Search Results

Does SEO differ for niche sites? What is the current environment for niche sites on the SERP? How will Google’s SGE affect niche sites? How will AI impact niche site rankings? Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back this time to figure out how niche sites can use SEO to thrive. Special guest Arielle Phoenix gives her methods for how these specialized sites can create quality content and drive traffic in the age of AI. If you work with specialized sites then this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you carve out a niche for yourself on the SERP. Back SGE & The SEO power of niche sites! Does SEO differ for niche sites? What is the current environment for niche sites on the SERP? How will Google’s SGE affect niche sites? How will AI impact niche site rankings? Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are back this time to figure out how niche sites can use SEO to thrive. Special guest Arielle Phoenix gives her methods for how these specialized sites can create quality content and drive traffic in the age of AI. If you work with specialized sites then this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you carve out a niche for yourself on the SERP. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 47 | July 19, 2023 | 51 MIN 00:00 / 50:58 This week’s guests Arielle Phoenix Arielle Phoenix is a content creator and the founder of Bulk Publishing AI. She runs a portfolio of niche sites monetised by display ads, affiliate offers and digital products. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha! Mahalo! We're joining the SERP's Up Podcast . We're pushing out some guru new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and joined by the incredible, the fantastic, the amazing, the marvelous, the spectacular head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Mordy Oberstein, how are you? Mordy Oberstein: I still have his cold, 12 months, months, brutal, ardent. Crystal Carter: We need Erin to play a little violin sound because I do genuinely feel some sadness for you. Mordy Oberstein: There's stuff in my nostrils that won't leave. Crystal Carter: Have you ever explained to a child about this? It's just like you need to go to sleep. They're like, "No, but my nose is stepped up." I'm like, "Hun, just lie on your side and it will all go to one side and then you'll have one clear one." This is what everyone does. Just wait for it. Mordy Oberstein: Doing the rest of the podcast with my head focused. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: We're done. Thank you. SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Nasonex. Just kidding. 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 leverage the power of SEO and content with both the Wix Blog and Wix Content Manager. Create content at scale and optimize it at scale to get traffic at scale, to increase your presence on the SERP as a niche site. Why niche site? Because today, we're talking about niche sites, the web, and SEO. That's right. We're taking stock of what I think is increased stock in niche sites and SEO by talking about where niche sites fit into the new web, the opportunity niche sites present to users, how to set up your niche site to be an authority for SEO success and beyond. Plus, we have a special guest, Arielle Phoenix , to help us dive into what that all means and she'll share all that in just jiffy. We'll also take a deep pause as we take a deep thought into what content really is. That sounds mysterious. Of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, find your little corner of the web and get cozy. It's episode number 47 of the SERP's Up Podcast, carves out the niche that is niche site for SEO. Crystal Carter: That was very bespoke, very bijou, very targeted at a very specific market. Now here's the first question we should talk about. Is it niche or niche? Mordy Oberstein: I say niche. Crystal Carter: I also say niche, but this is because I am very continental. There are other people that say niche, which I find sounds too close to an itch for me personally, but to each their own. Mordy Oberstein: You say tomato, I also say tomato, and some other people say tomato. Crystal Carter: They're wrong. No. Mordy Oberstein: They're wrong. Crystal Carter: Anyway, okay. So, depending on whether or not you were thinking about a niche or a niche website, let's just get a little bit of few things straight. Let's talk about what we are actually talking about. So, in SEO, you use various tactics to make sure that your content is discoverable, make sure that people can find your content, make sure that websites can find your content, and you create content strategies around lots of topics that are related to whatever it's you do. So, sometimes what will happen, for instance, let's say you run a business where you have aquariums, right? Let's say you have an aquarium, but I don't know why I thought of that today, but that's the example we're going to go with. Mordy Oberstein: A giant or a little unit. Crystal Carter: No. Okay, so my aquarium is a place where all of the fish of the sea, well, maybe not all of the fish of the sea, but the ones that I was able to wrangle into my aquarium can come and hang out and have a really good time. I'm a big fan of wrasse. They're really fun at an aquarium. Also, clown fish. Clown fish are a good time at an aquarium. So, anyway, so it's an attraction aquarium. That's what I'm doing in my example. Anyway, so let's say I have this attraction aquarium, then I will probably want to make content around fish, right? Fish, the ocean, the sea, coral reefs, snapper turtles, all that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Fish sticks. Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that they wouldn't like that, anyway, so I might want to do that thing. What a niche site would do, flipping that on the other side is their aim would be to sell things around aquariums, for instance. So, maybe they would look at the market and they would say there's a big market for people buying aquarium stuff, for instance. Then they would say, "I'm going to make content that appeals to people that are buying that so that I can get traffic through that way." So there's a great article on ahrefs.com, which talks about how to create a niche website . Their question, they say, "What is a niche site?" A niche said is any website that caters to a specific audience or topic. It can be about anything, health, business, relationships, food, travel, fashion, animals, or even more obscure all kinds of niche sites. In this one, they talk a lot about affiliate websites, which is what I'm talking about there. So, for instance, I looked up a niche site that I found, which was houseplants, houseplant.co.uk. You can guess what they talk about. They talk about houseplants almost exclusively. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say they talk about fish. Crystal Carter: No, they don't. They don't. So, they talk about houseplants almost exclusively. What a niche site team would do is they would make sure that their content was very, very tailored for an affiliate one. They would make sure it was tailored, and they'd also make sure that they had links that went off to affiliate content that was related to their particular niche. So, if it was houseplants.com, they might have affiliate content that went off to houseplant products or houseplant services or houseplants may be on Amazon or other sites where you can get affiliate traffic. We are going to be joined today by someone who works very much in this space, very much in this niche site space, creating content that's designed to be commercially viable on the web, either through affiliate traffic or potentially through display advertising traffic. There's lots of different tactics and it's an interesting way to approach online content and it's something that I thought would be worth exploring. Mordy Oberstein: I remember it was a couple of years ago. So, say in the health space, you have your non-niche players like WebMD, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, harvardhealth.org, and you have niche websites. When you start looking at certain keywords , they're just dominated by... I call them the superpowers of the health space. But as you look at certain types of keywords and for certain types of topics, I remember looking at autism for example. Google realizes as a topic, it's a far more niche topic conceptually than, let's say, I don't know, blood pressure. The SERP opens up, something like to the point where on your average top level head term for a health term, like a heart attack prevention, the entries dominated by 8 out of 10, if I remember correctly, were power players. But when you start opening up the SERP a little bit, half the SERP opens up to you as a niche site. I went through a couple hundred keywords doing this and you could just literally see the space for niche sites open up and blossom certain scenarios. Crystal Carter: I think where they thrive is with long-tail keywords , but a large volume of long-tail keywords. So, for instance, if you're thinking about autism for instance, autism has a spectrum of different situations, different scenarios, and each one of those is going to be its own set of keywords and there's going to be long-tail things for that. So, for instance, if you think about somebody who's on the autism spectrum, there might be a whole niche around being in the workplace as someone with autism for instance, and all of the different things that people might think about and might require, might consider, and might think about when they're writing those topics. What some of the niche site might do would be to focus on all of those. Again, it has to do with having laser focus in terms of your keywords and expecting that maybe one individual keyword might not yield you loads of traffic, but that the cumulative volume of all of your long-tail keywords would give you highly focused traffic that's highly focused on your niche and therefore potential opportunities for revenue and for audience engagement. Mordy Oberstein: In some of these cases, before we get to Arielle, Google, I think what it does is profile verticals or profile niches. So, for example, it knows that the content around autism is far more varied, far less, let's say, clear cut than other areas of health content. It's profiled to realize that there's far more websites talking about, far more different perspective, and far more nuanced ways to realize that even for some of the more headier terms, we should be ranking some more niche content or more nuanced content, because the nature of the topic is far more nuanced and far more harder to pin down than just having your WebMD ranking for everything. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing that's great about looking at different tactics within the SEO community is that there's going to be a lot of overlap and a lot of things that you can learn from say somebody who's going all the way laser focused on a particular niche like you're saying within this autism space and who's, let's say, picking up on the fact that things are wider, that there's more opportunities for more diverse perspectives and approaches to search and content. So, there's things you can learn about that will also apply to some of the more broader topic players and will also potentially apply to bigger companies. There's a charity called Cancer Research UK. They're a niche charity and they're looking at that specific things around cancer and research in the UK. So, they've got a long-tail sort of situation there as well. So, even if you're not working in a specific SEO industry or even if you're not generally applying all of the tactics, for instance, from a niche site approach or from a YMYL approach for instance, and looking widely at some of the ways that people are approaching SEO can be incredibly beneficial to how you get different results, get new results, and meet new audiences online. So, I'm really excited to be chatting about this today and I know that certainly when I've looked across some of these sites, I always learned something from them. I think that the other thing we've seen a lot with niche sites is that from their approach, they tend to rely a lot on content velocity. So, they tend to rely a lot on getting a lot of content out in an interesting way. I know that there are content writers who lean a lot on AI , for instance, and it's interesting to see how they're using that. It's interesting to see what results they're getting. It's interesting to see what works, what doesn't work. So, I think it's interesting to see how people are approaching that overall. Mordy Oberstein: Long story short, if you are running a niche site, there's room for you and opportunity for you. So, let's dive into this. We asked Arielle Phoenix a whole bunch of questions about niche sites and SEO. So, let's take this one first. We asked Arielle the difference between niche sites and non-niche sites from an SEO and organic traffic perspective, and here's Arielle Phoenix on that. Arielle Phoenix: What is the difference between niche sites and non-niche sites from an SEO and organic perspective? Personally, I don't think there is much of a difference between niche sites and non-niche sites from an SEO and organic traffic perspective because what we're doing is essentially the same thing. We're targeting keywords or search terms and optimizing them for search traffic. So, on page SEO , technical SEO , we're doing the same things that you would be doing for a non-niche site to gain Google's traffic or Bing or any search engine really, but the main player, of course, is Google. What I will say though is not all niche sites are the same, and where the model generally was find long-tail keywords and create content for those keywords based on Google search engine. Now more people are looking at alternative search engines, because YouTube is a search engine and apparently TikTok is a search engine . So, focusing more on social traffic as opposed to just Google's search engine, because of course, of algorithm updates and various changes, SEO starts to look a bit shaky or fragile as a sole method, but for most of us, it is still the main method of traffic for our sites. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, yeah, that's a great point. Most of the foundational things you're doing are the same across whatever site for the most part, right? Crystal Carter: Sure, sure. Absolutely. I think it's the similar thing too, and I guess it has to do with your objectives. A lot of folks that I know who work in niche sites and particularly the community around niche site SEO on Twitter, anyway, focus a lot on traffic that yields results and focus a lot more on traffic that yields results in a monetary way. So, maybe there's that to think about, but yeah, she's absolutely right that the core tactics, the core methodology is very similar. I think it's interesting that she's talking about additional search engines as well because that's certainly something that we've seen across the general SEO landscape as well. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. So, let's go a little bit deeper with this and let's go into what's the current environment on the SERP for niche sites? Here again is Arielle. Arielle Phoenix: I think this is going to vary a lot depending on the age of the site and how well somebody's built out their brand and the backlink profile and all of those things are going to come into play. But as an industry or as a sector, I think it's become very competitive over the past few years. I've only been in the space for a few years, but at every six month interval, it's changed dramatically. So, with the competition, and of course, many of us who are in this space, we don't just have the one site. We have multiple sites and we're constantly coming up with new niche ideas and throwing sites up. So, the landscape is very, very competitive. The SERPs for niche sites, again, it's going to vary, because for some of us or for some sites, you're going to have solid growth trajectory. Others are going to be tracking sideways and others are going to be dropping out of the SERPs and being replaced by higher authority or better quality in some cases sites. Mordy Oberstein: So this the vision between, I call them the super authorities of the SERP and niche sites have always been a weird balance. People have always accused Google of defaulting to big name brands, because they're buying so many ads, that thing. I think what it has a lot to do with it and I think this is where niche sites can carve their space out, is that Google really trusts those big sites. It's not like, "Oh, they're a big site, therefore we rank them." It's that they're a big site, therefore we really understand and know them and therefore can trust them. If you can somehow do that as a niche site, you could also rank. Obviously knowing where Google is looking at things like, hey, heart attack prevention is the keyword. Trying to rank there no matter what, it's just Google's going to default to .govs like the NHS or the CDC. There isn't a lot you can do there with that, but that doesn't mean that you can't build up that same kind of authority in a way and rank for media keywords you thought you really could. Now this wouldn't be a conversation about niche sites if we didn't get into AI or in the Google case, SGE, search generative experience . So, here's Arielle on how the future is shaping up for niche sites, especially considering the advent of Google's SGE. Take it away, Arielle. Arielle Phoenix: For many people, the future looks bleak. Personally, I don't think, although I know we are just at the beginning of AI. This is the tip of the iceberg and it's definitely going to improve. SGE at the moment is not that great, and I'm going to explain. We are at the very beginning of it and it handles many queries well. So, it does a good job and it's going to continue to do a good job of things like best products and product roundups and give the searcher probably a better experience than a niche site's review post because it's going based on all the information it has and it's summarizing it, which is essentially what we would be doing, but it's got that data in real time. So, there are going to be types of content and queries that it makes very little sense for niche sites to focus on doing because SGE is just going to do a better job. Where we will shine or where a niche site can shine is in the space where they have genuine product experience. So, if you have the product and you've done the YouTube video and you've got the T-shirt to prove this is your experience, then you have a chance of doing better in that particular topic. But I think the focus on the long-tail, the basic answer queries, which SGE is already doing a good job fulfilling, those are probably short-lived or going to be short-lived for now. As I said, it's not that great and people do still need to a lot of the time click in to see the actual article if the SGE has not done a sufficient job, but we will notice that there is a dip in traffic in those types of posts. If we've got a variety of posts on our site, we'll definitely notice that those basic answer query type posts are going to be just dropping in traffic. But as I said, there are many different types of content, and for me personally, I'm not focusing so much on those answer query type posts. There are many different methods that you can use to create quality content that is going to be useful to the reader and more useful than the question with an extended answer to gain that long-tail traffic. So, really delving into content that allows you to be a bit more creative that's multi-leveled in many ways and that allows you to also add videos and really things to enrich the post in a way that the search engine or this SGE can't do. I think that's always been the case, but because long-tail was such an easy game to play, it was very, very easy to again, create lots of content for those queries and I guess do enough posts where you could generate enough traffic to your site to earn a good amount of income. So, I definitely think for the long term, I don't think SGE cancels niche sites out completely. I don't see that. I know many people have their opinions on that, but I don't see that happening if the niche site owner can identify the different types of content that can work in a way that the SGE can't. In some cases, some sites are just going to fail because they've been built on that long-tail keyword model, but there's still a huge opportunity to use the content creation or the keyword targeting model to build your brand and get ahead of this SGE AI curve. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'll be honest with you, if you're running a niche site, going all in on the AI seems like, "Wait a second, your entire unique value or unique value is the fact that you're not AI, is that you have the actual experience, you are the actual expert. You are able to deep dive into the topic the way that most people, let alone most AI writers can't do." So I feel if you are a niche site, no, leverage the fact that you have that expertise and that experience and go full on into that as a way of combating what's inevitably going to be a world filled with the same content spun up by the same AI writers. Crystal Carter: I think that what she's talking about there is absolutely on the money on being able to show that you have reviewed the product well, that you have the YouTube video to go with it, that you're able to add value. This is something that applies not just to niche sites, but to all sites. I think it's something that Google has been trying to nurture within the SEO space for ages with their product review updates. Then with them, they just started calling it the review update and they're basically wanting actual examples and actual real life evidence that you engage with the product to know what you're talking about there. When I think of good niche sites that I have used where it's somebody who's reviewing specific products that I'm looking to buy, for instance, and they've gone into it in depth, I'm like, "I want a cordless vacuum cleaner." There's somebody who's like, "Have I got a website for you?" They're going into all the cordless vacuum cleaners and all of the different things that they do and they've got all the different videos. She's absolutely on the money, but the people who are creating content strategically for their niche are going to do well, because I think that the SGE is going to be very much like featured snippets. You don't see featured snippet on every single SERP. Cyrus Shepherd’s talked about how often you see SGE on the SERP. It's not all the time. So, I think the long-tails will still add value, as she said. As she also pointed out, you also need to enrich the content with additional value. Mordy Oberstein: Especially because when you do that, you're building up your brand, which is a very unique thing to do, especially in a world that's filled with the generic content that's already out there, let alone the generic content that AI is going to put out there. Now, we're talking about niche sites. We have to talk about the question, which is how to create authority as a niche site so that you can compete with the bigger players. Ooh, scandalous and probably the most important question in my mind that we've asked Arielle. Here's what she had to say. Arielle Phoenix: Again, personally, I still take the approach of topical domination or topical authority . The topical domination is more covering the topic in depth, so not leaving anything. Previously, we would try to find gaps in the topic where you have the high traffic, high authority sites going for specific topics, and then you find your way in where they wouldn't bother touching those topics. But with topical domination, you're covering everything. So, every related question, every entity around the subject, and then moving on to another silo that links to it, but that's also covered in depth. So, I guess once upon a time, you could do a small niche site where you just focus on the topic and make 50 or so articles. I think now you need to make these micro topics and do the same thing, but hone in on that micro topic and then relate that to another micro topic and then use that to bolster that key topic that you would've just made 50 articles around in the past. So, still taking that velocity or that high velocity approach with content, but using that as the foundation to build your brand upon. But then using things like YouTube as a separate entity, so focusing on YouTube and allowing them to support each other and other social channels. Of course, you do have to find the social channels that work for that niche. You don't have to go and build a Twitter or LinkedIn for everything, but you do want to build that social proof and focus on EAT once you've got that strong foundation, but that's just my approach. That's what I'm doing to compete with the bigger players, having a solid content base, pairing that with a solid social base, mainly YouTube, and then focusing on the EAT. So, that is the guest post and the link building efforts. As taboo as that does still seem to be, we know the huge sites have a huge backlink profile, so going deeper in on the content and the internal linking, making sure that the site as an entity is as strong as possible, and then going in with the social media, the outreach, building things like link magnets if possible in your niche building applications, things that really build the brand, and of course, focusing then on the EAT. So, ensuring that there is an actual entity behind it and everything is connected, so it is a reputable source or at least appears to be when facing those bigger players. So, yeah, that's my take. That's my approach in the ever-changing niche site space, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts and thanks for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I really liked what she had to say there. It's similar to what I've always talked about when people ask me about targeting zero search volume keywords. Okay, let's assume that no one's searching for this. Okay, there's no value. No, there actually is value because you're building up authority around that topic. You need to start slow. You need to start from somewhere, and starting from these micro topics and then building out from there is just the logical sequence of how you build trusted authority with a search engine who doesn't until that point know who you are. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. Sometimes you can even drive traffic by creating the traffic with what you're doing and what you're talking about. Then I think she also talked a lot about clustering keywords, and she talked about YouTube as well. She's got a great YouTube video about keyword clustering, keyword clustering tools, and how she works that into her general method, so that's definitely worth looking at. But the keyword clustering is a really great way to organize all of that content for Google because you are helping Google to understand what you're doing with your backlinks or say your site map and things like that and your hierarchy within your site, but also the way that you're linking your site and the way that you're connecting the content that you're creating will also help Google to understand what you're doing and help them to serve it on search result pages in a way that's really effective. I think that that is absolutely important to making sure that the content that you create is valuable to users, is discoverable by Google. So, when you're making lots more content around micro topics that Google can see the actual bulk of your content and that you have that topic authority and then it's really easy for them to access the whole stack. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You have to really think of it very holistically. You don't look at your pieces of content as individual pieces of content. It's one piece feeds the next piece, which feeds the next piece, which feeds the next piece, which creates a corpus. Content is a corpus, and you need a corpus of content. Thank you again, Arielle, for all of that amazing content. Definitely be sure to check out Arielle on Twitter, @ariellecpx. That's @A-R-I-E-L-L-ECPX on Twitter and ariellephoenix.com. Be sure to look in the show notes for the link to her site. Now, speaking about content and SGE and niche sites filling a void on the web, I like to go a little bit deeper into that. I spoil it a little bit on our episode with Mike King around CTR and SGE on the SERP. When I was talking about your content being Matlock, which I'm not going to go into that again. If you listen to that episode, you'll understand what I mean by it. Your content is Matlock. If you don't know who Matlock is, don't worry, ask your grandmother. So, let's dive in a little bit deeper as I'd like to talk about what the heck we mean when we ask that your content might not be as desirable as you might think it is and what that means in terms of SGE and CTR and traffic and clicks and the role of niche sites in all of this as Crystal and I share a deep thought. Okay, let me repose a question to you. So, you spin up content, you create content, it's content. Let's just leave it at that. It's content. You now expect rankings and you expect traffic and you expect conversions, but consider what we just talked about in terms of niche sites and their ability to go into micro topics and to really offer experience and to really offer expertise around really specific nuances within a larger area of the web. When you spin up content and you expect traffic, is that expectation really realistic? Crystal Carter: I mean, there's a reason why SEOs exist, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. To ignore John Mueller on Twitter. Crystal Carter: And Barry Schwartz, to be fair. Mordy Oberstein: To ignore Barry Schwartz on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Exactly. But we exist for a reason because there's lots of people who did that and got nothing. They were like, "Oh, I put up content, and just nothing happened." Sometimes it needs guidance, sometimes it needs help. Sometimes it needs... Mordy Oberstein: Well, let's say it gets the help. You've optimized all the things. Does it still deserve traffic? Just because it ranks, does it deserve traffic? That's what I'm really asking, I guess. Crystal Carter: No, I wouldn't say so. No, no. Google doesn't owe you anything. You could do your best, but Google doesn't owe you anything. Also, the clicks, the ranking, all of that, that's all a reflection of user value. Even if users are going to your site and they're not getting value, then they're not going to come back and Google won't rank you so well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and just because you rank really, really well doesn't mean the content is really, really good. It could just be there's nothing better. Crystal Carter: This is absolutely true. It could also be that maybe that search term was the search term for a while, but maybe nobody's searching it anymore. I don't think anybody's worried about who Jean-Claude Van Damme's girlfriend is right now or something. Mordy Oberstein: I was just Googling that the other day. Crystal Carter: Maybe people were Googling that back in the day when he was like that dude or whatever, but right now, nobody's particularly interested. Mordy Oberstein: What angle is Jean-Claude Van Damme's leg when he does a roundhouse kick? Is it 123 degrees? Crystal Carter: Maybe it was when he was doing pirouettes. Wasn't he a ballet too as well? Mordy Oberstein: Something like that. Yeah. I was watching a video about this recently. Actually, it's random. Just don't ask me why. When I say we, I mean I think the web has gotten to a point where we think, "Okay, this ranks or this should rank. It's good enough to rank, and therefore it deserves traffic." I'm not sure that that equation is entirely accurate. What I think is in many, many, many more cases than you would like to think is that the reason why a page would get traffic or a URL would rank is because there's nothing better. I think that there's an enormous shortage of content on the web. When I say shortage, I mean of good content. There's no shortage of content. There's a shortage of good content. What I think that AI and SGE is going to bring it to focus is that question, is the fact that just because in the past you've had traffic doesn't necessarily mean... I know this is a hot take, and I know SEOs are not going to be happy to be saying this. ... in terms of mathematical logic imply or demand that that traffic continue forever. Crystal Carter: Right. It might just be that nobody ever tried to tip you off a castle. It might be that nobody else tried to write that content. I sometimes find that I see content that's ranking number one, and then I go to check at the search volume up for it and it's not getting any traffic anyway. You're like the king of nothing. So, that happens too. Mordy Oberstein: Do you know what SGE is to me? It's a giant Local Pack. It's a giant Local Pack. Crystal Carter: I can see what you mean. Mordy Oberstein: Imagine it's 2003. I don't know if that's accurate or not. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Beforehand, there was no Local Pack. There's no three listings of a local business. When you search pizza near me, you had to go click on Yelp and run through all the listings there. Then all of a sudden, the Local Pack comes on the SERP and all of the organic results you have your typical 1 through 10 traditional listing, I don't say it becomes irrelevant or becomes less relevant. All things being equal, is that bad? Was that bad for the web? Was that bad for the users? Was that bad for businesses? Crystal Carter: It was different. I've been chatting about this a little while. Everyone's like, "Oh, SGE is completely new. AI and the search is completely new." Featured snippets have been run by AI and machine learning the entire time, the whole time. Featured snippets have been run by AI the entire time. It's been around for years. The image search, visual search with Vision AI has been around for years. All of these things have been around for ages. Yeah, like you're saying, it's different, but all of them are pulling from ranking content. So, the content has to rank in the first place before it can be considered for this new and shiny and fantastic feature. What we see is that the things that rank in SGE are also ranking in your needs SERP. So, what we see is the thing that ranks for the featured snippet or is included in the featured snippet, because sometimes featured snippets include content for one thing and content from another thing, content from another thing, they're all ranking content from the regular plain old blue link SERPS. So, that's important to think. I think also your Matlock scenario is really important. If you look at Internet Live Stats, startling statistics, in 2004, the number of websites according to Internet Live Stats was 51 million websites. Then by 2010, six years later, there were 206 million websites online. So, essentially, your Matlock thing is the same. That's a fourfold increase. Mordy Oberstein: Something's going to have to stop ranking or stop getting traffic at some point. My Matlock case, just for reference, there's a TV show back from the late '80s, early '90s called Matlock with Annie Griffith. When you were home sick as a kid, say a 10-year-old, you're watching The Price Is Right. Then at a certain point, there's nothing on, just Matlock. There was no cable. I'm dating myself here. There was no cable. There was five channel with the bunny rabbit ear antennas, and you were either watching General Hospital, which is soap opera, which I was not watching, or Matlock. So, Matlock had great numbers in the early afternoon because there was nothing else. That's my parallel with content. Maybe your content is getting all that traffic because there's nothing else. There's no other paradigm, but SGE brings in a new paradigm, which by the way, I think niche sites are built for SGE for two reasons. One is Google's trying to be a little bit more specific as the entire point of SGE to refine what people are looking for and they want to offer very refined, very specific results. That's one. The second is there's an explore feature or an expand feature within Google's SGE where it takes the SGE summary. So, it takes the five lines of SGE, of an AI content that they wrote. It breaks it down per line and it shows organic results per line, which are inherently going to be very specific. So, SGE in my mind is built for niche sites who may not have been able to capitalize on the SERP, who might now be able to capitalize on. I would love to see, thought, SGE rolls out in full a year later. Are the big players losing traffic and are niche sites increasing in traffic? That would be fascinating to see. Crystal Carter: I think it's really interesting because I think the reason why niche sites are going to do well out of this or could potentially do well is because of the way that you talk to a generative search experience. So, on a generative search, I am much more likely to write a very, very long-winded query. On a Google SERP, a standard traditional search, I'm probably going- Mordy Oberstein: Three words. Crystal Carter: Three words, right? I'm going to say TV on now. Mordy Oberstein: Van Damme leg kick. Crystal Carter: Right? Van Damme leg kick. Whereas let's say, "What kind of ballet did Jean-Claude Van Damme do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?" or whatever it may be So you'll get right into it, or you might even describe something that you don't even know the name for instance. Mordy Oberstein: The answer is the ballet where you get a roundhouse right to the face. Crystal Carter: I think that Arielle was talking about niching down and getting right into not just writing that one topic, but writing up, but making sure that your website represents an entity and that everything revolves around that entity and you're covering every different way to discover that entity and discover that information. Again, that works really, really well with a generative search experience because it's a situation where you're going to ask a question and then you're going to delve into it and delve into it and delve into it and delve into it more and more and more and more and more. I think I've discussed this previously, but one of the best ones I've had was I was trying to figure out what to do with my houseplant. My houseplant is dying. What do I do with it? It kept giving me lots of results from the same houseplant website. Now I'm like, "Okay, that's a good place to go for information about this houseplant because they have all of the information about that. So, why would I go to some other website? I'd go to that one." Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. You really build that trust, that branding. By the way, how was that houseplant? Crystal Carter: It's better. It's better actually. I took some advice. I put it in a north facing window. I gave it some more water. I haven't repotted it, but she's doing okay. Thanks for asking. That's so kind. Mordy Oberstein: Of course. Now, since we're talking about AI, I'm sure there's some AI news this week because there's always some AI news or not. Either way. Crystal Carter: There are bots. Mordy Oberstein: There's this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Come on, Barry. Light my fire. Barry Schwartz has been roll this week with a few hotly contested SEO issues. So, cue up some sappy soap opera music because it's about to get dramatic in here. First Barry Schwartz over at search engine round table, Google details, SEO guidance for content syndication partners. So, in a nutshell, the practice for years has been to use the canonical to tell Google, which is the real original article. So, you're syndicating content. Let's say you're Reuters. You're syndicating to ABC News, to CNN, to MSNBC, whatever it is. How do you know? How does Google supposed to know which is the real source, which is the real original article? By using the canonical tag pointing back to the original article, which has been difficult to get done because you have to get that done in an agreement with the syndicated partners. What are the chances that they actually want to tell Google, "Hey, don't rank us. Rank the original partner"? That aside, a few months ago, Google said, "We'll make it different. We're going to say, now you should use the no index instead of the canonical tag." Meaning if you want to rank and not your syndicated partners tell the syndicated partners, just apply a no index tag so they can't rank and only you can rank. So, you would need to get that into an agreement, which would be very, very difficult. There's a lot of back and forth. Was the guidance really that all along so forth and so forth and so forth? I don't want to get into any of that. The point is many SEOs feel stuck here to rock in a hard place and would like to see a different approach again, because you need to now tell the syndicated partners, "Hey, you need to apply a no index tag here." You're not going to rank at all, which again, if I'm, let's say MSNBC or ABC News, I want to rank. So, why would I agree to that? Google's Danny Sullivan did say he would take that feedback and bring it to the team, which is not always lip service. I know people sometimes feel that's lip service. It's not. I could say at Wix, we've done that many, many times. We've taken feedback from the SEO community, brought that to the team, and then made a product improvement. So, I would take that as a legitimate offer of, "Hey, I'm going to go bring that to the team. Let's see if we can figure that out." So maybe there will be something coming down the pike that would make syndication a little bit more advantageous from a ranking point of view. The point is, if you are going to syndicate your content, there are some hard conversations that you're going to need to have about the benefits of syndicating and the monetary gain you get from that versus the ability to rank and the monetary gain you would get from that. But wait, Barry was not done there. From search engine land, Barry goes, "Google's Core Web Vitals INP issues email is causing concern." So a few weeks ago, Google added INP, Interaction to Next Paint, which will replace FID, First Input Delay as one of the three Core Web Vitals Come March 2024. With that, Google started setting out the notifications. You have an issue for INP from search console. The issue is that the web is currently working to align with the new guidelines. So, for example, we at Wix have been working way before Google actually announced INP would be in the Core Web Vitals with Google to see what makes sense, what doesn't make sense when it comes to tracking websites and INP. So, for example, we've been working on this for a long time and now 83% of our website's mobile in the US pass INP, but the issue is that this is not coming due until March and really nothing changed on the website. Only that changed that Google brought INP into search console is now sending out notifications, but the website has been the same the entire time. So, if thing's been okay with the website, then there's really nothing to worry about. At the same time from a ranking point of view, nothing is changing until March 2024. Even with that, this is where Barry really went off in his weekly news recap on Search Engine Roundtable, which we'll link to, where Barry was saying, "Hey, look, there was a whole bunch of hype around Core Web Vitals that are ranking the first time around when Google initially integrated this into the algorithm and that didn't really pan out. There really wasn't any significant ranking impact as a result. In fact for many websites, there was literally zero. Nothing actually happened as a tiebreaker scenario." Barry was saying, "Hey, why are we trying to make this a big deal again, from a ranking point of view? You're now sending these issues out via email to websites. Website numbers are going to freak out and start prioritizing an INP from an SEO point of view." But that's not really the right thing to do because you're talking about a small issue within a small issue because a ranking impact is really, really minimal for Core Web Vitals. Now you're just talking about one of the Core Web Vitals. So, Barry was saying, "Hey, I think these emails are harmful because they're going to make people freak out and start prioritizing what might not be an SEO priority to begin with." That's not to say that INP is not important. It's super important from a user experience point of view. When your users get to the page, they should have a really seamless, fast integrated experience that doesn't hold them back from doing what they want to do. But the point about rank, I would have to agree with Barry about. The point is, if you've got these emails, nothing about your site actually changed. All that changes is Google's now sending the emails out. You don't know the significance of the INP issue. It could be a very small little thing that you need to change, right? But Google doesn't tell you that in the email, so take it slow. From a ranking point of view, none of this matters until March 2024, and even then, it's a very, very, very, very small issue most likely. The last thing you should really just understand is that this is something that the web itself is really aligning to, which is why I think people were upset. Hey, we're working towards aligning to your new guidelines. Why are we now getting emails that we're not there yet? Of course, we're not there yet, but again, many, many websites are there and should be fine. Again, for example, on the Wix site, 83% of mobile sites in the US already passed INP and we're not even anywhere close to March. Okay. Moving on, some AI news for you, again from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Just call him the monopoly man. He's got a monopoly on the SEO news. Barry writes, "Google expands Bard to more countries, more languages, and adds new features." So Bard is now available in more geolocations and there's a whole bunch of new features. For example, you can now listen to the prompt, which is great for accessibility. You can adjust the tone of the response, so how formal you want the response to be, how long you want the response to be and so forth. This comes, by the way, as Search Engine Journal's Matt Southern reports, "Is ChatGPT getting Dumber?" Usage drops as users complain. So, basically people are saying, "Hey, I've been using ChatGPT for a long time, and it seems to be the responses are not as good as they used to be." OpenAI said, which I very much align with, that nothing's really changed. It's probably noticing more and more issues as you use it more and more often. I totally agree with that. I don't think anything actually changed the... Why would the AI get dumber? It's only getting more refined and more refined and more refined. This goes back to what we've been saying on this podcast for a very, very, very long time. The technology is super cool and it is super amazing and it is super innovative and it is beyond words. But when you get past that and you're talking about actual usage in real life situations, there are gaps in this technology. So, now as a web, we've gotten past the initial wow factor and we're actually starting to use this thing in real life cases. We're like, "Wait a second, maybe this isn't as good as we thought it was, because you're looking at it from two different perspectives, the wow factor versus actual integration to your consumer base." So I don't think the AI has gotten any dumber. What I think, as OpenAI points out, is that you're starting to notice more and more flaws and thinking maybe this isn't as good and maybe we can't use it across the board the way we thought we could, which I hate to say this, but if you listen to the podcast regularly, we told you so. By the way, some of the data sources are showing a 10% drop-off in ChatGPT usage. Pulling Barry Schwartz back in on Twitter, he was talking about the hype is starting to wane. I think he ran a poll from Gary Sterling over at Search Engine Roundtable, showing that SEOs are using it significantly less often. The point is in marketing, there's all these things that come around in cycles, super hype things. I don't think AI is hype per se, as I've mentioned on the podcast many, many times. I think it's a great tool. It's not going anywhere, but that initial, "Oh, my goodness. This is amazing. It's a panacea for all things," I think that was hype. I think the web is starting to come out of that, and I think hopefully that will result in more mature adoption of the AI technology. With that, that is this week's not so snappy news. Always so snappy with that snappy news. Hey, Crystal, I always feel like coming back like a news show. Have a great weekend, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah, I had a great, great weekend. I'm planning to go- Mordy Oberstein: All right. Okay, here where the weather is... I always wanted to be a news anchor. Not never. Anyway, I always found that news anchor thing so plastic, not my thing. Crystal Carter: Fair enough. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, Sue, of course, Bob. Anyway, Crystal Carter: I feel like you'd be more of a radio show guy for that. Mordy Oberstein: Definitely more of the afternoon drive home radio station for hard rock radio station thing. Speaking of music, by the way, it's time for our follow of the weekend. He's a very musical person. If we're talking about SGE, we're talking about the future of search as we talked about niche sites, who else could our follow of the week be than our previous guest, Mike King over @iPullRank on Twitter. That's I, the letter I, not the number I, the letter I. Just like what? The letter I-P-U-L-L-R-A-N-K, iPullRank. Crystal Carter: iPullRank, yeah. Mike is great. Mike is a fount of SEO knowledge. He's been SEO and thinking about AI for ages. We had him on a webinar talking about ChatGPT and AI content writers. He's got so much knowledge about the relationship between machine learning and entities and search and how that all works. So, he's a fantastic follow. He's also really, really engaged with the community and very much a pillar of the community. So, absolutely follow him. He's a fantastic follow. Mordy Oberstein: Must follow, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely must follow. He is great at translating that information that's really complex in a really eye level way, which is fabulous. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and do check out the webinar. He dropped some fantastic, fantastic information there. Mordy Oberstein: The webinar with him and Ross Hudgins about AI content writers and SEO and the future of the web, we'll link to in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Everybody who joined it said it was fantastic. So, please, please do join along. Enjoy it, find it on YouTube, all of that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, we've come to the end of this road. I'll see you niche week. I've been holding that for like 20 minutes. Crystal Carter: Niche road will we take? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, niche. It doesn't work. Doesn't work. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with new episodes. We dive into repurposing your audio and video content for search. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars 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 rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Arielle Phoenix Mike King Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Areille Phoenix Website News: Google Details SEO Guidance For Content Syndication Partners Google’s Core Web Vitals INP issues email causing concern Is ChatGPT Getting “Dumber”? Usage Drops As Users Complain Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Arielle Phoenix Mike King Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Areille Phoenix Website News: Google Details SEO Guidance For Content Syndication Partners Google’s Core Web Vitals INP issues email causing concern Is ChatGPT Getting “Dumber”? Usage Drops As Users Complain Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha! Mahalo! We're joining the SERP's Up Podcast . We're pushing out some guru new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Branding here at Wix, and joined by the incredible, the fantastic, the amazing, the marvelous, the spectacular head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Mordy Oberstein, how are you? Mordy Oberstein: I still have his cold, 12 months, months, brutal, ardent. Crystal Carter: We need Erin to play a little violin sound because I do genuinely feel some sadness for you. Mordy Oberstein: There's stuff in my nostrils that won't leave. Crystal Carter: Have you ever explained to a child about this? It's just like you need to go to sleep. They're like, "No, but my nose is stepped up." I'm like, "Hun, just lie on your side and it will all go to one side and then you'll have one clear one." This is what everyone does. Just wait for it. Mordy Oberstein: Doing the rest of the podcast with my head focused. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: We're done. Thank you. SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Nasonex. Just kidding. 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 leverage the power of SEO and content with both the Wix Blog and Wix Content Manager. Create content at scale and optimize it at scale to get traffic at scale, to increase your presence on the SERP as a niche site. Why niche site? Because today, we're talking about niche sites, the web, and SEO. That's right. We're taking stock of what I think is increased stock in niche sites and SEO by talking about where niche sites fit into the new web, the opportunity niche sites present to users, how to set up your niche site to be an authority for SEO success and beyond. Plus, we have a special guest, Arielle Phoenix , to help us dive into what that all means and she'll share all that in just jiffy. We'll also take a deep pause as we take a deep thought into what content really is. That sounds mysterious. Of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, find your little corner of the web and get cozy. It's episode number 47 of the SERP's Up Podcast, carves out the niche that is niche site for SEO. Crystal Carter: That was very bespoke, very bijou, very targeted at a very specific market. Now here's the first question we should talk about. Is it niche or niche? Mordy Oberstein: I say niche. Crystal Carter: I also say niche, but this is because I am very continental. There are other people that say niche, which I find sounds too close to an itch for me personally, but to each their own. Mordy Oberstein: You say tomato, I also say tomato, and some other people say tomato. Crystal Carter: They're wrong. No. Mordy Oberstein: They're wrong. Crystal Carter: Anyway, okay. So, depending on whether or not you were thinking about a niche or a niche website, let's just get a little bit of few things straight. Let's talk about what we are actually talking about. So, in SEO, you use various tactics to make sure that your content is discoverable, make sure that people can find your content, make sure that websites can find your content, and you create content strategies around lots of topics that are related to whatever it's you do. So, sometimes what will happen, for instance, let's say you run a business where you have aquariums, right? Let's say you have an aquarium, but I don't know why I thought of that today, but that's the example we're going to go with. Mordy Oberstein: A giant or a little unit. Crystal Carter: No. Okay, so my aquarium is a place where all of the fish of the sea, well, maybe not all of the fish of the sea, but the ones that I was able to wrangle into my aquarium can come and hang out and have a really good time. I'm a big fan of wrasse. They're really fun at an aquarium. Also, clown fish. Clown fish are a good time at an aquarium. So, anyway, so it's an attraction aquarium. That's what I'm doing in my example. Anyway, so let's say I have this attraction aquarium, then I will probably want to make content around fish, right? Fish, the ocean, the sea, coral reefs, snapper turtles, all that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Fish sticks. Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think that they wouldn't like that, anyway, so I might want to do that thing. What a niche site would do, flipping that on the other side is their aim would be to sell things around aquariums, for instance. So, maybe they would look at the market and they would say there's a big market for people buying aquarium stuff, for instance. Then they would say, "I'm going to make content that appeals to people that are buying that so that I can get traffic through that way." So there's a great article on ahrefs.com, which talks about how to create a niche website . Their question, they say, "What is a niche site?" A niche said is any website that caters to a specific audience or topic. It can be about anything, health, business, relationships, food, travel, fashion, animals, or even more obscure all kinds of niche sites. In this one, they talk a lot about affiliate websites, which is what I'm talking about there. So, for instance, I looked up a niche site that I found, which was houseplants, houseplant.co.uk. You can guess what they talk about. They talk about houseplants almost exclusively. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say they talk about fish. Crystal Carter: No, they don't. They don't. So, they talk about houseplants almost exclusively. What a niche site team would do is they would make sure that their content was very, very tailored for an affiliate one. They would make sure it was tailored, and they'd also make sure that they had links that went off to affiliate content that was related to their particular niche. So, if it was houseplants.com, they might have affiliate content that went off to houseplant products or houseplant services or houseplants may be on Amazon or other sites where you can get affiliate traffic. We are going to be joined today by someone who works very much in this space, very much in this niche site space, creating content that's designed to be commercially viable on the web, either through affiliate traffic or potentially through display advertising traffic. There's lots of different tactics and it's an interesting way to approach online content and it's something that I thought would be worth exploring. Mordy Oberstein: I remember it was a couple of years ago. So, say in the health space, you have your non-niche players like WebMD, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, harvardhealth.org, and you have niche websites. When you start looking at certain keywords , they're just dominated by... I call them the superpowers of the health space. But as you look at certain types of keywords and for certain types of topics, I remember looking at autism for example. Google realizes as a topic, it's a far more niche topic conceptually than, let's say, I don't know, blood pressure. The SERP opens up, something like to the point where on your average top level head term for a health term, like a heart attack prevention, the entries dominated by 8 out of 10, if I remember correctly, were power players. But when you start opening up the SERP a little bit, half the SERP opens up to you as a niche site. I went through a couple hundred keywords doing this and you could just literally see the space for niche sites open up and blossom certain scenarios. Crystal Carter: I think where they thrive is with long-tail keywords , but a large volume of long-tail keywords. So, for instance, if you're thinking about autism for instance, autism has a spectrum of different situations, different scenarios, and each one of those is going to be its own set of keywords and there's going to be long-tail things for that. So, for instance, if you think about somebody who's on the autism spectrum, there might be a whole niche around being in the workplace as someone with autism for instance, and all of the different things that people might think about and might require, might consider, and might think about when they're writing those topics. What some of the niche site might do would be to focus on all of those. Again, it has to do with having laser focus in terms of your keywords and expecting that maybe one individual keyword might not yield you loads of traffic, but that the cumulative volume of all of your long-tail keywords would give you highly focused traffic that's highly focused on your niche and therefore potential opportunities for revenue and for audience engagement. Mordy Oberstein: In some of these cases, before we get to Arielle, Google, I think what it does is profile verticals or profile niches. So, for example, it knows that the content around autism is far more varied, far less, let's say, clear cut than other areas of health content. It's profiled to realize that there's far more websites talking about, far more different perspective, and far more nuanced ways to realize that even for some of the more headier terms, we should be ranking some more niche content or more nuanced content, because the nature of the topic is far more nuanced and far more harder to pin down than just having your WebMD ranking for everything. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing that's great about looking at different tactics within the SEO community is that there's going to be a lot of overlap and a lot of things that you can learn from say somebody who's going all the way laser focused on a particular niche like you're saying within this autism space and who's, let's say, picking up on the fact that things are wider, that there's more opportunities for more diverse perspectives and approaches to search and content. So, there's things you can learn about that will also apply to some of the more broader topic players and will also potentially apply to bigger companies. There's a charity called Cancer Research UK. They're a niche charity and they're looking at that specific things around cancer and research in the UK. So, they've got a long-tail sort of situation there as well. So, even if you're not working in a specific SEO industry or even if you're not generally applying all of the tactics, for instance, from a niche site approach or from a YMYL approach for instance, and looking widely at some of the ways that people are approaching SEO can be incredibly beneficial to how you get different results, get new results, and meet new audiences online. So, I'm really excited to be chatting about this today and I know that certainly when I've looked across some of these sites, I always learned something from them. I think that the other thing we've seen a lot with niche sites is that from their approach, they tend to rely a lot on content velocity. So, they tend to rely a lot on getting a lot of content out in an interesting way. I know that there are content writers who lean a lot on AI , for instance, and it's interesting to see how they're using that. It's interesting to see what results they're getting. It's interesting to see what works, what doesn't work. So, I think it's interesting to see how people are approaching that overall. Mordy Oberstein: Long story short, if you are running a niche site, there's room for you and opportunity for you. So, let's dive into this. We asked Arielle Phoenix a whole bunch of questions about niche sites and SEO. So, let's take this one first. We asked Arielle the difference between niche sites and non-niche sites from an SEO and organic traffic perspective, and here's Arielle Phoenix on that. Arielle Phoenix: What is the difference between niche sites and non-niche sites from an SEO and organic perspective? Personally, I don't think there is much of a difference between niche sites and non-niche sites from an SEO and organic traffic perspective because what we're doing is essentially the same thing. We're targeting keywords or search terms and optimizing them for search traffic. So, on page SEO , technical SEO , we're doing the same things that you would be doing for a non-niche site to gain Google's traffic or Bing or any search engine really, but the main player, of course, is Google. What I will say though is not all niche sites are the same, and where the model generally was find long-tail keywords and create content for those keywords based on Google search engine. Now more people are looking at alternative search engines, because YouTube is a search engine and apparently TikTok is a search engine . So, focusing more on social traffic as opposed to just Google's search engine, because of course, of algorithm updates and various changes, SEO starts to look a bit shaky or fragile as a sole method, but for most of us, it is still the main method of traffic for our sites. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, yeah, that's a great point. Most of the foundational things you're doing are the same across whatever site for the most part, right? Crystal Carter: Sure, sure. Absolutely. I think it's the similar thing too, and I guess it has to do with your objectives. A lot of folks that I know who work in niche sites and particularly the community around niche site SEO on Twitter, anyway, focus a lot on traffic that yields results and focus a lot more on traffic that yields results in a monetary way. So, maybe there's that to think about, but yeah, she's absolutely right that the core tactics, the core methodology is very similar. I think it's interesting that she's talking about additional search engines as well because that's certainly something that we've seen across the general SEO landscape as well. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. So, let's go a little bit deeper with this and let's go into what's the current environment on the SERP for niche sites? Here again is Arielle. Arielle Phoenix: I think this is going to vary a lot depending on the age of the site and how well somebody's built out their brand and the backlink profile and all of those things are going to come into play. But as an industry or as a sector, I think it's become very competitive over the past few years. I've only been in the space for a few years, but at every six month interval, it's changed dramatically. So, with the competition, and of course, many of us who are in this space, we don't just have the one site. We have multiple sites and we're constantly coming up with new niche ideas and throwing sites up. So, the landscape is very, very competitive. The SERPs for niche sites, again, it's going to vary, because for some of us or for some sites, you're going to have solid growth trajectory. Others are going to be tracking sideways and others are going to be dropping out of the SERPs and being replaced by higher authority or better quality in some cases sites. Mordy Oberstein: So this the vision between, I call them the super authorities of the SERP and niche sites have always been a weird balance. People have always accused Google of defaulting to big name brands, because they're buying so many ads, that thing. I think what it has a lot to do with it and I think this is where niche sites can carve their space out, is that Google really trusts those big sites. It's not like, "Oh, they're a big site, therefore we rank them." It's that they're a big site, therefore we really understand and know them and therefore can trust them. If you can somehow do that as a niche site, you could also rank. Obviously knowing where Google is looking at things like, hey, heart attack prevention is the keyword. Trying to rank there no matter what, it's just Google's going to default to .govs like the NHS or the CDC. There isn't a lot you can do there with that, but that doesn't mean that you can't build up that same kind of authority in a way and rank for media keywords you thought you really could. Now this wouldn't be a conversation about niche sites if we didn't get into AI or in the Google case, SGE, search generative experience . So, here's Arielle on how the future is shaping up for niche sites, especially considering the advent of Google's SGE. Take it away, Arielle. Arielle Phoenix: For many people, the future looks bleak. Personally, I don't think, although I know we are just at the beginning of AI. This is the tip of the iceberg and it's definitely going to improve. SGE at the moment is not that great, and I'm going to explain. We are at the very beginning of it and it handles many queries well. So, it does a good job and it's going to continue to do a good job of things like best products and product roundups and give the searcher probably a better experience than a niche site's review post because it's going based on all the information it has and it's summarizing it, which is essentially what we would be doing, but it's got that data in real time. So, there are going to be types of content and queries that it makes very little sense for niche sites to focus on doing because SGE is just going to do a better job. Where we will shine or where a niche site can shine is in the space where they have genuine product experience. So, if you have the product and you've done the YouTube video and you've got the T-shirt to prove this is your experience, then you have a chance of doing better in that particular topic. But I think the focus on the long-tail, the basic answer queries, which SGE is already doing a good job fulfilling, those are probably short-lived or going to be short-lived for now. As I said, it's not that great and people do still need to a lot of the time click in to see the actual article if the SGE has not done a sufficient job, but we will notice that there is a dip in traffic in those types of posts. If we've got a variety of posts on our site, we'll definitely notice that those basic answer query type posts are going to be just dropping in traffic. But as I said, there are many different types of content, and for me personally, I'm not focusing so much on those answer query type posts. There are many different methods that you can use to create quality content that is going to be useful to the reader and more useful than the question with an extended answer to gain that long-tail traffic. So, really delving into content that allows you to be a bit more creative that's multi-leveled in many ways and that allows you to also add videos and really things to enrich the post in a way that the search engine or this SGE can't do. I think that's always been the case, but because long-tail was such an easy game to play, it was very, very easy to again, create lots of content for those queries and I guess do enough posts where you could generate enough traffic to your site to earn a good amount of income. So, I definitely think for the long term, I don't think SGE cancels niche sites out completely. I don't see that. I know many people have their opinions on that, but I don't see that happening if the niche site owner can identify the different types of content that can work in a way that the SGE can't. In some cases, some sites are just going to fail because they've been built on that long-tail keyword model, but there's still a huge opportunity to use the content creation or the keyword targeting model to build your brand and get ahead of this SGE AI curve. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'll be honest with you, if you're running a niche site, going all in on the AI seems like, "Wait a second, your entire unique value or unique value is the fact that you're not AI, is that you have the actual experience, you are the actual expert. You are able to deep dive into the topic the way that most people, let alone most AI writers can't do." So I feel if you are a niche site, no, leverage the fact that you have that expertise and that experience and go full on into that as a way of combating what's inevitably going to be a world filled with the same content spun up by the same AI writers. Crystal Carter: I think that what she's talking about there is absolutely on the money on being able to show that you have reviewed the product well, that you have the YouTube video to go with it, that you're able to add value. This is something that applies not just to niche sites, but to all sites. I think it's something that Google has been trying to nurture within the SEO space for ages with their product review updates. Then with them, they just started calling it the review update and they're basically wanting actual examples and actual real life evidence that you engage with the product to know what you're talking about there. When I think of good niche sites that I have used where it's somebody who's reviewing specific products that I'm looking to buy, for instance, and they've gone into it in depth, I'm like, "I want a cordless vacuum cleaner." There's somebody who's like, "Have I got a website for you?" They're going into all the cordless vacuum cleaners and all of the different things that they do and they've got all the different videos. She's absolutely on the money, but the people who are creating content strategically for their niche are going to do well, because I think that the SGE is going to be very much like featured snippets. You don't see featured snippet on every single SERP. Cyrus Shepherd’s talked about how often you see SGE on the SERP. It's not all the time. So, I think the long-tails will still add value, as she said. As she also pointed out, you also need to enrich the content with additional value. Mordy Oberstein: Especially because when you do that, you're building up your brand, which is a very unique thing to do, especially in a world that's filled with the generic content that's already out there, let alone the generic content that AI is going to put out there. Now, we're talking about niche sites. We have to talk about the question, which is how to create authority as a niche site so that you can compete with the bigger players. Ooh, scandalous and probably the most important question in my mind that we've asked Arielle. Here's what she had to say. Arielle Phoenix: Again, personally, I still take the approach of topical domination or topical authority . The topical domination is more covering the topic in depth, so not leaving anything. Previously, we would try to find gaps in the topic where you have the high traffic, high authority sites going for specific topics, and then you find your way in where they wouldn't bother touching those topics. But with topical domination, you're covering everything. So, every related question, every entity around the subject, and then moving on to another silo that links to it, but that's also covered in depth. So, I guess once upon a time, you could do a small niche site where you just focus on the topic and make 50 or so articles. I think now you need to make these micro topics and do the same thing, but hone in on that micro topic and then relate that to another micro topic and then use that to bolster that key topic that you would've just made 50 articles around in the past. So, still taking that velocity or that high velocity approach with content, but using that as the foundation to build your brand upon. But then using things like YouTube as a separate entity, so focusing on YouTube and allowing them to support each other and other social channels. Of course, you do have to find the social channels that work for that niche. You don't have to go and build a Twitter or LinkedIn for everything, but you do want to build that social proof and focus on EAT once you've got that strong foundation, but that's just my approach. That's what I'm doing to compete with the bigger players, having a solid content base, pairing that with a solid social base, mainly YouTube, and then focusing on the EAT. So, that is the guest post and the link building efforts. As taboo as that does still seem to be, we know the huge sites have a huge backlink profile, so going deeper in on the content and the internal linking, making sure that the site as an entity is as strong as possible, and then going in with the social media, the outreach, building things like link magnets if possible in your niche building applications, things that really build the brand, and of course, focusing then on the EAT. So, ensuring that there is an actual entity behind it and everything is connected, so it is a reputable source or at least appears to be when facing those bigger players. So, yeah, that's my take. That's my approach in the ever-changing niche site space, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts and thanks for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I really liked what she had to say there. It's similar to what I've always talked about when people ask me about targeting zero search volume keywords. Okay, let's assume that no one's searching for this. Okay, there's no value. No, there actually is value because you're building up authority around that topic. You need to start slow. You need to start from somewhere, and starting from these micro topics and then building out from there is just the logical sequence of how you build trusted authority with a search engine who doesn't until that point know who you are. Crystal Carter: Right, precisely. Sometimes you can even drive traffic by creating the traffic with what you're doing and what you're talking about. Then I think she also talked a lot about clustering keywords, and she talked about YouTube as well. She's got a great YouTube video about keyword clustering, keyword clustering tools, and how she works that into her general method, so that's definitely worth looking at. But the keyword clustering is a really great way to organize all of that content for Google because you are helping Google to understand what you're doing with your backlinks or say your site map and things like that and your hierarchy within your site, but also the way that you're linking your site and the way that you're connecting the content that you're creating will also help Google to understand what you're doing and help them to serve it on search result pages in a way that's really effective. I think that that is absolutely important to making sure that the content that you create is valuable to users, is discoverable by Google. So, when you're making lots more content around micro topics that Google can see the actual bulk of your content and that you have that topic authority and then it's really easy for them to access the whole stack. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You have to really think of it very holistically. You don't look at your pieces of content as individual pieces of content. It's one piece feeds the next piece, which feeds the next piece, which feeds the next piece, which creates a corpus. Content is a corpus, and you need a corpus of content. Thank you again, Arielle, for all of that amazing content. Definitely be sure to check out Arielle on Twitter, @ariellecpx. That's @A-R-I-E-L-L-ECPX on Twitter and ariellephoenix.com. Be sure to look in the show notes for the link to her site. Now, speaking about content and SGE and niche sites filling a void on the web, I like to go a little bit deeper into that. I spoil it a little bit on our episode with Mike King around CTR and SGE on the SERP. When I was talking about your content being Matlock, which I'm not going to go into that again. If you listen to that episode, you'll understand what I mean by it. Your content is Matlock. If you don't know who Matlock is, don't worry, ask your grandmother. So, let's dive in a little bit deeper as I'd like to talk about what the heck we mean when we ask that your content might not be as desirable as you might think it is and what that means in terms of SGE and CTR and traffic and clicks and the role of niche sites in all of this as Crystal and I share a deep thought. Okay, let me repose a question to you. So, you spin up content, you create content, it's content. Let's just leave it at that. It's content. You now expect rankings and you expect traffic and you expect conversions, but consider what we just talked about in terms of niche sites and their ability to go into micro topics and to really offer experience and to really offer expertise around really specific nuances within a larger area of the web. When you spin up content and you expect traffic, is that expectation really realistic? Crystal Carter: I mean, there's a reason why SEOs exist, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. To ignore John Mueller on Twitter. Crystal Carter: And Barry Schwartz, to be fair. Mordy Oberstein: To ignore Barry Schwartz on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Exactly. But we exist for a reason because there's lots of people who did that and got nothing. They were like, "Oh, I put up content, and just nothing happened." Sometimes it needs guidance, sometimes it needs help. Sometimes it needs... Mordy Oberstein: Well, let's say it gets the help. You've optimized all the things. Does it still deserve traffic? Just because it ranks, does it deserve traffic? That's what I'm really asking, I guess. Crystal Carter: No, I wouldn't say so. No, no. Google doesn't owe you anything. You could do your best, but Google doesn't owe you anything. Also, the clicks, the ranking, all of that, that's all a reflection of user value. Even if users are going to your site and they're not getting value, then they're not going to come back and Google won't rank you so well. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and just because you rank really, really well doesn't mean the content is really, really good. It could just be there's nothing better. Crystal Carter: This is absolutely true. It could also be that maybe that search term was the search term for a while, but maybe nobody's searching it anymore. I don't think anybody's worried about who Jean-Claude Van Damme's girlfriend is right now or something. Mordy Oberstein: I was just Googling that the other day. Crystal Carter: Maybe people were Googling that back in the day when he was like that dude or whatever, but right now, nobody's particularly interested. Mordy Oberstein: What angle is Jean-Claude Van Damme's leg when he does a roundhouse kick? Is it 123 degrees? Crystal Carter: Maybe it was when he was doing pirouettes. Wasn't he a ballet too as well? Mordy Oberstein: Something like that. Yeah. I was watching a video about this recently. Actually, it's random. Just don't ask me why. When I say we, I mean I think the web has gotten to a point where we think, "Okay, this ranks or this should rank. It's good enough to rank, and therefore it deserves traffic." I'm not sure that that equation is entirely accurate. What I think is in many, many, many more cases than you would like to think is that the reason why a page would get traffic or a URL would rank is because there's nothing better. I think that there's an enormous shortage of content on the web. When I say shortage, I mean of good content. There's no shortage of content. There's a shortage of good content. What I think that AI and SGE is going to bring it to focus is that question, is the fact that just because in the past you've had traffic doesn't necessarily mean... I know this is a hot take, and I know SEOs are not going to be happy to be saying this. ... in terms of mathematical logic imply or demand that that traffic continue forever. Crystal Carter: Right. It might just be that nobody ever tried to tip you off a castle. It might be that nobody else tried to write that content. I sometimes find that I see content that's ranking number one, and then I go to check at the search volume up for it and it's not getting any traffic anyway. You're like the king of nothing. So, that happens too. Mordy Oberstein: Do you know what SGE is to me? It's a giant Local Pack. It's a giant Local Pack. Crystal Carter: I can see what you mean. Mordy Oberstein: Imagine it's 2003. I don't know if that's accurate or not. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Beforehand, there was no Local Pack. There's no three listings of a local business. When you search pizza near me, you had to go click on Yelp and run through all the listings there. Then all of a sudden, the Local Pack comes on the SERP and all of the organic results you have your typical 1 through 10 traditional listing, I don't say it becomes irrelevant or becomes less relevant. All things being equal, is that bad? Was that bad for the web? Was that bad for the users? Was that bad for businesses? Crystal Carter: It was different. I've been chatting about this a little while. Everyone's like, "Oh, SGE is completely new. AI and the search is completely new." Featured snippets have been run by AI and machine learning the entire time, the whole time. Featured snippets have been run by AI the entire time. It's been around for years. The image search, visual search with Vision AI has been around for years. All of these things have been around for ages. Yeah, like you're saying, it's different, but all of them are pulling from ranking content. So, the content has to rank in the first place before it can be considered for this new and shiny and fantastic feature. What we see is that the things that rank in SGE are also ranking in your needs SERP. So, what we see is the thing that ranks for the featured snippet or is included in the featured snippet, because sometimes featured snippets include content for one thing and content from another thing, content from another thing, they're all ranking content from the regular plain old blue link SERPS. So, that's important to think. I think also your Matlock scenario is really important. If you look at Internet Live Stats, startling statistics, in 2004, the number of websites according to Internet Live Stats was 51 million websites. Then by 2010, six years later, there were 206 million websites online. So, essentially, your Matlock thing is the same. That's a fourfold increase. Mordy Oberstein: Something's going to have to stop ranking or stop getting traffic at some point. My Matlock case, just for reference, there's a TV show back from the late '80s, early '90s called Matlock with Annie Griffith. When you were home sick as a kid, say a 10-year-old, you're watching The Price Is Right. Then at a certain point, there's nothing on, just Matlock. There was no cable. I'm dating myself here. There was no cable. There was five channel with the bunny rabbit ear antennas, and you were either watching General Hospital, which is soap opera, which I was not watching, or Matlock. So, Matlock had great numbers in the early afternoon because there was nothing else. That's my parallel with content. Maybe your content is getting all that traffic because there's nothing else. There's no other paradigm, but SGE brings in a new paradigm, which by the way, I think niche sites are built for SGE for two reasons. One is Google's trying to be a little bit more specific as the entire point of SGE to refine what people are looking for and they want to offer very refined, very specific results. That's one. The second is there's an explore feature or an expand feature within Google's SGE where it takes the SGE summary. So, it takes the five lines of SGE, of an AI content that they wrote. It breaks it down per line and it shows organic results per line, which are inherently going to be very specific. So, SGE in my mind is built for niche sites who may not have been able to capitalize on the SERP, who might now be able to capitalize on. I would love to see, thought, SGE rolls out in full a year later. Are the big players losing traffic and are niche sites increasing in traffic? That would be fascinating to see. Crystal Carter: I think it's really interesting because I think the reason why niche sites are going to do well out of this or could potentially do well is because of the way that you talk to a generative search experience. So, on a generative search, I am much more likely to write a very, very long-winded query. On a Google SERP, a standard traditional search, I'm probably going- Mordy Oberstein: Three words. Crystal Carter: Three words, right? I'm going to say TV on now. Mordy Oberstein: Van Damme leg kick. Crystal Carter: Right? Van Damme leg kick. Whereas let's say, "What kind of ballet did Jean-Claude Van Damme do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?" or whatever it may be So you'll get right into it, or you might even describe something that you don't even know the name for instance. Mordy Oberstein: The answer is the ballet where you get a roundhouse right to the face. Crystal Carter: I think that Arielle was talking about niching down and getting right into not just writing that one topic, but writing up, but making sure that your website represents an entity and that everything revolves around that entity and you're covering every different way to discover that entity and discover that information. Again, that works really, really well with a generative search experience because it's a situation where you're going to ask a question and then you're going to delve into it and delve into it and delve into it and delve into it more and more and more and more and more. I think I've discussed this previously, but one of the best ones I've had was I was trying to figure out what to do with my houseplant. My houseplant is dying. What do I do with it? It kept giving me lots of results from the same houseplant website. Now I'm like, "Okay, that's a good place to go for information about this houseplant because they have all of the information about that. So, why would I go to some other website? I'd go to that one." Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. You really build that trust, that branding. By the way, how was that houseplant? Crystal Carter: It's better. It's better actually. I took some advice. I put it in a north facing window. I gave it some more water. I haven't repotted it, but she's doing okay. Thanks for asking. That's so kind. Mordy Oberstein: Of course. Now, since we're talking about AI, I'm sure there's some AI news this week because there's always some AI news or not. Either way. Crystal Carter: There are bots. Mordy Oberstein: There's this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Come on, Barry. Light my fire. Barry Schwartz has been roll this week with a few hotly contested SEO issues. So, cue up some sappy soap opera music because it's about to get dramatic in here. First Barry Schwartz over at search engine round table, Google details, SEO guidance for content syndication partners. So, in a nutshell, the practice for years has been to use the canonical to tell Google, which is the real original article. So, you're syndicating content. Let's say you're Reuters. You're syndicating to ABC News, to CNN, to MSNBC, whatever it is. How do you know? How does Google supposed to know which is the real source, which is the real original article? By using the canonical tag pointing back to the original article, which has been difficult to get done because you have to get that done in an agreement with the syndicated partners. What are the chances that they actually want to tell Google, "Hey, don't rank us. Rank the original partner"? That aside, a few months ago, Google said, "We'll make it different. We're going to say, now you should use the no index instead of the canonical tag." Meaning if you want to rank and not your syndicated partners tell the syndicated partners, just apply a no index tag so they can't rank and only you can rank. So, you would need to get that into an agreement, which would be very, very difficult. There's a lot of back and forth. Was the guidance really that all along so forth and so forth and so forth? I don't want to get into any of that. The point is many SEOs feel stuck here to rock in a hard place and would like to see a different approach again, because you need to now tell the syndicated partners, "Hey, you need to apply a no index tag here." You're not going to rank at all, which again, if I'm, let's say MSNBC or ABC News, I want to rank. So, why would I agree to that? Google's Danny Sullivan did say he would take that feedback and bring it to the team, which is not always lip service. I know people sometimes feel that's lip service. It's not. I could say at Wix, we've done that many, many times. We've taken feedback from the SEO community, brought that to the team, and then made a product improvement. So, I would take that as a legitimate offer of, "Hey, I'm going to go bring that to the team. Let's see if we can figure that out." So maybe there will be something coming down the pike that would make syndication a little bit more advantageous from a ranking point of view. The point is, if you are going to syndicate your content, there are some hard conversations that you're going to need to have about the benefits of syndicating and the monetary gain you get from that versus the ability to rank and the monetary gain you would get from that. But wait, Barry was not done there. From search engine land, Barry goes, "Google's Core Web Vitals INP issues email is causing concern." So a few weeks ago, Google added INP, Interaction to Next Paint, which will replace FID, First Input Delay as one of the three Core Web Vitals Come March 2024. With that, Google started setting out the notifications. You have an issue for INP from search console. The issue is that the web is currently working to align with the new guidelines. So, for example, we at Wix have been working way before Google actually announced INP would be in the Core Web Vitals with Google to see what makes sense, what doesn't make sense when it comes to tracking websites and INP. So, for example, we've been working on this for a long time and now 83% of our website's mobile in the US pass INP, but the issue is that this is not coming due until March and really nothing changed on the website. Only that changed that Google brought INP into search console is now sending out notifications, but the website has been the same the entire time. So, if thing's been okay with the website, then there's really nothing to worry about. At the same time from a ranking point of view, nothing is changing until March 2024. Even with that, this is where Barry really went off in his weekly news recap on Search Engine Roundtable, which we'll link to, where Barry was saying, "Hey, look, there was a whole bunch of hype around Core Web Vitals that are ranking the first time around when Google initially integrated this into the algorithm and that didn't really pan out. There really wasn't any significant ranking impact as a result. In fact for many websites, there was literally zero. Nothing actually happened as a tiebreaker scenario." Barry was saying, "Hey, why are we trying to make this a big deal again, from a ranking point of view? You're now sending these issues out via email to websites. Website numbers are going to freak out and start prioritizing an INP from an SEO point of view." But that's not really the right thing to do because you're talking about a small issue within a small issue because a ranking impact is really, really minimal for Core Web Vitals. Now you're just talking about one of the Core Web Vitals. So, Barry was saying, "Hey, I think these emails are harmful because they're going to make people freak out and start prioritizing what might not be an SEO priority to begin with." That's not to say that INP is not important. It's super important from a user experience point of view. When your users get to the page, they should have a really seamless, fast integrated experience that doesn't hold them back from doing what they want to do. But the point about rank, I would have to agree with Barry about. The point is, if you've got these emails, nothing about your site actually changed. All that changes is Google's now sending the emails out. You don't know the significance of the INP issue. It could be a very small little thing that you need to change, right? But Google doesn't tell you that in the email, so take it slow. From a ranking point of view, none of this matters until March 2024, and even then, it's a very, very, very, very small issue most likely. The last thing you should really just understand is that this is something that the web itself is really aligning to, which is why I think people were upset. Hey, we're working towards aligning to your new guidelines. Why are we now getting emails that we're not there yet? Of course, we're not there yet, but again, many, many websites are there and should be fine. Again, for example, on the Wix site, 83% of mobile sites in the US already passed INP and we're not even anywhere close to March. Okay. Moving on, some AI news for you, again from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Just call him the monopoly man. He's got a monopoly on the SEO news. Barry writes, "Google expands Bard to more countries, more languages, and adds new features." So Bard is now available in more geolocations and there's a whole bunch of new features. For example, you can now listen to the prompt, which is great for accessibility. You can adjust the tone of the response, so how formal you want the response to be, how long you want the response to be and so forth. This comes, by the way, as Search Engine Journal's Matt Southern reports, "Is ChatGPT getting Dumber?" Usage drops as users complain. So, basically people are saying, "Hey, I've been using ChatGPT for a long time, and it seems to be the responses are not as good as they used to be." OpenAI said, which I very much align with, that nothing's really changed. It's probably noticing more and more issues as you use it more and more often. I totally agree with that. I don't think anything actually changed the... Why would the AI get dumber? It's only getting more refined and more refined and more refined. This goes back to what we've been saying on this podcast for a very, very, very long time. The technology is super cool and it is super amazing and it is super innovative and it is beyond words. But when you get past that and you're talking about actual usage in real life situations, there are gaps in this technology. So, now as a web, we've gotten past the initial wow factor and we're actually starting to use this thing in real life cases. We're like, "Wait a second, maybe this isn't as good as we thought it was, because you're looking at it from two different perspectives, the wow factor versus actual integration to your consumer base." So I don't think the AI has gotten any dumber. What I think, as OpenAI points out, is that you're starting to notice more and more flaws and thinking maybe this isn't as good and maybe we can't use it across the board the way we thought we could, which I hate to say this, but if you listen to the podcast regularly, we told you so. By the way, some of the data sources are showing a 10% drop-off in ChatGPT usage. Pulling Barry Schwartz back in on Twitter, he was talking about the hype is starting to wane. I think he ran a poll from Gary Sterling over at Search Engine Roundtable, showing that SEOs are using it significantly less often. The point is in marketing, there's all these things that come around in cycles, super hype things. I don't think AI is hype per se, as I've mentioned on the podcast many, many times. I think it's a great tool. It's not going anywhere, but that initial, "Oh, my goodness. This is amazing. It's a panacea for all things," I think that was hype. I think the web is starting to come out of that, and I think hopefully that will result in more mature adoption of the AI technology. With that, that is this week's not so snappy news. Always so snappy with that snappy news. Hey, Crystal, I always feel like coming back like a news show. Have a great weekend, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah, I had a great, great weekend. I'm planning to go- Mordy Oberstein: All right. Okay, here where the weather is... I always wanted to be a news anchor. Not never. Anyway, I always found that news anchor thing so plastic, not my thing. Crystal Carter: Fair enough. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, Sue, of course, Bob. Anyway, Crystal Carter: I feel like you'd be more of a radio show guy for that. Mordy Oberstein: Definitely more of the afternoon drive home radio station for hard rock radio station thing. Speaking of music, by the way, it's time for our follow of the weekend. He's a very musical person. If we're talking about SGE, we're talking about the future of search as we talked about niche sites, who else could our follow of the week be than our previous guest, Mike King over @iPullRank on Twitter. That's I, the letter I, not the number I, the letter I. Just like what? The letter I-P-U-L-L-R-A-N-K, iPullRank. Crystal Carter: iPullRank, yeah. Mike is great. Mike is a fount of SEO knowledge. He's been SEO and thinking about AI for ages. We had him on a webinar talking about ChatGPT and AI content writers. He's got so much knowledge about the relationship between machine learning and entities and search and how that all works. So, he's a fantastic follow. He's also really, really engaged with the community and very much a pillar of the community. So, absolutely follow him. He's a fantastic follow. Mordy Oberstein: Must follow, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely must follow. He is great at translating that information that's really complex in a really eye level way, which is fabulous. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and do check out the webinar. He dropped some fantastic, fantastic information there. Mordy Oberstein: The webinar with him and Ross Hudgins about AI content writers and SEO and the future of the web, we'll link to in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Everybody who joined it said it was fantastic. So, please, please do join along. Enjoy it, find it on YouTube, all of that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, we've come to the end of this road. I'll see you niche week. I've been holding that for like 20 minutes. Crystal Carter: Niche road will we take? Mordy Oberstein: Oh, niche. It doesn't work. Doesn't work. Anyway, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with new episodes. We dive into repurposing your audio and video content for search. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all of the great content and webinars 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 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 Looker Studio SEO report template Communicate SEO results and get stakeholder buy-in for future strategies with this customizable report. 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 resource to: Customize your performance easily Integrate with leading reporting tools Format your data clearly Sophie Brannon Director of SEO, RushOrderTees LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram Sophie Brannon is the Director of SEO at RushOrderTees . With agency, in-house, and freelance experience, she has led strategy, implementation, and communication for everything from local campaigns to multi-language international campaigns in the UK, US, and Australia. She’s an industry speaker and author, award-winner, and led the Web Almanac 2022 SEO chapter. More about this topic Read this post on how to create effective SEO reports 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

Crystal Ortiz is an SEO consultant with experience across fashion, health, travel, automotive, and fitness. She teaches digital marketing classes at various universities across the US. Crystal lives in Indiana with her husband, son, and dog. Crystal Ortiz SEO Consultant Crystal Ortiz is an SEO consultant with experience across fashion, health, travel, automotive, and fitness. She teaches digital marketing classes at various universities across the US. Crystal lives in Indiana with her husband, son, and dog. Articles & Resources 15 Nov 2022 What is search volume? Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

How do you get and keep your SEO team up to speed? Where do you even start when training an SEO team? What tactics should you follow when building a strong SEO training program? Take your team to the next level as Sterling Sky’s Colan Nielsen joins Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein to share proven strategies for training SEO teams. Formalize your training programs as Wix’s own Henry Collie joins us to discuss his expertise in implementing successful courses to further strengthen your SEO team and beyond. “Go team!”, as this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast helps you take your SEO team to new heights Back How to train your SEO team How do you get and keep your SEO team up to speed? Where do you even start when training an SEO team? What tactics should you follow when building a strong SEO training program? Take your team to the next level as Sterling Sky’s Colan Nielsen joins Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein to share proven strategies for training SEO teams. Formalize your training programs as Wix’s own Henry Collie joins us to discuss his expertise in implementing successful courses to further strengthen your SEO team and beyond. “Go team!”, as this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast helps you take your SEO team to new heights Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 59 | October 25, 2023 | 49 MIN 00:00 / 49:23 This week’s guests Colan Nielsen Colan began his career in the local SEO world back in 2010. He became a Google Product Expert at the Google My Business forum in 2014. This allowed him the opportunity to help 1000s of business owners navigate the often confusing world of Google My Business. In 2017 he joined the Sterling Sky team as VP of Local Search, and has served as a faculty member at LocalU and an administrator at the Local Search Forum, both affiliate organizations of Sterling Sky, since coming on board. 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've put out some groovy new insights around what's happening, SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the spectacular, the magnificent, the marvelous head of communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic introduction, Mordy. That was magnificent, and marvelous and... Mordy Oberstein: Not as easy as it sounds, is it? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's hard. You make it look really easy. But, I mean, you are a wordsmith. Are you not, Mr. Oberstein? Mordy Oberstein: I pretend to be one on TV. On the internet, I pretend to be one. Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is Mordy's pretty cas most of the time, but Mordy's got some $5 words in the bank there. I'm just saying. And every now and then, we'll be in a meeting, and he's just like, "Don't forget. Don't forget. I'm educated over here." And I don’t mean. I don’t mean. I hope that you can… Mordy Oberstein: But what you can't see on my other screen is the digital thesaurus. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. I see. I see. Back in the day I thought a thesaurus was a type of dinosaur. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. Crystal Carter: I was like, oh, yeah, there's the Brontosaurus, the Ichthyosaurus, the thesaurus, obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Obviously. Crystal Carter: I was like, why- Mordy Oberstein: It's the thesaurus. It's the biggest one of all, the thesaurus. Crystal Carter: I was like, why they got this book about dinosaurs next to the dictionaries? They keep putting them in the wrong place. What was that about? And so, anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Remind me later. I have a great story about something similar to my brother, but it's not for this podcast. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Right. Got it. Crystal Carter: That's SERP's Up plus plus. Mordy Oberstein: That's plus plus, right. That's the after hours SERP's Plus Up, whatever. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, searchlight over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, which you can get it delivered each and every month into your inbox, which is also part of our wider SEO learning hub, which is a great place to stay up to date on SEO, maybe join a webinar, maybe even access a resource to help, I don't know, train your SEO team. Who knows? The possibilities are endless over at wix.com/seo/learn, as today we're talking about training your SEO team. Get it? That's why I did that plug. Crystal Carter: I see. I see. That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Pat on the back for the pivot. We're talking how you train your SEO team. That's right. Today, whether you're an agency or an in-house team, or just want some tips for yourself, or maybe if you want to see perhaps how your boss is looking at things, we're here to help your team. Where to start when training an SEO team? How much is on you to train your team and how much is on them to train themselves? How do you train different types of people doing different types of SEO all with different levels of experience and then actually get your own work done? To help us bring our SEO pedagogy up to standard, Sterling Sky's VP of Search and Local University faculty member, Professor Colan Nielsen will be joining us in just a few minutes. Plus, we sit down with the true educator, Henry Collie, Wix's own curriculum developer, to talk about what goes into creating a strong learning program. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So open up your lesson planners and put on your spectacles with a little rope thingies attached to them as episode number 59 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find your teacher's voice. I want the audience to know that Crystal has those spectacles with the stringy thing. Crystal Carter: I do. Mordy Oberstein: And every time she wears her hair up. I'm like, "Oh, my God, you're giving me teacher vibes and I'm having a lot of anxiety." Crystal Carter: This makes you wonder, were you called into the office a lot back in the day? Like, oh, Mordy won't confirm nor deny. Mordy Oberstein: Who knows? Crystal Carter: I think your silence speaks so loud. Mordy Oberstein: I was difficult in high school, for the time I spent in high school. It's a totally different story for a totally different time. Crystal Carter: For SERP's Up plus plus. Mordy Oberstein: Plus plus. Right, the after hours podcast over away. I think just to give a quick, quick, quick background on this before we bring Colan in. You have an SEO team. Let's say, you're at an agency, you have all types of SEO folks. You have seniors and juniors and all types of different people, and whether they are SEO experts or they're new to the SEO game, there's always some kind of training that has to go on. Whether it be SEO training or even beyond SEO training. How do we speak nicely to our clients so they don't leave and they keep paying us every month? You might be a great SEO, but you might not be great with clients. There's a lot of education that continuously has to happen no matter where you are in any profession, but I think particularly when working inside of an SEO team, whether in-house, at an agency, which is why we have, as I mentioned right here, live with us, the VP of Search over at Sterling Sky. Welcome to the SERP's Up podcast, Colan. How are you? Colan Nielsen: Wow, Mordy. Thank you very much. That was a wonderful intro and a tough act to follow. Crystal's right, you are indeed a wordsmith. So I'm going to do my best to follow that incredible intro. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: It's our honor and esteemed pleasure. Okay, quick plug. Sterling Sky, Local U, what do we got? Colan Nielsen: Blue Mountains, Ontario, which is this beautiful city just north of Toronto. It's October 13th, which means we're into that time of year where trees are changing. It's beautiful, and this is probably one of the best places in all of Ontario to be at that time of year if you like the changing of the seasons and seeing these beautiful trees change color. So we're right nestled in this mountainous valley. This is our first Canadian Local University events, I believe, in the history of Local U, so it's very special to us. A lot of our team members, including Joy, the founder of the company, is from Canada. I'm from Canada. We're bringing all of our US team to Canada to be here with us for it as well. So we're super excited. Amazing speakers, amazing location. I can't say enough about how excited I am. Crystal Carter: It looks amazing. I'm looking at it and again, idyllic is the setting I would give. Just absolutely idyllic. Just frolicking in the beautiful leaves and- Mordy Oberstein: You're dropping the words now, by the way. Crystal Carter: But also, the lineup you have here. You're by himself. Darren Shaw, amazing. Claire Carlisle, absolute legend. We've got Matthew Hunt. I don't know him just at the moment, but I will find out and I'm sure he's fantastic. Jan Tomaso, also amazing. Darren, again. Joy, who is such a fountain of knowledge, and Marie Haynes also repping for... Mordy Oberstein: Also. Crystal Carter: ... Canada there. So yeah, what a lineup. What a great day. Colan Nielsen: Yeah, we're excited. And what's really cool about Local U night before networking events, that's, in my opinion, is almost at the same level in terms of the value you're going to get out as the day itself, where you're listening to speakers and presentations. That night before you get to interact, talk business, make connections. So it's all worth it. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great pivot into our topic because I think that sometimes folks think, oh, I'm not sure if we have money to send the junior team members or learning team members to something like Local U or another marketing conference, for instance. But being in the presence of people who are top of their game, who are really passionate about their topic, who are exploring new and interesting ideas can be really, really inspiring and can be really good and to help sort of kickstart someone's learning journey. And I don't know if that's part of your training sort of thing when you guys are getting new folks through the team, but I'd love to hear more about it. Colan Nielsen: It absolutely is. We do our best to try and ensure that certainly as many people from our team can attend these events as possible. Certainly, newer people to the team. We'll get to this in a little bit, but there's certainly an approach we have with hiring people is typically around hiring people that come with experience and knowledge baked in. But we also hire people that are newer to SEO that this is perfect for. Another thing you made me think of there that was really cool, if we're thinking about these different avenues for new people that are new to SEO, getting into training and where do I go? So there's events like Local University, but then something that's kind of connected to Local University is the Local Search Forum. The reason I bring that up is, well, A, it's a totally free resource. Anybody can go sign up. You can ask client questions. You can ask general SEO questions or hiring questions, training questions. And I've been finding for the last couple of Local U events, there are members of the Local Search Forum that are now attending the Local University events to sort of just level things up and then you get to meet those people in person. So it's like this really nice circle that gets completed between the forum and the events. So definitely check out the forum as well. It's a wonderful training resource for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, forums are particularly good for helping training. I think also because... And maybe we'll get to this, but sometimes in a team... And I think that that's the important operative word there. A team, is that sometimes in a team you need someone to do something. Maybe it's not the first thing that they want to do necessarily, but you're like, we have this new project that we're doing and we need you to learn how to prompt the AI efficiently or how to use this new tool or how to train everyone on this thing, or whatever it may be. And sometimes you might be the only person in the team that knows that skill or knows that tool, or something like that. And sometimes the forum folks will be the folks that you know that you can talk to about it. There's like the Google Business Profile forums and things like that. How much do you find that as a team, do you need to point people to resources like that forum? Colan Nielsen: So we actually have... Let's say we allocate budgets each month, time, resources, whatever you want to think about it to people on our team to make sure that on any given month they have time to go to the Local Search Forum to either participate, to create threads, or simply just to go through and answer threads that other people are asking. I think that's one of the best things you can do, especially as a beginning SEO. But even as time goes on is go to forums, find problems that people have and just volunteer your time and troubleshoot them and answer them. And it's really just sharpening that knife. It's a free, wonderful way to sharpen your knife. And then there's all those other benefits like the networking and meeting new people and all that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to piggyback on that just a little bit because about time and make sure everybody is able to do all these things, but you as someone who is training other SEOs, it could be a lot. You have your full-time job, and then you have all the training that you need to do. How do you sort of balance both? And I'll sort of piggyback another question on top of that. And you kind of mentioned at the beginning. How much is it on you to teach and how much is it on them to go figure it out and learn? Colan Nielsen: Yeah, it's a great question. So we definitely take a lot of time, care, efforts as an agency to ensure that we're continually training, and as time goes by, this becomes even more time. When we started in 2016, there was about three people on the Sterling Sky team. There was a part-time team member, Joy, and myself. I think we had one other person at the time. We're now approaching 40 full-time team members. So training is something we've really, really integrated. And so just to give you some examples. We kind of break things up in a given month. We'll have general training meetings and we'll break these into some very strategic categories. So for instance, every month, we have a strategy team meeting, and the people that are going to join that meeting are people that are responsible for client strategy. So that meeting is really about performance at the end of the day. It's about training on how to get better results for our clients as far as whatever performance metrics. But then we also have account manager training meetings, which are equally important, but instead of those being focused around client performance, they're around client relationship. Making sure we're doing the things that we say we're going to do, that we're communicating effectively, efficiently, all that kind of stuff. We then also have specific, let's call them, team meetings. So we have link building specific training meetings, which just the link builders are going to be a part of that. The other meeting that I would say for us being a Local Search agency, that's a really, really important meeting to have is we actually have a very specific set Google Business Profile strategy meeting. And the people on our team that join this meeting are, well, anybody that's doing Google Business Profile strategy, which I would say is a little bit higher level than somebody who's just say, optimizing a profile. This is like a level up from there where you're now building strategies, you know how to fix duplicate listing issues, stuff like that. We have a specific strategy meeting for that, where we'll discuss new issues that have come up with Google. You may have saw recently, Ben Fisher tweeted there's this big change coming to the... Mordy Oberstein: I saw that. Colan Nielsen: ... reinstatement process, which is huge. So we'll talk about stuff like that. The other thing that's interesting, and I think this is really important I would say for any agency or anybody learning is if you are an account manager working in Local Search, you also should be striving towards being a Google Business Profile strategist or experts, because that is the one thing that we've found that if you're on a call with a client that is paying you to do Local Search and you're not able to answer some of those important questions they have, where it's more like, let me get back to you about that and check with the team. If you can avoid those and build that knowledge of the account manager up, especially on the GVP stuff, that seems to go a long way as far as training goes. Crystal Carter: I think it's really interesting the way that you're breaking it down into so many different layers of learning. And I think that that will also really appeal to the different ways that people learn. So the different learning styles and qualitative, quantitative, that sort of stuff. Mordy has a degree in education, so he can probably break them down into more of them than me, but there's lots of different learning styles there, which I think is really interesting. I think the other thing that I find fascinating about this approach to team learning is that it helps to reduce skills gaps and it also helps to improve the dissemination of information with regards to a particular topic. So for instance, like Google Business Profile, there's lots of different changes. There's lots of different iterations that you'll see if you're working in a restaurant space, you'll see one type of Google Business Profile. If it's a hotel, it's another one. If it's a shop, it's another one, and things like that. I don't know how you organize your clients', but it might be that you have your clients organized by everybody who's in a restaurant is with one person and everybody who's in a hotel is with another person. Or it might just be that whoever's free, whoever has the time gets the next client. Different agencies work different ways. So if you have a meeting where you're discussing the broad trends that you're seeing across a particular platform or a particular approach, then that helps to reduce some of the gaps so that even if your account manager hasn't necessarily dealt with that particular issue personally, if they heard about it in the meeting, then they can say, oh, well our team has seen this or that, oh, I can get you the report that we saw from, we did that with this other client, that sort of thing. And I think that that also helped reduce some of the tacit knowledge that you sometimes lose in agencies when it's in everyone's head. Can you talk to us about how you disseminate the information that you get from some of those team collaborative training spaces? Colan Nielsen: Yeah. Well, typically if it's something that's, say, mission-critical, like this suspension change, where the reinstatement process changed or Google's making some other crazy change, which they constantly do as we all know. Those types of things will certainly filter themselves up to our monthly team meeting. So today is actually, in about four from now we have our monthly team meeting and this is our all hands on deck meeting. So all 40 people will be attending this, and we break that team meeting up into a similar style as to how I just mentioned we kind of break up those individual training sessions. But anything that comes out of those meetings that is important for everybody to know then makes its way into that monthly team meeting and we discuss it. Some of the other things that seem to be helping with that over time. And then also touch on something you mentioned, Crystal, about just meeting people's styles of how they would like to train. It's an evolving process, and something we've started to do a lot more recently is incorporate more shadowing, for instance. Because I think at the end of the day, if you're training an account manager or a sales role, let's say, there's only so much you can do by standing there and telling somebody, these are our golden rules, these are the things that you have to follow and you got to follow up within two hours and this, that and the other thing. Right, that's fine. People need to know that and they need to be listed somewhere so you can reference them and know rules. But I think what's more important and what we're experimenting with a lot more lately is getting into other styles like shadowing. So for instance, we've just started on the sales side of things. We actually don't have a sales team at Sterling Sky. I talk to clients. I don't have a sales background, but people on the team who love SEO and love talking to people are really good at selling. So that's kind of how we do it. And now we're having more people shadow. So I'll jump on a call with a prospect, I'll have somebody else from my team join, they'll take notes, they'll ask me questions. Maybe next month I'll have them join a sales call, I'll join with them, take notes, give them feedback. And that seems to be a really effective way to do training as well. Mordy Oberstein: So it's really because one of the way it sounds like, through a certain extent, is that you're doing a lot of the training as part of the actual workflow. Something new came up in the SEO industry, you got to know about this, let's have a meeting about discuss, now you're educated. But it also seems like you're trying to address gaps with the shadow. There's always two parts of the educational process. Okay, I'm going to teach you A, B, C, and D, and I when I was a teacher back in the teaching fourth graders, just like teaching SEOs, you have, I'm going to teach you X, Y, and Z today, but when I'm done teaching you or even while I'm teaching you, I also have to address the fact that you might have gaps at the same time. So it sounds like, on the one hand you are driving the conversation forward, we're updating a SEO knowledge on a constant basis and we're also trying to address the sort of gaps by having a shadow work with you so that you can ask your specific questions and get what your actual educational needs are satisfied. Colan Nielsen: 100%. It's amazing what types of things gets, let's say, revealed, for lack of a better word, during a shadowing process. Often things will come up that you didn't even think about. Or maybe the trainee, the person who's receiving the training, they didn't even think to ask or think that it was maybe a gap. Then you do the shadowing, hey, here's this little thing here. I think we have an opportunity to take this to a level 10. Maybe we're at a level six or something right now. And then where that leads to sometimes, another thing that we're, I'd say, relatively new starting to do is we will then have people on our team who are now wanting to do training of things that they've learned new training, which I think is probably the ultimate form of learning something, is taking something that you've recently learned and then teaching other people on the team that thing. I don't think it gets better than that. And for instance, my teammates, Becky on her team here is doing some training this month. It's very specific, but really cool training about something she's become really good at and it's about featured snippets. So she's become this pro in our team of, I refer to it as seizing, featured snippets. And she's gotten so good at, that she's now training the rest of the team on best practices for capturing featured snippets for our clients. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Crystal Carter: That's fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Let me ask you sort of a different kind of question I've been wanting to ask, because I do a lot of training not in SEO. It was totally different industry, and one of the debates we used to always have is, which is better? To hire somebody who knows nothing about whatever it's that we're doing, it's actually property management, whatever, or you can train them the way you want them to be trained? They know nothing about the industry, they're getting all the information from you. They're going to see just by default a lot of the things that they're going to be dealing with the way that you want them to be seeing it. Or do you want to bring in somebody who already has a lot of experience, more experience, who you don't have to train as much, but they may not see things the way that you see things as it pertains to, in this case, SEO? Colan Nielsen: Yeah, that's a great question. So I'd say, for us 90% of the time, certainly over the last six years or so, we are hiring experienced, really smart people that come with presets SEO knowledge. It's pre-programmed into them. They've been doing the SEO for, anywhere from five to 10 plus years. And I don't think that's necessarily the best way to do things, but I think what it really comes down to is what type of SEO service is it that you are providing? What is the perceived value of your service that you want to kind of implant into your potential customer's mind? So when I think of value, there's different things that are drivers of value. One of those is perceived likelihood of outcome, those types of things. And I think if you're building a team of say, all stars or a green team or whatever it may be and can deliver a much higher quality of SEO, it just means that you are able to charge more for your SEO because you're delivering better value at the end of the day. Now, that's not to say there's anything wrong with building a team of people who are less experienced them up. There's a place for that. I just think it might be working towards serving a slightly different product, let's say, or service for that client. So 90% of people who hire definitely come with experience and knowledge. And then what we do here is that for those people that we hire, a lot of the training will then be on Sterling Sky specific SEO tactics that we test, that we have then turned into our processes and tactics. So they've got the base SEO knowledge. That's all taken care of. Now it's like, welcome to Sterling Sky, here's some other really cool things that we have figured out over the years that we now do for our clients, and then we're training them on those specific things. Mordy Oberstein: So you have the dream team over Sterling Sky. I just want to know which one of y'all is Charles Barkley? Colan Nielsen: You know what, Dave could be Charles. It's a- Crystal Carter: I thought it was Noah. Yeah. Colan Nielsen: Could be. Dave's a big basketball fan. I actually have a big poster on my office wall here that Dave sent me, and it's all the caricatures of the big players from the '90s. So he's a big basketball fan. Crystal Carter: Sorry, to go back to what you're saying, I thought it really interesting about all of the different iterations of just being very bespoke with your training and being very attuned to the person that you're with. I think that's really important. So tuning it to somebody who's maybe into basketball. Certainly in my time, whether I'm training clients, because that's often very, very much the case, where you're training clients as well on maybe something that you're handing over to them or something, or juniors, where you sort of try to talk to them a little bit so you can figure out which kind of metaphors you can use with them to try to help make sure that it fit. But I think also how do you identify when somebody needs to do some more and are you able to identify sometimes before they do? Does that ever happen? Colan Nielsen: Yeah, definitely. And I would say that is extremely important to be able to do is figure out, to see that metaphorical train heading for the crash long before it happens. So this, again, is an evolving process, but we're continually trying to introduce new checks and balances along the way all while trying to balance that with not being too overbearing or micromanaging or whatever it may be. So we have started to do things like pre-mortems, regular meetings. So, say, as part of our that monthly strategy meeting that we have, we've recently started talking about very specific clients and then that gives opportunities for people to bring up issues that they're having, which could be a training issue, could be performance, could be progress related to that client. That would be one thing. For account managers, for example, they're more focused on client trust and happiness. So we have triggers in place where every single month we're doing a qualitative feedback to answer the question: Is the client happy and do they trust us? And depending on those answers, we track that over time. If we start to see something going down or dipping or whatever the problem is, it will trigger process here that we refer to as a red flag process, which then goes into a system of if it's a performance issue, okay, it's a strategy red flag. If it's a relationship issue or an account manager issue, it goes into more of a progress red flag. The other way we start to figure out these problems before they become real problems is through assessing via these shadowing type calls that we do and just giving that feedback as quickly as possible, and doing it regularly. And so far that seems to be working well, but it's definitely something that it's almost weekly is evolving. There's a new step, there's a new iteration of it. Mordy Oberstein: So if folks are having their own issues and looking for their own iteration of SEO education, they want to contact you, how can they find you, Professor? Colan Nielsen: My email's open. So colan@sterlingsky.ca , and for those who don't know, my first name's got a bit of a weird spelling. It's Colan, still pronounced like the traditional Colan. Long story there. But I think my parents had SEO in mind when they named me. Because it is wonderful for the old name search on Google. I think I covered the first two pages, so thanks mom and dad. That's good. So colan@sterlingsky.ca . I'm not very active on Twitter, that's probably where I share most things. You can find me at the Local Search Forum where I'm an administrator, very active there. If you come to the Local Search Forum and ask about specific problem with your client or whatever it may be, you very likely will see myself or certainly, one of the other Local U faculty members or one of our amazing guests. Mordy Oberstein: Awesome, and we'll make sure to link to all that in the show notes and definitely check out Local U. There's amazing knowledge from all sorts of amazing SEOs. It's at localu.org. All right, Colan, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you out there in the SEO ether. Colan Nielsen: Thank you so much. This was really fun. We'll talk to you soon. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So you may not know this, but we at Wix have a slew of courses and tutorials to help you do anything from master the Wix and Wix studio platform to learning how to use Meta to grow your brand and know how to create a site aligned to accessibility standards. And one of the great folks who does help design these curriculums and courses is the one, the only Henry Collie. And he's someone who Crystal and I have worked with directly. Spoiler alert, we're in the earliest stages of our SEO certification course that we're working with Henry on. So we thought it would make sense to talk about training teams that we should talk to Henry. So let's go across the Wix first and welcome Henry. Automated voice: 3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Hey Henry, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Henry Collie: Hey, Mordy. How's it going? Mordy Oberstein: We're good. So first off all, what's it like to work with Crystal and I on courses? Must be wonderful for you. Henry Collie: It's dreadful. It's awful. Yeah, a trial by fire. No, actually it's been really great. I mean, you and I've worked together now on and off for about a year, I think. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And a few courses, but this will be the first one that actually comes into fruition. Henry Collie: Yeah, the first one that actually gets over the finish line. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Henry Collie: I think that's the thing that people forget when they go into curriculum is that most of the stuff you make probably won't make it to the end for various reasons. It could be to do with production reasons or differences of opinion. Crystal Carter: And you've worked in curriculum for lots of spaces. I think what I find really interesting is that as the idea of education, of creating courses, of creating curriculums has really expanded. I think that maybe 10, 15 years ago it was mostly schools that were doing courses and things. And now, really if you've got a brand, if you've got a complex product, you probably need an education arm. And there's people who are really good at hula-hooping who are putting together courses and things like that. How have you seen that change and grow? Henry Collie: Yeah, so first of all, when I started, I actually started off as a copywriter. So I was simultaneously acting and copywriting, but I was mainly copywriting for educational materials. So one of my first jobs was with Freeformers, making a product for Facebook to teach soft skills. And then I kind of fell into it that way with a mentor. And I think there's a danger to what is happening right now with education online and in the tech space. It's amazing the opportunities are there, and there's a huge marketing value to having educational content. But what often happens and what's happening more and more is we're getting this superficial education like thing because we must have education, so we must make an education thing that looks like education, but we never... Well, I do, to my detriment. But it's really important to make sure that it's actually providing the outcomes that people are expecting. And often it doesn't, because we're making these pieces of education for an agenda that doesn't align with education. So it's really important to keep that in mind, I think. Mordy Oberstein: I find that these kind of courses, ya know, people think it's like writing. They go - I speak English. I write English. I can write. I can write whatever, just because you know how to write doesn't mean you can professionally write. Just because you want to have an educational course and you are going to do this and you feel you need to do this doesn't mean that you actually know how to do this. Because teaching, as someone who has a master's degree in education, is its own art form and it's its own thing and there's own consider... And there's things that you just don't think about when you are naturally speaking or naturally transmitting information that you do think about when you're more formally transmitting information. Henry Collie: Yeah, absolutely. Crystal Carter: And I think it's something that's interesting because a lot of people, there's a thing that people say, which is if you can't do teach. And people say that as an insult or something, which it is not, because I think the thing is that if you are somebody who's like, I don't know, David Beckham or something, and you rolled out of bed and you were like, I know how to do football off the top of your head, you never had to learn football. If you're somebody who you were like, I really love football, but I can't quite get that thing to do the thing that I want it to, then you learn how to learn that and therefore you can convey that. If it's just instinctual, you don't even know how to articulate it because it just came naturally to you. But if it's something that you have to learn how to do, then that's something that works really, really well. Henry Collie: Well, right. And there's also a very well-documented expert bias and experience bias where even if you have had to learn it and you have had to go through that process of learning, you are so far into your journey that you've forgotten what those particular things where that you learn from. And even if you have remembered all of those, let's say you took a log of every single educational step that you've passed through every single point of understanding, that log is special and specific to you. It's not necessarily something that's broadly applicable. So you can't simply just be an expert and then go teach. And what you often get when you have an expert who's way up here. I'm making gesticulations. Crystal Carter: Hand gestures. Henry Collie: Just so you know what can't see. Mordy Oberstein: His hand is way up high right now. Henry Collie: So just so everybody knows, my left hand is currently up around my eye level and my right hand is down around my neck. So if you're up here, then you can't see what those people down there need to understand. And you often fall into that trap of trying to tell everybody everything that you know is important. But sometimes you also need to leave things out. You need to lie to people a little bit so that later on you can reestablish the truth, because otherwise they have no framework of understanding to build on. Crystal Carter: It's like with kids, you tell them C is for cat, and the C word, that C makes a cah sound. T is for tall and it makes a tah sound, except for when it's in notion, then it makes a shah sound, except for when it's in that and it makes the th sound, and there's all these sorts of things. But you just need to get them to understand that the letters work in the first place and to get them forward before you tell them all of the I before Es, which I can never remember. Mordy Oberstein: You see that all the time. In sports, you have professional athletes who now go into broadcasting and they're terrible, because they know all about the game, they don't know how to talk or they don't know how to transmit the information into a way that I can understand it, because not a professional athlete. But if we can zoom out to a different question. So great, we're going to do this course and now we need to figure out how to do it. But what makes you decide legitimately whether or not you should or shouldn't be doing when to begin with? Henry Collie: Right. So it's a really important question. It depends on the situation and it depends on who you're dealing with. But the first step is to understand what value you're going to add. And I think that's, again, going back to the superficial superficiality of a lot of edutainment... Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Henry Collie: Ooh. Mordy Oberstein: That's a shot. Shots fired. Henry Collie: Is that, we ask what are we going to cover? Will people watch it? Will people engage with it? Which really aren't the most important metrics. The most important metrics is... The most important metrics are, rather, will they gain value from this? What value will they gain from it? And then if you can actually measure what that value will be. And there's ways of doing that. For example, with SEO, we're creating this SEO course at the moment. We know that our partners, our freelancers, our agencies will gain measurable value from being able to offer these services and to be able to offer them to a high level. Now of course, that value is completely stripped if we make an edutainment course with a funny little badge that they can put on their LinkedIn that nobody caress about, so it actually has to deliver those educational outcomes or it's completely pointless and it's just wasting their time. So first of all, that's how you figure out whether it's worth doing. You have to measure what that value will be. And then secondly, you need to break down what those services, what outcomes are into their smallest constituent parts and then see where those people are right now and get them to where they need to be to either emulate or even surpass people who are currently operating in that way. I think that's probably the long and short of it. Crystal Carter: And how dynamic would you say that process is? I certainly know that when I've done an article or done a video or something, or even when we do our webinars even, people are like, yeah, but what about this? What about that? How dynamic is that process? How often do we need to revise, do we need to amend, do we need to adjust a course? Henry Collie: Constantly. There is no point at which it's completed. There is no point where like, oh, now we're making curriculum and it's now finished and it's done. You constantly have to reevaluate. And actually that's something I harp on about this all the time, so stop me if it's rambling, but I actually hate the word educate and education. The reason being I think it's an aggressive act, is to educate and it also focuses on the teacher and what the teacher is imparting and what the teacher is enforcing into a student. Whereas, learning I much prefer rather than educator is to focus on learning, because that focuses more on what the learner is getting out of the process. And in order to do that, now you are enforced, just by that linguistic change and that reframing, you now have to not evaluate the student necessarily, which you do, but you actually have to evaluate how well your work is reaching your promises. Because you are promising somebody something. Education is a product. It's not just random thing where we cover topics, and to kind of circle back to what my main point is, is you can cover things and say, that's all covered. We have talked about this. We have talked about that. We have covered this. Why don't you understand you silly student? Well, because you didn't... Actually, you covered it and you checked off the box, but you didn't audit whether what you covered imparted any value to me as a learner. Oh, sorry. I feel myself getting angry. Crystal Carter: No, it's true. I've definitely had a situation where I've done a certification, I won't name which one it is, but I can think of exactly which one it is in my mind. And I've done a certification and you go through all the things and you tick the boxes, because they've told you that you have to do the certification again. And so I would call that, I guess, education, because I studied the things or whatever. But I didn't actually learn it necessarily. You don't really learn it. Mordy Oberstein: You do become part of your scheme, how you think and how you operate as part of your outlook and part of your knowledge base, just because something I like it's somewhere in my brain, but I have to recall it, I guess. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think to learn something, you kind of have to do it. And I think you mentioned mentorship and mentorship is really, really important as part of that, and learning as you go, which I think is one of the reasons why we add that into the product. Henry Collie: We also need to define what learning actually means, because I think we often say learning education, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not one thing. Learning involves loads of cognitive steps, loads of cognitive processes. It's a constant pathway. We constantly have to evaluate to see where we are in that process. And there are innumerable learning theories, instructional design methodologies, but when you break it all down, they're essentially all saying the same thing and providing various ways of achieving the same objective, which is you the learner in one state, and at the end of this process you should be in or at least, close to another state of being. And it's not just about rote learning or saying, I've covered this or I've talked about this and now you can tell me what the capital of X country is. You can learn what the capital of X country is, but do you know why it's the capital? Do you know how it became the capital? Do you understand the social aspects of that country that created that situation in the first place? Now you don't just know that it's the capital. You now understand that it's the capital. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's so Piaget dude. Henry Collie: When I was young. Mordy Oberstein: So as time ebbs away from us, where can people learn about you? Henry Collie: Ooh, I'm pretty quiet, to be honest. I don't really do social media. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Henry Collie: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's odd for us, personally. Crystal Carter: You run an educational course though, yeah? Henry Collie: Yes. Crystal Carter: Where is the course? Henry Collie: Oh, you mean separately from Wix? No, I don't. Crystal Carter: No. On Wix. Mordy Oberstein: On Wix. Henry Collie: Oh, on Wix. Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Because they can learn by osmosis. They can see the course, take the course in... Henry Collie: Right, right, right. Mordy Oberstein: ... and then learn who you are. Almost like reading a poem and understanding the poet. Henry Collie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Right. Well, if they want to find anything that I've done, they can check out Wix Learn, which they can find the e-commerce course on there. Also, the accessibility 101 course, which I highly recommend. It's extremely important. It's extremely important for design, not just for accessibility and for- Crystal Carter: Also important for SEO. Henry Collie: And extremely important for SEO. And then by probably the end of this year, we will have the new SEO course out where they won't directly see me as a human, but they will see- Mordy Oberstein: They will feel you at every step of the way. I guarantee it. Henry Collie: They'll feel my presence. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Henry Collie: My ominous presence. Mordy Oberstein: Your aura. Hum. You should leave like a Easter egg in there somewhere. Henry Collie: Oh, should we? Should we just put in little like my favorite books? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Or like the screenshot should be like... We're talking about the SERP, it could have a screenshot of like who is Henry? Henry Collie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Just be a photo of you in the background in a frame or something. Mordy Oberstein: Right, look for Easter egg. Henry Collie: Do you know, I think there was a time... I think it's gone now, but I Googled my name and I had a little knowledge profile and a little buttons. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, oh, I don't have social. You have a knowledge graph. Look at you. A knowledge panel. Henry Collie: I think they've clocked it though and gotten rid of it. Mordy Oberstein: I got Google that. Crystal Carter: That's cool. Mordy Oberstein: There was a movie called Henrique . Someone does movies that's also named Henry Collie. But your picture shows up right there when you… Henry Collie: Oh yeah, no, that's me. I used to be an actor. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so there you are. Okay, so where can they find you? They can find you in movies. Crystal Carter: IMDB. That's funny. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well, look for Henry in our SEO certification course that's coming up or in the movies. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us today. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks Henry. Henry Collie: Cheers guys. Automated voice: 3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So thank you so much again, Henry, it was fascinating to talk to you and looking forward to keep working with you on our SEO course. Spoiler. Spoiler. Spoiler. Now since we are talking about learning, you know what we can do to help you learn more? Crystal Carter: What can we do, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: We can quote Barry Schwartz a bunch of times as we get into this snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Three articles, two updates for you, or two articles about two updates for you. First one from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google completes rollout of October 2023 spam update, which means you can now resume spamming. I'm just kidding, you should not resume spamming. You should never be spamming to begin with. So if you're utilizing, you have been utilizing spammy practices across the webs, you may have seen a significant loss of rankings. If you have not been engaged in spammy practices, and 99.9% of the listeners of this podcast have not been, this update should not have really impacted you. What might have impacted you is the October 2023 core update. And one day before Google announced the completion of the spam update, Google said, per Barry Schwartz, over at SEL, Search Engine Land, Google October 23 core update rollout, now complete. They're both complete. This one may have impacted you. This impacts sites across the web. Have a look at your rankings, see what happened. The update is now finished. There will be data on this, meaning as the recording of this podcast, of the news section, we have not seen the data come out from the tool providers. I know because I do send Russia's data. So have a look by the time this episode does come out over at Search Engine Land, look for Barry's article, Collecting Data from Across the Tool Providers to see the nature of this update and how, perhaps, how impactful it is sort of, kind of, maybe, that's a different story for a different time. But you'll get some data that points to some things about the core update. Lastly, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. Got to make sure Barry gets all the links to all of the different blogs and websites that he has. This one's over at Search Engine Roundtable. Barry writes, Google search generative experience may link to paywalled content, but here's how to block SGE. So if you have content behind a paywall, say you have to sign, enter your name and email address to access the content, Google said they can link to that content in their Search Generative Experience, the SGE, as I like to refer the AI box, where Google, you enter a query, Google spits out a whole AI answer with a couple of links. Google also said, and they updated their robots meta tech documentation to show or to say that they will respect robots meta tag directives with the SGE. Meaning, if you say, "Hey Google, I'm going to implement a no snippet robots meta tag. I don't want you to quote me. I don't want you to show a snippet of my content on this webpage on your SERP. That includes all of the SERP, which also includes the SGE Box. Also, similarly, if say, for example, you say, "Google, you know what? You can show a snippet of my content from this page, on your webpage, on the SERP, rather, but I don't want you to show a ton." So here's the number of characters you're allowed to show is called a max snippet robots meta tag. You can also implement that and Google will respect that in the SGE for Wix users. It's very easy to implement any of these robot meta tags. Simply go to the SEO panel on any particular page and you will see a checkbox where you can tick off, which robots meta tags you want in the advanced SEO section of the SEO panel. And with that, Barry now has all the links, and that's our version of this week's snappy SEO news. Thanks to the learning Barry. Each and every week Barry brings us the SEO learning. Each and every day, in my opinion. I check it out all the time, every day. Crystal Carter: It's true. It's true. I contemplated sending him something today that I saw, but I'm sure that somebody else has seen it already. But you got to roll the dice. If you don't get involved, you can't win. Mordy Oberstein: The best thing to do, as I told you, Crystal, is let the article go live with somebody else, and then as soon as it goes live, say, Barry, is this new, and find your own example and then he will include you in it. Crystal Carter: Right. Oh, of course. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's my hack. I've never done that, but I should. Crystal Carter: I don't know anyone who would do that. Mordy Oberstein: No. Everyone has different standards for how they go about their lives. We're not here to judge anybody. Crystal Carter: Some people are doing their best, and we're just doing our best. Mordy Oberstein: And that's not new. That's just how life goes. Crystal Carter: It's something you got to learn. Mordy Oberstein: So many little SEO jokes in there. You know what's no joke? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Following the right people on social media so that you get the right SEO learning. So this week's follow of the week is a family favorite, as in the Wix family favorite. Mark Preston, who you can follow over at Mark Preston, 1969. That's at Mark Preston 1969 over on Twitter, formerly known as X, scratch reverse. I'm still confused, but follow Mark. Mark does tons of training, tons of advising, and he's our follow of the week for training people. Crystal Carter: And he's so committed to helping people learn more, particularly about Wix, but also generally about marketing, about personal branding, and is somebody who is very approachable in that regard. He shares a lot of information directly on Twitter. People ask him questions, and he's so generous with his time, and a super nice guy as well. Like Barry, but really lovely when you meet him. So I highly recommend following Mark and checking out his podcast and all the other cool stuff that he does. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. So definitely give Mark a follow. Definitely, definitely give Mark a follow over on Twitter, X, whatever. You got it. We'll link to his profile in the show notes and hope you learned a lot this week. And then you can go out there and train your SEO team. Crystal Carter: Choo, choo. Mordy Oberstein: I choo, choo, choose you Crystal Carter: It was a train because training because choo, choo. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, now I get it. Wow, that went right over my head. Crystal Carter: Well, I hope the train didn't go over your head. That would be very uncomfortable. Mordy Oberstein: Unless it was a toy train, in which case it would just bounce off my head. Crystal Carter: That reminds me of a friend who had a kid and then the other kid was like throwing their Thomas the tank engine at the baby, and it's like, no, don't, don't do that, don't do that. They had to take it away. Mordy Oberstein: I remember throwing my Star Trek Enterprise toy at my little baby brother, but it was a metal and getting in trouble for that. Crystal Carter: Were you shouting engage? Mordy Oberstein: Make it so. Crystal Carter: No, no, don't, don't. Don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Well, thank you for joining us on this SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss... Not to worry. We're back next week in the new episode as we dive into how to work well with non-SEO teams. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to a learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and newsletter on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, 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 Colan Nielsen Henry Collie Mark Preston Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sterling Sky SEO Agency LocalU News: Google Completes Rollout of October 2023 Spam Update Google October 2023 Core Update rollout is now complete Google: Search Generative Experience May Link To Paywalled Content But Here Is How To Block SGE Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Colan Nielsen Henry Collie Mark Preston Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Searchlight SEO Newsletter Sterling Sky SEO Agency LocalU News: Google Completes Rollout of October 2023 Spam Update Google October 2023 Core Update rollout is now complete Google: Search Generative Experience May Link To Paywalled Content But Here Is How To Block SGE 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've put out some groovy new insights around what's happening, SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the spectacular, the magnificent, the marvelous head of communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you for that fantastic introduction, Mordy. That was magnificent, and marvelous and... Mordy Oberstein: Not as easy as it sounds, is it? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's hard. You make it look really easy. But, I mean, you are a wordsmith. Are you not, Mr. Oberstein? Mordy Oberstein: I pretend to be one on TV. On the internet, I pretend to be one. Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is Mordy's pretty cas most of the time, but Mordy's got some $5 words in the bank there. I'm just saying. And every now and then, we'll be in a meeting, and he's just like, "Don't forget. Don't forget. I'm educated over here." And I don’t mean. I don’t mean. I hope that you can… Mordy Oberstein: But what you can't see on my other screen is the digital thesaurus. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Okay. I see. I see. Back in the day I thought a thesaurus was a type of dinosaur. Mordy Oberstein: That's great. Crystal Carter: I was like, oh, yeah, there's the Brontosaurus, the Ichthyosaurus, the thesaurus, obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Obviously. Crystal Carter: I was like, why- Mordy Oberstein: It's the thesaurus. It's the biggest one of all, the thesaurus. Crystal Carter: I was like, why they got this book about dinosaurs next to the dictionaries? They keep putting them in the wrong place. What was that about? And so, anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Remind me later. I have a great story about something similar to my brother, but it's not for this podcast. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Right. Got it. Crystal Carter: That's SERP's Up plus plus. Mordy Oberstein: That's plus plus, right. That's the after hours SERP's Plus Up, whatever. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, searchlight over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, which you can get it delivered each and every month into your inbox, which is also part of our wider SEO learning hub, which is a great place to stay up to date on SEO, maybe join a webinar, maybe even access a resource to help, I don't know, train your SEO team. Who knows? The possibilities are endless over at wix.com/seo/learn, as today we're talking about training your SEO team. Get it? That's why I did that plug. Crystal Carter: I see. I see. That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: Pat on the back for the pivot. We're talking how you train your SEO team. That's right. Today, whether you're an agency or an in-house team, or just want some tips for yourself, or maybe if you want to see perhaps how your boss is looking at things, we're here to help your team. Where to start when training an SEO team? How much is on you to train your team and how much is on them to train themselves? How do you train different types of people doing different types of SEO all with different levels of experience and then actually get your own work done? To help us bring our SEO pedagogy up to standard, Sterling Sky's VP of Search and Local University faculty member, Professor Colan Nielsen will be joining us in just a few minutes. Plus, we sit down with the true educator, Henry Collie, Wix's own curriculum developer, to talk about what goes into creating a strong learning program. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So open up your lesson planners and put on your spectacles with a little rope thingies attached to them as episode number 59 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find your teacher's voice. I want the audience to know that Crystal has those spectacles with the stringy thing. Crystal Carter: I do. Mordy Oberstein: And every time she wears her hair up. I'm like, "Oh, my God, you're giving me teacher vibes and I'm having a lot of anxiety." Crystal Carter: This makes you wonder, were you called into the office a lot back in the day? Like, oh, Mordy won't confirm nor deny. Mordy Oberstein: Who knows? Crystal Carter: I think your silence speaks so loud. Mordy Oberstein: I was difficult in high school, for the time I spent in high school. It's a totally different story for a totally different time. Crystal Carter: For SERP's Up plus plus. Mordy Oberstein: Plus plus. Right, the after hours podcast over away. I think just to give a quick, quick, quick background on this before we bring Colan in. You have an SEO team. Let's say, you're at an agency, you have all types of SEO folks. You have seniors and juniors and all types of different people, and whether they are SEO experts or they're new to the SEO game, there's always some kind of training that has to go on. Whether it be SEO training or even beyond SEO training. How do we speak nicely to our clients so they don't leave and they keep paying us every month? You might be a great SEO, but you might not be great with clients. There's a lot of education that continuously has to happen no matter where you are in any profession, but I think particularly when working inside of an SEO team, whether in-house, at an agency, which is why we have, as I mentioned right here, live with us, the VP of Search over at Sterling Sky. Welcome to the SERP's Up podcast, Colan. How are you? Colan Nielsen: Wow, Mordy. Thank you very much. That was a wonderful intro and a tough act to follow. Crystal's right, you are indeed a wordsmith. So I'm going to do my best to follow that incredible intro. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: It's our honor and esteemed pleasure. Okay, quick plug. Sterling Sky, Local U, what do we got? Colan Nielsen: Blue Mountains, Ontario, which is this beautiful city just north of Toronto. It's October 13th, which means we're into that time of year where trees are changing. It's beautiful, and this is probably one of the best places in all of Ontario to be at that time of year if you like the changing of the seasons and seeing these beautiful trees change color. So we're right nestled in this mountainous valley. This is our first Canadian Local University events, I believe, in the history of Local U, so it's very special to us. A lot of our team members, including Joy, the founder of the company, is from Canada. I'm from Canada. We're bringing all of our US team to Canada to be here with us for it as well. So we're super excited. Amazing speakers, amazing location. I can't say enough about how excited I am. Crystal Carter: It looks amazing. I'm looking at it and again, idyllic is the setting I would give. Just absolutely idyllic. Just frolicking in the beautiful leaves and- Mordy Oberstein: You're dropping the words now, by the way. Crystal Carter: But also, the lineup you have here. You're by himself. Darren Shaw, amazing. Claire Carlisle, absolute legend. We've got Matthew Hunt. I don't know him just at the moment, but I will find out and I'm sure he's fantastic. Jan Tomaso, also amazing. Darren, again. Joy, who is such a fountain of knowledge, and Marie Haynes also repping for... Mordy Oberstein: Also. Crystal Carter: ... Canada there. So yeah, what a lineup. What a great day. Colan Nielsen: Yeah, we're excited. And what's really cool about Local U night before networking events, that's, in my opinion, is almost at the same level in terms of the value you're going to get out as the day itself, where you're listening to speakers and presentations. That night before you get to interact, talk business, make connections. So it's all worth it. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great pivot into our topic because I think that sometimes folks think, oh, I'm not sure if we have money to send the junior team members or learning team members to something like Local U or another marketing conference, for instance. But being in the presence of people who are top of their game, who are really passionate about their topic, who are exploring new and interesting ideas can be really, really inspiring and can be really good and to help sort of kickstart someone's learning journey. And I don't know if that's part of your training sort of thing when you guys are getting new folks through the team, but I'd love to hear more about it. Colan Nielsen: It absolutely is. We do our best to try and ensure that certainly as many people from our team can attend these events as possible. Certainly, newer people to the team. We'll get to this in a little bit, but there's certainly an approach we have with hiring people is typically around hiring people that come with experience and knowledge baked in. But we also hire people that are newer to SEO that this is perfect for. Another thing you made me think of there that was really cool, if we're thinking about these different avenues for new people that are new to SEO, getting into training and where do I go? So there's events like Local University, but then something that's kind of connected to Local University is the Local Search Forum. The reason I bring that up is, well, A, it's a totally free resource. Anybody can go sign up. You can ask client questions. You can ask general SEO questions or hiring questions, training questions. And I've been finding for the last couple of Local U events, there are members of the Local Search Forum that are now attending the Local University events to sort of just level things up and then you get to meet those people in person. So it's like this really nice circle that gets completed between the forum and the events. So definitely check out the forum as well. It's a wonderful training resource for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah, forums are particularly good for helping training. I think also because... And maybe we'll get to this, but sometimes in a team... And I think that that's the important operative word there. A team, is that sometimes in a team you need someone to do something. Maybe it's not the first thing that they want to do necessarily, but you're like, we have this new project that we're doing and we need you to learn how to prompt the AI efficiently or how to use this new tool or how to train everyone on this thing, or whatever it may be. And sometimes you might be the only person in the team that knows that skill or knows that tool, or something like that. And sometimes the forum folks will be the folks that you know that you can talk to about it. There's like the Google Business Profile forums and things like that. How much do you find that as a team, do you need to point people to resources like that forum? Colan Nielsen: So we actually have... Let's say we allocate budgets each month, time, resources, whatever you want to think about it to people on our team to make sure that on any given month they have time to go to the Local Search Forum to either participate, to create threads, or simply just to go through and answer threads that other people are asking. I think that's one of the best things you can do, especially as a beginning SEO. But even as time goes on is go to forums, find problems that people have and just volunteer your time and troubleshoot them and answer them. And it's really just sharpening that knife. It's a free, wonderful way to sharpen your knife. And then there's all those other benefits like the networking and meeting new people and all that stuff. Mordy Oberstein: So I want to piggyback on that just a little bit because about time and make sure everybody is able to do all these things, but you as someone who is training other SEOs, it could be a lot. You have your full-time job, and then you have all the training that you need to do. How do you sort of balance both? And I'll sort of piggyback another question on top of that. And you kind of mentioned at the beginning. How much is it on you to teach and how much is it on them to go figure it out and learn? Colan Nielsen: Yeah, it's a great question. So we definitely take a lot of time, care, efforts as an agency to ensure that we're continually training, and as time goes by, this becomes even more time. When we started in 2016, there was about three people on the Sterling Sky team. There was a part-time team member, Joy, and myself. I think we had one other person at the time. We're now approaching 40 full-time team members. So training is something we've really, really integrated. And so just to give you some examples. We kind of break things up in a given month. We'll have general training meetings and we'll break these into some very strategic categories. So for instance, every month, we have a strategy team meeting, and the people that are going to join that meeting are people that are responsible for client strategy. So that meeting is really about performance at the end of the day. It's about training on how to get better results for our clients as far as whatever performance metrics. But then we also have account manager training meetings, which are equally important, but instead of those being focused around client performance, they're around client relationship. Making sure we're doing the things that we say we're going to do, that we're communicating effectively, efficiently, all that kind of stuff. We then also have specific, let's call them, team meetings. So we have link building specific training meetings, which just the link builders are going to be a part of that. The other meeting that I would say for us being a Local Search agency, that's a really, really important meeting to have is we actually have a very specific set Google Business Profile strategy meeting. And the people on our team that join this meeting are, well, anybody that's doing Google Business Profile strategy, which I would say is a little bit higher level than somebody who's just say, optimizing a profile. This is like a level up from there where you're now building strategies, you know how to fix duplicate listing issues, stuff like that. We have a specific strategy meeting for that, where we'll discuss new issues that have come up with Google. You may have saw recently, Ben Fisher tweeted there's this big change coming to the... Mordy Oberstein: I saw that. Colan Nielsen: ... reinstatement process, which is huge. So we'll talk about stuff like that. The other thing that's interesting, and I think this is really important I would say for any agency or anybody learning is if you are an account manager working in Local Search, you also should be striving towards being a Google Business Profile strategist or experts, because that is the one thing that we've found that if you're on a call with a client that is paying you to do Local Search and you're not able to answer some of those important questions they have, where it's more like, let me get back to you about that and check with the team. If you can avoid those and build that knowledge of the account manager up, especially on the GVP stuff, that seems to go a long way as far as training goes. Crystal Carter: I think it's really interesting the way that you're breaking it down into so many different layers of learning. And I think that that will also really appeal to the different ways that people learn. So the different learning styles and qualitative, quantitative, that sort of stuff. Mordy has a degree in education, so he can probably break them down into more of them than me, but there's lots of different learning styles there, which I think is really interesting. I think the other thing that I find fascinating about this approach to team learning is that it helps to reduce skills gaps and it also helps to improve the dissemination of information with regards to a particular topic. So for instance, like Google Business Profile, there's lots of different changes. There's lots of different iterations that you'll see if you're working in a restaurant space, you'll see one type of Google Business Profile. If it's a hotel, it's another one. If it's a shop, it's another one, and things like that. I don't know how you organize your clients', but it might be that you have your clients organized by everybody who's in a restaurant is with one person and everybody who's in a hotel is with another person. Or it might just be that whoever's free, whoever has the time gets the next client. Different agencies work different ways. So if you have a meeting where you're discussing the broad trends that you're seeing across a particular platform or a particular approach, then that helps to reduce some of the gaps so that even if your account manager hasn't necessarily dealt with that particular issue personally, if they heard about it in the meeting, then they can say, oh, well our team has seen this or that, oh, I can get you the report that we saw from, we did that with this other client, that sort of thing. And I think that that also helped reduce some of the tacit knowledge that you sometimes lose in agencies when it's in everyone's head. Can you talk to us about how you disseminate the information that you get from some of those team collaborative training spaces? Colan Nielsen: Yeah. Well, typically if it's something that's, say, mission-critical, like this suspension change, where the reinstatement process changed or Google's making some other crazy change, which they constantly do as we all know. Those types of things will certainly filter themselves up to our monthly team meeting. So today is actually, in about four from now we have our monthly team meeting and this is our all hands on deck meeting. So all 40 people will be attending this, and we break that team meeting up into a similar style as to how I just mentioned we kind of break up those individual training sessions. But anything that comes out of those meetings that is important for everybody to know then makes its way into that monthly team meeting and we discuss it. Some of the other things that seem to be helping with that over time. And then also touch on something you mentioned, Crystal, about just meeting people's styles of how they would like to train. It's an evolving process, and something we've started to do a lot more recently is incorporate more shadowing, for instance. Because I think at the end of the day, if you're training an account manager or a sales role, let's say, there's only so much you can do by standing there and telling somebody, these are our golden rules, these are the things that you have to follow and you got to follow up within two hours and this, that and the other thing. Right, that's fine. People need to know that and they need to be listed somewhere so you can reference them and know rules. But I think what's more important and what we're experimenting with a lot more lately is getting into other styles like shadowing. So for instance, we've just started on the sales side of things. We actually don't have a sales team at Sterling Sky. I talk to clients. I don't have a sales background, but people on the team who love SEO and love talking to people are really good at selling. So that's kind of how we do it. And now we're having more people shadow. So I'll jump on a call with a prospect, I'll have somebody else from my team join, they'll take notes, they'll ask me questions. Maybe next month I'll have them join a sales call, I'll join with them, take notes, give them feedback. And that seems to be a really effective way to do training as well. Mordy Oberstein: So it's really because one of the way it sounds like, through a certain extent, is that you're doing a lot of the training as part of the actual workflow. Something new came up in the SEO industry, you got to know about this, let's have a meeting about discuss, now you're educated. But it also seems like you're trying to address gaps with the shadow. There's always two parts of the educational process. Okay, I'm going to teach you A, B, C, and D, and I when I was a teacher back in the teaching fourth graders, just like teaching SEOs, you have, I'm going to teach you X, Y, and Z today, but when I'm done teaching you or even while I'm teaching you, I also have to address the fact that you might have gaps at the same time. So it sounds like, on the one hand you are driving the conversation forward, we're updating a SEO knowledge on a constant basis and we're also trying to address the sort of gaps by having a shadow work with you so that you can ask your specific questions and get what your actual educational needs are satisfied. Colan Nielsen: 100%. It's amazing what types of things gets, let's say, revealed, for lack of a better word, during a shadowing process. Often things will come up that you didn't even think about. Or maybe the trainee, the person who's receiving the training, they didn't even think to ask or think that it was maybe a gap. Then you do the shadowing, hey, here's this little thing here. I think we have an opportunity to take this to a level 10. Maybe we're at a level six or something right now. And then where that leads to sometimes, another thing that we're, I'd say, relatively new starting to do is we will then have people on our team who are now wanting to do training of things that they've learned new training, which I think is probably the ultimate form of learning something, is taking something that you've recently learned and then teaching other people on the team that thing. I don't think it gets better than that. And for instance, my teammates, Becky on her team here is doing some training this month. It's very specific, but really cool training about something she's become really good at and it's about featured snippets. So she's become this pro in our team of, I refer to it as seizing, featured snippets. And she's gotten so good at, that she's now training the rest of the team on best practices for capturing featured snippets for our clients. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Crystal Carter: That's fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: Let me ask you sort of a different kind of question I've been wanting to ask, because I do a lot of training not in SEO. It was totally different industry, and one of the debates we used to always have is, which is better? To hire somebody who knows nothing about whatever it's that we're doing, it's actually property management, whatever, or you can train them the way you want them to be trained? They know nothing about the industry, they're getting all the information from you. They're going to see just by default a lot of the things that they're going to be dealing with the way that you want them to be seeing it. Or do you want to bring in somebody who already has a lot of experience, more experience, who you don't have to train as much, but they may not see things the way that you see things as it pertains to, in this case, SEO? Colan Nielsen: Yeah, that's a great question. So I'd say, for us 90% of the time, certainly over the last six years or so, we are hiring experienced, really smart people that come with presets SEO knowledge. It's pre-programmed into them. They've been doing the SEO for, anywhere from five to 10 plus years. And I don't think that's necessarily the best way to do things, but I think what it really comes down to is what type of SEO service is it that you are providing? What is the perceived value of your service that you want to kind of implant into your potential customer's mind? So when I think of value, there's different things that are drivers of value. One of those is perceived likelihood of outcome, those types of things. And I think if you're building a team of say, all stars or a green team or whatever it may be and can deliver a much higher quality of SEO, it just means that you are able to charge more for your SEO because you're delivering better value at the end of the day. Now, that's not to say there's anything wrong with building a team of people who are less experienced them up. There's a place for that. I just think it might be working towards serving a slightly different product, let's say, or service for that client. So 90% of people who hire definitely come with experience and knowledge. And then what we do here is that for those people that we hire, a lot of the training will then be on Sterling Sky specific SEO tactics that we test, that we have then turned into our processes and tactics. So they've got the base SEO knowledge. That's all taken care of. Now it's like, welcome to Sterling Sky, here's some other really cool things that we have figured out over the years that we now do for our clients, and then we're training them on those specific things. Mordy Oberstein: So you have the dream team over Sterling Sky. I just want to know which one of y'all is Charles Barkley? Colan Nielsen: You know what, Dave could be Charles. It's a- Crystal Carter: I thought it was Noah. Yeah. Colan Nielsen: Could be. Dave's a big basketball fan. I actually have a big poster on my office wall here that Dave sent me, and it's all the caricatures of the big players from the '90s. So he's a big basketball fan. Crystal Carter: Sorry, to go back to what you're saying, I thought it really interesting about all of the different iterations of just being very bespoke with your training and being very attuned to the person that you're with. I think that's really important. So tuning it to somebody who's maybe into basketball. Certainly in my time, whether I'm training clients, because that's often very, very much the case, where you're training clients as well on maybe something that you're handing over to them or something, or juniors, where you sort of try to talk to them a little bit so you can figure out which kind of metaphors you can use with them to try to help make sure that it fit. But I think also how do you identify when somebody needs to do some more and are you able to identify sometimes before they do? Does that ever happen? Colan Nielsen: Yeah, definitely. And I would say that is extremely important to be able to do is figure out, to see that metaphorical train heading for the crash long before it happens. So this, again, is an evolving process, but we're continually trying to introduce new checks and balances along the way all while trying to balance that with not being too overbearing or micromanaging or whatever it may be. So we have started to do things like pre-mortems, regular meetings. So, say, as part of our that monthly strategy meeting that we have, we've recently started talking about very specific clients and then that gives opportunities for people to bring up issues that they're having, which could be a training issue, could be performance, could be progress related to that client. That would be one thing. For account managers, for example, they're more focused on client trust and happiness. So we have triggers in place where every single month we're doing a qualitative feedback to answer the question: Is the client happy and do they trust us? And depending on those answers, we track that over time. If we start to see something going down or dipping or whatever the problem is, it will trigger process here that we refer to as a red flag process, which then goes into a system of if it's a performance issue, okay, it's a strategy red flag. If it's a relationship issue or an account manager issue, it goes into more of a progress red flag. The other way we start to figure out these problems before they become real problems is through assessing via these shadowing type calls that we do and just giving that feedback as quickly as possible, and doing it regularly. And so far that seems to be working well, but it's definitely something that it's almost weekly is evolving. There's a new step, there's a new iteration of it. Mordy Oberstein: So if folks are having their own issues and looking for their own iteration of SEO education, they want to contact you, how can they find you, Professor? Colan Nielsen: My email's open. So colan@sterlingsky.ca , and for those who don't know, my first name's got a bit of a weird spelling. It's Colan, still pronounced like the traditional Colan. Long story there. But I think my parents had SEO in mind when they named me. Because it is wonderful for the old name search on Google. I think I covered the first two pages, so thanks mom and dad. That's good. So colan@sterlingsky.ca . I'm not very active on Twitter, that's probably where I share most things. You can find me at the Local Search Forum where I'm an administrator, very active there. If you come to the Local Search Forum and ask about specific problem with your client or whatever it may be, you very likely will see myself or certainly, one of the other Local U faculty members or one of our amazing guests. Mordy Oberstein: Awesome, and we'll make sure to link to all that in the show notes and definitely check out Local U. There's amazing knowledge from all sorts of amazing SEOs. It's at localu.org. All right, Colan, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you out there in the SEO ether. Colan Nielsen: Thank you so much. This was really fun. We'll talk to you soon. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So you may not know this, but we at Wix have a slew of courses and tutorials to help you do anything from master the Wix and Wix studio platform to learning how to use Meta to grow your brand and know how to create a site aligned to accessibility standards. And one of the great folks who does help design these curriculums and courses is the one, the only Henry Collie. And he's someone who Crystal and I have worked with directly. Spoiler alert, we're in the earliest stages of our SEO certification course that we're working with Henry on. So we thought it would make sense to talk about training teams that we should talk to Henry. So let's go across the Wix first and welcome Henry. Automated voice: 3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Hey Henry, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Henry Collie: Hey, Mordy. How's it going? Mordy Oberstein: We're good. So first off all, what's it like to work with Crystal and I on courses? Must be wonderful for you. Henry Collie: It's dreadful. It's awful. Yeah, a trial by fire. No, actually it's been really great. I mean, you and I've worked together now on and off for about a year, I think. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And a few courses, but this will be the first one that actually comes into fruition. Henry Collie: Yeah, the first one that actually gets over the finish line. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Henry Collie: I think that's the thing that people forget when they go into curriculum is that most of the stuff you make probably won't make it to the end for various reasons. It could be to do with production reasons or differences of opinion. Crystal Carter: And you've worked in curriculum for lots of spaces. I think what I find really interesting is that as the idea of education, of creating courses, of creating curriculums has really expanded. I think that maybe 10, 15 years ago it was mostly schools that were doing courses and things. And now, really if you've got a brand, if you've got a complex product, you probably need an education arm. And there's people who are really good at hula-hooping who are putting together courses and things like that. How have you seen that change and grow? Henry Collie: Yeah, so first of all, when I started, I actually started off as a copywriter. So I was simultaneously acting and copywriting, but I was mainly copywriting for educational materials. So one of my first jobs was with Freeformers, making a product for Facebook to teach soft skills. And then I kind of fell into it that way with a mentor. And I think there's a danger to what is happening right now with education online and in the tech space. It's amazing the opportunities are there, and there's a huge marketing value to having educational content. But what often happens and what's happening more and more is we're getting this superficial education like thing because we must have education, so we must make an education thing that looks like education, but we never... Well, I do, to my detriment. But it's really important to make sure that it's actually providing the outcomes that people are expecting. And often it doesn't, because we're making these pieces of education for an agenda that doesn't align with education. So it's really important to keep that in mind, I think. Mordy Oberstein: I find that these kind of courses, ya know, people think it's like writing. They go - I speak English. I write English. I can write. I can write whatever, just because you know how to write doesn't mean you can professionally write. Just because you want to have an educational course and you are going to do this and you feel you need to do this doesn't mean that you actually know how to do this. Because teaching, as someone who has a master's degree in education, is its own art form and it's its own thing and there's own consider... And there's things that you just don't think about when you are naturally speaking or naturally transmitting information that you do think about when you're more formally transmitting information. Henry Collie: Yeah, absolutely. Crystal Carter: And I think it's something that's interesting because a lot of people, there's a thing that people say, which is if you can't do teach. And people say that as an insult or something, which it is not, because I think the thing is that if you are somebody who's like, I don't know, David Beckham or something, and you rolled out of bed and you were like, I know how to do football off the top of your head, you never had to learn football. If you're somebody who you were like, I really love football, but I can't quite get that thing to do the thing that I want it to, then you learn how to learn that and therefore you can convey that. If it's just instinctual, you don't even know how to articulate it because it just came naturally to you. But if it's something that you have to learn how to do, then that's something that works really, really well. Henry Collie: Well, right. And there's also a very well-documented expert bias and experience bias where even if you have had to learn it and you have had to go through that process of learning, you are so far into your journey that you've forgotten what those particular things where that you learn from. And even if you have remembered all of those, let's say you took a log of every single educational step that you've passed through every single point of understanding, that log is special and specific to you. It's not necessarily something that's broadly applicable. So you can't simply just be an expert and then go teach. And what you often get when you have an expert who's way up here. I'm making gesticulations. Crystal Carter: Hand gestures. Henry Collie: Just so you know what can't see. Mordy Oberstein: His hand is way up high right now. Henry Collie: So just so everybody knows, my left hand is currently up around my eye level and my right hand is down around my neck. So if you're up here, then you can't see what those people down there need to understand. And you often fall into that trap of trying to tell everybody everything that you know is important. But sometimes you also need to leave things out. You need to lie to people a little bit so that later on you can reestablish the truth, because otherwise they have no framework of understanding to build on. Crystal Carter: It's like with kids, you tell them C is for cat, and the C word, that C makes a cah sound. T is for tall and it makes a tah sound, except for when it's in notion, then it makes a shah sound, except for when it's in that and it makes the th sound, and there's all these sorts of things. But you just need to get them to understand that the letters work in the first place and to get them forward before you tell them all of the I before Es, which I can never remember. Mordy Oberstein: You see that all the time. In sports, you have professional athletes who now go into broadcasting and they're terrible, because they know all about the game, they don't know how to talk or they don't know how to transmit the information into a way that I can understand it, because not a professional athlete. But if we can zoom out to a different question. So great, we're going to do this course and now we need to figure out how to do it. But what makes you decide legitimately whether or not you should or shouldn't be doing when to begin with? Henry Collie: Right. So it's a really important question. It depends on the situation and it depends on who you're dealing with. But the first step is to understand what value you're going to add. And I think that's, again, going back to the superficial superficiality of a lot of edutainment... Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Henry Collie: Ooh. Mordy Oberstein: That's a shot. Shots fired. Henry Collie: Is that, we ask what are we going to cover? Will people watch it? Will people engage with it? Which really aren't the most important metrics. The most important metrics is... The most important metrics are, rather, will they gain value from this? What value will they gain from it? And then if you can actually measure what that value will be. And there's ways of doing that. For example, with SEO, we're creating this SEO course at the moment. We know that our partners, our freelancers, our agencies will gain measurable value from being able to offer these services and to be able to offer them to a high level. Now of course, that value is completely stripped if we make an edutainment course with a funny little badge that they can put on their LinkedIn that nobody caress about, so it actually has to deliver those educational outcomes or it's completely pointless and it's just wasting their time. So first of all, that's how you figure out whether it's worth doing. You have to measure what that value will be. And then secondly, you need to break down what those services, what outcomes are into their smallest constituent parts and then see where those people are right now and get them to where they need to be to either emulate or even surpass people who are currently operating in that way. I think that's probably the long and short of it. Crystal Carter: And how dynamic would you say that process is? I certainly know that when I've done an article or done a video or something, or even when we do our webinars even, people are like, yeah, but what about this? What about that? How dynamic is that process? How often do we need to revise, do we need to amend, do we need to adjust a course? Henry Collie: Constantly. There is no point at which it's completed. There is no point where like, oh, now we're making curriculum and it's now finished and it's done. You constantly have to reevaluate. And actually that's something I harp on about this all the time, so stop me if it's rambling, but I actually hate the word educate and education. The reason being I think it's an aggressive act, is to educate and it also focuses on the teacher and what the teacher is imparting and what the teacher is enforcing into a student. Whereas, learning I much prefer rather than educator is to focus on learning, because that focuses more on what the learner is getting out of the process. And in order to do that, now you are enforced, just by that linguistic change and that reframing, you now have to not evaluate the student necessarily, which you do, but you actually have to evaluate how well your work is reaching your promises. Because you are promising somebody something. Education is a product. It's not just random thing where we cover topics, and to kind of circle back to what my main point is, is you can cover things and say, that's all covered. We have talked about this. We have talked about that. We have covered this. Why don't you understand you silly student? Well, because you didn't... Actually, you covered it and you checked off the box, but you didn't audit whether what you covered imparted any value to me as a learner. Oh, sorry. I feel myself getting angry. Crystal Carter: No, it's true. I've definitely had a situation where I've done a certification, I won't name which one it is, but I can think of exactly which one it is in my mind. And I've done a certification and you go through all the things and you tick the boxes, because they've told you that you have to do the certification again. And so I would call that, I guess, education, because I studied the things or whatever. But I didn't actually learn it necessarily. You don't really learn it. Mordy Oberstein: You do become part of your scheme, how you think and how you operate as part of your outlook and part of your knowledge base, just because something I like it's somewhere in my brain, but I have to recall it, I guess. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think to learn something, you kind of have to do it. And I think you mentioned mentorship and mentorship is really, really important as part of that, and learning as you go, which I think is one of the reasons why we add that into the product. Henry Collie: We also need to define what learning actually means, because I think we often say learning education, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not one thing. Learning involves loads of cognitive steps, loads of cognitive processes. It's a constant pathway. We constantly have to evaluate to see where we are in that process. And there are innumerable learning theories, instructional design methodologies, but when you break it all down, they're essentially all saying the same thing and providing various ways of achieving the same objective, which is you the learner in one state, and at the end of this process you should be in or at least, close to another state of being. And it's not just about rote learning or saying, I've covered this or I've talked about this and now you can tell me what the capital of X country is. You can learn what the capital of X country is, but do you know why it's the capital? Do you know how it became the capital? Do you understand the social aspects of that country that created that situation in the first place? Now you don't just know that it's the capital. You now understand that it's the capital. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's so Piaget dude. Henry Collie: When I was young. Mordy Oberstein: So as time ebbs away from us, where can people learn about you? Henry Collie: Ooh, I'm pretty quiet, to be honest. I don't really do social media. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Henry Collie: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's odd for us, personally. Crystal Carter: You run an educational course though, yeah? Henry Collie: Yes. Crystal Carter: Where is the course? Henry Collie: Oh, you mean separately from Wix? No, I don't. Crystal Carter: No. On Wix. Mordy Oberstein: On Wix. Henry Collie: Oh, on Wix. Oh. Mordy Oberstein: Because they can learn by osmosis. They can see the course, take the course in... Henry Collie: Right, right, right. Mordy Oberstein: ... and then learn who you are. Almost like reading a poem and understanding the poet. Henry Collie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Right. Well, if they want to find anything that I've done, they can check out Wix Learn, which they can find the e-commerce course on there. Also, the accessibility 101 course, which I highly recommend. It's extremely important. It's extremely important for design, not just for accessibility and for- Crystal Carter: Also important for SEO. Henry Collie: And extremely important for SEO. And then by probably the end of this year, we will have the new SEO course out where they won't directly see me as a human, but they will see- Mordy Oberstein: They will feel you at every step of the way. I guarantee it. Henry Collie: They'll feel my presence. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Henry Collie: My ominous presence. Mordy Oberstein: Your aura. Hum. You should leave like a Easter egg in there somewhere. Henry Collie: Oh, should we? Should we just put in little like my favorite books? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Or like the screenshot should be like... We're talking about the SERP, it could have a screenshot of like who is Henry? Henry Collie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Just be a photo of you in the background in a frame or something. Mordy Oberstein: Right, look for Easter egg. Henry Collie: Do you know, I think there was a time... I think it's gone now, but I Googled my name and I had a little knowledge profile and a little buttons. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, oh, I don't have social. You have a knowledge graph. Look at you. A knowledge panel. Henry Collie: I think they've clocked it though and gotten rid of it. Mordy Oberstein: I got Google that. Crystal Carter: That's cool. Mordy Oberstein: There was a movie called Henrique . Someone does movies that's also named Henry Collie. But your picture shows up right there when you… Henry Collie: Oh yeah, no, that's me. I used to be an actor. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so there you are. Okay, so where can they find you? They can find you in movies. Crystal Carter: IMDB. That's funny. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well, look for Henry in our SEO certification course that's coming up or in the movies. Crystal Carter: Thank you so much for joining us today. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks Henry. Henry Collie: Cheers guys. Automated voice: 3, 2, 1. Ignition. Lift off. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So thank you so much again, Henry, it was fascinating to talk to you and looking forward to keep working with you on our SEO course. Spoiler. Spoiler. Spoiler. Now since we are talking about learning, you know what we can do to help you learn more? Crystal Carter: What can we do, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: We can quote Barry Schwartz a bunch of times as we get into this snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Three articles, two updates for you, or two articles about two updates for you. First one from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. Google completes rollout of October 2023 spam update, which means you can now resume spamming. I'm just kidding, you should not resume spamming. You should never be spamming to begin with. So if you're utilizing, you have been utilizing spammy practices across the webs, you may have seen a significant loss of rankings. If you have not been engaged in spammy practices, and 99.9% of the listeners of this podcast have not been, this update should not have really impacted you. What might have impacted you is the October 2023 core update. And one day before Google announced the completion of the spam update, Google said, per Barry Schwartz, over at SEL, Search Engine Land, Google October 23 core update rollout, now complete. They're both complete. This one may have impacted you. This impacts sites across the web. Have a look at your rankings, see what happened. The update is now finished. There will be data on this, meaning as the recording of this podcast, of the news section, we have not seen the data come out from the tool providers. I know because I do send Russia's data. So have a look by the time this episode does come out over at Search Engine Land, look for Barry's article, Collecting Data from Across the Tool Providers to see the nature of this update and how, perhaps, how impactful it is sort of, kind of, maybe, that's a different story for a different time. But you'll get some data that points to some things about the core update. Lastly, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. Got to make sure Barry gets all the links to all of the different blogs and websites that he has. This one's over at Search Engine Roundtable. Barry writes, Google search generative experience may link to paywalled content, but here's how to block SGE. So if you have content behind a paywall, say you have to sign, enter your name and email address to access the content, Google said they can link to that content in their Search Generative Experience, the SGE, as I like to refer the AI box, where Google, you enter a query, Google spits out a whole AI answer with a couple of links. Google also said, and they updated their robots meta tech documentation to show or to say that they will respect robots meta tag directives with the SGE. Meaning, if you say, "Hey Google, I'm going to implement a no snippet robots meta tag. I don't want you to quote me. I don't want you to show a snippet of my content on this webpage on your SERP. That includes all of the SERP, which also includes the SGE Box. Also, similarly, if say, for example, you say, "Google, you know what? You can show a snippet of my content from this page, on your webpage, on the SERP, rather, but I don't want you to show a ton." So here's the number of characters you're allowed to show is called a max snippet robots meta tag. You can also implement that and Google will respect that in the SGE for Wix users. It's very easy to implement any of these robot meta tags. Simply go to the SEO panel on any particular page and you will see a checkbox where you can tick off, which robots meta tags you want in the advanced SEO section of the SEO panel. And with that, Barry now has all the links, and that's our version of this week's snappy SEO news. Thanks to the learning Barry. Each and every week Barry brings us the SEO learning. Each and every day, in my opinion. I check it out all the time, every day. Crystal Carter: It's true. It's true. I contemplated sending him something today that I saw, but I'm sure that somebody else has seen it already. But you got to roll the dice. If you don't get involved, you can't win. Mordy Oberstein: The best thing to do, as I told you, Crystal, is let the article go live with somebody else, and then as soon as it goes live, say, Barry, is this new, and find your own example and then he will include you in it. Crystal Carter: Right. Oh, of course. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's my hack. I've never done that, but I should. Crystal Carter: I don't know anyone who would do that. Mordy Oberstein: No. Everyone has different standards for how they go about their lives. We're not here to judge anybody. Crystal Carter: Some people are doing their best, and we're just doing our best. Mordy Oberstein: And that's not new. That's just how life goes. Crystal Carter: It's something you got to learn. Mordy Oberstein: So many little SEO jokes in there. You know what's no joke? Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Following the right people on social media so that you get the right SEO learning. So this week's follow of the week is a family favorite, as in the Wix family favorite. Mark Preston, who you can follow over at Mark Preston, 1969. That's at Mark Preston 1969 over on Twitter, formerly known as X, scratch reverse. I'm still confused, but follow Mark. Mark does tons of training, tons of advising, and he's our follow of the week for training people. Crystal Carter: And he's so committed to helping people learn more, particularly about Wix, but also generally about marketing, about personal branding, and is somebody who is very approachable in that regard. He shares a lot of information directly on Twitter. People ask him questions, and he's so generous with his time, and a super nice guy as well. Like Barry, but really lovely when you meet him. So I highly recommend following Mark and checking out his podcast and all the other cool stuff that he does. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. So definitely give Mark a follow. Definitely, definitely give Mark a follow over on Twitter, X, whatever. You got it. We'll link to his profile in the show notes and hope you learned a lot this week. And then you can go out there and train your SEO team. Crystal Carter: Choo, choo. Mordy Oberstein: I choo, choo, choose you Crystal Carter: It was a train because training because choo, choo. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, now I get it. Wow, that went right over my head. Crystal Carter: Well, I hope the train didn't go over your head. That would be very uncomfortable. Mordy Oberstein: Unless it was a toy train, in which case it would just bounce off my head. Crystal Carter: That reminds me of a friend who had a kid and then the other kid was like throwing their Thomas the tank engine at the baby, and it's like, no, don't, don't do that, don't do that. They had to take it away. Mordy Oberstein: I remember throwing my Star Trek Enterprise toy at my little baby brother, but it was a metal and getting in trouble for that. Crystal Carter: Were you shouting engage? Mordy Oberstein: Make it so. Crystal Carter: No, no, don't, don't. Don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Well, thank you for joining us on this SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss... Not to worry. We're back next week in the new episode as we dive into how to work well with non-SEO teams. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to a learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and newsletter on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, 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

How do you build an SEO strategy from scratch? How should SEO differ for specific business models? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by SEO growth specialist Gaetano DiNardi to teach you how to build an SEO strategy from the ground up… using an actual case as a reference. Get hands-on as we explore how Gaetano built his client an SEO strategy from scratch. Also stopping by is messaging strategist Diane Wiredu to discuss ways to articulate brand messaging that actually resonates with your audience effectively. Gather your finest ingredients, as this week we’re giving you the recipe to make SEO from scratch right here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back The ins & outs of starting SEO from scratch How do you build an SEO strategy from scratch? How should SEO differ for specific business models? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by SEO growth specialist Gaetano DiNardi to teach you how to build an SEO strategy from the ground up… using an actual case as a reference. Get hands-on as we explore how Gaetano built his client an SEO strategy from scratch. Also stopping by is messaging strategist Diane Wiredu to discuss ways to articulate brand messaging that actually resonates with your audience effectively. Gather your finest ingredients, as this week we’re giving you the recipe to make SEO from scratch right here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 77 | March 6, 2024 | 53 MIN 00:00 / 52:57 This week’s guests Diane Wiredu Diane Wiredu is a messaging expert and the founder of Lion Words. She helps scaling SaaS and B2B companies achieve message-market fit. So they can stand out from the crowd, market more effectively, and sell more. Simply put: she helps make the value of your products easier to understand. Gaetano DiNardi Gaetano DiNardi is a music producer and songwriter turned growth marketer. Over the past 10 years, Gaetano has become one of the most prominent voices in B2B marketing. Currently, he's advising companies like Gong, Kustomer, Cognism, Workvivo, DataGrail, Aura and more on SEO, PPC, content strategy, website optimization, and copywriting. 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. I'm brewing new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who cooks up a storm from the scratch. She has the flour, she has the water, she mixes it in, adds the sugar, puts in the oven, out comes great SEO pie, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Okay. I do not make cakes from scratch. Let's just make that clear. I use the box. The box is the best way. Mordy Oberstein: That counts, by the way. That's scratch. Crystal Carter: I use the box. I always use the box. The boxes are good. Highly recommend. Mordy Oberstein: If you didn't buy it and you put it into the oven and you had to mix something, that's from scratch in my book. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I do make cornbread from scratch because I moved to England from America, and in America they have Jiffy Cornbread, comes in a box, get it from the box. Perfect. Gets every single time, right? Every time. In England, Jiffy doesn't exist. So I had to learn how to make it from scratch so that I do make from scratch. But cakes, generally speaking, Betty Crocker, she does a great job. So let's just give Betty her flowers and everybody can have a nice birthday. Throw some sprinkles on it. Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: I make toast from scratch. Crystal Carter: Are you out there? Are you like the little red hen? Did you grow the wheat and- Mordy Oberstein: No, no. I just put it into the thing and out comes toast. Crystal Carter: Ta-daa. Mordy Oberstein: Ta-daa. I did it myself. Crystal Carter: Right. You tell your children, you're like, "You're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: My kids are actually way better cooks than I am. It's a whole- Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they're good. They're good. Crystal Carter: All right. This is good. Mordy Oberstein: That's so great on the cleanup, but on the cooking part. Crystal Carter: You win some, you lose some. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by a Wix. You can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search over Wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Got little slashes, but where you can also get started with your SEO by using the Wix SEO setup checklist, where you can connect to Google Search Console to single click with the add a bonus of having your homepage indexed by Google instantly. And who knows what else they'll find when they do. As this week we're talking about starting SEO from scratch, which now you know why there was a scratch joke about cooking in the beginning. It all makes sense, how your product and services and business models factor into SEO. How to craft a strategy and SEO plan from scratch. How to get your SEO to gain some momentum when you are starting from scratch. And to help us stir the pot and add in some spice, musician songwriter and SEO extraordinary Gaetano DiNardi will join us just a few minutes. Or before you could say, "It's shake a bake and I helped." Plus, we'll explore what it means to cook up some brand messaging from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you this weekend. Who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So add three cups of flour, one cup of water, a teaspoon of yeast, let it sit, and then add 10 sticks of butter, some large, as much as you want, Crisco the entire can, teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt. And you mix it all up till your arms fall off. As episode number 77 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you start baking some SEO goodness from scratch. You smell that? Smells like SEO. Crystal Carter: I don't know what this recipe was for, but it was very greasy. Its like- Mordy Oberstein: Well, some say that SEO is snake oil. It's not really snake oil, it's just Crisco. Crystal Carter: It's Crisco. Crisco is magical. Shout out to Crisco my- Mordy Oberstein: My grandma used scoop Crisco. It was a disgusting thing I've ever seen. It was just nasty. Crystal Carter: No. You want to make cookies? Crisco. Mordy Oberstein: Crisco. Crystal Carter: Those are the best cookies, honestly, dry never. Forever moisturized. Mordy Oberstein: It looks disgusting. I feel like it's the... It's like you eat it and it immediately clogs your entire body. Crystal Carter: I don't care. The cookies are off the chain. The cookies are delicious. Mordy Oberstein: But it's delicious. Probably worth it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: SEO from scratch. Starting from nothing is never easy. A lot of times when you come into SEO, it's in the middle of the process, but sometimes it's not in the middle of the process. Sometimes you're actually starting from literally nothing. And those are probably great moments because you're actually starting from when the business is getting going. You're there from day one. So that is very opportunistic for you as an SEO. But it's also hard, which gives me the pleasure of introducing today's guest. He's here in the flesh or the digital flesh, Gaetano DiNardi, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys, thank you so much for having me. What an introduction. And I got to say, I love the banter. I love the chemistry, I love the back and forth. This is the way. It almost feels like a talk radio show here. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. This is what I'm going for. I said this before, if I had to do my life over and I couldn't be what I am now, I had to do something different, I would like to be a talk radio show talking about sports in New York. That would be my dream. Gaetano DiNardi: That's what this feels like. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you. It's the greatest comment anyone has ever given me. Gaetano DiNardi: It's so good, man. I love it. I love it. Being from... Well, I'll tell you, when I was growing up, I couldn't really sleep well as a kid. And I used to put on the AM New York Sports Talk radio it's all right through the night. Mordy Oberstein: I did the same thing. I would put the thing on sleep for 90 minutes. And you have... Steve was choosing from the fan talking about the rangers. Gaetano DiNardi: Exactly. How boring can that be. There's nothing better to put you to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Right to sleep, right to sleep. Oh wait, who's that on line one? Is it Sal from Staten Island? I'm sorry. Gaetano DiNardi: Sal from Staten Island. Dude, it was some funny stuff though. I used to listen to Joe Benigno. Mordy Oberstein: Joe Benigno. You know he's still around? Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He's still around. Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Joe Benigno at like 2:00 AM, Mordy Oberstein: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Yeah. Frank coming out as … Mordy Oberstein: Crazier than ever- Gaetano DiNardi: ...because he's pissed. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I feel like though, y'all could do an app for that. There's people who are using... I don't know. There's different apps for meditation. You could just have a like, "Hey, do you need to go to sleep? Here's some vintage." Mordy Oberstein: Vintage 1990s New York Sports Radio. Crystal Carter: Right. You could just pick one and choose yours today. You want Staten Island? You want Long Island? What do you want? Mordy Oberstein: Oh man. I'll give you some good old Mike Francesa. I'll be out in three seconds. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh man, that guy. Mordy Oberstein: That guy is so boring. Gaetano DiNardi: That guy's so... Oh man. Mordy Oberstein: Well, he's also... Look at these guys are all still around with the geezers. Anyway. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Let's talk SEO from scratch. Since we're starting from scratch. Where do you want to start? Gaetano DiNardi: All right, well look, since we're starting from scratch, I'll tell you guys why this topic is being talked about. Now, I had a very tough assignment three years ago. I went into a company as a full-time head of marketing. And the primary way we're going to grow this business was through search. And so the SEO assignment was, well, there's nothing. There's zero. And the primary category was identity theft. The company saw is identity theft protection. Side note, my identity got stolen. It's a horrible situation. And so I was motivated to really thrive and crush this role because I know the kinds of people out there who do that, they are scum. So we need to fight back against this horrible thing that is plaguing so many people. And it's not just affecting young people, people who are digitally savvy. It's mostly hitting people who have no idea. And it's mostly hitting people who are in not great financial situations. So when it cracks them, it cracks hard because they're stuck with bills that they didn't accumulate, that they got to now pay for. Credit card accounts open in your name, the use of your social security number to steal your tax returns, all sorts of wacky stuff. So anyway, the company has a lot of products and they had a huge investment. So the one caveat to this is there was a lot of dough and I could spend. In fact, they kept saying to me, "Why don't you spend more? Can't you spend more? How much more can you spend?" Mordy Oberstein: That's a good problem to have. Gaetano DiNardi: Good problem to have. And of course, all my agency and consultants and link building friends are like, "He has a lot of resources, so let's get in there." So yeah, I did recruit in a lot of players to help me scale this, but this was the ultimate setup that we landed on. Me driving everything. Two content marketers with very strong SEO backgrounds and great editorial chops. 10 freelance writers, one in-house link building manager, plus like two, three external link builders. The result of that is approximately 20 articles a month and approximately a hundred links per month. And that was the pace we ran at from when I started building that program, which really kicked off in late 2021. The first article was published in November 2021. I personally wrote it actually. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: It was how to check if your identity has been stolen. It's still a top killer. It's still ranks- Mordy Oberstein: EEAT. E For experience. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. E for experience, baby. Yeah. I wrote it personally, built links to it personally through my own network. And it ranked pretty fast actually for a site with nothing. And so I guess I'll pause there before I keep ranting and riffing, but that's the initial setup. I know it's a lot to take in because most people do an SEO, it's way smaller scale than that. Nobody's doing 20 articles a month. Nobody's treating a SaaS SEO as a publisher almost would. And so anyway, I guess I'll pause there so we can just get your reactions. But that's how we launched it and that's the setup. Crystal Carter: I think one of the first things that stood out for me from that conversation, and you brought it back at the end, was when you were talking about the building it from scratch, you'd had the customer base in mind and you actually discussed that throughout your description of what you were going to do. You were saying, "I had my identity stolen. This is the experience that people were having. And I wrote the first article myself." And Mordy mentioned the experience in the EEAT. And I think that when people are thinking about getting going with SEO, having the customer experience and the customer focus, and like, "I get you, I get this, I get why this is an issue for you, and that's at the core of what we're doing." I feel like that is always a good recipe for success. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's exactly what stood out to me initially also is that when you're first starting out, you're really trying to think, "Okay, who is the audience? What are the needs? How do I align the needs? And how do I align SEO with what the business itself is actually trying to do?" So it's completely harmonious from the start. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So here's the next thing I realized. The company has a lot of products and services. Like identity theft protection is the flagship product, but it's sold as a bundle with a lot of other stuff. So there's financial fraud protection, there's password manager, there's VPN, there's antivirus and there's family safety, parental controls and stuff like that. Have you guys ever looked at how difficult VPN the category is? Have you ever seen how insane- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, actually. Gaetano DiNardi: ...antiviruses? You know the kind of brands and players that are in those categories. It's pretty wild. So you can get overwhelmed really fast as an SEO with the company saying, "Hey, we got to get more subscribers into this. We got to grow our presence for that. We got to do this and that and this and that." And so you got to actually deflect a lot of that noise and say, "All right, the reality is we have no topical focus and no strength and no brand association with anything right now." So we've got to hammer one thing and go all in and say, "All right, that other stuff is going to have to come later." And so I made the decision to say, "All right, we're just going to build our identity theft and own that to start because we need to get something going somehow, somewhere." Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a real strength because I think that a lot of people think that when my brand, I have to get my logo out there and this and that. And it's like when you're very much starting from a completely new business or a completely new website or a completely new product, for instance, the solution is the lead there. So when you're saying identity theft first, that's how people are going to find you. And I think that building that out and building the depth of information there is going to help you build trust with people so that when you introduce them to a new product, they're more likely to actually get involved with you because they trust you on that one thing that you show yourself to be very good at. Mordy Oberstein: I want to read you an email that I sent to somebody who was asking about an SEO product that I'm working on with them. And I'm not going to go into the whole details around the whole thing, but I wrote, I generally recommend in these cases, putting your full energy behind one thing, seeing how it goes- Gaetano DiNardi: Thank You. Mordy Oberstein: ...and then taking it from there. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Crystal Carter: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed and all over the place. And what I feel like when you're starting from scratch, what you're trying to do is really getting... We spoke about this on the podcast, is getting momentum. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And that's both momentum internally in terms of your own process, getting things going, getting things moving. And also externally, getting some momentum in terms of creating a digital presence for yourself, building up those associations and getting Google to really see your light in that dark sky so that it's gravitated to it, like a moth kind of thing. And you can't do that if you're all over the place. You have to just pick one thing and just go all in. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you so much for saying that. You just made me so happy because this is what I say too, the momentum piece in SEO is huge. It's such an underrated factor. But when you have momentum, think about it. You're publishing 10, 15, 20 articles a month, a hundred plus links a month. Now, I'll tell you guys how we sprinkled some more sauce on top of that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it is like a deep dish pizza, you're putting the sauce on top. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh, this is crazy. So now when the company you're driving results for is backed by the former chairman of Walt Disney Corporation, you know there's some heavy hitters behind this project. So they went and sponsored the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA basketball team. So then the next part of this was, all right, this can't just be SEO, it's got to be fully surround sound. Let's hit all the review sites as hard as we can. So we started doing surround sound search, hitting up every big site that reviews identity theft products and getting them to review us. We started getting included on all those X best top software lists for identity theft protection, working out affiliate deals with every single affiliate player out there. We started working with YouTube creators and influencers to mention our product in their scam stories. We did YouTube SEO, we mirrored our editorial strategy with a YouTube SEO playbook. It was literally just a dude who's well-spoken and credible, like a Mordy, I got to say. He's like your son. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. I don't have a credible part, but well-spoken I'll take. Gaetano DiNardi: To deliver on camera, very confident with good, clear delivery of speech and stuff. We basically took all the content briefs for our SEO pages and transformed them into scripts, and we started embedding all the YouTube videos into our SEO pages. But I guess where I was going with all this was it helped a lot to start seeing in branded search aura plus identity protection, aura identity theft. Now we're getting somewhere. Now it's like okay, we're getting a lot of links with those anchor texts. We're starting to rank for some really competitive terms, and we're branding ourselves real hard against LifeLock. So that was pick out the big nasty enemy in the room and just go attack. So ranking for stuff like that was key. Crystal Carter: And I think something that's interesting with that playbook that you just laid out, there is a lot of people... Some people will be listening to this and they'll go, "I'm a small business, how could I possibly do this?" But like, "Yo, you could sponsor the local 5K. You could sponsor your local little league team. You could sponsor the local football team at your high school, the high school near you. You can do that sort of thing. And then you can build on that. You can get links in local publications. You can talk to local influencers. You can literally talk to them because they're probably in your town. You can invite them to your restaurant. You could give them a free consultation at your law firm, whatever it may be." So there are definitely plays that you can make. And YouTube videos, you could make a YouTube video. We have the tools, we have the technology. It doesn't have to cost you a million dollars. And certainly when you're getting started, it doesn't have to be a massive production in order to get going. So I think that there's lots of things that you can take from that, even if you have a small budget. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, nothing's actually different. Just the scale of it is different. What you actually want to do is the same thing. It's actually probably easier at a smaller scale than doing it at a massive scale. I am thinking of two particular projects in my mind. One was a very big massive project with a big massive budget, and one is not. And the strategy I did for... They're pretty much the same. Just the scale is different. So in one of them, they have a hundred thousand dollars budget for SEO. I'm like, okay, 20 grand for the first three months should be on social media, getting influencers to share your content, put it out there, get your brand known, get your content known, get people to link to it, put money there. On the smaller scale product, it was the same thing, but it wasn't $20,000, it was $200. Crystal Carter: And you could figure that out. You can beg, borrow, et cetera, for instance- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's much easier. If you're a smaller grassroots, then you could beg, borrow and steal people. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. You work at a big product and no one doing any favors. Crystal Carter: No. But if you have people that you know that you're like, "Hey." These people, you can get involved with them. And I think you mentioned, you said, "Oh, this person's related to Disney," et cetera, et cetera. That's a sign. Be aware of your networks, that's the other thing. Use your networks to grow as well. I think that's really important. Mordy Oberstein: Think like a marketer. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So to the point of not needing a huge budget, I'll tell you, most of our ads were shot with iPhones. Most of our videos that we used for ads were shorts. We just got customers to put your iPhone in front of your face and just talk. And we would clip that up, shape that up. We would even take little clips of the news saying, "Austin, tonight, 10:00 PM news, this crazy identity theft story is out of control." And then we would have somebody talking about that same topic. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: And we would collage stuff together. So we got creative and nifty with some of our advertising as well. And then remember what we said at the beginning, how I actually wrote the first post, and like it's really about understanding that customer deeply. I forgot to mention one of the most important things I did in this whole process, and it was just listening to calls, listening to sales calls. That's all I did for the first week actually. As I was doing keyword research, I was listening to calls. We used a call transcription software, and I would type in things like dark web and I would see that 35% of our calls mentioned dark web or I would type in little focus terms like that just to see what pops up. And I would look at the surrounding texts near it and I would see, oh, dark web monitoring, dark web alerts. And I would form content strategy based on that. And then I would actually use mostly autosuggest to be honest with you, to find the super long tail stuff. Because what I realized was there's two things in somebody's mind who's worried about identity theft. It definitely has happened. I got hacked, I got scammed. Somebody took advantage of me somehow, some way, and I'm freaking out versus I think something weird is happening. Am I in that danger zone? I'm still very, very concerned, but I don't know if I should be out in full out panic mode yet. What should I do? And then there's actually another category of people that are just like, "Whatever, I don't care. I know that I use the same passwords across 80 different online accounts and I don't care. I'll be fine. This is all just marketing hype to try and get me to buy stuff." And we countered a lot of those thoughts and feelings with our content. We actually realized that is X worth it? Should I get X is a great topic for this category. Is identity theft insurance worth it? Is identity theft protection worth it? And we took the narrative of we're going to be the only company out there that says something different than everyone else. If you go look at Norton, LifeLock and all those big brands, they all say, "Yes, you need it, you need it, you need it, you need it. If you don't, you're screwed." We were the only ones that said, "You actually don't really need this if you're comfortable with doing all this manual work." And the reality is, no one's comfortable doing all this manual work. Who do you know that goes to the credit score website and checks all their credit reports and credit scores manually? Who goes through the three- Crystal Carter: I do all the time. No, I'm kidding. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Who do you know that... I mean, I do this because I'm a freak, but who logs in to all their credit card accounts and checks all the charges all the time, the debit card? Who's on top of that stuff like 24/7? You know what I mean? It's tough. So anyway, that's just some thoughts around the content strategy and how I came up with ideas and stuff. Crystal Carter: I think though, there's so many points to take from that. Again, this is something you do not need a gigantic budget for. You can look at your customer service information. You can see the reviews on your product. You can see the reviews on your business. You can talk to the people who are your customer service team. You can look in your Slack channels for the questions that are coming from that. I have an article that talks about user first content information. That is gold dust. That is gold dust. Going through those user calls is super, super useful. Does not cost the earth and like you said, gives you some keywords that you would not find in other places. The trending topics thing is really important, I think is particularly when you're working in SaaS or something that's where the technology is evolving and stuff because auto suggest updates quicker than you're going to see in historic keyword search volumes. So that's super useful. And also differentiation, like you said, we don't want to sound like everybody else. That's huge as well. With all the AI stuff, for instance, a lot of people are going to be making a lot of content that sounds very similar to a lot of content that's also being published at the same time. And that's been the case for a while. But if you can cut through that noise, that is absolutely crucial. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So I feel like we've got a really good solid foundation about how to get started, how to think strategically, how to think about... How to get going from the very beginning, how to structure, know what you're going to need long term. We going to make a point that maybe we can consciousize a little bit, that's not a real word. Make conscious a little bit, you need to think about what the plan is not now, but also long-term, the resource that you're going to need and build yourself up in order to handle that. But if there's one last thing you wanted to focus on before time quickly runs out on us, what would it be? Gaetano DiNardi: I think I would in terms of just how to decide topics, because there's so many different kinds of topics you could create content about. It's like an endless sea of ideas. I mean, I'm sure you guys are familiar with this framework. I'll just show it to you. It's this framework that prioritizes the business potential of a topic based on how commercially relevant it is. So there's a lot of rabbit holes with content. A lot of times even somebody at your company will bring up a really wacky idea like, "Hey, PPP loan fraud is exploding right now. Let's go cover this topic." That could potentially work. But the problem is there's very, very little connection with that trending topic to your solution. The other problem with it is that it's not really going to be much of an SEO play because think about who's covering the topic PPP loan fraud. Every big news site out there is already covering it. So it doesn't really make sense for you as a smaller brand to try and out-cover what these big publishers are already going nuts over. So I like to go as close to the product as possible, and it doesn't have to be the classic X best software list. There's other ways to find that pain point. So for example, how to protect your child from identity theft. That would be the highest possible business potential because you pretty much need a solution to do that. There are other things you can do manually, but a solution is going to do that really, really well. The next level down is if your product is helpful, but it's not absolutely essential to solving the problem. So something like I got scammed on Facebook marketplace. That was a very, very common thing that we would see. The solution can help you solve parts of that problem, but it can't guarantee 100% scam prevention. And we would say that pretty openly in all of our marketing material. Because a lot of people would get the impression that if you are a customer and you do get scammed on Facebook, we'll be able to help you recover a hundred percent of your lost assets or things like that. It's not always the case. The next level down is if the product can be mentioned sparingly or as part of the recovery process in the event of fraud or some kind of identity theft. So an example is like how do scammers steal credit card numbers? This is a very popular long-tail search, and we felt that explaining all the ways that scammers can steal your credit card number and then how to prevent that from happening is a great way to get in front of the audiences that matter. The audiences who are thinking about this, they may be worried that their credit card number already has been stolen, but this may be what they're searching. So that's the framework for thinking about how close is this topic to how our product can solve that potential problem. And if too many ideas are coming to the table that are far away from the product, we probably need to reevaluate what we're doing because the reality is we're not getting judged based on how much traffic we generate to the site. We're getting judged on SERPs. And so the traffic is nice, it's a leading indicator. We can show that to leadership and say, "Hey, we have this much organic visibility," and they're going to be like, "That's great. That's a great positive sign." But if none of that traffic is really doing anything in terms of business results, they're going to start questioning the program. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And we spoke about this on a recent podcast about emerging content versus evergreen content and bailing those two things out and going after, even for emerging content, if the big players are there, maybe not the best place for you to go. Being really strategic, especially at the very beginning about what topics you go after will be the difference maker between burning through resources that you don't really have or being effective with the limited resource that you have and making sure that you're actually building that momentum we spoke about before. With that, where can people find you? Gaetano DiNardi: You just go to my website, officialgaetano.com. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Social? Gaetano DiNardi: Social. Yeah, I'm all over that stuff. If you guys go to LinkedIn, that's where you'll primarily find me. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, Cool. Okay. So not TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: You just search Gaetano DiNardi. I'm not a tiktoker man. It's just not- Mordy Oberstein: It's not our thing. Again, I've never said, "Yeah, SEO marketing. But yeah, TikTok is my thing." And then we talk about TikTok, it's marketing TikTok, of course, but then actually on TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: I know. The thing is I'm a good writer and it's easier for me to just rant on X or put together a nice little LinkedIn post or something. It takes too much work to get on camera and start talking and doing video content. I don't know. I got to be in the mood for it. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you very much for being in the mood for this today. We really appreciate all your insights and it's very clear that you've got very clear focus of where you want to take something from zero to hero, and that's amazing. So thank you very much for sharing today. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys. Thank you so much. I don't know what to say. I feel pretty blessed and humbled to be a part of the Wix podcast. This is going to be a stamp on the- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Gaetano DiNardi: Stamp on the old resume here. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Gaetano DiNardi: Checkbox, accomplishment done. Mordy Oberstein: We're happy we can make this happen for you. Thanks so much for coming by. Gaetano DiNardi: All right, sounds good. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So building SEO from scratch is one thing, but to build brand messaging from scratch is a totally different thing, but not really because it overlap in a lot of ways. But let's pretend that they don't. Okay, let's not pretend that they don't, they do. What I'm saying is let's just focus on the brand messaging part and move beyond SEO, just so we bit as we get into brand messaging and building it from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu in a little segment we call The Great Beyond. So I, in case you don't know, I love brand building, I love brand messaging, I love brand positioning, I love brand marketing. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Let's bring a little bit of that into this. As we look at building messaging from scratch, which is really, really, really hard to do. Building brand from scratch, I take building a brand from scratch is harder than building SEO from scratch. And building SEO from scratch is incredibly difficult,. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And I think sometimes you have to decide which things to lean on. So I've seen people... I saw somebody on Dragon Stand, which is something like Shark Tank in America. It's like that sort of thing where you're presenting a business and they had this matcha tea brand and the guy asked him, "Why don't you have the name of your brand bigger on the can of tea?" It was like an iced tea kind of thing. And he was like, "Because matcha as a concept is bigger at the moment than our brand name. So if somebody is looking for this particular product, they will recognize the word matcha sooner than they will recognize our brand name." And sometimes you have to think about that. Sometimes you have to think about that and that balance of which thing is actually going to lead the conversation and which thing is going to be more recognizable. And sometimes that's a little bit of a tough pill to swallow because people are like, "But I want to have this thing." It's like, but people don't know you yet. Mordy Oberstein: That's always a tough pill to swallow in my opinion. And brand messaging is swallowing that pill. People don't care about the product the way that you think that they actually do, the way that you do, and just swallowing that pill. Crystal Carter: Right. And you have to recognize where the value is and people will come with you because let's say on this matcha tea thing, I love matcha tea, by the way, but if I were to try- Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if you've had a bit before. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I drink matcha tea, I switched from coffee to matcha tea. I highly recommend it to anyone. Anyway- Mordy Oberstein: Don't do that. No, no, no. Slow down. Do not get off coffee people. Crystal Carter: Do it. Do it. It's the best thing that ever happened to you. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to have a sip of coffee. Crystal Carter: And I think that the thing that you can do with that is that it allows you to... Let's say if I'm the matcha tea person, I'm in this audience and I go, "Oh, matcha tea." Then I can experience the brand and I can go, "Oh, I like this. I want to find out more about this." And then I will check out the brand and if I've had a good brand experience, and then I'll say, "Hey, have you heard about that?" I'll tell other people about it. I'll let people know, say, "Hey, I found this great thing. It's really, really great." I'll be out and about. And I'll say, "Oh, I'll see that. That's what I want." And I think that sometimes you can lead with that, lead with the product and the actual USP of the product, the solution that you have until you get that brand equity as you're building from scratch. Mordy Oberstein: It's a slow burn. I have so much to say about this, but let's actually get to what Diane Wiredu from Lion's Words, the founder of Lion Words has to say about building brand messaging from scratch. Here's Diane. Diane Wiredu: So the question is, how do you create brand messaging from scratch? Well, usually you're not really starting from scratch. You've probably been explaining what you do successfully somehow or somewhere to get your business to the state that it's at right now. So whether that's on your current website, on sales calls, chats, or prospect conversations, it could be in decks or proposals or even just on social media. So I'll start by saying that you've probably got a foundation. What you need to do is figure out if what you're saying about your product or service actually resonates with your market and buyers and how to better articulate the value that you deliver in a really clear, relevant and differentiated way. So for that, there are a few crucial steps. Step one is to document and evaluate your existing messaging. So I always do this with my clients. I take a look at their current messaging and bring it into one place. So what's working, what's not? Where are the gaps or inconsistencies in the story that you're telling? You want to identify some points of friction, but also opportunities. What do you want to be saying? So starting with this step, this gives you a really good point of reference and a benchmark to evaluate against. Then step two, we want to find out what your customers are saying. So go out and perform voice of customer research to discover how your customers speak about your product or service and their experience with it. So I love to set up customer interviews where I can ask open-ended questions around the before, during, and after stage. So I'll ask questions that dig into customer struggles, the decision and buying process, what their needs and jobs to be done were, and of course the results and outcomes afterwards. Step three is to go out and look at what competitors are saying. So our messaging doesn't exist in a vacuum. And aside from being clear, we also want to avoid drowning in the sea of sameness. So look at competitive alternatives and evaluate what they are and aren't saying as well. And then lastly, step four, you want to filter those findings and really narrow your messaging focus. So I like to create a messaging map, which is essentially a prioritized list of key themes, words, messages that came up in the research, and then map this against your initial evaluation and start drafting new messaging that better reflects your value as well as the customer's needs and point of view. A really important little copywriting tip is to really bring in and use those customer words as well. So this step is a bit tricky, but it's all about simplifying. Remember that you can't be known for a hundred things as a company, so find your north star and really narrow down your focus. And lastly, I guess a bonus step, step five is to test because creating messaging might be done by you and/or your team, but it's really your prospects and customers who will tell you if it works and resonates or not. So validate your messaging through message testing or user testing and then iterate on it and optimize so that you can get the biggest ROI from it. So hopefully that will help you get started with your messaging. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Diane. Make sure you follow Diane on LinkedIn. We'll link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Just look for Diane Wiredu on LinkedIn, give Lion's Word a look, and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. She's also an event and host organizer for the Marketing Meetup. So shout out to the Marketing Meetup. We love them. A lot of shout-outs. There's a lot of points to get to in this, and I'll say first off, one of the points people don't realize about messaging and something that she hit on is that I find that good messaging is the vertex of what your users need and who you are. And it's a convergence of those two things together. And I think what brands often don't get right is often they lean too into who they are or too far into who their audience is and what their audience needs, but don't connect that to who they are either. And that's finding that sweet spot is what you really ultimately want because what you're trying to do when you're building a brand is really trying to create a connection. So it has to be part of you and part of your audience together in that, in order for there to be a conversation or there be a connection, it can just be one or the other one. And the last thing I wanted to say, or one of the last things, I have a million things to say, but the last thing I want to say before I hand it over to Crystal is messaging frameworks when you're getting started are great. And to what she's talking about there about refining that and doing focus groups and really understanding what people want and who you are. All that stuff is great. I do find though, as you start getting things rolling, and as your brand starts evolving, as you mature, as you get past the starting up phase from scratch, messaging framework can also become a crutch and it's something to watch out for. Messaging frameworks are great for working at scale, especially in larger companies because you cannot talk to everybody all the time and all the different people all the time about what the USPS are, how you want to... You need to have some framework. What nearly happens though is as you use those frameworks to scale things, you lose touch with the actual user, the actual needs and the actual pain points and things can become a little bit templatized. So you need to find a good balance between scaling and actually being in tune and having your finger on the pulse, which you can't scale. There's no way to scale that in my personal opinion. So yes, frameworks are great, but as things start to evolve, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself with the frameworks and relying on them as a crutch. Crystal Carter: She talked about refining testing and things, and I think that really ties in with what you're saying as well. These shouldn't be static. They should evolve with your brand because your brand will evolve. Your brand is a living, breathing thing and will evolve. And certainly with digital marketing, with SEO, you will be able to get actual feedback on that in real time, essentially. So if a new story breaks and people want to talk about your brand in a different way, then your brand positioning will evolve. So for instance, I mean with Wix, we had this last year, people started talking about AI and Wix was like, "No, actually we are big in the game on AI, and we have been for a long time and started putting that information more to the fore. Another prime example is there's a drink called Lucozade, which exists in England, and it's a little bit like Gatorade. And back in the day it was marketed as the brand was medicinal. So it came in glass bottles and it had very medicinal packaging and stuff because it had electrolytes, it was the kind of thing that you would have after you'd been- Mordy Oberstein: Like coke, literally like Coke. Both the drink and the drug were medicinal. Crystal Carter: So yeah, so people thought of it as a medicinal thing. And then later on people started realizing that athletes were having it because it replaced electrolytes, and so they started marketing it as a sports drink, and that is people listening to how the audience is responding to their brand. And as she said, this is something you should see how users are responding to it, how your audience is responding to your brand. I also liked what she was saying about you're not really starting from scratch. You have input. You have data on how people respond to your brand from sales calls and from going to conferences and talking to people at expos and from talking about your brand, explaining what you do to your mom. Does your mom actually understand what you do? Can you summarize the brand of your company in a couple of words? That's something that you refine and that's something that's really, really important. If you're able to do that really, really quickly, then that means you've really nailed the essence of your brand. And I think also what you were talking about, about the relationship between what can you do for me? That sort of thing. What can you do for me? Who are you? Do you understand who you are? And do I understand who you are and do you understand who I am? I think sometimes there's a thing, it's like it's not necessarily that I don't have confidence in you but sometimes it's like... Not you personally Mordy, but- Mordy Oberstein: You're completely right. Crystal Carter: ...I do. But I think sometimes you have a situation, like I mentioned Dragons Den earlier, but something that happens on that show is they'll say, "Oh, I'm investing in you as a person," or whatever. And I think it's hard to understand what that means, but sometimes with the brand, it's a question of demonstrating that you have confidence in yourself, and if you don't have confidence in yourself, how can you expect somebody else to also have confidence in you? So it might be that you think this brand is great, but it doesn't seem like they think they're great, which makes you worry what they know that you don't know. So I think it's really important that you're confident, but maybe not necessarily overly so, but just confident in your capabilities and aware of your competitors and things like that. And I think that that's something that's really, really useful. Dan had some great points. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. One thing I'll say real quick before we have to move on, and never really when you're going to start thinking about messaging, you're going to bring up tone like what's our tone in our messaging going to be? I will say that the biggest mistake I see people make is the tone is simply a list of adjectives when really tone is actually a way of communicating with your audience in nonverbal ways or less like subtle, more sublime verbal ways. It's basically asking in what way and more importantly, on what emotional level do we want to communicate with our audience? And once you understand that's what tone actually is, you'll immediately realize that it's more than a few adjectives. Anyway, you know who's got a great tone? I always find this tone very fun, really fun, uplifting and exciting. Crystal Carter: I do too. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's Barry, Barry Schwartz, it's Barry Schwarz time on the SERP's Up podcast. When we get into the SEO news, I'm going to say, "Take it away, Barry," at this point. Crystal Carter: All right, go RustyBrick, go. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Search Engine Roundtable. One from Search Engine Land. All three from Barry Schwartz, who clearly has a monopoly on the SEO news. First up from SEO Roundtable, Google Popular Opinion search carousel. What about the Google Popular Opinions search carousel? Let me help you, Barry. Google tests popular Opinion search carousel. As spotted by Brodie Clark was a great follow, follow him over an X. Brodie was searching for Sony XM4, which is a pair of headphones and underneath an Amazon listing, got a carousel that was called Popular Opinions, which presented a series of cards that were review articles of the headphones. Barry pointed out that he saw a similar test a year ago with a section on the cervical perspectives and opinions. What's interesting though is that back then the results Barry got back were from CNET and Gadget, CNN, big, big name sites. In Brodie's case, the results seem a little bit more niche, which I think is interesting. What I think is happening here is Google looking for a way to put results up on the top of the SERP from more specifically topically specific websites that are not just the usual big names. There's been a lot of controversy around Google just defaulting to the big name websites and is that really healthy and are those results really good, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? I don't want to get into the controversy here right now, but what I do see is with a popular opinion is if the results are more niche and more topically specific than they used to be with the tests a year ago, that to me seems like Google is trying to find a way to implement a scenario where there are more topically focused websites that offer perhaps better content up at the top of the SERP. So I like that one. Okay. Also from seoroundtable.com and also from Barry Schwartz because who else would it be? Well, I guess technically Glenn Gabe does write once in a while for SEO Roundtable. By the way, Barry, more Glenn on SEO Roundtable. I like that little diversity of authors there. Anyway, Barry writes Early Signs, Google search ranking update on February 28th and 29th. There's been a... Well, it looks like almost like massive increase in ring fluctuations, not just on the 20th and 29th, but a few days before that. Also, it looks to be like 25th. So a series of ring volatility. Glenn Gabe who will try to link to the show notes on this as well, walk through some cases you've seen of massive reversals and so forth. Sometimes these kind of things could be a precursor to an official algorithm update. So who knows? As of the recording of this new section, it looks like things have calmed down a little bit. By the time when we release this episode, things could be spiking again. Who knows? It's a game of roulette. Onto searchengineland.com. But again, sticking with Barry Schwartz, new Google structured data carousels beta. What about them, Barry? Google announces new structured data carousels beta. Well, they didn't announce it, they added documentation. I digress. Google add in new documentation for a new beta carousel that basically looks when you have, let's say events or products or whatever it might be, but you have multiple iterations of them. So imagine a collection page or an event page with multiple events. If you want to show those multiple items, there's a new carousel that Google might implement, and you can use structurally in a markup to be eligible to appear in this little carousel that is attached to your result. It's not a separate independent cert feature carousel, but imagine you see this often with, let's say, news aggregators where if you search for something related to, say, sports news, ESPN might have a carousel, like multiple stories there. It's like that. Where in your organic result, you'll have multiple swipeable carousel cards. Basically this item list structured data needs to be attached or combined with something that supports the items. So you need to have product markup on there if you have a series of multiple products, right? If you are a local business and your page has multiple, I don't know, vacation rentals listed on the page, so you have to have local business markup or a subtype for a vacation rental listed on there. So it's not like it's independent thing, it's a markup to show the items or the items of what. So there's going to be multiple markups on the page. And with that, I'm done. That is your Snappy news for this week. Thank you, Barry, for your contributions and for your great headlines. Well, that was always fun. Thank you, Barry and the other contributors to the SEO News world out there. Crystal Carter: Yeah, thank you very much for keeping us up to date with everything that's going on. It's like, it's wild though here. There's a lot of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Lot of ins and outs, sort of what have yous. Different people involved. Speaking of people, speaking of people, that brings us to our follow of the week this week, which is the one, the only Lily Ugbaja who's over at Lily U-G-B-A-J-A over on X slash Twitter, whatever you want to call it. She's up first off contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. Crystal Carter: Contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. She's fantastic. She also has a great TED Talk online as well. One of the things she talks about on the Wix SEO Hub is how she built up our website from scratch and built up all the traffic from scratch and built that up from zero. That's one of the reasons why she's the follow of the week, and she talks about a lot of different tactics there and competitors and pulling things through. And I think she talks about being a little bit scrappy in the marketing, and I think that that's something that's really important when you're trying to get a brand going. I think Glenn Gabe has said, when trying to recover from an algorithm update, throw the kitchen sink at it, do all of the things- Mordy Oberstein: This is welcome wisdom by the way. Just want to shout out to Glen. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so Glen, Lily, everybody, Lily Ugbaja. And I think that it's important to, when you're thinking about your brand, get in there, get stuck in and move things forward until you get to the place where you want to be. And Lily definitely takes that approach. So yeah, she's a great follow. Do that. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And she takes a content first approach. I think people realize your content is your brand. That's you talking. Some random blog post about whatever, that's actually you communicating with your audience and they're looking how you're doing that. So watch your tone. As we said before, I don't like your tone young man. Listen to my children, never. Crystal Carter: I found a great blog. I don't know if we have time for another tangent. Mordy Oberstein: Always. Crystal Carter: Okay, so I was looking at sheds and I found this great blog. Mordy Oberstein: Like wood sheds, like the store tool? Crystal Carter: Like a shed in your garden. I found this great blog, and my question was, should I build a shed by a wall? And the article that I found was the general thing you would find on a blog, like a marketing blog, but it was so well written, me and my kids, I read it aloud to my family because it was so- Mordy Oberstein: Like a bedtime story? Crystal Carter: It was just so well written. I was like, "Should I build a shed by a wall?" And it was like, "Do you want to build a shed by a wall? That's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that." But then the heading, so they gave all the reasons, and then the last heading was like, "But I still want to build my shed by a wall." And it was so well written. And after that thinking, speaking of tone from that, I get that these people are knowledgeable. They know what they're talking about because there was definitely knowledge in this blog, but they also have a sense of humor. And they also saw me coming. They know. Mordy Oberstein: They know. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: 99.9% of all communication is nonverbal. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that there's definitely something in there, your tone of voice and what you're saying about your brand being... Your blog being your brand, your content being your brand. It's absolutely true. Mordy Oberstein: I only have one question for you. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: You know what's coming, right? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Did you build a shed by the wall? Yeah. Crystal Carter: So I had a shed that was by a wall, and it's causing me problems, and I was trying to figure out a way to get around it, but apparently you can't. So basically note to anybody who's listening, if you have a shed, do not build it by a wall because it will cause damp and the shed will fall down. So don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Next question. Are you rebuilding the shed yourself? Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I have- Mordy Oberstein: I would like to see this. Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I mean, it would be like the House of Jack- Mordy Oberstein: Please. No, please do it and like live, like video blogging. Crystal Carter: No, no, I'm not doing that. But I have a professional person who is assisting me with this. He's a very nice man named James. Thanks, James. Mordy Oberstein: Is he your husband? Crystal Carter: No. We are artsy. We don't build things with tools. We don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: We build knowledge. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we read books and stuff, but not about sheds. Mordy Oberstein: Well, apparently you do read books about... Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Well, I guess you got to do for us. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us not to worry? We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into what you never knew about Local pacs. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/seo/learn. Looking into more about SEO, check it all the great content, webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guest, at Wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece of love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Gaetano DiNardi Diane Wiredu Lily Ugbaja Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Lion Words News: Google Structured Data Carousels Beta Documentation Added Early Signs: Google Search Ranking Update On February 28 & 29th Glenn Gabe showing rank volatility examples New Google structured data carousels (beta) Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Gaetano DiNardi Diane Wiredu Lily Ugbaja Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Lion Words News: Google Structured Data Carousels Beta Documentation Added Early Signs: Google Search Ranking Update On February 28 & 29th Glenn Gabe showing rank volatility examples New Google structured data carousels (beta) 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. I'm brewing new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who cooks up a storm from the scratch. She has the flour, she has the water, she mixes it in, adds the sugar, puts in the oven, out comes great SEO pie, the head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Okay. I do not make cakes from scratch. Let's just make that clear. I use the box. The box is the best way. Mordy Oberstein: That counts, by the way. That's scratch. Crystal Carter: I use the box. I always use the box. The boxes are good. Highly recommend. Mordy Oberstein: If you didn't buy it and you put it into the oven and you had to mix something, that's from scratch in my book. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I do make cornbread from scratch because I moved to England from America, and in America they have Jiffy Cornbread, comes in a box, get it from the box. Perfect. Gets every single time, right? Every time. In England, Jiffy doesn't exist. So I had to learn how to make it from scratch so that I do make from scratch. But cakes, generally speaking, Betty Crocker, she does a great job. So let's just give Betty her flowers and everybody can have a nice birthday. Throw some sprinkles on it. Let's go. Mordy Oberstein: I make toast from scratch. Crystal Carter: Are you out there? Are you like the little red hen? Did you grow the wheat and- Mordy Oberstein: No, no. I just put it into the thing and out comes toast. Crystal Carter: Ta-daa. Mordy Oberstein: Ta-daa. I did it myself. Crystal Carter: Right. You tell your children, you're like, "You're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: My kids are actually way better cooks than I am. It's a whole- Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they're good. They're good. Crystal Carter: All right. This is good. Mordy Oberstein: That's so great on the cleanup, but on the cooking part. Crystal Carter: You win some, you lose some. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by a Wix. You can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, search over Wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Got little slashes, but where you can also get started with your SEO by using the Wix SEO setup checklist, where you can connect to Google Search Console to single click with the add a bonus of having your homepage indexed by Google instantly. And who knows what else they'll find when they do. As this week we're talking about starting SEO from scratch, which now you know why there was a scratch joke about cooking in the beginning. It all makes sense, how your product and services and business models factor into SEO. How to craft a strategy and SEO plan from scratch. How to get your SEO to gain some momentum when you are starting from scratch. And to help us stir the pot and add in some spice, musician songwriter and SEO extraordinary Gaetano DiNardi will join us just a few minutes. Or before you could say, "It's shake a bake and I helped." Plus, we'll explore what it means to cook up some brand messaging from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu. And of course, we have the snap piece of SEO news for you this weekend. Who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So add three cups of flour, one cup of water, a teaspoon of yeast, let it sit, and then add 10 sticks of butter, some large, as much as you want, Crisco the entire can, teaspoon of olive oil and a pinch of kosher salt. And you mix it all up till your arms fall off. As episode number 77 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you start baking some SEO goodness from scratch. You smell that? Smells like SEO. Crystal Carter: I don't know what this recipe was for, but it was very greasy. Its like- Mordy Oberstein: Well, some say that SEO is snake oil. It's not really snake oil, it's just Crisco. Crystal Carter: It's Crisco. Crisco is magical. Shout out to Crisco my- Mordy Oberstein: My grandma used scoop Crisco. It was a disgusting thing I've ever seen. It was just nasty. Crystal Carter: No. You want to make cookies? Crisco. Mordy Oberstein: Crisco. Crystal Carter: Those are the best cookies, honestly, dry never. Forever moisturized. Mordy Oberstein: It looks disgusting. I feel like it's the... It's like you eat it and it immediately clogs your entire body. Crystal Carter: I don't care. The cookies are off the chain. The cookies are delicious. Mordy Oberstein: But it's delicious. Probably worth it. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: SEO from scratch. Starting from nothing is never easy. A lot of times when you come into SEO, it's in the middle of the process, but sometimes it's not in the middle of the process. Sometimes you're actually starting from literally nothing. And those are probably great moments because you're actually starting from when the business is getting going. You're there from day one. So that is very opportunistic for you as an SEO. But it's also hard, which gives me the pleasure of introducing today's guest. He's here in the flesh or the digital flesh, Gaetano DiNardi, welcome to the SERP's Up podcast. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys, thank you so much for having me. What an introduction. And I got to say, I love the banter. I love the chemistry, I love the back and forth. This is the way. It almost feels like a talk radio show here. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. This is what I'm going for. I said this before, if I had to do my life over and I couldn't be what I am now, I had to do something different, I would like to be a talk radio show talking about sports in New York. That would be my dream. Gaetano DiNardi: That's what this feels like. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you. It's the greatest comment anyone has ever given me. Gaetano DiNardi: It's so good, man. I love it. I love it. Being from... Well, I'll tell you, when I was growing up, I couldn't really sleep well as a kid. And I used to put on the AM New York Sports Talk radio it's all right through the night. Mordy Oberstein: I did the same thing. I would put the thing on sleep for 90 minutes. And you have... Steve was choosing from the fan talking about the rangers. Gaetano DiNardi: Exactly. How boring can that be. There's nothing better to put you to sleep. Mordy Oberstein: Right to sleep, right to sleep. Oh wait, who's that on line one? Is it Sal from Staten Island? I'm sorry. Gaetano DiNardi: Sal from Staten Island. Dude, it was some funny stuff though. I used to listen to Joe Benigno. Mordy Oberstein: Joe Benigno. You know he's still around? Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He's still around. Gaetano DiNardi: He's still around. Yeah. Joe Benigno at like 2:00 AM, Mordy Oberstein: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Yeah. Frank coming out as … Mordy Oberstein: Crazier than ever- Gaetano DiNardi: ...because he's pissed. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: I feel like though, y'all could do an app for that. There's people who are using... I don't know. There's different apps for meditation. You could just have a like, "Hey, do you need to go to sleep? Here's some vintage." Mordy Oberstein: Vintage 1990s New York Sports Radio. Crystal Carter: Right. You could just pick one and choose yours today. You want Staten Island? You want Long Island? What do you want? Mordy Oberstein: Oh man. I'll give you some good old Mike Francesa. I'll be out in three seconds. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh man, that guy. Mordy Oberstein: That guy is so boring. Gaetano DiNardi: That guy's so... Oh man. Mordy Oberstein: Well, he's also... Look at these guys are all still around with the geezers. Anyway. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Let's talk SEO from scratch. Since we're starting from scratch. Where do you want to start? Gaetano DiNardi: All right, well look, since we're starting from scratch, I'll tell you guys why this topic is being talked about. Now, I had a very tough assignment three years ago. I went into a company as a full-time head of marketing. And the primary way we're going to grow this business was through search. And so the SEO assignment was, well, there's nothing. There's zero. And the primary category was identity theft. The company saw is identity theft protection. Side note, my identity got stolen. It's a horrible situation. And so I was motivated to really thrive and crush this role because I know the kinds of people out there who do that, they are scum. So we need to fight back against this horrible thing that is plaguing so many people. And it's not just affecting young people, people who are digitally savvy. It's mostly hitting people who have no idea. And it's mostly hitting people who are in not great financial situations. So when it cracks them, it cracks hard because they're stuck with bills that they didn't accumulate, that they got to now pay for. Credit card accounts open in your name, the use of your social security number to steal your tax returns, all sorts of wacky stuff. So anyway, the company has a lot of products and they had a huge investment. So the one caveat to this is there was a lot of dough and I could spend. In fact, they kept saying to me, "Why don't you spend more? Can't you spend more? How much more can you spend?" Mordy Oberstein: That's a good problem to have. Gaetano DiNardi: Good problem to have. And of course, all my agency and consultants and link building friends are like, "He has a lot of resources, so let's get in there." So yeah, I did recruit in a lot of players to help me scale this, but this was the ultimate setup that we landed on. Me driving everything. Two content marketers with very strong SEO backgrounds and great editorial chops. 10 freelance writers, one in-house link building manager, plus like two, three external link builders. The result of that is approximately 20 articles a month and approximately a hundred links per month. And that was the pace we ran at from when I started building that program, which really kicked off in late 2021. The first article was published in November 2021. I personally wrote it actually. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: It was how to check if your identity has been stolen. It's still a top killer. It's still ranks- Mordy Oberstein: EEAT. E For experience. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah. E for experience, baby. Yeah. I wrote it personally, built links to it personally through my own network. And it ranked pretty fast actually for a site with nothing. And so I guess I'll pause there before I keep ranting and riffing, but that's the initial setup. I know it's a lot to take in because most people do an SEO, it's way smaller scale than that. Nobody's doing 20 articles a month. Nobody's treating a SaaS SEO as a publisher almost would. And so anyway, I guess I'll pause there so we can just get your reactions. But that's how we launched it and that's the setup. Crystal Carter: I think one of the first things that stood out for me from that conversation, and you brought it back at the end, was when you were talking about the building it from scratch, you'd had the customer base in mind and you actually discussed that throughout your description of what you were going to do. You were saying, "I had my identity stolen. This is the experience that people were having. And I wrote the first article myself." And Mordy mentioned the experience in the EEAT. And I think that when people are thinking about getting going with SEO, having the customer experience and the customer focus, and like, "I get you, I get this, I get why this is an issue for you, and that's at the core of what we're doing." I feel like that is always a good recipe for success. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's exactly what stood out to me initially also is that when you're first starting out, you're really trying to think, "Okay, who is the audience? What are the needs? How do I align the needs? And how do I align SEO with what the business itself is actually trying to do?" So it's completely harmonious from the start. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So here's the next thing I realized. The company has a lot of products and services. Like identity theft protection is the flagship product, but it's sold as a bundle with a lot of other stuff. So there's financial fraud protection, there's password manager, there's VPN, there's antivirus and there's family safety, parental controls and stuff like that. Have you guys ever looked at how difficult VPN the category is? Have you ever seen how insane- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, actually. Gaetano DiNardi: ...antiviruses? You know the kind of brands and players that are in those categories. It's pretty wild. So you can get overwhelmed really fast as an SEO with the company saying, "Hey, we got to get more subscribers into this. We got to grow our presence for that. We got to do this and that and this and that." And so you got to actually deflect a lot of that noise and say, "All right, the reality is we have no topical focus and no strength and no brand association with anything right now." So we've got to hammer one thing and go all in and say, "All right, that other stuff is going to have to come later." And so I made the decision to say, "All right, we're just going to build our identity theft and own that to start because we need to get something going somehow, somewhere." Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a real strength because I think that a lot of people think that when my brand, I have to get my logo out there and this and that. And it's like when you're very much starting from a completely new business or a completely new website or a completely new product, for instance, the solution is the lead there. So when you're saying identity theft first, that's how people are going to find you. And I think that building that out and building the depth of information there is going to help you build trust with people so that when you introduce them to a new product, they're more likely to actually get involved with you because they trust you on that one thing that you show yourself to be very good at. Mordy Oberstein: I want to read you an email that I sent to somebody who was asking about an SEO product that I'm working on with them. And I'm not going to go into the whole details around the whole thing, but I wrote, I generally recommend in these cases, putting your full energy behind one thing, seeing how it goes- Gaetano DiNardi: Thank You. Mordy Oberstein: ...and then taking it from there. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Crystal Carter: Right. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed and all over the place. And what I feel like when you're starting from scratch, what you're trying to do is really getting... We spoke about this on the podcast, is getting momentum. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And that's both momentum internally in terms of your own process, getting things going, getting things moving. And also externally, getting some momentum in terms of creating a digital presence for yourself, building up those associations and getting Google to really see your light in that dark sky so that it's gravitated to it, like a moth kind of thing. And you can't do that if you're all over the place. You have to just pick one thing and just go all in. Gaetano DiNardi: Thank you so much for saying that. You just made me so happy because this is what I say too, the momentum piece in SEO is huge. It's such an underrated factor. But when you have momentum, think about it. You're publishing 10, 15, 20 articles a month, a hundred plus links a month. Now, I'll tell you guys how we sprinkled some more sauce on top of that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it is like a deep dish pizza, you're putting the sauce on top. Gaetano DiNardi: Oh, this is crazy. So now when the company you're driving results for is backed by the former chairman of Walt Disney Corporation, you know there's some heavy hitters behind this project. So they went and sponsored the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA basketball team. So then the next part of this was, all right, this can't just be SEO, it's got to be fully surround sound. Let's hit all the review sites as hard as we can. So we started doing surround sound search, hitting up every big site that reviews identity theft products and getting them to review us. We started getting included on all those X best top software lists for identity theft protection, working out affiliate deals with every single affiliate player out there. We started working with YouTube creators and influencers to mention our product in their scam stories. We did YouTube SEO, we mirrored our editorial strategy with a YouTube SEO playbook. It was literally just a dude who's well-spoken and credible, like a Mordy, I got to say. He's like your son. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. I don't have a credible part, but well-spoken I'll take. Gaetano DiNardi: To deliver on camera, very confident with good, clear delivery of speech and stuff. We basically took all the content briefs for our SEO pages and transformed them into scripts, and we started embedding all the YouTube videos into our SEO pages. But I guess where I was going with all this was it helped a lot to start seeing in branded search aura plus identity protection, aura identity theft. Now we're getting somewhere. Now it's like okay, we're getting a lot of links with those anchor texts. We're starting to rank for some really competitive terms, and we're branding ourselves real hard against LifeLock. So that was pick out the big nasty enemy in the room and just go attack. So ranking for stuff like that was key. Crystal Carter: And I think something that's interesting with that playbook that you just laid out, there is a lot of people... Some people will be listening to this and they'll go, "I'm a small business, how could I possibly do this?" But like, "Yo, you could sponsor the local 5K. You could sponsor your local little league team. You could sponsor the local football team at your high school, the high school near you. You can do that sort of thing. And then you can build on that. You can get links in local publications. You can talk to local influencers. You can literally talk to them because they're probably in your town. You can invite them to your restaurant. You could give them a free consultation at your law firm, whatever it may be." So there are definitely plays that you can make. And YouTube videos, you could make a YouTube video. We have the tools, we have the technology. It doesn't have to cost you a million dollars. And certainly when you're getting started, it doesn't have to be a massive production in order to get going. So I think that there's lots of things that you can take from that, even if you have a small budget. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, nothing's actually different. Just the scale of it is different. What you actually want to do is the same thing. It's actually probably easier at a smaller scale than doing it at a massive scale. I am thinking of two particular projects in my mind. One was a very big massive project with a big massive budget, and one is not. And the strategy I did for... They're pretty much the same. Just the scale is different. So in one of them, they have a hundred thousand dollars budget for SEO. I'm like, okay, 20 grand for the first three months should be on social media, getting influencers to share your content, put it out there, get your brand known, get your content known, get people to link to it, put money there. On the smaller scale product, it was the same thing, but it wasn't $20,000, it was $200. Crystal Carter: And you could figure that out. You can beg, borrow, et cetera, for instance- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's much easier. If you're a smaller grassroots, then you could beg, borrow and steal people. I do you a favor, you do me a favor. You work at a big product and no one doing any favors. Crystal Carter: No. But if you have people that you know that you're like, "Hey." These people, you can get involved with them. And I think you mentioned, you said, "Oh, this person's related to Disney," et cetera, et cetera. That's a sign. Be aware of your networks, that's the other thing. Use your networks to grow as well. I think that's really important. Mordy Oberstein: Think like a marketer. Gaetano DiNardi: Absolutely. So to the point of not needing a huge budget, I'll tell you, most of our ads were shot with iPhones. Most of our videos that we used for ads were shorts. We just got customers to put your iPhone in front of your face and just talk. And we would clip that up, shape that up. We would even take little clips of the news saying, "Austin, tonight, 10:00 PM news, this crazy identity theft story is out of control." And then we would have somebody talking about that same topic. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Gaetano DiNardi: And we would collage stuff together. So we got creative and nifty with some of our advertising as well. And then remember what we said at the beginning, how I actually wrote the first post, and like it's really about understanding that customer deeply. I forgot to mention one of the most important things I did in this whole process, and it was just listening to calls, listening to sales calls. That's all I did for the first week actually. As I was doing keyword research, I was listening to calls. We used a call transcription software, and I would type in things like dark web and I would see that 35% of our calls mentioned dark web or I would type in little focus terms like that just to see what pops up. And I would look at the surrounding texts near it and I would see, oh, dark web monitoring, dark web alerts. And I would form content strategy based on that. And then I would actually use mostly autosuggest to be honest with you, to find the super long tail stuff. Because what I realized was there's two things in somebody's mind who's worried about identity theft. It definitely has happened. I got hacked, I got scammed. Somebody took advantage of me somehow, some way, and I'm freaking out versus I think something weird is happening. Am I in that danger zone? I'm still very, very concerned, but I don't know if I should be out in full out panic mode yet. What should I do? And then there's actually another category of people that are just like, "Whatever, I don't care. I know that I use the same passwords across 80 different online accounts and I don't care. I'll be fine. This is all just marketing hype to try and get me to buy stuff." And we countered a lot of those thoughts and feelings with our content. We actually realized that is X worth it? Should I get X is a great topic for this category. Is identity theft insurance worth it? Is identity theft protection worth it? And we took the narrative of we're going to be the only company out there that says something different than everyone else. If you go look at Norton, LifeLock and all those big brands, they all say, "Yes, you need it, you need it, you need it, you need it. If you don't, you're screwed." We were the only ones that said, "You actually don't really need this if you're comfortable with doing all this manual work." And the reality is, no one's comfortable doing all this manual work. Who do you know that goes to the credit score website and checks all their credit reports and credit scores manually? Who goes through the three- Crystal Carter: I do all the time. No, I'm kidding. Gaetano DiNardi: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Who do you know that... I mean, I do this because I'm a freak, but who logs in to all their credit card accounts and checks all the charges all the time, the debit card? Who's on top of that stuff like 24/7? You know what I mean? It's tough. So anyway, that's just some thoughts around the content strategy and how I came up with ideas and stuff. Crystal Carter: I think though, there's so many points to take from that. Again, this is something you do not need a gigantic budget for. You can look at your customer service information. You can see the reviews on your product. You can see the reviews on your business. You can talk to the people who are your customer service team. You can look in your Slack channels for the questions that are coming from that. I have an article that talks about user first content information. That is gold dust. That is gold dust. Going through those user calls is super, super useful. Does not cost the earth and like you said, gives you some keywords that you would not find in other places. The trending topics thing is really important, I think is particularly when you're working in SaaS or something that's where the technology is evolving and stuff because auto suggest updates quicker than you're going to see in historic keyword search volumes. So that's super useful. And also differentiation, like you said, we don't want to sound like everybody else. That's huge as well. With all the AI stuff, for instance, a lot of people are going to be making a lot of content that sounds very similar to a lot of content that's also being published at the same time. And that's been the case for a while. But if you can cut through that noise, that is absolutely crucial. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: So I feel like we've got a really good solid foundation about how to get started, how to think strategically, how to think about... How to get going from the very beginning, how to structure, know what you're going to need long term. We going to make a point that maybe we can consciousize a little bit, that's not a real word. Make conscious a little bit, you need to think about what the plan is not now, but also long-term, the resource that you're going to need and build yourself up in order to handle that. But if there's one last thing you wanted to focus on before time quickly runs out on us, what would it be? Gaetano DiNardi: I think I would in terms of just how to decide topics, because there's so many different kinds of topics you could create content about. It's like an endless sea of ideas. I mean, I'm sure you guys are familiar with this framework. I'll just show it to you. It's this framework that prioritizes the business potential of a topic based on how commercially relevant it is. So there's a lot of rabbit holes with content. A lot of times even somebody at your company will bring up a really wacky idea like, "Hey, PPP loan fraud is exploding right now. Let's go cover this topic." That could potentially work. But the problem is there's very, very little connection with that trending topic to your solution. The other problem with it is that it's not really going to be much of an SEO play because think about who's covering the topic PPP loan fraud. Every big news site out there is already covering it. So it doesn't really make sense for you as a smaller brand to try and out-cover what these big publishers are already going nuts over. So I like to go as close to the product as possible, and it doesn't have to be the classic X best software list. There's other ways to find that pain point. So for example, how to protect your child from identity theft. That would be the highest possible business potential because you pretty much need a solution to do that. There are other things you can do manually, but a solution is going to do that really, really well. The next level down is if your product is helpful, but it's not absolutely essential to solving the problem. So something like I got scammed on Facebook marketplace. That was a very, very common thing that we would see. The solution can help you solve parts of that problem, but it can't guarantee 100% scam prevention. And we would say that pretty openly in all of our marketing material. Because a lot of people would get the impression that if you are a customer and you do get scammed on Facebook, we'll be able to help you recover a hundred percent of your lost assets or things like that. It's not always the case. The next level down is if the product can be mentioned sparingly or as part of the recovery process in the event of fraud or some kind of identity theft. So an example is like how do scammers steal credit card numbers? This is a very popular long-tail search, and we felt that explaining all the ways that scammers can steal your credit card number and then how to prevent that from happening is a great way to get in front of the audiences that matter. The audiences who are thinking about this, they may be worried that their credit card number already has been stolen, but this may be what they're searching. So that's the framework for thinking about how close is this topic to how our product can solve that potential problem. And if too many ideas are coming to the table that are far away from the product, we probably need to reevaluate what we're doing because the reality is we're not getting judged based on how much traffic we generate to the site. We're getting judged on SERPs. And so the traffic is nice, it's a leading indicator. We can show that to leadership and say, "Hey, we have this much organic visibility," and they're going to be like, "That's great. That's a great positive sign." But if none of that traffic is really doing anything in terms of business results, they're going to start questioning the program. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. And we spoke about this on a recent podcast about emerging content versus evergreen content and bailing those two things out and going after, even for emerging content, if the big players are there, maybe not the best place for you to go. Being really strategic, especially at the very beginning about what topics you go after will be the difference maker between burning through resources that you don't really have or being effective with the limited resource that you have and making sure that you're actually building that momentum we spoke about before. With that, where can people find you? Gaetano DiNardi: You just go to my website, officialgaetano.com. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, nice. Social? Gaetano DiNardi: Social. Yeah, I'm all over that stuff. If you guys go to LinkedIn, that's where you'll primarily find me. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, Cool. Okay. So not TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: You just search Gaetano DiNardi. I'm not a tiktoker man. It's just not- Mordy Oberstein: It's not our thing. Again, I've never said, "Yeah, SEO marketing. But yeah, TikTok is my thing." And then we talk about TikTok, it's marketing TikTok, of course, but then actually on TikTok. Gaetano DiNardi: I know. The thing is I'm a good writer and it's easier for me to just rant on X or put together a nice little LinkedIn post or something. It takes too much work to get on camera and start talking and doing video content. I don't know. I got to be in the mood for it. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Well, thank you very much for being in the mood for this today. We really appreciate all your insights and it's very clear that you've got very clear focus of where you want to take something from zero to hero, and that's amazing. So thank you very much for sharing today. Gaetano DiNardi: Guys. Thank you so much. I don't know what to say. I feel pretty blessed and humbled to be a part of the Wix podcast. This is going to be a stamp on the- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Gaetano DiNardi: Stamp on the old resume here. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Gaetano DiNardi: Checkbox, accomplishment done. Mordy Oberstein: We're happy we can make this happen for you. Thanks so much for coming by. Gaetano DiNardi: All right, sounds good. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. So building SEO from scratch is one thing, but to build brand messaging from scratch is a totally different thing, but not really because it overlap in a lot of ways. But let's pretend that they don't. Okay, let's not pretend that they don't, they do. What I'm saying is let's just focus on the brand messaging part and move beyond SEO, just so we bit as we get into brand messaging and building it from scratch with the help of the great Diane Wiredu in a little segment we call The Great Beyond. So I, in case you don't know, I love brand building, I love brand messaging, I love brand positioning, I love brand marketing. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Let's bring a little bit of that into this. As we look at building messaging from scratch, which is really, really, really hard to do. Building brand from scratch, I take building a brand from scratch is harder than building SEO from scratch. And building SEO from scratch is incredibly difficult,. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And I think sometimes you have to decide which things to lean on. So I've seen people... I saw somebody on Dragon Stand, which is something like Shark Tank in America. It's like that sort of thing where you're presenting a business and they had this matcha tea brand and the guy asked him, "Why don't you have the name of your brand bigger on the can of tea?" It was like an iced tea kind of thing. And he was like, "Because matcha as a concept is bigger at the moment than our brand name. So if somebody is looking for this particular product, they will recognize the word matcha sooner than they will recognize our brand name." And sometimes you have to think about that. Sometimes you have to think about that and that balance of which thing is actually going to lead the conversation and which thing is going to be more recognizable. And sometimes that's a little bit of a tough pill to swallow because people are like, "But I want to have this thing." It's like, but people don't know you yet. Mordy Oberstein: That's always a tough pill to swallow in my opinion. And brand messaging is swallowing that pill. People don't care about the product the way that you think that they actually do, the way that you do, and just swallowing that pill. Crystal Carter: Right. And you have to recognize where the value is and people will come with you because let's say on this matcha tea thing, I love matcha tea, by the way, but if I were to try- Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if you've had a bit before. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I drink matcha tea, I switched from coffee to matcha tea. I highly recommend it to anyone. Anyway- Mordy Oberstein: Don't do that. No, no, no. Slow down. Do not get off coffee people. Crystal Carter: Do it. Do it. It's the best thing that ever happened to you. Mordy Oberstein: I'm going to have a sip of coffee. Crystal Carter: And I think that the thing that you can do with that is that it allows you to... Let's say if I'm the matcha tea person, I'm in this audience and I go, "Oh, matcha tea." Then I can experience the brand and I can go, "Oh, I like this. I want to find out more about this." And then I will check out the brand and if I've had a good brand experience, and then I'll say, "Hey, have you heard about that?" I'll tell other people about it. I'll let people know, say, "Hey, I found this great thing. It's really, really great." I'll be out and about. And I'll say, "Oh, I'll see that. That's what I want." And I think that sometimes you can lead with that, lead with the product and the actual USP of the product, the solution that you have until you get that brand equity as you're building from scratch. Mordy Oberstein: It's a slow burn. I have so much to say about this, but let's actually get to what Diane Wiredu from Lion's Words, the founder of Lion Words has to say about building brand messaging from scratch. Here's Diane. Diane Wiredu: So the question is, how do you create brand messaging from scratch? Well, usually you're not really starting from scratch. You've probably been explaining what you do successfully somehow or somewhere to get your business to the state that it's at right now. So whether that's on your current website, on sales calls, chats, or prospect conversations, it could be in decks or proposals or even just on social media. So I'll start by saying that you've probably got a foundation. What you need to do is figure out if what you're saying about your product or service actually resonates with your market and buyers and how to better articulate the value that you deliver in a really clear, relevant and differentiated way. So for that, there are a few crucial steps. Step one is to document and evaluate your existing messaging. So I always do this with my clients. I take a look at their current messaging and bring it into one place. So what's working, what's not? Where are the gaps or inconsistencies in the story that you're telling? You want to identify some points of friction, but also opportunities. What do you want to be saying? So starting with this step, this gives you a really good point of reference and a benchmark to evaluate against. Then step two, we want to find out what your customers are saying. So go out and perform voice of customer research to discover how your customers speak about your product or service and their experience with it. So I love to set up customer interviews where I can ask open-ended questions around the before, during, and after stage. So I'll ask questions that dig into customer struggles, the decision and buying process, what their needs and jobs to be done were, and of course the results and outcomes afterwards. Step three is to go out and look at what competitors are saying. So our messaging doesn't exist in a vacuum. And aside from being clear, we also want to avoid drowning in the sea of sameness. So look at competitive alternatives and evaluate what they are and aren't saying as well. And then lastly, step four, you want to filter those findings and really narrow your messaging focus. So I like to create a messaging map, which is essentially a prioritized list of key themes, words, messages that came up in the research, and then map this against your initial evaluation and start drafting new messaging that better reflects your value as well as the customer's needs and point of view. A really important little copywriting tip is to really bring in and use those customer words as well. So this step is a bit tricky, but it's all about simplifying. Remember that you can't be known for a hundred things as a company, so find your north star and really narrow down your focus. And lastly, I guess a bonus step, step five is to test because creating messaging might be done by you and/or your team, but it's really your prospects and customers who will tell you if it works and resonates or not. So validate your messaging through message testing or user testing and then iterate on it and optimize so that you can get the biggest ROI from it. So hopefully that will help you get started with your messaging. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Diane. Make sure you follow Diane on LinkedIn. We'll link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Just look for Diane Wiredu on LinkedIn, give Lion's Word a look, and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. She's also an event and host organizer for the Marketing Meetup. So shout out to the Marketing Meetup. We love them. A lot of shout-outs. There's a lot of points to get to in this, and I'll say first off, one of the points people don't realize about messaging and something that she hit on is that I find that good messaging is the vertex of what your users need and who you are. And it's a convergence of those two things together. And I think what brands often don't get right is often they lean too into who they are or too far into who their audience is and what their audience needs, but don't connect that to who they are either. And that's finding that sweet spot is what you really ultimately want because what you're trying to do when you're building a brand is really trying to create a connection. So it has to be part of you and part of your audience together in that, in order for there to be a conversation or there be a connection, it can just be one or the other one. And the last thing I wanted to say, or one of the last things, I have a million things to say, but the last thing I want to say before I hand it over to Crystal is messaging frameworks when you're getting started are great. And to what she's talking about there about refining that and doing focus groups and really understanding what people want and who you are. All that stuff is great. I do find though, as you start getting things rolling, and as your brand starts evolving, as you mature, as you get past the starting up phase from scratch, messaging framework can also become a crutch and it's something to watch out for. Messaging frameworks are great for working at scale, especially in larger companies because you cannot talk to everybody all the time and all the different people all the time about what the USPS are, how you want to... You need to have some framework. What nearly happens though is as you use those frameworks to scale things, you lose touch with the actual user, the actual needs and the actual pain points and things can become a little bit templatized. So you need to find a good balance between scaling and actually being in tune and having your finger on the pulse, which you can't scale. There's no way to scale that in my personal opinion. So yes, frameworks are great, but as things start to evolve, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself with the frameworks and relying on them as a crutch. Crystal Carter: She talked about refining testing and things, and I think that really ties in with what you're saying as well. These shouldn't be static. They should evolve with your brand because your brand will evolve. Your brand is a living, breathing thing and will evolve. And certainly with digital marketing, with SEO, you will be able to get actual feedback on that in real time, essentially. So if a new story breaks and people want to talk about your brand in a different way, then your brand positioning will evolve. So for instance, I mean with Wix, we had this last year, people started talking about AI and Wix was like, "No, actually we are big in the game on AI, and we have been for a long time and started putting that information more to the fore. Another prime example is there's a drink called Lucozade, which exists in England, and it's a little bit like Gatorade. And back in the day it was marketed as the brand was medicinal. So it came in glass bottles and it had very medicinal packaging and stuff because it had electrolytes, it was the kind of thing that you would have after you'd been- Mordy Oberstein: Like coke, literally like Coke. Both the drink and the drug were medicinal. Crystal Carter: So yeah, so people thought of it as a medicinal thing. And then later on people started realizing that athletes were having it because it replaced electrolytes, and so they started marketing it as a sports drink, and that is people listening to how the audience is responding to their brand. And as she said, this is something you should see how users are responding to it, how your audience is responding to your brand. I also liked what she was saying about you're not really starting from scratch. You have input. You have data on how people respond to your brand from sales calls and from going to conferences and talking to people at expos and from talking about your brand, explaining what you do to your mom. Does your mom actually understand what you do? Can you summarize the brand of your company in a couple of words? That's something that you refine and that's something that's really, really important. If you're able to do that really, really quickly, then that means you've really nailed the essence of your brand. And I think also what you were talking about, about the relationship between what can you do for me? That sort of thing. What can you do for me? Who are you? Do you understand who you are? And do I understand who you are and do you understand who I am? I think sometimes there's a thing, it's like it's not necessarily that I don't have confidence in you but sometimes it's like... Not you personally Mordy, but- Mordy Oberstein: You're completely right. Crystal Carter: ...I do. But I think sometimes you have a situation, like I mentioned Dragons Den earlier, but something that happens on that show is they'll say, "Oh, I'm investing in you as a person," or whatever. And I think it's hard to understand what that means, but sometimes with the brand, it's a question of demonstrating that you have confidence in yourself, and if you don't have confidence in yourself, how can you expect somebody else to also have confidence in you? So it might be that you think this brand is great, but it doesn't seem like they think they're great, which makes you worry what they know that you don't know. So I think it's really important that you're confident, but maybe not necessarily overly so, but just confident in your capabilities and aware of your competitors and things like that. And I think that that's something that's really, really useful. Dan had some great points. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. One thing I'll say real quick before we have to move on, and never really when you're going to start thinking about messaging, you're going to bring up tone like what's our tone in our messaging going to be? I will say that the biggest mistake I see people make is the tone is simply a list of adjectives when really tone is actually a way of communicating with your audience in nonverbal ways or less like subtle, more sublime verbal ways. It's basically asking in what way and more importantly, on what emotional level do we want to communicate with our audience? And once you understand that's what tone actually is, you'll immediately realize that it's more than a few adjectives. Anyway, you know who's got a great tone? I always find this tone very fun, really fun, uplifting and exciting. Crystal Carter: I do too. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's Barry, Barry Schwartz, it's Barry Schwarz time on the SERP's Up podcast. When we get into the SEO news, I'm going to say, "Take it away, Barry," at this point. Crystal Carter: All right, go RustyBrick, go. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Search Engine Roundtable. One from Search Engine Land. All three from Barry Schwartz, who clearly has a monopoly on the SEO news. First up from SEO Roundtable, Google Popular Opinion search carousel. What about the Google Popular Opinions search carousel? Let me help you, Barry. Google tests popular Opinion search carousel. As spotted by Brodie Clark was a great follow, follow him over an X. Brodie was searching for Sony XM4, which is a pair of headphones and underneath an Amazon listing, got a carousel that was called Popular Opinions, which presented a series of cards that were review articles of the headphones. Barry pointed out that he saw a similar test a year ago with a section on the cervical perspectives and opinions. What's interesting though is that back then the results Barry got back were from CNET and Gadget, CNN, big, big name sites. In Brodie's case, the results seem a little bit more niche, which I think is interesting. What I think is happening here is Google looking for a way to put results up on the top of the SERP from more specifically topically specific websites that are not just the usual big names. There's been a lot of controversy around Google just defaulting to the big name websites and is that really healthy and are those results really good, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? I don't want to get into the controversy here right now, but what I do see is with a popular opinion is if the results are more niche and more topically specific than they used to be with the tests a year ago, that to me seems like Google is trying to find a way to implement a scenario where there are more topically focused websites that offer perhaps better content up at the top of the SERP. So I like that one. Okay. Also from seoroundtable.com and also from Barry Schwartz because who else would it be? Well, I guess technically Glenn Gabe does write once in a while for SEO Roundtable. By the way, Barry, more Glenn on SEO Roundtable. I like that little diversity of authors there. Anyway, Barry writes Early Signs, Google search ranking update on February 28th and 29th. There's been a... Well, it looks like almost like massive increase in ring fluctuations, not just on the 20th and 29th, but a few days before that. Also, it looks to be like 25th. So a series of ring volatility. Glenn Gabe who will try to link to the show notes on this as well, walk through some cases you've seen of massive reversals and so forth. Sometimes these kind of things could be a precursor to an official algorithm update. So who knows? As of the recording of this new section, it looks like things have calmed down a little bit. By the time when we release this episode, things could be spiking again. Who knows? It's a game of roulette. Onto searchengineland.com. But again, sticking with Barry Schwartz, new Google structured data carousels beta. What about them, Barry? Google announces new structured data carousels beta. Well, they didn't announce it, they added documentation. I digress. Google add in new documentation for a new beta carousel that basically looks when you have, let's say events or products or whatever it might be, but you have multiple iterations of them. So imagine a collection page or an event page with multiple events. If you want to show those multiple items, there's a new carousel that Google might implement, and you can use structurally in a markup to be eligible to appear in this little carousel that is attached to your result. It's not a separate independent cert feature carousel, but imagine you see this often with, let's say, news aggregators where if you search for something related to, say, sports news, ESPN might have a carousel, like multiple stories there. It's like that. Where in your organic result, you'll have multiple swipeable carousel cards. Basically this item list structured data needs to be attached or combined with something that supports the items. So you need to have product markup on there if you have a series of multiple products, right? If you are a local business and your page has multiple, I don't know, vacation rentals listed on the page, so you have to have local business markup or a subtype for a vacation rental listed on there. So it's not like it's independent thing, it's a markup to show the items or the items of what. So there's going to be multiple markups on the page. And with that, I'm done. That is your Snappy news for this week. Thank you, Barry, for your contributions and for your great headlines. Well, that was always fun. Thank you, Barry and the other contributors to the SEO News world out there. Crystal Carter: Yeah, thank you very much for keeping us up to date with everything that's going on. It's like, it's wild though here. There's a lot of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Lot of ins and outs, sort of what have yous. Different people involved. Speaking of people, speaking of people, that brings us to our follow of the week this week, which is the one, the only Lily Ugbaja who's over at Lily U-G-B-A-J-A over on X slash Twitter, whatever you want to call it. She's up first off contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. Crystal Carter: Contributor to the Wix SEO Hub. She's fantastic. She also has a great TED Talk online as well. One of the things she talks about on the Wix SEO Hub is how she built up our website from scratch and built up all the traffic from scratch and built that up from zero. That's one of the reasons why she's the follow of the week, and she talks about a lot of different tactics there and competitors and pulling things through. And I think she talks about being a little bit scrappy in the marketing, and I think that that's something that's really important when you're trying to get a brand going. I think Glenn Gabe has said, when trying to recover from an algorithm update, throw the kitchen sink at it, do all of the things- Mordy Oberstein: This is welcome wisdom by the way. Just want to shout out to Glen. Crystal Carter: Yeah, so Glen, Lily, everybody, Lily Ugbaja. And I think that it's important to, when you're thinking about your brand, get in there, get stuck in and move things forward until you get to the place where you want to be. And Lily definitely takes that approach. So yeah, she's a great follow. Do that. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. And she takes a content first approach. I think people realize your content is your brand. That's you talking. Some random blog post about whatever, that's actually you communicating with your audience and they're looking how you're doing that. So watch your tone. As we said before, I don't like your tone young man. Listen to my children, never. Crystal Carter: I found a great blog. I don't know if we have time for another tangent. Mordy Oberstein: Always. Crystal Carter: Okay, so I was looking at sheds and I found this great blog. Mordy Oberstein: Like wood sheds, like the store tool? Crystal Carter: Like a shed in your garden. I found this great blog, and my question was, should I build a shed by a wall? And the article that I found was the general thing you would find on a blog, like a marketing blog, but it was so well written, me and my kids, I read it aloud to my family because it was so- Mordy Oberstein: Like a bedtime story? Crystal Carter: It was just so well written. I was like, "Should I build a shed by a wall?" And it was like, "Do you want to build a shed by a wall? That's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that." But then the heading, so they gave all the reasons, and then the last heading was like, "But I still want to build my shed by a wall." And it was so well written. And after that thinking, speaking of tone from that, I get that these people are knowledgeable. They know what they're talking about because there was definitely knowledge in this blog, but they also have a sense of humor. And they also saw me coming. They know. Mordy Oberstein: They know. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: 99.9% of all communication is nonverbal. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that there's definitely something in there, your tone of voice and what you're saying about your brand being... Your blog being your brand, your content being your brand. It's absolutely true. Mordy Oberstein: I only have one question for you. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: You know what's coming, right? Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Did you build a shed by the wall? Yeah. Crystal Carter: So I had a shed that was by a wall, and it's causing me problems, and I was trying to figure out a way to get around it, but apparently you can't. So basically note to anybody who's listening, if you have a shed, do not build it by a wall because it will cause damp and the shed will fall down. So don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: Next question. Are you rebuilding the shed yourself? Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I have- Mordy Oberstein: I would like to see this. Crystal Carter: I do not have the skills. I mean, it would be like the House of Jack- Mordy Oberstein: Please. No, please do it and like live, like video blogging. Crystal Carter: No, no, I'm not doing that. But I have a professional person who is assisting me with this. He's a very nice man named James. Thanks, James. Mordy Oberstein: Is he your husband? Crystal Carter: No. We are artsy. We don't build things with tools. We don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: We build knowledge. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we read books and stuff, but not about sheds. Mordy Oberstein: Well, apparently you do read books about... Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Well, I guess you got to do for us. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us not to worry? We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into what you never knew about Local pacs. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at Wix.com/seo/learn. Looking into more about SEO, check it all the great content, webinars and resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guest, at Wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece of 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

Can a content marketer’s mindset help you with creating highly successful SEO content? Did you know that the gap between content marketing and SEO has significantly narrowed in recent years? Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter welcome guest Sarah McDowell, SEO Manager at Captivate, where they discuss the nuances and crossroads between SEO and content marketing on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEOPodcast. Back Should SEOs adopt a content mindset? Can a content marketer’s mindset help you with creating highly successful SEO content? Did you know that the gap between content marketing and SEO has significantly narrowed in recent years? Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter welcome guest Sarah McDowell, SEO Manager at Captivate, where they discuss the nuances and crossroads between SEO and content marketing on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEOPodcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 35 | April 26, 2023 | 43 MIN 00:00 / 42:58 This week’s guests Sarah McDowell Sarah McDowell is a digital marketer, specialising in SEO. She currently works for the podcast hosting company Captivate, as the SEO Manager. She is also an international speaker, podcaster, kickboxer (early days) and at the end of 2022, became a book co-author including SEOin2023 by Majestic and In House SEO Success by Blue Array. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha and mahalo for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein the head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, fantastic, a completely awesome, spectacular, fabulous, amazing, redundant again, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Thank you. I'm, I'm not redundant, but I like- Mordy Oberstein: No, my intro is redundant. I said the same thing twice. You are not redundant. Sorry. Crystal Carter: To be fair though, I made the same Star Trek joke in the last episode at least three times, so that's fine. We've got a lot of content to cover. Mordy Oberstein: Star Trek joke can never be redundant. My kid's like, "Hey, what movie should we watch next?" I'm like, "Oh, should watch Star Trek." And I'm thinking about it and I was like, they're going to hate it. I'm like, why am I even going to bother showing them Star Trek? Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Don't do that. Don't apologize for that. Your job as a parent to isn't to indoctrinate your children with things that you're into. My dad was a seventies child and basically he had a cassette tape set called The History of Funk Volumes one through Five, and we listened to every single volume Bayside B side for hours every time we got into the car. It was just some version of the history of funk all the time. And like, yes, I do know my Parliament from my Funkadelic as a result, and I had no choice. I had no choice whatsoever. So yeah, go for it. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Fine. I will do that to their detriment. If they say, "Why did you show us this slow old movie?" I'll be like, "Crystal told me to." Crystal Carter: Because you want them to live long and prosper. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, I do. More Star Trek jokes here on the SERPs Up podcast each and every week. The SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we automatically add article markup to your blog post, which you can customize that markup and where you can manage your structure to markup as well as your title tag, meta descriptions, OG tags, and more for all of your blog posts in one shot at the folder level. Because Wix, it's where SEO meets content strategy because today's episode is where SEO meets content strategy. Crystal Carter: Seamless, seamless. Mordy Oberstein: Seamless so well. That's right today we're diving into the overlap between content marketing and SEO. And should you as an SEO be thinking more like a content creator? Why both content marketing and SEO requires staunch topical focus. The role of media diversification in SEO and content marketing. And why a long tail approach is good for both SEO and for content marketing. With that Captivate's, Sarah McDowell stops by to share how to market your media assets and how that might be different across different types of media assets. And on top of all of that, Crystal and I are going to explore a possible shake up to both the content marketing and SEO worlds when we dive into whether or not featured snippets... You heard that right, featured snippets, are about to become obsolete, maybe, maybe not. We'll see. 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. Mind the gap as episode 35 of the SERPs Up podcast bridges the schisms between content marketing and SEO. Crystal Carter: Oh, schism. I always like that word. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great word, isn't it? Crystal Carter: Prism. Prism, schism. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's just one of those words. It's like you use the word schism, you sound smart. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, yes, schisms, of course. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, schism and juxtaposition. Mordy Oberstein: How many schisms? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy, it's very important. Mordy Oberstein: So there's a reason why content has come into the focus of the SEO world very, very strongly, way stronger than before since 2018 for sure, since the advent of the new era of the core algorithm updates. And it's why you have all the talk around EAT or rather EEAT, that is never going to sound right. It's like from GMB to GBP does sound wrong. Crystal Carter: Or Looker Studio. Mordy Oberstein: Look. Yeah, all these things. I guess the new kids like it. Anyway, it has to do with what we spoke about during the episode. We took a look at Google's ranking factors, and there we mentioned things like links are not a direct signal. Links are a secondary signal. Having good back links doesn't actually tell you if the content on the page is any good. It doesn't. It perhaps alludes to the fact that it might be good. And what Google's been doing in Google's goal has been to get better at actually understanding content, not just finding ways to get around understanding content so we can ring sites. It means to actually understand content as spoken about few times on this podcast, Google using machine learning to do things like better contextualize content making meaning of understanding the words and the phrases by using the context around those words and phrases by profiling language structure in all different ways. Google's getting way, way, way, way better at actually understanding the content. The net result of all of that... We're not getting into all of that again. The net result of all of that is that Google's better able to focus on the actual content of the site. And the net result of all of that is that you should be focusing more on the content on your site. And I don't know, less on dare I say, links, SEO police come knocking on my door right now, which means the gap between SEOs and content creators has significantly narrowed. In fact, to a larger or lesser extent to be a good SEO, to me... SEOs will fight about this on Twitter... But to me personally qualifying this, not saying universally means to be good at content creation, means I don't think you need to necessarily be a good writer, but you need to know what good content looks like and sounds like and what makes good content. Which means that that gap between content creators and SEOs has significantly shrunken to the point where it's almost nonexistent. Crystal Carter: Right? The idea of what good content is includes technical things as well. So good content does not have broken pictures in the middle of it. Good content does not have 404s. Good content does not have problems when you're on mobile. Good content doesn't take a long time load. Good content should also be fit for purpose and should be rendered and served and constructed from a technical point of view in a good way, in a way that adds value to the users. So I think that certainly good SEOs will be working hand in glove with a good technical SEO, with their developers, with their designers, with all of that sort of stuff. It is something that needs to work well and needs to work in a synergy- Mordy Oberstein: There it is. Can use that word synergy. And I feel like that's a great place where SEOs bring value to the content marketing table. But I also think at the same time, in reverse to the things that we're talking about now in SEO and content, I feel like marketers or good marketers have been talking about forever. Oh, targeting the audience, multi-layered content experiences, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: For us, wow, this is novel. This is so new. EEAT expertise? Wow. And good content means I need to have actual interesting, I like how you're thinking there. Content marketers or marketers in general, they're like, "Oh, we've been thinking like that for years." Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that this also goes back to some of the... I was reading something, someone who was talking about, oh, Google trends and how to find trending topics and things and like, oh, you need to look at political and in considerations and social things that are happening and maybe technology trends. And I'm like, that's a PESTLE analysis. That's a classic marketing PEST analysis. And there's also SWAT analysis and a lot of that stuff that's from classic marketing training. A lot of that stuff still applies. I think that that's something that you're absolutely right about that content marketers tend to come from more of a marketing background and the tech comes second. Whereas I think a lot of SEOs will often come from a sort of tech first and connecting with the audience via the tech first and then getting into some of the marketing things. And if you're able to bridge the gap across the two, you'll do really well. And I think that some of the marketing techniques might seem a little old school, but a lot of marketing techniques are 100% transferrable to an SEO space and will do well for you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think that the devil there is in the details. First off, plus one for diversity of thought in the SEO world, but it's all sorts of SEOs adding to the great SEO conversation in the sky, and it all comes together to be one set of awesomeness. But yeah, I think when you talk about your audience targeting, very basic. Content marketers have been thinking about targeting their audiences forever. Recently, I say recently, in the last couple of years in the SEO role, that's come into way more of a focus because there's less opportunity to rank for short-tail keywords. You need to diversify into long-tail keywords. Now you are thinking about how you're targeting your audiences. I think the uniqueness or the abstractness of that comes into the details. What does it mean to target an audience? How do you target an audience? What does it mean in this space versus that space finding opportunity on the SERP to target the audience, which is where I think an SEO has a tremendous amount of value for content marketers all comes into play. So yeah, when you say targeting an audience, long-tail focused, yeah, that sounds obvious, but when you start getting into the particulars in a particular scenario, then it becomes, wow, there's some real ingenuity there. I was going to say... I know you have something to say hold on one... If you're ever submitting to an SEO award category and you say, "Yeah, we need target audiences, not novel," but if you show the unique ways in which you've targeted that audience, that's where the novelty is, and that's what'll make you win the award. Crystal Carter: The thing that I love about SEO and the thing that I find challenging with sometimes with traditional marketing and traditional marketing, not necessarily metrics but maybe KPIs or whatever. And one of the things that I love about SEO is that if you want to say we're targeting audiences, and of course you can do that from a general marketing point of view, one of the things I love about SEO is that you can get some tangibles for that. You can say, okay, this audience is looking for bird feed for robins, or something like that. And so you can look at the search volume for that term for information around that content. You can look at the search volume for pages that are ranking for those terms. And you can see with tangibles, how many people are actually, how big is this market? Well, actually there's only 1000 people looking for this particular thing for instance, in UK, then you can set your expectations for your marketing based on that. So I think that the research tools that SEOs have available to them work so well to help marketing teams to refine and to focus on certain things. And again, if you're working in tangent, if you're working together, where you have, we have this marketing idea? Well, I have this marketing data. Well we have this marketing data. And you can bring it together with the SEO and the marketing side, then I think that's when you're really flying and that's when it's working really well. Mordy Oberstein: And to that point, that's why you see companies like Semrush, where they, you see their advertising, they're going after the wider marketing world with their ads because they realize that the keyword research is just as relevant to an SEO as it is to a content marketer. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And These tools have a certain universality, that's not a real word, to it. At the same time, I'll say that if SEOs adopt... At times if you look out to the content marketing world and you could adopt some of their mindsets, that can very much help you refine your SEO strategy. For the one I always use, and it's because I love brand marketing is a brand marketing mindset because with SEOs, we talk about topical focus, topical nuance, creating authority around a particular topic and all that kind of stuff. Brand marketers are experts at that. That's literally what they're trying to do. They're trying to position their company as being authoritative, as being reputable, as being whatever, whatever, around a particular set of topics. If you take a brand marketing mindset to your SEO, to your topical focus from an SEO point of view, you'll naturally limit yourself to the topics you should be focusing on as opposed to trying to cast a wide net and catching all sorts of keywords for vanity search volume or vanity traffic metrics. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. So I guess when you're thinking about that, Mordy, what questions would you ask yourself to make sure that the topic that you're using or the topic that you're pursuing is in keeping with your brand? Mordy Oberstein: So it's not even that. That I think is very, again, that's like that's very top level and very easy to do. And I think where it gets more tricky is when you start asking more questions once you've chosen that topic. So obviously as a brand, let's take Wix. Now for us to talk about NASCAR, how to build a race car makes no sense whatsoever. We might get a lot of traffic on that theoretically if we were to write about it. Well, probably not, but let's say we were. That traffic is meaningless and as a brand it dilutes your brand value. Who are you? What are you talking about? What are you doing? I think once you've picked those topics, and again, it can get very nuanced. For example, on the Wix SEO hub, do we cover this or does blog cover this? And where's a topical focus for us as an asset within a wider brand? It gets very, very nuanced. But then you have the question of how do... Okay, I figured out the topic, how do I handle the topic? What tone do I take? Once you answer those kinds of questions, you'll usually end up creating content that comes off as in a professional authoritative manner that has nuance to it, which is exactly what you want to be doing from an SEO point of view at the same time. So I think I call that brand sniff test. Does it sound right, look right, formatted right, I'm speaking in the right way to the right people? If it passes that brand test, it'll usually pass the EEAT test from the SEO point of view. Crystal Carter: Right. And do you think it's important that people identify what their expertise, what their authority is if they were ever to- Mordy Oberstein: I would say yes. If you want to create actual a authoritative content, you need to know, not an expert on this, needs somebody else. Crystal Carter: Right? Okay. So like- Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means you need somebody else to do it. Crystal Carter: Right? So I'm not an expert on NASCAR, for instance. So like- Mordy Oberstein: Neither am I. Crystal Carter: ... no, that's not it. That's not a thing. Even if I did all the keyboard research in the world, I am not a NASCAR- Mordy Oberstein: And that shines through. Crystal Carter: I thought I fooled you, I thought I fooled you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the only people you're fooling are people who are not going to buy your product anyway. Crystal Carter: Right, or people who don't really know. And just because you watched Talladega Nights does not make you a NASCAR expert. Mordy Oberstein: Didn't finish watching that. So I would've even know that much. That's how little I know about NASCAR. Crystal Carter: Shake and bake. Mordy Oberstein: But that's really the point is that you can't fudge that expertise. I taking a look at the product review update, the February 2023 product review update recently, and a lot of the top ranking pages, and I'm not getting into why they're ranking, why they're not ranking. But some of the things that they're doing just from a pure content point of view, if you want to compete with them at a content level, they're bringing in expertise, be it the Wirecutter, those kind of websites, are bringing in a level of expertise that you can't fake. And one of the pros and cons I saw around what was animal carriers? The sites that weren't ranking well, were putting things like, oh, it's too small or too big, or whatever it is. I don't know. Very generic things. And the sites that are ranking well and forget the ranking for a second, just from a pure content point of view, were things like, it smells weird when you unbox it. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: You could not like... There's the only way that is, you either completely made that up or you actually took it out of the box. Crystal Carter: Right. But I think also that's the kind of thing that people will be searching for. But that's also the kind of thing that you like this, I think people have talked a lot about how TikTok is affecting Google and Google search, but I think that actually one of the things that's most prescient about TikTok's emergence is that TikTok is very real. There's a lot of people who are sharing very personal, very unfiltered, very deep things about themselves, about topics, et cetera. There's very few boundaries on TikTok. And so there's people... And in fact, if you're too polished on TikTok, people are like, "Ugh, you're too polished. I don't believe you." Similarly, this piece of content that you've seen that was like, "Oh, this smells funny." I recently saw a piece of content that was talking about steam rollers or some hair rollers or ceramic rollers or something like that. And they were like, "We tested all these rollers." And they posted the ugliest picture I've ever seen of all of the different rollers that they had, and they had six different sets and it was on a desk and it was an ugly photo, but I believe that they actually took that photo, that that's an actual photo that somebody actually took when they actually reviewed whatever it is they were reviewing. That realness is also something that can help differentiate you from AI generated content, which is something that you need to think about. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So again, take that point, take the AI point. It's a great point by the way, and don't feel weird about taking a picture of whatever it is on a desk, because if you look at the big brands and what they're doing the same thing, they're going the travel carrier for animals, they had actual pictures at the airport of the dog and the carrier on the conveyor belt, whatever it was, at the airport. It wasn't a very pretty picture, but it was real. And again, going back to say a brand marketing or content marketing mindset, if you're trying to distinguish yourself, forget ranking, but you're just trying to distinguish yourself in front of users that your content is real content written by real people as opposed to AI, you're going to approach the content and the way of writing the content differently. Now, think that Google's able to detect AI content and let's say for just argument's sake, it says if it's AI content and it's a really Y in, Y out kind of query, we're not going to rank it. I know they're not going to say... That they're not, but just argument's sake, hypothetically they are. The content that you just wrote from a brand and a content point of view now automatically completely aligns the search. Crystal Carter: Right. So Joe Hall, who we've had on the podcast previously and who's a fantastic SEO was talking about, he recently put out a prompt generator tool, which I tried out and was interesting. And the other thing that he had on his site was how to write content that's better than ChatGPT. And one of the things that he said, and I thought this was really interesting, and one of the things he said was, have an opinion. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Have an opinion. If you ask one of these chatbots, what's your opinion? It's like, "I am a robot. I do not have an opinion. I cannot give you an opinion because I'm a robot." That's what it'll tell you. So have an opinion, actually have an opinion, and that actual opinion of, "Oh, it smells funny." That's like, a robot can't tell whether or not it smells funny, it can't smell. Mordy Oberstein: SEOs have been making this mistake for a long time. Forget the AI side, which we'll get more into later. I know we disagree about listicles and I will fully admit there are value to listicles. However, many times SEOs write these sort of listicle kind of content because they wanted to rank and it has no opinion, it has no unique value, it has no targeting, it has none of the good stuff that a content marketer, if you were thinking like a content marketer would've put in there. Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Interesting. I think that the tricky thing with it, and we're going to talk about featured snippets coming up and the featured snippets love and a listicle, which is one of the reasons why content marketers love a listicle. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not against a listicle. Crystal Carter: But I think one of the things that's tricky about it, and I was thinking about this too the other day, so again, I said, I used Joe Hall's Prompt Generator and I plugged it in and it pulled out an article, and the article that it wrote was perfectly solid. It was solid it and stuff. And so those sorts of listicle kinds of things like that are thin, that don't have an opinion, that don't have additional value. Somebody can get that from one of these AI tools and pretty solidly, pretty solidly like enough to get going to maybe do a deeper search or whatever. So it is the deeper, more brand aware, more high value content. And also I think people need to think about the kinds of content you have on your site, once they're on your site, that adds value to your site and making sure that your content aligns with your brand is going to be absolutely crucial in this new space. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of value and insights, Sarah McDowell is going to join us as we ask her, how does marketing media assets like a podcast change based on medium and media? Here's Captivate's Sarah McDowell. Sarah McDowell: There are some similarities and differences when marketing a podcast or video, compared to say something like a blog post or written content. Similar to an article or written content, the title needs to be engaging. You need to give people reason to check your content out. We can't be boring folks. You also have to think about keywords, the queries people are searching in places like Google where you should be coming up. For example, with a podcast, you need to think about keywords for your main show title and show description, but you also need to think about keywords for your episode titles. Long-tail keywords work great here. Use something like the tool AlsoAsked which generates data from people also ask on Google. We also need to think about repurposing. So when you repurpose blog content, let's say into social media posts, et cetera, you should be doing the same for your podcast and videos. Something that I have tried for my podcast is Twitter threads. So taking the key takeaways from a podcast episode and creating a Twitter thread with the last tweet in the thread, asking people to check out your podcast episode. Now this is great because people are going to engage and we share different parts of the Twitter threads and you're providing value there and then, so you're giving people more reason to check the thing out at the end. I also share video clips of the podcast. When I record, I also record a video, which I then clip into a short two-minute video to share over social media. Obviously, links are also important. Your in external back links, links pointing to you and internal links. There's some examples of how it's the same. Differences then. First up, it can be tricky with discoverability. There's a debate whether search engines like Google are automatically transcribing audio or not. If they are, it's not going to be perfect. Sorry, John Mueller, search engines are great when it comes to webpages and textbook. Other assets can be tricky, like we know that they can't read texts on an image. You need to think about how people come across your podcast and videos. Sure, they may go to YouTube or they may go to a podcast app, but people will be searching for you in other places. So for example, according to Semrush, there's over 32,000 searches globally for keywords that include best podcast and over 18,000 for keywords that include best video. I reckon that number is even higher. More people are searching. Google shows video in the search, so you must have seen it when you are searching for different things and you get a YouTube carousel or a YouTube video. But podcasts are a different ballgame. They used to show a podcast episode carousel when you were on a mobile, but they took this away in February this year. I know, boo/ we need to help Google surface our podcasts and episodes. This is why a website is important here, ways like I've mentioned before, but also transcripts okay? Taking the time to use it all, I use Poddin. My mate Danny is Scottish and he says he finds Poddin the most accurate. But you need to use a tool to transcribe, but you also need to tidy up the text. There's always mistakes and you need to remove the filler words. Make it easy for Google. If you have this transcript visible on your podcast episode page, this is going to help as much relevant information as you can to help Google search engines understand your content and what it is about. There's my thoughts, or my two pence, I think that's the right saying, on the matter. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Sarah for that. Don't forget to check out Sarah has a wonderful SEO podcast called the SEO Mindset podcast. We'll link to that in the show notes. Yeah, so a lot of what you're saying goes into what we're talking about before about repurposing, but to target your audience the right way and I love repurposing content. Especially like let's say around a podcast, you throw out an audiogram, you're targeting what the user wants on social, which is interaction. So an interactive asset like an audiogram, and you have the add a bonus of repurposing content at the same time. So two birds with one stone. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think that making sure that you are tapping into where your audience is across the web is really, really important. So the repurposing task does that. So you might have people that are on your podcast that are there. You might have people who might be interested in your podcast on Twitter, then you might have people who are interested in your podcast who are on LinkedIn, and making sure that you're available and visible on those spaces is really, really, really important and should absolutely part of your content marketing journey. I think we had Ross Simmons, who is the king of content distro on a webinar talking about this as well, and there's some great tactics that you can implement to make sure that you're making your content get the best opportunity to be seen. Mordy Oberstein: So because we're talking about SEO from the content mindset, one of the things that generally greatly impacts SEOs and content marketers alike because they just drive so much traffic in theory and can serve as part of your branded efforts also are featured snippets. But is there very existence in jeopardy? Join us now as we explore whether or not AI chat experiences on search engines are going to make featured snippets obsolete as we explore the new trends on the SERP with the little segment we call going, going, Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going, google! It's out of here! Mordy Oberstein: So there's Bard, which is Google's AI chat experience, you.com, the chat experience bing in the chat experience, and- Crystal Carter: Neeva. Mordy Oberstein: Neeva, I apologize to all the other search engines who have... Brave... Have a chat experience and I didn't mention them. Apologies. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. One of the interesting outcomes of that, let's just stick with Google for a minute. They're going, if not by the time this episode airs, release Bard into the wild. What does that mean for feature snippets? Meaning if I'm searching for "How do I change a tire? What are the five steps of changing a tire?" And you currently get either a video or a list or a paragraph of how to change a tire. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But now I just go to the chat and it basically gives me the exact same information that a featured snippet... So what does that mean for featured snippets? You see the problem? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I do. I do. So they're constantly tinkering with featured snippets. Google is constantly tinkering with featured snippets. Mordy Oberstein: Forever. Crystal Carter: I've done a few presentations on featured snippets, and it's always exhausting because they're constantly changing what what's going on with them. So you have to update every single time and they'll change it the week before you have to present and the whole thing. Anyway, enough about me. The thing that people forget about featured snippets is that they are also powered by AI. Everybody's like, "Oh, AI and search!" Y'all. AI has been all over search for years. And Google had that presentation that they did and they talked about, "Oh, we're doing AI with our visual search, and we're using AI for this, and we're using AI for that." And it's true, they've been using AI for featured tidbits for years. They go into your content, they pull it out and they re-structure it on the SERP. Sometimes they'll put bullets in where there aren't, sometimes they'll put numbers in where there aren't. Sometimes they'll add in pictures from other places. So this tooling is already there. What is likely to happen is that some of the things that they've been toying with, with featured snippets are probably going to come to the fore. So with featured snippets, one of the things they were talking about for a while was adding in multiple links to the featured snippets, so you wouldn't have an exclusive featured snippet for each query- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they've played with that a few times. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they've played with that a few times, but I mean that's fair game now. Although at the moment they're now talking about not having any links in their chat, which I think is a real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: That's a different... like that's a whole different- Crystal Carter: That's another real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: ... let's just say for a minute there are links in the chat, in a perfect where I don't want to- Crystal Carter: Things are happening. Mordy Oberstein: ... That's a Pandora's box. I'm not opening on this podcast. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of things changing at the moment. So who knows where we'll be by the time this airs. But I think Bing have certainly done this, and I think Google have done this sometimes, but they'll sometimes have two featured snippets. So if it's a controversial issue then they'll have Mordy Oberstein: Bing, or Google has a multifaceted featured snippet. Crystal Carter: So they'll have multiple things there. And to be honest, most of the time for most quick queries, the featured snippet is useful. Is useful, is enough, is pretty much the same as what you would get from a quick answer from one of the generator search things. So yeah, I think it will absolutely change, and I think that we might see more people using, you can opt out a featured snippets, we might see more people doing that and depending on how the search results are shown. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's complicated. What do you think? Mordy Oberstein: So I'm with you and your point about the featured snippets have changed so much over time is really, I think, on point. First off, I did a study a long time ago. Just cause you're in a featured snippet doesn't mean that you show there consistently over a 30-day period. I don't remember the numbers, but it's not the case. You can go... I'll link to it in the show notes, it's from years ago though. So it's a little out of date, but you don't get that... If you're Wikipedia, maybe you get the 100% of coverage in the featured snippet for 30 days. Other than that, it usually, there's a dominant URL and a secondary URL that Google usually inter-disperses throughout the month. Obviously Google's not thinking about it on a monthly basis, but as a study, I needed a timeframe. Anyway with that so featured snippets has evolved and I think that one of our issues as SEOs is we look at what's on the SERP now and we think that's how it should be forever. If you've been in SEO long enough, you'd remember there were no feature snippets ever. Crystal Carter: 2017, 2016? Mordy Oberstein: Probably 2014 I think was the, I'm terrible with time but I think it was 2014 was when featured snippets came into the play. I could be confusing with direct answers. Anyway, there's a different problem. All part of the same problem sort of, kind of, maybe not, but it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. One of the things that I think is really important for us to realize though, is that these things are constantly changing. So I actually did a whole blog post about this on the Wix SEO about why Google is switching to a content diversity focus as opposed to a one true answer authority focus. So back in the day, Google loved being the one true authority. You put in a search query, gave you back a featured snippet, the one URL. And as you mentioned, Bing has been not doing that for a very long time, showing you multiple URLs for featured snippets, or a carousel of featured snippets. Over the last, let's say six months to a year, Google's been testing all sorts of formats where they're throwing in multiple URLs throughout the featured snippet or they're having one under the other, under the other, under the other, a multiple things that we mentioned, like- Crystal Carter: Like an accordion type thing. Mordy Oberstein: All sorts of variations around that because I think Google realized what we mentioned earlier, that content consumption trends have changed, and just like people want more personal content, they also want a more diverse set of content. And there's a recent change to the top stories carousel, Google's showing multiple perspectives now. This is a change for Google overall, where it's going away from the one true answer, "We know everything. We are Google." to multiple perspectives, multiple URLs, a diverse set of URLs and perspectives, and I think it's important to take the question of AI replacing featured snippets from that point of view. In which case the format of you put in how to change a tire, you get back a AI generated snippet with multiple citations. Let's take the Bing version of it for the moment. That is the future of featured snippets anyway. So yes, it might replace it, but that already is the future of featured snippets Crystal Carter: Right and also they replace featured snippets all the time. They've also replaced featured snippets with some of these from sources around the web dropdowns, which are essentially AI generated. That is AI curated content, and then they put it in. So if you type in "seven wonders of the world," or "50 books to read before you die," or something like that, then you may get one of these dropdown things and it'll say, so let's say 50 books to read before you die. And one of them is let's say 1984, and then they'll list these 50 books and then there'll be a dropdown and then there's a bunch of featured snippet type content underneath those things. But that list is very similar to the AI generated chat because they don't have a source for who came up with the list. They just put the list on there. I've always found that a bit challenging because some of those lists, if I wrote a list for instance, then somebody could say, "Well, you might be biased because you are Western or because of whatever, and so your list will be based on your biases, which I can see from who you are or whatever." Whereas if Google puts that on, then that's a different sort of, "This is the answer" sort of perspective. So I think those lists, those dropdown lists are very similar to that space. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Totally. Exactly. Crystal Carter: I think that the featured snippet has always been a challenging beast to wrangle because they show up, they go away, they show up, they go away. Mordy Oberstein: Listen, I don't think they're going to die. I think they might be secondary. You might have the chat experience first and then you might have a feature snippet afterwards is what Bing does now currently. So yeah, they'll still be there. Are they still as relevant? Probably not because they're probably not getting the same kind of traffic because Google or in this case, if we're talking about Bing, is showing the chat experience above it. But that is where featured snippets were headed already. Crystal Carter: I think also it's important to remember that they're part of an ecosystem. So they're also, and the people also ask, they're also in the voice search, the voice search return, which that may very well change with AI as well. They're also part of the visual search might turn them up. That there's lots of different parts of things that it will show up in and a knowledge panels that'll be like a dropdown on a knowledge panel as well. So I think that, and that goes to more- Mordy Oberstein: More panels. Crystal Carter: More panels. So I think that goes to the idea of making sure that you've got content that is able to touch on all of those parts of the SERP`. I think that the featured snippet is less of a destination and more part of the journey. Mordy Oberstein: So perhaps something has changed with featured snippets that we should cover in the news. Who knows? Perhaps not, probably not the case because this is not what's been in focus, whatever, but it's possible. You'll have to wait and find out. Crystal Carter: I'm going to guess it's going to be something about AI. That's my guess. Mordy Oberstein: There was one episode, okay, couple of weeks ago, or I don't know if you caught the line where I said, "Okay, there was other news in SEO this week, but it wasn't about AI, so who cares?" Crystal Carter: Just AI, Bard, Bing, ChatGPT, AI, AI, AI, AIO. Mordy Oberstein: AIO. As we AAAIO ourselves over to the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Geez Louise, what is going on? A lot, and it all has to do with the page experience, update, ranking system or lack thereof. I'll explain. First off, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable Google Search Console to drop page experience report, mobile usability report and mobile friendly tests. Yes, you heard that, right, but it's all a little bit confusing. So one, the page experience report Google added in 2021 is going away. Then in December of 2023, Google will also drop the mobile usability report from Google Search Console along with the mobile friendly test API and tool. Barry speculates this is related to the recent layoffs at Google and resource issues they are subsequently having. Who am I to argue with Barry? On top of all of that, you know the relatively new page where Google talks about their different rankings, algorithms, and different ranking systems? Well, they just removed the page experience update/ranking system from the page. It's gone completely. Barry speculates that the algorithm was pretty much a nothing burger, putting words in Barry's mouth there, which Google basically used to try to convince us that making these changes to our pages was really important. Wow Barry, diving into the whole conspiracy world now, aren't we? This time I see things slightly ever so different from Barry. Forgive me, Barry, Google here said quote, "It was not," meaning the page experience ranking system, "... was not a separate ranking system and it did not combine all these signals into one single page experience signal." So I guess they removed it, but I think what's going on here is that Google might now have a different way of defining page experience more broadly. Hear me out. Okay. While all this was happening and as also reported by none other than the King of SERPs, Barry Schwartz, Google added page experience guidance around the helpful content update saying "Provide a great page experience. Google's core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you're providing an overall great page experience across many aspects. For more advice see our page." That updated page that Google said see our page has some really interesting things on it, such as questions to self success page experience. These include obviously things around Core Web Vitals as you would expect, but also questions like how easily can visitors navigate to or locate the main content of your pages? Or is the page designed so visitors can easily distinguish the main content from other content on your page? See, what I think is happening here is Google might be redefining page experience as basically usability, and I wonder if they will assess this by proxy, meaning using various aspects of the algorithm to simulate how a human would best assess good page experience or good page usability. Meaning that the page experience is far more abstract, far more subtle, and is not unified in any way, shape, or form within the algorithm. Hence, they removed it, meaning the page experience ranking system, from their ranking system page. Why? Again, because it might include or it might be headed towards including way more subtle, way more abstract, and way more broadly defined aspects of experience or usability. What do you think, Barry? Do you agree? Parenthetically Google also added a section about EEAT to the helpful content guidance page saying quote, "While EEAT itself isn't a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good EEAT is useful." This all feels like an SEO, soap opera. And with that, that is this week's snappiest of news. I hope you weren't disappointed with that snappy news. If you were expecting major news around either AI or feature snippets that wasn't covered. Crystal Carter: I found it to be incredibly newsworthy. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we covered it really. Crystal Carter: Right? Because it was the news. Mordy Oberstein: It was new news for everybody. Crystal Carter: Just kidding. Mordy Oberstein: You know what may be new news to you if you're in the SEO world, although probably not, let's be honest here. Is our follow of the week, who is coming from the content marketing world? Does that make sense? Right? We're covering the overlapping content marketing and SEO, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So here's a content marketing person for you. Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Ann Handley. Crystal Carter: And Handley. Mordy Oberstein: A legend, an absolute legend in the content marketing space. She's done an absolute ton for the content marketing space. Of course, I think if I look through my Twitter feed, like my Twitter follow list, whatever, one of the first people I think I've ever followed ever on Twitter. Crystal Carter: She's incredibly well respected and with great reason. She's very strategic and has a lot of resources available for people to get sucked into and has a reputation that absolutely precedes her. Mordy Oberstein: And you could check out what she's doing over at MarketingProfs. It's a great website to learn more about writing and content and content marketing, content writing. There are events that she has. There's a lot there. So check out marketingprofs.com and definitely check out Ann Handley, whose handle is at @marketingprofs. So it's at the word marketing and P-R-O-F-S, profs, we'll include it in the show notes because who's listening and spelling at the same time right now? I don't know why I do that, but I feel like I have to do that. I have to spell it out in case maybe you won't go to the show notes. Crystal Carter: Some people are auditory learners. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't know who those people are. Those people are like that's not- Crystal Carter: There are people, they listen to podcasts. Mordy Oberstein: There probably are, there are, there are, but even spelling of names. I'm isolating our audio learners right now. I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: Have you ever had called someone and they just had said their number? Like you called someone and they're like 555-555, and you're like, what? Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea what you just... Yeah, every time I have no- Crystal Carter: Sometimes like when people answer the phone, some people tell me, instead of saying hello, they just tell you their phone number. Mordy Oberstein: When I ask like, "Okay, what's your number?" I have to ask for three times. Crystal Carter: I also don't like it when people, so I say my phone number, my mobile phone number in a certain way, and if somebody says it back to me in a different way, I'm like, I don't even know whose number that is. I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: Is that your number? Yes. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Yes it is. Yes it is. Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: And then you're like worried like, oh man, I really hope they... they need to call me back. I didn't give them the wrong number. Crystal Carter: These are the things we think about. Mordy Oberstein: You know what you can't go wrong with is tuning into next week's episode. Thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us not to worry? We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to shape an SEO campaign. Use cookie cutters and you shape it with those cookie cutter out. That's how you shape an SEO campaign. Look forward 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 webinars and content we have over on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify or both. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Sarah McDowell Joe Hall Ann Handley Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Capitvate The SEO Mindset Podcast Do Ranking Factors Matter for SEO Featured Snippet Market Share Study Featured Snippet Content Diversity The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google Search Console To Drop Page Experience Report, Mobile Usability Report & Mobile-Friendly Tests Google Drops Mobile-Friendly, Page Speed, Secure Sites & Page Experience As Retired Ranking Systems Understanding page experience in Google Search results Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Sarah McDowell Joe Hall Ann Handley Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Capitvate The SEO Mindset Podcast Do Ranking Factors Matter for SEO Featured Snippet Market Share Study Featured Snippet Content Diversity The Searchlight Newsletter News: Google Search Console To Drop Page Experience Report, Mobile Usability Report & Mobile-Friendly Tests Google Drops Mobile-Friendly, Page Speed, Secure Sites & Page Experience As Retired Ranking Systems Understanding page experience in Google Search results Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha and mahalo for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein the head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, fantastic, a completely awesome, spectacular, fabulous, amazing, redundant again, Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Thank you. I'm, I'm not redundant, but I like- Mordy Oberstein: No, my intro is redundant. I said the same thing twice. You are not redundant. Sorry. Crystal Carter: To be fair though, I made the same Star Trek joke in the last episode at least three times, so that's fine. We've got a lot of content to cover. Mordy Oberstein: Star Trek joke can never be redundant. My kid's like, "Hey, what movie should we watch next?" I'm like, "Oh, should watch Star Trek." And I'm thinking about it and I was like, they're going to hate it. I'm like, why am I even going to bother showing them Star Trek? Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Don't do that. Don't apologize for that. Your job as a parent to isn't to indoctrinate your children with things that you're into. My dad was a seventies child and basically he had a cassette tape set called The History of Funk Volumes one through Five, and we listened to every single volume Bayside B side for hours every time we got into the car. It was just some version of the history of funk all the time. And like, yes, I do know my Parliament from my Funkadelic as a result, and I had no choice. I had no choice whatsoever. So yeah, go for it. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Fine. I will do that to their detriment. If they say, "Why did you show us this slow old movie?" I'll be like, "Crystal told me to." Crystal Carter: Because you want them to live long and prosper. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, I do. More Star Trek jokes here on the SERPs Up podcast each and every week. The SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where we automatically add article markup to your blog post, which you can customize that markup and where you can manage your structure to markup as well as your title tag, meta descriptions, OG tags, and more for all of your blog posts in one shot at the folder level. Because Wix, it's where SEO meets content strategy because today's episode is where SEO meets content strategy. Crystal Carter: Seamless, seamless. Mordy Oberstein: Seamless so well. That's right today we're diving into the overlap between content marketing and SEO. And should you as an SEO be thinking more like a content creator? Why both content marketing and SEO requires staunch topical focus. The role of media diversification in SEO and content marketing. And why a long tail approach is good for both SEO and for content marketing. With that Captivate's, Sarah McDowell stops by to share how to market your media assets and how that might be different across different types of media assets. And on top of all of that, Crystal and I are going to explore a possible shake up to both the content marketing and SEO worlds when we dive into whether or not featured snippets... You heard that right, featured snippets, are about to become obsolete, maybe, maybe not. We'll see. 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. Mind the gap as episode 35 of the SERPs Up podcast bridges the schisms between content marketing and SEO. Crystal Carter: Oh, schism. I always like that word. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great word, isn't it? Crystal Carter: Prism. Prism, schism. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's just one of those words. It's like you use the word schism, you sound smart. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, yes, schisms, of course. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, schism and juxtaposition. Mordy Oberstein: How many schisms? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy, it's very important. Mordy Oberstein: So there's a reason why content has come into the focus of the SEO world very, very strongly, way stronger than before since 2018 for sure, since the advent of the new era of the core algorithm updates. And it's why you have all the talk around EAT or rather EEAT, that is never going to sound right. It's like from GMB to GBP does sound wrong. Crystal Carter: Or Looker Studio. Mordy Oberstein: Look. Yeah, all these things. I guess the new kids like it. Anyway, it has to do with what we spoke about during the episode. We took a look at Google's ranking factors, and there we mentioned things like links are not a direct signal. Links are a secondary signal. Having good back links doesn't actually tell you if the content on the page is any good. It doesn't. It perhaps alludes to the fact that it might be good. And what Google's been doing in Google's goal has been to get better at actually understanding content, not just finding ways to get around understanding content so we can ring sites. It means to actually understand content as spoken about few times on this podcast, Google using machine learning to do things like better contextualize content making meaning of understanding the words and the phrases by using the context around those words and phrases by profiling language structure in all different ways. Google's getting way, way, way, way better at actually understanding the content. The net result of all of that... We're not getting into all of that again. The net result of all of that is that Google's better able to focus on the actual content of the site. And the net result of all of that is that you should be focusing more on the content on your site. And I don't know, less on dare I say, links, SEO police come knocking on my door right now, which means the gap between SEOs and content creators has significantly narrowed. In fact, to a larger or lesser extent to be a good SEO, to me... SEOs will fight about this on Twitter... But to me personally qualifying this, not saying universally means to be good at content creation, means I don't think you need to necessarily be a good writer, but you need to know what good content looks like and sounds like and what makes good content. Which means that that gap between content creators and SEOs has significantly shrunken to the point where it's almost nonexistent. Crystal Carter: Right? The idea of what good content is includes technical things as well. So good content does not have broken pictures in the middle of it. Good content does not have 404s. Good content does not have problems when you're on mobile. Good content doesn't take a long time load. Good content should also be fit for purpose and should be rendered and served and constructed from a technical point of view in a good way, in a way that adds value to the users. So I think that certainly good SEOs will be working hand in glove with a good technical SEO, with their developers, with their designers, with all of that sort of stuff. It is something that needs to work well and needs to work in a synergy- Mordy Oberstein: There it is. Can use that word synergy. And I feel like that's a great place where SEOs bring value to the content marketing table. But I also think at the same time, in reverse to the things that we're talking about now in SEO and content, I feel like marketers or good marketers have been talking about forever. Oh, targeting the audience, multi-layered content experiences, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: For us, wow, this is novel. This is so new. EEAT expertise? Wow. And good content means I need to have actual interesting, I like how you're thinking there. Content marketers or marketers in general, they're like, "Oh, we've been thinking like that for years." Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that this also goes back to some of the... I was reading something, someone who was talking about, oh, Google trends and how to find trending topics and things and like, oh, you need to look at political and in considerations and social things that are happening and maybe technology trends. And I'm like, that's a PESTLE analysis. That's a classic marketing PEST analysis. And there's also SWAT analysis and a lot of that stuff that's from classic marketing training. A lot of that stuff still applies. I think that that's something that you're absolutely right about that content marketers tend to come from more of a marketing background and the tech comes second. Whereas I think a lot of SEOs will often come from a sort of tech first and connecting with the audience via the tech first and then getting into some of the marketing things. And if you're able to bridge the gap across the two, you'll do really well. And I think that some of the marketing techniques might seem a little old school, but a lot of marketing techniques are 100% transferrable to an SEO space and will do well for you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think that the devil there is in the details. First off, plus one for diversity of thought in the SEO world, but it's all sorts of SEOs adding to the great SEO conversation in the sky, and it all comes together to be one set of awesomeness. But yeah, I think when you talk about your audience targeting, very basic. Content marketers have been thinking about targeting their audiences forever. Recently, I say recently, in the last couple of years in the SEO role, that's come into way more of a focus because there's less opportunity to rank for short-tail keywords. You need to diversify into long-tail keywords. Now you are thinking about how you're targeting your audiences. I think the uniqueness or the abstractness of that comes into the details. What does it mean to target an audience? How do you target an audience? What does it mean in this space versus that space finding opportunity on the SERP to target the audience, which is where I think an SEO has a tremendous amount of value for content marketers all comes into play. So yeah, when you say targeting an audience, long-tail focused, yeah, that sounds obvious, but when you start getting into the particulars in a particular scenario, then it becomes, wow, there's some real ingenuity there. I was going to say... I know you have something to say hold on one... If you're ever submitting to an SEO award category and you say, "Yeah, we need target audiences, not novel," but if you show the unique ways in which you've targeted that audience, that's where the novelty is, and that's what'll make you win the award. Crystal Carter: The thing that I love about SEO and the thing that I find challenging with sometimes with traditional marketing and traditional marketing, not necessarily metrics but maybe KPIs or whatever. And one of the things that I love about SEO is that if you want to say we're targeting audiences, and of course you can do that from a general marketing point of view, one of the things I love about SEO is that you can get some tangibles for that. You can say, okay, this audience is looking for bird feed for robins, or something like that. And so you can look at the search volume for that term for information around that content. You can look at the search volume for pages that are ranking for those terms. And you can see with tangibles, how many people are actually, how big is this market? Well, actually there's only 1000 people looking for this particular thing for instance, in UK, then you can set your expectations for your marketing based on that. So I think that the research tools that SEOs have available to them work so well to help marketing teams to refine and to focus on certain things. And again, if you're working in tangent, if you're working together, where you have, we have this marketing idea? Well, I have this marketing data. Well we have this marketing data. And you can bring it together with the SEO and the marketing side, then I think that's when you're really flying and that's when it's working really well. Mordy Oberstein: And to that point, that's why you see companies like Semrush, where they, you see their advertising, they're going after the wider marketing world with their ads because they realize that the keyword research is just as relevant to an SEO as it is to a content marketer. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And These tools have a certain universality, that's not a real word, to it. At the same time, I'll say that if SEOs adopt... At times if you look out to the content marketing world and you could adopt some of their mindsets, that can very much help you refine your SEO strategy. For the one I always use, and it's because I love brand marketing is a brand marketing mindset because with SEOs, we talk about topical focus, topical nuance, creating authority around a particular topic and all that kind of stuff. Brand marketers are experts at that. That's literally what they're trying to do. They're trying to position their company as being authoritative, as being reputable, as being whatever, whatever, around a particular set of topics. If you take a brand marketing mindset to your SEO, to your topical focus from an SEO point of view, you'll naturally limit yourself to the topics you should be focusing on as opposed to trying to cast a wide net and catching all sorts of keywords for vanity search volume or vanity traffic metrics. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. So I guess when you're thinking about that, Mordy, what questions would you ask yourself to make sure that the topic that you're using or the topic that you're pursuing is in keeping with your brand? Mordy Oberstein: So it's not even that. That I think is very, again, that's like that's very top level and very easy to do. And I think where it gets more tricky is when you start asking more questions once you've chosen that topic. So obviously as a brand, let's take Wix. Now for us to talk about NASCAR, how to build a race car makes no sense whatsoever. We might get a lot of traffic on that theoretically if we were to write about it. Well, probably not, but let's say we were. That traffic is meaningless and as a brand it dilutes your brand value. Who are you? What are you talking about? What are you doing? I think once you've picked those topics, and again, it can get very nuanced. For example, on the Wix SEO hub, do we cover this or does blog cover this? And where's a topical focus for us as an asset within a wider brand? It gets very, very nuanced. But then you have the question of how do... Okay, I figured out the topic, how do I handle the topic? What tone do I take? Once you answer those kinds of questions, you'll usually end up creating content that comes off as in a professional authoritative manner that has nuance to it, which is exactly what you want to be doing from an SEO point of view at the same time. So I think I call that brand sniff test. Does it sound right, look right, formatted right, I'm speaking in the right way to the right people? If it passes that brand test, it'll usually pass the EEAT test from the SEO point of view. Crystal Carter: Right. And do you think it's important that people identify what their expertise, what their authority is if they were ever to- Mordy Oberstein: I would say yes. If you want to create actual a authoritative content, you need to know, not an expert on this, needs somebody else. Crystal Carter: Right? Okay. So like- Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means you need somebody else to do it. Crystal Carter: Right? So I'm not an expert on NASCAR, for instance. So like- Mordy Oberstein: Neither am I. Crystal Carter: ... no, that's not it. That's not a thing. Even if I did all the keyboard research in the world, I am not a NASCAR- Mordy Oberstein: And that shines through. Crystal Carter: I thought I fooled you, I thought I fooled you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the only people you're fooling are people who are not going to buy your product anyway. Crystal Carter: Right, or people who don't really know. And just because you watched Talladega Nights does not make you a NASCAR expert. Mordy Oberstein: Didn't finish watching that. So I would've even know that much. That's how little I know about NASCAR. Crystal Carter: Shake and bake. Mordy Oberstein: But that's really the point is that you can't fudge that expertise. I taking a look at the product review update, the February 2023 product review update recently, and a lot of the top ranking pages, and I'm not getting into why they're ranking, why they're not ranking. But some of the things that they're doing just from a pure content point of view, if you want to compete with them at a content level, they're bringing in expertise, be it the Wirecutter, those kind of websites, are bringing in a level of expertise that you can't fake. And one of the pros and cons I saw around what was animal carriers? The sites that weren't ranking well, were putting things like, oh, it's too small or too big, or whatever it is. I don't know. Very generic things. And the sites that are ranking well and forget the ranking for a second, just from a pure content point of view, were things like, it smells weird when you unbox it. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: You could not like... There's the only way that is, you either completely made that up or you actually took it out of the box. Crystal Carter: Right. But I think also that's the kind of thing that people will be searching for. But that's also the kind of thing that you like this, I think people have talked a lot about how TikTok is affecting Google and Google search, but I think that actually one of the things that's most prescient about TikTok's emergence is that TikTok is very real. There's a lot of people who are sharing very personal, very unfiltered, very deep things about themselves, about topics, et cetera. There's very few boundaries on TikTok. And so there's people... And in fact, if you're too polished on TikTok, people are like, "Ugh, you're too polished. I don't believe you." Similarly, this piece of content that you've seen that was like, "Oh, this smells funny." I recently saw a piece of content that was talking about steam rollers or some hair rollers or ceramic rollers or something like that. And they were like, "We tested all these rollers." And they posted the ugliest picture I've ever seen of all of the different rollers that they had, and they had six different sets and it was on a desk and it was an ugly photo, but I believe that they actually took that photo, that that's an actual photo that somebody actually took when they actually reviewed whatever it is they were reviewing. That realness is also something that can help differentiate you from AI generated content, which is something that you need to think about. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So again, take that point, take the AI point. It's a great point by the way, and don't feel weird about taking a picture of whatever it is on a desk, because if you look at the big brands and what they're doing the same thing, they're going the travel carrier for animals, they had actual pictures at the airport of the dog and the carrier on the conveyor belt, whatever it was, at the airport. It wasn't a very pretty picture, but it was real. And again, going back to say a brand marketing or content marketing mindset, if you're trying to distinguish yourself, forget ranking, but you're just trying to distinguish yourself in front of users that your content is real content written by real people as opposed to AI, you're going to approach the content and the way of writing the content differently. Now, think that Google's able to detect AI content and let's say for just argument's sake, it says if it's AI content and it's a really Y in, Y out kind of query, we're not going to rank it. I know they're not going to say... That they're not, but just argument's sake, hypothetically they are. The content that you just wrote from a brand and a content point of view now automatically completely aligns the search. Crystal Carter: Right. So Joe Hall, who we've had on the podcast previously and who's a fantastic SEO was talking about, he recently put out a prompt generator tool, which I tried out and was interesting. And the other thing that he had on his site was how to write content that's better than ChatGPT. And one of the things that he said, and I thought this was really interesting, and one of the things he said was, have an opinion. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Have an opinion. If you ask one of these chatbots, what's your opinion? It's like, "I am a robot. I do not have an opinion. I cannot give you an opinion because I'm a robot." That's what it'll tell you. So have an opinion, actually have an opinion, and that actual opinion of, "Oh, it smells funny." That's like, a robot can't tell whether or not it smells funny, it can't smell. Mordy Oberstein: SEOs have been making this mistake for a long time. Forget the AI side, which we'll get more into later. I know we disagree about listicles and I will fully admit there are value to listicles. However, many times SEOs write these sort of listicle kind of content because they wanted to rank and it has no opinion, it has no unique value, it has no targeting, it has none of the good stuff that a content marketer, if you were thinking like a content marketer would've put in there. Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Interesting. I think that the tricky thing with it, and we're going to talk about featured snippets coming up and the featured snippets love and a listicle, which is one of the reasons why content marketers love a listicle. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not against a listicle. Crystal Carter: But I think one of the things that's tricky about it, and I was thinking about this too the other day, so again, I said, I used Joe Hall's Prompt Generator and I plugged it in and it pulled out an article, and the article that it wrote was perfectly solid. It was solid it and stuff. And so those sorts of listicle kinds of things like that are thin, that don't have an opinion, that don't have additional value. Somebody can get that from one of these AI tools and pretty solidly, pretty solidly like enough to get going to maybe do a deeper search or whatever. So it is the deeper, more brand aware, more high value content. And also I think people need to think about the kinds of content you have on your site, once they're on your site, that adds value to your site and making sure that your content aligns with your brand is going to be absolutely crucial in this new space. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of value and insights, Sarah McDowell is going to join us as we ask her, how does marketing media assets like a podcast change based on medium and media? Here's Captivate's Sarah McDowell. Sarah McDowell: There are some similarities and differences when marketing a podcast or video, compared to say something like a blog post or written content. Similar to an article or written content, the title needs to be engaging. You need to give people reason to check your content out. We can't be boring folks. You also have to think about keywords, the queries people are searching in places like Google where you should be coming up. For example, with a podcast, you need to think about keywords for your main show title and show description, but you also need to think about keywords for your episode titles. Long-tail keywords work great here. Use something like the tool AlsoAsked which generates data from people also ask on Google. We also need to think about repurposing. So when you repurpose blog content, let's say into social media posts, et cetera, you should be doing the same for your podcast and videos. Something that I have tried for my podcast is Twitter threads. So taking the key takeaways from a podcast episode and creating a Twitter thread with the last tweet in the thread, asking people to check out your podcast episode. Now this is great because people are going to engage and we share different parts of the Twitter threads and you're providing value there and then, so you're giving people more reason to check the thing out at the end. I also share video clips of the podcast. When I record, I also record a video, which I then clip into a short two-minute video to share over social media. Obviously, links are also important. Your in external back links, links pointing to you and internal links. There's some examples of how it's the same. Differences then. First up, it can be tricky with discoverability. There's a debate whether search engines like Google are automatically transcribing audio or not. If they are, it's not going to be perfect. Sorry, John Mueller, search engines are great when it comes to webpages and textbook. Other assets can be tricky, like we know that they can't read texts on an image. You need to think about how people come across your podcast and videos. Sure, they may go to YouTube or they may go to a podcast app, but people will be searching for you in other places. So for example, according to Semrush, there's over 32,000 searches globally for keywords that include best podcast and over 18,000 for keywords that include best video. I reckon that number is even higher. More people are searching. Google shows video in the search, so you must have seen it when you are searching for different things and you get a YouTube carousel or a YouTube video. But podcasts are a different ballgame. They used to show a podcast episode carousel when you were on a mobile, but they took this away in February this year. I know, boo/ we need to help Google surface our podcasts and episodes. This is why a website is important here, ways like I've mentioned before, but also transcripts okay? Taking the time to use it all, I use Poddin. My mate Danny is Scottish and he says he finds Poddin the most accurate. But you need to use a tool to transcribe, but you also need to tidy up the text. There's always mistakes and you need to remove the filler words. Make it easy for Google. If you have this transcript visible on your podcast episode page, this is going to help as much relevant information as you can to help Google search engines understand your content and what it is about. There's my thoughts, or my two pence, I think that's the right saying, on the matter. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Sarah for that. Don't forget to check out Sarah has a wonderful SEO podcast called the SEO Mindset podcast. We'll link to that in the show notes. Yeah, so a lot of what you're saying goes into what we're talking about before about repurposing, but to target your audience the right way and I love repurposing content. Especially like let's say around a podcast, you throw out an audiogram, you're targeting what the user wants on social, which is interaction. So an interactive asset like an audiogram, and you have the add a bonus of repurposing content at the same time. So two birds with one stone. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think that making sure that you are tapping into where your audience is across the web is really, really important. So the repurposing task does that. So you might have people that are on your podcast that are there. You might have people who might be interested in your podcast on Twitter, then you might have people who are interested in your podcast who are on LinkedIn, and making sure that you're available and visible on those spaces is really, really, really important and should absolutely part of your content marketing journey. I think we had Ross Simmons, who is the king of content distro on a webinar talking about this as well, and there's some great tactics that you can implement to make sure that you're making your content get the best opportunity to be seen. Mordy Oberstein: So because we're talking about SEO from the content mindset, one of the things that generally greatly impacts SEOs and content marketers alike because they just drive so much traffic in theory and can serve as part of your branded efforts also are featured snippets. But is there very existence in jeopardy? Join us now as we explore whether or not AI chat experiences on search engines are going to make featured snippets obsolete as we explore the new trends on the SERP with the little segment we call going, going, Google. Speaker 4: And it's going, going, google! It's out of here! Mordy Oberstein: So there's Bard, which is Google's AI chat experience, you.com, the chat experience bing in the chat experience, and- Crystal Carter: Neeva. Mordy Oberstein: Neeva, I apologize to all the other search engines who have... Brave... Have a chat experience and I didn't mention them. Apologies. Crystal Carter: There you go. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. One of the interesting outcomes of that, let's just stick with Google for a minute. They're going, if not by the time this episode airs, release Bard into the wild. What does that mean for feature snippets? Meaning if I'm searching for "How do I change a tire? What are the five steps of changing a tire?" And you currently get either a video or a list or a paragraph of how to change a tire. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But now I just go to the chat and it basically gives me the exact same information that a featured snippet... So what does that mean for featured snippets? You see the problem? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I do. I do. So they're constantly tinkering with featured snippets. Google is constantly tinkering with featured snippets. Mordy Oberstein: Forever. Crystal Carter: I've done a few presentations on featured snippets, and it's always exhausting because they're constantly changing what what's going on with them. So you have to update every single time and they'll change it the week before you have to present and the whole thing. Anyway, enough about me. The thing that people forget about featured snippets is that they are also powered by AI. Everybody's like, "Oh, AI and search!" Y'all. AI has been all over search for years. And Google had that presentation that they did and they talked about, "Oh, we're doing AI with our visual search, and we're using AI for this, and we're using AI for that." And it's true, they've been using AI for featured tidbits for years. They go into your content, they pull it out and they re-structure it on the SERP. Sometimes they'll put bullets in where there aren't, sometimes they'll put numbers in where there aren't. Sometimes they'll add in pictures from other places. So this tooling is already there. What is likely to happen is that some of the things that they've been toying with, with featured snippets are probably going to come to the fore. So with featured snippets, one of the things they were talking about for a while was adding in multiple links to the featured snippets, so you wouldn't have an exclusive featured snippet for each query- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, they've played with that a few times. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they've played with that a few times, but I mean that's fair game now. Although at the moment they're now talking about not having any links in their chat, which I think is a real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: That's a different... like that's a whole different- Crystal Carter: That's another real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: ... let's just say for a minute there are links in the chat, in a perfect where I don't want to- Crystal Carter: Things are happening. Mordy Oberstein: ... That's a Pandora's box. I'm not opening on this podcast. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of things changing at the moment. So who knows where we'll be by the time this airs. But I think Bing have certainly done this, and I think Google have done this sometimes, but they'll sometimes have two featured snippets. So if it's a controversial issue then they'll have Mordy Oberstein: Bing, or Google has a multifaceted featured snippet. Crystal Carter: So they'll have multiple things there. And to be honest, most of the time for most quick queries, the featured snippet is useful. Is useful, is enough, is pretty much the same as what you would get from a quick answer from one of the generator search things. So yeah, I think it will absolutely change, and I think that we might see more people using, you can opt out a featured snippets, we might see more people doing that and depending on how the search results are shown. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's complicated. What do you think? Mordy Oberstein: So I'm with you and your point about the featured snippets have changed so much over time is really, I think, on point. First off, I did a study a long time ago. Just cause you're in a featured snippet doesn't mean that you show there consistently over a 30-day period. I don't remember the numbers, but it's not the case. You can go... I'll link to it in the show notes, it's from years ago though. So it's a little out of date, but you don't get that... If you're Wikipedia, maybe you get the 100% of coverage in the featured snippet for 30 days. Other than that, it usually, there's a dominant URL and a secondary URL that Google usually inter-disperses throughout the month. Obviously Google's not thinking about it on a monthly basis, but as a study, I needed a timeframe. Anyway with that so featured snippets has evolved and I think that one of our issues as SEOs is we look at what's on the SERP now and we think that's how it should be forever. If you've been in SEO long enough, you'd remember there were no feature snippets ever. Crystal Carter: 2017, 2016? Mordy Oberstein: Probably 2014 I think was the, I'm terrible with time but I think it was 2014 was when featured snippets came into the play. I could be confusing with direct answers. Anyway, there's a different problem. All part of the same problem sort of, kind of, maybe not, but it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. One of the things that I think is really important for us to realize though, is that these things are constantly changing. So I actually did a whole blog post about this on the Wix SEO about why Google is switching to a content diversity focus as opposed to a one true answer authority focus. So back in the day, Google loved being the one true authority. You put in a search query, gave you back a featured snippet, the one URL. And as you mentioned, Bing has been not doing that for a very long time, showing you multiple URLs for featured snippets, or a carousel of featured snippets. Over the last, let's say six months to a year, Google's been testing all sorts of formats where they're throwing in multiple URLs throughout the featured snippet or they're having one under the other, under the other, under the other, a multiple things that we mentioned, like- Crystal Carter: Like an accordion type thing. Mordy Oberstein: All sorts of variations around that because I think Google realized what we mentioned earlier, that content consumption trends have changed, and just like people want more personal content, they also want a more diverse set of content. And there's a recent change to the top stories carousel, Google's showing multiple perspectives now. This is a change for Google overall, where it's going away from the one true answer, "We know everything. We are Google." to multiple perspectives, multiple URLs, a diverse set of URLs and perspectives, and I think it's important to take the question of AI replacing featured snippets from that point of view. In which case the format of you put in how to change a tire, you get back a AI generated snippet with multiple citations. Let's take the Bing version of it for the moment. That is the future of featured snippets anyway. So yes, it might replace it, but that already is the future of featured snippets Crystal Carter: Right and also they replace featured snippets all the time. They've also replaced featured snippets with some of these from sources around the web dropdowns, which are essentially AI generated. That is AI curated content, and then they put it in. So if you type in "seven wonders of the world," or "50 books to read before you die," or something like that, then you may get one of these dropdown things and it'll say, so let's say 50 books to read before you die. And one of them is let's say 1984, and then they'll list these 50 books and then there'll be a dropdown and then there's a bunch of featured snippet type content underneath those things. But that list is very similar to the AI generated chat because they don't have a source for who came up with the list. They just put the list on there. I've always found that a bit challenging because some of those lists, if I wrote a list for instance, then somebody could say, "Well, you might be biased because you are Western or because of whatever, and so your list will be based on your biases, which I can see from who you are or whatever." Whereas if Google puts that on, then that's a different sort of, "This is the answer" sort of perspective. So I think those lists, those dropdown lists are very similar to that space. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Totally. Exactly. Crystal Carter: I think that the featured snippet has always been a challenging beast to wrangle because they show up, they go away, they show up, they go away. Mordy Oberstein: Listen, I don't think they're going to die. I think they might be secondary. You might have the chat experience first and then you might have a feature snippet afterwards is what Bing does now currently. So yeah, they'll still be there. Are they still as relevant? Probably not because they're probably not getting the same kind of traffic because Google or in this case, if we're talking about Bing, is showing the chat experience above it. But that is where featured snippets were headed already. Crystal Carter: I think also it's important to remember that they're part of an ecosystem. So they're also, and the people also ask, they're also in the voice search, the voice search return, which that may very well change with AI as well. They're also part of the visual search might turn them up. That there's lots of different parts of things that it will show up in and a knowledge panels that'll be like a dropdown on a knowledge panel as well. So I think that, and that goes to more- Mordy Oberstein: More panels. Crystal Carter: More panels. So I think that goes to the idea of making sure that you've got content that is able to touch on all of those parts of the SERP`. I think that the featured snippet is less of a destination and more part of the journey. Mordy Oberstein: So perhaps something has changed with featured snippets that we should cover in the news. Who knows? Perhaps not, probably not the case because this is not what's been in focus, whatever, but it's possible. You'll have to wait and find out. Crystal Carter: I'm going to guess it's going to be something about AI. That's my guess. Mordy Oberstein: There was one episode, okay, couple of weeks ago, or I don't know if you caught the line where I said, "Okay, there was other news in SEO this week, but it wasn't about AI, so who cares?" Crystal Carter: Just AI, Bard, Bing, ChatGPT, AI, AI, AI, AIO. Mordy Oberstein: AIO. As we AAAIO ourselves over to the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Geez Louise, what is going on? A lot, and it all has to do with the page experience, update, ranking system or lack thereof. I'll explain. First off, per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable Google Search Console to drop page experience report, mobile usability report and mobile friendly tests. Yes, you heard that, right, but it's all a little bit confusing. So one, the page experience report Google added in 2021 is going away. Then in December of 2023, Google will also drop the mobile usability report from Google Search Console along with the mobile friendly test API and tool. Barry speculates this is related to the recent layoffs at Google and resource issues they are subsequently having. Who am I to argue with Barry? On top of all of that, you know the relatively new page where Google talks about their different rankings, algorithms, and different ranking systems? Well, they just removed the page experience update/ranking system from the page. It's gone completely. Barry speculates that the algorithm was pretty much a nothing burger, putting words in Barry's mouth there, which Google basically used to try to convince us that making these changes to our pages was really important. Wow Barry, diving into the whole conspiracy world now, aren't we? This time I see things slightly ever so different from Barry. Forgive me, Barry, Google here said quote, "It was not," meaning the page experience ranking system, "... was not a separate ranking system and it did not combine all these signals into one single page experience signal." So I guess they removed it, but I think what's going on here is that Google might now have a different way of defining page experience more broadly. Hear me out. Okay. While all this was happening and as also reported by none other than the King of SERPs, Barry Schwartz, Google added page experience guidance around the helpful content update saying "Provide a great page experience. Google's core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you're providing an overall great page experience across many aspects. For more advice see our page." That updated page that Google said see our page has some really interesting things on it, such as questions to self success page experience. These include obviously things around Core Web Vitals as you would expect, but also questions like how easily can visitors navigate to or locate the main content of your pages? Or is the page designed so visitors can easily distinguish the main content from other content on your page? See, what I think is happening here is Google might be redefining page experience as basically usability, and I wonder if they will assess this by proxy, meaning using various aspects of the algorithm to simulate how a human would best assess good page experience or good page usability. Meaning that the page experience is far more abstract, far more subtle, and is not unified in any way, shape, or form within the algorithm. Hence, they removed it, meaning the page experience ranking system, from their ranking system page. Why? Again, because it might include or it might be headed towards including way more subtle, way more abstract, and way more broadly defined aspects of experience or usability. What do you think, Barry? Do you agree? Parenthetically Google also added a section about EEAT to the helpful content guidance page saying quote, "While EEAT itself isn't a specific ranking factor, using a mix of factors that can identify content with good EEAT is useful." This all feels like an SEO, soap opera. And with that, that is this week's snappiest of news. I hope you weren't disappointed with that snappy news. If you were expecting major news around either AI or feature snippets that wasn't covered. Crystal Carter: I found it to be incredibly newsworthy. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we covered it really. Crystal Carter: Right? Because it was the news. Mordy Oberstein: It was new news for everybody. Crystal Carter: Just kidding. Mordy Oberstein: You know what may be new news to you if you're in the SEO world, although probably not, let's be honest here. Is our follow of the week, who is coming from the content marketing world? Does that make sense? Right? We're covering the overlapping content marketing and SEO, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So here's a content marketing person for you. Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Ann Handley. Crystal Carter: And Handley. Mordy Oberstein: A legend, an absolute legend in the content marketing space. She's done an absolute ton for the content marketing space. Of course, I think if I look through my Twitter feed, like my Twitter follow list, whatever, one of the first people I think I've ever followed ever on Twitter. Crystal Carter: She's incredibly well respected and with great reason. She's very strategic and has a lot of resources available for people to get sucked into and has a reputation that absolutely precedes her. Mordy Oberstein: And you could check out what she's doing over at MarketingProfs. It's a great website to learn more about writing and content and content marketing, content writing. There are events that she has. There's a lot there. So check out marketingprofs.com and definitely check out Ann Handley, whose handle is at @marketingprofs. So it's at the word marketing and P-R-O-F-S, profs, we'll include it in the show notes because who's listening and spelling at the same time right now? I don't know why I do that, but I feel like I have to do that. I have to spell it out in case maybe you won't go to the show notes. Crystal Carter: Some people are auditory learners. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I don't know who those people are. Those people are like that's not- Crystal Carter: There are people, they listen to podcasts. Mordy Oberstein: There probably are, there are, there are, but even spelling of names. I'm isolating our audio learners right now. I'm sorry. Crystal Carter: Have you ever had called someone and they just had said their number? Like you called someone and they're like 555-555, and you're like, what? Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea what you just... Yeah, every time I have no- Crystal Carter: Sometimes like when people answer the phone, some people tell me, instead of saying hello, they just tell you their phone number. Mordy Oberstein: When I ask like, "Okay, what's your number?" I have to ask for three times. Crystal Carter: I also don't like it when people, so I say my phone number, my mobile phone number in a certain way, and if somebody says it back to me in a different way, I'm like, I don't even know whose number that is. I don't understand. Mordy Oberstein: Is that your number? Yes. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Yes it is. Yes it is. Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: And then you're like worried like, oh man, I really hope they... they need to call me back. I didn't give them the wrong number. Crystal Carter: These are the things we think about. Mordy Oberstein: You know what you can't go wrong with is tuning into next week's episode. Thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us not to worry? We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to shape an SEO campaign. Use cookie cutters and you shape it with those cookie cutter out. That's how you shape an SEO campaign. Look forward 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 webinars and content we have over on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify or both. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Is Google sweet on your website, or does it have a secret grudge? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter get a little nostalgic as they take a quick detour into ‘90s music, reminiscing about Ace of Base and Hanson—Mmmbop! We learn how to shore up the pages that are on the brink between ranking and not ranking, and figure out if it is a topic or intent misalignment or if it has something to do with your topic depth. Minding the SERP gaps by comparing content with competitors, updating internal links, and supporting content. Andy Crestondina of Orbit Media gives recommendations on what to do once websites are established and already have brand awareness. Suggesting ways to diversify and continue to build momentum beyond the SERP. Don't miss these game-changing SEO insights, topped with a generous side of fun, on this spirited edition of SERP’s Up! Back How to tell if Google loves you Is Google sweet on your website, or does it have a secret grudge? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter get a little nostalgic as they take a quick detour into ‘90s music, reminiscing about Ace of Base and Hanson—Mmmbop! We learn how to shore up the pages that are on the brink between ranking and not ranking, and figure out if it is a topic or intent misalignment or if it has something to do with your topic depth. Minding the SERP gaps by comparing content with competitors, updating internal links, and supporting content. Andy Crestondina of Orbit Media gives recommendations on what to do once websites are established and already have brand awareness. Suggesting ways to diversify and continue to build momentum beyond the SERP. Don't miss these game-changing SEO insights, topped with a generous side of fun, on this spirited edition of SERP’s Up! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 104 | October 2,2024 | 56 MIN 00:00 / 56:37 This week’s guests Despina Gavoyannis Despina is a Senior SEO Consultant with 8+ years of experience growing B2B, e-commerce, SaaS, and national brands. She's an optimist at heart, taking time to enjoy life's silver linings each day. Andy Crestondina Andy is the CMO and Co-Founder at Orbit Media Studios. He has been at the forefront of digital marketing innovation for over two decades. With a deep-seated passion for SEO, analytics, and website optimization, Andy is highly regarded as a leading expert in the marketing field. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights into what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head SEO of brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by she who is always transparent, clear, and crystal. Our own head of communications, Crystal Carter. There's no doubt when it comes to Crystal. Crystal Carter: I get charged up in a full moon. I find water really easily as well. That's another thing. Mordy Oberstein: You have the two pronged stick that finds water? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I'm very reflective in my general demeanor and I like to think that I bring a nice warm glow. Mordy Oberstein: You always know where you stand with Crystal. Crystal Carter: It's true. It's true. Mordy Oberstein: For better or for worse. I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: Mostly for better, I hope. Mordy Oberstein: Only for better. The SERP'S Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our built-in Google Search Console Insights to see just how much Google does love you. As today we're diving into the gray area of the algorithm, how to know the signs of whether or not Google does or doesn't love you. What are the telltale signs that Google is infatuated with your website? What are some of the signs that they maybe are not infatuated with you, and how do all of those reversals you see in algorithm updates factor into this love triangle? HREF's Despina Gavoyannis will join us to share her tips on how to shore up those pages that might be wavering in the rankings. Plus, Orbit Media co-founder, and all around great digital marketer star, Andy Crestodina stops by to chat about what you can do while you're waiting for Google to fall in love with you. So turn up your Ace of Base because today we're showing you the sign of algorithmic love on this the 104th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast. Full disclosure, I had a moment in time where I actually liked the Ace of Base for five minutes. Crystal Carter: Dude, I totally had that CD. I mean, that introduction definitely opened up my eyes. I think. Mordy Oberstein: What's the other song they had? They have another one, one other song. Crystal Carter: The, All That She Wants. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right, that one, right. What the hell were we thinking with that crap. Crystal Carter: Dude. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's terrible. Crystal Carter: They've gone a little bit off the rails in recent times, but in 1998 or whatever- Mordy Oberstein: It made sense in the moment. I remember as a kid being like, "Oh, this is great," and an older friend is like, "No, don't say that. It's not good." Crystal Carter: You had to be there, man. You had to be there. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's kind of like Hanson but worse. Hanson I thought was a good... like, Hanson was good. Crystal Carter: MMMBop is a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good song. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. MMMBop comes on and I am singing every single word. And the breakdown. Mordy Oberstein: There are only three words in MMMBop. What do you mean all words? Crystal Carter: No, I mean there's lots of parts that aren't words like, du dubi dop, ba du bop. Mordy Oberstein: Di dibby dop dop, the du ap. That's the... Crystal Carter: Then there's all of the verses. It's very- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great song. Crystal Carter: You say you can, but you don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Bob Dylan, it is not. Crystal Carter: No, of course not. It's a bop. It's a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a word. Is it a word? Crystal Carter: It's like, the quintessential bop. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, it's great. I'm all for the MMMBop, I'm all for the Hanson. They played their own instruments like, win. Crystal Carter: Hey, I mean, all this nineties nostalgia. It was a beautiful life. Whoa, oh, oh, oh. Mordy Oberstein: How do I pivot this into SEO? I'm just not... just whatever. It's not... Not every day to win is a win, and not every loss is a loss. There's a lot to read into it. And sometimes Google demotes a site's rankings, but you may not know that's going to be a real long-term problem. Maybe these are signs of signals, Google's having a real issue with your website. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the ebb and flow of the rankings on the SERP these days, although it's always been volatile, but pretty, especially these days. For example, you can have a prolonged slow ebbing of the rankings over time. That to me is usually a very serious issue. For me, that's usually something where Google has a quality issue with your website and it's slowly eroding away at your rankings over time. I know we're used to looking at a quality issue with your website as, oh, algorithm update, goodbye, but sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes you might see a downtrend with the algorithm update and then it slowly ebbs and erodes from there. At the same time, there are signs that maybe Google does like your content, and those could be really important for you to realize what those are because then you can improve upon them and build upon them. For example, one case that I saw back with the March 2024 core update was it was a certain keyword and the only website that was ranking... all of the websites that were ranking were pages that were specifically built to target that keyword, meaning the only topic that those pages dealt with was the topic represented in that keyword. There was this other page though that showed up around position like three, four or five, forgot exactly, and that was about the topic overall, but it dealt with as a subtopic, that one aspect of the page dealt with the keyword. That to me was a signal looking at that page and then how that page ranked and how the website ranked overall where Google's like, you know what? This website is so strong that we're even going to rank you for instances or keywords where the page isn't specifically targeting just that keyword, and even though the only other pages that are ranking are targeting that keyword, we're going to rank you anyway 'cause the content overall is so great that you now have the power to rank... in this case, this website had the power to rank, even though it wasn't particularly targeting that keyword, but just dealt with the topic tangentially. That might be a sign. In this case, it was a sign that the site was really showing favor and love in the eyes of Google, so it's really important, I think, to know what those signals and signs might be. I don't think it's an exact science because sometimes you just don't know. Having a look and seeing what the signs are that Google really does have an issue with your website or that Google doesn't, and really is loving your website. Knowing those signs and signals or trends can really be important guiding what you do for your SEO strategy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because I think it determines how much risk you take with different topics and whether or not you, as you said, go into the sort of tangential ones, whether you try something that maybe is very long tail and whether or not you... and whether or not you go for some of those head terms. Because if Google is generally into you, then you'll know because you'll have a couple of big ticket, big search volume pieces of content, and if you're able to give them something that's similar to some of your rock star pieces of content, then they're going to come back for more, and so if you can prove that users appreciate your content and that you have a good experience for users who come to the website, things aren't glitchy, that it all works well, that it's superfast loading, that kind of thing, then yeah, Google's probably going to send you some more traffic because I think what people forget is that Google's into you because users are into you. What's it called? Danny Sullivan was talking about the user signals. We have a podcast on user signals and stuff previously, but he said that people were like, oh, Google uses user signals. He's like, we've always said that. We've always paid attention to that. Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Old. Crystal Carter: Old, not new. And it's not a question of just doing it for Google, which I think Google has been trying to get into people's brains for the last couple of years. It's not just about doing it for Google, it's also about doing it for users, and then Google will see that works and then they will send their users to you. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you were talking about profiling the types of keywords that you're ranking for. That's a huge thing, by the way, to take a look at because you should really be breaking down, not just, am I ranking? Am I not ranking? That's way too broad. Am I ranking or does Google love me? Is too broad of a question. You should really be looking at where does Google rank you? Where do they not rank you? Meaning where do they love me? Where do they not love me? How do they understand me? Because being understood is really what it means to be loved, but really looking at what folders or what types of keywords or topics am I ranking for, and those sort of things are really important to understand so that either you can double down on that and build on that or say, you know what? Or cut off what's not working. It's like a bad limb on a tree. It's dying. Just cut that off. Just happened to me with a tree. Crystal Carter: Because like any relationship, there's going to be things that are annoying. Mordy, you've been married for a while, I've been married for a while. You're in a long-term relationship, there's things that are annoying about yourself and about your partner and Google will know what things they don't like about your website, but they'll know the things that they do like about your website and just if you're in a relationship and you know that maybe they don't like when you leave your shoes in the doorway or maybe they don't like it when you, I don't know, play your music really loud or something like that. If you're trying to carry favor with someone, you wouldn't do the things that you know irritate them. You would do the things that they like. So if you know that they like it when you make that particular dinner for them, you know that they really love that lasagna that you make, give them more lasagna. That's the thing. So you look at your keywords and you're like, what are the things that they like, give them more of that. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes it's very clear that they don't like that. You just don't rank for that no matter what you do and how many links you've built from high DA sites, you're not ranking for that. But sometimes it's a little bit tricky. For example, sometimes you could see with every algorithm update official and unofficial, you get thrown into the volatility fire. That's probably a sign that you might be okay in the end, you might not be okay in the end, but Google's clearly looking around at other partners. Crystal Carter: Right. Right, right, right, right. I had a client and they used to have a lot of competitors, so they'd have loads of competitors for particular keywords, and it was really spicy. Basically for this particular SERP, there was up and down, who was in one, who was in three, and the top five would switch around a lot depending on who had updated what most recently and stuff. In those situations, you really need to give Google your attention in order to make sure that you're able to stay on the side of having that SERP visibility, and that can include, it's sort of a quid pro quo. You want traffic, you have to give them more opportunities to give you traffic. It's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of schema markup and structured data because it gives you more opportunities to get on the SERP because you have more opportunities to get more rich features, for instance. And if your competitors are not optimized in that way, then they have fewer opportunities to get on there. It's another reason why I'm a big fan of using multimedia because that also gives you more opportunities to get in there. It also gives Google more opportunity to show you to different folks, and it helps them to understand your content better. So if you want them to help you, you also have to help them, but there's that saying, what is it? "The Lord helps those who help themselves," and you need to help yourself to let them help you. And I'm not saying that Google's Lord or whatever, but I think that it's worth thinking about it in that way anyway. So yeah, multimedia is something that can help you. Structured data is something that can help you. Obviously having relevant, well-written, well-researched and well-known, as in you're distributing it to people who need to know about it. You're getting people enthused about it. The content that's getting people hyped up is really useful as well because Google can take those signals and go, oh, okay, this sample of people liked it. Then we can show it to other samples of people. The other thing about that kind of thing is today, so historically speaking, when we think about content distribution, we think about it from a sort of opportunities for clicks and things like that, but in today's space where Google is not just a publisher, but Google also is a web browser and Google's also a phone manufacturer and Google is also, they have data on my wallet. I use Google Wallet all the time. They've got all of that data. They store my phone, my phone photos and all that sort of stuff. Google also, when you're sending signals out, when you're sending your content out on social, for instance, you're also giving them signals for which users to send your content to. I don't have the exact technical links between all of the content that they store and all of the data that they store, but they're going to be getting signals from, even if it's a small amount. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's the semantic analysis, that's the semantic web. It's like showing how it's all connected and making those links. Crystal Carter: Right. And like the For You feed essentially from Google that comes up... the Discover page, sorry, that shows up. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. For you is Twitter. Crystal Carter: And also on TikTok as well, but it's basically, it's a similar kind of thing. So,- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. Crystal Carter: ... if I- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And so- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Yankees and SEO. Crystal Carter: So for instance, if you send content to a few people and then they're like, okay, this kind of person likes this content, that gives more opportunity to filter down those bespoke queries, which are going to get more and more bespoke as we get into a more AI assisted search space. So I think that we need to show them that we care about our content before we expect them to care about our content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And the last thing I want to say, I agree with that a billion percent. The last thing I want to say before we get into Despina is, I'm not always big on rank tracking. I think sometimes it could be a little bit of a... you run into the problem of being a little bit of vanity or a little bit too micro-analytic. But looking at rank tracking patterns over time is a great way to get an understanding of how much Google is into you and how Google is not into you, where they're into you and where they're not into you. So if you are using a rank tracking tool, I would highly recommend you go back and look at the rank tracking trends over an extended period of time to take a look at volatility within your keywords and break them down into subcategories or tags, as they're traditionally referred to in SEO tools and to really get an understanding of where Google is into you, where they're not into you, and how in into they are. Crystal Carter: And I think also, I think you need to think about the variables of content creation and all of that sort of stuff. One of the things that you also want to think about is, let's say you're tracking this stuff and you're seeing the patterns and you're seeing the way that Google's looking at the way your content is created, etc. One of the things you might also want to think about is, is it my domain or is it the content? Right? So sometimes if you serve the content on a different domain or if you serve similar content in a different platform, and let's say it goes off, so let's say you've been writing your blog, writing your blog, and maybe you're not getting that much traffic, but let's say you do a guest post on a different blog and that gets loads of traffic and you've taken the same approach that you always do, that's a really positive signal, that's a really positive signal that if you keep going in the way that you're going, that you'll eventually get the traffic. It doesn't mean that you'll get it right that second, but it means that the content itself is good, and that means that the technical things that you do might need to change, but the content itself is solid. And you see this on social a lot where you'll have some creator will do a video or something and then some bigger platform like Lab Bible or something will share it on there and that will go really big. And if it goes off on there, you're like, okay, the content is good. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great point. It's such a good point. Crystal Carter: Distribution, whichever, might be the technical, it might be whatever that might need to change, but the content itself is good. And so I think it's important to do that not just for link building, but also to understand what it is that you need to tweak in order for Google to- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Yeah, is it your authority? Is it the content, is it the technical aspect of it? All that diagnosing where the problem is? That's a great point. Speaking of shoring up that content and finding out what you should be doing and how to go about doing it, we spoke to HREF's Despina Gavoyannis about how to shore up a page or pages that seemed to be wavering between ranking and not ranking. Here's what she had to say. Despina Gavoyannis: So like anything with SEO, it depends on your situation, like what you're seeing and what kind of positions your page is wavering between, because I've seen pages, they just don't stick in the SERPs at all like your targeted keyword, but then in the top 100 they'll show up sometimes and then just drop out of the top 100. So if you're seeing that sort of thing, that's a really big kind of flickering. And to me that is a hundred percent about topic alignment and intent alignment. It means you're targeting the right keyword, sure, but you're not really matching your content with what Google and people expect to see. So when you fix that up, the intent misalignment there. Generally what you'll see is that the page will stick in the SERPs. Now if you wanted to rank higher and stick higher, so for example, it'll land somewhere generally in the top 50 results is what I see, maybe even in the top 30. But then you want to get it ranking and if what you are seeing is that it's wavering between say the bottom of page one and page two, so you can't quite crack position 10 and stay there or higher. So in that case, it could be a topic or an intent misalignment. It could also be a topic depth thing. Maybe you don't have as many sections in your content that cover the subtopics that are relevant to the keyword, and your competitors might be doing a better job of that. So looking at their content and any kind of gaps in terms of the content topic depth perspective. Also looking at any gaps in your core fundamentals of SEO, things like, on-page and links. A lot of SEO depends on doing these small things that on their own don't move the needle much or even at all, but in combination can have a big impact. So for example, if your competitors have much more solid on-page optimization than what you do, that's a big gap. So they're doing it and they're doing a lot of little things that can add up and have a big impact in total. Whereas if you are not doing any of it or very little of it, then that creates a huge gap right there and it's a pretty easy gap to fix. So making sure that you've got your keywords in your headings, you've got keywords in your URLs, that you've got image alt texts and things like that, and providing a great user experience with the page itself, make sure that's all sorted. Also with links, don't look at it just from your whole website. Get links to the individual page and close those gaps. This includes internal links. So if you're covering the topic in other articles on your website, make sure you are internally linking to the page you're trying to support. And also I suppose if you can't internally link because you don't have enough content or any kind of mentions about the topic, then in that case you need to create supporting content so that it works as a hub or a bit of a content cluster that can support each other. And that helps in terms of closing topical gaps across your whole website, not just within one article. And finally, if you've tried all these things, and you're still not seeing much movement. Evaluate the recency of your content. Is the advice relevant to people right now? Even if you add new sections and technically the date on your content might be written in this year, the advice you're giving might still be outdated or not providing great user experience or things like that. So look at, is it relevant to people right now? Is it providing the best experience to people right now? Are your competitors potentially doing a better job there? And if you're not sure, if you can't be unbiased about it, you can use a website like user testing and get real people's feedback, get them to compare your competitor's content to yours and to give you their thoughts on which one they think does a better job of answering a particular question or for a specific keyword. It helps you overcome biases in your own thinking of what's working and whether your content is actually good compared to competitors or not. So those are a few of the things that I think can help. In summary: check your intent misalignment, cover any topical gaps, cover any really basic SEO gaps like, on-page and links. Those have been fundamentals for ages for a reason. Make sure that you're doing internal linking and topical gaps are covered across your whole website. And then also check the recency in user experience of the content for people searching today. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Despina. Look for Despina out on social media. Link to her profile is in the show notes. Yeah, it comes back to we're talking diagnosing. Diagnosing what the problem is, what you should be doing, have a methodical approach. Also running through the options like she's talking about. You don't always know exactly what it is. You have to roll through them and throw the kitchen sink at it in a way. So diagnose, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and also I think she was talking about testing as well. So one of the things she mentioned was user testing. So getting people to look at it and why do you think this content is better? Or why do you think this content is good? Why do you think this content is struggling or whatever? And I think she's totally right because you see this a lot. And Glenn Gabe is a big advocate of user testing for websites and particularly for user journeys because sometimes if you are in it all the time, you don't know how difficult it is to find the things that people need to find. Or maybe you do know how difficult it is, but you've gotten so used to having to navigate it in the way that you do that you're not conscious of it. So I think that getting someone with a fresh set of eyes can be really, really useful, even if, I think she mentioned that it can be a bit painful sometimes. You might have to eat a little bit of humble pie, but it is really important to do and really, really valuable both for publishers who are doing it directly and also for agency folks who are managing clients. Mordy Oberstein: And humble pie is fine because pie is pie. Pie is good. Crystal Carter: I love pie. I'm a big fan of like- Mordy Oberstein: Pie is the best- Crystal Carter: I do love Pie. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best dessert. I'm sorry, hands down, it's pie. Crystal Carter: I also like a savory pie, like- Mordy Oberstein: Like shepherd's pie? Crystal Carter: Shepherd's pie, cottage pie, chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Chicken pot pie is delicious. Oh, love chicken pot pie. Crystal Carter: Right. In England there's a lot of savory pies. It's really common. Also in America, you get chicken pot pie. Chicken pot pie is the classic one. I don't eat meat anymore, but when I did, I was all about the chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Which one? Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. There are lots of delicious, lots of delicious veggie pies that I'm a big fan of. So yeah, pies are good. I just generally like things that are pastry with yummy stuff in the middle of it. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best. It's literally the best. I don't have access to a lot of pie where I live, which means we don't live in a perfect world and while we're not living in a perfect world and you're sorting out your love or Google's love for you, to make sure your content is bringing in the traffic and the conversions and yada yada yada that you want, while that's all being worked out, you might want to try other marketing activities to drive that awareness, traffic, leads, and conversions instead. It's a crazy idea. Which is why we're going down a rabbit hole in a little segment we call, from the top of the SERP, as in this case, we're looking at not what gets you to the top of page one, but what other activities can get you traffic while you work your way there. And to help us, we have special guest, the co-founder of Orbit Media, Andy Crestodina. Andy, welcome to the SERPs Up Podcast. Andy Crestondina: I am glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for sticking with us by the way, because the audience doesn't know this. I've known your name for many, many years, but I couldn't get it out of my mouth the right way. Andy Crestondina: I stumbled on it myself. No trouble at all. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you with us today. Andy Crestondina: Yeah, thanks for having me, Crystal. I'm glad. This will be fun. I've been looking forward to this. I'm psyched. Mordy Oberstein: So I know it's a little bit like heresy to the SEO folk listening to this. If you're not an SEO folk, this makes obvious logical sense. But putting all of your eggs in one algorithmic basket, whether you're still trying to get Google to love you and whatnot, or in general, Google does love you now, they might not love you tomorrow. What do you recommend sites do? Let's say there are an established website, they have traffic, they have some brand awareness. What do you recommend they do to really increase that, diversify their channels and get some momentum beyond the SERP? Andy Crestondina: I love this question. I think that it's important for SEOs to consider this because there is such a thing as topic channel fit, and there are lots of articles and web pages and service we offer different things that have no keyword opportunity. Only about half of the articles that I write are actually relevant for search. And that's fine. I'm not a keyword first marketer. I'm trying to connect a piece of content to a target audience. So my first thought is, I'm making this thing, is there a keyword opportunity here? If no, no problem, I can use other channels. Everything can be promoted in email and social, through influencers, and other ways. So it's really important to keep that in mind. And I sleep well at night knowing that I am not totally beholden to Google for all of my traffic and that I can be kind of a dual threat marketer. There's more to life than search and many things that we all make really are not relevant for that channel whatsoever. Crystal Carter: I think that's a really interesting way to think about it because I've definitely seen people go, oh, well, we shouldn't write this blog because it doesn't have a good search volume. We shouldn't write this piece of content because no one's going to find it on Google or the search volume's low or that sort of thing. And I think it's really interesting that you're like, this is a thing that people need to hear. We can get it to them in a different way. If it's not for search, it can go another way. Is there a way that you sort of figure out which is the best channel for a piece of content that you think people need to hear? Andy Crestondina: For sure. The job of the search marketer is to basically meet expectations. The searcher has an information need and your job is satisfy that information need. The social media marketer, the job is to be a little bit unexpected. See how that's actually the opposite channel? So there are lots of topics where social is the proper channel. Let's say you want to put out a counter-narrative perspective. No one's looking for counter-narratives, they're looking for confirmation or they're looking for an answer. And thought leadership. Another way to say that, op-ed content, anything that is a perspective where you're trying to start a conversation or you're saying something that's maybe contrarian to the conventional wisdom. That stuff crushes social media. It's great in social, it starts big conversations, right? Say something interesting. So search, if your content meets expectations, search. If your content is a bit unexpected, social. And by the way, these channels, understanding the difference between social and search, it's so fascinating. In search there's actually a ceiling to the amount of demand in the market. There's only X number of people searching for a topic each day, but social media, there is no limit. I have seen things... If you've never seen the analytics for a mini viral event, you're missing out. It is breathtaking how many people are on the internet. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, totally true. Andy Crestondina: And if you're exhausted, just long form content, long text pieces, Hey, guess what? The short, punchy, pithy thing, the highly visual thing, the collaboration with an influencer thing, social's perfect. So you don't have enough in your content mix, and Mordy, thanks for saying diversification because that's the perfect perspective. If you are not first thinking of the topic, what does my audience need? What's the most interesting thing I can do today? And then asking what is the proper channel for promoting this thing? The answer is not always search. Mordy Oberstein: So when you're thinking of diversifying those channels, okay, I am not going to write for search. Where do you start? What are you looking at? Is there like, okay, I want to do something on social. Does the channel drive the strategy itself or the type of content drive the strategy, trying to build a brand awareness? What's driving the overall strategy for you? Andy Crestondina: Well, I am a fifteen-year content strategist, and I often think to myself, this is something new, interesting, helpful, valuable to me, working for me, I should share this with the world. Next question. Is this something that could work in content marketing or maybe I'm just make this as a sales enablement piece. By the way, there's bottom of funnel content that you can share with prospects that is 100X the value of that new weird top of funnel, high search volume phrase. Make something for your prospects first. I'd say let's all prioritize the bottom of the funnel. And then whatever that thing is, whatever you're making, does it relate to other pieces of content? Is there already a conversation happening about this? Is this part of a trend? Is this content evergreen? What is the proper format? Should this be a video or long form text or is it an infographic thing here? Give you an example. Two weeks ago, I've always been thinking about this, you know how every chart in marketing is like a log scale curve. There are no straight lines. The top performers are... search especially, top performer gets most of the clicks. Number two gets half as many. Number three gets a third as many. That mathematical distribution is called the Zipfian distribution. Okay, you've never heard of that? No one's heard of that. I get it. But actually it's super interesting that that Zipfian distribution applies across topics and formats and channels. Click-through rate by search position, and a tiny percentage of things go viral, and a tiny percentage of social accounts gets most of the engagement. And a tiny percentage YouTube videos get most of the views. That's a really interesting way to think about marketing and it's valuable because you can focus on trying to make top performers and avoid making the medium quality stuff , but there's a practical takeaway. Okay, you get the idea. I'm making this article, right? I want to do this. I want to show the charts. I want people to see the alignment between this math thing and their marketing, and I want to make strategic recommendations based on that. Focus on the 10X things. No keyword opportunity at all. No one is searching for log scale pattern- Crystal Carter: Zipfian. Andy Crestondina: ... marketing. Yeah, George Zipf. So no problem. I'm making it anyway. I feel strongly about this. I think the world needs the article. It's a failure of the internet that this article doesn't exist. That's how passionate I am about creating it. Who has all the data? Pete Caputa from Databox. Let's talk to Pete. Great, Pete and I have a call. He shares a bunch of data. I overlay my little chart thing on it. He starts a conversation on LinkedIn. I jump in, I write the article, I publish on LinkedIn, he jumps in. It got huge results. Nothing to do with search. What did I do? I found something that was visual. I collaborated with a subject matter expert. I didn't hesitate to write the cool, weird, fun headline with no keywords in it. It's liberating, by the way, to not have to worry about keywords sometimes, right? In search, I'm all in or I'm all out. If that thing's keyword relevant, I'm totally focused on making something that is the best page on the internet for that topic. But if it's just an unusual thing, a weird thing, a visual thing, a surprising thing. It's kind of like working with, if you've ever worked with an innovator or an inventor or someone who makes new things, no one's looking for new things. It doesn't exist yet. Those people should still start those companies. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think it's like, if you were cooking for, I don't know, 500 people, if you were cooking for, I don't know, the family reunion or something like that, you're not going to do an artisanal ceviche or something with heirloom tomatoes from here, there and there. You're going to do the macaroni and cheese. You know that the macaroni and cheese is going to get the most people and they're going to enjoy it and they're going to be happy. Whereas, I don't know, if it's some special dinner for your anniversary or whatever, and it's a special person and you know that they'll appreciate that you've spent all of this time, but it's a different audience. You're still cooking, you're still making whatever you're making, but it's a different kind of situation and they'll appreciate it more. And both audiences will appreciate that you've taken the care to give them the right thing, in the right space. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. Crystal Carter: ... really important. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great example. Andy Crestondina: Yep. Mac and cheese, that's the highest search volume key phrase. And my daughter loves it. But the heirloom tomato, like the fancy Caprese salad that people weren't expecting, like, whoa, dude, pine nuts. Wait a minute, that's a different... you get it, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Andy Crestondina: So, it's really kind of a boring content strategy both for your readers to consume and for you to create if you think that everything's got to be a keyword. Come on. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, a thousand percent. Crystal Carter: And I think also, so there's a couple of things that I come for that. So people who have just discovered you on our podcast might not know that you are also speaking from the point of having a massive social media following. So I think that that's something that's worth thinking about as well. If you're not following Andy on LinkedIn, you should do that because it's absolutely worth doing. And all the other channels as well- Andy Crestondina: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: So I think that that's something that's really important to think about as well, is that you have spent time cultivating an audience that you know is interested in the thing that you found really fascinating this week. The thing that you found really fascinating today or whatever it may be. And I think that in order to do some of the things that you're talking about in order to speak to some of that more creative, more out-of-the-box content, do you think that it's worth building that community first before you start doing that? Or do you think the two things go together? Andy Crestondina: I'm not sure if... community building and in some ways search rankings, these are not... they're more like outcomes than they are a strategy in a way. That's what happens if you did everything else well. So what did I do on LinkedIn? I wrote an article every two weeks for 12 years. I never write an article without collaborating with a subject matter expert or influencer. I made sure that my articles were highly visual. I promoted those things in many places as well as on LinkedIn. I used LinkedIn for all kinds of other activities, for research and collaborating and connecting with people. I started a LinkedIn newsletter, which is my number one tip for B2B marketers today, started a LinkedIn newsletter. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I was talking to Andy about this at MozCon. It really is a masterclass. It's fantastic. Subscribe to Digital Marketing Tips on LinkedIn. Andy Crestondina: Give it a boring name like Digital Marketing Tips. Actually, this is common across channels. Specificity correlates with engagement, conversion, search rankings. I think that a lot of things, a lot of... one of the common mistakes that marketers make is just writing sort of vague headlines and subheads. So Digital Marketing Tips. I've seen people launch LinkedIn newsletters that's like, What's in Brian's Brain? What would I get if... no, I'm not. You can subscribe to a LinkedIn newsletter with one tap of your finger that explains the growth. But why would someone tap? Who's Brian? I don't get... there's no specificity. Be specific about the benefits, right? It's like a call to action in anything. Tell them what they're going to get if they do it. But yeah, LinkedIn newsletters, you can repurpose old content. It's going to reach a much larger audience. It's a lot of tableau funnel stuff, but it's great for brand. Mordy Oberstein: This is SERP's Up Podcast, we ask the hard questions. I don't think I've ever asked a hard question in this podcast before, but this is the first time. If we're saying, okay, wait a second, be careful with the whole Google thing. You're beholden to the algorithm. Who knows what'll happen? Is it the same thing to play devil's advocate on social media? Like, look what happened with X. Andy Crestondina: Excellent point. No social and search are algorithm marketing. And no one really uses that term, but that's exactly what you're doing if you're marketing in those. And those marketers have a bit of anxiety all the time anyway. Oh, what will I do if I... It's like LinkedIn, I've never done it. But some people on LinkedIn, they make a post promoting an article, then they put the article link in the first comment. Oh, because LinkedIn doesn't like if you have a thing that sends people... Who cares? Mordy Oberstein: I'll tell you on that, someone once said, I'm... because I would play around with doing this thing, what worked, what didn't work? And then someone said, "I hate when people put the link in the comment. You never find the damn thing." I'm like, "You know what? I don't care about the algorithm anymore. People who are reading what I'm writing are annoyed by it, then I'm not going to do that." Andy Crestondina: People first, no matter what channel you're in. But then, yeah, I mean a diversified marketing strategy should have more than search and social because you will be forever beholden to those algorithms and they will change. You don't own your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers or your followers or your search rankings. Email, live events, where Crystal and I first met. Webinars, podcasts, we're doing right now. These are all where word of mouth crushes it. They're relationship based. They cause greater loyalty. There are higher touch formats. But now I have to say that Google, LinkedIn, and YouTube and our listeners know this, but those should be in the mix. I'm just saying those shouldn't be the only things in the mix. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. And I think also platforms come and go. TikTok, there's a lot going on there at the moment, but people remember, gosh, I can't even remember the name of it, the audio one, Clubhouse, everyone was crazy for Clubhouse for about 20 minutes. Mordy Oberstein: Blast from the COVID past. Crystal Carter: Right. And there were people everywhere. I'm doing that Clubhouse, and then it was really blowing up and people were desperate to get invitations and stuff like that. But again, not putting everything in one basket, it's kind of like a ghost town now. Mordy Oberstein: It’s still there. Come on. Andy Crestondina: I remember, I guess I'm old, but Google+. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, I was on Google+. Andy Crestondina: There were a lot of people who invested time to build a network, and so yeah, the people who invested in email, they aren't disrupted. You're just prone to disruption. Think of it this way, if you're doing algorithm marketing, big tech sits between you and your audience. Email marketing, webinars, podcasts, live events… Mordy Oberstein: Resources. You have to sign up and download the thing. Submit your email. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Yeah. Gated content. That's disintermediation. You're taking big tech out from in the middle of between you and your audience. I've always thought of email as just a disintermediation. So as soon as that person who lands from search and loved with the thing and shared their address. You got permission to talk to them directly, that is special. And that means you are not forever beholden to the algorithm. You've diversified your traffic sources. I think also algorithm marketers, they get very focused on top of funnel metrics. It's really hard not to obsess over some of these numbers, even if the number has a very low correlation with real business impact. Crystal Carter: I've had this before, so I've worked with clients before and I've done the SEO, we did the audit, we did the updates, we did the thing, we did the blah, and we looked and they're like, "But our traffic went down." I was like, "Yeah, but you had traffic two pages that were trash. They were trash pages. They meant nothing to what you were doing. So yes, the traffic did go down, but your conversions went up. That means that we're more specific. That means that we're more targeted. That means that we are getting to the right people instead of just some random people." And I've had it where I had ads that we were running, for instance, and we were getting tons of traffic in the middle of the night, but none of the people who were looking at the website between midnight and 3:00 A.M. were buying anything. So I turned off all the ads for the looky-loos, and we concentrated it for all the daytime people, and then suddenly we got more conversions. And it's not just about traffic. It's not just about those top of funnel metrics as you're saying, it's about being smart about what you're doing. Mordy Oberstein: Why I hate rank tracking on the SEO side. Yes, you rank number two, one, whatever. Okay, that's nice. Andy Crestondina: I once did a piece, it had no conversion opportunities or keyword opportunities, but I made the case that there's an inverse relationship between the visibility of a metric and its importance. The most important things in your business: net promoter score, net margins, revenue, these things you need an expert to help you create, even to find the metric. Net promoter score is very hard to measure, it takes a big effort. The most visible things in your marketing: number of followers, your rankings for a keyword, have very low correlation with business outcomes. So all the way from the top to bottom, I had this list of 37 metrics and I purposely ordered them in a way where you could sort of see the more visible the metric, the lower the business impact, the less visible the metric, the higher the business impact. It's strangely true. These platforms want us to obsess over them. Social media has gamified engagement and followings, that's why they made the... it's the availability heuristic. We pay attention to things we can see. Those big numbers, even LinkedIn now, remember they used to be like 500+. They show followings. They've gamified engagement and it helps them a lot, but it gets marketers distracted. Mordy Oberstein: LinkedIn as a side note, it's been interesting when the whole X thing was happening, I feel like they boosted engagement on purpose because they knew, okay, people were flocking over from X, let's get them hooked. Whereas I felt like that's why Threads failed or I don't want to say failed, I don't think that Threads caught on the way that it should have because when people were moving from X to Threads, the engagement was garbage, they'd be like, "Ah, what am I doing here?" Which is funny because I think it's an important point to realize that when you're on these platforms, you're right, they are gaming you and they are playing with you a little bit and it's distracting. Andy Crestondina: It is, and junior marketers and less informed executives alike pay a lot of attention to those things. It's also sort of true in analytics because if you only click on the high level report in analytics, you see top line numbers. To really get any, and I strongly believe this, you are using GA4 wrong if you don't add another dimension or drill down to a certain audience. Oh, my search rankings are down. To which pages? From which phrases? Visitors who have what kind of intent? And Crystal, we've all, anybody who's done this for half an hour will know, sure, there's tons of URLs that will attract a ton of visibility with a 0%. They don't see a single other page, they don't subscribe. They don't engage with the offers. So those are vanity. We've all heard the term, vanity metrics, so that's part of it. Don't put all your eggs in one algorithmic basket, Mordy love how you said that. And then don't put all your focus on a single metric. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. I think it's really important, and I think it's really important to keep track and to understand what actual metrics matter to your business. So I had a client once who was really concerned about brochure downloads, and I was like, why? They were really into these brochure download things. No matter what I did. In the end, we parted ways because no matter what I did, we didn't get the brochure downloads. I was like, nobody's going to download your brochure, which is the same thing that the website says. And they were like, "We needed the brochure." I was like, there are other things we can do. We can do a webinar, we could do something else, and it just wouldn't line up. But I think that it is really important for people to be conscious of those data points and maybe not so distracted by the shiny things, by all of the followers, by the things. There was a company I was talking to, or it was a talk I was at, and he was someone who worked with big influencers, people like Ronaldo, the football player, and various different things like big sports teams and stuff. And Ronaldo literally had a thing where he went viral wearing their product and they got tons of views on this video and they got tons of traffic to the site, but they got hardly any sales. Then, and this goes back to your point of the things that aren't visible or the things that really make the difference. They did a postmortem and they figured out that they needed to sort out their funnel so that when these kinds of viral things happened, they were able to actually monetize the funnel so that they were ready for it. So the next time there was a big sports player who was seen with one of these things, they were able to actually monetize it and it wasn't even as big as the first spike, but they were able to get a lot more revenue out of the instance because they spent the time doing the boring... Mordy Oberstein: That's so funny. I feel like that's one of those things where brand and performance people always silo those things separately, but they're not separate. There's just marketing and there's just awareness and there's just revenue and conversions. It's all one. It's a Neil Young song. They all sound the same because it's all one song. It all has to work together. So yeah, you could have that viral moment, but if they can't get through the funnel to buy the actual thing. They're like, great. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. So if you carry that thinking through and you conclude like, Hey, I need to fix the mousetrap before I make cheese. So here's a way to use the analytics, go look at analytics and figure out which of your landing pages converts visitors into subscribers at the highest rate of all in your content marketing. And that's that same Zipfian thing again, right? I have pages where 3% of visitors who land subscribe. I have pages where 0.003% of visitors who land subscribe. This is zero rounded up to zero in GA4. Now that I know that, I know which articles to optimize better for search, which articles to keep in heavy social media rotation, which articles to put back on my home page or to link to from my email signature or to put back on the top of the blog. Once you know where your best mousetraps are, now go make the cheese. This is the problem with SEOs right, they're all cheese and no mousetrap. You're not going to drive results. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think there's a better phrase to end this interview with than it's all cheese and no mousetraps when it comes to SEO. Andy, where can people find you? Andy Crestondina: Crystal mentioned LinkedIn. I'm of course very active there. Orbitmedia.com is where I write one article every two weeks. That's been my frequency forever. I will never send more than one email every two weeks if you sign up there. I don't know, YouTube. I wrote a book, it's on Amazon. You can find me at conferences, that's where Crystal and I hang out, so I'm easy to reach. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, thanks for joining us and I guess we'll see you out there at the next conference. Andy Crestondina: Thanks, Marty. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure you follow Andy on social media. He is absolutely fabulous, almost as fabulous or maybe the opposite way around, maybe this person is almost as fabulous as Andy is Barry Schwartz, which means that it's... is it really fair to compare Andy and Barry. I feel like it's two different things all together. Crystal Carter: Hey, there's plenty of room in the SEO universe for everyone to shine. Mordy Oberstein: Mount Rushmore, only four people. Who do you put on top? Crystal Carter: Oh no, we don't put anything on Mount Rushmore. Leave that mountain alone. Mordy Oberstein: Who's like the Mount Rushmore of Yankees greats? It's always a big argument. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I think leave the mountain alone. My personal opinion is like, let the mountain be a mountain. It doesn't need a face on it. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't need to be an artwork. You know what's artwork? The way Barry covers the SEO news, which means it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, two articles for you from Barry Schwartz and from SE Roundtable or from Barry on SE Roundtable. They're not from two different people, Barry is SE Roundtable. First up, this comes from September 27th. Spike in remove Google Reviews on September 17th. A lot of sevens in there, on September 27th Barry was reporting about a review removal spike on the 17th. Lucky number seven, I guess. Anyway, this comes from a little bit of a consensus across the local SEO space. Tim Colling posted this in local search forums. He basically asked like, Hey, seems like there's a spike in the number of legitimate favorable reviews inside of Google business profiles. Then again, Michel van Luijtelaar, saw the same sort of thing. Claudia Tomina jumped in the conversation and saw, yeah, there seems to be a bigger spike in September with more deleted reviews. So if you are in the local space, or if you are yourself a local business and you're seeing, hey, some of those great reviews are gone, you're not alone, doesn't solve the problem, but you're not alone. Also from Barry and also from SE Roundtable, but not from September 27th but from September 26th, Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25. There's so many dates, so many dates this week Barry. Okay. Basically in a nutshell, the SEO weather tools are still bonkers, still reporting an incredible amount of rank volatility. I think we're approaching at least on the Semrush Sensor. By the time you listen to this and the rank volatility on the Semrush Sensor is still high or very high, you are looking at the longest period of elevated rank volatility in history, or in the history of tracking these things the way that we do. But it sounds better to say in history. But again, all of the tools are kind of bonkers and off the rails. Some of them have reset a little bit and they're showing less volatility the way these things work, there's no such thing as high or low rank volatility, there's just relative high or relative low volatility. Think of the weather itself. If the normal was a million degrees Fahrenheit like we were living on the sun, if it was a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside, wow, that's a pretty cool day. So it's all relative. It does mean, by the way, you have to be looking at what's happening in your rankings and your traffic and yada yada, yada, go Barry, yada, yada yada. There have been reports from folks like Glenn Gabe, I've seen this myself, where a lot of the rewards in the August 2024 update have been reversed. Maybe there have been reversed back since, who knows by the time you listening to this? Who doesn't love a good reversal? Anyway, that's this week's Snappy News. Barry, the Picasso of SEO News. Crystal Carter: What? Are you saying he's all over the place. Is that what you mean? Mordy Oberstein: I didn't call him Jackson Pollock or anything. Can you imagine? You ever seen the movie Pollock where it was Ed Harris plays Jackson Pollock and it goes through the whole thing and like, wow, imagine that's how Barry wrote articles, on the floor smoking cigarettes. Crystal Carter: No, I could not imagine Barry doing that, ever. Just not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Someone should make a meme of that. Instead of Ed Harris in the movie it's Barry's face. Love that. That's a good idea. Someone should do that. Anyway, you know who else is a master of painting the fine arts of SEO? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. Darth is a... first of all, he's brilliant, but we also don't know who he really is, so it's an like an air of mystery. Crystal Carter: He's mysterious. Like a man of mystery, and yeah, he's got this fantastic collection of Threads talking about technical SEO and talking about integrating content and talking about the way you should think about content in a really nuanced way. If you follow him, he is got a really, really great perspective on all of this stuff, and it's really, really nuanced, and it doesn't just stick to standard SEO practices, but he doesn't stay just in the SEO lane. He goes into a lane that includes thinking about the business objectives, thinking about what actually moves the needle for actual businesses, and he's somebody who works with clients and who does a lot of research as well. So honestly, a great follow Mordy Oberstein: Super conceptual, really gives you frameworks that you can operate out of. I used have a standing bet with him. I used to do SEO chat. It was like a Twitter chat that I no longer do. If he could answer a question in one tweet, I gave him 20 bucks. Crystal Carter: Everything is a thread, but they're delightful. Mordy Oberstein: But they're really good. It's a fresh take. It's not the same thing regurded a thousand times over, which is why he's the follow of the week, this week. Props to Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. The man under the mask. Links to his profiles in the show notes. He's now available on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Oh, I did not realize that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. He's on LinkedIn now. Crystal Carter: There we go. Follow him on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: So I'll try to link to both of those in the show notes and quite a collection of people this week. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean, it's been great, but I think as Rihanna said, we want everyone to love us like a hot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really one of those, it's a stew, but in pie form, the stew- Crystal Carter: Stew pie form. And everyone- Mordy Oberstein: Stew pie. It's stupendous. Crystal Carter: We want Google to appreciate the delicious pie that we've made. Mordy Oberstein: And give us a larger piece of the traffic pie. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And put it on a chart. Mordy Oberstein: With a dollop of whipped cream. Crystal Carter: Right. And the dollop needs to go up into the right. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Can I get a good dollop, by the way, that's all... You think AI creates fake things, commercials have been creating fake things for a long time. No one can get a dollop that looks like that, okay. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Yo, dude, I used to work in that industry. I used to work in that industry. Do you know anytime you see an apple pie, it's actually a potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Potato pie? Crystal Carter: It's a mashed potato pie. Because what happens is if you have an actual real apple pie, you cut it and all the apple oozes out. Mordy Oberstein: It oozes out. Yeah. Crystal Carter: So what they do is they bake a mashed potato pie, and then they stick the apples on the side. So when they cut it, the apple stays in, nestled into the mashed potato, and then they just cut the- Mordy Oberstein: You're saying my whole life I've been like, it's been a lie, we're living a lie? Crystal Carter: It's mashed potato pie. I've got other secrets as well. It's like a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Mashed potato pie is also delicious. I'm not upset. Okay. Crystal Carter: I've never had a mashed potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, me neither. But it sounds like it's delicious. It's pie. Crystal Carter: I mean like… Mordy Oberstein: Are potatoes good? Is pie good? Crystal Carter: Best pie. Best pie, Mordy. Best sweet pie? Mordy Oberstein: Cherry pie is the best pie. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Hands down the best pie. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: And you have cherry pie on top of pudding. Or no, key lime pie is also delicious. I'm sorry. Lemon pie is also good. Pumpkin. I can't decide. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: That's also delicious. Crystal Carter: Pecan pie. Mordy Oberstein: Pecan pie is also delicious. Pineapple. I like pineapple pie, which is a weird thing, but- Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me one... Marshmallow pie. Good. Skittles and pie, that would probably taste good. Crystal Carter: Marshmallow. You put marshmallows on your sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Cereal pie. You just put Lucky charms to a pie crust. Crystal Carter: Okay. I think we should end with that. I think that's enough now. Mordy Oberstein: I think it's kind of ridiculous. Crystal Carter: We've reached the conclusion. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for joining us on the Serp's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with the new episode, as we dive into, bored? Here's how to rejuvenate your SEO career. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check on all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO and pie. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Despina Gavoyannis Andy Crestondina Lyndon NA Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series AHREFS Orbit Media A Guide for Content Marketing Metrics: The 37 Most (and Least) Useful Metrics This Math Pattern Explains Your Content Performance (and what to do about it) News: Spike In Removed Google Reviews On September 17th Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25 Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Despina Gavoyannis Andy Crestondina Lyndon NA Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series AHREFS Orbit Media A Guide for Content Marketing Metrics: The 37 Most (and Least) Useful Metrics This Math Pattern Explains Your Content Performance (and what to do about it) News: Spike In Removed Google Reviews On September 17th Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25 Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights into what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head SEO of brand here at Wix. And I'm joined by she who is always transparent, clear, and crystal. Our own head of communications, Crystal Carter. There's no doubt when it comes to Crystal. Crystal Carter: I get charged up in a full moon. I find water really easily as well. That's another thing. Mordy Oberstein: You have the two pronged stick that finds water? Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. I'm very reflective in my general demeanor and I like to think that I bring a nice warm glow. Mordy Oberstein: You always know where you stand with Crystal. Crystal Carter: It's true. It's true. Mordy Oberstein: For better or for worse. I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: Mostly for better, I hope. Mordy Oberstein: Only for better. The SERP'S Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our built-in Google Search Console Insights to see just how much Google does love you. As today we're diving into the gray area of the algorithm, how to know the signs of whether or not Google does or doesn't love you. What are the telltale signs that Google is infatuated with your website? What are some of the signs that they maybe are not infatuated with you, and how do all of those reversals you see in algorithm updates factor into this love triangle? HREF's Despina Gavoyannis will join us to share her tips on how to shore up those pages that might be wavering in the rankings. Plus, Orbit Media co-founder, and all around great digital marketer star, Andy Crestodina stops by to chat about what you can do while you're waiting for Google to fall in love with you. So turn up your Ace of Base because today we're showing you the sign of algorithmic love on this the 104th episode of the SERP'S Up Podcast. Full disclosure, I had a moment in time where I actually liked the Ace of Base for five minutes. Crystal Carter: Dude, I totally had that CD. I mean, that introduction definitely opened up my eyes. I think. Mordy Oberstein: What's the other song they had? They have another one, one other song. Crystal Carter: The, All That She Wants. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, right, that one, right. What the hell were we thinking with that crap. Crystal Carter: Dude. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's terrible. Crystal Carter: They've gone a little bit off the rails in recent times, but in 1998 or whatever- Mordy Oberstein: It made sense in the moment. I remember as a kid being like, "Oh, this is great," and an older friend is like, "No, don't say that. It's not good." Crystal Carter: You had to be there, man. You had to be there. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's kind of like Hanson but worse. Hanson I thought was a good... like, Hanson was good. Crystal Carter: MMMBop is a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's a good song. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. MMMBop comes on and I am singing every single word. And the breakdown. Mordy Oberstein: There are only three words in MMMBop. What do you mean all words? Crystal Carter: No, I mean there's lots of parts that aren't words like, du dubi dop, ba du bop. Mordy Oberstein: Di dibby dop dop, the du ap. That's the... Crystal Carter: Then there's all of the verses. It's very- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, come on. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great song. Crystal Carter: You say you can, but you don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Bob Dylan, it is not. Crystal Carter: No, of course not. It's a bop. It's a bop. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a word. Is it a word? Crystal Carter: It's like, the quintessential bop. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, it's great. I'm all for the MMMBop, I'm all for the Hanson. They played their own instruments like, win. Crystal Carter: Hey, I mean, all this nineties nostalgia. It was a beautiful life. Whoa, oh, oh, oh. Mordy Oberstein: How do I pivot this into SEO? I'm just not... just whatever. It's not... Not every day to win is a win, and not every loss is a loss. There's a lot to read into it. And sometimes Google demotes a site's rankings, but you may not know that's going to be a real long-term problem. Maybe these are signs of signals, Google's having a real issue with your website. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just the ebb and flow of the rankings on the SERP these days, although it's always been volatile, but pretty, especially these days. For example, you can have a prolonged slow ebbing of the rankings over time. That to me is usually a very serious issue. For me, that's usually something where Google has a quality issue with your website and it's slowly eroding away at your rankings over time. I know we're used to looking at a quality issue with your website as, oh, algorithm update, goodbye, but sometimes it's not like that. Sometimes you might see a downtrend with the algorithm update and then it slowly ebbs and erodes from there. At the same time, there are signs that maybe Google does like your content, and those could be really important for you to realize what those are because then you can improve upon them and build upon them. For example, one case that I saw back with the March 2024 core update was it was a certain keyword and the only website that was ranking... all of the websites that were ranking were pages that were specifically built to target that keyword, meaning the only topic that those pages dealt with was the topic represented in that keyword. There was this other page though that showed up around position like three, four or five, forgot exactly, and that was about the topic overall, but it dealt with as a subtopic, that one aspect of the page dealt with the keyword. That to me was a signal looking at that page and then how that page ranked and how the website ranked overall where Google's like, you know what? This website is so strong that we're even going to rank you for instances or keywords where the page isn't specifically targeting just that keyword, and even though the only other pages that are ranking are targeting that keyword, we're going to rank you anyway 'cause the content overall is so great that you now have the power to rank... in this case, this website had the power to rank, even though it wasn't particularly targeting that keyword, but just dealt with the topic tangentially. That might be a sign. In this case, it was a sign that the site was really showing favor and love in the eyes of Google, so it's really important, I think, to know what those signals and signs might be. I don't think it's an exact science because sometimes you just don't know. Having a look and seeing what the signs are that Google really does have an issue with your website or that Google doesn't, and really is loving your website. Knowing those signs and signals or trends can really be important guiding what you do for your SEO strategy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because I think it determines how much risk you take with different topics and whether or not you, as you said, go into the sort of tangential ones, whether you try something that maybe is very long tail and whether or not you... and whether or not you go for some of those head terms. Because if Google is generally into you, then you'll know because you'll have a couple of big ticket, big search volume pieces of content, and if you're able to give them something that's similar to some of your rock star pieces of content, then they're going to come back for more, and so if you can prove that users appreciate your content and that you have a good experience for users who come to the website, things aren't glitchy, that it all works well, that it's superfast loading, that kind of thing, then yeah, Google's probably going to send you some more traffic because I think what people forget is that Google's into you because users are into you. What's it called? Danny Sullivan was talking about the user signals. We have a podcast on user signals and stuff previously, but he said that people were like, oh, Google uses user signals. He's like, we've always said that. We've always paid attention to that. Not new. Mordy Oberstein: Not new. Old. Crystal Carter: Old, not new. And it's not a question of just doing it for Google, which I think Google has been trying to get into people's brains for the last couple of years. It's not just about doing it for Google, it's also about doing it for users, and then Google will see that works and then they will send their users to you. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you were talking about profiling the types of keywords that you're ranking for. That's a huge thing, by the way, to take a look at because you should really be breaking down, not just, am I ranking? Am I not ranking? That's way too broad. Am I ranking or does Google love me? Is too broad of a question. You should really be looking at where does Google rank you? Where do they not rank you? Meaning where do they love me? Where do they not love me? How do they understand me? Because being understood is really what it means to be loved, but really looking at what folders or what types of keywords or topics am I ranking for, and those sort of things are really important to understand so that either you can double down on that and build on that or say, you know what? Or cut off what's not working. It's like a bad limb on a tree. It's dying. Just cut that off. Just happened to me with a tree. Crystal Carter: Because like any relationship, there's going to be things that are annoying. Mordy, you've been married for a while, I've been married for a while. You're in a long-term relationship, there's things that are annoying about yourself and about your partner and Google will know what things they don't like about your website, but they'll know the things that they do like about your website and just if you're in a relationship and you know that maybe they don't like when you leave your shoes in the doorway or maybe they don't like it when you, I don't know, play your music really loud or something like that. If you're trying to carry favor with someone, you wouldn't do the things that you know irritate them. You would do the things that they like. So if you know that they like it when you make that particular dinner for them, you know that they really love that lasagna that you make, give them more lasagna. That's the thing. So you look at your keywords and you're like, what are the things that they like, give them more of that. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes it's very clear that they don't like that. You just don't rank for that no matter what you do and how many links you've built from high DA sites, you're not ranking for that. But sometimes it's a little bit tricky. For example, sometimes you could see with every algorithm update official and unofficial, you get thrown into the volatility fire. That's probably a sign that you might be okay in the end, you might not be okay in the end, but Google's clearly looking around at other partners. Crystal Carter: Right. Right, right, right, right. I had a client and they used to have a lot of competitors, so they'd have loads of competitors for particular keywords, and it was really spicy. Basically for this particular SERP, there was up and down, who was in one, who was in three, and the top five would switch around a lot depending on who had updated what most recently and stuff. In those situations, you really need to give Google your attention in order to make sure that you're able to stay on the side of having that SERP visibility, and that can include, it's sort of a quid pro quo. You want traffic, you have to give them more opportunities to give you traffic. It's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of schema markup and structured data because it gives you more opportunities to get on the SERP because you have more opportunities to get more rich features, for instance. And if your competitors are not optimized in that way, then they have fewer opportunities to get on there. It's another reason why I'm a big fan of using multimedia because that also gives you more opportunities to get in there. It also gives Google more opportunity to show you to different folks, and it helps them to understand your content better. So if you want them to help you, you also have to help them, but there's that saying, what is it? "The Lord helps those who help themselves," and you need to help yourself to let them help you. And I'm not saying that Google's Lord or whatever, but I think that it's worth thinking about it in that way anyway. So yeah, multimedia is something that can help you. Structured data is something that can help you. Obviously having relevant, well-written, well-researched and well-known, as in you're distributing it to people who need to know about it. You're getting people enthused about it. The content that's getting people hyped up is really useful as well because Google can take those signals and go, oh, okay, this sample of people liked it. Then we can show it to other samples of people. The other thing about that kind of thing is today, so historically speaking, when we think about content distribution, we think about it from a sort of opportunities for clicks and things like that, but in today's space where Google is not just a publisher, but Google also is a web browser and Google's also a phone manufacturer and Google is also, they have data on my wallet. I use Google Wallet all the time. They've got all of that data. They store my phone, my phone photos and all that sort of stuff. Google also, when you're sending signals out, when you're sending your content out on social, for instance, you're also giving them signals for which users to send your content to. I don't have the exact technical links between all of the content that they store and all of the data that they store, but they're going to be getting signals from, even if it's a small amount. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's the semantic analysis, that's the semantic web. It's like showing how it's all connected and making those links. Crystal Carter: Right. And like the For You feed essentially from Google that comes up... the Discover page, sorry, that shows up. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. For you is Twitter. Crystal Carter: And also on TikTok as well, but it's basically, it's a similar kind of thing. So,- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. Crystal Carter: ... if I- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And so- Mordy Oberstein: They know what I want. Yankees and SEO. Crystal Carter: So for instance, if you send content to a few people and then they're like, okay, this kind of person likes this content, that gives more opportunity to filter down those bespoke queries, which are going to get more and more bespoke as we get into a more AI assisted search space. So I think that we need to show them that we care about our content before we expect them to care about our content. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And the last thing I want to say, I agree with that a billion percent. The last thing I want to say before we get into Despina is, I'm not always big on rank tracking. I think sometimes it could be a little bit of a... you run into the problem of being a little bit of vanity or a little bit too micro-analytic. But looking at rank tracking patterns over time is a great way to get an understanding of how much Google is into you and how Google is not into you, where they're into you and where they're not into you. So if you are using a rank tracking tool, I would highly recommend you go back and look at the rank tracking trends over an extended period of time to take a look at volatility within your keywords and break them down into subcategories or tags, as they're traditionally referred to in SEO tools and to really get an understanding of where Google is into you, where they're not into you, and how in into they are. Crystal Carter: And I think also, I think you need to think about the variables of content creation and all of that sort of stuff. One of the things that you also want to think about is, let's say you're tracking this stuff and you're seeing the patterns and you're seeing the way that Google's looking at the way your content is created, etc. One of the things you might also want to think about is, is it my domain or is it the content? Right? So sometimes if you serve the content on a different domain or if you serve similar content in a different platform, and let's say it goes off, so let's say you've been writing your blog, writing your blog, and maybe you're not getting that much traffic, but let's say you do a guest post on a different blog and that gets loads of traffic and you've taken the same approach that you always do, that's a really positive signal, that's a really positive signal that if you keep going in the way that you're going, that you'll eventually get the traffic. It doesn't mean that you'll get it right that second, but it means that the content itself is good, and that means that the technical things that you do might need to change, but the content itself is solid. And you see this on social a lot where you'll have some creator will do a video or something and then some bigger platform like Lab Bible or something will share it on there and that will go really big. And if it goes off on there, you're like, okay, the content is good. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's a great point. It's such a good point. Crystal Carter: Distribution, whichever, might be the technical, it might be whatever that might need to change, but the content itself is good. And so I think it's important to do that not just for link building, but also to understand what it is that you need to tweak in order for Google to- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Yeah, is it your authority? Is it the content, is it the technical aspect of it? All that diagnosing where the problem is? That's a great point. Speaking of shoring up that content and finding out what you should be doing and how to go about doing it, we spoke to HREF's Despina Gavoyannis about how to shore up a page or pages that seemed to be wavering between ranking and not ranking. Here's what she had to say. Despina Gavoyannis: So like anything with SEO, it depends on your situation, like what you're seeing and what kind of positions your page is wavering between, because I've seen pages, they just don't stick in the SERPs at all like your targeted keyword, but then in the top 100 they'll show up sometimes and then just drop out of the top 100. So if you're seeing that sort of thing, that's a really big kind of flickering. And to me that is a hundred percent about topic alignment and intent alignment. It means you're targeting the right keyword, sure, but you're not really matching your content with what Google and people expect to see. So when you fix that up, the intent misalignment there. Generally what you'll see is that the page will stick in the SERPs. Now if you wanted to rank higher and stick higher, so for example, it'll land somewhere generally in the top 50 results is what I see, maybe even in the top 30. But then you want to get it ranking and if what you are seeing is that it's wavering between say the bottom of page one and page two, so you can't quite crack position 10 and stay there or higher. So in that case, it could be a topic or an intent misalignment. It could also be a topic depth thing. Maybe you don't have as many sections in your content that cover the subtopics that are relevant to the keyword, and your competitors might be doing a better job of that. So looking at their content and any kind of gaps in terms of the content topic depth perspective. Also looking at any gaps in your core fundamentals of SEO, things like, on-page and links. A lot of SEO depends on doing these small things that on their own don't move the needle much or even at all, but in combination can have a big impact. So for example, if your competitors have much more solid on-page optimization than what you do, that's a big gap. So they're doing it and they're doing a lot of little things that can add up and have a big impact in total. Whereas if you are not doing any of it or very little of it, then that creates a huge gap right there and it's a pretty easy gap to fix. So making sure that you've got your keywords in your headings, you've got keywords in your URLs, that you've got image alt texts and things like that, and providing a great user experience with the page itself, make sure that's all sorted. Also with links, don't look at it just from your whole website. Get links to the individual page and close those gaps. This includes internal links. So if you're covering the topic in other articles on your website, make sure you are internally linking to the page you're trying to support. And also I suppose if you can't internally link because you don't have enough content or any kind of mentions about the topic, then in that case you need to create supporting content so that it works as a hub or a bit of a content cluster that can support each other. And that helps in terms of closing topical gaps across your whole website, not just within one article. And finally, if you've tried all these things, and you're still not seeing much movement. Evaluate the recency of your content. Is the advice relevant to people right now? Even if you add new sections and technically the date on your content might be written in this year, the advice you're giving might still be outdated or not providing great user experience or things like that. So look at, is it relevant to people right now? Is it providing the best experience to people right now? Are your competitors potentially doing a better job there? And if you're not sure, if you can't be unbiased about it, you can use a website like user testing and get real people's feedback, get them to compare your competitor's content to yours and to give you their thoughts on which one they think does a better job of answering a particular question or for a specific keyword. It helps you overcome biases in your own thinking of what's working and whether your content is actually good compared to competitors or not. So those are a few of the things that I think can help. In summary: check your intent misalignment, cover any topical gaps, cover any really basic SEO gaps like, on-page and links. Those have been fundamentals for ages for a reason. Make sure that you're doing internal linking and topical gaps are covered across your whole website. And then also check the recency in user experience of the content for people searching today. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Despina. Look for Despina out on social media. Link to her profile is in the show notes. Yeah, it comes back to we're talking diagnosing. Diagnosing what the problem is, what you should be doing, have a methodical approach. Also running through the options like she's talking about. You don't always know exactly what it is. You have to roll through them and throw the kitchen sink at it in a way. So diagnose, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and also I think she was talking about testing as well. So one of the things she mentioned was user testing. So getting people to look at it and why do you think this content is better? Or why do you think this content is good? Why do you think this content is struggling or whatever? And I think she's totally right because you see this a lot. And Glenn Gabe is a big advocate of user testing for websites and particularly for user journeys because sometimes if you are in it all the time, you don't know how difficult it is to find the things that people need to find. Or maybe you do know how difficult it is, but you've gotten so used to having to navigate it in the way that you do that you're not conscious of it. So I think that getting someone with a fresh set of eyes can be really, really useful, even if, I think she mentioned that it can be a bit painful sometimes. You might have to eat a little bit of humble pie, but it is really important to do and really, really valuable both for publishers who are doing it directly and also for agency folks who are managing clients. Mordy Oberstein: And humble pie is fine because pie is pie. Pie is good. Crystal Carter: I love pie. I'm a big fan of like- Mordy Oberstein: Pie is the best- Crystal Carter: I do love Pie. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best dessert. I'm sorry, hands down, it's pie. Crystal Carter: I also like a savory pie, like- Mordy Oberstein: Like shepherd's pie? Crystal Carter: Shepherd's pie, cottage pie, chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Chicken pot pie is delicious. Oh, love chicken pot pie. Crystal Carter: Right. In England there's a lot of savory pies. It's really common. Also in America, you get chicken pot pie. Chicken pot pie is the classic one. I don't eat meat anymore, but when I did, I was all about the chicken pot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Which one? Mordy Oberstein: Tofu pot pie. Crystal Carter: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. There are lots of delicious, lots of delicious veggie pies that I'm a big fan of. So yeah, pies are good. I just generally like things that are pastry with yummy stuff in the middle of it. Mordy Oberstein: It's the best. It's literally the best. I don't have access to a lot of pie where I live, which means we don't live in a perfect world and while we're not living in a perfect world and you're sorting out your love or Google's love for you, to make sure your content is bringing in the traffic and the conversions and yada yada yada that you want, while that's all being worked out, you might want to try other marketing activities to drive that awareness, traffic, leads, and conversions instead. It's a crazy idea. Which is why we're going down a rabbit hole in a little segment we call, from the top of the SERP, as in this case, we're looking at not what gets you to the top of page one, but what other activities can get you traffic while you work your way there. And to help us, we have special guest, the co-founder of Orbit Media, Andy Crestodina. Andy, welcome to the SERPs Up Podcast. Andy Crestondina: I am glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for sticking with us by the way, because the audience doesn't know this. I've known your name for many, many years, but I couldn't get it out of my mouth the right way. Andy Crestondina: I stumbled on it myself. No trouble at all. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you with us today. Andy Crestondina: Yeah, thanks for having me, Crystal. I'm glad. This will be fun. I've been looking forward to this. I'm psyched. Mordy Oberstein: So I know it's a little bit like heresy to the SEO folk listening to this. If you're not an SEO folk, this makes obvious logical sense. But putting all of your eggs in one algorithmic basket, whether you're still trying to get Google to love you and whatnot, or in general, Google does love you now, they might not love you tomorrow. What do you recommend sites do? Let's say there are an established website, they have traffic, they have some brand awareness. What do you recommend they do to really increase that, diversify their channels and get some momentum beyond the SERP? Andy Crestondina: I love this question. I think that it's important for SEOs to consider this because there is such a thing as topic channel fit, and there are lots of articles and web pages and service we offer different things that have no keyword opportunity. Only about half of the articles that I write are actually relevant for search. And that's fine. I'm not a keyword first marketer. I'm trying to connect a piece of content to a target audience. So my first thought is, I'm making this thing, is there a keyword opportunity here? If no, no problem, I can use other channels. Everything can be promoted in email and social, through influencers, and other ways. So it's really important to keep that in mind. And I sleep well at night knowing that I am not totally beholden to Google for all of my traffic and that I can be kind of a dual threat marketer. There's more to life than search and many things that we all make really are not relevant for that channel whatsoever. Crystal Carter: I think that's a really interesting way to think about it because I've definitely seen people go, oh, well, we shouldn't write this blog because it doesn't have a good search volume. We shouldn't write this piece of content because no one's going to find it on Google or the search volume's low or that sort of thing. And I think it's really interesting that you're like, this is a thing that people need to hear. We can get it to them in a different way. If it's not for search, it can go another way. Is there a way that you sort of figure out which is the best channel for a piece of content that you think people need to hear? Andy Crestondina: For sure. The job of the search marketer is to basically meet expectations. The searcher has an information need and your job is satisfy that information need. The social media marketer, the job is to be a little bit unexpected. See how that's actually the opposite channel? So there are lots of topics where social is the proper channel. Let's say you want to put out a counter-narrative perspective. No one's looking for counter-narratives, they're looking for confirmation or they're looking for an answer. And thought leadership. Another way to say that, op-ed content, anything that is a perspective where you're trying to start a conversation or you're saying something that's maybe contrarian to the conventional wisdom. That stuff crushes social media. It's great in social, it starts big conversations, right? Say something interesting. So search, if your content meets expectations, search. If your content is a bit unexpected, social. And by the way, these channels, understanding the difference between social and search, it's so fascinating. In search there's actually a ceiling to the amount of demand in the market. There's only X number of people searching for a topic each day, but social media, there is no limit. I have seen things... If you've never seen the analytics for a mini viral event, you're missing out. It is breathtaking how many people are on the internet. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, totally true. Andy Crestondina: And if you're exhausted, just long form content, long text pieces, Hey, guess what? The short, punchy, pithy thing, the highly visual thing, the collaboration with an influencer thing, social's perfect. So you don't have enough in your content mix, and Mordy, thanks for saying diversification because that's the perfect perspective. If you are not first thinking of the topic, what does my audience need? What's the most interesting thing I can do today? And then asking what is the proper channel for promoting this thing? The answer is not always search. Mordy Oberstein: So when you're thinking of diversifying those channels, okay, I am not going to write for search. Where do you start? What are you looking at? Is there like, okay, I want to do something on social. Does the channel drive the strategy itself or the type of content drive the strategy, trying to build a brand awareness? What's driving the overall strategy for you? Andy Crestondina: Well, I am a fifteen-year content strategist, and I often think to myself, this is something new, interesting, helpful, valuable to me, working for me, I should share this with the world. Next question. Is this something that could work in content marketing or maybe I'm just make this as a sales enablement piece. By the way, there's bottom of funnel content that you can share with prospects that is 100X the value of that new weird top of funnel, high search volume phrase. Make something for your prospects first. I'd say let's all prioritize the bottom of the funnel. And then whatever that thing is, whatever you're making, does it relate to other pieces of content? Is there already a conversation happening about this? Is this part of a trend? Is this content evergreen? What is the proper format? Should this be a video or long form text or is it an infographic thing here? Give you an example. Two weeks ago, I've always been thinking about this, you know how every chart in marketing is like a log scale curve. There are no straight lines. The top performers are... search especially, top performer gets most of the clicks. Number two gets half as many. Number three gets a third as many. That mathematical distribution is called the Zipfian distribution. Okay, you've never heard of that? No one's heard of that. I get it. But actually it's super interesting that that Zipfian distribution applies across topics and formats and channels. Click-through rate by search position, and a tiny percentage of things go viral, and a tiny percentage of social accounts gets most of the engagement. And a tiny percentage YouTube videos get most of the views. That's a really interesting way to think about marketing and it's valuable because you can focus on trying to make top performers and avoid making the medium quality stuff , but there's a practical takeaway. Okay, you get the idea. I'm making this article, right? I want to do this. I want to show the charts. I want people to see the alignment between this math thing and their marketing, and I want to make strategic recommendations based on that. Focus on the 10X things. No keyword opportunity at all. No one is searching for log scale pattern- Crystal Carter: Zipfian. Andy Crestondina: ... marketing. Yeah, George Zipf. So no problem. I'm making it anyway. I feel strongly about this. I think the world needs the article. It's a failure of the internet that this article doesn't exist. That's how passionate I am about creating it. Who has all the data? Pete Caputa from Databox. Let's talk to Pete. Great, Pete and I have a call. He shares a bunch of data. I overlay my little chart thing on it. He starts a conversation on LinkedIn. I jump in, I write the article, I publish on LinkedIn, he jumps in. It got huge results. Nothing to do with search. What did I do? I found something that was visual. I collaborated with a subject matter expert. I didn't hesitate to write the cool, weird, fun headline with no keywords in it. It's liberating, by the way, to not have to worry about keywords sometimes, right? In search, I'm all in or I'm all out. If that thing's keyword relevant, I'm totally focused on making something that is the best page on the internet for that topic. But if it's just an unusual thing, a weird thing, a visual thing, a surprising thing. It's kind of like working with, if you've ever worked with an innovator or an inventor or someone who makes new things, no one's looking for new things. It doesn't exist yet. Those people should still start those companies. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Crystal Carter: I think it's like, if you were cooking for, I don't know, 500 people, if you were cooking for, I don't know, the family reunion or something like that, you're not going to do an artisanal ceviche or something with heirloom tomatoes from here, there and there. You're going to do the macaroni and cheese. You know that the macaroni and cheese is going to get the most people and they're going to enjoy it and they're going to be happy. Whereas, I don't know, if it's some special dinner for your anniversary or whatever, and it's a special person and you know that they'll appreciate that you've spent all of this time, but it's a different audience. You're still cooking, you're still making whatever you're making, but it's a different kind of situation and they'll appreciate it more. And both audiences will appreciate that you've taken the care to give them the right thing, in the right space. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. Crystal Carter: ... really important. Mordy Oberstein: That's a great example. Andy Crestondina: Yep. Mac and cheese, that's the highest search volume key phrase. And my daughter loves it. But the heirloom tomato, like the fancy Caprese salad that people weren't expecting, like, whoa, dude, pine nuts. Wait a minute, that's a different... you get it, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Andy Crestondina: So, it's really kind of a boring content strategy both for your readers to consume and for you to create if you think that everything's got to be a keyword. Come on. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, a thousand percent. Crystal Carter: And I think also, so there's a couple of things that I come for that. So people who have just discovered you on our podcast might not know that you are also speaking from the point of having a massive social media following. So I think that that's something that's worth thinking about as well. If you're not following Andy on LinkedIn, you should do that because it's absolutely worth doing. And all the other channels as well- Andy Crestondina: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Link in the show notes. Crystal Carter: So I think that that's something that's really important to think about as well, is that you have spent time cultivating an audience that you know is interested in the thing that you found really fascinating this week. The thing that you found really fascinating today or whatever it may be. And I think that in order to do some of the things that you're talking about in order to speak to some of that more creative, more out-of-the-box content, do you think that it's worth building that community first before you start doing that? Or do you think the two things go together? Andy Crestondina: I'm not sure if... community building and in some ways search rankings, these are not... they're more like outcomes than they are a strategy in a way. That's what happens if you did everything else well. So what did I do on LinkedIn? I wrote an article every two weeks for 12 years. I never write an article without collaborating with a subject matter expert or influencer. I made sure that my articles were highly visual. I promoted those things in many places as well as on LinkedIn. I used LinkedIn for all kinds of other activities, for research and collaborating and connecting with people. I started a LinkedIn newsletter, which is my number one tip for B2B marketers today, started a LinkedIn newsletter. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. I was talking to Andy about this at MozCon. It really is a masterclass. It's fantastic. Subscribe to Digital Marketing Tips on LinkedIn. Andy Crestondina: Give it a boring name like Digital Marketing Tips. Actually, this is common across channels. Specificity correlates with engagement, conversion, search rankings. I think that a lot of things, a lot of... one of the common mistakes that marketers make is just writing sort of vague headlines and subheads. So Digital Marketing Tips. I've seen people launch LinkedIn newsletters that's like, What's in Brian's Brain? What would I get if... no, I'm not. You can subscribe to a LinkedIn newsletter with one tap of your finger that explains the growth. But why would someone tap? Who's Brian? I don't get... there's no specificity. Be specific about the benefits, right? It's like a call to action in anything. Tell them what they're going to get if they do it. But yeah, LinkedIn newsletters, you can repurpose old content. It's going to reach a much larger audience. It's a lot of tableau funnel stuff, but it's great for brand. Mordy Oberstein: This is SERP's Up Podcast, we ask the hard questions. I don't think I've ever asked a hard question in this podcast before, but this is the first time. If we're saying, okay, wait a second, be careful with the whole Google thing. You're beholden to the algorithm. Who knows what'll happen? Is it the same thing to play devil's advocate on social media? Like, look what happened with X. Andy Crestondina: Excellent point. No social and search are algorithm marketing. And no one really uses that term, but that's exactly what you're doing if you're marketing in those. And those marketers have a bit of anxiety all the time anyway. Oh, what will I do if I... It's like LinkedIn, I've never done it. But some people on LinkedIn, they make a post promoting an article, then they put the article link in the first comment. Oh, because LinkedIn doesn't like if you have a thing that sends people... Who cares? Mordy Oberstein: I'll tell you on that, someone once said, I'm... because I would play around with doing this thing, what worked, what didn't work? And then someone said, "I hate when people put the link in the comment. You never find the damn thing." I'm like, "You know what? I don't care about the algorithm anymore. People who are reading what I'm writing are annoyed by it, then I'm not going to do that." Andy Crestondina: People first, no matter what channel you're in. But then, yeah, I mean a diversified marketing strategy should have more than search and social because you will be forever beholden to those algorithms and they will change. You don't own your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers or your followers or your search rankings. Email, live events, where Crystal and I first met. Webinars, podcasts, we're doing right now. These are all where word of mouth crushes it. They're relationship based. They cause greater loyalty. There are higher touch formats. But now I have to say that Google, LinkedIn, and YouTube and our listeners know this, but those should be in the mix. I'm just saying those shouldn't be the only things in the mix. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. And I think also platforms come and go. TikTok, there's a lot going on there at the moment, but people remember, gosh, I can't even remember the name of it, the audio one, Clubhouse, everyone was crazy for Clubhouse for about 20 minutes. Mordy Oberstein: Blast from the COVID past. Crystal Carter: Right. And there were people everywhere. I'm doing that Clubhouse, and then it was really blowing up and people were desperate to get invitations and stuff like that. But again, not putting everything in one basket, it's kind of like a ghost town now. Mordy Oberstein: It’s still there. Come on. Andy Crestondina: I remember, I guess I'm old, but Google+. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, I was on Google+. Andy Crestondina: There were a lot of people who invested time to build a network, and so yeah, the people who invested in email, they aren't disrupted. You're just prone to disruption. Think of it this way, if you're doing algorithm marketing, big tech sits between you and your audience. Email marketing, webinars, podcasts, live events… Mordy Oberstein: Resources. You have to sign up and download the thing. Submit your email. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. Yeah. Gated content. That's disintermediation. You're taking big tech out from in the middle of between you and your audience. I've always thought of email as just a disintermediation. So as soon as that person who lands from search and loved with the thing and shared their address. You got permission to talk to them directly, that is special. And that means you are not forever beholden to the algorithm. You've diversified your traffic sources. I think also algorithm marketers, they get very focused on top of funnel metrics. It's really hard not to obsess over some of these numbers, even if the number has a very low correlation with real business impact. Crystal Carter: I've had this before, so I've worked with clients before and I've done the SEO, we did the audit, we did the updates, we did the thing, we did the blah, and we looked and they're like, "But our traffic went down." I was like, "Yeah, but you had traffic two pages that were trash. They were trash pages. They meant nothing to what you were doing. So yes, the traffic did go down, but your conversions went up. That means that we're more specific. That means that we're more targeted. That means that we are getting to the right people instead of just some random people." And I've had it where I had ads that we were running, for instance, and we were getting tons of traffic in the middle of the night, but none of the people who were looking at the website between midnight and 3:00 A.M. were buying anything. So I turned off all the ads for the looky-loos, and we concentrated it for all the daytime people, and then suddenly we got more conversions. And it's not just about traffic. It's not just about those top of funnel metrics as you're saying, it's about being smart about what you're doing. Mordy Oberstein: Why I hate rank tracking on the SEO side. Yes, you rank number two, one, whatever. Okay, that's nice. Andy Crestondina: I once did a piece, it had no conversion opportunities or keyword opportunities, but I made the case that there's an inverse relationship between the visibility of a metric and its importance. The most important things in your business: net promoter score, net margins, revenue, these things you need an expert to help you create, even to find the metric. Net promoter score is very hard to measure, it takes a big effort. The most visible things in your marketing: number of followers, your rankings for a keyword, have very low correlation with business outcomes. So all the way from the top to bottom, I had this list of 37 metrics and I purposely ordered them in a way where you could sort of see the more visible the metric, the lower the business impact, the less visible the metric, the higher the business impact. It's strangely true. These platforms want us to obsess over them. Social media has gamified engagement and followings, that's why they made the... it's the availability heuristic. We pay attention to things we can see. Those big numbers, even LinkedIn now, remember they used to be like 500+. They show followings. They've gamified engagement and it helps them a lot, but it gets marketers distracted. Mordy Oberstein: LinkedIn as a side note, it's been interesting when the whole X thing was happening, I feel like they boosted engagement on purpose because they knew, okay, people were flocking over from X, let's get them hooked. Whereas I felt like that's why Threads failed or I don't want to say failed, I don't think that Threads caught on the way that it should have because when people were moving from X to Threads, the engagement was garbage, they'd be like, "Ah, what am I doing here?" Which is funny because I think it's an important point to realize that when you're on these platforms, you're right, they are gaming you and they are playing with you a little bit and it's distracting. Andy Crestondina: It is, and junior marketers and less informed executives alike pay a lot of attention to those things. It's also sort of true in analytics because if you only click on the high level report in analytics, you see top line numbers. To really get any, and I strongly believe this, you are using GA4 wrong if you don't add another dimension or drill down to a certain audience. Oh, my search rankings are down. To which pages? From which phrases? Visitors who have what kind of intent? And Crystal, we've all, anybody who's done this for half an hour will know, sure, there's tons of URLs that will attract a ton of visibility with a 0%. They don't see a single other page, they don't subscribe. They don't engage with the offers. So those are vanity. We've all heard the term, vanity metrics, so that's part of it. Don't put all your eggs in one algorithmic basket, Mordy love how you said that. And then don't put all your focus on a single metric. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. I think it's really important, and I think it's really important to keep track and to understand what actual metrics matter to your business. So I had a client once who was really concerned about brochure downloads, and I was like, why? They were really into these brochure download things. No matter what I did. In the end, we parted ways because no matter what I did, we didn't get the brochure downloads. I was like, nobody's going to download your brochure, which is the same thing that the website says. And they were like, "We needed the brochure." I was like, there are other things we can do. We can do a webinar, we could do something else, and it just wouldn't line up. But I think that it is really important for people to be conscious of those data points and maybe not so distracted by the shiny things, by all of the followers, by the things. There was a company I was talking to, or it was a talk I was at, and he was someone who worked with big influencers, people like Ronaldo, the football player, and various different things like big sports teams and stuff. And Ronaldo literally had a thing where he went viral wearing their product and they got tons of views on this video and they got tons of traffic to the site, but they got hardly any sales. Then, and this goes back to your point of the things that aren't visible or the things that really make the difference. They did a postmortem and they figured out that they needed to sort out their funnel so that when these kinds of viral things happened, they were able to actually monetize the funnel so that they were ready for it. So the next time there was a big sports player who was seen with one of these things, they were able to actually monetize it and it wasn't even as big as the first spike, but they were able to get a lot more revenue out of the instance because they spent the time doing the boring... Mordy Oberstein: That's so funny. I feel like that's one of those things where brand and performance people always silo those things separately, but they're not separate. There's just marketing and there's just awareness and there's just revenue and conversions. It's all one. It's a Neil Young song. They all sound the same because it's all one song. It all has to work together. So yeah, you could have that viral moment, but if they can't get through the funnel to buy the actual thing. They're like, great. Andy Crestondina: Yeah. So if you carry that thinking through and you conclude like, Hey, I need to fix the mousetrap before I make cheese. So here's a way to use the analytics, go look at analytics and figure out which of your landing pages converts visitors into subscribers at the highest rate of all in your content marketing. And that's that same Zipfian thing again, right? I have pages where 3% of visitors who land subscribe. I have pages where 0.003% of visitors who land subscribe. This is zero rounded up to zero in GA4. Now that I know that, I know which articles to optimize better for search, which articles to keep in heavy social media rotation, which articles to put back on my home page or to link to from my email signature or to put back on the top of the blog. Once you know where your best mousetraps are, now go make the cheese. This is the problem with SEOs right, they're all cheese and no mousetrap. You're not going to drive results. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think there's a better phrase to end this interview with than it's all cheese and no mousetraps when it comes to SEO. Andy, where can people find you? Andy Crestondina: Crystal mentioned LinkedIn. I'm of course very active there. Orbitmedia.com is where I write one article every two weeks. That's been my frequency forever. I will never send more than one email every two weeks if you sign up there. I don't know, YouTube. I wrote a book, it's on Amazon. You can find me at conferences, that's where Crystal and I hang out, so I'm easy to reach. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Well, thanks for joining us and I guess we'll see you out there at the next conference. Andy Crestondina: Thanks, Marty. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure you follow Andy on social media. He is absolutely fabulous, almost as fabulous or maybe the opposite way around, maybe this person is almost as fabulous as Andy is Barry Schwartz, which means that it's... is it really fair to compare Andy and Barry. I feel like it's two different things all together. Crystal Carter: Hey, there's plenty of room in the SEO universe for everyone to shine. Mordy Oberstein: Mount Rushmore, only four people. Who do you put on top? Crystal Carter: Oh no, we don't put anything on Mount Rushmore. Leave that mountain alone. Mordy Oberstein: Who's like the Mount Rushmore of Yankees greats? It's always a big argument. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I think leave the mountain alone. My personal opinion is like, let the mountain be a mountain. It doesn't need a face on it. Mordy Oberstein: It doesn't need to be an artwork. You know what's artwork? The way Barry covers the SEO news, which means it's time for this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, two articles for you from Barry Schwartz and from SE Roundtable or from Barry on SE Roundtable. They're not from two different people, Barry is SE Roundtable. First up, this comes from September 27th. Spike in remove Google Reviews on September 17th. A lot of sevens in there, on September 27th Barry was reporting about a review removal spike on the 17th. Lucky number seven, I guess. Anyway, this comes from a little bit of a consensus across the local SEO space. Tim Colling posted this in local search forums. He basically asked like, Hey, seems like there's a spike in the number of legitimate favorable reviews inside of Google business profiles. Then again, Michel van Luijtelaar, saw the same sort of thing. Claudia Tomina jumped in the conversation and saw, yeah, there seems to be a bigger spike in September with more deleted reviews. So if you are in the local space, or if you are yourself a local business and you're seeing, hey, some of those great reviews are gone, you're not alone, doesn't solve the problem, but you're not alone. Also from Barry and also from SE Roundtable, but not from September 27th but from September 26th, Google Search Ranking Movement Heated, Volatility Continues 9/25. There's so many dates, so many dates this week Barry. Okay. Basically in a nutshell, the SEO weather tools are still bonkers, still reporting an incredible amount of rank volatility. I think we're approaching at least on the Semrush Sensor. By the time you listen to this and the rank volatility on the Semrush Sensor is still high or very high, you are looking at the longest period of elevated rank volatility in history, or in the history of tracking these things the way that we do. But it sounds better to say in history. But again, all of the tools are kind of bonkers and off the rails. Some of them have reset a little bit and they're showing less volatility the way these things work, there's no such thing as high or low rank volatility, there's just relative high or relative low volatility. Think of the weather itself. If the normal was a million degrees Fahrenheit like we were living on the sun, if it was a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside, wow, that's a pretty cool day. So it's all relative. It does mean, by the way, you have to be looking at what's happening in your rankings and your traffic and yada yada, yada, go Barry, yada, yada yada. There have been reports from folks like Glenn Gabe, I've seen this myself, where a lot of the rewards in the August 2024 update have been reversed. Maybe there have been reversed back since, who knows by the time you listening to this? Who doesn't love a good reversal? Anyway, that's this week's Snappy News. Barry, the Picasso of SEO News. Crystal Carter: What? Are you saying he's all over the place. Is that what you mean? Mordy Oberstein: I didn't call him Jackson Pollock or anything. Can you imagine? You ever seen the movie Pollock where it was Ed Harris plays Jackson Pollock and it goes through the whole thing and like, wow, imagine that's how Barry wrote articles, on the floor smoking cigarettes. Crystal Carter: No, I could not imagine Barry doing that, ever. Just not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Someone should make a meme of that. Instead of Ed Harris in the movie it's Barry's face. Love that. That's a good idea. Someone should do that. Anyway, you know who else is a master of painting the fine arts of SEO? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. Darth is a... first of all, he's brilliant, but we also don't know who he really is, so it's an like an air of mystery. Crystal Carter: He's mysterious. Like a man of mystery, and yeah, he's got this fantastic collection of Threads talking about technical SEO and talking about integrating content and talking about the way you should think about content in a really nuanced way. If you follow him, he is got a really, really great perspective on all of this stuff, and it's really, really nuanced, and it doesn't just stick to standard SEO practices, but he doesn't stay just in the SEO lane. He goes into a lane that includes thinking about the business objectives, thinking about what actually moves the needle for actual businesses, and he's somebody who works with clients and who does a lot of research as well. So honestly, a great follow Mordy Oberstein: Super conceptual, really gives you frameworks that you can operate out of. I used have a standing bet with him. I used to do SEO chat. It was like a Twitter chat that I no longer do. If he could answer a question in one tweet, I gave him 20 bucks. Crystal Carter: Everything is a thread, but they're delightful. Mordy Oberstein: But they're really good. It's a fresh take. It's not the same thing regurded a thousand times over, which is why he's the follow of the week, this week. Props to Darth Autocrat, Lyndon NA. The man under the mask. Links to his profiles in the show notes. He's now available on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Oh, I did not realize that. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. He's on LinkedIn now. Crystal Carter: There we go. Follow him on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: So I'll try to link to both of those in the show notes and quite a collection of people this week. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I mean, it's been great, but I think as Rihanna said, we want everyone to love us like a hot pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's really one of those, it's a stew, but in pie form, the stew- Crystal Carter: Stew pie form. And everyone- Mordy Oberstein: Stew pie. It's stupendous. Crystal Carter: We want Google to appreciate the delicious pie that we've made. Mordy Oberstein: And give us a larger piece of the traffic pie. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And put it on a chart. Mordy Oberstein: With a dollop of whipped cream. Crystal Carter: Right. And the dollop needs to go up into the right. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah. Can I get a good dollop, by the way, that's all... You think AI creates fake things, commercials have been creating fake things for a long time. No one can get a dollop that looks like that, okay. It's ridiculous. Crystal Carter: Yo, dude, I used to work in that industry. I used to work in that industry. Do you know anytime you see an apple pie, it's actually a potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Potato pie? Crystal Carter: It's a mashed potato pie. Because what happens is if you have an actual real apple pie, you cut it and all the apple oozes out. Mordy Oberstein: It oozes out. Yeah. Crystal Carter: So what they do is they bake a mashed potato pie, and then they stick the apples on the side. So when they cut it, the apple stays in, nestled into the mashed potato, and then they just cut the- Mordy Oberstein: You're saying my whole life I've been like, it's been a lie, we're living a lie? Crystal Carter: It's mashed potato pie. I've got other secrets as well. It's like a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Mashed potato pie is also delicious. I'm not upset. Okay. Crystal Carter: I've never had a mashed potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, me neither. But it sounds like it's delicious. It's pie. Crystal Carter: I mean like… Mordy Oberstein: Are potatoes good? Is pie good? Crystal Carter: Best pie. Best pie, Mordy. Best sweet pie? Mordy Oberstein: Cherry pie is the best pie. Crystal Carter: What? Mordy Oberstein: Hands down the best pie. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: And you have cherry pie on top of pudding. Or no, key lime pie is also delicious. I'm sorry. Lemon pie is also good. Pumpkin. I can't decide. Crystal Carter: Sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: That's also delicious. Crystal Carter: Pecan pie. Mordy Oberstein: Pecan pie is also delicious. Pineapple. I like pineapple pie, which is a weird thing, but- Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me one... Marshmallow pie. Good. Skittles and pie, that would probably taste good. Crystal Carter: Marshmallow. You put marshmallows on your sweet potato pie. Mordy Oberstein: Cereal pie. You just put Lucky charms to a pie crust. Crystal Carter: Okay. I think we should end with that. I think that's enough now. Mordy Oberstein: I think it's kind of ridiculous. Crystal Carter: We've reached the conclusion. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks for joining us on the Serp's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry? We're back next week with the new episode, as we dive into, bored? Here's how to rejuvenate your SEO career. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check on all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio, SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO and pie. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Websites aren’t built by SEOs alone. As an SEO, how can you best collaborate with all of the teams pushing the site’s success? We dive into how SEOs can best work this designers, devs, content creators, and beyond to build the best and most optimzied site possible. Join Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein to get tips and strategies on working with non-SEOs on websites. In the SEO world, jargon can be a hindrance when working with non-SEO teams. Neha Khanna joins the podcast to enlighten us on how to use the art of communication when working with these teams. Marissa Brower also joins the conversation to shed light on the fascinating world of personal branding. Gain insights on how not just to create a personal brand but how to leverage that personal brand to uplift your whole team. Join us as we share the long-term strategies that can help you win the SEO game and beyond on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back SEOs working well with non-SEOs for success Websites aren’t built by SEOs alone. As an SEO, how can you best collaborate with all of the teams pushing the site’s success? We dive into how SEOs can best work this designers, devs, content creators, and beyond to build the best and most optimzied site possible. Join Wix’s Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein to get tips and strategies on working with non-SEOs on websites. In the SEO world, jargon can be a hindrance when working with non-SEO teams. Neha Khanna joins the podcast to enlighten us on how to use the art of communication when working with these teams. Marissa Brower also joins the conversation to shed light on the fascinating world of personal branding. Gain insights on how not just to create a personal brand but how to leverage that personal brand to uplift your whole team. Join us as we share the long-term strategies that can help you win the SEO game and beyond on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 60 | November 1, 2023 | 44 MIN 00:00 / 44:18 This week’s guests Marissa Brower Marissa Brower is a highly skilled and experienced social media manager and content creator with a proven track record of successfully developing and implementing video-focused social media strategies to drive brand awareness, engagement, and growth. She has amassed over 220,000 followers on her TikTok channel, as well as nearly 70,000 followers between her Instagram and YouTube channels. She has honed her skills in social media management, content creation, and video editing to drive Wix's brand awareness and boost audience engagement. Neha Khanna Neha Khanna is a seasoned Technical Product Manager at Wayfair, where she has made her mark in the dynamic world of SEO. With several years of dedicated experience in the field, Neha has established herself as a passionate problem solver and product builder, consistently driving SEO value to the business. Her enthusiasm for optimizing digital landscapes and crafting solutions that boost online visibility is not only a profession but also a profound passion! Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahala. We're joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I am joined by she who works well with others, plays nicely with the sandbox, with everybody. She is our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hi. Yes, it is very important to work well with others, to get along, to make friends, and influence people- Mordy Oberstein: Play nicely in the sandbox. Crystal Carter: ... It's very important. It's very important. It's very important. Mordy Oberstein: Well, it's very hard, because in a sandbox, the one thing you want to do was fling sand at other children. Not that I am an adult, go into the sandbox and fling sand at children, but when I was a child. Crystal Carter: No. I was all about digging a hole from one side, digging a tunnel, a full tunnel, so that you had the- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... sand... I mean, because that was a challenge. You'd have to maintain the integrity and you also have to judge it correctly, because otherwise it will collapse. That was my favorite thing. I was like, "Can we dig a tunnel? Yes or no? Let's see." Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. You right- Crystal Carter: Can I step up? Mordy Oberstein: ... when I dig a tunnel and I'm like, "Hey, can I fling sand at this kid over here?" Look at what we both turned out. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there you go. Mordy Oberstein: This SERF's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix. You can only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also manage projects in one unified workspace of multiple teammates, work on one site at the same time while sharing live comments, and all while setting specific roles for specific team members on specific sites, with our new agency first offering with Studio. Learn more about that over at wix.com/studios. Today, we talk about working well with non-SEO teams, or as my language, don't fling sand at the design team or the dev team. Work well with them. We're diving into joining together with the band to make beautiful music on the site that you're working on, as we cover why jargon is not an SEO's best friend when working with other teams. Why everyone is different and their different priorities are A-okay. Why common sense ain't so common when working with non-SEO teams. It ain't so common, to be honest with you, when working with anybody, but whatever. To help us make SEO accessible to non-SEO teams, Neha Khanna: will stop by to help us make SEO accessible for non-SEO teams. Hello, redundancy. I think I has said that. Anyway, we'll also talk with one of our in-house influencers, Marissa Brower on how to build your personal brand, but do it in a way that works well, not just for you but for your whole team. We're all team this week. So put on your cooperation caps as episode number 60 of the SERF's Up podcast takes Sesame Street's cooperation makes it happen to a whole other level. (singing) Remember that song? Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, it's a classic Sesame Street song. Crystal Carter: Oh, right. I mean, I was a big fan of Sesame Street's. Still am. Still absolutely am, but I don't remember Cooperation. I remember (singing)- Mordy Oberstein: Also a classic. Crystal Carter: That's a good one. Also- Mordy Oberstein: That's the classic. Crystal Carter: Right? Also, Martina, know is a tennis player is a person in your neighborhood, and they had Martina Navratilova, and I was like, "What's up, Martina? Okay." Mordy Oberstein: "This isn't my neighborhood." Crystal Carter: She's not, she's really not. Mordy Oberstein: It's like on Park Avenue somewhere. Crystal Carter: Right. I think I'd know if Martina Navratilova lived in my neighborhood. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: But also, what was the, the other one is put down the ducky. That is like... Mordy Oberstein: That's, also B is for Bubble is one of my classic favorite ones. (singing) Crystal Carter: There was a New York Giants one that they did or something as well, I think. Mordy Oberstein: Billy Joel was on Sesame Street. Wow, we- Crystal Carter: Ooh. Sorry, last one. The best one is it's like that Paul Simon song, You got to get on- Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: ... make a new plan, Stan. And it was like, God, what was it? Oh no, I'm sorry, it's Kermit the Frog. It's Kermit the Frog, and I think it's a wrench or something? What's the name of that song? It's like make a news plan stand. You don't need to be coy, Roy, just listen to me. Mordy Oberstein: Didn't Kermit sing that Carpenter song also? Maybe the Carpenters sang the Kermit song. Crystal Carter: Lever. It was love your lever. It wasn't learn to love your... leave your lover, it was Learn to Love Your Lever. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, nice. Crystal Carter: That's what they did. It was brilliant. Anyway, it was worth it. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, we're talking about not-Sesame Street today, although really we could. Talking about creating, managing, and growing a website and a business along with it. And when you're doing it, it's like an onion, or for fans of Shrek, like an ogre, it has layers. And the success of the site, as much as it pains me to say this, is not all about SEO. I know, hot take, right? Everyone's, "Oh, no. It's about SEO." It is, and it's also not. There are multiple things going on, from the organic success to the branding, to the social media marketing, to dev, to whatever that means. Getting along with others in the wider sandbox and not flinging sand at them. Nay, it means more than getting along with them. That means actually being productive. It means digging tunnels in the sandbox together. And I can tell you from personal experience, that's very hard. It's hard, because it means you have to not only explain things the right way, but it also means bringing in other teams at the right time, which can be tricky, but your ability as an SEO can make or break the efficiency of getting that site going. And at that level of organization, especially on bigger sites and bigger organizations, it's really, really tricky. And it means being very well organized, I think, and very well aware of what's happening around you in the organization. And it also means, in my personal opinion, hard it is for me to say, because I have a hard time with this, being able to let go. I feel like SEO's hard because we fight for every inch of the internet, but when working with non-SEO teams, you need to know how to accommodate their goals and their needs and how they see things. And it's going to mean knowing when to and when not to push the envelope. If there's a big branding push on the site's homepage, and that may impact some small SEO tasks, maybe don't fight it. Save your capital. And that's not always very easy, because at times, you do want to push the SEO agenda, but not all the way, meaning you have to be strategic and know how to start a conversation without finishing it so that in the future, other teams may eventually adopt your SEO outlook. Meaning you're starting even though you think, "Yes, we should do this SEO thing." Sometimes you want to start the conversation but not finish it. Let it simmer, let it stew, and all those sorts of cooking analogies. Crystal Carter: Let it marinate. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. That's another one. Wow, good pull. Good pull. That's why you're my favorite co-host. You're also my only co-host. Whatever it is, when working with non-SEO teams, my opinion is play the long game. Crystal, your take. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I totally think so. And also I think it's really important to understand what's important to them and how you can make SEO important to them based on what they value. So if you're working with sales teams, how can you connect SEO to sales? If you're working with PPC teams, how can you connect the value of your SEO to making their ads cost less? Because if your SEO is good on the pages that you're using for PPC as well, then that's going to help you to get a good value there. If you're seeing that you're getting good PPC traffic... I think I saw a really good presentation at Brighton SEO, and I cannot remember who it was off the top of my head just now, but they were talking about prioritization. And they were saying that sometimes you can have a look at your information and your keyword research and you can say, "This keyword should be used for PPC," "This keyword, we're crushing it on SEO, so we should not be doing PPC on that, because we're getting that traffic anyway." "But this one is something that we're in the ballpark, and if we did a little PPC on there, we could get some good reaction there." So I think don't just go to people with your own agenda, go to them with something that's of value to them and understand what things are of value to them so that you can work genuinely together. Genuinely. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time, it's also explain the value to you. If you want something done, if you're able to explain, "Hey, this is why I think it's really important and here's the impact and the outcomes, and maybe the long-term impact," or whatever it is, if you're able to educate and explain why it's important to you. So even just outside of, okay, now they understand what you're looking for and why it's important, but they know that it's something that actually is important to you for a real reason, and they'll identify with that and identify with you. And that identification, not to get too psychological here, is super important working with non-SEO teams. Crystal Carter: Right. And it also means that they'll come to you ahead of time next time. So- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... if if you're working with a PR team or something and they're doing all this stuff and you're like, "Hey, can we just make sure that we get a link there and that the link doesn't say learn more, the link doesn't say click here, the link doesn't say something completely useless. And if they're like, "Oh yeah, we can get a link." You're like, "Cool. If we can get a link there, then we can track some of the value of the PR that you're doing." So make it a give and take. How can you help them to help you? Think about those opportunities? And also feedback. Right? So in the PR example, for instance, sometimes people will say, "Oh, we're sponsoring this event." It's like, "Have we got an event page or have we got a sponsor page with a link on it to us and with some keywords around that?" So let's say, I've had it before where I had clients sponsoring the local marathon or half-marathon or whatever it is, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, we're sponsoring this thing. We got things on the banner, we have the logo on the finish line and all that stuff." And I'm like, "Do we have some real estate on the webpage?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "Can we get some? Can we get a paragraph? Can we get a logo link? Can we get a page? Can we get a blog? Can we get a quote somewhere? Can we get something online?" Because that will give us a long-term value out of that. They're like, "Oh, okay." And make sure that you make it as easy for them as possible to help you to achieve your SEO goals. And then after the event, for instance, let's say this marathon example, after the event, tell them what information you got from that. So, "We found that this many people clicked through the website, this page had that many views, this helped our rankings this much, we saw this uplift." And then they'll go, "Oh, hey, I do see the value of that.: And next time they have a sponsorship, they'll say, "Hey, talk to the SEO team, just to make sure that we're ticking any boxes that we can to also get a little SEO lift off of that." So make sure that you're illustrating to them the opportunities. And make them as simple as possible. Lay it out for them, because they don't need to know the technical details of link-building and all of the ranking algorithms. They don't need to know that. They just need to know that they need to put a paragraph or something on the page that has a link back to your website that includes the keyword that is relevant to you. That's what you need to do. So write them that paragraph. Give it to them. Spoonfeed them if you have to, but get that done and then give them the feedback, and then you will get buy-in from them, because they'll be able to see the value from that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Two great points, then, right? You don't want to use jargon when you don't have to use jargon. Oh, this is... Imagine it's a page, you want to add author bios onto the page. You need to put a dev ticket in order to have that done."Oh, it's very important, we're in a Y and YL niche, and it's very important for our EEAT. Of course, I'm so smart, they look at the abbreviations I know." It doesn't help if you actually get rid of the jargon and flush out, hey, look, one of the things the algorithm that Google's looking for is actual experience from actual people. One of the ways you can send us signals by having an author bio there, but our pages just don't have them. What can you do there? And a second point is being specific. And I've had this a lot of times where I'm trying to do a run an experiment and try to see what's going on, and I need the help of the dev team to do that. And whatever it is that you want, in this particular case, I wanted to set up the experiment, be as specific as possible. Because if they're left trying to even figure out the smallest details, they're out. They're just out right away. Unless you have a really good dev who's like, "Hey, let me help you here." And I have had that, but sometimes I haven't had that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that brings up another point, is that you need to know your team. So it's really worth introducing yourself to multiple teams, having, and I think this is something that Eli Schwartz talked about in his in-house enterprise SEO tactics as well. It's really worth introducing yourself to some of the other marketing channels and the teams there in a casual space. It could be that you're all doing CPD and you're doing some CPD that's nothing to do with anything, but I don't know, it's like health and safety training, and the marketing person is there, or the PPC person is there and you're like, "Oh, hey. Just saying hi, nice to meet you," that sort of thing, so that you get to know them. Because the devs really vary. Sometimes with devs, you have some devs who you literally have to give them every single thing, or you have a dev where you're like, "Hey, I want to get from A to B. I've seen this website that does this, I've seen that website that does that." And they're like, "Cool, I'll get in the kitchen. I'll cook you up something nice." And they come back to you with a surprise. And some devs want a recipe and they want all of the different things. So depending on which kind of dev. But you need to know which kind of dev you're working with. Because the one who's more like, "Oh, yeah, I'll make something that's beautiful la, la, la, la, la," they don't want you to be super prescriptive. In fact, they find that irritating. Whereas, the ones who really want a recipe, it's like, "Yeah, do what you like," they find that really, really off-putting as well. So it's really important to know what kind of teams you're working with and their schedule, their calendar, all those sorts of things. Mordy Oberstein: Which goes to our last point, that common sense isn't always so common. You might think this is quite obvious. And by the... I'll say this, if you're listening to this podcast, you're not an SEO. In fact, you're looking to hire an SEO, let's say. You're looking to hire an SEO agency and your business and your goals are quite obvious to you when you're communicating them to the SEO, because from your perspective, the SEO is a non-business team. They're not part of your business team, they're not an SEO. They don't always understand the full scope of what you're doing in your business model. What might be obvious to you and common sense to you is completely not obvious to us SEOs. I have no idea. It's the same thing with a dev. What's obvious to you and obvious to you if you... Don't use a PNG. Obvious to me. That thing is massive. GIFs? God no. Although I love a good GIF. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: But to someone on the design team, JPEG is less quality. Why would I use a JPEG? That's crazy. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And I think it's important to understand those things. And I think that when you're working with folks, you have to meet them at their level in order to get the results that you want and in order to get the results that they want and stuff. And think in terms of common sense. The way I always describe it is two things. First of all, if you're hiring an SEO company and they're using jargon, they're using language that you don't understand or they're taking for granted certain things that you know, don't be afraid to ask what people call "stupid questions." Don't be afraid to ask those questions. Because I've definitely been in meetings where somebody was telling me this acronym or that acronym, and I just raised my hand and I was like, "What does that acronym mean?" And they were like, "I don't know." I was like, "Well, what the F is going on here?" So don't be afraid to ask that question, because if you're spending money, they should be able to tell you. And if they can't explain it to you in plain English, then they don't know what they're doing. The other thing I would say on that is, in terms of common sense is, make sure that you know what you want out of it when you're going into it. And also, make sure that... If you've ever been to a hotel, every hotel shower is completely different. Right? And I've been in hotels before and I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the hot water. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's the most annoying thing, then you burn yourself and flood the bathroom at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. So whole drama. So sometimes, even if it's something that you take for granted, just say to them and be like, "Look, I'm not trying to patronize you, but let me just explain this to you quickly for five minutes and then it might save you another half an hour of faffing around with whatever this thing is. Give me these couple minutes just to explain it, and if you know all of this, cool. You can just go, 'I know all of that.' If you don't know all of this, then great, we've made sure that we have a baseline here." So make sure that you know what you want out of it and that you know which things they need to know. So it might be that they need to know that you don't work on a certain day of the week, or they need to know that you only have one receptionist. So on this SEO campaign, if you're setting up a, "Yeah, we'll get you lots of phone calls." And let's say you only have one receptionist and she can't handle all those phone calls, that's something that they need to know when they're getting that stuff together. There's going to be certain things that they need to know. Make sure that they know those things and make sure that you have, you are like, "Oh, well, actually, we have a quarterly report that we have to do and that we need to have those metrics by that..." Make sure that you know, that they know those things. Don't take these things for granted. And it might seem obvious, that's fine. Just quickly tell them the obvious thing quickly. If it's obvious, they'll go, "Great." And if not, they'll go, "What?" And then you know that you need to spend some more time on that. Mordy Oberstein: Last point, real, real quick, bribery. Bribery works. The point that Jack Chambers-Ward made to me a long time ago over at Candour, bribery. So like, "Hey, dev, I got your tickets for the Jets game." Actually, don't do the Jets, that's terrible. "I got two tickets for the Steelers game. Come on down." Bribery works. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You're trying to make friends and influence people, bring in cake, bring them candy, do what you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: Not the Jets tickets, that would be insulting, that's how bad the Jets are. With that, we asked Wayfair's own Neha Khanna: how she goes about and what metaphors she uses to explain SEO to non-SEOs that you can use when you're explaining SEO to other non-SEOs. Or, if you're not an SEO, here's a great way to understand SEO, from Neha. Neha Khanna: I love going back to the basics. Today, we talk about search engine optimization or SEO. So the first thing is think of it as a roadmap of getting your website or content noticed by search engines, like Google. Imagine the internet as a vast library of billions and billions of books inside. Now think of these books as your websites. Now, when people want to find information, they often turn to a librarian for help, right? Think of this case, librarian is a search engine. Now, SEO is all about helping the librarian find and recommend your book, which is a website in this case, when someone asks for a specific topic. Now this topic becomes a keyword. Keyword is the basic foundation of SEO. Think of keywords as phrases or words that people use when asking the librarian for a book. Now, SEO helps you to choose the right keywords that match what your website is all about. For example, if your website is about cooking, your keywords might be easy recipes or cooking tips. The second way to go about it is organization. Now, just like books in a library are organized by categories, your website should be well organized, too. SEO helps you to structure your content so that it's easy for both the librarian, that is a search engine, and the readers to understand. In this case, the customers are your readers that are coming on search engine to look for your book or your website. Quality content. Now, in our library story, the librarian wants to recommend the best books to the readers. SEO encourages you to create high-quality content that provides valuable information, answers question, and solves the problems for your readers. Now, in this case, your readers are looking to find something, which is why they're on Google, and your website is helping them find that right answer. Popularity. In library, popular books get recommended more often. Similarly, SEO considers how many other reputable sources or other websites link to your website. Now, these are like recommendations from other librarians and they can boost your website's credibility. User experience. A well-organized library, with clear signs and comfy chairs, really makes readers happy, right? So SEO focuses on improving your website's user experience, ensuring it's easy to navigate, it loads quickly, and looks great on all the devices. And last but not the least, regular updates. Now, libraries adds books and new books, and removes the old ones. Similarly, SEO encourages you to update your content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant to the current environment. In a nutshell, SEO is all about making a website or content more visible and accessible in the vast online library of information. It helps ensure that when someone asks the librarian, that is the search engine, for a specific topic, your book or your website is one of the top recommendations. It's all about helping people find what they're looking for on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much to Neha. We definitely appreciate that. Always love a good SEO metaphor to explain SEO. By the way, we will absolutely link to Neha's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But yes, I always love a good SEO metaphor, and that was an SEO metaphor on steroids. Crystal Carter: She's brilliant. I've seen her speak at SearchLove, and she used some really great metaphors there as well. And I think that her real skill is just making things really, really clear. I think that if you're working on the team with her, it'd be really great to explain whatever you needed to. And I think that that patience with folks who are maybe new to SEO, maybe understand the value but maybe don't understand the implementation, is really, really important when you're working with various teams. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Now, with that, so it's always hard to balance working well as part of a team and balancing your own personal needs and goals and whatnot. But more often than not, you could probably find a way to balance both. If not to balance both, you can actually leverage your own personal oomph for the sake of the team. The question is how does that work and how do you do that? That's why we're going deep into how to work well as a team, but also build up your own personal brand, with a very special deep thought with Crystal and Mordy, as our own social media extraordinaire here at Wix, Marissa Brower joins us for a deep thought with Crystal, Mordy, and Marissa. Crystal Carter: Welcome, Marissa. Marissa Brower: Thanks for having me. Hi, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Hi, Marissa. Happy to have you here. It's so fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: You're all so happy, because you both grew up in the same place and you all know the same thing. Marissa Brower: Yeah, we're Californians. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Marissa Brower: Right. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Just like all of that Golden State shine, just shine, shine, shine. Mordy Oberstein: All that sunshine. I'm just from grumpy New York. "Get out of my way. I'm walking here." Marissa Brower: We don't walk, we drive. Crystal Carter: No. Okay. Marissa Brower: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With lots and lots of traffic, too. Mordy Oberstein: I know about traffic. It's on my website. Marissa Brower: Oh. Crystal Carter: Oh. Very nice! Marissa Brower: That was a good one. Mordy Oberstein: So before you joined us at Wix, and according to Google, you have your own knowledge panel, which in our little SEO world is quite the thing. Marissa Brower: I'm so happy you to find that for me. Because I looked that up the other day and I was like, what? I mean, first of all, who did that? And secondly, what's it called? I just told my parents, I'm like, "Someone's calling me an internet personality on the internet, and I don't know who, but I love it." Crystal Carter: They found you. Marissa Brower: It's a knowledge panel. They found... they identified me. Crystal Carter: It means they found you. It means that, it's normally, as an indicator that you're doing great stuff and that you're involved in lots of really great projects, and that you're yeah, involved with some great stuff. I don't have a knowledge panel yet. I'm working on it. Mordy has one, which he's very proud of. Marissa Brower: Mordy, you have one? Crystal Carter: Mordy has one. It's very exhaustive, and so does George as well. Marissa Brower: Okay, that's good. Mordy Oberstein: We write a lot of content. But Crystal, you also have a ton of content. Why is that? Maybe Google doesn't... See, I always had to think about Google not liking me, because I had a search console problem that maybe Daniel Waisberg had a thing. Maybe Daniel's doing it to you now, because my search console works now. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Daniel Waisberg. Where's my knowledge panel? But I think also a lot of it has to do with data and projects that you've worked on and things like that. Yeah, but well done. Fantastic and well-earned, I think. Marissa Brower: Thank you. Crystal Carter: I think, if people aren't aware, Marissa has an incredible following on Instagram, makes incredible content, and has a fantastic doggo who is adorable, who you should also follow. Mordy Oberstein: With you being an internet personality... Marissa Brower: Uh-huh. Mordy Oberstein: ... and that was before you started at Wix. How did that help your career being this internet personality? Marissa Brower: Well, I actually had a very interesting career... I studied statistics in college. So I have a degree in statistics. And then I moved to Israel, and I lived... When you move to Israel, I feel like there's not a lot for English speakers to do, so I was pretty fresh. I was 21, so I started working in customer support and I hated it. So I was doing that for a little bit. And then also, I'm living really far. I'm in the Middle East, my parents have no idea what's going on, so I started making YouTube videos so that my parents could... More of a way to connect with my family and friends to show them like, "Hey, everything's same-old. I'm just, this is my routine here." So I was making these YouTube videos weekly, and then I got this opportunity with my work to relocate to Boston. And then this was during COVID, right when COVID started, March, 2020. And TikTok was just taking off. It was the early days of TikTok, right when all those kids were hitting... And I was like, "You know what, I want to try it, too." So I'm in Boston, quarantining and trying to get a flight back to Israel. And I noticed when I was in Boston that the only people that would see my videos, even though I'm experimenting with the app, were people that were in Boston. And then, as soon as I flew back to Israel, the only people that would see my videos were Israelis. So I realized it was based off of my location. So I thought to myself, I can't do anything in English. If I'm going to be in Israel, I have to start making Hebrew videos if I want to... I was just really doing it for fun. So I made one video about translation fails, stupid translation fails that I've made as an American trying to learn Hebrew, and it just blew up. And at that moment I thought, okay, this is the niche that I'm going to go into is being an American in a foreign country. And then from there, I just, I kept leveling up. I did different kinds of stuff with translation and just being an American expat. But it's not consistent. When you're a freelancer, it's stressful. So I wanted to leverage what I had done into a more professional career, and that's how I found Wix. Very different brands, web design and American translation fails. Crystal Carter: So I think there's a couple of fantastic things there in what you're saying that I'd like to pick up on. One is that one of the things about being a, so-called influencer or being somebody who is building up a personal brand is that you're able to learn at your own pace and you're able to apply different knowledge as you see it when you want to. And certainly, in my experience, I have people and they're like, "Oh, I can't do SEO, I don't have a website." I'm like, "Make a website. Make a website." People are like, "How do I get good at digital marketing?" I'm like, "Do digital marketing. Make something. Make a YouTube channel, make a Instagram, make a Facebook, make a TikTok." How much of the stuff that you taught yourself do you apply to the work that you do for the brand? Now, I don't know if we mentioned it, but Marissa is one of the masterminds behind the Wix social things. No disrespect to the rest of Wix social team, they're fantastic, but Marissa does a lot of great stuff as well. So how much of the things that you learned, while you were learning all those different platforms and applying all these different techniques, are you applying daily in your work? Marissa Brower: Absolutely, 100%. I'm self-taught. I have no background in video creation. I know nothing about cameras, but I just had to teach myself doing green screen, editing programs. Everything started as doing it for my YouTube channel and for my TikTok account. And then technically, my job is a social media manager, it's not a video editor. But I have this background in video, and so it's really helps me create content and get it out really fast, which is all, it's the nature of social media. It's fast, short-paced, snackable content. So it's been really helpful for me to have that base, and everything was really just self-taught. Crystal Carter: And I think also, the other thing that I thought was really interesting, you said you studied statistics. My degree is in English literature. I know somebody else who's a fantastic SEO and his degree is in archeology. How much of your statistical background are you bringing into your work? I imagine quite a lot, actually, with some of the content. Marissa Brower: Isn't it funny, how I think they'd say in college, "You're probably going to major in something and do nothing with that major and do something completely else." But luckily for me, statistics does play a little bit of a part in social media. We're always looking at performance, like how a video, the engagement, saves, likes, all that kinds of stuff, and trying to identify why a video outperformed another video. So I think I wish statistics came in more of a play. It's very basic statistics. Yeah, there's definitely a need for it with social media and trying to just figure out what your audience likes, and it's all based on numbers. Mordy Oberstein: So if we can move away from math forever- Marissa Brower: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: ... and numbers. Because you have such a strong personal background and what you're doing and all things you've done in the personal success that you've had, do you feel when you're now going back to the team and saying, "Hey, we're going to do X, Y, and Z, what do you think about this?" That it gives you a different, I guess, weight to your voice, because you have that personal background and that personal success that came along with it? As opposed to somebody who's like, "I've been working..." I guess what I'm asking is, if you have somebody who's working as social media manager for, forget Wix for a second, just for a company and they're on your team, and then you are on the same team with that person, but you have your own personal history, your own personal experience to doing social media, in this particular case, and I think would apply to any other vertical, does that give you a different kind of voice? Not maybe more weighty, but does it give you different outlook and different perspective? Does it help you bring a fresh perspective to the team? Wow, I finally got the question out. Marissa Brower: I think it does, but it's totally different working for your personal brand than a brand like Wix. I have learned so much just trying to make a strategy for Wix. It's completely different... As a viewer, I think you're more skeptical of taking advice from a brand than you are of taking advice from just a regular individual on the internet. So it's trying to like... Something that I would do on my own TikTok account or my own Instagram account wouldn't come off the same way on a branded account. So I think I do have a little bit more experience just working within the app, knowing there's a lot to do with SEO and TikTok, and knowing how to write a good caption and what hashtags to use and just navigating the app itself. I think I have a lot of expertise in that. But in terms of strategy, that was a whole new learning experience for me when I came from my personal brand to Wix, trying to build that strategy, see what resonates with your viewers. It's very different than being an individual creator. Mordy Oberstein: And do you think that's helped your personal content creation process for your own channels? Marissa Brower: No. I like to keep my personal content very authentic. What I'm making for Wix is there's a lot of heavy editing, a lot of green screen. I don't think it translates well. My videos are comedic, my personal videos. I'm not really trying to teach someone something. I think if I were, I would take more of that professional aspect that we've used in the Wix strategy. But no, I think for personal creators, the best thing, especially right now, is authenticity. I think we've had so much in the past, the previous years of very filtered, perfect videos, circulating in pictures, circulating the internet, and now people find just authentic content really relatable, and that's what people stay around for. So I try and, I really have to separate the two, personal creation and branded creation, because it's super different. Mordy Oberstein: On behalf of my generation, we apologize for all that perfect content that was completely just schlock. Anyway... Crystal Carter: I think it can be very important. I certainly, I think that brings into the idea of channels and brand voice and things like that. Because I think that that awareness is really important when people are thinking about bringing some of the knowledge that they have from their personal branding, development experience, into other avenues. So people might have a personal blog and then start writing for a company blog, or people might have a personal Facebook account that gets a lot of engagement, or I know, bless Facebook. And then maybe they're writing for the company one. And I've seen this when working with juniors, working with people who are just getting started, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I can do the same thing. I'll just share these same..." And it's maybe sort of sometimes, but you really do have to experiment with that. Can you give any advice of when people should draw the lines between one brand voice and another brand voice? Marissa Brower: I think it takes so much experimentation to understand what works on a particular channel. I'm only working on TikTok, and when I came into Wix's TikTok, it was really underdeveloped, one post a month compared to what we're doing now, which is three to four a week. And the ones that we were posting before I joined was just recycled content. It was nothing specific for TikTok. So when I came in, it was like, "Let's build a strategy and let's figure out what to do for our channel." And we tried a bunch of different stuff. Trending sounds, it's huge and it still is huge. And then the user showcases, educational content tutorials, and just the educational content and the tutorials just blew out all the other ideas. Once we started really figuring out what do our viewers stick around for? It was really providing value for them. So on TikTok, even though it's really this fun, light app that a younger generation is engaging with, I think that people still want to walk away from the app retaining something, especially from a brand. So that's how we got into these tutorials. Whereas on Instagram, I think that there's an opportunity to be more, to use more design on TikTok. Using design is the worst thing you can do on TikTok. We try and stay away from design, because we want to keep it still authentic to TikTok. So it's just learning what each platform... When you're on Instagram scrolling, you want to see something beautiful. On TikTok, you won't want to walk away feeling like you learn something or that video wasn't a waste of your time. So it's just learning the landscapes of different social media apps, I think. Mordy Oberstein: To quote Jimi Hendrix quoting Bob Dylan, "The hour is getting late." Where can people find you, Marissa? Marissa Brower: My Instagram is @marissabrower, and my TikTok account is @marissabrow. That's pretty... And then I have a YouTube account that I've deleted. Same thing @marissabrow. Mordy Oberstein: Links in the show notes, so look for Marissa there. Help build up her knowledge panel by linking to her content all over the place. Marissa, thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you around on TikTok, or at least Crystal will, because I don't do TikTok. Marissa Brower: Thanks, guys, for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Again, major kudos to Marissa. The stuff that she does on TikTok is awesome. She did a great one. We did Semrush and StudioHawk reviewed a Wix website called WhatSugar, and they put out a whole SEO audit template based on WhatSugar is doing and the SEO success. It's very awesome Wix website has seen. And then Marissa took that SEO template and created a whole Instagram and TikTok wrap-up of it that we posted on our TikTok and Instagram account. So it was super cool. It was full-circle infographic, SEO audit thing into TikTok, Instagram content. So a way to knock it out of the park without repurposing, Marissa. Crystal Carter: Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I always have a good repurposing, right? You know who doesn't repurpose a lot of content? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz does not repurpose a lot of content. It's always fresh and always new. Crystal Carter: So fresh, like a summer's breeze. Mordy Oberstein: Although sometimes, it is semi-repackaged, like, "Here's Google again telling you for the eight millionth time, word count doesn't matter." Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is when he, well, to be fair, he does do the, in-case-you-missed-its, which I'm very grateful for, because he publishes so much. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm a different time zone, so I get the, in case you missed it in the morning sometimes. So yeah, I do appreciate that. That is repurposing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I insulted you. Crystal Carter: He also does pull out those pictures from random bits of Google around, which are really fun. Mordy Oberstein: It's a Google cake in Tel Aviv. Crystal Carter: Right. There was a fantastic one of Daniel Waisberg blowing a horn from- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the shofar. Crystal Carter: ... his balcony or something? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. I said that to Barry, like, "Oh, you-" Crystal Carter: Yeah. Oh, you did. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: I was so wrong again, Barry. I'm wrong. You're right, Barry does repurpose content. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Admitting that you're wrong is a really important part of working with teams. Mordy Oberstein: It's the first step to recovery. And with that, here's the snappy SEO news. Snappy News, snappy news, snappy news. Got three for you this week, and the first one's not from Barry Schwartz. Sorry, Barry, they can't all be from you. From Nicola Agius, from SearchEngineLand. Google testing ads between organic results. There's been a spattering of examples from across the web of people seeing Google ads among the search results. Meaning you usually see ads at the top of the results or at the bottom of the set of results. But now, lots of folks are seeing ads within the results. I think, by the way, this has a lot to do with the fact that I think users are wiser than they were before, and they're looking to not be sold to in the same way. So perhaps they're not clicking on those ads up top the way that they used to before, and Google wants to be more subtle about it. Number two, article number two from, okay, it's from Barry Schwartz. This from Search Engine Roundtable. Google about this image. About this image now live, recency of image, AI details and more. This is really interesting. Google's now offering the ability to see some history or some information about an image. You go to image search, there's a little three button setting thing that you can click on and it will show you how old the image is. Google said it may also indicate if the image has been generated by AI and so forth. Have a look at the GIF that Barry shares in the article, which we'll link to in the show notes. It's really interesting to look at. Obviously, this makes a lot of sense, because the web is going, it already is inundated with AI images, and it's good for people to know what's real than what's AI, if we want to put it that way. So it makes a lot of great sense to have something like that. I think it's a really nice little feature. Okay, this one, well, I guess it comes from Barry. I saw it first on seroundtable.com, but it's actually announced by Google. We'll link to both sources. There's your link. Barry, from Google's own blog. Three new ways to check images and sources online. So Google has an About This Result feature that'll let you get some more context about why that particular result shows in their search results for you and some information about that result. We'll link to the article in the show notes. You can have a look at where that actually is and what it looks like. But just know there's this little feature out there that gives context to a result shown to you on the SERP. Google is now using AI to generate information or a description about a result that you may see among your search results within this About This Result feature. I'll just read to you what Google themselves wrote. It'll make this a little bit clearer, because without seeing it, it's hard to understand it. Google writes, "One of the best ways to evaluate information online is to learn more about the source. Say you stumble upon some cool new hiking boots, but they're from a small merchant you're not familiar with. You might want to do research on the seller, but in some cases, it can be hard to find information about lesser-known sites. Now we're starting to experiment how generative AI can do some of that digging for you to help you search with confidence." So the AI will generate a little bit of a description about who the seller actually is or who the website actually is, so you can better understand, contextually, who they are and may say, "You know what? I do want to buy it from them. They do seem reliable." I think it's really interesting that Google's using AI for this. I think it's a little bit of a shame that it's hard to actually know that this feature even exists unless you stumble on it, like you are now, if you haven't heard of it before and you're listening to this podcast. I think it's fabulous that Google is trying to democratize the web even more than it currently is. And I think Google really is trying to democratize the web in a lot of ways. I know some may push back on my claim that they are doing that, but I think they are doing that, or trying to do that, rather. And I think giving context to smaller or lesser-known websites is a great way to do that. So kudos to Google. I like the feature. I think it's cool. And that's this week's Snappy News. And once again, as always, thank you Barry and the other SEO news authors who are out there. Crystal Carter: Yes, other people talk about new things, too. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, and it's not just you. Crystal Carter: Other people, too. Mordy Oberstein: There are other people, like Matt Southern and Roger Montti, Denny Goodwin, Loren Baker, Kristi Hines. Crystal Carter: Kristi Hines, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: A lot of great people. Crystal Carter: Ellie DeMasellis. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, Glenn Gabe's always covering something. Crystal Carter: Billy Ray. Things are happening, things are happening- Mordy Oberstein: Things are happy- Crystal Carter: ... moving, shaking. Mordy Oberstein: You know what's always moving and shaking, our follow of the week, who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness over on social media. This one is former Wix SEO advisory board member Nikki Mossier, over at Niki Mosier, SEO. It's N-I-K-I-M-O-S-I-E-R-S-E-O, over on Twitter, the platform I formally call X. Did I get that backwards? Crystal Carter: I don't know. But Niki's a great follow. She's really, really good at talking about lots of different SEO stuff, and she's also, she's a consultant, so she works across lots of different groups. So she's a great person to follow for SEO. Mordy Oberstein: And she has a course for non-SEO, is about SEO. Crystal Carter: Which is incredibly valuable. Mordy Oberstein: It's the perfect tie-in. Crystal Carter: I think that's why we picked her. Mordy Oberstein: Was that on purpose? Crystal Carter: I think we did it deliberately. Mordy Oberstein: No. We were deliberate? Crystal Carter: Brilliant. I think brilliant, genius. Mordy Oberstein: Brilliance. I will say brilliance is deliberate. Crystal Carter: We're delivering brilliance. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Deliberately. Well, thank you for joining us for the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episodes. We dive into the money bin itself. We're looking at, too, how much should SEO cost? That's a taboo topic right there. Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Mordy Oberstein: I will tell you it was hard to find a guest who wanted to talk about it. Little spoiler alert. Anyway, look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars over at the Wix SEO Learning over at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Neha Khanna Marissa Brower Niki Mosier Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: Google testing ads between organic results? Google About This Image Now Live Recency Of Image, AI Details & More Google Search Generative Experience Gains "Supportive" Links In About This Result 3 new ways to check images and sources online Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Neha Khanna Marissa Brower Niki Mosier Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: Google testing ads between organic results? Google About This Image Now Live Recency Of Image, AI Details & More Google Search Generative Experience Gains "Supportive" Links In About This Result 3 new ways to check images and sources online Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahala. We're joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I am joined by she who works well with others, plays nicely with the sandbox, with everybody. She is our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hi. Yes, it is very important to work well with others, to get along, to make friends, and influence people- Mordy Oberstein: Play nicely in the sandbox. Crystal Carter: ... It's very important. It's very important. It's very important. Mordy Oberstein: Well, it's very hard, because in a sandbox, the one thing you want to do was fling sand at other children. Not that I am an adult, go into the sandbox and fling sand at children, but when I was a child. Crystal Carter: No. I was all about digging a hole from one side, digging a tunnel, a full tunnel, so that you had the- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... sand... I mean, because that was a challenge. You'd have to maintain the integrity and you also have to judge it correctly, because otherwise it will collapse. That was my favorite thing. I was like, "Can we dig a tunnel? Yes or no? Let's see." Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. You right- Crystal Carter: Can I step up? Mordy Oberstein: ... when I dig a tunnel and I'm like, "Hey, can I fling sand at this kid over here?" Look at what we both turned out. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there you go. Mordy Oberstein: This SERF's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix. You can only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also manage projects in one unified workspace of multiple teammates, work on one site at the same time while sharing live comments, and all while setting specific roles for specific team members on specific sites, with our new agency first offering with Studio. Learn more about that over at wix.com/studios. Today, we talk about working well with non-SEO teams, or as my language, don't fling sand at the design team or the dev team. Work well with them. We're diving into joining together with the band to make beautiful music on the site that you're working on, as we cover why jargon is not an SEO's best friend when working with other teams. Why everyone is different and their different priorities are A-okay. Why common sense ain't so common when working with non-SEO teams. It ain't so common, to be honest with you, when working with anybody, but whatever. To help us make SEO accessible to non-SEO teams, Neha Khanna: will stop by to help us make SEO accessible for non-SEO teams. Hello, redundancy. I think I has said that. Anyway, we'll also talk with one of our in-house influencers, Marissa Brower on how to build your personal brand, but do it in a way that works well, not just for you but for your whole team. We're all team this week. So put on your cooperation caps as episode number 60 of the SERF's Up podcast takes Sesame Street's cooperation makes it happen to a whole other level. (singing) Remember that song? Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, it's a classic Sesame Street song. Crystal Carter: Oh, right. I mean, I was a big fan of Sesame Street's. Still am. Still absolutely am, but I don't remember Cooperation. I remember (singing)- Mordy Oberstein: Also a classic. Crystal Carter: That's a good one. Also- Mordy Oberstein: That's the classic. Crystal Carter: Right? Also, Martina, know is a tennis player is a person in your neighborhood, and they had Martina Navratilova, and I was like, "What's up, Martina? Okay." Mordy Oberstein: "This isn't my neighborhood." Crystal Carter: She's not, she's really not. Mordy Oberstein: It's like on Park Avenue somewhere. Crystal Carter: Right. I think I'd know if Martina Navratilova lived in my neighborhood. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: But also, what was the, the other one is put down the ducky. That is like... Mordy Oberstein: That's, also B is for Bubble is one of my classic favorite ones. (singing) Crystal Carter: There was a New York Giants one that they did or something as well, I think. Mordy Oberstein: Billy Joel was on Sesame Street. Wow, we- Crystal Carter: Ooh. Sorry, last one. The best one is it's like that Paul Simon song, You got to get on- Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: ... make a new plan, Stan. And it was like, God, what was it? Oh no, I'm sorry, it's Kermit the Frog. It's Kermit the Frog, and I think it's a wrench or something? What's the name of that song? It's like make a news plan stand. You don't need to be coy, Roy, just listen to me. Mordy Oberstein: Didn't Kermit sing that Carpenter song also? Maybe the Carpenters sang the Kermit song. Crystal Carter: Lever. It was love your lever. It wasn't learn to love your... leave your lover, it was Learn to Love Your Lever. Mordy Oberstein: Nice, nice. Crystal Carter: That's what they did. It was brilliant. Anyway, it was worth it. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, we're talking about not-Sesame Street today, although really we could. Talking about creating, managing, and growing a website and a business along with it. And when you're doing it, it's like an onion, or for fans of Shrek, like an ogre, it has layers. And the success of the site, as much as it pains me to say this, is not all about SEO. I know, hot take, right? Everyone's, "Oh, no. It's about SEO." It is, and it's also not. There are multiple things going on, from the organic success to the branding, to the social media marketing, to dev, to whatever that means. Getting along with others in the wider sandbox and not flinging sand at them. Nay, it means more than getting along with them. That means actually being productive. It means digging tunnels in the sandbox together. And I can tell you from personal experience, that's very hard. It's hard, because it means you have to not only explain things the right way, but it also means bringing in other teams at the right time, which can be tricky, but your ability as an SEO can make or break the efficiency of getting that site going. And at that level of organization, especially on bigger sites and bigger organizations, it's really, really tricky. And it means being very well organized, I think, and very well aware of what's happening around you in the organization. And it also means, in my personal opinion, hard it is for me to say, because I have a hard time with this, being able to let go. I feel like SEO's hard because we fight for every inch of the internet, but when working with non-SEO teams, you need to know how to accommodate their goals and their needs and how they see things. And it's going to mean knowing when to and when not to push the envelope. If there's a big branding push on the site's homepage, and that may impact some small SEO tasks, maybe don't fight it. Save your capital. And that's not always very easy, because at times, you do want to push the SEO agenda, but not all the way, meaning you have to be strategic and know how to start a conversation without finishing it so that in the future, other teams may eventually adopt your SEO outlook. Meaning you're starting even though you think, "Yes, we should do this SEO thing." Sometimes you want to start the conversation but not finish it. Let it simmer, let it stew, and all those sorts of cooking analogies. Crystal Carter: Let it marinate. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. That's another one. Wow, good pull. Good pull. That's why you're my favorite co-host. You're also my only co-host. Whatever it is, when working with non-SEO teams, my opinion is play the long game. Crystal, your take. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I totally think so. And also I think it's really important to understand what's important to them and how you can make SEO important to them based on what they value. So if you're working with sales teams, how can you connect SEO to sales? If you're working with PPC teams, how can you connect the value of your SEO to making their ads cost less? Because if your SEO is good on the pages that you're using for PPC as well, then that's going to help you to get a good value there. If you're seeing that you're getting good PPC traffic... I think I saw a really good presentation at Brighton SEO, and I cannot remember who it was off the top of my head just now, but they were talking about prioritization. And they were saying that sometimes you can have a look at your information and your keyword research and you can say, "This keyword should be used for PPC," "This keyword, we're crushing it on SEO, so we should not be doing PPC on that, because we're getting that traffic anyway." "But this one is something that we're in the ballpark, and if we did a little PPC on there, we could get some good reaction there." So I think don't just go to people with your own agenda, go to them with something that's of value to them and understand what things are of value to them so that you can work genuinely together. Genuinely. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time, it's also explain the value to you. If you want something done, if you're able to explain, "Hey, this is why I think it's really important and here's the impact and the outcomes, and maybe the long-term impact," or whatever it is, if you're able to educate and explain why it's important to you. So even just outside of, okay, now they understand what you're looking for and why it's important, but they know that it's something that actually is important to you for a real reason, and they'll identify with that and identify with you. And that identification, not to get too psychological here, is super important working with non-SEO teams. Crystal Carter: Right. And it also means that they'll come to you ahead of time next time. So- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... if if you're working with a PR team or something and they're doing all this stuff and you're like, "Hey, can we just make sure that we get a link there and that the link doesn't say learn more, the link doesn't say click here, the link doesn't say something completely useless. And if they're like, "Oh yeah, we can get a link." You're like, "Cool. If we can get a link there, then we can track some of the value of the PR that you're doing." So make it a give and take. How can you help them to help you? Think about those opportunities? And also feedback. Right? So in the PR example, for instance, sometimes people will say, "Oh, we're sponsoring this event." It's like, "Have we got an event page or have we got a sponsor page with a link on it to us and with some keywords around that?" So let's say, I've had it before where I had clients sponsoring the local marathon or half-marathon or whatever it is, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, we're sponsoring this thing. We got things on the banner, we have the logo on the finish line and all that stuff." And I'm like, "Do we have some real estate on the webpage?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "Can we get some? Can we get a paragraph? Can we get a logo link? Can we get a page? Can we get a blog? Can we get a quote somewhere? Can we get something online?" Because that will give us a long-term value out of that. They're like, "Oh, okay." And make sure that you make it as easy for them as possible to help you to achieve your SEO goals. And then after the event, for instance, let's say this marathon example, after the event, tell them what information you got from that. So, "We found that this many people clicked through the website, this page had that many views, this helped our rankings this much, we saw this uplift." And then they'll go, "Oh, hey, I do see the value of that.: And next time they have a sponsorship, they'll say, "Hey, talk to the SEO team, just to make sure that we're ticking any boxes that we can to also get a little SEO lift off of that." So make sure that you're illustrating to them the opportunities. And make them as simple as possible. Lay it out for them, because they don't need to know the technical details of link-building and all of the ranking algorithms. They don't need to know that. They just need to know that they need to put a paragraph or something on the page that has a link back to your website that includes the keyword that is relevant to you. That's what you need to do. So write them that paragraph. Give it to them. Spoonfeed them if you have to, but get that done and then give them the feedback, and then you will get buy-in from them, because they'll be able to see the value from that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Two great points, then, right? You don't want to use jargon when you don't have to use jargon. Oh, this is... Imagine it's a page, you want to add author bios onto the page. You need to put a dev ticket in order to have that done."Oh, it's very important, we're in a Y and YL niche, and it's very important for our EEAT. Of course, I'm so smart, they look at the abbreviations I know." It doesn't help if you actually get rid of the jargon and flush out, hey, look, one of the things the algorithm that Google's looking for is actual experience from actual people. One of the ways you can send us signals by having an author bio there, but our pages just don't have them. What can you do there? And a second point is being specific. And I've had this a lot of times where I'm trying to do a run an experiment and try to see what's going on, and I need the help of the dev team to do that. And whatever it is that you want, in this particular case, I wanted to set up the experiment, be as specific as possible. Because if they're left trying to even figure out the smallest details, they're out. They're just out right away. Unless you have a really good dev who's like, "Hey, let me help you here." And I have had that, but sometimes I haven't had that. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that brings up another point, is that you need to know your team. So it's really worth introducing yourself to multiple teams, having, and I think this is something that Eli Schwartz talked about in his in-house enterprise SEO tactics as well. It's really worth introducing yourself to some of the other marketing channels and the teams there in a casual space. It could be that you're all doing CPD and you're doing some CPD that's nothing to do with anything, but I don't know, it's like health and safety training, and the marketing person is there, or the PPC person is there and you're like, "Oh, hey. Just saying hi, nice to meet you," that sort of thing, so that you get to know them. Because the devs really vary. Sometimes with devs, you have some devs who you literally have to give them every single thing, or you have a dev where you're like, "Hey, I want to get from A to B. I've seen this website that does this, I've seen that website that does that." And they're like, "Cool, I'll get in the kitchen. I'll cook you up something nice." And they come back to you with a surprise. And some devs want a recipe and they want all of the different things. So depending on which kind of dev. But you need to know which kind of dev you're working with. Because the one who's more like, "Oh, yeah, I'll make something that's beautiful la, la, la, la, la," they don't want you to be super prescriptive. In fact, they find that irritating. Whereas, the ones who really want a recipe, it's like, "Yeah, do what you like," they find that really, really off-putting as well. So it's really important to know what kind of teams you're working with and their schedule, their calendar, all those sorts of things. Mordy Oberstein: Which goes to our last point, that common sense isn't always so common. You might think this is quite obvious. And by the... I'll say this, if you're listening to this podcast, you're not an SEO. In fact, you're looking to hire an SEO, let's say. You're looking to hire an SEO agency and your business and your goals are quite obvious to you when you're communicating them to the SEO, because from your perspective, the SEO is a non-business team. They're not part of your business team, they're not an SEO. They don't always understand the full scope of what you're doing in your business model. What might be obvious to you and common sense to you is completely not obvious to us SEOs. I have no idea. It's the same thing with a dev. What's obvious to you and obvious to you if you... Don't use a PNG. Obvious to me. That thing is massive. GIFs? God no. Although I love a good GIF. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: But to someone on the design team, JPEG is less quality. Why would I use a JPEG? That's crazy. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And I think it's important to understand those things. And I think that when you're working with folks, you have to meet them at their level in order to get the results that you want and in order to get the results that they want and stuff. And think in terms of common sense. The way I always describe it is two things. First of all, if you're hiring an SEO company and they're using jargon, they're using language that you don't understand or they're taking for granted certain things that you know, don't be afraid to ask what people call "stupid questions." Don't be afraid to ask those questions. Because I've definitely been in meetings where somebody was telling me this acronym or that acronym, and I just raised my hand and I was like, "What does that acronym mean?" And they were like, "I don't know." I was like, "Well, what the F is going on here?" So don't be afraid to ask that question, because if you're spending money, they should be able to tell you. And if they can't explain it to you in plain English, then they don't know what they're doing. The other thing I would say on that is, in terms of common sense is, make sure that you know what you want out of it when you're going into it. And also, make sure that... If you've ever been to a hotel, every hotel shower is completely different. Right? And I've been in hotels before and I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the hot water. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. It's the most annoying thing, then you burn yourself and flood the bathroom at the same time. Crystal Carter: Right. So whole drama. So sometimes, even if it's something that you take for granted, just say to them and be like, "Look, I'm not trying to patronize you, but let me just explain this to you quickly for five minutes and then it might save you another half an hour of faffing around with whatever this thing is. Give me these couple minutes just to explain it, and if you know all of this, cool. You can just go, 'I know all of that.' If you don't know all of this, then great, we've made sure that we have a baseline here." So make sure that you know what you want out of it and that you know which things they need to know. So it might be that they need to know that you don't work on a certain day of the week, or they need to know that you only have one receptionist. So on this SEO campaign, if you're setting up a, "Yeah, we'll get you lots of phone calls." And let's say you only have one receptionist and she can't handle all those phone calls, that's something that they need to know when they're getting that stuff together. There's going to be certain things that they need to know. Make sure that they know those things and make sure that you have, you are like, "Oh, well, actually, we have a quarterly report that we have to do and that we need to have those metrics by that..." Make sure that you know, that they know those things. Don't take these things for granted. And it might seem obvious, that's fine. Just quickly tell them the obvious thing quickly. If it's obvious, they'll go, "Great." And if not, they'll go, "What?" And then you know that you need to spend some more time on that. Mordy Oberstein: Last point, real, real quick, bribery. Bribery works. The point that Jack Chambers-Ward made to me a long time ago over at Candour, bribery. So like, "Hey, dev, I got your tickets for the Jets game." Actually, don't do the Jets, that's terrible. "I got two tickets for the Steelers game. Come on down." Bribery works. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You're trying to make friends and influence people, bring in cake, bring them candy, do what you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: Not the Jets tickets, that would be insulting, that's how bad the Jets are. With that, we asked Wayfair's own Neha Khanna: how she goes about and what metaphors she uses to explain SEO to non-SEOs that you can use when you're explaining SEO to other non-SEOs. Or, if you're not an SEO, here's a great way to understand SEO, from Neha. Neha Khanna: I love going back to the basics. Today, we talk about search engine optimization or SEO. So the first thing is think of it as a roadmap of getting your website or content noticed by search engines, like Google. Imagine the internet as a vast library of billions and billions of books inside. Now think of these books as your websites. Now, when people want to find information, they often turn to a librarian for help, right? Think of this case, librarian is a search engine. Now, SEO is all about helping the librarian find and recommend your book, which is a website in this case, when someone asks for a specific topic. Now this topic becomes a keyword. Keyword is the basic foundation of SEO. Think of keywords as phrases or words that people use when asking the librarian for a book. Now, SEO helps you to choose the right keywords that match what your website is all about. For example, if your website is about cooking, your keywords might be easy recipes or cooking tips. The second way to go about it is organization. Now, just like books in a library are organized by categories, your website should be well organized, too. SEO helps you to structure your content so that it's easy for both the librarian, that is a search engine, and the readers to understand. In this case, the customers are your readers that are coming on search engine to look for your book or your website. Quality content. Now, in our library story, the librarian wants to recommend the best books to the readers. SEO encourages you to create high-quality content that provides valuable information, answers question, and solves the problems for your readers. Now, in this case, your readers are looking to find something, which is why they're on Google, and your website is helping them find that right answer. Popularity. In library, popular books get recommended more often. Similarly, SEO considers how many other reputable sources or other websites link to your website. Now, these are like recommendations from other librarians and they can boost your website's credibility. User experience. A well-organized library, with clear signs and comfy chairs, really makes readers happy, right? So SEO focuses on improving your website's user experience, ensuring it's easy to navigate, it loads quickly, and looks great on all the devices. And last but not the least, regular updates. Now, libraries adds books and new books, and removes the old ones. Similarly, SEO encourages you to update your content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant to the current environment. In a nutshell, SEO is all about making a website or content more visible and accessible in the vast online library of information. It helps ensure that when someone asks the librarian, that is the search engine, for a specific topic, your book or your website is one of the top recommendations. It's all about helping people find what they're looking for on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much to Neha. We definitely appreciate that. Always love a good SEO metaphor to explain SEO. By the way, we will absolutely link to Neha's LinkedIn profile in the show notes. But yes, I always love a good SEO metaphor, and that was an SEO metaphor on steroids. Crystal Carter: She's brilliant. I've seen her speak at SearchLove, and she used some really great metaphors there as well. And I think that her real skill is just making things really, really clear. I think that if you're working on the team with her, it'd be really great to explain whatever you needed to. And I think that that patience with folks who are maybe new to SEO, maybe understand the value but maybe don't understand the implementation, is really, really important when you're working with various teams. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Now, with that, so it's always hard to balance working well as part of a team and balancing your own personal needs and goals and whatnot. But more often than not, you could probably find a way to balance both. If not to balance both, you can actually leverage your own personal oomph for the sake of the team. The question is how does that work and how do you do that? That's why we're going deep into how to work well as a team, but also build up your own personal brand, with a very special deep thought with Crystal and Mordy, as our own social media extraordinaire here at Wix, Marissa Brower joins us for a deep thought with Crystal, Mordy, and Marissa. Crystal Carter: Welcome, Marissa. Marissa Brower: Thanks for having me. Hi, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Hi, Marissa. Happy to have you here. It's so fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: You're all so happy, because you both grew up in the same place and you all know the same thing. Marissa Brower: Yeah, we're Californians. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Marissa Brower: Right. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Just like all of that Golden State shine, just shine, shine, shine. Mordy Oberstein: All that sunshine. I'm just from grumpy New York. "Get out of my way. I'm walking here." Marissa Brower: We don't walk, we drive. Crystal Carter: No. Okay. Marissa Brower: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With lots and lots of traffic, too. Mordy Oberstein: I know about traffic. It's on my website. Marissa Brower: Oh. Crystal Carter: Oh. Very nice! Marissa Brower: That was a good one. Mordy Oberstein: So before you joined us at Wix, and according to Google, you have your own knowledge panel, which in our little SEO world is quite the thing. Marissa Brower: I'm so happy you to find that for me. Because I looked that up the other day and I was like, what? I mean, first of all, who did that? And secondly, what's it called? I just told my parents, I'm like, "Someone's calling me an internet personality on the internet, and I don't know who, but I love it." Crystal Carter: They found you. Marissa Brower: It's a knowledge panel. They found... they identified me. Crystal Carter: It means they found you. It means that, it's normally, as an indicator that you're doing great stuff and that you're involved in lots of really great projects, and that you're yeah, involved with some great stuff. I don't have a knowledge panel yet. I'm working on it. Mordy has one, which he's very proud of. Marissa Brower: Mordy, you have one? Crystal Carter: Mordy has one. It's very exhaustive, and so does George as well. Marissa Brower: Okay, that's good. Mordy Oberstein: We write a lot of content. But Crystal, you also have a ton of content. Why is that? Maybe Google doesn't... See, I always had to think about Google not liking me, because I had a search console problem that maybe Daniel Waisberg had a thing. Maybe Daniel's doing it to you now, because my search console works now. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Daniel Waisberg. Where's my knowledge panel? But I think also a lot of it has to do with data and projects that you've worked on and things like that. Yeah, but well done. Fantastic and well-earned, I think. Marissa Brower: Thank you. Crystal Carter: I think, if people aren't aware, Marissa has an incredible following on Instagram, makes incredible content, and has a fantastic doggo who is adorable, who you should also follow. Mordy Oberstein: With you being an internet personality... Marissa Brower: Uh-huh. Mordy Oberstein: ... and that was before you started at Wix. How did that help your career being this internet personality? Marissa Brower: Well, I actually had a very interesting career... I studied statistics in college. So I have a degree in statistics. And then I moved to Israel, and I lived... When you move to Israel, I feel like there's not a lot for English speakers to do, so I was pretty fresh. I was 21, so I started working in customer support and I hated it. So I was doing that for a little bit. And then also, I'm living really far. I'm in the Middle East, my parents have no idea what's going on, so I started making YouTube videos so that my parents could... More of a way to connect with my family and friends to show them like, "Hey, everything's same-old. I'm just, this is my routine here." So I was making these YouTube videos weekly, and then I got this opportunity with my work to relocate to Boston. And then this was during COVID, right when COVID started, March, 2020. And TikTok was just taking off. It was the early days of TikTok, right when all those kids were hitting... And I was like, "You know what, I want to try it, too." So I'm in Boston, quarantining and trying to get a flight back to Israel. And I noticed when I was in Boston that the only people that would see my videos, even though I'm experimenting with the app, were people that were in Boston. And then, as soon as I flew back to Israel, the only people that would see my videos were Israelis. So I realized it was based off of my location. So I thought to myself, I can't do anything in English. If I'm going to be in Israel, I have to start making Hebrew videos if I want to... I was just really doing it for fun. So I made one video about translation fails, stupid translation fails that I've made as an American trying to learn Hebrew, and it just blew up. And at that moment I thought, okay, this is the niche that I'm going to go into is being an American in a foreign country. And then from there, I just, I kept leveling up. I did different kinds of stuff with translation and just being an American expat. But it's not consistent. When you're a freelancer, it's stressful. So I wanted to leverage what I had done into a more professional career, and that's how I found Wix. Very different brands, web design and American translation fails. Crystal Carter: So I think there's a couple of fantastic things there in what you're saying that I'd like to pick up on. One is that one of the things about being a, so-called influencer or being somebody who is building up a personal brand is that you're able to learn at your own pace and you're able to apply different knowledge as you see it when you want to. And certainly, in my experience, I have people and they're like, "Oh, I can't do SEO, I don't have a website." I'm like, "Make a website. Make a website." People are like, "How do I get good at digital marketing?" I'm like, "Do digital marketing. Make something. Make a YouTube channel, make a Instagram, make a Facebook, make a TikTok." How much of the stuff that you taught yourself do you apply to the work that you do for the brand? Now, I don't know if we mentioned it, but Marissa is one of the masterminds behind the Wix social things. No disrespect to the rest of Wix social team, they're fantastic, but Marissa does a lot of great stuff as well. So how much of the things that you learned, while you were learning all those different platforms and applying all these different techniques, are you applying daily in your work? Marissa Brower: Absolutely, 100%. I'm self-taught. I have no background in video creation. I know nothing about cameras, but I just had to teach myself doing green screen, editing programs. Everything started as doing it for my YouTube channel and for my TikTok account. And then technically, my job is a social media manager, it's not a video editor. But I have this background in video, and so it's really helps me create content and get it out really fast, which is all, it's the nature of social media. It's fast, short-paced, snackable content. So it's been really helpful for me to have that base, and everything was really just self-taught. Crystal Carter: And I think also, the other thing that I thought was really interesting, you said you studied statistics. My degree is in English literature. I know somebody else who's a fantastic SEO and his degree is in archeology. How much of your statistical background are you bringing into your work? I imagine quite a lot, actually, with some of the content. Marissa Brower: Isn't it funny, how I think they'd say in college, "You're probably going to major in something and do nothing with that major and do something completely else." But luckily for me, statistics does play a little bit of a part in social media. We're always looking at performance, like how a video, the engagement, saves, likes, all that kinds of stuff, and trying to identify why a video outperformed another video. So I think I wish statistics came in more of a play. It's very basic statistics. Yeah, there's definitely a need for it with social media and trying to just figure out what your audience likes, and it's all based on numbers. Mordy Oberstein: So if we can move away from math forever- Marissa Brower: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: ... and numbers. Because you have such a strong personal background and what you're doing and all things you've done in the personal success that you've had, do you feel when you're now going back to the team and saying, "Hey, we're going to do X, Y, and Z, what do you think about this?" That it gives you a different, I guess, weight to your voice, because you have that personal background and that personal success that came along with it? As opposed to somebody who's like, "I've been working..." I guess what I'm asking is, if you have somebody who's working as social media manager for, forget Wix for a second, just for a company and they're on your team, and then you are on the same team with that person, but you have your own personal history, your own personal experience to doing social media, in this particular case, and I think would apply to any other vertical, does that give you a different kind of voice? Not maybe more weighty, but does it give you different outlook and different perspective? Does it help you bring a fresh perspective to the team? Wow, I finally got the question out. Marissa Brower: I think it does, but it's totally different working for your personal brand than a brand like Wix. I have learned so much just trying to make a strategy for Wix. It's completely different... As a viewer, I think you're more skeptical of taking advice from a brand than you are of taking advice from just a regular individual on the internet. So it's trying to like... Something that I would do on my own TikTok account or my own Instagram account wouldn't come off the same way on a branded account. So I think I do have a little bit more experience just working within the app, knowing there's a lot to do with SEO and TikTok, and knowing how to write a good caption and what hashtags to use and just navigating the app itself. I think I have a lot of expertise in that. But in terms of strategy, that was a whole new learning experience for me when I came from my personal brand to Wix, trying to build that strategy, see what resonates with your viewers. It's very different than being an individual creator. Mordy Oberstein: And do you think that's helped your personal content creation process for your own channels? Marissa Brower: No. I like to keep my personal content very authentic. What I'm making for Wix is there's a lot of heavy editing, a lot of green screen. I don't think it translates well. My videos are comedic, my personal videos. I'm not really trying to teach someone something. I think if I were, I would take more of that professional aspect that we've used in the Wix strategy. But no, I think for personal creators, the best thing, especially right now, is authenticity. I think we've had so much in the past, the previous years of very filtered, perfect videos, circulating in pictures, circulating the internet, and now people find just authentic content really relatable, and that's what people stay around for. So I try and, I really have to separate the two, personal creation and branded creation, because it's super different. Mordy Oberstein: On behalf of my generation, we apologize for all that perfect content that was completely just schlock. Anyway... Crystal Carter: I think it can be very important. I certainly, I think that brings into the idea of channels and brand voice and things like that. Because I think that that awareness is really important when people are thinking about bringing some of the knowledge that they have from their personal branding, development experience, into other avenues. So people might have a personal blog and then start writing for a company blog, or people might have a personal Facebook account that gets a lot of engagement, or I know, bless Facebook. And then maybe they're writing for the company one. And I've seen this when working with juniors, working with people who are just getting started, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I can do the same thing. I'll just share these same..." And it's maybe sort of sometimes, but you really do have to experiment with that. Can you give any advice of when people should draw the lines between one brand voice and another brand voice? Marissa Brower: I think it takes so much experimentation to understand what works on a particular channel. I'm only working on TikTok, and when I came into Wix's TikTok, it was really underdeveloped, one post a month compared to what we're doing now, which is three to four a week. And the ones that we were posting before I joined was just recycled content. It was nothing specific for TikTok. So when I came in, it was like, "Let's build a strategy and let's figure out what to do for our channel." And we tried a bunch of different stuff. Trending sounds, it's huge and it still is huge. And then the user showcases, educational content tutorials, and just the educational content and the tutorials just blew out all the other ideas. Once we started really figuring out what do our viewers stick around for? It was really providing value for them. So on TikTok, even though it's really this fun, light app that a younger generation is engaging with, I think that people still want to walk away from the app retaining something, especially from a brand. So that's how we got into these tutorials. Whereas on Instagram, I think that there's an opportunity to be more, to use more design on TikTok. Using design is the worst thing you can do on TikTok. We try and stay away from design, because we want to keep it still authentic to TikTok. So it's just learning what each platform... When you're on Instagram scrolling, you want to see something beautiful. On TikTok, you won't want to walk away feeling like you learn something or that video wasn't a waste of your time. So it's just learning the landscapes of different social media apps, I think. Mordy Oberstein: To quote Jimi Hendrix quoting Bob Dylan, "The hour is getting late." Where can people find you, Marissa? Marissa Brower: My Instagram is @marissabrower, and my TikTok account is @marissabrow. That's pretty... And then I have a YouTube account that I've deleted. Same thing @marissabrow. Mordy Oberstein: Links in the show notes, so look for Marissa there. Help build up her knowledge panel by linking to her content all over the place. Marissa, thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you around on TikTok, or at least Crystal will, because I don't do TikTok. Marissa Brower: Thanks, guys, for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Again, major kudos to Marissa. The stuff that she does on TikTok is awesome. She did a great one. We did Semrush and StudioHawk reviewed a Wix website called WhatSugar, and they put out a whole SEO audit template based on WhatSugar is doing and the SEO success. It's very awesome Wix website has seen. And then Marissa took that SEO template and created a whole Instagram and TikTok wrap-up of it that we posted on our TikTok and Instagram account. So it was super cool. It was full-circle infographic, SEO audit thing into TikTok, Instagram content. So a way to knock it out of the park without repurposing, Marissa. Crystal Carter: Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I always have a good repurposing, right? You know who doesn't repurpose a lot of content? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry Schwartz does not repurpose a lot of content. It's always fresh and always new. Crystal Carter: So fresh, like a summer's breeze. Mordy Oberstein: Although sometimes, it is semi-repackaged, like, "Here's Google again telling you for the eight millionth time, word count doesn't matter." Crystal Carter: My favorite thing is when he, well, to be fair, he does do the, in-case-you-missed-its, which I'm very grateful for, because he publishes so much. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm a different time zone, so I get the, in case you missed it in the morning sometimes. So yeah, I do appreciate that. That is repurposing. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I insulted you. Crystal Carter: He also does pull out those pictures from random bits of Google around, which are really fun. Mordy Oberstein: It's a Google cake in Tel Aviv. Crystal Carter: Right. There was a fantastic one of Daniel Waisberg blowing a horn from- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the shofar. Crystal Carter: ... his balcony or something? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. I said that to Barry, like, "Oh, you-" Crystal Carter: Yeah. Oh, you did. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: I was so wrong again, Barry. I'm wrong. You're right, Barry does repurpose content. Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Admitting that you're wrong is a really important part of working with teams. Mordy Oberstein: It's the first step to recovery. And with that, here's the snappy SEO news. Snappy News, snappy news, snappy news. Got three for you this week, and the first one's not from Barry Schwartz. Sorry, Barry, they can't all be from you. From Nicola Agius, from SearchEngineLand. Google testing ads between organic results. There's been a spattering of examples from across the web of people seeing Google ads among the search results. Meaning you usually see ads at the top of the results or at the bottom of the set of results. But now, lots of folks are seeing ads within the results. I think, by the way, this has a lot to do with the fact that I think users are wiser than they were before, and they're looking to not be sold to in the same way. So perhaps they're not clicking on those ads up top the way that they used to before, and Google wants to be more subtle about it. Number two, article number two from, okay, it's from Barry Schwartz. This from Search Engine Roundtable. Google about this image. About this image now live, recency of image, AI details and more. This is really interesting. Google's now offering the ability to see some history or some information about an image. You go to image search, there's a little three button setting thing that you can click on and it will show you how old the image is. Google said it may also indicate if the image has been generated by AI and so forth. Have a look at the GIF that Barry shares in the article, which we'll link to in the show notes. It's really interesting to look at. Obviously, this makes a lot of sense, because the web is going, it already is inundated with AI images, and it's good for people to know what's real than what's AI, if we want to put it that way. So it makes a lot of great sense to have something like that. I think it's a really nice little feature. Okay, this one, well, I guess it comes from Barry. I saw it first on seroundtable.com, but it's actually announced by Google. We'll link to both sources. There's your link. Barry, from Google's own blog. Three new ways to check images and sources online. So Google has an About This Result feature that'll let you get some more context about why that particular result shows in their search results for you and some information about that result. We'll link to the article in the show notes. You can have a look at where that actually is and what it looks like. But just know there's this little feature out there that gives context to a result shown to you on the SERP. Google is now using AI to generate information or a description about a result that you may see among your search results within this About This Result feature. I'll just read to you what Google themselves wrote. It'll make this a little bit clearer, because without seeing it, it's hard to understand it. Google writes, "One of the best ways to evaluate information online is to learn more about the source. Say you stumble upon some cool new hiking boots, but they're from a small merchant you're not familiar with. You might want to do research on the seller, but in some cases, it can be hard to find information about lesser-known sites. Now we're starting to experiment how generative AI can do some of that digging for you to help you search with confidence." So the AI will generate a little bit of a description about who the seller actually is or who the website actually is, so you can better understand, contextually, who they are and may say, "You know what? I do want to buy it from them. They do seem reliable." I think it's really interesting that Google's using AI for this. I think it's a little bit of a shame that it's hard to actually know that this feature even exists unless you stumble on it, like you are now, if you haven't heard of it before and you're listening to this podcast. I think it's fabulous that Google is trying to democratize the web even more than it currently is. And I think Google really is trying to democratize the web in a lot of ways. I know some may push back on my claim that they are doing that, but I think they are doing that, or trying to do that, rather. And I think giving context to smaller or lesser-known websites is a great way to do that. So kudos to Google. I like the feature. I think it's cool. And that's this week's Snappy News. And once again, as always, thank you Barry and the other SEO news authors who are out there. Crystal Carter: Yes, other people talk about new things, too. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, and it's not just you. Crystal Carter: Other people, too. Mordy Oberstein: There are other people, like Matt Southern and Roger Montti, Denny Goodwin, Loren Baker, Kristi Hines. Crystal Carter: Kristi Hines, exactly. Mordy Oberstein: A lot of great people. Crystal Carter: Ellie DeMasellis. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh, Glenn Gabe's always covering something. Crystal Carter: Billy Ray. Things are happening, things are happening- Mordy Oberstein: Things are happy- Crystal Carter: ... moving, shaking. Mordy Oberstein: You know what's always moving and shaking, our follow of the week, who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness over on social media. This one is former Wix SEO advisory board member Nikki Mossier, over at Niki Mosier, SEO. It's N-I-K-I-M-O-S-I-E-R-S-E-O, over on Twitter, the platform I formally call X. Did I get that backwards? Crystal Carter: I don't know. But Niki's a great follow. She's really, really good at talking about lots of different SEO stuff, and she's also, she's a consultant, so she works across lots of different groups. So she's a great person to follow for SEO. Mordy Oberstein: And she has a course for non-SEO, is about SEO. Crystal Carter: Which is incredibly valuable. Mordy Oberstein: It's the perfect tie-in. Crystal Carter: I think that's why we picked her. Mordy Oberstein: Was that on purpose? Crystal Carter: I think we did it deliberately. Mordy Oberstein: No. We were deliberate? Crystal Carter: Brilliant. I think brilliant, genius. Mordy Oberstein: Brilliance. I will say brilliance is deliberate. Crystal Carter: We're delivering brilliance. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Deliberately. Well, thank you for joining us for the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with the new episodes. We dive into the money bin itself. We're looking at, too, how much should SEO cost? That's a taboo topic right there. Crystal Carter: Mm-hmm. Mordy Oberstein: I will tell you it was hard to find a guest who wanted to talk about it. Little spoiler alert. Anyway, look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars over at the Wix SEO Learning over at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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 can you bring your SEO performance back to life? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter discuss ways you can get your SEO production back on track. Whether your SEO performance has flatlined or the site hasn’t been worked on for a good while we have tips and strategies to kick your SEO back into gear. Sterling Sky’s Carrie Hill joins as she dives into the intricacies behind helping clients who desperately need an SEO resurgence. Plus, this content marketing tool will make getting your content to perform well on the SERP again that much easier. We’re doing some digital CPR this week as we break the cycle of stagnation and teach you how to revive your SEO playbook on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Take your SEO off life support How can you bring your SEO performance back to life? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter discuss ways you can get your SEO production back on track. Whether your SEO performance has flatlined or the site hasn’t been worked on for a good while we have tips and strategies to kick your SEO back into gear. Sterling Sky’s Carrie Hill joins as she dives into the intricacies behind helping clients who desperately need an SEO resurgence. Plus, this content marketing tool will make getting your content to perform well on the SERP again that much easier. We’re doing some digital CPR this week as we break the cycle of stagnation and teach you how to revive your SEO playbook on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 86 | May 8, 2024 | 45 MIN 00:00 / 44:31 This week’s guests Carrie Hill Carrie Hill brings over 18 years of experience in all aspects of SEO to the table. She thrives on unraveling the complexities of Google's ever-changing algorithms and crafting customized strategies for each client's unique needs. Her influence extends beyond Sterling Sky, where she's spearheaded the LocalU Conference Series since 2017, ensuring its success through challenging times and a return to in-person events. But Carrie's life isn't all SEO. In her free time, you might find her curled up with her three dogs and a good book, or unleashing her culinary creativity in the kitchen. 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, and I'm joined by she who rekindles fires across the internet, the one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am the fire starter, the twisted fire starter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, 'cause I was wondering who burned down that lovely- Crystal Carter: No, no, no, that wasn't me. No. Sorry. No, no, no, no. Sorry I didn't start that fire. Mordy Oberstein: I really liked that place. Crystal Carter: No, no… different one. No, it's just like shout out to the [sings]. People know that song, right? Am I that old? It's that bad? Do you know that song? Mordy Oberstein: Anyway though. The Serb's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also resuscitate and revitalize your SEO workflows with checklist, cheat sheets and more found on the SEO Learning Hub's resource Center over at wix.com/SEO/learn, but this time /assets, as this week, we're here to help you if your SEO strategy and performance is on life support. Get tips and how to revitalize your SEO as we look into how to hunt down new organic opportunities, how to get your content cadence going again and the risk reward of trying something new for your SEO to help us. Sterling Sky's Carrie Hill will pop into to share how she revitalizes a site's SEO after a search marketing hiatus. Plus we'll explore a tool that can help you find new ideas. You probably already have it, but you don't even know that it's there. And of course, we have the snappies of SEO News and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social media. So somebody called 911 and started singing, staying Alive in Your Head as episode 86 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you resuscitate your SEO back up to 100 or to 120 beats a minute. You know that trick by the way you're doing CPR [singing “Staying Alive”]. And that's how you do the compressions? Crystal Carter: No, I did not know that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, that is some good life skills there. Mordy Oberstein: There's some life skills right here on the SERP's Up podcast. Great episode of the office that talks about that also, which I'm not going to go into here. But yeah, it helps you do the cadence for the compressions. That's the reference. That's why I talk about the Bee Gees. Crystal Carter: Okay, I see that. I see that. I think that makes sense. That makes sense. So we're talking about how to reignite, resuscitate even, the SEO if it's gone kind of flat. And I think that this happens essentially when people take a break from content creation and/or when people sort of maybe forget about the website. There's a lot of times where there are clients who are so busy managing the website and maybe it's a business that isn't a direct to consumer business and maybe it's more of a brochure site. And what will often happen is that businesses will carry out their business, they'll do their day-to-day, and they might not even look at their website very often. They put up the core information about the business, but they might not look at what's on the pages there. And oftentimes if you look at that, then the SEO is kind of flat, right? Might be the same sort of number of traffic for years, months, weeks, certainly months and years. And I think that when you have a situation like that, even if you have blogs, even if you have content, if you are doing some of the sort of SEO best practices that people talk about, things like optimizing images and optimizing Meta descriptions and optimizing even the content that's already there, you might still see that your website is still kind of flat. And if your traffic is a little bit flat, but my general advice is that it probably means you need to do something different. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, if you're doing the same thing, if you've got the same amount of content, then Google will give you the same results. So if you want to reinvigorate your website, if you want to re-engage Google with your website, then probably the best bit of advice I can give to someone is to start making new content. And this might mean that you need to create new blogs. It might mean that you need to create new other pages on your website, but chances are between the last time you updated your website and now things have changed either for your business or within your industry, certainly within the last 18 months with all the AI that's going on, I think most industries have seen some impact from that, for instance. So there's almost certainly something that you can contribute there. But that does a few things. First of all, recency is a consideration when Google is thinking about new content and when Google is thinking about indexing content. Second of all, if Google is seeing that your site map, your site map will say the last time that your content was updated, and on a dynamic site map, very often the most recent content will go to the top of that list. And it's the case that the top of that list says that the last time your content was updated was in March the fourth, 2022, then they're going to go, "Well, we don't need to crawl this again. We already crawled this between now and 2022." So when you update content that says, "Oh, we should refresh this crawl because this site is new." They've done new stuff, they've got new things. The other thing that's great about it is it also gives you another opportunity to share content across different socials, which also will get crawled. It also gives you an opportunity to connect with more folks via backlinks, email, et cetera, et cetera, and to get a burst of traffic coming to your site when you're doing new content. Another great tactic that I've seen from folks, particularly agencies who are doing great work with content and websites that have sort of flatlined a little bit, is to not just do it in dribs and drabs, not just do one blog and then a month later, another blog, and then a month later, another blog, but upload 20, 30 blogs at the same time or 20, 30 pages at the same time, because that gives Google lots of new information about what's going on on your site. And when you link all of that up, that also gives lots of information to Google about the connections across it and all of that sort of stuff. I can see Morty wants to jump in here. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time, if you haven't produced new content, you have another problem, is that your audience thinks you're dead. So if you're going to put out one, "Okay, I'll get the SEO going. I'll put out a new post every month," and over time, "I'm not in a big rush." Let's say you're not in a big rush for whatever reason. I don't know why you wouldn't be in a big rush, but you're not in a big rush. "I'll take my leisurely time ranking again." Fine. You will miss out on all of that potential on your brand for people to realize that you've revitalized, you've been resuscitated, you are still alive. And that can also lead to helping your SEO, because once your people see that your brand is back, they'll share content on social, they might link to your content, all of that momentum, all of that digital light and cadence you'll benefit from if you think about it from your user's point of view. I hate being cliche, but if you think about the user's point of view as well. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a great point. Since Covid, because a lot of businesses changed during Covid, and I think that one of the things that I find particularly with bricks and mortar businesses is that I will go to their website and their website might say their opening hours or might say what's going on or where they are or what they do, and then I'll go to their social to double check whether or not they're still there. Because it's been a couple of times when I've gone to go to a business that I haven't been to in a while and they're not there and the website says that they are, but their social says it or not. And I think that it is really important from the fad, that SEO perspective to say, "I'm still standing stronger than I ever did as it were." And I think that that's really, really important for Google and for users. And I think that it tells people that you're still on top of the conversation, whatever the new conversation is, particularly if you're a knowledge-based business, it tells people that you're still part of the community, if you're a local business. It tells people lots of things about you. Getting the content going, and it might even be updating some of your old pages as well. If people leave your team and you have a team page, update the team page. If Sarah's not working there anymore, then Sarah shouldn't be on your team page. And we wish Sarah well, I'm sure she's going to do a great job in her new role or whatever, but just update the page. That's fine. That's totally fine. And I think that that is something that Google will reward you for. And also trimming the fat is really useful as well. I think people overlook the fact that getting rid of content is sometimes updating content as well. Mordy Oberstein: I was just talking about this with Carrie Hill, who is our actual guest. I think our webinar with Sterling Sky, I think she mentioned the same thing. It's a great point. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So the way I like to think about it is cutting T-shirt, right? If you cut a T-shirt, you're actually cutting content out, but you're still updating the content at the same time. Mordy Oberstein: Or it's like when you need new shorts, you just take old pants and you cut them to make shorts. So now you have shorts. Crystal Carter: New content. Mordy Oberstein: It's the '80s again, we're wearing cutoff shorts. Crystal Carter: And it makes a new content because the other thing is that if Google's coming to your website and they're seeing lots and lots and lots of old content, that is irrelevant. Let's say you had a charity fun run or something, and Sarah again, who left the team, did the charity fun run. Mordy Oberstein: Sarah, who's been convicted of stealing from charities. Crystal Carter: Now Sarah's a nice person. She's making jewelry now doing. Mordy Oberstein: She's no longer in charge of the charity run. Crystal Carter: She's doing something else. So let's say, and no shade to Sarahs, I know lots of lovely Sarahs, but Mordy Oberstein: My wife's name is Sarah, so what are you... Crystal Carter: Hey, I'm sure she's great at fun runs. No shade to Sarahs, but I think that if she did a charity fun run, and you were like, "Hey, we'd like you to donate to Sarah's charity fun run." Guess what? They can't donate anymore. That was seven years ago. We don't need that page. Gone. Delete. Doesn't need to be there. It probably isn't ranking anymore. It's probably not getting you loads of traffic, but it is clogging up your crawl. So if you can cut those pages, that will also help revive things because Google will say, "Oh, okay, somebody's looking after this site. Somebody is pruning things and making them look good." Similarly, literally like pruning, if you see a tree that's all overgrown, or if you see a hedge that's all overgrown, nobody's looking after that, right? All of the stuff that's hanging over the side of the road. If you see some fantastic topiary, which is a great word, then you're going to say, "Oh, somebody's looking after that." And even though it's shorter than it would be if it was overgrown, you can tell that someone's looking after that and it's better for that reason. So I think make sure that you're pruning your content coherently as well, because that should also be part of creating a revived SEO presence. Mordy Oberstein: And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your SEO, you're also revitalizing your business. So I'll give you a good example of this. I was reading an article about how Nike wants to revitalize its brand with the Paris Olympic Games, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you actually look at Nike's organic traffic, it's pretty stagnant over the last few years. And in the article they're saying because they feel their sales have stagnated, they've flatlined. I mean, I would take Nike's flatline any day of the week, but they want to grow up. You're not growing, you're dying kind of thing. And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your content, because you're talking about revitalizing content, and a lot of the times your content is your brand, your content is your business. So when you're revitalizing your SEO, it's an opportunity to pivot your entire... If your business is stagnant, it's a good time to pivot. I was talking to Ryan L. Smith, who will be a guest on this podcast in a few weeks just yesterday on a different podcast. And he was saying he had a client where they sold wedding cakes. And as they started really creating that identity around selling wedding cakes, people started to ask them about, "Hey, can you do my anniversary?" Or, "Can you do my birthday?" And they saw that as a good time to start pivoting. If you are creating, you should be opening new doors of opportunity for yourself. If you're alive, you should be creating new doors for opportunity for yourself, and you should be using it to, if not pivot, expand on what you do as a business. And that's a great time to start expanding on what you do for SEO and the topics that you're now able to focus on. I will say, and we were talking about this earlier today, and then when you do that, sometimes as you're expanding your offering or you're pivoting your offering, both for your users and for search engines, you need to make sure that you're taking it step by step. Before you sold baseball jerseys and now you're selling, I don't know, you sold hockey sweaters and now you're selling actual sweaters. You need to somehow slowly make the move from selling hockey sweaters to actual sweaters and creating that perception and the content that supports that over time, which may mean you're creating content or pages that are not meant to rank or pull in conversions, but then help you make the pivot so that you can eventually pull in the traffic and pull in the conversions. Crystal Carter: And I think it's important when you're doing that to think about the core of your audience, people who know you, people who like you, your warm leads, your friends, like your internet friends, as it were- Mordy Oberstein: I only have internet friends. Crystal Carter: ... you're not throwing them out of the window. Mordy Oberstein: Let’s gloss right over that! Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. Morning. It's all good. We'll do a whip round as it were. I don't know. We'll sort you out. So a prime example of this is Old Spice, right? I remember when Old Spice revived their brand, so there's Old Spice original, then they had that big campaign, this is probably 10 or 15 years ago now when they had the guy and he was like, "Look at your man. Now look at me. Now look at this." Do you remember those? And they did some great stuff online. They did some great stuff on YouTube, and they really revitalized the brand. It got people really interested in it, in the brand, because this was a brand that everybody knew and loved. It was old faithful, just like peanut butter and jelly. Everybody knew Old Spice and what it did. It was solid and it's a perfectly solid brand, like Nike's, totally solid brand, all of that sort of stuff. And then they were just like, "Let's do something fun. Let's do something fun and interesting." And now they've got lots of different kinds of styles and stuff, and they've got really interesting names. Mordy Oberstein: They were very, I would say bland. They were like old man a little bit. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it was totally fine. But that was kind of their brand. And they were like, "Let's get crazy." Now they've got scents called Night Panther. Mordy Oberstein: Hell, yeah. Crystal Carter: And they're just getting a little bit interesting, but they're building on the brand that they have there to expand that out. Mordy Oberstein: But that's a really good point. One of the things that helps you revitalize your SEO and all the things in this case for your brand, in the case of Old Spice, and I think by the way, that Nike needs to do the same thing, you're kind of going against the grain or against what you were doing before. You're going against your instincts or reference back to a Seinfeld episode. I'm not a big Seinfeld fan. Anyway, but there's an episode where George kind does the opposite of whatever he would normally do, how he would normally react because things are not going well for him. Do that. Pull a Costanza, do the opposite. If your brand is a little bit old man, a little bit boring, if you're Old Spice, go a little crazy with it. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think it comes from a point of confidence as well. So old Spice for instance, we're just going to stick with this for a minute. The thing about them is people know that that's a solid brand, that they know how to make sure that you don't smell the way that you don't want to smell or whatever. We know that they know how to do that job, and we know that they're consistent and we know that they're a solid brand, they're a solid team, they're dependable, all of that sort of stuff. So this extra thing that they're doing is something that where they're like, "Hey, we're trying this new thing. It's kind of fun." And it comes from a place of comfort. It's like you want something that same but different. Mordy Oberstein: Same but different. Crystal Carter: And for instance, I went to a wedding and they had fish and chips. I'm in England, but they have fish and chips, but in a single serving thing, right? Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? So it was like a cone, a handheld cone, and it had one bit of fish and a couple of chips and a little bit of peas at the bottom or whatever. And that was fun. "Oh, it's fun." But if they were like, "Oh, we've got fish sticks covered in jelly," that would be weird. That's too weird. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's too weird. Crystal Carter: You don't want to go too weird. You don't want to go too weird. You want to go to something that people recognize that's from you. That's not like Old Spice straight away went into doing something completely different. They said, "We have different scents." That's kind of really where they went. And that's fine. So I think when you're thinking about your branding, you're thinking about your blogs, think of what's in the neighborhood of what you're doing, but is building on it. So it might be that you're talking about the same topic, but to a slightly different audience. Mordy Oberstein: Or in a different way or a different take. And if you have been producing a lot of content and you've stagnated, this might be the strategy for you, do something different. If you're being very methodical about A, B, B, and C, A, B, B, and C, of course you have two, Bs, of course B is the most important letter in the alphabet. Crystal Carter: Obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Then try something different. If you're trying X in your title tags and it's not pulling in clicks, do the opposite. Crystal Carter: And also when we say creating new content, it could be new blogs or it could be your same blogs in a different way. So you could take your blogs and make them into YouTube videos. You could take your blogs and make them into newsletters. You could take your blogs and make them into Twitter posts or infographics or whatever, what have you. And then that doesn't need a new content writer to do all of that. That's just the same information in a different way. But it will get your information to a new audience. And if you're doing something like a podcast, for instance, let's say you interviewed someone for a blog and you could maybe make them into a podcast or maybe you're discussing an event that you did in a podcast, for instance, podcast, again, have another distribution model that will also bring in traffic to your website. So same but different. It's the same content but in a different guise, for instance. And that can revitalize, but basically you need to do something new. Mordy Oberstein: You need to break the cycle of stagnation. To help you understand how she does this, Carrie Hill from Sterling Sky and LocalU is here to tell us how she goes about helping SEO clients who have stopped their work, but need to revive some faltering search performance and come back to SEO and search success. Here's Carrie. Carrie Hill: So what do we do at Sterling Sky when a client comes back after suspending their SEO? We're going to make a few assumptions here because this can be nuanced. So let's kind of create a story and then I'll kind of tell you how we'd handle it. So this person has paused SEO. They have done no work on their website, no SEO in this time period that we're going to talk about. If they've hired another company that's coming in and done some things, or they've tried to do it in-house, we're sort of looking at a different scenario. But let's just say for this first example that nothing's been done on the website since they "paused" SEO. If they were Sterling Sky client, they paused SEO and it's six months later and they've come back and said, "Okay, we're ready to start up again." It's likely we can pretty much start back up where we left off. If it's been more than six months, we're probably going to have to take a step back, do some more evaluation, do a bit of an audit, kind of look at the keywords and the competition and what's going on in their market before we move forward. If it's been six months or less, we're pretty confident that what we have done to date and the research we have to implement to date is probably pretty good. Now, there are things that will have to change. Tactics that worked six months ago might not be working today. Things that didn't work six months ago might be working today. So there's always a bit of reevaluation that you have to plan for when you restart SEO. But if they've left us and then come back to us with no work in the interim, we can pretty much hit the ground running, keep implementing our tactics and moving forward. Now, scenario number two is they suspend SEO and it's a year later and they come back to us. For the most part, we're going to treat them like a brand new client. More than likely we're going to audit them, which is sort of like the baseline of where everybody starts with Sterling Sky. We pretty much don't take on SEO clients if we don't have an audit done first, just so we know kind of where we're starting from, what's there, what's working, what's not working. Quite frankly, a year can make a big difference in search volumes, keyword trends, et cetera. So we're going to sort of start, I don't want to say start from scratch, but we're going to pull back a bit more, do a bit more research before we then start implementing and probably, let's be perfectly honest, making changes to the website because what keywords worked a year ago probably aren't going to be working now or maybe not working as effectively. Maybe some new phrases or new services that they've added in that year could come into play that we have to plan around as well. Now, the third scenario I'm just going to mention is if they've paused SEO and they had a different SEO company previously, or they did it in-house previously, they've not done anything for a year and then they hire us. That's a new client. We're going to start them with an audit. We're going to do our own keyword research with their input of course, and start with making sure that their architecture and technical SEO is on point as we start moving them forward into all of the tactics that we use to ensure that not only do they rank well, they convert well. So that's kind of our process for bringing people back into SEO when they've been on hiatus or sabbatical from the whole SEO realm for a bit of time. Now, if it's been a month or two that they've paused, maybe they ran into a cashflow problem or something, we're probably just going to start right back up again and jump right back into it. But if it's been a bit longer, we kind of pump the brakes a little bit, make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. All of our research is still fresh and looks good to continue implementing as we move forward. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Carrie. Make sure to give Carrie a big follow over on Twitter at Carrie Hill, C-A-R-R-I-E H-I-L-L. Link in the show notes and follow all the good folks over at LocalU and Sterling Sky. It's a good point by the way, where you have a new client who's kind of been a hiatus, and they're coming in from somebody else who's doing some SEO work for them. And you have to start from scratch with an audit. It's always a little bit funny. Now you got to go back to the client and say, "Okay, well, you did some SEO for a while, but we're going to start from the beginning. We don't know what that other agency or consultant did for you, and now we're going to start from scratch." The client's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Start from scratch? We've been doing SEO." Crystal Carter: Yeah, but I think the other thing is that there'll be some scales and there's some things you can build on. You can tell a website is very janky from a technical point of view. Which is why Carrie very rightly mentioned auditing over and over again. And I think that that's super important and is definitely a process in restarting, is that before you restart, you wanted to make sure that there aren't any technical reasons why it's flatlined. And it could be that maybe the industry has moved on and this website has not, and that's something to do. So auditing is super important to make sure that there aren't broken things or things that are out of date. For instance, if there's a schema thing that they haven't implemented, but since they last updated the website has become a standard practice, for instance, that might be something to you think about, or Google Merchant Center or something. Maybe they never didn't sign up for Google Merchant Center or whatever it may be. So I think that that's super important. The auditing is really, really important and is absolutely crucial. And I think that it can be very tricky for clients who want to get started, and when you're like, "We need to do an audit," and they're like, "But I don't want to audit." It's like, "Yeah, but the thing is, if we don't do an audit, then I'm going to have to audit as I go along, which is going to take me twice as long as if I just do an audit from the first instance. And then I can tell you all of the things that are wrong or all of the things that we might be doing, and then we can make a decision as grownup human beings. So why don't we just do the grownup thing and do an audit, please." Mordy Oberstein: Another grownup thing that you could do is, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support, and we're talking about new content opportunities, is use this SEO tool as we dive into a segment we haven't done in a while called Tool Dive. So when I used to work at Semrush, one of my biggest hills I would die on is the content marketing tool, topic research tool, in the content marketing tool set is the best tool in the whole platform. And no one uses it because it's not in SEO, it's under content marketing. But it was my favorite tool. And when I would do advocacy about the tool set, that would be the tool I would always use. And I always try to showcase, "My baby project." Getting people to understand this tool is awesome and you should use it, but it's not a keyword research tool. It's a topic research tool, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support and finding new topics. I recommend this tool among others. Also ask as well. But this is a great tool and what you can do with it is, so let's say I'm a local SEO and I'm working with, I don't know, a doctor in Tampa, Florida. So you could put things in like doctor and Tampa Bay and see what shows up and understand what topics other doctors are ranking for or showing or whatever it is. So for example, I get back urgent care, type 2 diabetes, internal medicine, family medicine, board certified, quality care, specialty care as topics. So if I'm trying to revitalize my SEO when I'm a doctor office in Tampa Bay, Florida, then I probably want to talk about urgent care. I probably want to talk about what I specialize in. I probably want to talk about the quality of my care. I probably want to talk about, it talks about here family physician or different types of other medicine. If you specialize in one of those areas, you want talk about that. What the tool basically do is put out all of the topics that are relevant to... And you need to kind of work through because some of them are not relevant to you or shouldn't be relevant to you, and work through what is relevant and what's not relevant to you. And if you're trying to revitalize your SEO, you're probably going to find topics in here that relate to what you do that you have not been focusing on. And there's actually a mind map built in. And what's cool about this is so you can see all the topics. First off, you can dive into questions about the topic. So let's say for example, I choose high blood pressure, so I can get a whole bunch of questions about, as a doctor, have you ever given the wrong diagnosis about blood pressure? What are the best blood thinners? All the different subtopics or questions that your users have about blood pressure and being a doctor in Tampa Bay. But what you can also do is you can put it in a competitor website and the mind map will highlight in blue or green, I forget which one, which of its subtopics your competitor that you entered is ranking for. And you can focus on those first so you can find new topics and at the same time, see not just by keyword but topically which topics or subtopics your competitors are already focused on. Crystal Carter: And I think they've split it out in a really interesting way. So one thing that I was looking at was I was looking at Negroni's and people aren't familiar, Negroni is a trending drink. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, very familiar. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I went out with people and everybody was like, "I wanted Negroni." I was like, "What is the deal? It's like Pinot Grigio." Like 10 years ago, everybody suddenly got into Pinot Grigio, and at the moment people are really into Negroni. Anyway, so they have trending topics within it and then they break it into high resonance with audience. So it'll tell you that Negroni cocktail recipe has a lot of backlinks, that there's a lot of backlinks for that topic, which is really interesting. It gives you the search volume across lots of them and lots of different topics as well. It also breaks you into related searches, which Google will do. So that replicates the user journey for people looking at that topic. So I can see headlines. So it says headlines like Negroni recipes, like top Negroni recipes, classic Negroni recipes, related searches, best of vermouth for Negroni. So I if I had a drinks website, a cocktail recipe website, then that might be something that I'd want to include there. Or if I was a spirits seller, for instance, that'd be a great blog of the vermouth, the ingredient that goes in that particular drink. Mordy Oberstein: That's why I always like the tool because the tool does, it kind of gives you a very holistic understanding of what's included in the subtopic. First, outside of breaking up the subtopics, it breaks down the subtopic, the further subtopics like you're saying here. And it lets you kind of figure out... And what's different about this and versus a keyword research is you don't pick the question. You're taking a look and thematically analyzing what kind of topics or subtopics should I be talking about? You're a vermouth question. Maybe there's other kinds of mixers that need to be factored in that you should also... It should just raise questions about like, "Oh, snap. I never thought to take the topic from that point of view." Crystal Carter: Right. Similarly, they're talking about rock glasses, the types of glasses that you would put that drink in. Mordy Oberstein: I never would've thought of that. Crystal Carter: Orange slices. Then I like the way they split out the questions because they go into what, how can I, like why so can you make it with Campari, for instance, is one. And then they go into can you make it without sweet vermouth? Things like that. So I think that it's something that goes into it and it goes into it in a lot of different ways. I think also for a different perspective is that if you are feeling like you're SEO is a little bit stagnant, using different tools is a great way as well. So if it's a tool that you haven't used or a different part of the tool, because I completely forgot about this. I've used this tool before, but I completely forgot that this was here. Mordy Oberstein: It's not in the SEO section. They should put it in the SEO section. Crystal Carter: Right. This is our call to you, Semrush. And I think that using a different tool, using a different tool set, there are other tools that do this kind of thing as well, can give you some good ideas on where you can get new topics and also get yourself enthused. I think sometimes what happens with topics is that you have talked about the topic and you're like, "Oh, I talked about this so many times." My great aunt who's dearly departed was really, really lovely and she told me the same stories whenever I saw her, but when I introduced her to my husband, she told him all these different stories that I never heard and I was like, "Aunt Sonia, why don't you tell me this?" She was like, "I don't know, I didn't feel the need." So I think sometimes when you get new tools, you get new things out of them and maybe it helps you revive the way that you feel about your content even, which is a great thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. All the time. I do that, by the way, you know there's something to do with this tool, but if I go on LinkedIn and the collaborative questions and I don't like the articles or whatever, but I like seeing the question. It helps me think like, "Oh, how would I answer that? What's my take on that?" So getting a fresh look at something is a great idea. By the way, in the tool here itself, in the Semrush tool, you can filter it by trending topics. It helps you see what's hot, what's what's current event or news-y kind of thing. So you can sort of break down the topics that way as well. It's a great tool. Have a look at it, tell them we sent you, I guess, I don't know, we're not getting a referral out of this, but just want to show the love. Anyway, check out the content marketing tool inside of Semrush. It's a hidden gem to borrow an SEO term. You know what's also a hidden gem? Barry Schwartz is a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He's not hidden at all. Mordy Oberstein: No, he is. You ever see him out and about? I never seen him out and about. He's hiding in his SEO cave. He's a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He has thousands of followers. He comes out sometimes to give out baseball cards. Well, to talk about baseball cards. Or were they basketball cards? Basketball cards. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I have seen him play hockey in his driveway, so he comes out for that also. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Actually I am on BarrySEOMemes.com, I ask in my FAQ about Barry, "Does he play hockey?" And I have a link to the tweet that shows him playing hockey. He does the slap shot a little bit wrong, and everyone does this. The way that the slap shot gets momentum is when you first smack it on the ice or the ground, the stick bends backwards, and then when it hits the ball or the puck, like a slingshot slings forward. So you actually are meant to hit the stick on the ground before you hit the actual puck to get momentum. That's physics for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: How many people know that? I didn't know that growing up until I watch a video about this. Anyway, here's this week's Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Barry Schwartz of course, and one from some guy named Mordy oberstein. Never heard of him before. Anyway, Mordy Oberstein wrote, or I wrote, on Search Engine Land three key observations about the March 2024 core update. So I got a hold of some big data from Semrush and went through sort of why it's hard to analyze the impact of the March 2024 core update. Basically due to the extended rollout, 45 day rollout, it makes looking at metrics like the peak level of ring volatility, almost meaningless to a larger or greater extent. Ran through some data on the impact of the core update at the top of the search. So one ranking pattern that I saw throughout my analysis or just running through 300 manually researching some 300 different search over the course of the update, was that there was a lot of movement or ranking shifts between narrow around positions five through 10, let's say the bottom half of page one, what we call page one. But when you looked at position one through five, the more of that very top of the SERP, I didn't see as much volatility there. So one of the things we looked at in the Semrush data set was the percentage of new URLs ranking in the top 10 that prior to the update didn't rank top 20, meaning before the update, these URLs did not even crack the top 20 results on the SERP, and now they rank top 10. And what we see is there's around 9% of the URLs ranking after the March, 2024 core update came from beyond position 20 with the implication meeting that Google realized that they were under rewarding significantly these URLs. If you look back at the previous core update, which was the November 2023 core update, that number is only around 6.5%. So that's a big increase in rank volatility and the drasticness rather of the rank volatility among the top 10 results. But when you look at the top five results, the percentage of new URLs that didn't rank top 20, even top 20, that now ranked top five after the March, 2024 core update is 3%. Back in November, it was 2%. Not as big of a gap. I would say marginal, but not notably significant, meaning a lot of the update across the web, and it's a very important word, across the web with the March 2024 core update, a lot of the drasticness of that big movement happened at positions five through 10, but not as much at one through five or not as much as you might've expected considering this was a huge update. The March, 2024 is a huge, huge update. You might've expected to be far more movement or drastic movement among the top five results. But Semrush's data says that's showing that that does not mean that this update was not more powerful than other core updates. In fact, I believe it was. And that's why you need to not just look at the normalized data across the entire web, which is what that Semrush's data set is doing, but you need to look at it more vertically. You need to dig deeper into the websites that were affected, whether positively or negatively, and to the extent of which they were. If you look at, just like I show in the article a bunch of examples, how heavy-handed, I think this update might have been. Anyway, I'll link to the article. We can read the whole thing there on Search Engine Land. Onto SE Roundtable, this from Barry Schwartz, "Google SGE, AI answers now cost 80% less to generate." So one of the big things that people were worried about with Google releasing the SGE, is it always going to cost them so much money. Now we're finding out that now looks like they've kind of perhaps handled that. Barry wrote quote, "I was never worried about Google reducing its costs to generate those AI answers." I agree. I was not really worried that Google was going to be able to figure out the money side of this or the cost to actually produce the results. I think the bigger question is, can Google figure out a way to actually make them, I think, fundamentally useful? To quote friend of the show, Mike King from iPoll rank, paraphrasing him, basically, "Have you ever read an SGE result and walked away feeling, 'Wow, that was incredibly unique and insightful?' Neither have I." Onto the next article and our last article of the day from, again, Barry Schwartz on SE Roundtable. "Google search tests, custom filters and templates." So there was a test, this was spotted by nine to five Google.com I believe. And what it basically is a test where you can now set custom filters and have them apply again and again and again and have them save. So I haven't actually used this, I can't see the test, but it looks like it's very similar to Advanced Search where you can set, let's say you want to say, "I only want results from these websites." You can now kind of save those to replicate over and over and over again across various keywords. So that's really interesting to me because we've been talking about a more personalized results page or Google results page for a while. Something like this would kind of limit what you're seeing, maybe create a filter bubble of sort. That's a different conversation for a different time, but it would result in a much more personalized kind of SERP experience, which is something that SEOs have been talking about forever. If Google does roll out something like this in earnest, that would be very much a paradigm shift in my opinion. And that is this week's Snappy News. If you're looking for a daily dose of some snappy ish kind of news, please check out, It's New. Our Daily, well, Monday through Friday daily news series with the great Barry Schwartz, of course Crystal and myself and Greg Finn from the marketing Clock Team, where we run through all of the news or some of the news for each and every day. You can find it on the Wix SEO Hub. It's right there at the top. You'll see a little card for it, It's New. And also it's on the Rusty Brick YouTube channel. And now I'm officially done with the Snappy News. Goal. Barry scorred a goal, the SEO News this week, didn't he? Crystal Carter: Did he do the Flying V? That's literally all I know about hockey. Mordy Oberstein: The Flying V. Crystal Carter: The only thing I know about hockey is what I learned from the Mighty Dicls. Mordy Oberstein: I was watching the movie with my kids and they're like, "Yeah, it's boring.' Like, "What?" Crystal Carter: Do you know what? My kids did the same thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my God. And you know what? Watching as an adult now, it is a little boring. Crystal Carter: We recently rewatched the Sandlot though. That's so good, right? Please tell me. Mordy Oberstein: My kids love that. My 7-year-old and my 6-year-old are talking about Babe Ruth now, and I'm trying to explain, he's dead. They're like, "Where’s Babe Ruth." Crystal Carter: The great Bambino. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the great Bambino. I thought you said the great Bambi. Great. If you haven't seen this movie, absolutely watch this movie. Crystal Carter: You're killing me Smalls. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, killing Smalls – so good, forever. And also, check out our follow of the week, who's also a great find, Xlili Gonzalez over at Rickety Roo at Xlili, X-L-I-L-I. Link in the show notes to her X profile, an Wix SEO contributor. Little tease here, part of our Wix SEO course, which is forthcoming and a great person to get some ideas to revitalize your SEO strategy on social media. Crystal Carter: She's absolutely fantastic, super nice, and also really gets enthusiastic about great opportunities for clients. She did a great article on the Wix SEO Hub about Microsoft Clarity. She also appeared on the Microsoft Clarity website from Microsoft. I'm talking about this, and again, CRO is a great way to think about how to revitalize your content as well. We have the Microsoft Clarity app on Wix, and she talks about that in her article. And if you are trying to figure out what should we do? How can we revitalize this content? How are people using the content? You can look at a tool like Microsoft Clarity to go, "Oh, actually people are really interested in this part of the website. We should lean into that. This is a good place to start. Let's keep going." Xlili is a great follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: And you can access Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix with our integration with Microsoft Clarity. So double win. Follow Xlili, get Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix. Everyone wins on multiple levels. Boom. Goal. Score. Home run. Another references. Anyway, I hope you feel rejuvenated after this. Like a good IPA, you feel refreshed. Crystal Carter: I was going to say like a spa day, but whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, either because of all the IPA, not only do you feel refreshed, you also feel slightly drunk. So double win. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There we go. There we go. Cool. How do you revitalize yourself after the getting drunk? Mordy Oberstein: Or they can drink that other drink you mentioned before, which I don't know what that- Crystal Carter: Negroni? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, maybe that's what it was. The topic research. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I only drink straight. I don't drink mixed drinks. Crystal Carter: You only drink whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: I drink whiskey straight. Don't even put ice in it. Crystal Carter: What's your favorite whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: Woodford Reserve. Crystal Carter: Wow, that was quick. That's quick. That's an American whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: It's a bourbon. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. Right, right, right. Not scotch? Mordy Oberstein: No, I like scotch too, but that's my favorite. I like bourbon. Crystal Carter: I live in the UK and the people are big on the Glens. If it ain't a Glen, we're not messing with it. Mordy Oberstein: Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glengoyle. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. Mordy Oberstein: Glen Gabe Crystal Carter: Glen Gabe needs his own scotch. Yes. Can we please arrange that? Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. We'll talk to him. Crystal Carter: Right. Single-Domain main malt? Single-domain main malt. Mordy Oberstein: I love it. Crystal Carter: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so good. Well, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week of the new episode as we dive into accessibility and SEO. Look forward wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning Hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content of webinars and resources and beyond over the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it. Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Carrie Hill Celeste Gonzalez Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: 3 key observations about the Google March 2024 core update Google SGE AI Answers Now Cost 80% Less To Generate Google Search Tests Custom Filters & Templates Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Carrie Hill Celeste Gonzalez Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube News: 3 key observations about the Google March 2024 core update Google SGE AI Answers Now Cost 80% Less To Generate Google Search Tests Custom Filters & Templates 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, and I'm joined by she who rekindles fires across the internet, the one, the only head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am the fire starter, the twisted fire starter. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, 'cause I was wondering who burned down that lovely- Crystal Carter: No, no, no, that wasn't me. No. Sorry. No, no, no, no. Sorry I didn't start that fire. Mordy Oberstein: I really liked that place. Crystal Carter: No, no… different one. No, it's just like shout out to the [sings]. People know that song, right? Am I that old? It's that bad? Do you know that song? Mordy Oberstein: Anyway though. The Serb's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also resuscitate and revitalize your SEO workflows with checklist, cheat sheets and more found on the SEO Learning Hub's resource Center over at wix.com/SEO/learn, but this time /assets, as this week, we're here to help you if your SEO strategy and performance is on life support. Get tips and how to revitalize your SEO as we look into how to hunt down new organic opportunities, how to get your content cadence going again and the risk reward of trying something new for your SEO to help us. Sterling Sky's Carrie Hill will pop into to share how she revitalizes a site's SEO after a search marketing hiatus. Plus we'll explore a tool that can help you find new ideas. You probably already have it, but you don't even know that it's there. And of course, we have the snappies of SEO News and who you should be following for more awesomeness on social media. So somebody called 911 and started singing, staying Alive in Your Head as episode 86 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you resuscitate your SEO back up to 100 or to 120 beats a minute. You know that trick by the way you're doing CPR [singing “Staying Alive”]. And that's how you do the compressions? Crystal Carter: No, I did not know that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, that is some good life skills there. Mordy Oberstein: There's some life skills right here on the SERP's Up podcast. Great episode of the office that talks about that also, which I'm not going to go into here. But yeah, it helps you do the cadence for the compressions. That's the reference. That's why I talk about the Bee Gees. Crystal Carter: Okay, I see that. I see that. I think that makes sense. That makes sense. So we're talking about how to reignite, resuscitate even, the SEO if it's gone kind of flat. And I think that this happens essentially when people take a break from content creation and/or when people sort of maybe forget about the website. There's a lot of times where there are clients who are so busy managing the website and maybe it's a business that isn't a direct to consumer business and maybe it's more of a brochure site. And what will often happen is that businesses will carry out their business, they'll do their day-to-day, and they might not even look at their website very often. They put up the core information about the business, but they might not look at what's on the pages there. And oftentimes if you look at that, then the SEO is kind of flat, right? Might be the same sort of number of traffic for years, months, weeks, certainly months and years. And I think that when you have a situation like that, even if you have blogs, even if you have content, if you are doing some of the sort of SEO best practices that people talk about, things like optimizing images and optimizing Meta descriptions and optimizing even the content that's already there, you might still see that your website is still kind of flat. And if your traffic is a little bit flat, but my general advice is that it probably means you need to do something different. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, if you're doing the same thing, if you've got the same amount of content, then Google will give you the same results. So if you want to reinvigorate your website, if you want to re-engage Google with your website, then probably the best bit of advice I can give to someone is to start making new content. And this might mean that you need to create new blogs. It might mean that you need to create new other pages on your website, but chances are between the last time you updated your website and now things have changed either for your business or within your industry, certainly within the last 18 months with all the AI that's going on, I think most industries have seen some impact from that, for instance. So there's almost certainly something that you can contribute there. But that does a few things. First of all, recency is a consideration when Google is thinking about new content and when Google is thinking about indexing content. Second of all, if Google is seeing that your site map, your site map will say the last time that your content was updated, and on a dynamic site map, very often the most recent content will go to the top of that list. And it's the case that the top of that list says that the last time your content was updated was in March the fourth, 2022, then they're going to go, "Well, we don't need to crawl this again. We already crawled this between now and 2022." So when you update content that says, "Oh, we should refresh this crawl because this site is new." They've done new stuff, they've got new things. The other thing that's great about it is it also gives you another opportunity to share content across different socials, which also will get crawled. It also gives you an opportunity to connect with more folks via backlinks, email, et cetera, et cetera, and to get a burst of traffic coming to your site when you're doing new content. Another great tactic that I've seen from folks, particularly agencies who are doing great work with content and websites that have sort of flatlined a little bit, is to not just do it in dribs and drabs, not just do one blog and then a month later, another blog, and then a month later, another blog, but upload 20, 30 blogs at the same time or 20, 30 pages at the same time, because that gives Google lots of new information about what's going on on your site. And when you link all of that up, that also gives lots of information to Google about the connections across it and all of that sort of stuff. I can see Morty wants to jump in here. Mordy Oberstein: At the same time, if you haven't produced new content, you have another problem, is that your audience thinks you're dead. So if you're going to put out one, "Okay, I'll get the SEO going. I'll put out a new post every month," and over time, "I'm not in a big rush." Let's say you're not in a big rush for whatever reason. I don't know why you wouldn't be in a big rush, but you're not in a big rush. "I'll take my leisurely time ranking again." Fine. You will miss out on all of that potential on your brand for people to realize that you've revitalized, you've been resuscitated, you are still alive. And that can also lead to helping your SEO, because once your people see that your brand is back, they'll share content on social, they might link to your content, all of that momentum, all of that digital light and cadence you'll benefit from if you think about it from your user's point of view. I hate being cliche, but if you think about the user's point of view as well. Crystal Carter: And I think that that's a great point. Since Covid, because a lot of businesses changed during Covid, and I think that one of the things that I find particularly with bricks and mortar businesses is that I will go to their website and their website might say their opening hours or might say what's going on or where they are or what they do, and then I'll go to their social to double check whether or not they're still there. Because it's been a couple of times when I've gone to go to a business that I haven't been to in a while and they're not there and the website says that they are, but their social says it or not. And I think that it is really important from the fad, that SEO perspective to say, "I'm still standing stronger than I ever did as it were." And I think that that's really, really important for Google and for users. And I think that it tells people that you're still on top of the conversation, whatever the new conversation is, particularly if you're a knowledge-based business, it tells people that you're still part of the community, if you're a local business. It tells people lots of things about you. Getting the content going, and it might even be updating some of your old pages as well. If people leave your team and you have a team page, update the team page. If Sarah's not working there anymore, then Sarah shouldn't be on your team page. And we wish Sarah well, I'm sure she's going to do a great job in her new role or whatever, but just update the page. That's fine. That's totally fine. And I think that that is something that Google will reward you for. And also trimming the fat is really useful as well. I think people overlook the fact that getting rid of content is sometimes updating content as well. Mordy Oberstein: I was just talking about this with Carrie Hill, who is our actual guest. I think our webinar with Sterling Sky, I think she mentioned the same thing. It's a great point. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So the way I like to think about it is cutting T-shirt, right? If you cut a T-shirt, you're actually cutting content out, but you're still updating the content at the same time. Mordy Oberstein: Or it's like when you need new shorts, you just take old pants and you cut them to make shorts. So now you have shorts. Crystal Carter: New content. Mordy Oberstein: It's the '80s again, we're wearing cutoff shorts. Crystal Carter: And it makes a new content because the other thing is that if Google's coming to your website and they're seeing lots and lots and lots of old content, that is irrelevant. Let's say you had a charity fun run or something, and Sarah again, who left the team, did the charity fun run. Mordy Oberstein: Sarah, who's been convicted of stealing from charities. Crystal Carter: Now Sarah's a nice person. She's making jewelry now doing. Mordy Oberstein: She's no longer in charge of the charity run. Crystal Carter: She's doing something else. So let's say, and no shade to Sarahs, I know lots of lovely Sarahs, but Mordy Oberstein: My wife's name is Sarah, so what are you... Crystal Carter: Hey, I'm sure she's great at fun runs. No shade to Sarahs, but I think that if she did a charity fun run, and you were like, "Hey, we'd like you to donate to Sarah's charity fun run." Guess what? They can't donate anymore. That was seven years ago. We don't need that page. Gone. Delete. Doesn't need to be there. It probably isn't ranking anymore. It's probably not getting you loads of traffic, but it is clogging up your crawl. So if you can cut those pages, that will also help revive things because Google will say, "Oh, okay, somebody's looking after this site. Somebody is pruning things and making them look good." Similarly, literally like pruning, if you see a tree that's all overgrown, or if you see a hedge that's all overgrown, nobody's looking after that, right? All of the stuff that's hanging over the side of the road. If you see some fantastic topiary, which is a great word, then you're going to say, "Oh, somebody's looking after that." And even though it's shorter than it would be if it was overgrown, you can tell that someone's looking after that and it's better for that reason. So I think make sure that you're pruning your content coherently as well, because that should also be part of creating a revived SEO presence. Mordy Oberstein: And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your SEO, you're also revitalizing your business. So I'll give you a good example of this. I was reading an article about how Nike wants to revitalize its brand with the Paris Olympic Games, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you actually look at Nike's organic traffic, it's pretty stagnant over the last few years. And in the article they're saying because they feel their sales have stagnated, they've flatlined. I mean, I would take Nike's flatline any day of the week, but they want to grow up. You're not growing, you're dying kind of thing. And a lot of the times when you're revitalizing your content, because you're talking about revitalizing content, and a lot of the times your content is your brand, your content is your business. So when you're revitalizing your SEO, it's an opportunity to pivot your entire... If your business is stagnant, it's a good time to pivot. I was talking to Ryan L. Smith, who will be a guest on this podcast in a few weeks just yesterday on a different podcast. And he was saying he had a client where they sold wedding cakes. And as they started really creating that identity around selling wedding cakes, people started to ask them about, "Hey, can you do my anniversary?" Or, "Can you do my birthday?" And they saw that as a good time to start pivoting. If you are creating, you should be opening new doors of opportunity for yourself. If you're alive, you should be creating new doors for opportunity for yourself, and you should be using it to, if not pivot, expand on what you do as a business. And that's a great time to start expanding on what you do for SEO and the topics that you're now able to focus on. I will say, and we were talking about this earlier today, and then when you do that, sometimes as you're expanding your offering or you're pivoting your offering, both for your users and for search engines, you need to make sure that you're taking it step by step. Before you sold baseball jerseys and now you're selling, I don't know, you sold hockey sweaters and now you're selling actual sweaters. You need to somehow slowly make the move from selling hockey sweaters to actual sweaters and creating that perception and the content that supports that over time, which may mean you're creating content or pages that are not meant to rank or pull in conversions, but then help you make the pivot so that you can eventually pull in the traffic and pull in the conversions. Crystal Carter: And I think it's important when you're doing that to think about the core of your audience, people who know you, people who like you, your warm leads, your friends, like your internet friends, as it were- Mordy Oberstein: I only have internet friends. Crystal Carter: ... you're not throwing them out of the window. Mordy Oberstein: Let’s gloss right over that! Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. Morning. It's all good. We'll do a whip round as it were. I don't know. We'll sort you out. So a prime example of this is Old Spice, right? I remember when Old Spice revived their brand, so there's Old Spice original, then they had that big campaign, this is probably 10 or 15 years ago now when they had the guy and he was like, "Look at your man. Now look at me. Now look at this." Do you remember those? And they did some great stuff online. They did some great stuff on YouTube, and they really revitalized the brand. It got people really interested in it, in the brand, because this was a brand that everybody knew and loved. It was old faithful, just like peanut butter and jelly. Everybody knew Old Spice and what it did. It was solid and it's a perfectly solid brand, like Nike's, totally solid brand, all of that sort of stuff. And then they were just like, "Let's do something fun. Let's do something fun and interesting." And now they've got lots of different kinds of styles and stuff, and they've got really interesting names. Mordy Oberstein: They were very, I would say bland. They were like old man a little bit. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it was totally fine. But that was kind of their brand. And they were like, "Let's get crazy." Now they've got scents called Night Panther. Mordy Oberstein: Hell, yeah. Crystal Carter: And they're just getting a little bit interesting, but they're building on the brand that they have there to expand that out. Mordy Oberstein: But that's a really good point. One of the things that helps you revitalize your SEO and all the things in this case for your brand, in the case of Old Spice, and I think by the way, that Nike needs to do the same thing, you're kind of going against the grain or against what you were doing before. You're going against your instincts or reference back to a Seinfeld episode. I'm not a big Seinfeld fan. Anyway, but there's an episode where George kind does the opposite of whatever he would normally do, how he would normally react because things are not going well for him. Do that. Pull a Costanza, do the opposite. If your brand is a little bit old man, a little bit boring, if you're Old Spice, go a little crazy with it. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think it comes from a point of confidence as well. So old Spice for instance, we're just going to stick with this for a minute. The thing about them is people know that that's a solid brand, that they know how to make sure that you don't smell the way that you don't want to smell or whatever. We know that they know how to do that job, and we know that they're consistent and we know that they're a solid brand, they're a solid team, they're dependable, all of that sort of stuff. So this extra thing that they're doing is something that where they're like, "Hey, we're trying this new thing. It's kind of fun." And it comes from a place of comfort. It's like you want something that same but different. Mordy Oberstein: Same but different. Crystal Carter: And for instance, I went to a wedding and they had fish and chips. I'm in England, but they have fish and chips, but in a single serving thing, right? Mordy Oberstein: Oh. Crystal Carter: Yeah, right? So it was like a cone, a handheld cone, and it had one bit of fish and a couple of chips and a little bit of peas at the bottom or whatever. And that was fun. "Oh, it's fun." But if they were like, "Oh, we've got fish sticks covered in jelly," that would be weird. That's too weird. Mordy Oberstein: No, that's too weird. Crystal Carter: You don't want to go too weird. You don't want to go too weird. You want to go to something that people recognize that's from you. That's not like Old Spice straight away went into doing something completely different. They said, "We have different scents." That's kind of really where they went. And that's fine. So I think when you're thinking about your branding, you're thinking about your blogs, think of what's in the neighborhood of what you're doing, but is building on it. So it might be that you're talking about the same topic, but to a slightly different audience. Mordy Oberstein: Or in a different way or a different take. And if you have been producing a lot of content and you've stagnated, this might be the strategy for you, do something different. If you're being very methodical about A, B, B, and C, A, B, B, and C, of course you have two, Bs, of course B is the most important letter in the alphabet. Crystal Carter: Obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Then try something different. If you're trying X in your title tags and it's not pulling in clicks, do the opposite. Crystal Carter: And also when we say creating new content, it could be new blogs or it could be your same blogs in a different way. So you could take your blogs and make them into YouTube videos. You could take your blogs and make them into newsletters. You could take your blogs and make them into Twitter posts or infographics or whatever, what have you. And then that doesn't need a new content writer to do all of that. That's just the same information in a different way. But it will get your information to a new audience. And if you're doing something like a podcast, for instance, let's say you interviewed someone for a blog and you could maybe make them into a podcast or maybe you're discussing an event that you did in a podcast, for instance, podcast, again, have another distribution model that will also bring in traffic to your website. So same but different. It's the same content but in a different guise, for instance. And that can revitalize, but basically you need to do something new. Mordy Oberstein: You need to break the cycle of stagnation. To help you understand how she does this, Carrie Hill from Sterling Sky and LocalU is here to tell us how she goes about helping SEO clients who have stopped their work, but need to revive some faltering search performance and come back to SEO and search success. Here's Carrie. Carrie Hill: So what do we do at Sterling Sky when a client comes back after suspending their SEO? We're going to make a few assumptions here because this can be nuanced. So let's kind of create a story and then I'll kind of tell you how we'd handle it. So this person has paused SEO. They have done no work on their website, no SEO in this time period that we're going to talk about. If they've hired another company that's coming in and done some things, or they've tried to do it in-house, we're sort of looking at a different scenario. But let's just say for this first example that nothing's been done on the website since they "paused" SEO. If they were Sterling Sky client, they paused SEO and it's six months later and they've come back and said, "Okay, we're ready to start up again." It's likely we can pretty much start back up where we left off. If it's been more than six months, we're probably going to have to take a step back, do some more evaluation, do a bit of an audit, kind of look at the keywords and the competition and what's going on in their market before we move forward. If it's been six months or less, we're pretty confident that what we have done to date and the research we have to implement to date is probably pretty good. Now, there are things that will have to change. Tactics that worked six months ago might not be working today. Things that didn't work six months ago might be working today. So there's always a bit of reevaluation that you have to plan for when you restart SEO. But if they've left us and then come back to us with no work in the interim, we can pretty much hit the ground running, keep implementing our tactics and moving forward. Now, scenario number two is they suspend SEO and it's a year later and they come back to us. For the most part, we're going to treat them like a brand new client. More than likely we're going to audit them, which is sort of like the baseline of where everybody starts with Sterling Sky. We pretty much don't take on SEO clients if we don't have an audit done first, just so we know kind of where we're starting from, what's there, what's working, what's not working. Quite frankly, a year can make a big difference in search volumes, keyword trends, et cetera. So we're going to sort of start, I don't want to say start from scratch, but we're going to pull back a bit more, do a bit more research before we then start implementing and probably, let's be perfectly honest, making changes to the website because what keywords worked a year ago probably aren't going to be working now or maybe not working as effectively. Maybe some new phrases or new services that they've added in that year could come into play that we have to plan around as well. Now, the third scenario I'm just going to mention is if they've paused SEO and they had a different SEO company previously, or they did it in-house previously, they've not done anything for a year and then they hire us. That's a new client. We're going to start them with an audit. We're going to do our own keyword research with their input of course, and start with making sure that their architecture and technical SEO is on point as we start moving them forward into all of the tactics that we use to ensure that not only do they rank well, they convert well. So that's kind of our process for bringing people back into SEO when they've been on hiatus or sabbatical from the whole SEO realm for a bit of time. Now, if it's been a month or two that they've paused, maybe they ran into a cashflow problem or something, we're probably just going to start right back up again and jump right back into it. But if it's been a bit longer, we kind of pump the brakes a little bit, make sure we have all of our ducks in a row. All of our research is still fresh and looks good to continue implementing as we move forward. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Carrie. Make sure to give Carrie a big follow over on Twitter at Carrie Hill, C-A-R-R-I-E H-I-L-L. Link in the show notes and follow all the good folks over at LocalU and Sterling Sky. It's a good point by the way, where you have a new client who's kind of been a hiatus, and they're coming in from somebody else who's doing some SEO work for them. And you have to start from scratch with an audit. It's always a little bit funny. Now you got to go back to the client and say, "Okay, well, you did some SEO for a while, but we're going to start from the beginning. We don't know what that other agency or consultant did for you, and now we're going to start from scratch." The client's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Start from scratch? We've been doing SEO." Crystal Carter: Yeah, but I think the other thing is that there'll be some scales and there's some things you can build on. You can tell a website is very janky from a technical point of view. Which is why Carrie very rightly mentioned auditing over and over again. And I think that that's super important and is definitely a process in restarting, is that before you restart, you wanted to make sure that there aren't any technical reasons why it's flatlined. And it could be that maybe the industry has moved on and this website has not, and that's something to do. So auditing is super important to make sure that there aren't broken things or things that are out of date. For instance, if there's a schema thing that they haven't implemented, but since they last updated the website has become a standard practice, for instance, that might be something to you think about, or Google Merchant Center or something. Maybe they never didn't sign up for Google Merchant Center or whatever it may be. So I think that that's super important. The auditing is really, really important and is absolutely crucial. And I think that it can be very tricky for clients who want to get started, and when you're like, "We need to do an audit," and they're like, "But I don't want to audit." It's like, "Yeah, but the thing is, if we don't do an audit, then I'm going to have to audit as I go along, which is going to take me twice as long as if I just do an audit from the first instance. And then I can tell you all of the things that are wrong or all of the things that we might be doing, and then we can make a decision as grownup human beings. So why don't we just do the grownup thing and do an audit, please." Mordy Oberstein: Another grownup thing that you could do is, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support, and we're talking about new content opportunities, is use this SEO tool as we dive into a segment we haven't done in a while called Tool Dive. So when I used to work at Semrush, one of my biggest hills I would die on is the content marketing tool, topic research tool, in the content marketing tool set is the best tool in the whole platform. And no one uses it because it's not in SEO, it's under content marketing. But it was my favorite tool. And when I would do advocacy about the tool set, that would be the tool I would always use. And I always try to showcase, "My baby project." Getting people to understand this tool is awesome and you should use it, but it's not a keyword research tool. It's a topic research tool, and we're talking about getting your SEO off life support and finding new topics. I recommend this tool among others. Also ask as well. But this is a great tool and what you can do with it is, so let's say I'm a local SEO and I'm working with, I don't know, a doctor in Tampa, Florida. So you could put things in like doctor and Tampa Bay and see what shows up and understand what topics other doctors are ranking for or showing or whatever it is. So for example, I get back urgent care, type 2 diabetes, internal medicine, family medicine, board certified, quality care, specialty care as topics. So if I'm trying to revitalize my SEO when I'm a doctor office in Tampa Bay, Florida, then I probably want to talk about urgent care. I probably want to talk about what I specialize in. I probably want to talk about the quality of my care. I probably want to talk about, it talks about here family physician or different types of other medicine. If you specialize in one of those areas, you want talk about that. What the tool basically do is put out all of the topics that are relevant to... And you need to kind of work through because some of them are not relevant to you or shouldn't be relevant to you, and work through what is relevant and what's not relevant to you. And if you're trying to revitalize your SEO, you're probably going to find topics in here that relate to what you do that you have not been focusing on. And there's actually a mind map built in. And what's cool about this is so you can see all the topics. First off, you can dive into questions about the topic. So let's say for example, I choose high blood pressure, so I can get a whole bunch of questions about, as a doctor, have you ever given the wrong diagnosis about blood pressure? What are the best blood thinners? All the different subtopics or questions that your users have about blood pressure and being a doctor in Tampa Bay. But what you can also do is you can put it in a competitor website and the mind map will highlight in blue or green, I forget which one, which of its subtopics your competitor that you entered is ranking for. And you can focus on those first so you can find new topics and at the same time, see not just by keyword but topically which topics or subtopics your competitors are already focused on. Crystal Carter: And I think they've split it out in a really interesting way. So one thing that I was looking at was I was looking at Negroni's and people aren't familiar, Negroni is a trending drink. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, very familiar. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I went out with people and everybody was like, "I wanted Negroni." I was like, "What is the deal? It's like Pinot Grigio." Like 10 years ago, everybody suddenly got into Pinot Grigio, and at the moment people are really into Negroni. Anyway, so they have trending topics within it and then they break it into high resonance with audience. So it'll tell you that Negroni cocktail recipe has a lot of backlinks, that there's a lot of backlinks for that topic, which is really interesting. It gives you the search volume across lots of them and lots of different topics as well. It also breaks you into related searches, which Google will do. So that replicates the user journey for people looking at that topic. So I can see headlines. So it says headlines like Negroni recipes, like top Negroni recipes, classic Negroni recipes, related searches, best of vermouth for Negroni. So I if I had a drinks website, a cocktail recipe website, then that might be something that I'd want to include there. Or if I was a spirits seller, for instance, that'd be a great blog of the vermouth, the ingredient that goes in that particular drink. Mordy Oberstein: That's why I always like the tool because the tool does, it kind of gives you a very holistic understanding of what's included in the subtopic. First, outside of breaking up the subtopics, it breaks down the subtopic, the further subtopics like you're saying here. And it lets you kind of figure out... And what's different about this and versus a keyword research is you don't pick the question. You're taking a look and thematically analyzing what kind of topics or subtopics should I be talking about? You're a vermouth question. Maybe there's other kinds of mixers that need to be factored in that you should also... It should just raise questions about like, "Oh, snap. I never thought to take the topic from that point of view." Crystal Carter: Right. Similarly, they're talking about rock glasses, the types of glasses that you would put that drink in. Mordy Oberstein: I never would've thought of that. Crystal Carter: Orange slices. Then I like the way they split out the questions because they go into what, how can I, like why so can you make it with Campari, for instance, is one. And then they go into can you make it without sweet vermouth? Things like that. So I think that it's something that goes into it and it goes into it in a lot of different ways. I think also for a different perspective is that if you are feeling like you're SEO is a little bit stagnant, using different tools is a great way as well. So if it's a tool that you haven't used or a different part of the tool, because I completely forgot about this. I've used this tool before, but I completely forgot that this was here. Mordy Oberstein: It's not in the SEO section. They should put it in the SEO section. Crystal Carter: Right. This is our call to you, Semrush. And I think that using a different tool, using a different tool set, there are other tools that do this kind of thing as well, can give you some good ideas on where you can get new topics and also get yourself enthused. I think sometimes what happens with topics is that you have talked about the topic and you're like, "Oh, I talked about this so many times." My great aunt who's dearly departed was really, really lovely and she told me the same stories whenever I saw her, but when I introduced her to my husband, she told him all these different stories that I never heard and I was like, "Aunt Sonia, why don't you tell me this?" She was like, "I don't know, I didn't feel the need." So I think sometimes when you get new tools, you get new things out of them and maybe it helps you revive the way that you feel about your content even, which is a great thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. All the time. I do that, by the way, you know there's something to do with this tool, but if I go on LinkedIn and the collaborative questions and I don't like the articles or whatever, but I like seeing the question. It helps me think like, "Oh, how would I answer that? What's my take on that?" So getting a fresh look at something is a great idea. By the way, in the tool here itself, in the Semrush tool, you can filter it by trending topics. It helps you see what's hot, what's what's current event or news-y kind of thing. So you can sort of break down the topics that way as well. It's a great tool. Have a look at it, tell them we sent you, I guess, I don't know, we're not getting a referral out of this, but just want to show the love. Anyway, check out the content marketing tool inside of Semrush. It's a hidden gem to borrow an SEO term. You know what's also a hidden gem? Barry Schwartz is a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He's not hidden at all. Mordy Oberstein: No, he is. You ever see him out and about? I never seen him out and about. He's hiding in his SEO cave. He's a hidden gem. Crystal Carter: He has thousands of followers. He comes out sometimes to give out baseball cards. Well, to talk about baseball cards. Or were they basketball cards? Basketball cards. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I have seen him play hockey in his driveway, so he comes out for that also. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Actually I am on BarrySEOMemes.com, I ask in my FAQ about Barry, "Does he play hockey?" And I have a link to the tweet that shows him playing hockey. He does the slap shot a little bit wrong, and everyone does this. The way that the slap shot gets momentum is when you first smack it on the ice or the ground, the stick bends backwards, and then when it hits the ball or the puck, like a slingshot slings forward. So you actually are meant to hit the stick on the ground before you hit the actual puck to get momentum. That's physics for you. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: How many people know that? I didn't know that growing up until I watch a video about this. Anyway, here's this week's Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy news, three articles for you this week. Two from Barry Schwartz of course, and one from some guy named Mordy oberstein. Never heard of him before. Anyway, Mordy Oberstein wrote, or I wrote, on Search Engine Land three key observations about the March 2024 core update. So I got a hold of some big data from Semrush and went through sort of why it's hard to analyze the impact of the March 2024 core update. Basically due to the extended rollout, 45 day rollout, it makes looking at metrics like the peak level of ring volatility, almost meaningless to a larger or greater extent. Ran through some data on the impact of the core update at the top of the search. So one ranking pattern that I saw throughout my analysis or just running through 300 manually researching some 300 different search over the course of the update, was that there was a lot of movement or ranking shifts between narrow around positions five through 10, let's say the bottom half of page one, what we call page one. But when you looked at position one through five, the more of that very top of the SERP, I didn't see as much volatility there. So one of the things we looked at in the Semrush data set was the percentage of new URLs ranking in the top 10 that prior to the update didn't rank top 20, meaning before the update, these URLs did not even crack the top 20 results on the SERP, and now they rank top 10. And what we see is there's around 9% of the URLs ranking after the March, 2024 core update came from beyond position 20 with the implication meeting that Google realized that they were under rewarding significantly these URLs. If you look back at the previous core update, which was the November 2023 core update, that number is only around 6.5%. So that's a big increase in rank volatility and the drasticness rather of the rank volatility among the top 10 results. But when you look at the top five results, the percentage of new URLs that didn't rank top 20, even top 20, that now ranked top five after the March, 2024 core update is 3%. Back in November, it was 2%. Not as big of a gap. I would say marginal, but not notably significant, meaning a lot of the update across the web, and it's a very important word, across the web with the March 2024 core update, a lot of the drasticness of that big movement happened at positions five through 10, but not as much at one through five or not as much as you might've expected considering this was a huge update. The March, 2024 is a huge, huge update. You might've expected to be far more movement or drastic movement among the top five results. But Semrush's data says that's showing that that does not mean that this update was not more powerful than other core updates. In fact, I believe it was. And that's why you need to not just look at the normalized data across the entire web, which is what that Semrush's data set is doing, but you need to look at it more vertically. You need to dig deeper into the websites that were affected, whether positively or negatively, and to the extent of which they were. If you look at, just like I show in the article a bunch of examples, how heavy-handed, I think this update might have been. Anyway, I'll link to the article. We can read the whole thing there on Search Engine Land. Onto SE Roundtable, this from Barry Schwartz, "Google SGE, AI answers now cost 80% less to generate." So one of the big things that people were worried about with Google releasing the SGE, is it always going to cost them so much money. Now we're finding out that now looks like they've kind of perhaps handled that. Barry wrote quote, "I was never worried about Google reducing its costs to generate those AI answers." I agree. I was not really worried that Google was going to be able to figure out the money side of this or the cost to actually produce the results. I think the bigger question is, can Google figure out a way to actually make them, I think, fundamentally useful? To quote friend of the show, Mike King from iPoll rank, paraphrasing him, basically, "Have you ever read an SGE result and walked away feeling, 'Wow, that was incredibly unique and insightful?' Neither have I." Onto the next article and our last article of the day from, again, Barry Schwartz on SE Roundtable. "Google search tests, custom filters and templates." So there was a test, this was spotted by nine to five Google.com I believe. And what it basically is a test where you can now set custom filters and have them apply again and again and again and have them save. So I haven't actually used this, I can't see the test, but it looks like it's very similar to Advanced Search where you can set, let's say you want to say, "I only want results from these websites." You can now kind of save those to replicate over and over and over again across various keywords. So that's really interesting to me because we've been talking about a more personalized results page or Google results page for a while. Something like this would kind of limit what you're seeing, maybe create a filter bubble of sort. That's a different conversation for a different time, but it would result in a much more personalized kind of SERP experience, which is something that SEOs have been talking about forever. If Google does roll out something like this in earnest, that would be very much a paradigm shift in my opinion. And that is this week's Snappy News. If you're looking for a daily dose of some snappy ish kind of news, please check out, It's New. Our Daily, well, Monday through Friday daily news series with the great Barry Schwartz, of course Crystal and myself and Greg Finn from the marketing Clock Team, where we run through all of the news or some of the news for each and every day. You can find it on the Wix SEO Hub. It's right there at the top. You'll see a little card for it, It's New. And also it's on the Rusty Brick YouTube channel. And now I'm officially done with the Snappy News. Goal. Barry scorred a goal, the SEO News this week, didn't he? Crystal Carter: Did he do the Flying V? That's literally all I know about hockey. Mordy Oberstein: The Flying V. Crystal Carter: The only thing I know about hockey is what I learned from the Mighty Dicls. Mordy Oberstein: I was watching the movie with my kids and they're like, "Yeah, it's boring.' Like, "What?" Crystal Carter: Do you know what? My kids did the same thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my God. And you know what? Watching as an adult now, it is a little boring. Crystal Carter: We recently rewatched the Sandlot though. That's so good, right? Please tell me. Mordy Oberstein: My kids love that. My 7-year-old and my 6-year-old are talking about Babe Ruth now, and I'm trying to explain, he's dead. They're like, "Where’s Babe Ruth." Crystal Carter: The great Bambino. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the great Bambino. I thought you said the great Bambi. Great. If you haven't seen this movie, absolutely watch this movie. Crystal Carter: You're killing me Smalls. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, killing Smalls – so good, forever. And also, check out our follow of the week, who's also a great find, Xlili Gonzalez over at Rickety Roo at Xlili, X-L-I-L-I. Link in the show notes to her X profile, an Wix SEO contributor. Little tease here, part of our Wix SEO course, which is forthcoming and a great person to get some ideas to revitalize your SEO strategy on social media. Crystal Carter: She's absolutely fantastic, super nice, and also really gets enthusiastic about great opportunities for clients. She did a great article on the Wix SEO Hub about Microsoft Clarity. She also appeared on the Microsoft Clarity website from Microsoft. I'm talking about this, and again, CRO is a great way to think about how to revitalize your content as well. We have the Microsoft Clarity app on Wix, and she talks about that in her article. And if you are trying to figure out what should we do? How can we revitalize this content? How are people using the content? You can look at a tool like Microsoft Clarity to go, "Oh, actually people are really interested in this part of the website. We should lean into that. This is a good place to start. Let's keep going." Xlili is a great follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: And you can access Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix with our integration with Microsoft Clarity. So double win. Follow Xlili, get Microsoft Clarity inside of Wix. Everyone wins on multiple levels. Boom. Goal. Score. Home run. Another references. Anyway, I hope you feel rejuvenated after this. Like a good IPA, you feel refreshed. Crystal Carter: I was going to say like a spa day, but whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, either because of all the IPA, not only do you feel refreshed, you also feel slightly drunk. So double win. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There we go. There we go. Cool. How do you revitalize yourself after the getting drunk? Mordy Oberstein: Or they can drink that other drink you mentioned before, which I don't know what that- Crystal Carter: Negroni? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, maybe that's what it was. The topic research. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I only drink straight. I don't drink mixed drinks. Crystal Carter: You only drink whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: I drink whiskey straight. Don't even put ice in it. Crystal Carter: What's your favorite whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: Woodford Reserve. Crystal Carter: Wow, that was quick. That's quick. That's an American whiskey? Mordy Oberstein: It's a bourbon. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay, okay. Right, right, right. Not scotch? Mordy Oberstein: No, I like scotch too, but that's my favorite. I like bourbon. Crystal Carter: I live in the UK and the people are big on the Glens. If it ain't a Glen, we're not messing with it. Mordy Oberstein: Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, Glengoyle. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Et cetera, et cetera. Mordy Oberstein: Glen Gabe Crystal Carter: Glen Gabe needs his own scotch. Yes. Can we please arrange that? Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. We'll talk to him. Crystal Carter: Right. Single-Domain main malt? Single-domain main malt. Mordy Oberstein: I love it. Crystal Carter: Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so good. Well, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week of the new episode as we dive into accessibility and SEO. Look forward wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning Hub at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check out all the great content of webinars and resources and beyond over the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it. Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us your review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Chris Green is an SEO consultant and trainer of over 10 years. A lover of all things digital and uses spreadsheets for more of his life than he really needs to, Chris specializes in migrations, auditing, reporting, training and standing up new processes for teams. Chris Green Senior SEO Consultant, Torque Partnership Chris Green is an SEO consultant and trainer of over 10 years. A lover of all things digital and uses spreadsheets for more of his life than he really needs to, Chris specializes in migrations, auditing, reporting, training and standing up new processes for teams. Articles & Resources 21 Mar 2023 The elements of advanced site migrations for SEO 16 Aug 2022 The fundamentals of site migrations for SEO Resources Chris Green Site keyword mapping worksheet Optimize your content strategy and ensure effective keyword utilization with this detailed keyword mapping worksheet. 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

Anastasia Kotsiubynska is the Head of SEO at SE Ranking. She is passionate about online marketing, analytics, and the technical aspects of SEO. Thanks to her extensive background in content marketing, technical SEO, and link building, she confidently handles both on-page and off-page strategies. Anastasia Kotsiubynska Head of SEO at SE Ranking Anastasia Kotsiubynska is the Head of SEO at SE Ranking. She is passionate about online marketing, analytics, and the technical aspects of SEO. Thanks to her extensive background in content marketing, technical SEO, and link building, she confidently handles both on-page and off-page strategies. She also explores how innovative technologies and AI are transforming SEO and applies this knowledge in her work. Beyond her professional life, Anastasia is an avid traveler and a language enthusiast. Articles & Resources 28 Jul 2025 How to conduct a competitor backlink analysis 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

Michael is a multi-disciplinary data expert with over ten years of agency-side experience in paid media and analytics. He has a passion for problem solving and skill for demystifying data, which he uses to help businesses of all shapes and sizes create enhanced, actionable insights. Michael Patten Analytics Manager at PMG Michael is a multi-disciplinary data expert with over ten years of agency-side experience in paid media and analytics. He has a passion for problem solving and skill for demystifying data, which he uses to help businesses of all shapes and sizes create enhanced, actionable insights. Articles & Resources 22 Aug 2024 Create a compliant cookie banner for user data privacy and ethical data collection 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