users are going to have with the content itself. And therefore, you're creating with nuance. If you're creating content, and while you're doing, you're thinking about, well, this user, when they read this, they're not going to really understand this. Let me add this line and let me add a link in, let me do this with this or this. Or this user, they might understand this point that the other user won't, but they're not going to understand this point. Or they're going to need another piece of content after they read this piece of content to really get what they want. And when you start predicting the problems that your users are going to have with your content, and that's not a bad thing to going to have problems, they will never really have problems. You end up running with nuance. It's like when I was teaching, was like that you try to predict this type of students going to have a problem with what I'm saying, but this type of student won't, but this type of student will have a different problem. And you try to build your lesson around that. You're trying to build content around the different problems that users are going to have. And that usually means you end up creating content with the right page structure, with the right level of detail, with the right nuance, with the right kind of links. You're creating, in the end, as a default, substantial content by doing that. Crystal Carter: And I think that what you're talking about, the crux of what you're talking about, is thinking the user. As a user, how would you feel if you came to this content? Would you have more questions? Would you need more support? Would you need to be provided with more information? Would you want it in a different format? You need to think about the users. I had an experience, I don't eat meat. I went to a place and they were like, "We've got new vegetarian options." And I said to the waitress, "I would like the vegetarian options." And then she's like, "We don't have it." And that was it, that's all she said. She didn't give me more options. I needed more options. She didn't care about what I was doing. And I think that when you're thinking about users, don't leave them with that end. Don't leave them with content that doesn't go anywhere. Think about the content that matters for them. And I think that's super important. And for a tech SEO point of view, again, I mentioned format, but from a tech SEO point of view, there's a lot of things that can be done from the same content, the same written content, but provided in a different way. If they were to say about, oh, I want to listen to like, I don't know, Beyoncé's whole back catalog and someone would say, great. And they gave me a stack of vinyl records and I was on a train, that wouldn't be any help. That would be useless with me. The content is the same, but- Mordy Oberstein: You don't walk around the phonograph? Because that's-, Crystal Carter: Right. I'm not going to do that. The content is the same, but being able to play it on Spotify is much better content for me than being able to play it on a record. From a tech SEO point of view, you can sometimes make content better just by changing the format, making it better for mobile, making it more accessible for other users using audio and video and all this sorts of different things. And that can make content really good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm trying to link with this show. And so I have a whole post about it, and so I wrote for so much a while back of why usability is going to be the differentiating factor going forward. But tech SEO comes in because they make sure content either less or more usable, and that's a huge part of UX UI. It's really all one thing. And then I'll go back to my sniff test that we get to later. But I want to briefly talk about like what prevent ... It sounds really simple what we're saying, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's not like, wow, that's earth shattering. There are really good points, I hope, I think. But for some reason, most of the content on the web gets this wrong. And I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say most of it gets it wrong because there's page 1, but then there's page 2 through 20. And that's not always means that it's bad. It might be irrelevant for the key, whatever. But I think there's two things in my mind that make people hesitant about going this direction with their content. And that is, one, they're anxious about sales. And it's just landing pages all of the time. Where people on a landing page, you really want to try to drive ... That's where you're making the money. You really want to drive the sales, so CTA here, CTA there, and quick marketing kind of content. And you don't offer more informational content that gives context to the user. Or you don't scale back those CTAs because you're just anxious about making the sale. I'm not blaming anybody. I get that you're anxious, but that anxiety can lead you to go too far with pushing a sale, let's say, and not creating really good content. And the second thing is relying on wrong metrics. Let's take search volume, a tool, like Samra says, that every single month, a million people are looking for this keyword. So I'm going to write about this keyword, I'm going to do whatever I can and try to get search. And then said, no, I wrote about this keyword. But the end, you're not thinking about, A, is this content I should be writing? Is this good for my user? And even if it should be written on your blog or on your website, whatever it is, you're not thinking about what makes us good content. You're just thinking about how to get a million users to come and look at your content every month. And those metrics- Crystal Carter: Right. And I- Mordy Oberstein: ... just throw things off sometimes. Crystal Carter: And I think that one of the things that's good about those metrics is that they're really accessible. You've got your average search volume metric and you can see that and you can show that to someone and that sort of thing, but there are other metrics that you can use and there are other ways that you can get content ideas. And I think, also, Google often says that like, there's the ... I think the number they normally bat around is around 15% of queries have never been made. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 15%. Crystal Carter: And you have other tools available than just the same tools that everyone has. If you have a customer service team, they will know the kinds of questions that people are regularly asking them about what you do. If you have a sales team, they will regularly ask you about those things. If you genuinely are using your product, there's probably questions that you have. Or if you, let's say, show it to your mom and she's like, "But how do I actually bake the cake?" And you're like, "Oh, follow the recipe." She's like, "Yeah, but this doesn't say that." If she says that, that's a gap, that's a content gap, that's an opportunity, and that's something that people are going to be looking for. There are other things. And reviews are a really good source of this. I've had it before where I've written content on golf. I know nothing about golf, but I have a friend who's related to golf and I followed him. And I also went through the reviews and looked at the kinds of stuff that everybody was talking about in the reviews. And we made the content based on that, not just on keyword volumes, but on the kinds of things that you're seeing come up from users and that you can actually answer. Mordy Oberstein: And I've actually done this, where I've gone to keyword research tools, plucked out the questions that they offer, then gone to real people I knew who are dealing with it, whatever it was I was researching. And the questions that I got back were completely different. That's a really good point. The last thing I want to hit on before we head over to our guest tips for this week is, practically speaking, how do you actually go about creating the really good content? This comes by my sniff test. Well, first, I want to say is, and I'll probably say this a lot on this podcast, start with empathy. Start with really understanding your audience. What are their pain points? What's their life situation? And what do they actually need? Because otherwise, you can't actually write that content I was talking about earlier where you're predicting what they're going to need if you don't understand who they are and what they need. [00:14:21] The Brand Sniff Test The second thing is that I call it the brand sniff test. Whenever you go to a page or you go really anything, you go to a store, you walk in, you look around and you're like, the prices might be great, they might have exactly what you need, but you look at it, and something just doesn't give you a great impression. And we, as human beings, we do this in three seconds flat. You go to a webpage, you're looking at it like the overall experience, there's something off with it. All of the latent signals that you're getting from the page, whether it be the tone, whether it be like they're still using tables from 1995. All of those things that give off and what brand marketers will use all the time as signals, like how effective are we, I call it the brand sniff test. Does your page pass the brand sniff test? Is the tone right? Is the format right? Or is the graphics right? Everything, all of those latent signals. When someone reads the content, does it come off that's well written, that is substantial, that is detailed, that has nuance to it, that's not just fluff? Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I- Mordy Oberstein: Those latent signals. And Google's trying to mimic that. It's the same thing that Google's trying to mimic. Obviously, they're not you, they can't show up and do that in three seconds. They're trying to mimic that through quantitative analysis, but that's what they're trying to accomplish. Give your content- Crystal Carter: And I think that- Mordy Oberstein: ... the brand sniff. Sorry, you're going. Crystal Carter: No, no. And I think it's true. If you're arriving on a new website and whether you're getting information or whether you're looking to buy something or whether you're looking to answer a question, whatever your intent might be, you want to know that the person that you're getting this information from is a decent source and that whatever the query have is actually in their wheelhouse, that they actually know what they're talking about. I could ask anybody about, I don't know why I've got a cold or something like that, but my doctor probably knows better than the person that I met down the pub. And because it's in my doctor's wheelhouse, it's important to remember that. And I think also, you talked about empathy. It's important to think about being genuinely of use to your users. I think I see a lot of content that is around like, we do this, we are great, we've got this, we do that. When you see content that's really good, it explains why. I saw a gym that was like, we have lots of machines, so you don't have to wait. We keep everything clean so that you can see healthy. We are open all the hours so that you can exercise whenever you want. Phones, in particular, are very personal. It's very important to think about like you were talking to one person when you're writing that content. And so, think about that person when you're writing the content. And I think if you do that, you'll make much better content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And by the way, I so agree with you. And I think, speculate, that Google understands the difference between language profile. It understands when you write a certain way and when you're not writing a certain way. And it says, this way is good and that way is bad for whatever topic that you're dealing with. [00:17:05] Focus Topic Guest: Shelby Blackley and Jesse Williams But speaking of experts, as you brought up, we have two experts who are going to be talking to you about how do you not only get people to click on the content. You rank, they click, how do you get them to ultimately buy into that content, trust it, and come back for more maybe or actually, buy that product in the end? Here's Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms from WTF SEO, or they're both from WTF SEO. We'll link to those links in the show notes on how to get people to trust your content after they click on it from the SERP. Jessie Willms: The question that we're answering today is, how do you create content that doesn't just get clicks, but really resonates and engages the user once they land on the page? Shelby Blackley: Well, I think that the big thing about having a quality piece of journalism or having a quality piece of content is really focusing on three pillars, search intent, keyword research, and the actual reader experience and how they are immersed in the piece. When you think about search intent, it's very much like why people are searching these things. They're looking at what is the actual main purpose of the page. To create a quality piece, you need to look at what's actually out there and what people are actually creating. If someone's looking up a specific keyword and they want an FAQ, how can you take that FAQ and take it an extra level? Is there a way to engage it? Can you add in schema? Is there an H2 subheading that you can add in? All of these will allow the readers to get what they need out of it. Jessie Willms: Right. By aligning the search intent with the content that we end up creating, we can make sure that we really fulfill that request that people are making when they turn to a search engine, I should say. Shelby Blackley: Exactly. And then you think about the keyword research behind it too. And we do so much around keyword research, right, Jessie? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Keyword research is the first thing that any new SEO will do when they are thinking about creating a new piece of content. We really want to, first, understand what it is people are looking for to understand the questions that we need to answer and the topics that we need to cover in whatever piece of content that we create. The other thing between keyword research as your first step is it helps inform not just what you cover, but how you cover it. Like Shelby said, if you are doing key research and you see that other publishers are creating FAQs to answer these reader questions, then you know that this is in line with how readers want to consume this content. A series of questions and answers is a really effective tool for creating that engagement with readers, because it allows them to answer specifically the question that they're after, but also scan and skim over other questions that they might find useful. Shelby Blackley: Right. And it's a perfect opportunity for internal linking out to other stories. Jessie Willms: Exactly. Shelby Blackley: For example, if you've got that FAQ, you can link out to a really great piece of enterprise journalism that will definitely hook people and keep them there for longer, right? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Internal links are really great two-way relationship between your content. If you have, in the context of journalism, for example, a really big investigation, pairing that with an FAQ that answers the most common questions that came up during this investigation is a really excellent way to make sure that you have multiple entry points for your readers into your most valuable content. Shelby Blackley: Which takes us into our third part about the reader experience, because it's all about, how can you give the reader as much information as possible in the easiest way, but also the most engaging. If you're creating a piece of content and you've got a video that you can throw in, absolutely, it should be in there. Not only can that video rank on its own, but you're already adding to that reader experience. And then you can add in an audio clip. What if there's another piece of journalism that's connected to it? Jessie Willms: Mm-hmm. Exactly. We need to remember that readers get information in a variety of ways. So wanting to make sure that we create those access points, as Shelby said, pairing a piece of text journalism with a video component or a piece of audio or even, for example, a static graphic that explains a concept. These are all really useful ways to make sure that whatever reader finds your content, that that particular type of reader can get something out of the information that you're servicing. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And we recently had an issue on 10X content. And I think this whole question can be answered, really thinking about content in that sphere of 10X. If you're not familiar, 10X content was coined by Rand Fishkin or the co-founder of moz, now it's SparkToro. And it's really about taking a piece of journalism or a piece of content and making it 10 times better than what's out there. What's on SERP's right now? Are you seeing regular FAQs that are just lists? How do you take it 10 times better to really serve that audience and make those readers want to come back to your site? Jessie Willms: And for any journalist listening, this is a very key pillar of journalism. You don't want to just match what your competitors are doing. You want to beat them by producing something that is better than what they've created. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And always thinking about how can you best serve the reader and give them the most information they can. Jessie Willms: Yeah. Centering the reader in your experience is a great way to make content that resonates. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much to Shelby and Jessie for that really interesting. Crystal, wonder what you're thinking. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that it's really on the mark with a lot of what we've been discussing. User-centric content is really important. And they also talked about format, which I'm a big proponent of and making sure that you have content that is good on a lot of different levels. And I think that they also mentioned how can you make your content better. I think we think about making new content a lot, but a lot of the work that I've done in the past has been around enhancing content that already exists. And there's a lot of times where you can go back over well performing content or existing content or content that's on the board, but maybe not at the top and actually tailor it with new elements to make it rank better and perform better for users. But keeping users at the center is absolutely key. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, again, to Jessie and to Shelby, really appreciate you sending that into us. Be sure to check out WTF SEO. It's a newsletter for journalists who do SEO. But again, journalism and content go hand in hand. If you're looking to create content, there's some really great tips in there. They also have a Slack group, a Slack channel. Check that out as well. We'll link to it all in the show notes. Again, thank you so, so much from us, here at the SERP’s Up podcast. Okay. I had this great idea. I think it was a great idea. Why don't we take a look at- Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I think you are being so skeptical, Crystal. [00:23:20] From the Top of the SERP I had this idea. Why don't we take a look at content that ranks really well and that doesn't rank as well or so, so, or not well at all, maybe, and see if we can maybe diagnose some reasons why content is ranking well and why it's not ranking well. So that you, our lovely audience, could have some tips around creating content that ranks well and doesn't rank well. And we're calling it from the top of the SERP. My association, by the way, the top of the SERP, when I was a kid, I grew in New York and Z100 was a radio station. Their thing was from the top of the Empire State Building. My mind, I hear from the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Do you know what, I live in England and there's something called Top of the Pops, which is a bit like American bandstand. And so that's what I think of. You said, top of the SERP, and I'm like, top of the pops. Yeah, top of the pops. Mordy Oberstein: What do you think of, our dear audience? Let us know on Twitter. Anyway, for real. We're looking down, but we're not judging any site or any page here in particular. That's why I need to say that. But this week, we're going to look at content around the keyword. Should I use pastels in my business logo design? And Crystal has a very different way of saying pastels, it's pastels? Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels, all right. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels. I say it pastels. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Potato, potato yet again. When we ran this keyword, and by the way, if you go ahead in Google, as you might not see the exact same thing as we saw because rank is always changing. Crystal Carter: Exactly, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But there was a page from ZillionDesigns that ranks really, really well. And what I liked about this page is that ... And so I'm getting zilliondesigns.com. What it does really well is it gets really deep into pastels, which is so exciting, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And how you could use them for design. For example, it gets into things around like the intensity of pastels and what that means for using it in a logo and how the different colors relate and how that evokes different emotions. It really what I thought it did a really good job. And I think what Google sees in this piece of content is that it takes understanding of pastels. It applies it to logo and design. But from a very business point of view, what does this mean for your business? Crystal Carter: I think- Mordy Oberstein: Which really speaks to the intent. Crystal Carter: And what I think is really interesting is that we were talking about like literal keywords and things like that. The actual page is called using pastel colors in your brand. That's what it's called. It doesn't say using it in your logo. But as you go through it, they have lots of visuals and they're talking about logos and they have tons and tons of examples of pastel colors and logos so that you ... And Google understands that if you're talking about pastel colors and logos, you not only want to talk about pastel colors, you not only want to talk about the ... But you also want to see them in the logo. They're ranking top, even though they're not explicitly saying logo, logo, logo all over the page. But they've got good examples of logos and how you can use them. From an intent point of view, it's giving you information and it's also giving you demonstration of what you need. And I think that's one of the things [inaudible 00:26:26]. Mordy Oberstein: I think all of the pages that are ranking well the top of the SERP, they are doing things like that. They're giving you a little bit of context. There's a page from tailorbrands.com and they're talking about muted pastels. And they write ... I was going to say something like they literally write, I'll read it to you, a muted palette can actually help highlight a specific part of your logo, like an icon or your brand name. You can always experiment blending muted pastels with colors, with a brighter accent to give it a unique look that pops off the page, as opposed to just saying that you should always experiment with blending muted pastels and colors. It gives you the whole context around why that is, and it goes even deeper into it. The pages that I see, at least from my point of view, that are ranking well are not just listing information or showing you examples, but they're giving you some kind of context around how this works. You can extrapolate out what they're saying and apply it to your own situation, which I think Google sees that. Crystal Carter: Exactly, because I think Google understands what the next query is going to be. They know what people are going to come back for. They can see when they ... And a bit of content is addressing multiple stages of the query at once. Not only understanding what the past logo is and not going, these are pastel colors, lavender is pastel and baby pink is pastel and things, and not just listing them all and then somebody has to go back and find another thing. But it's a rich bit of content that's working there. I think what's also interesting about these is the top ranking ones, is that they're pretty robust. They're fairly longer form bits of content. Which means that they're probably ranking for multiple terms, which is very, very interesting to see. They're both doing a really good job on delivering content that is valuable to users. Mordy Oberstein: So, takeaway for this kind of query and perhaps your kind of query is also if you see this out there for the things that you're trying to rank for, a little bit of context and around what you're saying and why you're saying it and how it applies to the particular use case of what people are looking for, in this case, their business, definitely help here. It seemed that Google is saying, hey, we want users to be able to take away something and being able to apply it to their own site. And the only way you can do that is if you offer people a concept that they could take away and apply it to their own site, not just like, here's the information. Now, to the pages that didn't do so well. Now these are pages that maybe were on page two, maybe bumped up to page one for a little while, went back down to page two. One of the pages we looked at, one was on page two and then one was on page four. Maybe it'll get backed up to page two. But it wasn't consistently performing well, is our point. What did you see there? Crystal Carter: Yes. This is one that I saw from invideo.io and they're talking about pastel colors. What's very interesting here is that InVideo is a video website. It looks like they're providing a video tool and this is talking about pretty much different color palettes that you might use. And so the content is called pastel colors and it was ranking page two. It's now ranking lower. And I think part of this is because it's not explicitly talking about logo design. It's talking about pastel colors, generally. Even though they don't state it in the title, there's an implied connection between using pastel colors and video rather than using it in a logo design. They mention the word logo, but it's not really an emphasis. I don't think this is necessarily that this page needs to be optimized for the pastel colors for your logo query. I think this is a question that this is kind of in the general neighborhood, but this content doesn't actually satisfy this particular query. It probably ranks for something else very well. But in this particular instance, it's not actually satisfying it. It's in the ballpark, but it's not going to be taught because it's not actually satisfying the query. I think if you had this page and you saw that it lost rank, don't worry about it. Because you weren't supposed to rank for it in the first place. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point, by the way, general point for listening to this. Again, we're not trying to be judgmental. These are good pages, but not for this particular keyword or this particular intent. And I think you're right. And for this particular page, what it did that I think doesn't work for this particular query is like, let's say, it talks about the pale lemon color. This color too is named after [inaudible 00:30:16] and it's softer version of a vibrant yellow, doing the job of a perfect background with your visuals whenever you need an alternative for white. And it tells you, okay, this is a good alternative for white, but it doesn't give you a concept or context around why this color might be good in the business context, how you might pair this color. The next step is not there. There's no context around it. Crystal Carter: Exactly. It's not talking about logo design, which is a different thing from a video palette. Another one that was ranking page two, for the color is pastel colors and design, ideas, examples, mega inspiration. And this one is just general pastel colors and it's GraphicMama blog. What I think is interesting about this one is, again, it discusses logos a little bit, but it's not dedicated to logo design. And it's just discussing pastel colors, generally. But again, it's not dedicated to logo design. But what's also interesting about this one is that this has a lot of social proof. I think the reason why this is ranking on page two rather than ranking on page four is that if you look at it says that it's been viewed 12,000 times. That's pretty good. Based on that, I'm guessing that GraphicMama has a lot of social media followings and things like that. And they've also really done really well with showing lots of different illustrations of use cases for capsule design. Some of them which include logos. But again, it's not dedicated to that particular thing. Again, this is one where the content is perfectly solid, but Google's trying to find the content that is the most useful and the most appropriate for that particular query, and that's what they're going to put on top. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we were talking about earlier in the podcast, where you're trying to write nuance content for a particular audience and this content doesn't speak this particular audience. Because the audience in mind is coming from a business point of view. They're using it for their logo, for their what? For their business, for their website, whatever it is, some kind of business professional use. And what the content that you have here just gives you the information about pastels in a vacuum, but not in the context of how you can actually use it. I think it lacks from that point of, again, intent and that level of nuance that the intent demands. But either way, just to sum it all up, it's about intent, it's about nuance, it's about the right content at the right place, at the right time. And in this particular case, it seems to be about creating context and creating concepts that the user is able to walk away from and therefore apply to their own site, which again, speaks to the intent- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: ... of. Crystal Carter: They want to be able to learn how to do something and they want to be able to learn how to apply some information. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you can't do that without concepts. It's just not possible. Amazing. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Now we're not done with content just yet, there's more. But wait, there's more. Crystal Carter: There's more. Mordy Oberstein: Because content, when you talk about content, it's always hard to pin it down. And whether it's using tools to analyze content or which tools are the best for how do you define content, what kind of content are you talking about? Content is always ... Again, here's that word again, so nuanced. [00:33:13] Deep Thoughts | What IS Content? We thought, why don't we try to define, what is content? Crystal Carter: What is content? Mordy Oberstein: Is content? Here's a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy. Crystal Carter: I think on this one, I think the reason why I wanted to bring this up is because I think a lot of people, when they say, "Oh, we're going to make some content," is they think about blogs. That's the first thing they think about. They think, oh, we're going to make some blogs. That's the content. Once we've done the blogs, we've done the content. And I- Mordy Oberstein: I love the blogs. Crystal Carter: Love the blogs, don't get me wrong. Blogs are great. Blogs are good. Blogs are fantastic. However, that's not all your content. That's not the end all be all of your content. There is a lot of different content on your site. And content can include like really tiny things. Content can include big things like images, videos, audio, lots of different multimedia, but can also include things like microcopy, like things for buttons. Or a really good example that I can think of is in MailChimp, for instance. One of the reasons why I think MailChimp has such a good following is that when you press send on MailChimp, while it's loading up your email templates and getting them all the things, they put cute little quotes or they'll say cute little thing, something to do with bananas or something like that in between. And those little moments, those that lose a little bit of moments, those are also content. That's like a Microcopy Canvas. Another one, while they're waiting for things to load, it'll have a quote about something creative or something like that. And all of those different parts of your content are part of your content. And I think that it's important to remember that, to me, my deep thought is that content is about everything that people experience from your brand and from your website. Mordy Oberstein: That's exactly where I went with this. I defined content as that which communicates. And that's everything. Crystal Carter: Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I want to be thorough. No, but for real. And by the way, most of the communication is done lately. And we, as marketers or SEOs or content creator, just by default, end up focusing on the more manifest parts of your content. But like a dream, it's really the latent part of your content that really matters. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm just trying to think, there's definitely times where if I go to a website and stuff and it's like, nothing they said, but you just go, oop, no. This isn't a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you just run away straight away. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Yes, the content is the actual facts or the messaging or ideas or product or whatever it is that you're trying to communicate, but it's way more than that. It's everything about communication. It's everything you're signaling, everything you're giving off. Which means, by the way, if you wanted to take it from the same concept on the flip side, content is relationship building. Crystal Carter: That's very interesting. That's very interesting. And I think, also, that comes with ... That helps you to decide about which content to make. I think if you're building relationships, when you're making this content, you are trying to build a relationship with people. There are people that I follow. There's an artist that I follow, and she makes amazing content. And I look at her pictures all the time and I tell people about her all the time. I've only bought three things from her, but I tell people about her all the time because I feel like- Mordy Oberstein: Resonates. Crystal Carter: ... I have a relationship with her content because it makes me happy. And- Mordy Oberstein: No, no joke. That's totally true. When you read a piece of content, when you're looking at an image, when you're listening to whatever it is, it hits you a certain way and that builds associations. I compare it to you have a doctor and they can treat you. And everything is like 100%, on the up and up, they are the best at their craft. But then there's also the bedside manner part of it. And your content is really both. Your content is obviously the actual facts. And so you're talking about, you have a blog about scientific theories of theory, theory of relativity. But it's also how you're communicating it. In event, you came up really pretentious. Your reader might have the best facts, but would they be able to actually assimilate that information? Were they so turned off by your tone that they would forget about this? I love what you said as facts, but I hate how you said it. I'm not taking this content in. Crystal Carter: It's very interesting. And I think that people forget that it's not just ... These are the deal breakers. When people are deciding which content to go to or which information to access or which thing to buy, those bits of nuance in between can be what makes the difference. I know there are people who really, really like iPhones, for instance, who really just love the box for years. I remember people would be like, oh, I just love the boxes. And that would be part of the experience, would be that like they're- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: They had these really good boxes and you could have the same phone. Again, you can resell an iPhone, for instance, but if it comes in a box. That's- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Imagine your iPhone came in a brown paper bag, like a lunch bag. Crystal Carter: Right. You feel differently about it. You feel differently about it. And you know it's the same content, but you feel differently about it because it feels different. And like you said, it's very ethereal. It can be very in between, there's a lot of in between. But I think it's sometimes when we're talking about why people can't make great content and I think sometimes people feel nervous about actually investing the time or actually showing some personality, but do it. Just do it. And you can also try it in different channels. I mentioned not just blogs, but a blog is a really good ... You can do a litmus test so you can just try it and see what people think. You write one little blog and see if people take to that. And if you can get feedback on it, you go, okay, so this didn't resonate that well, okay, this did resonate. And then you can build on that and you can ... You don't have to do everything all at once. You can try things and see how it connects with people. But I think that thinking about relationship- Mordy Oberstein: Content. Crystal Carter: ... element of content is really important. Mordy Oberstein: It's a relationship. It's communication that relates. Crystal Carter: Relatable communication. Mordy Oberstein: Relatable communications. Do you know what else- Crystal Carter: If no one can understand you, then are you [inaudible 00:39:30] communicated? Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't matter. Crystal Carter: It's like they say, if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? And my answer to that is, who cares? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, who cares? [00:39:37] Snappy SEO News You know what we do care about? The news. So, here- Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: The news. Some snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two things for you today. You have PSA, just in case you missed it. [00:39:55] News: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus But first, vindication from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google beauty blog with financial and medical advice, a bit sus, that's suspect. Google's John Mueller was asked if offering medical advice on a beauty blog was a viable plan. Now for the record, the question was a hypothetical so they can pull out a concept. Just FYI, no one was actually proposing doing something like that. John from Google said, "If you're giving financial and medical advice on a beauty blog, I suspect users are probably rightly going to find that a bit sus," as in suspect. Vindication, I've been saying this forever, well, since August 2018, where I wrote a post for Rank Ranger, is Google profiling your site? Well, while John is going to say, Google treats this as suspect in the algorithm. Technically, you have to think that if the quality of each page is great, but it's on completely different topics, again, you're talking about financial advice or medical advice on a beauty blog that's going through setting very mixed signals to Google and call into question the reliability of that content. Because quality looks at the entire domain of the site. Meaning Google looks at the quality of the site overall, not just specific pages. For long time SEOs, that might sound a bit odd. But it's true [00:41:41] News: Google's Helpful Content Update when it brings us to our PSA. Just in case you missed it, Google announced it will be launching the helpful content update. By the time you are listening to this, it may already be live and rolling out. Police check the SEO news outlets for more coverage, such as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Journal, and so forth. I'm not going to get into too many details here because it's snappy. But basically, the update is going after content written for bots first and not users. Content, you write so that you rank, but not really focused on your audience being happy. That's what this update is going after. It is a sitewide algorithm. Google is scoring the entire site, not just pages, so willing to some more resources around the update in the show notes so that you can learn more. And that is the snappy news. Crystal Carter: Let's roll. [00:42:08] Follow of the Week Mordy Oberstein: Before we leave every week, what we would like to do is to give you, our dear listeners, more resources to learn more SEO. One of the greatest resources out there is the SEO community. Now there are some great people to follow, some not so great people to follow in the SEO community, like any community. Here, however, is a great person to follow. Crystal, who we following this week? Crystal Carter: This week, I'm going to give a shout out to Ross Simmonds. Ross Simmonds is @TheCoolestCool on Twitter. And Ross is someone who has a big following, but I'm always surprised that more people aren't aware of him. Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, Ross Simmonds says this," and people say, "Oh, I don't follow him." And I'm like, "You should. You absolutely should follow him." And one of the things that he specializes in is content distro. He talks about repurposing your content, about making sure that your content is being found in different places. So that not only are you making unusually awesome content, but that you're also making sure that it's found in lots of unusually awesome ways. And this is something that I have done for clients, and I've seen incredible results. And I think that it's something that you can add to your SEO process. Because that way, you don't have to just hope that people will find your content and all that time you spent connecting with your users and building relationships and doing all of that sort of stuff can find more fruits. And I think the other thing is that he talks about using about different channels and formatting, specifically, for those channels, so making Twitter threads or making videos or making this other or the other to make that content really sing in lots of new ways. And I think he does it really, really well. Mordy Oberstein: Which is a perfect place to end off. Because you need to not only create that great content, but you need to know how to share that great content and spread that great content around., Crystal Carter: Spread it around. Mordy Oberstein: Appropriate. Thank you, Crystal. That was so appropriate. And thank you to our great audience. Thank you for joining us with the SERP’s Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Well, not to worry, we're back next week with an all new episode as we get into the algorithm. Crystal Carter: Mm. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, algorithm updates. Ooh, scary. [00:44:18] Wix.com/SEO/Learn Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our very own Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Look and learn more about everything SEO. Check out all the great content at webinars over at the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guess it, I'll say it again one more time, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Crystal Carter: SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Shelby Blackley Jessie Willms Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub WTFSEO Newsletter News: Google: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus What creators should know about Google's helpful content update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Shelby Blackley Jessie Willms Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub WTFSEO Newsletter News: Google: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus What creators should know about Google's helpful content update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP’s Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix. And I'm joined by our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, SERP's people. I'm very happy to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I thought you were going to say like, hey, all you groovy cats and kittens because- Crystal Carter: I love cool cats and kittens and dogs and- Mordy Oberstein: And gerbils. Crystal Carter: Gerbils. And also- Mordy Oberstein: Hamsters. Crystal Carter: ... hamsters, guinea pigs. I've got a friend who's- Mordy Oberstein: Birds. Crystal Carter: ... He has a lizard. This is- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, forget about lizards, birds. Crystal Carter: Birds. Birds are good. Yeah, that's good. Mordy Oberstein: People who have pets, you are welcome on this podcast. And those of you who don't. Crystal Carter: Yes. Those of you who don't. Those of you who virtual pets or potted plants, potted plants are cool. Mordy Oberstein: Or even just like pets, altogether. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I have animal friends. I just anthropomorphized the animals in my midst. There are seagulls nesting across the street from my house and I've named them Gerald and Susan. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's wonderful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, the- Mordy Oberstein: That's really lovely. Are you sure it's the same two seagulls every single day? Crystal Carter: Dude, they got a little baby. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: And the baby is like ... Yeah, I can see them. Mordy Oberstein: But you didn't name the baby? Crystal Carter: Well, I mean, we were still deciding on it. But he's really cute. He's really friendly. Mordy Oberstein: You have list of names? Crystal Carter: Yeah, we got a list of names. We're going to have a gender reveal party and everything. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. On that note, the SERP’s Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can run a quick and link site audit with our Deepcrawl integration have again during the Wix app market to make your site healthy today with the Deepcrawl app. So much going on in this episode. I feel like we're just going to say that at every episode, but it's true. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of content. We have a lot of content today. Mordy Oberstein: There's a lot of content. [00:01:59] What are we talking about in this episode? I like what you did there. Because this week, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content for users and for bots. We're going to be covering being uncommon by creating some uncommonly awesome content for both users and bots. Crystal Carter: Users and bots. Bots would like content that is interesting as well, and not just the same as everyone else's content. Mordy Oberstein: You sound like a coneheads consume mass consumptions. Those of you watch Saturday Night Live way back in the day. Anyway, we're going to go into what it means to create good content, how to create good content with guest drops from, Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms. So looking forward to that. We're also going to get lost in the ether of, what is content? That's my William Shatner impersonation, by the way, as we have a deep thought moment for you. Crystal Carter: Deep thoughts. Deep, deep thoughts of the content. Mordy Oberstein: Mm, deep thoughts. We're also going to be taking a hard look at the SERP itself to see what ranks, what doesn't, why it does, why it doesn't as we take a look at the keyword, should I use pastels, pastels, I never get this word right, in my business logo design. Crystal Carter: It's something that we've all considered. Are we going for lavender or powder blue eggshell? Mordy Oberstein: I love pastels. Crystal Carter: What do [inaudible 00:03:14]? Mordy Oberstein: Eggshell. I painted my apartment eggshell one time. Anyways, we're getting ready for some real life lessons on what content is ranking and what Google likes and what it doesn't like, so you can apply that to your own content. Plus, some snappy SEO news and who to follow in the SEO industry for some SEO awesomeness. So much going on. Well, let's snap into it. Content. [00:03:36] Focus Topic of the Week | Content Content is the commodity of your website. People are going to your website to consume something. That thing is pizza. No, content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: Content, not a pizza. It could be content around pizza. It could be content around a product so they can buy it. It could be a podcast episode like this one. It could be a blog post. Whatever it is, it's some form of? Content. Crystal Carter: Content. Mordy Oberstein: A site without content is basically like a body without bones. It's a giant lump of mush. Crystal Carter: Are you getting into the deep thoughts already? Who are we- Mordy Oberstein: That's right, yeah. Crystal Carter: ... without content Mordy Oberstein: Deep metaphors by Mordy Oberstein. Back in the day, if you've been doing SEO for a while, you'll remember this. But if you haven't been, this is a good lesson for you to learn. Back in the day, when you wrote content for the web, you wanted to rank and pulling traffic from search, so you created content that wasn't, I don't know, call it not exactly natural. Crystal Carter: Mm, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Mm. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we've seen not-good content. Mordy Oberstein: Gee, not good content. You were doing things like making sure your keywords and your title and the first end of the first paragraph, of the first heading, of every single page, and every heading in the last paragraph, keywords here, keywords there, keywords everywhere. The only thing that wasn't actually there, other than the keyword, was actually good content. Crystal Carter: Oh. Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, snap. We're getting salty. By the way, if anybody tells you, if you're listening to this, you need to have your keyword over here and your keyword over there and your keyword in the first end. Do not listen to them. For the love of God, do not listen to them. That's bad SEO advice. Crystal Carter: It can lead to some trouble. Mordy Oberstein: Really bad trouble, really not good for anything. Why? Well, Google's got via machine learning and NLP and a bunch of other things that make me sound well smart when I say that. Google has gotten really good in understanding what content is, what users want. You should now write content that isn't bleh. Which is why today ... By the way, it's the official diagnosis of bad content, it's bleh. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And I think on the machine learning point, it's really important to think about the machine learning is powered by NLP, which is natural- Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Crystal Carter: ... language processing. It's natural language. One of the problems with writing keywords or writing four keywords in the way that people did back in the day is that it wasn't very natural. And that's not how people write and it's not how people talk to their computers anymore. And it's certainly not the way that we should be making content anymore. Mordy Oberstein: No. It's really just bad, which, again, why, today, we're talking about creating uncommonly good content and what that actually means, which is, I guess, where we should begin. What does it actually mean to create good content from an SEO point of view? It sounds like a simple question for the probably simple answer, but it is not. It is not simple. Crystal Carter: It's not. It is not simple and it's very ... Whenever Google has an algorithm update, they always say, oh, just make good content, just make good content. And everyone is like, but what is good? Mordy Oberstein: What does that mean? Crystal Carter: What does it mean? What does good content mean? Mordy Oberstein: What's in the box? What's in the box? Crystal Carter: Just tell us what do you want us to do, Google. Everyone gets very confused. And I think that there's a very interesting thing. And I always think about this as a tech SEO. And I've got a quote here from John Mueller. He is quoted in search engine journal, and he says, "When it comes to the quality of the content, we don't mean just the text of your articles." And we're talking about good content. It's really about the quality of the website overall that includes everything from layout to design, like how you have things presented on your page, how you integrate images, how you work with speed, all of those factors contribute to what is good. Because the thing is, what is good also has to do with the context. If you have a delicious five-star gourmet meal that's presented on a dirty plate, the meal might be good content, but the context of the meal doesn't mean it's not good. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Arghhhh. Arghhhh. Crystal Carter: You need to think about all of those things. And so, I think that when you think about good content, it's important to think about the overall content experience, not just the words. Mordy Oberstein: That's so true, so true. And we'll, hopefully, get to it later. I have a whole sniff test around that. To me, good content is all about ... If you wanted to ask me like, how do I define ... There's multiple ways you could define what is good content. I define good content as nuance content, meaning it's content that you created that you're trying to predict the problems that users are going to have with the content itself. And therefore, you're creating with nuance. If you're creating content, and while you're doing, you're thinking about, well, this user, when they read this, they're not going to really understand this. Let me add this line and let me add a link in, let me do this with this or this. Or this user, they might understand this point that the other user won't, but they're not going to understand this point. Or they're going to need another piece of content after they read this piece of content to really get what they want. And when you start predicting the problems that your users are going to have with your content, and that's not a bad thing to going to have problems, they will never really have problems. You end up running with nuance. It's like when I was teaching, was like that you try to predict this type of students going to have a problem with what I'm saying, but this type of student won't, but this type of student will have a different problem. And you try to build your lesson around that. You're trying to build content around the different problems that users are going to have. And that usually means you end up creating content with the right page structure, with the right level of detail, with the right nuance, with the right kind of links. You're creating, in the end, as a default, substantial content by doing that. Crystal Carter: And I think that what you're talking about, the crux of what you're talking about, is thinking the user. As a user, how would you feel if you came to this content? Would you have more questions? Would you need more support? Would you need to be provided with more information? Would you want it in a different format? You need to think about the users. I had an experience, I don't eat meat. I went to a place and they were like, "We've got new vegetarian options." And I said to the waitress, "I would like the vegetarian options." And then she's like, "We don't have it." And that was it, that's all she said. She didn't give me more options. I needed more options. She didn't care about what I was doing. And I think that when you're thinking about users, don't leave them with that end. Don't leave them with content that doesn't go anywhere. Think about the content that matters for them. And I think that's super important. And for a tech SEO point of view, again, I mentioned format, but from a tech SEO point of view, there's a lot of things that can be done from the same content, the same written content, but provided in a different way. If they were to say about, oh, I want to listen to like, I don't know, Beyoncé's whole back catalog and someone would say, great. And they gave me a stack of vinyl records and I was on a train, that wouldn't be any help. That would be useless with me. The content is the same, but- Mordy Oberstein: You don't walk around the phonograph? Because that's-, Crystal Carter: Right. I'm not going to do that. The content is the same, but being able to play it on Spotify is much better content for me than being able to play it on a record. From a tech SEO point of view, you can sometimes make content better just by changing the format, making it better for mobile, making it more accessible for other users using audio and video and all this sorts of different things. And that can make content really good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm trying to link with this show. And so I have a whole post about it, and so I wrote for so much a while back of why usability is going to be the differentiating factor going forward. But tech SEO comes in because they make sure content either less or more usable, and that's a huge part of UX UI. It's really all one thing. And then I'll go back to my sniff test that we get to later. But I want to briefly talk about like what prevent ... It sounds really simple what we're saying, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's not like, wow, that's earth shattering. There are really good points, I hope, I think. But for some reason, most of the content on the web gets this wrong. And I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say most of it gets it wrong because there's page 1, but then there's page 2 through 20. And that's not always means that it's bad. It might be irrelevant for the key, whatever. But I think there's two things in my mind that make people hesitant about going this direction with their content. And that is, one, they're anxious about sales. And it's just landing pages all of the time. Where people on a landing page, you really want to try to drive ... That's where you're making the money. You really want to drive the sales, so CTA here, CTA there, and quick marketing kind of content. And you don't offer more informational content that gives context to the user. Or you don't scale back those CTAs because you're just anxious about making the sale. I'm not blaming anybody. I get that you're anxious, but that anxiety can lead you to go too far with pushing a sale, let's say, and not creating really good content. And the second thing is relying on wrong metrics. Let's take search volume, a tool, like Samra says, that every single month, a million people are looking for this keyword. So I'm going to write about this keyword, I'm going to do whatever I can and try to get search. And then said, no, I wrote about this keyword. But the end, you're not thinking about, A, is this content I should be writing? Is this good for my user? And even if it should be written on your blog or on your website, whatever it is, you're not thinking about what makes us good content. You're just thinking about how to get a million users to come and look at your content every month. And those metrics- Crystal Carter: Right. And I- Mordy Oberstein: ... just throw things off sometimes. Crystal Carter: And I think that one of the things that's good about those metrics is that they're really accessible. You've got your average search volume metric and you can see that and you can show that to someone and that sort of thing, but there are other metrics that you can use and there are other ways that you can get content ideas. And I think, also, Google often says that like, there's the ... I think the number they normally bat around is around 15% of queries have never been made. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, 15%. Crystal Carter: And you have other tools available than just the same tools that everyone has. If you have a customer service team, they will know the kinds of questions that people are regularly asking them about what you do. If you have a sales team, they will regularly ask you about those things. If you genuinely are using your product, there's probably questions that you have. Or if you, let's say, show it to your mom and she's like, "But how do I actually bake the cake?" And you're like, "Oh, follow the recipe." She's like, "Yeah, but this doesn't say that." If she says that, that's a gap, that's a content gap, that's an opportunity, and that's something that people are going to be looking for. There are other things. And reviews are a really good source of this. I've had it before where I've written content on golf. I know nothing about golf, but I have a friend who's related to golf and I followed him. And I also went through the reviews and looked at the kinds of stuff that everybody was talking about in the reviews. And we made the content based on that, not just on keyword volumes, but on the kinds of things that you're seeing come up from users and that you can actually answer. Mordy Oberstein: And I've actually done this, where I've gone to keyword research tools, plucked out the questions that they offer, then gone to real people I knew who are dealing with it, whatever it was I was researching. And the questions that I got back were completely different. That's a really good point. The last thing I want to hit on before we head over to our guest tips for this week is, practically speaking, how do you actually go about creating the really good content? This comes by my sniff test. Well, first, I want to say is, and I'll probably say this a lot on this podcast, start with empathy. Start with really understanding your audience. What are their pain points? What's their life situation? And what do they actually need? Because otherwise, you can't actually write that content I was talking about earlier where you're predicting what they're going to need if you don't understand who they are and what they need. [00:14:21] The Brand Sniff Test The second thing is that I call it the brand sniff test. Whenever you go to a page or you go really anything, you go to a store, you walk in, you look around and you're like, the prices might be great, they might have exactly what you need, but you look at it, and something just doesn't give you a great impression. And we, as human beings, we do this in three seconds flat. You go to a webpage, you're looking at it like the overall experience, there's something off with it. All of the latent signals that you're getting from the page, whether it be the tone, whether it be like they're still using tables from 1995. All of those things that give off and what brand marketers will use all the time as signals, like how effective are we, I call it the brand sniff test. Does your page pass the brand sniff test? Is the tone right? Is the format right? Or is the graphics right? Everything, all of those latent signals. When someone reads the content, does it come off that's well written, that is substantial, that is detailed, that has nuance to it, that's not just fluff? Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I- Mordy Oberstein: Those latent signals. And Google's trying to mimic that. It's the same thing that Google's trying to mimic. Obviously, they're not you, they can't show up and do that in three seconds. They're trying to mimic that through quantitative analysis, but that's what they're trying to accomplish. Give your content- Crystal Carter: And I think that- Mordy Oberstein: ... the brand sniff. Sorry, you're going. Crystal Carter: No, no. And I think it's true. If you're arriving on a new website and whether you're getting information or whether you're looking to buy something or whether you're looking to answer a question, whatever your intent might be, you want to know that the person that you're getting this information from is a decent source and that whatever the query have is actually in their wheelhouse, that they actually know what they're talking about. I could ask anybody about, I don't know why I've got a cold or something like that, but my doctor probably knows better than the person that I met down the pub. And because it's in my doctor's wheelhouse, it's important to remember that. And I think also, you talked about empathy. It's important to think about being genuinely of use to your users. I think I see a lot of content that is around like, we do this, we are great, we've got this, we do that. When you see content that's really good, it explains why. I saw a gym that was like, we have lots of machines, so you don't have to wait. We keep everything clean so that you can see healthy. We are open all the hours so that you can exercise whenever you want. Phones, in particular, are very personal. It's very important to think about like you were talking to one person when you're writing that content. And so, think about that person when you're writing the content. And I think if you do that, you'll make much better content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And by the way, I so agree with you. And I think, speculate, that Google understands the difference between language profile. It understands when you write a certain way and when you're not writing a certain way. And it says, this way is good and that way is bad for whatever topic that you're dealing with. [00:17:05] Focus Topic Guest: Shelby Blackley and Jesse Williams But speaking of experts, as you brought up, we have two experts who are going to be talking to you about how do you not only get people to click on the content. You rank, they click, how do you get them to ultimately buy into that content, trust it, and come back for more maybe or actually, buy that product in the end? Here's Shelby Blackley over at Mashable and Jessie Willms from WTF SEO, or they're both from WTF SEO. We'll link to those links in the show notes on how to get people to trust your content after they click on it from the SERP. Jessie Willms: The question that we're answering today is, how do you create content that doesn't just get clicks, but really resonates and engages the user once they land on the page? Shelby Blackley: Well, I think that the big thing about having a quality piece of journalism or having a quality piece of content is really focusing on three pillars, search intent, keyword research, and the actual reader experience and how they are immersed in the piece. When you think about search intent, it's very much like why people are searching these things. They're looking at what is the actual main purpose of the page. To create a quality piece, you need to look at what's actually out there and what people are actually creating. If someone's looking up a specific keyword and they want an FAQ, how can you take that FAQ and take it an extra level? Is there a way to engage it? Can you add in schema? Is there an H2 subheading that you can add in? All of these will allow the readers to get what they need out of it. Jessie Willms: Right. By aligning the search intent with the content that we end up creating, we can make sure that we really fulfill that request that people are making when they turn to a search engine, I should say. Shelby Blackley: Exactly. And then you think about the keyword research behind it too. And we do so much around keyword research, right, Jessie? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Keyword research is the first thing that any new SEO will do when they are thinking about creating a new piece of content. We really want to, first, understand what it is people are looking for to understand the questions that we need to answer and the topics that we need to cover in whatever piece of content that we create. The other thing between keyword research as your first step is it helps inform not just what you cover, but how you cover it. Like Shelby said, if you are doing key research and you see that other publishers are creating FAQs to answer these reader questions, then you know that this is in line with how readers want to consume this content. A series of questions and answers is a really effective tool for creating that engagement with readers, because it allows them to answer specifically the question that they're after, but also scan and skim over other questions that they might find useful. Shelby Blackley: Right. And it's a perfect opportunity for internal linking out to other stories. Jessie Willms: Exactly. Shelby Blackley: For example, if you've got that FAQ, you can link out to a really great piece of enterprise journalism that will definitely hook people and keep them there for longer, right? Jessie Willms: Yeah. Internal links are really great two-way relationship between your content. If you have, in the context of journalism, for example, a really big investigation, pairing that with an FAQ that answers the most common questions that came up during this investigation is a really excellent way to make sure that you have multiple entry points for your readers into your most valuable content. Shelby Blackley: Which takes us into our third part about the reader experience, because it's all about, how can you give the reader as much information as possible in the easiest way, but also the most engaging. If you're creating a piece of content and you've got a video that you can throw in, absolutely, it should be in there. Not only can that video rank on its own, but you're already adding to that reader experience. And then you can add in an audio clip. What if there's another piece of journalism that's connected to it? Jessie Willms: Mm-hmm. Exactly. We need to remember that readers get information in a variety of ways. So wanting to make sure that we create those access points, as Shelby said, pairing a piece of text journalism with a video component or a piece of audio or even, for example, a static graphic that explains a concept. These are all really useful ways to make sure that whatever reader finds your content, that that particular type of reader can get something out of the information that you're servicing. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And we recently had an issue on 10X content. And I think this whole question can be answered, really thinking about content in that sphere of 10X. If you're not familiar, 10X content was coined by Rand Fishkin or the co-founder of moz, now it's SparkToro. And it's really about taking a piece of journalism or a piece of content and making it 10 times better than what's out there. What's on SERP's right now? Are you seeing regular FAQs that are just lists? How do you take it 10 times better to really serve that audience and make those readers want to come back to your site? Jessie Willms: And for any journalist listening, this is a very key pillar of journalism. You don't want to just match what your competitors are doing. You want to beat them by producing something that is better than what they've created. Shelby Blackley: Absolutely. And always thinking about how can you best serve the reader and give them the most information they can. Jessie Willms: Yeah. Centering the reader in your experience is a great way to make content that resonates. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much to Shelby and Jessie for that really interesting. Crystal, wonder what you're thinking. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that it's really on the mark with a lot of what we've been discussing. User-centric content is really important. And they also talked about format, which I'm a big proponent of and making sure that you have content that is good on a lot of different levels. And I think that they also mentioned how can you make your content better. I think we think about making new content a lot, but a lot of the work that I've done in the past has been around enhancing content that already exists. And there's a lot of times where you can go back over well performing content or existing content or content that's on the board, but maybe not at the top and actually tailor it with new elements to make it rank better and perform better for users. But keeping users at the center is absolutely key. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, again, to Jessie and to Shelby, really appreciate you sending that into us. Be sure to check out WTF SEO. It's a newsletter for journalists who do SEO. But again, journalism and content go hand in hand. If you're looking to create content, there's some really great tips in there. They also have a Slack group, a Slack channel. Check that out as well. We'll link to it all in the show notes. Again, thank you so, so much from us, here at the SERP’s Up podcast. Okay. I had this great idea. I think it was a great idea. Why don't we take a look at- Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I think you are being so skeptical, Crystal. [00:23:20] From the Top of the SERP I had this idea. Why don't we take a look at content that ranks really well and that doesn't rank as well or so, so, or not well at all, maybe, and see if we can maybe diagnose some reasons why content is ranking well and why it's not ranking well. So that you, our lovely audience, could have some tips around creating content that ranks well and doesn't rank well. And we're calling it from the top of the SERP. My association, by the way, the top of the SERP, when I was a kid, I grew in New York and Z100 was a radio station. Their thing was from the top of the Empire State Building. My mind, I hear from the top of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Do you know what, I live in England and there's something called Top of the Pops, which is a bit like American bandstand. And so that's what I think of. You said, top of the SERP, and I'm like, top of the pops. Yeah, top of the pops. Mordy Oberstein: What do you think of, our dear audience? Let us know on Twitter. Anyway, for real. We're looking down, but we're not judging any site or any page here in particular. That's why I need to say that. But this week, we're going to look at content around the keyword. Should I use pastels in my business logo design? And Crystal has a very different way of saying pastels, it's pastels? Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels, all right. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Pastels. I say it pastels. Crystal Carter: Pastels. Mordy Oberstein: Potato, potato yet again. When we ran this keyword, and by the way, if you go ahead in Google, as you might not see the exact same thing as we saw because rank is always changing. Crystal Carter: Exactly, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But there was a page from ZillionDesigns that ranks really, really well. And what I liked about this page is that ... And so I'm getting zilliondesigns.com. What it does really well is it gets really deep into pastels, which is so exciting, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: And how you could use them for design. For example, it gets into things around like the intensity of pastels and what that means for using it in a logo and how the different colors relate and how that evokes different emotions. It really what I thought it did a really good job. And I think what Google sees in this piece of content is that it takes understanding of pastels. It applies it to logo and design. But from a very business point of view, what does this mean for your business? Crystal Carter: I think- Mordy Oberstein: Which really speaks to the intent. Crystal Carter: And what I think is really interesting is that we were talking about like literal keywords and things like that. The actual page is called using pastel colors in your brand. That's what it's called. It doesn't say using it in your logo. But as you go through it, they have lots of visuals and they're talking about logos and they have tons and tons of examples of pastel colors and logos so that you ... And Google understands that if you're talking about pastel colors and logos, you not only want to talk about pastel colors, you not only want to talk about the ... But you also want to see them in the logo. They're ranking top, even though they're not explicitly saying logo, logo, logo all over the page. But they've got good examples of logos and how you can use them. From an intent point of view, it's giving you information and it's also giving you demonstration of what you need. And I think that's one of the things [inaudible 00:26:26]. Mordy Oberstein: I think all of the pages that are ranking well the top of the SERP, they are doing things like that. They're giving you a little bit of context. There's a page from tailorbrands.com and they're talking about muted pastels. And they write ... I was going to say something like they literally write, I'll read it to you, a muted palette can actually help highlight a specific part of your logo, like an icon or your brand name. You can always experiment blending muted pastels with colors, with a brighter accent to give it a unique look that pops off the page, as opposed to just saying that you should always experiment with blending muted pastels and colors. It gives you the whole context around why that is, and it goes even deeper into it. The pages that I see, at least from my point of view, that are ranking well are not just listing information or showing you examples, but they're giving you some kind of context around how this works. You can extrapolate out what they're saying and apply it to your own situation, which I think Google sees that. Crystal Carter: Exactly, because I think Google understands what the next query is going to be. They know what people are going to come back for. They can see when they ... And a bit of content is addressing multiple stages of the query at once. Not only understanding what the past logo is and not going, these are pastel colors, lavender is pastel and baby pink is pastel and things, and not just listing them all and then somebody has to go back and find another thing. But it's a rich bit of content that's working there. I think what's also interesting about these is the top ranking ones, is that they're pretty robust. They're fairly longer form bits of content. Which means that they're probably ranking for multiple terms, which is very, very interesting to see. They're both doing a really good job on delivering content that is valuable to users. Mordy Oberstein: So, takeaway for this kind of query and perhaps your kind of query is also if you see this out there for the things that you're trying to rank for, a little bit of context and around what you're saying and why you're saying it and how it applies to the particular use case of what people are looking for, in this case, their business, definitely help here. It seemed that Google is saying, hey, we want users to be able to take away something and being able to apply it to their own site. And the only way you can do that is if you offer people a concept that they could take away and apply it to their own site, not just like, here's the information. Now, to the pages that didn't do so well. Now these are pages that maybe were on page two, maybe bumped up to page one for a little while, went back down to page two. One of the pages we looked at, one was on page two and then one was on page four. Maybe it'll get backed up to page two. But it wasn't consistently performing well, is our point. What did you see there? Crystal Carter: Yes. This is one that I saw from invideo.io and they're talking about pastel colors. What's very interesting here is that InVideo is a video website. It looks like they're providing a video tool and this is talking about pretty much different color palettes that you might use. And so the content is called pastel colors and it was ranking page two. It's now ranking lower. And I think part of this is because it's not explicitly talking about logo design. It's talking about pastel colors, generally. Even though they don't state it in the title, there's an implied connection between using pastel colors and video rather than using it in a logo design. They mention the word logo, but it's not really an emphasis. I don't think this is necessarily that this page needs to be optimized for the pastel colors for your logo query. I think this is a question that this is kind of in the general neighborhood, but this content doesn't actually satisfy this particular query. It probably ranks for something else very well. But in this particular instance, it's not actually satisfying it. It's in the ballpark, but it's not going to be taught because it's not actually satisfying the query. I think if you had this page and you saw that it lost rank, don't worry about it. Because you weren't supposed to rank for it in the first place. Mordy Oberstein: That's a really good point, by the way, general point for listening to this. Again, we're not trying to be judgmental. These are good pages, but not for this particular keyword or this particular intent. And I think you're right. And for this particular page, what it did that I think doesn't work for this particular query is like, let's say, it talks about the pale lemon color. This color too is named after [inaudible 00:30:16] and it's softer version of a vibrant yellow, doing the job of a perfect background with your visuals whenever you need an alternative for white. And it tells you, okay, this is a good alternative for white, but it doesn't give you a concept or context around why this color might be good in the business context, how you might pair this color. The next step is not there. There's no context around it. Crystal Carter: Exactly. It's not talking about logo design, which is a different thing from a video palette. Another one that was ranking page two, for the color is pastel colors and design, ideas, examples, mega inspiration. And this one is just general pastel colors and it's GraphicMama blog. What I think is interesting about this one is, again, it discusses logos a little bit, but it's not dedicated to logo design. And it's just discussing pastel colors, generally. But again, it's not dedicated to logo design. But what's also interesting about this one is that this has a lot of social proof. I think the reason why this is ranking on page two rather than ranking on page four is that if you look at it says that it's been viewed 12,000 times. That's pretty good. Based on that, I'm guessing that GraphicMama has a lot of social media followings and things like that. And they've also really done really well with showing lots of different illustrations of use cases for capsule design. Some of them which include logos. But again, it's not dedicated to that particular thing. Again, this is one where the content is perfectly solid, but Google's trying to find the content that is the most useful and the most appropriate for that particular query, and that's what they're going to put on top. Mordy Oberstein: That's what we were talking about earlier in the podcast, where you're trying to write nuance content for a particular audience and this content doesn't speak this particular audience. Because the audience in mind is coming from a business point of view. They're using it for their logo, for their what? For their business, for their website, whatever it is, some kind of business professional use. And what the content that you have here just gives you the information about pastels in a vacuum, but not in the context of how you can actually use it. I think it lacks from that point of, again, intent and that level of nuance that the intent demands. But either way, just to sum it all up, it's about intent, it's about nuance, it's about the right content at the right place, at the right time. And in this particular case, it seems to be about creating context and creating concepts that the user is able to walk away from and therefore apply to their own site, which again, speaks to the intent- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: ... of. Crystal Carter: They want to be able to learn how to do something and they want to be able to learn how to apply some information. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you can't do that without concepts. It's just not possible. Amazing. Crystal Carter: There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Now we're not done with content just yet, there's more. But wait, there's more. Crystal Carter: There's more. Mordy Oberstein: Because content, when you talk about content, it's always hard to pin it down. And whether it's using tools to analyze content or which tools are the best for how do you define content, what kind of content are you talking about? Content is always ... Again, here's that word again, so nuanced. [00:33:13] Deep Thoughts | What IS Content? We thought, why don't we try to define, what is content? Crystal Carter: What is content? Mordy Oberstein: Is content? Here's a deep thought by Crystal and Mordy. Crystal Carter: I think on this one, I think the reason why I wanted to bring this up is because I think a lot of people, when they say, "Oh, we're going to make some content," is they think about blogs. That's the first thing they think about. They think, oh, we're going to make some blogs. That's the content. Once we've done the blogs, we've done the content. And I- Mordy Oberstein: I love the blogs. Crystal Carter: Love the blogs, don't get me wrong. Blogs are great. Blogs are good. Blogs are fantastic. However, that's not all your content. That's not the end all be all of your content. There is a lot of different content on your site. And content can include like really tiny things. Content can include big things like images, videos, audio, lots of different multimedia, but can also include things like microcopy, like things for buttons. Or a really good example that I can think of is in MailChimp, for instance. One of the reasons why I think MailChimp has such a good following is that when you press send on MailChimp, while it's loading up your email templates and getting them all the things, they put cute little quotes or they'll say cute little thing, something to do with bananas or something like that in between. And those little moments, those that lose a little bit of moments, those are also content. That's like a Microcopy Canvas. Another one, while they're waiting for things to load, it'll have a quote about something creative or something like that. And all of those different parts of your content are part of your content. And I think that it's important to remember that, to me, my deep thought is that content is about everything that people experience from your brand and from your website. Mordy Oberstein: That's exactly where I went with this. I defined content as that which communicates. And that's everything. Crystal Carter: Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I want to be thorough. No, but for real. And by the way, most of the communication is done lately. And we, as marketers or SEOs or content creator, just by default, end up focusing on the more manifest parts of your content. But like a dream, it's really the latent part of your content that really matters. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm just trying to think, there's definitely times where if I go to a website and stuff and it's like, nothing they said, but you just go, oop, no. This isn't a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: And you just run away straight away. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Yes, the content is the actual facts or the messaging or ideas or product or whatever it is that you're trying to communicate, but it's way more than that. It's everything about communication. It's everything you're signaling, everything you're giving off. Which means, by the way, if you wanted to take it from the same concept on the flip side, content is relationship building. Crystal Carter: That's very interesting. That's very interesting. And I think, also, that comes with ... That helps you to decide about which content to make. I think if you're building relationships, when you're making this content, you are trying to build a relationship with people. There are people that I follow. There's an artist that I follow, and she makes amazing content. And I look at her pictures all the time and I tell people about her all the time. I've only bought three things from her, but I tell people about her all the time because I feel like- Mordy Oberstein: Resonates. Crystal Carter: ... I have a relationship with her content because it makes me happy. And- Mordy Oberstein: No, no joke. That's totally true. When you read a piece of content, when you're looking at an image, when you're listening to whatever it is, it hits you a certain way and that builds associations. I compare it to you have a doctor and they can treat you. And everything is like 100%, on the up and up, they are the best at their craft. But then there's also the bedside manner part of it. And your content is really both. Your content is obviously the actual facts. And so you're talking about, you have a blog about scientific theories of theory, theory of relativity. But it's also how you're communicating it. In event, you came up really pretentious. Your reader might have the best facts, but would they be able to actually assimilate that information? Were they so turned off by your tone that they would forget about this? I love what you said as facts, but I hate how you said it. I'm not taking this content in. Crystal Carter: It's very interesting. And I think that people forget that it's not just ... These are the deal breakers. When people are deciding which content to go to or which information to access or which thing to buy, those bits of nuance in between can be what makes the difference. I know there are people who really, really like iPhones, for instance, who really just love the box for years. I remember people would be like, oh, I just love the boxes. And that would be part of the experience, would be that like they're- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, totally. Crystal Carter: They had these really good boxes and you could have the same phone. Again, you can resell an iPhone, for instance, but if it comes in a box. That's- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Imagine your iPhone came in a brown paper bag, like a lunch bag. Crystal Carter: Right. You feel differently about it. You feel differently about it. And you know it's the same content, but you feel differently about it because it feels different. And like you said, it's very ethereal. It can be very in between, there's a lot of in between. But I think it's sometimes when we're talking about why people can't make great content and I think sometimes people feel nervous about actually investing the time or actually showing some personality, but do it. Just do it. And you can also try it in different channels. I mentioned not just blogs, but a blog is a really good ... You can do a litmus test so you can just try it and see what people think. You write one little blog and see if people take to that. And if you can get feedback on it, you go, okay, so this didn't resonate that well, okay, this did resonate. And then you can build on that and you can ... You don't have to do everything all at once. You can try things and see how it connects with people. But I think that thinking about relationship- Mordy Oberstein: Content. Crystal Carter: ... element of content is really important. Mordy Oberstein: It's a relationship. It's communication that relates. Crystal Carter: Relatable communication. Mordy Oberstein: Relatable communications. Do you know what else- Crystal Carter: If no one can understand you, then are you [inaudible 00:39:30] communicated? Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't matter. Crystal Carter: It's like they say, if a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound? And my answer to that is, who cares? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, who cares? [00:39:37] Snappy SEO News You know what we do care about? The news. So, here- Crystal Carter: The news. Mordy Oberstein: The news. Some snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Two things for you today. You have PSA, just in case you missed it. [00:39:55] News: Beauty Blog With Financial & Medical Advice A Bit Sus But first, vindication from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google beauty blog with financial and medical advice, a bit sus, that's suspect. Google's John Mueller was asked if offering medical advice on a beauty blog was a viable plan. Now for the record, the question was a hypothetical so they can pull out a concept. Just FYI, no one was actually proposing doing something like that. John from Google said, "If you're giving financial and medical advice on a beauty blog, I suspect users are probably rightly going to find that a bit sus," as in suspect. Vindication, I've been saying this forever, well, since August 2018, where I wrote a post for Rank Ranger, is Google profiling your site? Well, while John is going to say, Google treats this as suspect in the algorithm. Technically, you have to think that if the quality of each page is great, but it's on completely different topics, again, you're talking about financial advice or medical advice on a beauty blog that's going through setting very mixed signals to Google and call into question the reliability of that content. Because quality looks at the entire domain of the site. Meaning Google looks at the quality of the site overall, not just specific pages. For long time SEOs, that might sound a bit odd. But it's true [00:41:41] News: Google's Helpful Content Update when it brings us to our PSA. Just in case you missed it, Google announced it will be launching the helpful content update. By the time you are listening to this, it may already be live and rolling out. Police check the SEO news outlets for more coverage, such as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Journal, and so forth. I'm not going to get into too many details here because it's snappy. But basically, the update is going after content written for bots first and not users. Content, you write so that you rank, but not really focused on your audience being happy. That's what this update is going after. It is a sitewide algorithm. Google is scoring the entire site, not just pages, so willing to some more resources around the update in the show notes so that you can learn more. And that is the snappy news. Crystal Carter: Let's roll. [00:42:08] Follow of the Week Mordy Oberstein: Before we leave every week, what we would like to do is to give you, our dear listeners, more resources to learn more SEO. One of the greatest resources out there is the SEO community. Now there are some great people to follow, some not so great people to follow in the SEO community, like any community. Here, however, is a great person to follow. Crystal, who we following this week? Crystal Carter: This week, I'm going to give a shout out to Ross Simmonds. Ross Simmonds is @TheCoolestCool on Twitter. And Ross is someone who has a big following, but I'm always surprised that more people aren't aware of him. Sometimes I'm like, "Oh, Ross Simmonds says this," and people say, "Oh, I don't follow him." And I'm like, "You should. You absolutely should follow him." And one of the things that he specializes in is content distro. He talks about repurposing your content, about making sure that your content is being found in different places. So that not only are you making unusually awesome content, but that you're also making sure that it's found in lots of unusually awesome ways. And this is something that I have done for clients, and I've seen incredible results. And I think that it's something that you can add to your SEO process. Because that way, you don't have to just hope that people will find your content and all that time you spent connecting with your users and building relationships and doing all of that sort of stuff can find more fruits. And I think the other thing is that he talks about using about different channels and formatting, specifically, for those channels, so making Twitter threads or making videos or making this other or the other to make that content really sing in lots of new ways. And I think he does it really, really well. Mordy Oberstein: Which is a perfect place to end off. Because you need to not only create that great content, but you need to know how to share that great content and spread that great content around., Crystal Carter: Spread it around. Mordy Oberstein: Appropriate. Thank you, Crystal. That was so appropriate. And thank you to our great audience. Thank you for joining us with the SERP’s Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Well, not to worry, we're back next week with an all new episode as we get into the algorithm. Crystal Carter: Mm. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, algorithm updates. Ooh, scary. [00:44:18] Wix.com/SEO/Learn Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our very own Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Look and learn more about everything SEO. Check out all the great content at webinars over at the Wix SEO learning hub at, you guess it, I'll say it again one more time, wix.com/seo/learn. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Crystal Carter: SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Is there a difference between enterprise SEO and SMB SEO? Yes, there is, but it’s probably not what you think it is. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein sit down with Wix’s own Matt Matergia, Vice President of Global Strategic Sales, to discuss the challenges of navigating the enterprise space. They also welcome guest Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, who discusses how SEOs can ensure that they’re staying hands-on and sharp at their craft. Walk with us into the enterprise this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back What you need to know if you want to go Enterprise SEO Is there a difference between enterprise SEO and SMB SEO? Yes, there is, but it’s probably not what you think it is. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein sit down with Wix’s own Matt Matergia, Vice President of Global Strategic Sales, to discuss the challenges of navigating the enterprise space. They also welcome guest Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, who discusses how SEOs can ensure that they’re staying hands-on and sharp at their craft. Walk with us into the enterprise this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 33 | April 12, 2023 | 40 MIN 00:00 / 40:26 This week’s guests Eli Schwartz Eli Schwartz is the bestselling author of Product-Led SEO: The Why Behind Building Your Organic Growth Strategy. A growth advisor and consultant, his ability to demystify and craft organic marketing strategies has generated billions in value for some of the internet's top sites. Matt Matergia Matt works with some of Wix’s largest channel partners. With over 10 years of experience in the digital marketing and SaaS industries, Matt knows what it takes for digital service providers and software companies to successfully serve small businesses’ online needs. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by someone who is good, Crystal Carter, head of SEO Communications here at Wix. Totally got you by surprise at that one. Crystal Carter:: You did. I thought you were going to be like, "Ooh." Mordy Oberstein: Nope. Someone who is good. Crystal Carter:: That was a good note. Thanks for just... Yes. Also, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, the context for this is, and I guess you'll see our recording schedule and I'll hint at it. Yesterday was Barry Schwartz's birthday. Happy birthday, Barry. Crystal Carter: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to Barry rested break. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But by the time he hears it's going to be weeks after his actual birthday, but Barry- Crystal Carter:: We should also wish him happy birthday when this comes out. Mordy Oberstein: We should. So, Barry put out a Tweet saying, "I wish there was some kind of automated AI that would automatically reply back to when people wish you happy birthday on Twitter with, 'Thank you.'" So, you could have gone on Twitter and wrote an entire spiel to Barry like, "Barry, we love you. You're amazing." He would literally reply back to everyone, "Thank you." Period. Crystal Carter:: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, that's where I got my intro to Crystal this week. Crystal Carter:: There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Period. Crystal Carter:: Full stop. End of sentence. Mordy Oberstein: Full stop. End of sentence. Crystal Carter:: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: All right, please. Moving on. Period. Thank you. Period. Do you know who Barry Schwartz is? By the way, Barry Schwartz, I call him the Godfather of SEO. He has been covering the SEO news for literally forever. He has SERoundtable.com, news editor at SearchEngineland.com. He is a huge asset to the industry. So, please follow Barry Schwartz and read his news content. You will learn a tremendous amount about SEO. And he's a great follow on Twitter because he is, as much as he denies it, he's a real character. Crystal Carter:: He also has a weekly video roundup, which is sponsored by Wix. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Crystal Carter:: So, yeah, check that out. That's a really good watch on a Friday morning while you're having your cup of coffee. It's a good way to keep up on point. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. You can see Barry wearing a Wix hat. This episode is sponsored by Barry. No, just kidding. Crystal Carter:: No, it's not. Mordy Oberstein: This podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can filter through all of your pages with the Wix site inspection tool. Literally, filter through them because they now have filters. So, you can filter through up to 2000 pages of Google Search Console, URL inspection, API data to look at the indexation status of the specific types of pages on your site, or filter according to indexation status. Or filter according to a whole bunch of other different ways, because it's Wix making it easier for you to work at scale, which is a large part of... Crystal Carter:: I just wanted to chime in and just say I love it. I love that feature so much. I'm sure Daniel Weisberg from Google might be listening, but it's better than Google Search Console because you can search for a word that might be in your URL, it might be in the page title. You can search by that. You can filter by rich results. You can see that all on one table. I literally love it so much. Mordy Oberstein: Same here. Crystal Carter:: They announced that there was a filter and I lost my mind. It's brilliant. Check it out, please. Mordy Oberstein: You can now search for pages by the keyword in the URL, by the words in the URL. There's a million ways to now organize your data. Crystal Carter:: And on Google Search Console, you have to do three clicks or a redjects or a thing to find the thing. It's like, what? Just let me search for- Mordy Oberstein: Before you even finish the whole word that you type in, it's already pulled it out for you. Crystal Carter:: Yes, I love it. I literally love it. Mordy Oberstein: It is amazing. Which is a large part of doing SEO at scale, which is a large part of enterprise SEO, which is what today's episode is all about. No, it's not a Star Trek convention. It's the enterprise, but it's enterprise SEO. Or SEO for enterprise, however you want to phrase it. Crystal Carter:: Engage. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, thank you. Engage. Thank you. Make it so. Today, we are looking at what you should expect when working SEO at the enterprise level. How enterprise SEO does and doesn't differ from "regular SEO." What skills come into focus when doing enterprise SEO? And we have someone who has become synonymous with enterprise SEO stopping by to talk about how you can do enterprise SEO and still be hands on. Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO is stopping and by to share his thoughts and his insights. Plus, we're going to talk to vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia, who's going to stop by with us to chat all about what it means and what you should know when talking to enterprise level clients. 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. Beam me up, Scotty, because episode number 33 of the SERP's Up podcast is taking on the enterprise. Crystal Carter:: I'm like, more Star Trek jokes. Honestly, please. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Did you know by the way, that he never, Kirk never said Captain Kirk, William Shatner of Star Trek, never said, "Beam me up, Scotty," ever on the show or the movies? Crystal Carter:: Who said, "Beam me up, Scotty"? Mordy Oberstein: No one. Crystal Carter:: Leonard Nemoy? Mordy Oberstein: No one said it. He said something similar to it. Crystal Carter:: That's not rational. Mordy Oberstein: Fascinating. Crystal Carter:: In a sense it's futile. I know. I can literally just spat out things. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Endless. We'll know we've gone too far when we break out into William Shatner impersonations. Okay, so. Crystal Carter:: Okay, wait, wait, wait. Who's your favorite Star Trek captain? Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. Crystal Carter:: Kirk. Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. It's absolutely. Crystal Carter:: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: First of all, I grew up on Kirk in the movies. It's very nostalgic for me. Crystal Carter:: I'm sorry. So, it's a close tie between Janeway and Picard, and all Sisko. Mordy Oberstein: Janeway is wonderful. I think the number two for me is Picard, followed by Janeway, followed by a Sisko, followed by it doesn't matter anymore. Crystal Carter:: I put Kirk pretty low on the thing. People, listeners, listeners, listeners to this podcast of who I know the Treking community is a lot, chime in. Tell us who's your favorite captain? Who's your favorite captain? Mordy Oberstein: There is no competition. We've gone too far. There is a bias. There is a bias in SEO. If I can go out on a limb here, people will think local SEO was simple because it's SMBs, and enterprise SEO is complex because it's huge in large organizations. That I don't think is the truth. Certainly not in the way that the perception of many of us think it is. Local SEO can in fact, by the way, be enterprise. Right? Think, I don't know, you're doing local SEO for Taco Bell. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. Dairy Queen. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter:: Pret a Manger. Mordy Oberstein: We listed all these companies. Papa Johns. Forever. Crystal Carter:: People who have multiple locations. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That is what we're trying to say. Also, by the way, small websites have their own complications and SEO at the enterprise level might not be as complicated as you think the way you think. Sure, they might have lots of pages. More pages than a typical SMB. But is that fundamentally what makes enterprise SEO more complex? Let's find out. Crystal Carter:: Make it so. Mordy Oberstein: Make it so. Engage. I think there's this general thought around enterprise SEO where it's more paid ads, therefore it's more complex. That's what enterprise SEO more complex words to me, and being at Wix at the enterprise level, why at SEMrush also is very enterprise. To me, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb here, we could talk to Nick Wilson about this on another podcast. What makes enterprise SEO complicated is the sheer size of the company itself, not the size of the website. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. I think it can be a little bit of both and I think it can also be the difference between a tugboat and a cruise ship. If you need to move a cruise ship through a space, you have to move it all at once and you have to do a lot of planning. It's going to take a lot of planning in order to make sure. If you've got a tugboat or a canoe or whatever and you need to leave the harbor, you just go. Mordy Oberstein: You untie the boat, you throw on your little captain's hat. Crystal Carter:: Right, exactly. Let's talk about captains. Lots of stuff about captains, right. So, you can get yourself on your little ship and you can sail away into the blue. Mordy Oberstein: Someone put on the Styx Come Sail Away right now. Crystal Carter:: I was thinking of Enya, Sail Away. Anyway. So, if you're sailing out, it's not a big deal. Yeah, you can do that and you can be nimble. It's not a big deal because you can say, oh, you know what? I'm just going to post that blog. You could be nimble. If you are moving an entire unit, then you have to plan and that planning can take a long time. So, if we're talking about the cruise ship metaphor, because I love a folksy metaphor, if we're talking about that you need to tell the harbor master, you need to tell the people who look after the harbor, I'm moving my ship. Right? I'm getting out of this dock and I'm moving my ship. They're like, okay, we need to clear the way, we need to do these things. Mordy Oberstein: Sign these forms. Crystal Carter:: Right. There's things you have to do in order to engage that. On an enterprise level, if you want to do things, there's lead time. You have to take lead time into account, and sometimes that lead time can be months. Sometimes that lead time can be even longer than that. So, when you're thinking about your SEO and you're thinking about SEO implementations, particularly like tech SEOS implementations. If you want to address some tech debt for instance, that's in your website stack. Or if you want to create a new asset on your blog or create a new asset for the digital asset or something. You have to think about the fact that there are wheels within wheels within wheels, and you have to be able to move as a unit. You can't think of yourself in a siloed space because you're part of a larger unit. Mordy Oberstein: You know what it's like, to use another analogy? Let's say you want to get ice cream. You hop in the car, you get ice cream. Now, let's say you have 10 kids. Now go try to get ice cream. Crystal Carter:: Right, right, right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: You have 10 different people with 10 different considerations and it's at the enterprise level. So, you might think, wow, let's target this keyword. Make it a really simple case. Target this keyword, engage. Then someone says, the brand manager says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That is not on brand for us." But the SEO, the traffic. That's not what the brand does. There's so many different teams with so many different considerations, who have a voice and a legitimate voice on what you do and what you don't do. Navigating all of that, extremely complex. If you were to ask me, if I'm doing SEO with scale already and I want to move to the enterprise level. Or I'm not doing SEO with what I want to go into enterprise. The greatest skill I think you can have is being able to navigate different relationships, considerations, compromising, planning. That back and forth with other people comes much into focus, uniquely so, in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: This is something that Eli Schwartz talks about. He says you need to make friends with everyone. I think also you need to have your ears to the ground about where things are moving. I was on a recent discussion with the women in tech SEO crew, talking about their state of technical SEO report that they put out with ERA digital. We were talking about enterprise SEO and we were talking about how you get things implemented. One of the consensuses that we came to was that timing is everything. If you know that a team is moving on an initiative across your company, and this also applies to smaller businesses as well. But let's say that you're working for a theme park or something and the theme park has a new ride that they want to promote. And you have an SEO thing that you want to get done and you've been trying for months to get it done. If you can position the SEO tactic, the SEO implementation that you want as a benefit to this other initiative that's coming down the pipe, which you know that the company has momentum on, then you're more likely to get that sign off than if you just have something random that's like a thing that you think is a good thing that's best practice that will generally help the website. If you have something that works with the timing of the company, that's really useful to think about. And thinking about budgets allocation, thinking about when your company signs off marketing plans, for instance. If the marketing plans are signed off in October and you show up with this great idea in December, they've already signed it off and they're midway through and you need to think about that as well. So, I think there's a lot of wheels within wheels and finding out is really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: That goes back to your point about the boats, or in my case, the kids and the ice cream. If you want to successfully navigate that slow moving ship, it means that you have to be almost a type A personality to a certain extent. If that's not you, by the way, then make sure there's somebody on your team who that is them. Because you need to know in advance, be able to plan it in advance and predict the various scenarios that will play out. If this happens, we're going to have to do that and now I'm going to know these five different things and set up meetings with these five different people, and have that all planned out. So, before you even get to the doc, or before you even offer the kids, hey, let's go for ice cream, you need to have a plan of how that's going to happen and what that's going to look like. Crystal Carter:: I know that for instance with Wix there's a logo maker tool, which the team put together, and that took a little while to put together, but it's a fantastic tool. It's a fantastic tool for users in lots of ways and adds a lot of user value for users for instance. Putting that together and getting all the moving parts and getting everyone together to make that happen is something that's really valuable. I think also when you're in an enterprise team, and even when you're in a smaller in-house team or an agency as well, being prescient, being aware of who the gatekeepers are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Very much so. Crystal Carter:: Can be really, really, really useful. I don't mean gatekeepers as in like boo, you can't come in, but I mean people that are facilitators. Being conscious of who those people are and identifying them and being able to see who that works, because it might not even be the people that you would normally on paper assume. It might be that there's somebody who manages the diary for the CEO or manages the diary for the CMO or something. If you don't speak well to them, you will not get a meeting. It might be that might be the person that you need to think about. It might be that it's not necessarily the person who is the team lead, but it's the project lead who's actually driving some of the decisions and things. So, be aware of those so that you can get your implementations met. Also, when you're thinking about your SEO implementations, I think it's also important to tie them into the team's priorities. If they don't fit in with the team's priorities, then it's going to be very difficult to get signed off. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's another thing that really has to align priorities. Also, because in my experience you could only, and I think you understand this also, we've experienced this both, where you're going to have overlap. People have their own priorities and your priorities are going to overlap. Sometimes your priorities align and you work together, and sometimes your priorities are the same and it means cannibalization. Crystal Carter:: Right. So, you've got to think about that. I think from a keyword research point of view, from an enterprise, that's definitely something that people should think about. If you're working on a big domain, and one of the things that's tricky with enterprise domains is that not only do you have your main domain, but you very often will have your knowledge base or whatever. You'll very often have support docs, help docs and things like that. You may also have a lot of old content. So, if you're working on a website, if you've gotten to an enterprise level, chances are the domain is a little bit older and is going to have a lot of webpages. It might be that there are pages from way, way, way, way, way back. Mordy Oberstein: You talked about this in a previous podcast, you have to be careful with those things also because if you pull off the wallpaper, sometimes the wall crumbles. Crystal Carter:: Right. Precisely. I think that when you're looking at your keyword research, you should also be looking at how to make sure that you're not overlapping with yourself. I think we talked a little bit about keyword cannibalization, which I think is a challenge for enterprise SEOs. One of the tools that I found recently that's really useful is a keyword gap analysis tool, Semrush. Mordy Oberstein: Pretty cool. Crystal Carter:: Which is supposed to be for they're looking at competitors. But it's actually really, really useful for looking at your own content and finding the gaps in the existing content you have, so that you can create some complimentary rather than competitive content. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So, different folders compared to each other, different sub-domains compared to each other, that kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: Precisely. It's a really, really good tool that you can look at for your own. So, if you compare all of those different things and then you can see untapped, picked from the untapped. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Where it's overlapped and you're just going to end up killing their page, people are not going to be happy. Don't do that. Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. It may even mean you have to work harder to make your content rank and perform and engage and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or if you are going to do that, you need to sync up to make sure that everyone's aligned in all the resources and all of the SEO juice are going to one place, for lack of a better word. Now, if you're doing keyword research, that's great. You're at the enterprise level, you're doing keyword research. Are you really though? Are you that hands-on? Is it all strategies? Should you be hands-on? Probably, yeah, but how do you remain hands-on at the enterprise level when you're so busy? All these big pages and big things and different meetings and different teams. Oh my goodness. To help us answer that, Product Led SEO's author, Eli Schwartz, is here to tell us how to remain hands on when working at the enterprise level. Eli Schwartz: Figuring out how to stay hands on an SEO when you're working at an enterprise level is no easy feat. By the very nature of the job, your job is more likely to be focused on meetings, architecture, strategy, diplomacy, politics and all things that are the furthest thing from hands-on. As a consultant, this is even more challenging for me because I'm not hands on. I'm not working within a company. I don't really get to look at the source code of anything. I don't see Jira tickets. I'm barely in Slack conversations. When I am in, these are the conversations that I'm invited into. So, I have to find other ways to be hands-on. I'll do things like work on my own projects, launch pages, break pages. I recently launched a new website with Wix, and when I forwarded my website over from WordPress over to Wix, I intentionally 404ed pages to see how long they would still be in the index. Spoiler, it's been about two months and they're still in the Google index. So, if you do a site query on my site, EliSchwartz.co, you're still going to find webpages that are 404ed and they're still in the Google index. So, I do things like that to stay really on top of the real hands-on part of SEO. The other things I'll do is I'll do things that are out of my typical role as a consultant. I'll coach new SEOs or I'll coach enterprise SEOs and help them understand and help work with them, and really for my own learning to understand how to navigate the challenges that they're working on as a part of their roles. If they have a challenge with how do they get an engineer to do something, how do they understand the reporting they have? These aren't things that I get to do in my regular consulting, but these are things that I get to really learn and do from coaching. Coaching isn't necessarily the part of consulting that I might earn the most from or I might focus the most time on, but it actually is for me the most rewarding because I am getting my hands dirty. I am learning things and I am navigating challenges, and it keeps me up to date with existing issues around SEO. For example, most of my larger clients are very, very unlikely to ever get hit by a Google algorithm update. They aren't going to get penalties, they aren't even doing things that are big enough and important enough to get the attention of Google. However, with some of the coaching projects that I work on, those are smaller sites. Those will be the kinds of things where they are seeing changes from Google algorithm updates and they need to message that to executives. They are seeing things and they need to message to counterparts across the company, how do we go ahead and fix this? That's the primary way that I'll get most of my hands-on access and really stay up to date. Of course, I'm sure other people are recommending and I would totally agree with that, read blog posts. Be on Twitter, be on LinkedIn, be a part of conversations. But the one extra piece I do is when I hear these things and I see these conversations, I go ahead and try to test it on my own. But this is something that I am very proactive about. How do I stay hands-on rather than just staying high level? Mordy Oberstein: Thank you very much, Eli. Don't forget to check out Eli's book, Product-Led SEO. A little plug for Eli. Hey, if somebody's coming on the podcast and they have a book, we have to plug the book. Crystal Carter:: Plug the book. Mordy Oberstein: Plug the book. Crystal Carter:: That's what you do. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I'm like Jay Leno or something. I have a guest on, I'm plugging the book. Crystal Carter:: Some shameless self-promotion but not self-promotion. Something that's just- Mordy Oberstein: Marketer's going to market. That's how it goes. Crystal Carter:: This is it. This is it. Mordy Oberstein: Respect. Crystal Carter:: Resistant is futile. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good point and it's a good point at the enterprise level and in general. If you want to get hands-on experiences with SEO and you're like, I don't know, I don't have a local SEO client or whatever it is, I don't have an eCommerce. So, try to spin up a mock site. Try to get your hands on. Take that extra initiative. If you're sitting at strategy meetings all day long, great, start a podcast. Create a podcast website. Run that website. Do something with it, not just a test. Actually run something. Create a blog, run that blog, do the work read. Keep your hands dirty in the SEO by being a little bit proactive and spending a little bit of time on, even if it's a small website, it's something tangible. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, yeah, it's so true and the best SEOs do this all the time. I hear people who are like, oh, I did this course but I need to get some SEO experience and I need to get a job somewhere. Or I need to get a thing somewhere. I'm like, you don't need anyone's permission to do SEO. You can just do SEO. You can start a website right now and you can do SEO. You can start creating content. You can start doing content optimization. You can start thinking about your content and that sort of thing on things like Medium, on things like LinkedIn, on things like that. But do SEO. And then I think really nice working on enterprise level, John Sehada is also somebody who does this a lot. Barry interviewed him recently, or there's a video interview of Barry and John talking about this as well. John's like, oh yeah, I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that. Barry was like, I literally love how in the weeds you are. The best SEOs are doing this all the time. I know somebody who is an enterprise SEO who works for a major fashion label. She's like, oh yeah, we've been experimenting on this project with AI content and seeing how that performs and that sort of thing. I think that if you want to learn how to do SEO, doing is the most important thing. Because SEO in theory is great and you can learn a lot of stuff from reading blogs, but until you put the content into, until you set it live, it's not really active. You have to set it live and you have to see how Google responds, how people respond, how the internet responds to your content. Mordy Oberstein: This goes to a point John Mueller made a while back a couple years ago, where someone's talking about creating a test site. John's like, well. John, the search advocate over at Google. You don't usually put the same kind of effort into a test site as you do a real site, so it's hard to really see how things would actually work and play themselves out. The real thing is the real thing. Now, sometimes in enterprise SEO, you work in-house. Sometimes, however, very often actually, you consult at the enterprise level when doing SEO. Which means you have clients, which means you have high stake clients who have big budgets and big expectations, on my. To ease our anxiety around this, we're going to talk to someone who knows a thing or two about how to talk to big name brands or running big budgets with big expectations. Our very own vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia stops by as we go across the Wix verse. Speaker 5: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show, Matt. Really nice to have you here. Matt Matergia: Pleasure to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I'm kind of excited to pick your brain. Enterprise level clients. When you're talking to SEO, not SEO, just purely in abstract, not connected to any vertical, what goes through your mind when you have to deal with a, say, a complicated SEO? I'm sorry, a complicated enterprise. We're not doing SEO. A complicated enterprise client. Matt Matergia: You can't get off of the SEO. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a drug. Matt Matergia: So, all right. I think SEO doesn't matter what you're talking about with an enterprise client, right? It all comes back to understanding their business and understanding the problems that they're having and how their business works. In the sales world, we talk about discovery, right? Discovery is basically understanding who you're talking to, where they are in the organization, what their goals are, what their problems are, what opportunities you can gain out of this. So, we always say good discovery leads to good opportunities, and that's Sales 101, right? But that is really understanding clients and understanding their business. Crystal Carter:: What's your process for getting that level of understanding that helps you to create an effective relationship between yourself and an enterprise client? Matt Matergia: I would say base level, it's curiosity. Crystal Carter:: Okay. Matt Matergia: It's curiosity and asking good questions. Mordy Oberstein: You and John Mueller. So, we did an episode on building the good SEO team, and we asked Google's John Mueller, what are the traits of a good SEO team? He said curiosity. Matt Matergia : All right. Mordy Oberstein: Great minds. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Wow, what a level I've set myself at. Mordy Oberstein: That is, right? You've reached. We all aspired to each level of John. You have just said we've been trying for this, what, how many episodes? Like 33 episodes? And you've been here for five minutes. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Well, I'm honored. I think maybe we should just end this right here. Mordy Oberstein: Somebody's got another meeting to go to. Crystal Carter:: I would say also when you're working with clients who are enterprise or are part of a larger organization, in my experience, timelines can be something of a challenge or can be something that needs to be managed anyway. Have you found that to be the case as well? Matt Matergia : Yes, of course. Timelines, budgets, and also what is driving the timeline is usually it's the process on the other side. It's that decision making process that you need to understand, because we all have maybe a timeline in our head of the ideal process that we want to go through. But if you don't understand what's going on the other side and the business case that they need to make, the people that they need to get involved, the approval that they have to get, then those timelines, it's expectation versus reality. There can be some huge gap between what you're expecting the timelines to be and what they might be expecting. Which goes back to curiosity because you need to ask the questions to understand what that process is going to be. Crystal Carter:: Right, and I think that that's part of building a relationship with someone from a team like that. And that's a healthy relationship because you don't want to be pressuring someone. How come you haven't responded to this email when they don't have the capacity to get back to you straight away. Or they've got some other things that are going on around or that sort of thing. So yeah, I don't know if you can talk more about that. Matt Matergia: Well, I was joking. We had a sales kickoff in New York, I guess it was two months ago now, but I was joking with the team because we were talking about building trust and where you need to get with your main stakeholders and the sales process. We were talking about breaking the cell phone barrier. We were saying if you don't have your main contact cell phone and you don't have the right to be texting, calling, whatever, and you don't have that relationship, forget it. You're not closing the deal because you haven't established trust. Right? I made that up, breaking the cell phone barrier, but it goes back to trust really. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have your number so I kind of... Matt Matergia: We don't have a good relationship. Mordy Oberstein: We're not there, huh? Oh man. I really misassessed this whole relationship. Matt Matergia: I'll Slack it to you. We're on Slack. Mordy Oberstein: Oh okay, we're on Slack? Okay, so Slack is not... Wait, what if you're in a group Slack together with them, so it's a cross company Slack? Matt Matergia: Actually, that is definitely a good sign, right? When you have something like a joint Monday board or a joint Slack channel and now you're bringing in all the players. I feel like now you're starting to work on actual implementation or getting to the actual project, for sure. Mordy Oberstein: So, you're really trying to integrate with that person as much as possible. Matt Matergia: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Crystal Carter:: I think from an SEO point of view, the process of building trust with your clients is very similar whether they're enterprise or whether they're a smaller scale. I think when you have that level of trust, when you think about timelines, sometimes it might not be the right time for whatever it is that you're doing. But if you have a level of trust where they've got you on speed dial, they've got your number, they've got all your information, they know that you're solid and stuff. Then you were talking about opportunity as well, then they're able to connect with you when they need you for whatever it is, and you're able to fulfill whatever it is that they need. Matt Matergia: It's expectation setting. It's been a long time since I've worked selling SEO to enterprise clients, and I'm sure in a decade. But sophistication of the marketing teams, I'm sure it has improved or let's hope. But a lot of the partners that I'm working with today, they're working with small businesses. You think, all right, I'm going to invest money in SEO and overnight I'm going to show up on Google first page because you have a unscrupulous SEO agencies that are always saying that, right? So, part of the way that you can build trust is also that you do proper expectation setting. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, a great positive or bonus is that when this person you've made contact with, whether it be you have their home phone number, their children's names, whatever it is that you have, if they go to another company, I've seen this a gazillion times, if they like you, they'll bring you into that company. Which means that you've not lost the other client. They don't necessarily get rid of you because your POC is gone and you've gained a new client, because your POC is now in a new company. And you know that person's children's names and you're on a first name basis, and you go to the country club. Whatever it is that you do together. Matt Matergia: I feel like CMO turnover is the bread and butter of marketing agents. Mordy Oberstein: You're like, all right, let's see. When you intake a new client, I wonder what's their churn rate going to be here at their own company? Matt Matergia: Yeah. Like, all right, every two years I can just hit the. Mordy Oberstein: This guy's great. I love this person. He just brought me 10 clients just by himself moving around. Matt Matergia: Exactly. Crystal Carter:: I think there's also, talking about churn, sometimes when there's new team, let's say you're working with an account or you're working with a team, sometimes when there's a new company or a new team member, sometimes they're like, we want to clear out. We want to get new contacts and things like that. Have you got any advice for how to establish good relationships with talent incoming management? Matt Matergia: Yeah. In the sales world, we look for signals. Signals could be maybe a company has raised money or maybe they had a change in strategy. But certainly a signal could be new leadership coming in. Because 100% whether they're going to come in and bring existing vendors and existing relationships, or they're going to look for new ones, they're going to 100% make changes and they're going to want to make those changes usually within the first 90 to 180 days. So, specific to how do I establish those new relationships, I don't think it's any different necessarily than just establishing relationships in general. But I think looking for those buying signals is very important, and having your finger on the pulse to know what's going on to be proactive in those situations is important. Crystal Carter:: In my experience, also having your act together also helps. So, if you have a well-oiled machine and you're like, this is our report that we do every month and this is our thing that we do every month, then when the new person comes in, you've got all that stuff for them to see and the transition is easier. I don't know if you find that that's useful from a sales point of view as well? Matt Matergia: Everybody wants to look good. So, if you are the facilitator of that person looking good, then you've just earned their trust, right? 100%. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of looking good, if people wanted to look good and follow you out there on social media, where can they find you? Matt Matergia: I am MTerg on Twitter. M-T-E-R-G. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, and we'll link to that in the show notes. Matt Matergia: I'm not as active as either of you, but I am there. Crystal Carter:: But you're on LinkedIn as well, yes? Matt Matergia: And on LinkedIn. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. LinkedIn's great. I go there once in a while. I visit. Not like TikTok. I don't even know what that is. Crystal Carter:: That's not true. Marty has a very active TikTok where he does lots of dances, too. Mordy Oberstein: Dancing and I fall downstairs. That's what I do. On purpose. Or some people can like it, laugh at me. I just hurt myself. Anyway, forgetting that rabbit hole, Matt, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you sharing your expertise and experience with us and look forward to seeing you around the virtual office, because we're not in the same office. We're not in any office together. Matt Matergia: Nope. One day I'll get to Tel Aviv. Mordy Oberstein: One day I'll get to Denver. Matt Matergia: Yes. Look forward to that. Crystal Carter:: Fantastic. Matt Matergia: Thank you both. It's a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Matt. I've had numerous conversations over the years with Matt. Super nice guy, super friendly, super accessible, and one of these people who you walk away feeling like they know way more than they let on kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: In a good way. Mordy Oberstein: In a good way. I mean it in the best way possible. Some things that I'm not going to let on that I do know, well maybe I will, that you'll soon know, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I'm not sure. As I pivot into the snappy news. Crystal Carter:: And now, with the snappy news and news from Bing, they have announced that their new Bing has increased the number of conversations that you can have with Bing chat from 15 up to 20. You can also have a total of up to 200, which is an increase from 150. They've also explained that they are adding in image and video search, which will make it a lot easier for you to have a bit more information there. And that they're adding local grounding to give better results for local search. Also in local search, if you are using Bing places, you might also be interested to know that they have improved their location recognition API to include something called local intelligence, which allows you to create territories and to do better local SEO via Bing. They're also adding more information about demographics and continuing to build and grow. We reported last week that the March core algorithm update had completed. However, in the early days of April, we are starting to see a lot of movement around there, to the point that Barry Schwartz reported seeing early signs of a Google search algorithm update on the third. A lot of people were saying that they have seen some reversals and a lot of changes early in the month. So, if you have a website that you're looking after, have a look at those results and see if anything has changed. Picking up on the AI news from Google, they continue to roll out Bard in a testing framework, so more people are reporting that they're getting access to Bard. They also announced recently during a podcast with the New York Times that they are also testing Bard in Gmail. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, discussed some of their approaches to innovation and responsibility, and also discussed and denied that he ever issued a code red as part of their approach to AI. Finally, news from ChatGPT is that ChatGPT has been disabled for users in Italy, reported by Christie Hines in Search Engine Journal. It seems that OpenAI did not in properly inform users that it was collecting personal data. This may have been in contravention with GDPR. And as such, they have now blocked access to ChatGPT for Italian users while they tried to make adjustments to potentially reestablish the ground rules for use in that area. This brings into question some potential challenges for how generative AI tools like Chachi PT, Bard and New Bing may approach this privacy space going forward. That's all for today's SERP's Up podcast snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Coming back now from the snappy news, always good to have news. Crystal Carter:: Always good. Have we reached the final frontier of our podcast? Mordy Oberstein: It was the undiscovered country of SEO enterprises. Crystal Carter:: That's very fair. Mordy Oberstein: A little Star Trek Six reference for you there. All right. I feel like we're spanning generations, we keep this podcast going on any longer. But before we do lead the part, we need to talk about who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness, and this week we have a great follow for you, Paul Andre Devera, also known as Dre. An absolute character who you may not realize specializes in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: So, he is living my podcast sound effects dreams because he has a fantastic podcast and webcast called The SEO Show. Do check the out on YouTube and on all of your best channels. He is somebody who drops the air horns that go. He just drops them in the middle of whatever he's doing and it's amazing. He has a lot of fun with his podcast and with a lot of his web stuff, but don't let the fun fool you. He's so smart and so strategic about the things that he does. I was on a recent discussion for Majestic, where we were talking about enterprise level SEO. The amount of sense he was talking, the amount of clarity that he has about how to approach enterprise SEO is phenomenal. He's super intelligent and really engaging, and a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: I've had numerous conversations with him. I've interviewed him. He is so on the ball and his take on SEO is so accurate and it's real. You're not getting the influencer flop. You're getting a real take from him. Again, like the SEO Video Show, the production value is off the chain. Little plug from myself, beginning of each show I do the SEO joke. So, if you want to hear me do an SEO joke, check out Dre's show. Marketers going to market. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, he's got a fantastic theme song as well. Which I thought that he'd done it himself, but he didn't do it himself. I wish he had, but there we go. Mordy Oberstein: He's over on Twitter at Paul Andre, that's P-A-U-L-A-N-D-R-E. Paul Andre on Twitter. We'll link to it in the show notes so you could follow him, check him out across all of his platforms, especially on YouTube and his SEO Video Show. And that's it. That's all we got. Crystal Carter:: That's it. We've reached the final frontier. We have- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you made that joke already today. Crystal Carter:: Did I? Can I not do it again? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You can pick it again. Crystal Carter:: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: Another Star Trek joke. Crystal Carter:: Oh, an insert Star Trek joke here. Mordy Oberstein: Live long and prosper, everybody. Thank you for joining us on the SERB'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 SEO on PPC with our powers combined. Look for wherever you could consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO loading app over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn a little more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Eli Schwartz Matt Matergia Paul Andre De Vera Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Enterprise SEO Tips Product Led SEO Eli Schwartz SEO Consulting State of Technical SEO 2023 The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Talks Bard & The Future Of Search Seeing Early Signs Of A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Maximizing Sales Team Efficiency with Location Intelligence Bing Preview Release Notes: Image & Video Search Exploring Italy’s ChatGPT Ban And Its Potential Impact Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Eli Schwartz Matt Matergia Paul Andre De Vera Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Enterprise SEO Tips Product Led SEO Eli Schwartz SEO Consulting State of Technical SEO 2023 The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Talks Bard & The Future Of Search Seeing Early Signs Of A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update Maximizing Sales Team Efficiency with Location Intelligence Bing Preview Release Notes: Image & Video Search Exploring Italy’s ChatGPT Ban And Its Potential Impact Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO branding at Wix, and I'm joined by someone who is good, Crystal Carter, head of SEO Communications here at Wix. Totally got you by surprise at that one. Crystal Carter:: You did. I thought you were going to be like, "Ooh." Mordy Oberstein: Nope. Someone who is good. Crystal Carter:: That was a good note. Thanks for just... Yes. Also, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, the context for this is, and I guess you'll see our recording schedule and I'll hint at it. Yesterday was Barry Schwartz's birthday. Happy birthday, Barry. Crystal Carter: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to Barry rested break. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But by the time he hears it's going to be weeks after his actual birthday, but Barry- Crystal Carter:: We should also wish him happy birthday when this comes out. Mordy Oberstein: We should. So, Barry put out a Tweet saying, "I wish there was some kind of automated AI that would automatically reply back to when people wish you happy birthday on Twitter with, 'Thank you.'" So, you could have gone on Twitter and wrote an entire spiel to Barry like, "Barry, we love you. You're amazing." He would literally reply back to everyone, "Thank you." Period. Crystal Carter:: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So, that's where I got my intro to Crystal this week. Crystal Carter:: There you go. Thank you. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Period. Crystal Carter:: Full stop. End of sentence. Mordy Oberstein: Full stop. End of sentence. Crystal Carter:: Moving on. Mordy Oberstein: All right, please. Moving on. Period. Thank you. Period. Do you know who Barry Schwartz is? By the way, Barry Schwartz, I call him the Godfather of SEO. He has been covering the SEO news for literally forever. He has SERoundtable.com, news editor at SearchEngineland.com. He is a huge asset to the industry. So, please follow Barry Schwartz and read his news content. You will learn a tremendous amount about SEO. And he's a great follow on Twitter because he is, as much as he denies it, he's a real character. Crystal Carter:: He also has a weekly video roundup, which is sponsored by Wix. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Crystal Carter:: So, yeah, check that out. That's a really good watch on a Friday morning while you're having your cup of coffee. It's a good way to keep up on point. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. You can see Barry wearing a Wix hat. This episode is sponsored by Barry. No, just kidding. Crystal Carter:: No, it's not. Mordy Oberstein: This podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can filter through all of your pages with the Wix site inspection tool. Literally, filter through them because they now have filters. So, you can filter through up to 2000 pages of Google Search Console, URL inspection, API data to look at the indexation status of the specific types of pages on your site, or filter according to indexation status. Or filter according to a whole bunch of other different ways, because it's Wix making it easier for you to work at scale, which is a large part of... Crystal Carter:: I just wanted to chime in and just say I love it. I love that feature so much. I'm sure Daniel Weisberg from Google might be listening, but it's better than Google Search Console because you can search for a word that might be in your URL, it might be in the page title. You can search by that. You can filter by rich results. You can see that all on one table. I literally love it so much. Mordy Oberstein: Same here. Crystal Carter:: They announced that there was a filter and I lost my mind. It's brilliant. Check it out, please. Mordy Oberstein: You can now search for pages by the keyword in the URL, by the words in the URL. There's a million ways to now organize your data. Crystal Carter:: And on Google Search Console, you have to do three clicks or a redjects or a thing to find the thing. It's like, what? Just let me search for- Mordy Oberstein: Before you even finish the whole word that you type in, it's already pulled it out for you. Crystal Carter:: Yes, I love it. I literally love it. Mordy Oberstein: It is amazing. Which is a large part of doing SEO at scale, which is a large part of enterprise SEO, which is what today's episode is all about. No, it's not a Star Trek convention. It's the enterprise, but it's enterprise SEO. Or SEO for enterprise, however you want to phrase it. Crystal Carter:: Engage. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, thank you. Engage. Thank you. Make it so. Today, we are looking at what you should expect when working SEO at the enterprise level. How enterprise SEO does and doesn't differ from "regular SEO." What skills come into focus when doing enterprise SEO? And we have someone who has become synonymous with enterprise SEO stopping by to talk about how you can do enterprise SEO and still be hands on. Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO is stopping and by to share his thoughts and his insights. Plus, we're going to talk to vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia, who's going to stop by with us to chat all about what it means and what you should know when talking to enterprise level clients. 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. Beam me up, Scotty, because episode number 33 of the SERP's Up podcast is taking on the enterprise. Crystal Carter:: I'm like, more Star Trek jokes. Honestly, please. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Did you know by the way, that he never, Kirk never said Captain Kirk, William Shatner of Star Trek, never said, "Beam me up, Scotty," ever on the show or the movies? Crystal Carter:: Who said, "Beam me up, Scotty"? Mordy Oberstein: No one. Crystal Carter:: Leonard Nemoy? Mordy Oberstein: No one said it. He said something similar to it. Crystal Carter:: That's not rational. Mordy Oberstein: Fascinating. Crystal Carter:: In a sense it's futile. I know. I can literally just spat out things. Mordy Oberstein: Endless. Endless. We'll know we've gone too far when we break out into William Shatner impersonations. Okay, so. Crystal Carter:: Okay, wait, wait, wait. Who's your favorite Star Trek captain? Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. Crystal Carter:: Kirk. Mordy Oberstein: Kirk. It's absolutely. Crystal Carter:: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: First of all, I grew up on Kirk in the movies. It's very nostalgic for me. Crystal Carter:: I'm sorry. So, it's a close tie between Janeway and Picard, and all Sisko. Mordy Oberstein: Janeway is wonderful. I think the number two for me is Picard, followed by Janeway, followed by a Sisko, followed by it doesn't matter anymore. Crystal Carter:: I put Kirk pretty low on the thing. People, listeners, listeners, listeners to this podcast of who I know the Treking community is a lot, chime in. Tell us who's your favorite captain? Who's your favorite captain? Mordy Oberstein: There is no competition. We've gone too far. There is a bias. There is a bias in SEO. If I can go out on a limb here, people will think local SEO was simple because it's SMBs, and enterprise SEO is complex because it's huge in large organizations. That I don't think is the truth. Certainly not in the way that the perception of many of us think it is. Local SEO can in fact, by the way, be enterprise. Right? Think, I don't know, you're doing local SEO for Taco Bell. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. Dairy Queen. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter:: Pret a Manger. Mordy Oberstein: We listed all these companies. Papa Johns. Forever. Crystal Carter:: People who have multiple locations. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That is what we're trying to say. Also, by the way, small websites have their own complications and SEO at the enterprise level might not be as complicated as you think the way you think. Sure, they might have lots of pages. More pages than a typical SMB. But is that fundamentally what makes enterprise SEO more complex? Let's find out. Crystal Carter:: Make it so. Mordy Oberstein: Make it so. Engage. I think there's this general thought around enterprise SEO where it's more paid ads, therefore it's more complex. That's what enterprise SEO more complex words to me, and being at Wix at the enterprise level, why at SEMrush also is very enterprise. To me, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb here, we could talk to Nick Wilson about this on another podcast. What makes enterprise SEO complicated is the sheer size of the company itself, not the size of the website. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. I think it can be a little bit of both and I think it can also be the difference between a tugboat and a cruise ship. If you need to move a cruise ship through a space, you have to move it all at once and you have to do a lot of planning. It's going to take a lot of planning in order to make sure. If you've got a tugboat or a canoe or whatever and you need to leave the harbor, you just go. Mordy Oberstein: You untie the boat, you throw on your little captain's hat. Crystal Carter:: Right, exactly. Let's talk about captains. Lots of stuff about captains, right. So, you can get yourself on your little ship and you can sail away into the blue. Mordy Oberstein: Someone put on the Styx Come Sail Away right now. Crystal Carter:: I was thinking of Enya, Sail Away. Anyway. So, if you're sailing out, it's not a big deal. Yeah, you can do that and you can be nimble. It's not a big deal because you can say, oh, you know what? I'm just going to post that blog. You could be nimble. If you are moving an entire unit, then you have to plan and that planning can take a long time. So, if we're talking about the cruise ship metaphor, because I love a folksy metaphor, if we're talking about that you need to tell the harbor master, you need to tell the people who look after the harbor, I'm moving my ship. Right? I'm getting out of this dock and I'm moving my ship. They're like, okay, we need to clear the way, we need to do these things. Mordy Oberstein: Sign these forms. Crystal Carter:: Right. There's things you have to do in order to engage that. On an enterprise level, if you want to do things, there's lead time. You have to take lead time into account, and sometimes that lead time can be months. Sometimes that lead time can be even longer than that. So, when you're thinking about your SEO and you're thinking about SEO implementations, particularly like tech SEOS implementations. If you want to address some tech debt for instance, that's in your website stack. Or if you want to create a new asset on your blog or create a new asset for the digital asset or something. You have to think about the fact that there are wheels within wheels within wheels, and you have to be able to move as a unit. You can't think of yourself in a siloed space because you're part of a larger unit. Mordy Oberstein: You know what it's like, to use another analogy? Let's say you want to get ice cream. You hop in the car, you get ice cream. Now, let's say you have 10 kids. Now go try to get ice cream. Crystal Carter:: Right, right, right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: You have 10 different people with 10 different considerations and it's at the enterprise level. So, you might think, wow, let's target this keyword. Make it a really simple case. Target this keyword, engage. Then someone says, the brand manager says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That is not on brand for us." But the SEO, the traffic. That's not what the brand does. There's so many different teams with so many different considerations, who have a voice and a legitimate voice on what you do and what you don't do. Navigating all of that, extremely complex. If you were to ask me, if I'm doing SEO with scale already and I want to move to the enterprise level. Or I'm not doing SEO with what I want to go into enterprise. The greatest skill I think you can have is being able to navigate different relationships, considerations, compromising, planning. That back and forth with other people comes much into focus, uniquely so, in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: This is something that Eli Schwartz talks about. He says you need to make friends with everyone. I think also you need to have your ears to the ground about where things are moving. I was on a recent discussion with the women in tech SEO crew, talking about their state of technical SEO report that they put out with ERA digital. We were talking about enterprise SEO and we were talking about how you get things implemented. One of the consensuses that we came to was that timing is everything. If you know that a team is moving on an initiative across your company, and this also applies to smaller businesses as well. But let's say that you're working for a theme park or something and the theme park has a new ride that they want to promote. And you have an SEO thing that you want to get done and you've been trying for months to get it done. If you can position the SEO tactic, the SEO implementation that you want as a benefit to this other initiative that's coming down the pipe, which you know that the company has momentum on, then you're more likely to get that sign off than if you just have something random that's like a thing that you think is a good thing that's best practice that will generally help the website. If you have something that works with the timing of the company, that's really useful to think about. And thinking about budgets allocation, thinking about when your company signs off marketing plans, for instance. If the marketing plans are signed off in October and you show up with this great idea in December, they've already signed it off and they're midway through and you need to think about that as well. So, I think there's a lot of wheels within wheels and finding out is really helpful. Mordy Oberstein: That goes back to your point about the boats, or in my case, the kids and the ice cream. If you want to successfully navigate that slow moving ship, it means that you have to be almost a type A personality to a certain extent. If that's not you, by the way, then make sure there's somebody on your team who that is them. Because you need to know in advance, be able to plan it in advance and predict the various scenarios that will play out. If this happens, we're going to have to do that and now I'm going to know these five different things and set up meetings with these five different people, and have that all planned out. So, before you even get to the doc, or before you even offer the kids, hey, let's go for ice cream, you need to have a plan of how that's going to happen and what that's going to look like. Crystal Carter:: I know that for instance with Wix there's a logo maker tool, which the team put together, and that took a little while to put together, but it's a fantastic tool. It's a fantastic tool for users in lots of ways and adds a lot of user value for users for instance. Putting that together and getting all the moving parts and getting everyone together to make that happen is something that's really valuable. I think also when you're in an enterprise team, and even when you're in a smaller in-house team or an agency as well, being prescient, being aware of who the gatekeepers are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Very much so. Crystal Carter:: Can be really, really, really useful. I don't mean gatekeepers as in like boo, you can't come in, but I mean people that are facilitators. Being conscious of who those people are and identifying them and being able to see who that works, because it might not even be the people that you would normally on paper assume. It might be that there's somebody who manages the diary for the CEO or manages the diary for the CMO or something. If you don't speak well to them, you will not get a meeting. It might be that might be the person that you need to think about. It might be that it's not necessarily the person who is the team lead, but it's the project lead who's actually driving some of the decisions and things. So, be aware of those so that you can get your implementations met. Also, when you're thinking about your SEO implementations, I think it's also important to tie them into the team's priorities. If they don't fit in with the team's priorities, then it's going to be very difficult to get signed off. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's another thing that really has to align priorities. Also, because in my experience you could only, and I think you understand this also, we've experienced this both, where you're going to have overlap. People have their own priorities and your priorities are going to overlap. Sometimes your priorities align and you work together, and sometimes your priorities are the same and it means cannibalization. Crystal Carter:: Right. So, you've got to think about that. I think from a keyword research point of view, from an enterprise, that's definitely something that people should think about. If you're working on a big domain, and one of the things that's tricky with enterprise domains is that not only do you have your main domain, but you very often will have your knowledge base or whatever. You'll very often have support docs, help docs and things like that. You may also have a lot of old content. So, if you're working on a website, if you've gotten to an enterprise level, chances are the domain is a little bit older and is going to have a lot of webpages. It might be that there are pages from way, way, way, way, way back. Mordy Oberstein: You talked about this in a previous podcast, you have to be careful with those things also because if you pull off the wallpaper, sometimes the wall crumbles. Crystal Carter:: Right. Precisely. I think that when you're looking at your keyword research, you should also be looking at how to make sure that you're not overlapping with yourself. I think we talked a little bit about keyword cannibalization, which I think is a challenge for enterprise SEOs. One of the tools that I found recently that's really useful is a keyword gap analysis tool, Semrush. Mordy Oberstein: Pretty cool. Crystal Carter:: Which is supposed to be for they're looking at competitors. But it's actually really, really useful for looking at your own content and finding the gaps in the existing content you have, so that you can create some complimentary rather than competitive content. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So, different folders compared to each other, different sub-domains compared to each other, that kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: Precisely. It's a really, really good tool that you can look at for your own. So, if you compare all of those different things and then you can see untapped, picked from the untapped. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Where it's overlapped and you're just going to end up killing their page, people are not going to be happy. Don't do that. Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Yeah. It may even mean you have to work harder to make your content rank and perform and engage and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or if you are going to do that, you need to sync up to make sure that everyone's aligned in all the resources and all of the SEO juice are going to one place, for lack of a better word. Now, if you're doing keyword research, that's great. You're at the enterprise level, you're doing keyword research. Are you really though? Are you that hands-on? Is it all strategies? Should you be hands-on? Probably, yeah, but how do you remain hands-on at the enterprise level when you're so busy? All these big pages and big things and different meetings and different teams. Oh my goodness. To help us answer that, Product Led SEO's author, Eli Schwartz, is here to tell us how to remain hands on when working at the enterprise level. Eli Schwartz: Figuring out how to stay hands on an SEO when you're working at an enterprise level is no easy feat. By the very nature of the job, your job is more likely to be focused on meetings, architecture, strategy, diplomacy, politics and all things that are the furthest thing from hands-on. As a consultant, this is even more challenging for me because I'm not hands on. I'm not working within a company. I don't really get to look at the source code of anything. I don't see Jira tickets. I'm barely in Slack conversations. When I am in, these are the conversations that I'm invited into. So, I have to find other ways to be hands-on. I'll do things like work on my own projects, launch pages, break pages. I recently launched a new website with Wix, and when I forwarded my website over from WordPress over to Wix, I intentionally 404ed pages to see how long they would still be in the index. Spoiler, it's been about two months and they're still in the Google index. So, if you do a site query on my site, EliSchwartz.co, you're still going to find webpages that are 404ed and they're still in the Google index. So, I do things like that to stay really on top of the real hands-on part of SEO. The other things I'll do is I'll do things that are out of my typical role as a consultant. I'll coach new SEOs or I'll coach enterprise SEOs and help them understand and help work with them, and really for my own learning to understand how to navigate the challenges that they're working on as a part of their roles. If they have a challenge with how do they get an engineer to do something, how do they understand the reporting they have? These aren't things that I get to do in my regular consulting, but these are things that I get to really learn and do from coaching. Coaching isn't necessarily the part of consulting that I might earn the most from or I might focus the most time on, but it actually is for me the most rewarding because I am getting my hands dirty. I am learning things and I am navigating challenges, and it keeps me up to date with existing issues around SEO. For example, most of my larger clients are very, very unlikely to ever get hit by a Google algorithm update. They aren't going to get penalties, they aren't even doing things that are big enough and important enough to get the attention of Google. However, with some of the coaching projects that I work on, those are smaller sites. Those will be the kinds of things where they are seeing changes from Google algorithm updates and they need to message that to executives. They are seeing things and they need to message to counterparts across the company, how do we go ahead and fix this? That's the primary way that I'll get most of my hands-on access and really stay up to date. Of course, I'm sure other people are recommending and I would totally agree with that, read blog posts. Be on Twitter, be on LinkedIn, be a part of conversations. But the one extra piece I do is when I hear these things and I see these conversations, I go ahead and try to test it on my own. But this is something that I am very proactive about. How do I stay hands-on rather than just staying high level? Mordy Oberstein: Thank you very much, Eli. Don't forget to check out Eli's book, Product-Led SEO. A little plug for Eli. Hey, if somebody's coming on the podcast and they have a book, we have to plug the book. Crystal Carter:: Plug the book. Mordy Oberstein: Plug the book. Crystal Carter:: That's what you do. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I'm like Jay Leno or something. I have a guest on, I'm plugging the book. Crystal Carter:: Some shameless self-promotion but not self-promotion. Something that's just- Mordy Oberstein: Marketer's going to market. That's how it goes. Crystal Carter:: This is it. This is it. Mordy Oberstein: Respect. Crystal Carter:: Resistant is futile. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good point and it's a good point at the enterprise level and in general. If you want to get hands-on experiences with SEO and you're like, I don't know, I don't have a local SEO client or whatever it is, I don't have an eCommerce. So, try to spin up a mock site. Try to get your hands on. Take that extra initiative. If you're sitting at strategy meetings all day long, great, start a podcast. Create a podcast website. Run that website. Do something with it, not just a test. Actually run something. Create a blog, run that blog, do the work read. Keep your hands dirty in the SEO by being a little bit proactive and spending a little bit of time on, even if it's a small website, it's something tangible. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, yeah, it's so true and the best SEOs do this all the time. I hear people who are like, oh, I did this course but I need to get some SEO experience and I need to get a job somewhere. Or I need to get a thing somewhere. I'm like, you don't need anyone's permission to do SEO. You can just do SEO. You can start a website right now and you can do SEO. You can start creating content. You can start doing content optimization. You can start thinking about your content and that sort of thing on things like Medium, on things like LinkedIn, on things like that. But do SEO. And then I think really nice working on enterprise level, John Sehada is also somebody who does this a lot. Barry interviewed him recently, or there's a video interview of Barry and John talking about this as well. John's like, oh yeah, I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that. Barry was like, I literally love how in the weeds you are. The best SEOs are doing this all the time. I know somebody who is an enterprise SEO who works for a major fashion label. She's like, oh yeah, we've been experimenting on this project with AI content and seeing how that performs and that sort of thing. I think that if you want to learn how to do SEO, doing is the most important thing. Because SEO in theory is great and you can learn a lot of stuff from reading blogs, but until you put the content into, until you set it live, it's not really active. You have to set it live and you have to see how Google responds, how people respond, how the internet responds to your content. Mordy Oberstein: This goes to a point John Mueller made a while back a couple years ago, where someone's talking about creating a test site. John's like, well. John, the search advocate over at Google. You don't usually put the same kind of effort into a test site as you do a real site, so it's hard to really see how things would actually work and play themselves out. The real thing is the real thing. Now, sometimes in enterprise SEO, you work in-house. Sometimes, however, very often actually, you consult at the enterprise level when doing SEO. Which means you have clients, which means you have high stake clients who have big budgets and big expectations, on my. To ease our anxiety around this, we're going to talk to someone who knows a thing or two about how to talk to big name brands or running big budgets with big expectations. Our very own vice president of Global Strategic Sales at Wix, Matt Matergia stops by as we go across the Wix verse. Speaker 5: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show, Matt. Really nice to have you here. Matt Matergia: Pleasure to be here. Mordy Oberstein: I'm kind of excited to pick your brain. Enterprise level clients. When you're talking to SEO, not SEO, just purely in abstract, not connected to any vertical, what goes through your mind when you have to deal with a, say, a complicated SEO? I'm sorry, a complicated enterprise. We're not doing SEO. A complicated enterprise client. Matt Matergia: You can't get off of the SEO. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a drug. Matt Matergia: So, all right. I think SEO doesn't matter what you're talking about with an enterprise client, right? It all comes back to understanding their business and understanding the problems that they're having and how their business works. In the sales world, we talk about discovery, right? Discovery is basically understanding who you're talking to, where they are in the organization, what their goals are, what their problems are, what opportunities you can gain out of this. So, we always say good discovery leads to good opportunities, and that's Sales 101, right? But that is really understanding clients and understanding their business. Crystal Carter:: What's your process for getting that level of understanding that helps you to create an effective relationship between yourself and an enterprise client? Matt Matergia: I would say base level, it's curiosity. Crystal Carter:: Okay. Matt Matergia: It's curiosity and asking good questions. Mordy Oberstein: You and John Mueller. So, we did an episode on building the good SEO team, and we asked Google's John Mueller, what are the traits of a good SEO team? He said curiosity. Matt Matergia : All right. Mordy Oberstein: Great minds. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Wow, what a level I've set myself at. Mordy Oberstein: That is, right? You've reached. We all aspired to each level of John. You have just said we've been trying for this, what, how many episodes? Like 33 episodes? And you've been here for five minutes. Matt Matergia: Yeah. Well, I'm honored. I think maybe we should just end this right here. Mordy Oberstein: Somebody's got another meeting to go to. Crystal Carter:: I would say also when you're working with clients who are enterprise or are part of a larger organization, in my experience, timelines can be something of a challenge or can be something that needs to be managed anyway. Have you found that to be the case as well? Matt Matergia : Yes, of course. Timelines, budgets, and also what is driving the timeline is usually it's the process on the other side. It's that decision making process that you need to understand, because we all have maybe a timeline in our head of the ideal process that we want to go through. But if you don't understand what's going on the other side and the business case that they need to make, the people that they need to get involved, the approval that they have to get, then those timelines, it's expectation versus reality. There can be some huge gap between what you're expecting the timelines to be and what they might be expecting. Which goes back to curiosity because you need to ask the questions to understand what that process is going to be. Crystal Carter:: Right, and I think that that's part of building a relationship with someone from a team like that. And that's a healthy relationship because you don't want to be pressuring someone. How come you haven't responded to this email when they don't have the capacity to get back to you straight away. Or they've got some other things that are going on around or that sort of thing. So yeah, I don't know if you can talk more about that. Matt Matergia: Well, I was joking. We had a sales kickoff in New York, I guess it was two months ago now, but I was joking with the team because we were talking about building trust and where you need to get with your main stakeholders and the sales process. We were talking about breaking the cell phone barrier. We were saying if you don't have your main contact cell phone and you don't have the right to be texting, calling, whatever, and you don't have that relationship, forget it. You're not closing the deal because you haven't established trust. Right? I made that up, breaking the cell phone barrier, but it goes back to trust really. Mordy Oberstein: I don't have your number so I kind of... Matt Matergia: We don't have a good relationship. Mordy Oberstein: We're not there, huh? Oh man. I really misassessed this whole relationship. Matt Matergia: I'll Slack it to you. We're on Slack. Mordy Oberstein: Oh okay, we're on Slack? Okay, so Slack is not... Wait, what if you're in a group Slack together with them, so it's a cross company Slack? Matt Matergia: Actually, that is definitely a good sign, right? When you have something like a joint Monday board or a joint Slack channel and now you're bringing in all the players. I feel like now you're starting to work on actual implementation or getting to the actual project, for sure. Mordy Oberstein: So, you're really trying to integrate with that person as much as possible. Matt Matergia: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Crystal Carter:: I think from an SEO point of view, the process of building trust with your clients is very similar whether they're enterprise or whether they're a smaller scale. I think when you have that level of trust, when you think about timelines, sometimes it might not be the right time for whatever it is that you're doing. But if you have a level of trust where they've got you on speed dial, they've got your number, they've got all your information, they know that you're solid and stuff. Then you were talking about opportunity as well, then they're able to connect with you when they need you for whatever it is, and you're able to fulfill whatever it is that they need. Matt Matergia: It's expectation setting. It's been a long time since I've worked selling SEO to enterprise clients, and I'm sure in a decade. But sophistication of the marketing teams, I'm sure it has improved or let's hope. But a lot of the partners that I'm working with today, they're working with small businesses. You think, all right, I'm going to invest money in SEO and overnight I'm going to show up on Google first page because you have a unscrupulous SEO agencies that are always saying that, right? So, part of the way that you can build trust is also that you do proper expectation setting. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, a great positive or bonus is that when this person you've made contact with, whether it be you have their home phone number, their children's names, whatever it is that you have, if they go to another company, I've seen this a gazillion times, if they like you, they'll bring you into that company. Which means that you've not lost the other client. They don't necessarily get rid of you because your POC is gone and you've gained a new client, because your POC is now in a new company. And you know that person's children's names and you're on a first name basis, and you go to the country club. Whatever it is that you do together. Matt Matergia: I feel like CMO turnover is the bread and butter of marketing agents. Mordy Oberstein: You're like, all right, let's see. When you intake a new client, I wonder what's their churn rate going to be here at their own company? Matt Matergia: Yeah. Like, all right, every two years I can just hit the. Mordy Oberstein: This guy's great. I love this person. He just brought me 10 clients just by himself moving around. Matt Matergia: Exactly. Crystal Carter:: I think there's also, talking about churn, sometimes when there's new team, let's say you're working with an account or you're working with a team, sometimes when there's a new company or a new team member, sometimes they're like, we want to clear out. We want to get new contacts and things like that. Have you got any advice for how to establish good relationships with talent incoming management? Matt Matergia: Yeah. In the sales world, we look for signals. Signals could be maybe a company has raised money or maybe they had a change in strategy. But certainly a signal could be new leadership coming in. Because 100% whether they're going to come in and bring existing vendors and existing relationships, or they're going to look for new ones, they're going to 100% make changes and they're going to want to make those changes usually within the first 90 to 180 days. So, specific to how do I establish those new relationships, I don't think it's any different necessarily than just establishing relationships in general. But I think looking for those buying signals is very important, and having your finger on the pulse to know what's going on to be proactive in those situations is important. Crystal Carter:: In my experience, also having your act together also helps. So, if you have a well-oiled machine and you're like, this is our report that we do every month and this is our thing that we do every month, then when the new person comes in, you've got all that stuff for them to see and the transition is easier. I don't know if you find that that's useful from a sales point of view as well? Matt Matergia: Everybody wants to look good. So, if you are the facilitator of that person looking good, then you've just earned their trust, right? 100%. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter:: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of looking good, if people wanted to look good and follow you out there on social media, where can they find you? Matt Matergia: I am MTerg on Twitter. M-T-E-R-G. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, and we'll link to that in the show notes. Matt Matergia: I'm not as active as either of you, but I am there. Crystal Carter:: But you're on LinkedIn as well, yes? Matt Matergia: And on LinkedIn. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. LinkedIn's great. I go there once in a while. I visit. Not like TikTok. I don't even know what that is. Crystal Carter:: That's not true. Marty has a very active TikTok where he does lots of dances, too. Mordy Oberstein: Dancing and I fall downstairs. That's what I do. On purpose. Or some people can like it, laugh at me. I just hurt myself. Anyway, forgetting that rabbit hole, Matt, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you sharing your expertise and experience with us and look forward to seeing you around the virtual office, because we're not in the same office. We're not in any office together. Matt Matergia: Nope. One day I'll get to Tel Aviv. Mordy Oberstein: One day I'll get to Denver. Matt Matergia: Yes. Look forward to that. Crystal Carter:: Fantastic. Matt Matergia: Thank you both. It's a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Three, two, one, ignition. Lift-off. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Matt. I've had numerous conversations over the years with Matt. Super nice guy, super friendly, super accessible, and one of these people who you walk away feeling like they know way more than they let on kind of thing. Crystal Carter:: In a good way. Mordy Oberstein: In a good way. I mean it in the best way possible. Some things that I'm not going to let on that I do know, well maybe I will, that you'll soon know, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I'm not sure. As I pivot into the snappy news. Crystal Carter:: And now, with the snappy news and news from Bing, they have announced that their new Bing has increased the number of conversations that you can have with Bing chat from 15 up to 20. You can also have a total of up to 200, which is an increase from 150. They've also explained that they are adding in image and video search, which will make it a lot easier for you to have a bit more information there. And that they're adding local grounding to give better results for local search. Also in local search, if you are using Bing places, you might also be interested to know that they have improved their location recognition API to include something called local intelligence, which allows you to create territories and to do better local SEO via Bing. They're also adding more information about demographics and continuing to build and grow. We reported last week that the March core algorithm update had completed. However, in the early days of April, we are starting to see a lot of movement around there, to the point that Barry Schwartz reported seeing early signs of a Google search algorithm update on the third. A lot of people were saying that they have seen some reversals and a lot of changes early in the month. So, if you have a website that you're looking after, have a look at those results and see if anything has changed. Picking up on the AI news from Google, they continue to roll out Bard in a testing framework, so more people are reporting that they're getting access to Bard. They also announced recently during a podcast with the New York Times that they are also testing Bard in Gmail. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, discussed some of their approaches to innovation and responsibility, and also discussed and denied that he ever issued a code red as part of their approach to AI. Finally, news from ChatGPT is that ChatGPT has been disabled for users in Italy, reported by Christie Hines in Search Engine Journal. It seems that OpenAI did not in properly inform users that it was collecting personal data. This may have been in contravention with GDPR. And as such, they have now blocked access to ChatGPT for Italian users while they tried to make adjustments to potentially reestablish the ground rules for use in that area. This brings into question some potential challenges for how generative AI tools like Chachi PT, Bard and New Bing may approach this privacy space going forward. That's all for today's SERP's Up podcast snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: Coming back now from the snappy news, always good to have news. Crystal Carter:: Always good. Have we reached the final frontier of our podcast? Mordy Oberstein: It was the undiscovered country of SEO enterprises. Crystal Carter:: That's very fair. Mordy Oberstein: A little Star Trek Six reference for you there. All right. I feel like we're spanning generations, we keep this podcast going on any longer. But before we do lead the part, we need to talk about who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness, and this week we have a great follow for you, Paul Andre Devera, also known as Dre. An absolute character who you may not realize specializes in enterprise SEO. Crystal Carter:: So, he is living my podcast sound effects dreams because he has a fantastic podcast and webcast called The SEO Show. Do check the out on YouTube and on all of your best channels. He is somebody who drops the air horns that go. He just drops them in the middle of whatever he's doing and it's amazing. He has a lot of fun with his podcast and with a lot of his web stuff, but don't let the fun fool you. He's so smart and so strategic about the things that he does. I was on a recent discussion for Majestic, where we were talking about enterprise level SEO. The amount of sense he was talking, the amount of clarity that he has about how to approach enterprise SEO is phenomenal. He's super intelligent and really engaging, and a great follow. Mordy Oberstein: I've had numerous conversations with him. I've interviewed him. He is so on the ball and his take on SEO is so accurate and it's real. You're not getting the influencer flop. You're getting a real take from him. Again, like the SEO Video Show, the production value is off the chain. Little plug from myself, beginning of each show I do the SEO joke. So, if you want to hear me do an SEO joke, check out Dre's show. Marketers going to market. Crystal Carter:: Yeah, he's got a fantastic theme song as well. Which I thought that he'd done it himself, but he didn't do it himself. I wish he had, but there we go. Mordy Oberstein: He's over on Twitter at Paul Andre, that's P-A-U-L-A-N-D-R-E. Paul Andre on Twitter. We'll link to it in the show notes so you could follow him, check him out across all of his platforms, especially on YouTube and his SEO Video Show. And that's it. That's all we got. Crystal Carter:: That's it. We've reached the final frontier. We have- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, you made that joke already today. Crystal Carter:: Did I? Can I not do it again? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You can pick it again. Crystal Carter:: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: Another Star Trek joke. Crystal Carter:: Oh, an insert Star Trek joke here. Mordy Oberstein: Live long and prosper, everybody. Thank you for joining us on the SERB'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 SEO on PPC with our powers combined. Look for wherever you could consume your podcast or on our Wix SEO loading app over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn a little more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or 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 agency project proposal template Create proposals for potential clients efficiently with this adaptable template. Get resource Full name* Agency name Business email* I want to receive news and updates from the Wix SEO team. * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix’s Privacy Policy . Get resource Use this project proposal template to: Create an outline of services that address your potential clients’ needs head on Integrate an ongoing process that slots into your SEO agency’s workflow Ensure that necessary elements like communications, reporting, payment and terms & conditions are part of the proposal Joshua George Founder, ClickSlice LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram Joshua George is the founder of ClickSlice, an e-commerce SEO agency based in London. They partner with 20+ DTC brands in various regions, have gained recognition from Forbes, Entrepreneur and Agency Analytics and have been sourced by the British Government for SEO training. More about this topic Read this article on developing SEO strategies on the Wix SEO Hub blog for more information. Share this resource Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO