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Lily is a content marketing consultant for brands like Zapier and HubSpot. For seven years, she has built and managed content sites (including three of her own) that rely on SEO as the main distribution channel. In her spare time, she writes the marketing newsletter Marketing Cyborg. Lily Ugbaja Fractional Content & Growth Manager Lily is a content marketing consultant for brands like Zapier and HubSpot. For seven years, she has built and managed content sites (including three of her own) that rely on SEO as the main distribution channel. In her spare time, she writes the marketing newsletter Marketing Cyborg . Articles & Resources 27 Jul 2023 How to find SEO keywords to rank a new domain quickly Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

With over 15 years of experience and a focus in large scale website optimization, Nati was the CEO of a prominent SEO agency catering to some of Israel’s biggest brands. As the Head of SEO at Wix, he focuses on helping platforms be search-engine friendly and building SEO products. Nati Elimelech Head of SEO, Wix With over 15 years of experience and a focus in large scale website optimization, Nati was the CEO of a prominent SEO agency catering to some of Israel’s biggest brands. As the Head of SEO at Wix, he focuses on helping platforms be search-engine friendly and building SEO products. Articles & Resources 16 Nov 2023 Rethinking AMP: Is it time for SEOs to let go? Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

How do you successfully rank your site’s content at the top of the SERP… and then keep it there for the long haul? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by RicketyRoo’s, Melissa Popp, to discuss tactics for maintaining your rankings on the SERP. Discover how you can overcome volatility on Google and competitor targeting by taking a content-first approach to maintain rankings. Join us this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as we pay tribute to the unsung heroes of SEO… those who can maintain their rankings! Back The hard work of maintaining your Google rankings How do you successfully rank your site’s content at the top of the SERP… and then keep it there for the long haul? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by RicketyRoo’s, Melissa Popp, to discuss tactics for maintaining your rankings on the SERP. Discover how you can overcome volatility on Google and competitor targeting by taking a content-first approach to maintain rankings. Join us this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as we pay tribute to the unsung heroes of SEO… those who can maintain their rankings! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 93 | June 26, 2024 | 58 MIN 00:00 / 58:13 This week’s guests Melissa Popp Melissa Popp is the Content Strategy Director for RicketyRoo. With two decades of experience helping businesses amplify their online presence, Melissa brings knowledge, innovative ideas, and actionable strategies tailored to today's competitive landscape. Her expertise is backed by successful collaborations with diverse businesses, from small local shops to larger enterprises, proving the effectiveness of well-crafted content strategies in driving tangible results. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, we're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO brand here at Wix. Today, I'm joined by she who doesn't wear a cape, but maybe she should wear a cape. But either way, she is an SEO hero, our Head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: But the good ones do like, yeah, the Flash doesn't wear one, but Batman does. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I had a plumber who really helped me out. He didn't wear a cape, that would be very impractical. Mordy Oberstein: But it would've covered up his crack. Crystal Carter: My plumber has it under control. I'll just tell you that right now. Mordy Oberstein: Plumber crack is a real thing. My stepfather's an electrician. Electrician crack is also a real thing. Crystal Carter: Wow, this is wow, that's a great start to the podcast. Thanks listeners for hanging in there with us. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, it's not my fault, it's a full moon tonight. Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also get inbuilt Google Search Console insights to help you maintain those rankings. Look for within our SEO dashboard, because today we pay homage to the unsung heroes of SEO, those who maintain rank, how Google updates bring maintaining rank into focus in all new ways. The content connection, why a content first focus can be your best friend when looking to keep your rankings, and how sites of all sizes can go about maintaining their rankings. To help us RicketyRoo's own, Melissa Popp will be here in just a few minutes to share what's in her utility belt as she goes about keeping her rankings. Plus, we look at how search engines try to maintain their market share by borrowing from other search engines. And of course, we have snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, put on your capes and proudly wear your underwear on the outside as we pay tribute to you, the unsung hero of SEO, AKA, Captain Rank Maintainer on this, the 93rd episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Maintaining rank is hard. It's not easy. Crystal Carter: Maintaining rank is hard. Mordy Oberstein: Because everyone's gunning for you now. Crystal Carter: Yes, everyone can see you. You were completely exposed. If you're number two or if you're number 37, you can sneak in, right? You can sneak in on the cut, you can be like, okay, I see you number one, I see what you're doing, but you can bide your time, like a sneak attack kind of thing. But if you are number one, everyone can see you and everybody knows what's going on and people will study you and get all in there. A great tool for looking at your competitors is Semrush has a great tool for that, looking at keywords and looking at competitors. One of the ones that Ross Simmons, friend of the podcast, friend of the SEO Hub has talked about is CRM. Salesforce has an article called, What is A CRM, and I'm looking at there, and that has a traffic volume, the keyword, what is a CRM has a traffic volume of 22,000. According to Semrush, they're getting 5,000 of those clicks every month. They've ranked number one in that position since May, 2023, possibly even longer. And they spend time making sure that that does not move. Why? Because that's 5,000. That's that much coming through straight away, and that's something that's really important. They're also ranked, they recently have had a tussle with HubSpot. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, a tussle, that's a good word, by the way. I just want to stop, point out what a great word tussle is. Sorry. Crystal Carter: Tussle, yes, tussle is a good word. So they're tussling a little bit with HubSpot for CRM, so sometimes they're number one, sometimes HubSpot's number one for just the word CRM, but they've had number one for, what is a CRM, for a very long time. And that's really important because that's core to their business. So if you have terms that are core to your business, it is absolutely worth maintaining that content, maintaining that position over time. And if Google understands that it is core to your business, that everything you do points to that particular keyword, then they will give you that. They'll understand that you are the authority in that, and all of the things on your website should point to that. Now, not only does what does a CRM, rank number one for what is a CRM, but it also ranks number one for loads of other terms as well. So for instance, it also ranks number one for, what is a CRM tool. It ranks number one for, CRM definition, CRM program, all of that sort of stuff. That particular piece of content is pulling in tons of traffic for them. And I think that in terms of maintaining rank, sometimes things can rank number one and get no traffic and not get much traffic at all. But according to this, according to Semrush in May alone, the page, what is a CRM, on Salesforce was getting 43,000 clicks a month. Okay, now that is absolutely, absolutely 100% worth maintaining rank. Now, if you're looking at your keywords and you've got number one but nobody's coming to the page anyway, you want to have as many number one keywords on your site as you can, but maybe don't lose any sleep if you slip a little bit. But if you have something that's coming in and bringing in thousands and thousands every month, then absolutely spend the time. And there's lots of different tools, which I'm sure that Melissa will get into the details of it, but you need to assess when you're assessing whether or not you should fight to maintain your rank, whether or not you should defend yourself from the usurpers. Make sure... I know dropping the vocabulary words. Anybody studying for their SATs, you're welcome. And- Mordy Oberstein: That's our core audience right there. Crystal Carter: Right? But basically anybody who, if you're looking at it and you're trying to think, should they hold the line here? Have a look at the search volume, have a look at how relevant it is to the rest of your content, and then also think about the links. So if you're thinking about that particular page, we have a particular piece of content. We have the SEO Guide, the Wix SEO Guide, for instance, on the Wix SEO Hub, which has lots of links out to other pieces of content, has lots of links into it from lots of other links as well, and gets a fair amount of traffic for us for that particular page. That's worth us maintaining, that's worth us looking after, that's worth us thinking about. And so have a look at which ones are those pivotal, crucial, important pages, and you should probably be monitoring those in terms of ranking. You should probably be monitoring them daily, weekly, at least. And you should be scheduling in and making sure that you're updating them regularly and making sure that you're paying attention to your competitors because sometimes if you're not looking and they can sneak in and you might miss that you lost a keyword that maybe has a knock on effect to some of the other keywords that you're ranking for. Mordy Oberstein: Now, to get more into this, I had a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Popp, because I have a lot to say about this, and we talked a lot about this. Here's a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Pop. So, welcome to this show, Melissa Popp. How are you? Melissa Popp: I'm good. How are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: I'm good, can't complain. I think that you are one of the unsung heroes of SEO. Melissa Popp: Oh, gosh. I just have to throw that feather in my cap, won't I? Mordy Oberstein: Not all heroes wear capes, unless you're wearing a cape. You wear capes? Melissa Popp: That's true. No, not yet, not yet. No, I do have a crown though that I wear sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's close. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I'm a little extra sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: There's a whole... In every SEO conversation, podcast, webinar, article, whatever, it's all about increasing rank, increasing rank, increasing rank. But one of the things that I'll put a little spoiler out there, or I don't know, behind the scenes thing, maybe I'm not allowed to say this, but one of the things we talk about internally at Wix is maintaining rank. We're already ranking, and now we have to keep those rankings because if you don't keep those rankings, then you're back at the square one of trying to get the rankings, but no one ever talks about this. Melissa Popp: No, nobody does. Nobody talks about, what I like to think of as maintenance mode of SEO. You come to a point where depending on how big your site is, what your niche is, that you hit a saturation level where it's like, how much more can you do to continue to boost rankings when you already are in page one, top three results, earning your featured snippets, unfortunately showing up in SGE now, whether that's right or wrong, but there's a maintenance that's involved there and ongoing work that most of us, I would say, probably 60 to 70% of our job is that maintenance mode of maintaining those ranks. And then at the same time, trying to figure out, okay, where do we pivot from here to earn additional rank rankings? If that's even possible, because at some point you reach a level where you own it all, ideally. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, that's one of the, I don't know, thou shall not say this, but sometimes you can't go any higher. You're number three, and that's where you're going to get for this keyword. Melissa Popp: Absolutely, and at RicketyRoo, we do a lot of work with home service clients, and you see that all the time. These businesses are competing with directors like Yelp, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, and other websites that the domain authority and just overall topical authority that they have in those niches because of what powerhouse of websites they are. Your little mom and pop shop is never going to be able to get rank one, two, three, even in some cases when you're going up against powerhouses like that. So it's, what do you do from there? Unless you have millions of dollars to try to compete there, you're never going to maintain that. And nobody talks about that either, of what ranking is good enough before you start carrying the load of ranking right there versus trying to convince clients that you can go higher because you can't. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's fine because sometimes you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggonit, and people click on you and you're ranking number three, and that's fine. Melissa Popp: And as long as you're converting and earning business, and then also you're satisfied as a business owner at what your revenue is from that, you don't have to be number one to make a living and to keep your business growing. And there's so much competition out there, and so many, we're seeing this right now, all the changes. I mean, that could be a whole other episode, right? Talking about Reddit and Quora jumping in rankings, and now you're competing with a whole other subset of websites that shouldn't even be competing with you, but at some point you have to step back and say, okay, this is good enough. We are converting enough. Either, what other channels can we look at? Because that's another thing we don't talk about as part of this maintenance mode. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's life outside of Google? Melissa Popp: Oh my gosh, life outside of SEO, I'm going to get hate mail for saying, and I'm a huge, huge believer in being able to look at, where is your audience? Where are they hanging out? Where are they having discussions? Sometimes it's social media, sometimes it is Reddit. Sometimes, I mean, I was talking to someone the other week about direct mail campaigns and how nobody talks about direct mail, but when you look at certain demographics, that still works. And that's another whole aspect of maintaining not just rankings, but brand awareness. You want to go where people are. You reach a plateau with SEO, you can take that budget and spend it a little bit elsewhere to figure that out, and you're still growing just in a different way. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so spinning back around to all this, because the point about Reddit and Quora is exactly where I want go with this. You were doing just fine, things were okay. You were ranking, I don't know, one, two, or three, and now all of a sudden you're still ranking one, two, or three, but there's a giant discussions, cert feature box above you with a bunch of Reddit URLs. How much of your work is going into changes in the ecosystem, how to combat them, how to deal with them? With the Reddit one, I don't know what you do, but things like that where the SERP is changing, the algorithm is changing, there are updates, there's this or that, and you're trying to just staying out above water because you're doing better than above water. You're ranking the top of the SERP, but you're doing work that keeps you afloat at the very top of the SERP. How much of your time is spent on those kinds of things? Melissa Popp: I mean, I already, as part of my work, and especially on the content marketing side with clients, I am already looking at Reddit and Quora, whether they're ranking on page one or not. When it comes to content ideas, blogging, even updating content, looking at people, also ask boxes, I was already looking at all of this before all of a sudden they all jumped to page one. And I think that's a big problem in our industry, is that a lot of our efforts, there's a lot of people out there doing great work with content that are looking at the big picture and not just the little SEO piece of it. We need to start spending more time looking at this. So Reddit and Quora, I mean, I was doing content briefs a couple of weeks ago for a home services client, and I'm seeing Reddit discussions pop up for transactional keywords. There's no reason they need to be there at all, but I'm like, okay, if people are landing on a page, a service page, and still have that question that is popping up on page one, whether I agree that that Reddit thread should be there or not, I need to be looking at that. There is still, whether Google's algorithm is all jacked up and that is what's happening here or not, I still, if Google is going to rank that there, I need to be aware of that for my client and think, is this Reddit discussion worthy of inclusion on a piece of content I'm creating for? Do I need to update that piece of content? So I think there's two, there's two issues there. One is we're not doing enough to actually understand search intent to begin with, and Reddit in discussion is popping up there is one way to look at that. What are people discussing that they're not getting from "normal" search results, that we need to be including in our content? And not just for SEO purposes, but literally a potential customer is asking that question. And then on the flip side, why are we not doing this to begin with? We only care about it now that Reddit and Quora and other discussions are on page one. So we're already doing a disservice to clients by having not paid attention to this before it simply popped to page one. Mordy Oberstein: But that goes into, so I'll give you an example of this where if you're not paying attention to what people actually want and talking to them in a way that actually speaks to them, while you might be ranking today, I don't think you'll be ranking tomorrow. There was a couple... I'm actually running this up right now for the Wix SEO Hub. By the time this recording comes out, I hope it'll be long published. Looking at two examples from the March 2024 core update. So bankrate.com redid basically an entire folder of their content, and it was previously very, I call it sterile content, like, what is a payday loan? How to get a payday loan, when don't you choose a payday loan, how to finance a payday loan. Every H two was very topical, and it's like each one's trying to rank for a featured snippet, kind of thing. And they redid all of it and the folder went berserk in a good way, just shot up in the rankings with the March 2024 core update, because what they did was they said, okay, let's speak to the topic, but in a way that relates to what the user's going to do with the information. So for example, they added a section on when a payday loan might actually be worthwhile because they realized, okay, we're talking about payday loans and the original content was, what is a payday loan, the risk of a payday loan, and all these very generalized, sterile kind of subtopics. But if we're talking about this, obviously the user is looking to get a payday loan for a reason, so why don't we address that? And they did, and they did it across all of their content, it became very situational like, here's what you need to know about a payday loan, in the context of how it's going to work for you. They talked about just what to expect, the money would take X number of days to get into your account, blah, blah, blah. It was much more user focused. All of a sudden they shot up in the rankings, they replaced somebody. They replaced the page, and that page is now gone and not ranking. And websites, I think are slowly coming around to the idea that they have to update content. What they wrote five years ago and ranked with five years ago is not going to work anymore because the algorithm is changing. Let's change that up. And big content teams are doing that and if you're not worried about maintaining your rank, somebody's going to get after you and replace you. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and why wouldn't they? Especially when you look at bigger websites compared to smaller websites, and that's a whole other player, smaller websites being frozen out of brand dominated topical searches. But that example that you gave with bank rate, how many SEOs listening to this right now, okay, on let's say smaller or medium sized teams and websites, are going to come away from this and go, holy cow, if Bankrate did this, this is absolutely what we should do. Lily Ray, Marie Haynes have been sharing other examples of websites that are skyrocketing after pivoting their content strategy. We have that proof there. Now, can we guarantee 100% certainty that Google's always going to reward that content? Who knows what Google's going to do, but what we know is searchers want information that they can actually act on and use, beyond just whatever their initial search query is. And the problem is, is we spend so much time creating SEO content, focusing on keywords, focusing on page, what backlinks can we get, what internal links can we update? We are so focused on gaining the SEO side of things that we forget the content is the foundation of that growth. And what's even worse is most people know that, but they don't want to spend the time on creating a quality piece of content because holy cow, that's actually really hard, even if it's a topic, what is a payday loan versus how does the payday loan scam work? And so you have a problem that companies don't want to invest the time in creating quality of content. They certainly don't want to pay writers and spend the money to create quality content. I mean, I can imagine how much Wix spends with all the content that you all push out and you have a set budget for that and you can get it and you look at the names you bring on to write for you. But most companies don't have that, nor do they want to invest in it because they feel that their ROI could be better spent elsewhere, whether it's paid advertising, display, something else. They want instant gratification, not realizing that keeping your content updated to match search intent and what your users are actually looking for to make a decision through that top and middle of the funnel content, particularly, you are going to spend less money long-term on ROI than throwing money at the wall with PPC, competing with everyone else driving bids up. And I get it, I understand why this works the way it does. You're always going to try to get the most for the cheapest. But we're now finding with the helpful content update and other things Google are doing that, holy cow, that doesn't work anymore. And now companies are playing catch up and having to spend even more money that they didn't budget. In Bankrate's case, I wonder how much money they spent updating content that if they had approached the correct way to begin with, they wouldn't have had to spend. And that's the conundrum now everybody is in. Mordy Oberstein: That's the whole problem. And to your point about the smaller websites, they also, in my opinion, there's no such thing as one kind of site having a total advantage. There are things that big websites have that smaller websites don't, like we have money for SEO Hub to pay writers, yada, yada, yada, yada. But if you want to make changes, it's very slow. We're a giant brand, there's a lot of guidelines, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. If you're a smaller website and you're like, you know what? And we're more risk averse, so if we see that there's a new trend. I think for example, that content's far more conversational than it ever has been before. Good luck getting a big brand to create a landing page that's conversational, not ultimate, whatever, whatever, sell, buy here. Good luck. If you're a small brand or a small website or a small business or an SME, whatever it is, you can do that. You can take those risks and that's what'll help you maintain the rank, in my opinion. I think you're at an easier advantage to maintain rank to a certain extent. Obviously, the larger websites have that authority and that makes it easier for them but you can do things like, I think that content that Google's looking for X now and I want to pivot to do X, you can do that tomorrow if you wanted to. There's no hoops to jump through. Melissa Popp: Definitely, and the thing with smaller business versus bigger businesses, especially in brands, we're hearing that conversation a lot as well, is how is anybody going to compete with these big brands now dominating search more than ever? And depending on what your business is, especially as a small, medium sized business, you don't need to compete with those. That's not where locally people are looking for. We have these conversations with local clients all the time, that they want number one against Yelp and Angie's List, and it's like, no, you don't, you don't need to. People understand that they're shopping around, they are going to click down through results. That's the whole scary idea of, oh, if you're not at the top of page one, oh no, oh no, the sky is falling. Mordy Oberstein: What's the best place to bury a dead body? On page two of the SERP. Melissa Popp: Listen, you just need to be on page one, and you need to give searchers and actual consumers more power to make that choice, most people are shopping for that. But yeah, I absolutely agree that smaller businesses has the opportunity to make more immediate impact than bigger businesses do, and they are less risk adverse. And it comes down to the priority of changes you're making, whether it's SEO updates, link building, content, you don't have to do it all. You just have to do the right things in the right order to make the most impact and then eventually, you get to all the other things. And that's another thing that gets, I think very missed in our industry is everybody wants a checklist. Let's go through, update title tags and Meta descriptions and headers and blah, blah, blah down the list, where it's like, okay, we know Google rewrites Meta titles and descriptions all the time. Why is that your number one priority? Mordy Oberstein: That's not what's going to move... Sometimes, yes, but my experience, if you had rankings and are slowly seeing a decline, like a consistent slow degradation, it's a quality issue, usually. Melissa Popp: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And that might be, you have terrible headers as part of the quality, but it's usually the quality overall. You need to have a hard look at your content, which is I think what people don't do. I feel like SEOs look at the SERP like I won. It's like I don't know, I'll use a sports reference, like, I scored a basket or I got a goal or I got a hit, now I'm done. Yeah, but in five minutes from now, you're back up in the order, you got to take another swing. It's not, you won and these rankings belong to you. Google doesn't owe you anything. Melissa Popp: No, no, and why we think they do. These conversations and arguments and the vitriol that our industry is showing to one another right now and frankly showing to folks like John Miller and Danny Sullivan. Okay, I'm not saying Google is the enemy, but we are competing against them. That's a realistic fact of what we do. The only thing we can do is do the best we possibly can, starting with the foundation that does everything for SEO and that piece of content. We can only do the best that we can and maybe pray, hope, whatever you want to do, burn a candle, whatever, and hope for everything else to match up and help rankings. But at the end of the day, we start with that piece of content and it's so overlooked. And to circle back to talking about unsung heroes, that's why this maintenance of your rankings is so important. And it always starts with that content. What more could you be doing? How has search intent changed that you need to now update your piece? We see that all the time in local. I feel like local search results, the search intent changes more than anywhere else that I've worked, and I've worked on e-comm brands, I've worked enterprise level national, international. I feel like at the local level, that search intent changes almost on a whim. It's like a whole demographic decides, oh, I'm going to search to buy this or find this service, this is what... And it makes no sense, but it's what happens. And that's one of the first things I do when I'm looking to update a piece of content is, I want to dive deep into SERPs and understand, has this changed? And we don't spend that time. We want to blame Google and we want to point fingers at things. And yes, sometimes, you know what? I've seen some of the cases here that I definitely think this is Google's fault for a particular domain and not what they're doing, absolutely, but those cases are so actually rare. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Yeah, the norm is, Google knows for the most part what he's doing. There are enormous gaps sometimes and there are shifts. I think we're in a point right now where, like an inflection point, where things just like multiple reasons why things are not firing in all cylinders and they're not and- Melissa Popp: No, they're not. Absolutely, I'm not defending Google here at all for any of this. I cannot imagine the algorithmic engineering, especially now that you're adding machine learning and AI into the mix, of how difficult it is to actually do this right. And part of me still believes that they do in fact want to get this right. Losing market share for people switching to AI search engines, to TikTok, to any of these things, depletes their revenue. They want to get this right, but in the meantime, we're all left holding the bag with our clients trying to explain, we have no control over this, so- Mordy Oberstein: But you do have control over, for example, let's talk about bounce rate, and they'll talk about the context of user behavior metrics and nav boost, that kind of thing, which is legit, nav boosts is a really interesting conversation, but they're not talking. We're not talking about it. Oh, you know what? I see my bounce rate has gone up, maybe my content's not what people want anymore. Let me see, maybe I should rework that. We always look for the most immediate, easy way out. Melissa Popp: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: As opposed to taking a hard look, and the only way I feel like to maintain your rankings is to take a hard look at yourself. What are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? What's the data say about how people feel about our content? And it is not just your typical SEO metrics, if you're going on social media and being like, oh, I hate this. Also, you're seeing people talk about your blog in a negative way, that's going at some point to impact search and your rankings. You need to go back, you need to take a hard look, you need to think, okay, I need to rework this because your rankings, again, they're not a given. They're not going to last, no rankings last forever. Melissa Popp: No, nobody, nobody, and you bring up bounce rate, one of the most misunderstood and it's like the bad child of everything. But how many SEOs are either bringing in a content marketer to actually look at content marketing metrics like bounce rate, timeline page, etc? How many of SEOs are actually looking at those metrics at all? And I'd imagine that number is probably staggering low because like you said, a lot of us, well first off, I mean it goes back to our clients. What do our clients care about? They care about rankings, traffic and conversion, and that's usually it. They don't care about anything else, as long as rankings leave the traffic to conversion, boom, you're done, right? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Melissa Popp: But the problem is, is so many have relied on those three types of metrics for so long, they've forgotten about the world of things out there beyond just bounce rate and time on page. It's, how many websites have heat maps and are looking at what elements on a page people are clicking on? Where are they clicking out? Well how... Scroll depth, if you write a 2,000-word blog, let's say it's completely as comprehensive, topically authoritative, it's a perfect, perfect blog ever written on a subject, but nobody's reading past the first third part of it. Something is wrong with that, even if it is the greatest blog ever to be written. But we don't, for the most part, SEOs don't look at metrics outside of their little bubble. And I get it, I understand why that happens, but we're now evolving to how content is relatable, not only to search but to users. We have to be more aware. I really believe in the next couple of years, probably next 15, 18 months really, that design and user experience- Mordy Oberstein: Sure, 100%. Melissa Popp: ... that's going to be the next set of conversations we're having, it's if your user experience is terrible, starting with site speed and page load time, to just how your call to actions. I mean, how many websites do we go to nowadays that, here's a modal popup, boom, right in your face. You're not even there for two seconds and it's like, sign up for this, do this. Or my least favorite thing in the world, you get to a page and a video automatically starts playing and it scares you out of your seat because all of a sudden your screen is yelling at you. Mordy Oberstein: Here's a page I'm sharing. You can't see this audience because it's an audio experience. Melissa Popp: Oh, I already hate this. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, okay, you already hate it. This is a page that lost a lot of rank with the March 2024 core update and it's not hard to see why. There's no white space on the page, there's no spacing, there's no anything. You're looking like, oh my God, it wasn't meant for me to consume the information. The page was designed to rank for whatever keywords. Melissa Popp: No, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And the enterprise is like, you read it, it's not bad information. Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: But it's not usable. Melissa Popp: No, my eyes already hurt. The font is terrible on the page, the image is so tiny. I can tell it's a dude, but I have no idea. Mordy Oberstein: Why is that even there? Is that the author? I don't even know what that is. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I mean, and even look at this, I see the data up here, the published date is 2022. When was the last time that this page was vetted by anybody to determine is this information still accurate? Is it correct? But then also it's like, where is the connection here? Just skimming this first paragraph. There is no connection to get people to even care. The hook is not there. This absolutely to me- Mordy Oberstein: It's very sterile content, it is written topically, it's not written for users, and the problem with this is no one since 2022 has looked at this and said, how can we make this page better? You should be constantly thinking, how can I make my content better? Because your content is never perfect and it's never good enough, and it's never, I don't want to say good enough, but it's never the pinnacle of what you want. And user expectations are always changing. To quote Glenn Gabe, Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned. If the user looks at this and says, oh this... They're never coming back, all of that nav boost interaction data is getting factored and now, and it's all because you thought I wrote the content, I won the rankings and I'm done. And hence, the unsung heroes of SEO are those who are saying, it's never done. Melissa Popp: No, and it's never, it absolutely isn't. And one of the things I do, a lot of the times when we have new clients come on board, no matter it's a 10-page website or a 1,000-page website, is we content audit the heck out of every single page on the website. And I want to understand, it's, are you getting traffic? Do you have any rankings? And then beyond that, what do these pages look like? What information is on there? And anybody on the RicketyRoo team will tell you, I am vicious when it comes to content update. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Melissa Popp: I do not play around, I take a scalpel to websites. I have recommended pruning websites two thirds of the content in cases. There has been recent cases where I've pruned a lot of content and said, no, you know what? We're just going to start over. We probably could use some of this content foundationally, but I don't even want to look at it anymore. It's that bad. And I don't do this, I laugh a little bit about it, I don't do this because I'm a mean person or I want to tick people off. I'm doing this because I see the writing on the wall. We've been saying this for 20 years, that content is king, that has not changed, it hasn't. And why every couple of years we shift back and forth on that and we don't spend the time on even just focusing on our content strategy. Most SEO's content strategy is literally, okay, what long tail keywords in Semrush or Ahrefs do I see that are questions and your when, where, whys, hows? Let's just write that content because it has high search volume and no, and it's like- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Melissa Popp: And I'm not saying that that is incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: No, there's a place for it within. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and you have to look at it bigger than that. I mean, there are lots of topics I recommend because absolutely, I'm like, oh, the search volume is there, but also, it matches search intent. And we talk a lot about a topic clustering as if that is a new thing that somehow magically has appeared. And no, that has been a marketing trend, not just in content marketing, but in other forms of marketing for decades. And when I'm building topic clusters for clients, I absolutely am looking at search volume, but I'm also thinking, okay, what do people actually want to know? And a lot of times I recommend topics that have very low search volume, and sometimes I'll get pushback on that of like, oh, but oh no, nobody's searching for that. And I'm like, listen, search volume numbers are BS, they are guesstimates. They do not necessarily mean that 1,200 people are searching a month for X, Y, Z. Now, that doesn't mean that we should ignore those guesstimates. They do help guide our efforts, but we have to think more outside the box. And especially working with smaller clients, you'll get a lot of zero volume keywords that because the tools are running nationally to aggregate that guesstimate, you actually don't know how many people locally might be searching for that because it's not enough to ping for those tools. And that's another thing people forget about when they're creating content, but also updating content. Just because something has the 1,200 volume search nationally every month doesn't mean that people are actually searching for that to eventually lead to conversion. And so that's why I always go back to the number one thing I'm always looking for when I'm updating content and in this maintenance mode, is search intent. It's the most important part of updating and creating content. And we dance around that because that's a little bit outside the SEO box. We talk about search intent at a very high level, but in the nitty-gritty- Mordy Oberstein: But the micro level, no. Micro intents, what's that? Or we feel like, yeah, we nailed it and don't think, wait, it changed. It's like anything with your content. I want you, if you're listening to this podcast and you write content and you're trying to write content, I want you to go back to something you wrote, I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago, two years ago, and I want you to reread it and I want you to walk away. And how many of you walk away feeling like, that was amazing content? And how many times do you walk away? That's how I used to write and it's good, it's not bad, but- Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: ... you're in a different place and you're a better writer, you're a better SEO, you're a better content person and you look back like, I could have done better with that. That's how Google's looking at your content. That was good, that was good. Melissa Popp: Exactly, that's the missing link, is as Google's algorithm gets smarter, faster and larger, encompassing more items into ranking factors, we have to evolve with that. We can sit here in our discussions and blame Google all we want, but at the end of the day, we are at their mercy of how they want to do things, whether we like it or not, and our clients are at that mercy. So we have to evolve with it. And it's like for writers, absolutely, just go back a year and look at some of the things that you wrote. Go look at where they rank. Go look where they rank now and if you still have access to any analytical data around it, how many people are coming to that page? Where are they going from that page? And I guarantee you, in a lot of cases, you're going to find that it's not performing the way you felt when you finished writing and you hit publish, because we publish pieces of content and we're like, yes, this is it. This is awesome, this is the pinnacle we did, we're at the top of the world, but then nobody comes to see it. Nobody comes, but we pretend like that doesn't exist. We pretend that that's not a thing that we need to care about. The SEO team cares about that now and it's like, no, it's like we should also care about that too, especially if we're continuing to write for that business or we work in-house or whatever our role is, and that's just part of the process. Just like you revisit keyword research, with clients, I like to revisit keyword research every six months to a year. I want to see again, where does the search intent just for on-page change that we need to pivot and change things up? Mordy Oberstein: Totally, totally. Melissa Popp: But we just don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: No, we don't get that that's, it's not a checklist. That's a different snarky point for a different time. If people wanted to revisit their processes and get some advice from you, where can they find you out there in ether? Melissa Popp: Oh gosh, everybody knows I live on Twitter and I'm going down with that ship. You can find me at- Mordy Oberstein: Me too. Melissa Popp: ... Popup writer on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Popup writer, okay, we'll link to that in the show notes. Melissa Popp: And yeah, feel free, anybody on my team will tell you I love ripping content apart and not from a place of negativity, but to help people do better. I ask my team all the time, any RicketyRoo blog that you read that I wrote, I guarantee you, two or three people on the team have told me how terrible it is and helped me make it better. I come from a place where I want to support anybody writing content to do better, not just for their clients, but for themselves. We only grow by putting ourselves out there and that's another scary part of all of this, is we have to admit that maybe we didn't do our best or something changed. That means we have to do better. So, I'm always happy to help people. Slide into my DMs, email me, any of that. I'm always around to help with this because I think these are the conversations we need to be having. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa is not only a great SEO and a great content person, just a great follow altogether, and it is why you were a previous follow of the week on the podcast for that reason. Melissa Popp: I was, I know. Mordy Oberstein: You were. Melissa Popp: I was like, oh. Mordy Oberstein: You're one of the best follows on Twitter out there in the SEO space right now. I don't want to say all of Twitter because if you're sports, maybe you don't talk about sports, but in the SEO space, not many better follows at all. So, please follow Melissa. Melissa Popp: Well, I appreciate that. I just telling it like it is. I love what I do and I love to share knowledge and I want us to have more productive conversations about the things we're doing because we're all going through it. It's not us versus one another, it's we're all in this together. And as cheesey that is, there is light at the end of this tunnel. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa, thank you so much for coming on and really say hi to all the great folks over at RicketyRoo. Melissa Popp: I will, I will. I'm sure they'll all send their love to you too. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, bye. Melissa Popp: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you again, Melissa, she's one of the best people in the whole SEO industry. Crystal Carter: Melissa is, she's just the gold star human being. 10 out of 10 recommend following Melissa. Not only is she amazing at SEO, not only is she super warm and friendly and really nice when you meet her, but she also has fantastic music taste. Mordy Oberstein: And movie taste. Crystal Carter: Right, Melissa is just, she's just the best. And also, she's on team RicketyRoo. Team RicketyRoo are the best, they're so good. Don't get me wrong, lots of love to lots of other agencies as well, but team RicketyRoo are fantastic, I'm not going to lie. Amanda, Celeste, Tess, everybody there is fantastic, they're just a great squad. Mordy Oberstein: On that note, you might be fighting for your rankings and your own market share, but you know what else is fighting for their own rankings and market share? Search engines. Like love is a battlefield, so is search engine market share is a battlefield. So, sometimes they do borrow ideas from each other in order to maintain market share. So here's a look at how search engines maintain their market share with a little segment we call, Going, Going, Going, Google. Well, I guess in this case Going, Going, Going, Search Engines. Going back in the day, multifaceted feature snippets and there was, I think I wrote an article about this on the Wix SEO about Google is moving away from the one true answer to a multifaceted kind of approach, because that's what people expect, they don't want one answer, they want options. And to do that, Google had a whole bunch of formats, has been testing with featured snippets and multiple URLs and feature snippets and multifaceted feature snippets, which is a feature snippet on top of a feature snippet on top of another feature snippet. You know what's doing that forever? Crystal Carter: Who? Mordy Oberstein: Bing. Crystal Carter: Bing. Mordy Oberstein: Bing's been doing that for years before Google was doing it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm pretty sure Google took that from Bing. Crystal Carter: One of the things I love about the team at Bing is that they do a lot of innovation. And we had Fabrice Canel from the search team at Bing on a webinar talking about Index Now, which you should definitely check out that webinar, it was great, but also he talked about that we build new things, we drive change and they do a lot of innovation and they're always coming through with that consistently. And so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking over the shoulder a little bit to see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: No, I mean, look at AI on the SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Bing puts in what's called Copilot now, Google go code red, red alert, whatever it was. Also, now we need to add AI onto the SERP the same way, not different, the exact same thing. Crystal Carter: One of the things that we're talking about, at one point Google was talking about contextual links. Bing has been doing that for ages as well. And one of the other things that Bing does is they'll pull in lots of information from other sources into their knowledge panel type things, but they also cite those sources there really, really clearly. I think that's really interesting. Another thing that you sometimes see on Bing is that sometimes Bing has rich results as well. So we think sometimes that rich results only happen on Google, but rich results happen on Bing as well. And so for instance, FAQ schema is no longer as prominent as it was on Google search, but it is still pretty prominent on Bing search, for instance. So that's something to consider as well. And I think that also, there's been some recent discussion about Bing's market share with some interesting statistics coming from World. Is it World Stat? Mordy Oberstein: Something like that, Stat Counter? Crystal Carter: Stat Counter, that's it. Some interesting statistics coming from them, and I think that it's definitely the case that I've heard a lot of folks using Bing. I've started using Bing a little bit more for different things as well. But yeah, they add in lots of different features and they're really innovative. Sometimes the SERP can be a little bit busy at Bing, but I think they're really innovative and it can sometimes give you an idea. Optimizing for Bing can sometimes give you ideas for optimizing for Google in the future. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm not saying this is bad, this is just the nature of how things go. You would open SERP, anyone can look at it, and Bing structures like, for example, you Google who are the Yankees, you get a big sports box at the top of the Bing SERP, that came from Google. The way they have site links, that came from Google. The way they have a people also ask kind of similar result, the related searches in that little gray box, that came from Google and that's fine, that's how it goes, everyone's kind of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the Googles and the Bings, and that's just the way it is to quote Bruce Hornsby. Crystal Carter: But I think also one of the things, Google has started doing those really rich knowledge panel things like particularly for people. For instance, if you look up Beyonce, you'll get a picture of her, her date of birth, the music video panel, a Spotify panel, that sort of thing. And Bing have been doing things like that, particularly for location for a little while. So, one of the ones was like the Paris catacombs was one of my favorite ones because I've never been there but I'm like, oh, that looks really interesting. But I'm looking at one for the Grand Canyon right now and it's got a real mix of stuff all across it and there's lots of different ways that you can connect with it. One of the other things I find really interesting is the way that they parse things out. So this can help you to understand how search engines are seeing your content as well. So for instance, if you go to look up something like the Grand Canyon, they have these little explore this page button on the side, which is a little light bulb. Mordy Oberstein: Right, yeah, that's why I like that feature. Crystal Carter: Right, and it'll pull out different things from it. So it'll pull out the images that are related to it. It will also pull out some of the topics from it. So for instance, I found one that's like, everything you need to know about Grand Canyon National Park, and it's a National Geographic article, and it says, about this website, which talks about, about this website on the little explore this page. And then it says topics on this page and it pulls out some of the headers from the page. So, there you can see whether or not a search engine is able to parse that, is able to see all of it, is able to understand the topics that you're trying to cover and whether it all makes sense. It also allows you to get a summary of some of that information there. And we talked a little bit about competitors. It also lets you see your competitors at a glance really easily as well. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, on that Grand Canyon SERP, Bing had this really cool 3D exploration tool for seeing the Grand Canyon, it's got nothing to do with anything, but you see, it is just interesting to me how one follows the other, how competitive they are, how they borrow from each other. Just for example, Barry Schwartz covered in searches at Round Table that after Google announced that they're getting rid of their cache link, on April 8th, Bing tests removing cache link from search results. Interesting how that is. So they do follow each other's, it's interesting to see what they find. I find it's interesting to see what they find meaningful, that they follow each other on, what they tend to steal and not steal from each other or borrow from each other. And it's just how it goes, it's not good or bad, I guess it's a good thing. It makes everybody better. Rising tide lifts all ships. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, if you are somebody who's interested in search engine marketing and search engine optimization, it's definitely worth becoming familiar with Bing and also with Bing webmaster tools. So that's something that also drives innovation I think on both sides as well. I've spoken to folks at Google before who said, yeah, I think Bing webmaster tools are pretty solid and I think that they're really great. I think it's worth being familiar with both so that you can understand how search engines work overall. Mordy Oberstein: Yep, and if you're looking to understand how search engines work overall, another great resource for you. It's not Google, it's not Bing, it's the king, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine land. So, that means that we're now about to head into Barry Land, also known as the Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a whole bunch for you this week. So I'll try to keep it snappy, but I also like to talk a lot. So, I'll still try to keep it snappy, but I might not succeed. From Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land, Google Unleashes June 2024, spam update. I like that, Barry, unleashes, it feels so aggressive. Google released it's June 2024 spam update. It is a regular spam update. It's not, I repeat, it's not and do not ask Danny Sullivan on X this question. It is not the algorithmic integration that will result in Google being able to algorithmically go after third party content hosted on websites that should not actually be there, also known as site reputation abuse. That was implemented thus far only with manual actions, this is known as parasite SEO within the SEO industry. The spam update of this June 2024 is not that. I cannot be clearer. It is not that. If you want something clearer, then go to X and look at the search liaison account, it'll be clearer but not much clearer. Perhaps a little bit more aggressive though, unleashes. Anyway, this from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Search bug not indexing or serving new content. So news websites noticed that there are content which they're constantly creating because there's news and they're creating new content for the news wasn't being indexed by Google. This has happened in the past before, it's not the first time, won't be the last time, but it's obviously super, super scary for a publisher. Google said that the problem has been fixed. They said we identified and fixed the issue with indexing. Sites may still experience some delayed indexing until the previously affected URLs have been reprocessed. There will be no more updates, end transmission. They didn't say end transmission, I added that. Crystal pointed out on X, perhaps LinkedIn, I saw it on X. You should make note of this if you are in that category of publisher and make a note because you might see a dip in your search console and traffic data and so forth. And you might go hey, what happened there? But if you make a note, you realize, oh, there was an indexing thing there. So that explains it. Okay, onto Search Engine Land, but not from Barry this time. Barry, you can't have them. This from Danny Goodwin. Google AI overview is showing less often with less Reddit, data shows. We've actually covered a bunch of studies showing there's less AI overviews being produced by Google. In this study by SEO ranking, Danny notes also that Reddit's visibility in the AI overviews is no longer a top 10 most cited domain, which is interesting because on June 19th, Barry Schwartz reported, there's Barry, on seoroundtable.com, report on if Google's showing fewer Reddit links in search. So some guy who's name rhymes with Gordy Boberstein, sent a whole bunch of data from Semrush showing that there's just a little bit of a slight drop off in the Reddit and Quora URLs that Google is showing within its discussion and forms. ERP feature. I'm not talking about, I mean, Gordy Boberstein wasn't talking about the entire SERP on the organic results, only the discussion of form SERP feature, but there's a little bit of a trend from April through June where Reddit URLs used to show in 49% of these SERP features, now is down to 48.56%. Same for Quora and other forums have seen a more noticeable rise in visibility within the platform. The same time, by the way, the Semrush data I looked at, I mean, Gordy looked at, was indicating that there are less instances or fewer instances if I'm going to speak grammatically correctly, of multiple Reddit URLs showing up in the discussion and form SERP feature. So there's less cases of Google using multiple URLs in the same SERP feature box from Reddit. That combined with the data that Danny's showing in the AI overview where Danny's discussing from SEO ranking, creates this picture where we're kind of seeing Reddit being scaled back just a bit. I do think Google realizes that it's a little bit too much on the Reddit front, but I don't see any dramatic shifts, I don't think advantage coming soon, but perhaps it's Google trying to act on that. I don't know, the data story is still to be told. However, continuing on that data story, wow I'm really threading the narratives together. This comes from Lily Ray over Amps of Digital, SEO visibility shifts to review sites to e-commerce and user generated content sites in 2024. What Lily shows is basically, I search for something like best jeans, not bad, or I don't know, I always go blank when I'm trying to figure out query to show an example of, like best cell phone or best mug or best glasses, or I just use Lily's cases, laptops, or bird feeders. There used to be a lot of product review websites showing up. What Lily is showing is that in May 2024, Google seems to have shifted away from the product review site and more to the actual product site, so less URLs being shown in the organic results for, here's my top five best bird feeders and more Homedepot.com, buy a bird feeder. By the way, that's happened in the past in other verticals. One of the cases I used to always study was insurance. So if I search for car insurance. Back in the day, there used to be a lot of informational content about how to buy insurance versus just places to buy insurance. That narrative switched back a little bit, and that's the last time I checked a few months ago, is a little bit more commerce side and less informational side. So, intent does change. But it's interesting to see this considering the fact that Google is not happy with affiliates. We spoke about this on our episode with Glenn Gabe, where we basically asked, is Google at war with affiliate sites? And the answer is yes, Google is at war with affiliate sites. Product review sites tend to be very heavy on the affiliate side, so this makes sense in that context of that narrative. Another thing going, making this full circle that Lily also noticed is that instead of relying on product review sites, she sees a shift from those affiliate review sites to user-generated content like Reddit and Quora and YouTube. So, maybe it's not the end of Reddit on the SERP. It already wasn't, but you get what I'm saying. Do I have another story? No, that's it. Okay. I thought I had another one. Wow. We covered a lot of ground this week. I try to keep each story snappy, so maybe it still is, the snappy news. How was your trip to Barry Land, Crystal? Crystal Carter: It was fantastic. We stand and optimize King. Mordy Oberstein: You have to be this short to ride. Crystal Carter: Leaving that, I have no further comment. Mordy Oberstein: I have another further comment. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: My further comment is that this week you should be following Roxana Stingu as your follow of the week. She's at Roxana, R-O-X-A-N-A S-T-I-N-G-U over on X. Head of SEO over at Alamy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's fantastic. She's so clever and has such a great technical knowledge across lots of different elements, and I think that she works across Alamy, which is trying to maintain brand reputation and maintain ranking across lots of different elements. And I think that it's that in-house play when you're an in-house SEO, you really have to guard your keywords, and she is an in-house SEO, who's been there for a while. And I think that when you've been there for a long time, you're able to, you know your keywords, you know them, and you need to know them inside out, and you need to know who comes for you, who your competitors are, and I think that she does a great job of it. Mordy Oberstein: I can't believe it took us this long to mention how maintaining reign comes into focus when you're in-house, but here we are, took us this long to mention that point. On the ball. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's really, really important in-house. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure to give her a follow over on X and check it out on LinkedIn as well. Links in the show notes. That's all the maintenance I have, I can do today. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Well, we will keep going. We will maintain the podcast for next week. We will also be on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: We'll maintain our rankings on Spotify. Crystal Carter: And anybody who wants to help us with that, please leave a review. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and a rating. Yeah, please. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because maintenance is a team effort. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed. Crystal Carter: And it's so fun. Mordy Oberstein: And a whole bunch of other cliches. Thanks for joining us on The SERPs Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how agency SEO is changing. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or as Crystal already told you, a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece and love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Melissa Popp Roxana Stingu Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter It's New: Daily SEO News Series RicketyRoo SEO Agency Google’s Shifts From Authority to Content Diversity on the SERP Is Google Going After Affiliate Sites News: Google unleashes June 2024 spam update Google Search Bug: Not Indexing or Serving New Content Google AI Overviews showing less often, with less Reddit, data shows Report On If Google Showing Fewer Reddit Links In Search? SEO Visibility Shifts from Review Sites to eCommmerce & User-Generated Content Sites in 2024 Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Melissa Popp Roxana Stingu Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter It's New: Daily SEO News Series RicketyRoo SEO Agency Google’s Shifts From Authority to Content Diversity on the SERP Is Google Going After Affiliate Sites News: Google unleashes June 2024 spam update Google Search Bug: Not Indexing or Serving New Content Google AI Overviews showing less often, with less Reddit, data shows Report On If Google Showing Fewer Reddit Links In Search? SEO Visibility Shifts from Review Sites to eCommmerce & User-Generated Content Sites in 2024 Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, we're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO brand here at Wix. Today, I'm joined by she who doesn't wear a cape, but maybe she should wear a cape. But either way, she is an SEO hero, our Head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes- Mordy Oberstein: But the good ones do like, yeah, the Flash doesn't wear one, but Batman does. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I had a plumber who really helped me out. He didn't wear a cape, that would be very impractical. Mordy Oberstein: But it would've covered up his crack. Crystal Carter: My plumber has it under control. I'll just tell you that right now. Mordy Oberstein: Plumber crack is a real thing. My stepfather's an electrician. Electrician crack is also a real thing. Crystal Carter: Wow, this is wow, that's a great start to the podcast. Thanks listeners for hanging in there with us. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, it's not my fault, it's a full moon tonight. Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also get inbuilt Google Search Console insights to help you maintain those rankings. Look for within our SEO dashboard, because today we pay homage to the unsung heroes of SEO, those who maintain rank, how Google updates bring maintaining rank into focus in all new ways. The content connection, why a content first focus can be your best friend when looking to keep your rankings, and how sites of all sizes can go about maintaining their rankings. To help us RicketyRoo's own, Melissa Popp will be here in just a few minutes to share what's in her utility belt as she goes about keeping her rankings. Plus, we look at how search engines try to maintain their market share by borrowing from other search engines. And of course, we have snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So, put on your capes and proudly wear your underwear on the outside as we pay tribute to you, the unsung hero of SEO, AKA, Captain Rank Maintainer on this, the 93rd episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Maintaining rank is hard. It's not easy. Crystal Carter: Maintaining rank is hard. Mordy Oberstein: Because everyone's gunning for you now. Crystal Carter: Yes, everyone can see you. You were completely exposed. If you're number two or if you're number 37, you can sneak in, right? You can sneak in on the cut, you can be like, okay, I see you number one, I see what you're doing, but you can bide your time, like a sneak attack kind of thing. But if you are number one, everyone can see you and everybody knows what's going on and people will study you and get all in there. A great tool for looking at your competitors is Semrush has a great tool for that, looking at keywords and looking at competitors. One of the ones that Ross Simmons, friend of the podcast, friend of the SEO Hub has talked about is CRM. Salesforce has an article called, What is A CRM, and I'm looking at there, and that has a traffic volume, the keyword, what is a CRM has a traffic volume of 22,000. According to Semrush, they're getting 5,000 of those clicks every month. They've ranked number one in that position since May, 2023, possibly even longer. And they spend time making sure that that does not move. Why? Because that's 5,000. That's that much coming through straight away, and that's something that's really important. They're also ranked, they recently have had a tussle with HubSpot. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, a tussle, that's a good word, by the way. I just want to stop, point out what a great word tussle is. Sorry. Crystal Carter: Tussle, yes, tussle is a good word. So they're tussling a little bit with HubSpot for CRM, so sometimes they're number one, sometimes HubSpot's number one for just the word CRM, but they've had number one for, what is a CRM, for a very long time. And that's really important because that's core to their business. So if you have terms that are core to your business, it is absolutely worth maintaining that content, maintaining that position over time. And if Google understands that it is core to your business, that everything you do points to that particular keyword, then they will give you that. They'll understand that you are the authority in that, and all of the things on your website should point to that. Now, not only does what does a CRM, rank number one for what is a CRM, but it also ranks number one for loads of other terms as well. So for instance, it also ranks number one for, what is a CRM tool. It ranks number one for, CRM definition, CRM program, all of that sort of stuff. That particular piece of content is pulling in tons of traffic for them. And I think that in terms of maintaining rank, sometimes things can rank number one and get no traffic and not get much traffic at all. But according to this, according to Semrush in May alone, the page, what is a CRM, on Salesforce was getting 43,000 clicks a month. Okay, now that is absolutely, absolutely 100% worth maintaining rank. Now, if you're looking at your keywords and you've got number one but nobody's coming to the page anyway, you want to have as many number one keywords on your site as you can, but maybe don't lose any sleep if you slip a little bit. But if you have something that's coming in and bringing in thousands and thousands every month, then absolutely spend the time. And there's lots of different tools, which I'm sure that Melissa will get into the details of it, but you need to assess when you're assessing whether or not you should fight to maintain your rank, whether or not you should defend yourself from the usurpers. Make sure... I know dropping the vocabulary words. Anybody studying for their SATs, you're welcome. And- Mordy Oberstein: That's our core audience right there. Crystal Carter: Right? But basically anybody who, if you're looking at it and you're trying to think, should they hold the line here? Have a look at the search volume, have a look at how relevant it is to the rest of your content, and then also think about the links. So if you're thinking about that particular page, we have a particular piece of content. We have the SEO Guide, the Wix SEO Guide, for instance, on the Wix SEO Hub, which has lots of links out to other pieces of content, has lots of links into it from lots of other links as well, and gets a fair amount of traffic for us for that particular page. That's worth us maintaining, that's worth us looking after, that's worth us thinking about. And so have a look at which ones are those pivotal, crucial, important pages, and you should probably be monitoring those in terms of ranking. You should probably be monitoring them daily, weekly, at least. And you should be scheduling in and making sure that you're updating them regularly and making sure that you're paying attention to your competitors because sometimes if you're not looking and they can sneak in and you might miss that you lost a keyword that maybe has a knock on effect to some of the other keywords that you're ranking for. Mordy Oberstein: Now, to get more into this, I had a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Popp, because I have a lot to say about this, and we talked a lot about this. Here's a little chat with RicketyRoo's, Melissa Pop. So, welcome to this show, Melissa Popp. How are you? Melissa Popp: I'm good. How are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: I'm good, can't complain. I think that you are one of the unsung heroes of SEO. Melissa Popp: Oh, gosh. I just have to throw that feather in my cap, won't I? Mordy Oberstein: Not all heroes wear capes, unless you're wearing a cape. You wear capes? Melissa Popp: That's true. No, not yet, not yet. No, I do have a crown though that I wear sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's close. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I'm a little extra sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: There's a whole... In every SEO conversation, podcast, webinar, article, whatever, it's all about increasing rank, increasing rank, increasing rank. But one of the things that I'll put a little spoiler out there, or I don't know, behind the scenes thing, maybe I'm not allowed to say this, but one of the things we talk about internally at Wix is maintaining rank. We're already ranking, and now we have to keep those rankings because if you don't keep those rankings, then you're back at the square one of trying to get the rankings, but no one ever talks about this. Melissa Popp: No, nobody does. Nobody talks about, what I like to think of as maintenance mode of SEO. You come to a point where depending on how big your site is, what your niche is, that you hit a saturation level where it's like, how much more can you do to continue to boost rankings when you already are in page one, top three results, earning your featured snippets, unfortunately showing up in SGE now, whether that's right or wrong, but there's a maintenance that's involved there and ongoing work that most of us, I would say, probably 60 to 70% of our job is that maintenance mode of maintaining those ranks. And then at the same time, trying to figure out, okay, where do we pivot from here to earn additional rank rankings? If that's even possible, because at some point you reach a level where you own it all, ideally. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, that's one of the, I don't know, thou shall not say this, but sometimes you can't go any higher. You're number three, and that's where you're going to get for this keyword. Melissa Popp: Absolutely, and at RicketyRoo, we do a lot of work with home service clients, and you see that all the time. These businesses are competing with directors like Yelp, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, and other websites that the domain authority and just overall topical authority that they have in those niches because of what powerhouse of websites they are. Your little mom and pop shop is never going to be able to get rank one, two, three, even in some cases when you're going up against powerhouses like that. So it's, what do you do from there? Unless you have millions of dollars to try to compete there, you're never going to maintain that. And nobody talks about that either, of what ranking is good enough before you start carrying the load of ranking right there versus trying to convince clients that you can go higher because you can't. It's fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's fine because sometimes you're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggonit, and people click on you and you're ranking number three, and that's fine. Melissa Popp: And as long as you're converting and earning business, and then also you're satisfied as a business owner at what your revenue is from that, you don't have to be number one to make a living and to keep your business growing. And there's so much competition out there, and so many, we're seeing this right now, all the changes. I mean, that could be a whole other episode, right? Talking about Reddit and Quora jumping in rankings, and now you're competing with a whole other subset of websites that shouldn't even be competing with you, but at some point you have to step back and say, okay, this is good enough. We are converting enough. Either, what other channels can we look at? Because that's another thing we don't talk about as part of this maintenance mode. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, there's life outside of Google? Melissa Popp: Oh my gosh, life outside of SEO, I'm going to get hate mail for saying, and I'm a huge, huge believer in being able to look at, where is your audience? Where are they hanging out? Where are they having discussions? Sometimes it's social media, sometimes it is Reddit. Sometimes, I mean, I was talking to someone the other week about direct mail campaigns and how nobody talks about direct mail, but when you look at certain demographics, that still works. And that's another whole aspect of maintaining not just rankings, but brand awareness. You want to go where people are. You reach a plateau with SEO, you can take that budget and spend it a little bit elsewhere to figure that out, and you're still growing just in a different way. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so spinning back around to all this, because the point about Reddit and Quora is exactly where I want go with this. You were doing just fine, things were okay. You were ranking, I don't know, one, two, or three, and now all of a sudden you're still ranking one, two, or three, but there's a giant discussions, cert feature box above you with a bunch of Reddit URLs. How much of your work is going into changes in the ecosystem, how to combat them, how to deal with them? With the Reddit one, I don't know what you do, but things like that where the SERP is changing, the algorithm is changing, there are updates, there's this or that, and you're trying to just staying out above water because you're doing better than above water. You're ranking the top of the SERP, but you're doing work that keeps you afloat at the very top of the SERP. How much of your time is spent on those kinds of things? Melissa Popp: I mean, I already, as part of my work, and especially on the content marketing side with clients, I am already looking at Reddit and Quora, whether they're ranking on page one or not. When it comes to content ideas, blogging, even updating content, looking at people, also ask boxes, I was already looking at all of this before all of a sudden they all jumped to page one. And I think that's a big problem in our industry, is that a lot of our efforts, there's a lot of people out there doing great work with content that are looking at the big picture and not just the little SEO piece of it. We need to start spending more time looking at this. So Reddit and Quora, I mean, I was doing content briefs a couple of weeks ago for a home services client, and I'm seeing Reddit discussions pop up for transactional keywords. There's no reason they need to be there at all, but I'm like, okay, if people are landing on a page, a service page, and still have that question that is popping up on page one, whether I agree that that Reddit thread should be there or not, I need to be looking at that. There is still, whether Google's algorithm is all jacked up and that is what's happening here or not, I still, if Google is going to rank that there, I need to be aware of that for my client and think, is this Reddit discussion worthy of inclusion on a piece of content I'm creating for? Do I need to update that piece of content? So I think there's two, there's two issues there. One is we're not doing enough to actually understand search intent to begin with, and Reddit in discussion is popping up there is one way to look at that. What are people discussing that they're not getting from "normal" search results, that we need to be including in our content? And not just for SEO purposes, but literally a potential customer is asking that question. And then on the flip side, why are we not doing this to begin with? We only care about it now that Reddit and Quora and other discussions are on page one. So we're already doing a disservice to clients by having not paid attention to this before it simply popped to page one. Mordy Oberstein: But that goes into, so I'll give you an example of this where if you're not paying attention to what people actually want and talking to them in a way that actually speaks to them, while you might be ranking today, I don't think you'll be ranking tomorrow. There was a couple... I'm actually running this up right now for the Wix SEO Hub. By the time this recording comes out, I hope it'll be long published. Looking at two examples from the March 2024 core update. So bankrate.com redid basically an entire folder of their content, and it was previously very, I call it sterile content, like, what is a payday loan? How to get a payday loan, when don't you choose a payday loan, how to finance a payday loan. Every H two was very topical, and it's like each one's trying to rank for a featured snippet, kind of thing. And they redid all of it and the folder went berserk in a good way, just shot up in the rankings with the March 2024 core update, because what they did was they said, okay, let's speak to the topic, but in a way that relates to what the user's going to do with the information. So for example, they added a section on when a payday loan might actually be worthwhile because they realized, okay, we're talking about payday loans and the original content was, what is a payday loan, the risk of a payday loan, and all these very generalized, sterile kind of subtopics. But if we're talking about this, obviously the user is looking to get a payday loan for a reason, so why don't we address that? And they did, and they did it across all of their content, it became very situational like, here's what you need to know about a payday loan, in the context of how it's going to work for you. They talked about just what to expect, the money would take X number of days to get into your account, blah, blah, blah. It was much more user focused. All of a sudden they shot up in the rankings, they replaced somebody. They replaced the page, and that page is now gone and not ranking. And websites, I think are slowly coming around to the idea that they have to update content. What they wrote five years ago and ranked with five years ago is not going to work anymore because the algorithm is changing. Let's change that up. And big content teams are doing that and if you're not worried about maintaining your rank, somebody's going to get after you and replace you. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and why wouldn't they? Especially when you look at bigger websites compared to smaller websites, and that's a whole other player, smaller websites being frozen out of brand dominated topical searches. But that example that you gave with bank rate, how many SEOs listening to this right now, okay, on let's say smaller or medium sized teams and websites, are going to come away from this and go, holy cow, if Bankrate did this, this is absolutely what we should do. Lily Ray, Marie Haynes have been sharing other examples of websites that are skyrocketing after pivoting their content strategy. We have that proof there. Now, can we guarantee 100% certainty that Google's always going to reward that content? Who knows what Google's going to do, but what we know is searchers want information that they can actually act on and use, beyond just whatever their initial search query is. And the problem is, is we spend so much time creating SEO content, focusing on keywords, focusing on page, what backlinks can we get, what internal links can we update? We are so focused on gaining the SEO side of things that we forget the content is the foundation of that growth. And what's even worse is most people know that, but they don't want to spend the time on creating a quality piece of content because holy cow, that's actually really hard, even if it's a topic, what is a payday loan versus how does the payday loan scam work? And so you have a problem that companies don't want to invest the time in creating quality of content. They certainly don't want to pay writers and spend the money to create quality content. I mean, I can imagine how much Wix spends with all the content that you all push out and you have a set budget for that and you can get it and you look at the names you bring on to write for you. But most companies don't have that, nor do they want to invest in it because they feel that their ROI could be better spent elsewhere, whether it's paid advertising, display, something else. They want instant gratification, not realizing that keeping your content updated to match search intent and what your users are actually looking for to make a decision through that top and middle of the funnel content, particularly, you are going to spend less money long-term on ROI than throwing money at the wall with PPC, competing with everyone else driving bids up. And I get it, I understand why this works the way it does. You're always going to try to get the most for the cheapest. But we're now finding with the helpful content update and other things Google are doing that, holy cow, that doesn't work anymore. And now companies are playing catch up and having to spend even more money that they didn't budget. In Bankrate's case, I wonder how much money they spent updating content that if they had approached the correct way to begin with, they wouldn't have had to spend. And that's the conundrum now everybody is in. Mordy Oberstein: That's the whole problem. And to your point about the smaller websites, they also, in my opinion, there's no such thing as one kind of site having a total advantage. There are things that big websites have that smaller websites don't, like we have money for SEO Hub to pay writers, yada, yada, yada, yada. But if you want to make changes, it's very slow. We're a giant brand, there's a lot of guidelines, there's a lot of hoops to jump through. If you're a smaller website and you're like, you know what? And we're more risk averse, so if we see that there's a new trend. I think for example, that content's far more conversational than it ever has been before. Good luck getting a big brand to create a landing page that's conversational, not ultimate, whatever, whatever, sell, buy here. Good luck. If you're a small brand or a small website or a small business or an SME, whatever it is, you can do that. You can take those risks and that's what'll help you maintain the rank, in my opinion. I think you're at an easier advantage to maintain rank to a certain extent. Obviously, the larger websites have that authority and that makes it easier for them but you can do things like, I think that content that Google's looking for X now and I want to pivot to do X, you can do that tomorrow if you wanted to. There's no hoops to jump through. Melissa Popp: Definitely, and the thing with smaller business versus bigger businesses, especially in brands, we're hearing that conversation a lot as well, is how is anybody going to compete with these big brands now dominating search more than ever? And depending on what your business is, especially as a small, medium sized business, you don't need to compete with those. That's not where locally people are looking for. We have these conversations with local clients all the time, that they want number one against Yelp and Angie's List, and it's like, no, you don't, you don't need to. People understand that they're shopping around, they are going to click down through results. That's the whole scary idea of, oh, if you're not at the top of page one, oh no, oh no, the sky is falling. Mordy Oberstein: What's the best place to bury a dead body? On page two of the SERP. Melissa Popp: Listen, you just need to be on page one, and you need to give searchers and actual consumers more power to make that choice, most people are shopping for that. But yeah, I absolutely agree that smaller businesses has the opportunity to make more immediate impact than bigger businesses do, and they are less risk adverse. And it comes down to the priority of changes you're making, whether it's SEO updates, link building, content, you don't have to do it all. You just have to do the right things in the right order to make the most impact and then eventually, you get to all the other things. And that's another thing that gets, I think very missed in our industry is everybody wants a checklist. Let's go through, update title tags and Meta descriptions and headers and blah, blah, blah down the list, where it's like, okay, we know Google rewrites Meta titles and descriptions all the time. Why is that your number one priority? Mordy Oberstein: That's not what's going to move... Sometimes, yes, but my experience, if you had rankings and are slowly seeing a decline, like a consistent slow degradation, it's a quality issue, usually. Melissa Popp: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: And that might be, you have terrible headers as part of the quality, but it's usually the quality overall. You need to have a hard look at your content, which is I think what people don't do. I feel like SEOs look at the SERP like I won. It's like I don't know, I'll use a sports reference, like, I scored a basket or I got a goal or I got a hit, now I'm done. Yeah, but in five minutes from now, you're back up in the order, you got to take another swing. It's not, you won and these rankings belong to you. Google doesn't owe you anything. Melissa Popp: No, no, and why we think they do. These conversations and arguments and the vitriol that our industry is showing to one another right now and frankly showing to folks like John Miller and Danny Sullivan. Okay, I'm not saying Google is the enemy, but we are competing against them. That's a realistic fact of what we do. The only thing we can do is do the best we possibly can, starting with the foundation that does everything for SEO and that piece of content. We can only do the best that we can and maybe pray, hope, whatever you want to do, burn a candle, whatever, and hope for everything else to match up and help rankings. But at the end of the day, we start with that piece of content and it's so overlooked. And to circle back to talking about unsung heroes, that's why this maintenance of your rankings is so important. And it always starts with that content. What more could you be doing? How has search intent changed that you need to now update your piece? We see that all the time in local. I feel like local search results, the search intent changes more than anywhere else that I've worked, and I've worked on e-comm brands, I've worked enterprise level national, international. I feel like at the local level, that search intent changes almost on a whim. It's like a whole demographic decides, oh, I'm going to search to buy this or find this service, this is what... And it makes no sense, but it's what happens. And that's one of the first things I do when I'm looking to update a piece of content is, I want to dive deep into SERPs and understand, has this changed? And we don't spend that time. We want to blame Google and we want to point fingers at things. And yes, sometimes, you know what? I've seen some of the cases here that I definitely think this is Google's fault for a particular domain and not what they're doing, absolutely, but those cases are so actually rare. Mordy Oberstein: Truth. Yeah, the norm is, Google knows for the most part what he's doing. There are enormous gaps sometimes and there are shifts. I think we're in a point right now where, like an inflection point, where things just like multiple reasons why things are not firing in all cylinders and they're not and- Melissa Popp: No, they're not. Absolutely, I'm not defending Google here at all for any of this. I cannot imagine the algorithmic engineering, especially now that you're adding machine learning and AI into the mix, of how difficult it is to actually do this right. And part of me still believes that they do in fact want to get this right. Losing market share for people switching to AI search engines, to TikTok, to any of these things, depletes their revenue. They want to get this right, but in the meantime, we're all left holding the bag with our clients trying to explain, we have no control over this, so- Mordy Oberstein: But you do have control over, for example, let's talk about bounce rate, and they'll talk about the context of user behavior metrics and nav boost, that kind of thing, which is legit, nav boosts is a really interesting conversation, but they're not talking. We're not talking about it. Oh, you know what? I see my bounce rate has gone up, maybe my content's not what people want anymore. Let me see, maybe I should rework that. We always look for the most immediate, easy way out. Melissa Popp: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: As opposed to taking a hard look, and the only way I feel like to maintain your rankings is to take a hard look at yourself. What are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? What's the data say about how people feel about our content? And it is not just your typical SEO metrics, if you're going on social media and being like, oh, I hate this. Also, you're seeing people talk about your blog in a negative way, that's going at some point to impact search and your rankings. You need to go back, you need to take a hard look, you need to think, okay, I need to rework this because your rankings, again, they're not a given. They're not going to last, no rankings last forever. Melissa Popp: No, nobody, nobody, and you bring up bounce rate, one of the most misunderstood and it's like the bad child of everything. But how many SEOs are either bringing in a content marketer to actually look at content marketing metrics like bounce rate, timeline page, etc? How many of SEOs are actually looking at those metrics at all? And I'd imagine that number is probably staggering low because like you said, a lot of us, well first off, I mean it goes back to our clients. What do our clients care about? They care about rankings, traffic and conversion, and that's usually it. They don't care about anything else, as long as rankings leave the traffic to conversion, boom, you're done, right? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Melissa Popp: But the problem is, is so many have relied on those three types of metrics for so long, they've forgotten about the world of things out there beyond just bounce rate and time on page. It's, how many websites have heat maps and are looking at what elements on a page people are clicking on? Where are they clicking out? Well how... Scroll depth, if you write a 2,000-word blog, let's say it's completely as comprehensive, topically authoritative, it's a perfect, perfect blog ever written on a subject, but nobody's reading past the first third part of it. Something is wrong with that, even if it is the greatest blog ever to be written. But we don't, for the most part, SEOs don't look at metrics outside of their little bubble. And I get it, I understand why that happens, but we're now evolving to how content is relatable, not only to search but to users. We have to be more aware. I really believe in the next couple of years, probably next 15, 18 months really, that design and user experience- Mordy Oberstein: Sure, 100%. Melissa Popp: ... that's going to be the next set of conversations we're having, it's if your user experience is terrible, starting with site speed and page load time, to just how your call to actions. I mean, how many websites do we go to nowadays that, here's a modal popup, boom, right in your face. You're not even there for two seconds and it's like, sign up for this, do this. Or my least favorite thing in the world, you get to a page and a video automatically starts playing and it scares you out of your seat because all of a sudden your screen is yelling at you. Mordy Oberstein: Here's a page I'm sharing. You can't see this audience because it's an audio experience. Melissa Popp: Oh, I already hate this. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, okay, you already hate it. This is a page that lost a lot of rank with the March 2024 core update and it's not hard to see why. There's no white space on the page, there's no spacing, there's no anything. You're looking like, oh my God, it wasn't meant for me to consume the information. The page was designed to rank for whatever keywords. Melissa Popp: No, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: And the enterprise is like, you read it, it's not bad information. Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: But it's not usable. Melissa Popp: No, my eyes already hurt. The font is terrible on the page, the image is so tiny. I can tell it's a dude, but I have no idea. Mordy Oberstein: Why is that even there? Is that the author? I don't even know what that is. Melissa Popp: Yeah, I mean, and even look at this, I see the data up here, the published date is 2022. When was the last time that this page was vetted by anybody to determine is this information still accurate? Is it correct? But then also it's like, where is the connection here? Just skimming this first paragraph. There is no connection to get people to even care. The hook is not there. This absolutely to me- Mordy Oberstein: It's very sterile content, it is written topically, it's not written for users, and the problem with this is no one since 2022 has looked at this and said, how can we make this page better? You should be constantly thinking, how can I make my content better? Because your content is never perfect and it's never good enough, and it's never, I don't want to say good enough, but it's never the pinnacle of what you want. And user expectations are always changing. To quote Glenn Gabe, Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned. If the user looks at this and says, oh this... They're never coming back, all of that nav boost interaction data is getting factored and now, and it's all because you thought I wrote the content, I won the rankings and I'm done. And hence, the unsung heroes of SEO are those who are saying, it's never done. Melissa Popp: No, and it's never, it absolutely isn't. And one of the things I do, a lot of the times when we have new clients come on board, no matter it's a 10-page website or a 1,000-page website, is we content audit the heck out of every single page on the website. And I want to understand, it's, are you getting traffic? Do you have any rankings? And then beyond that, what do these pages look like? What information is on there? And anybody on the RicketyRoo team will tell you, I am vicious when it comes to content update. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Melissa Popp: I do not play around, I take a scalpel to websites. I have recommended pruning websites two thirds of the content in cases. There has been recent cases where I've pruned a lot of content and said, no, you know what? We're just going to start over. We probably could use some of this content foundationally, but I don't even want to look at it anymore. It's that bad. And I don't do this, I laugh a little bit about it, I don't do this because I'm a mean person or I want to tick people off. I'm doing this because I see the writing on the wall. We've been saying this for 20 years, that content is king, that has not changed, it hasn't. And why every couple of years we shift back and forth on that and we don't spend the time on even just focusing on our content strategy. Most SEO's content strategy is literally, okay, what long tail keywords in Semrush or Ahrefs do I see that are questions and your when, where, whys, hows? Let's just write that content because it has high search volume and no, and it's like- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. Melissa Popp: And I'm not saying that that is incorrect. Mordy Oberstein: No, there's a place for it within. Melissa Popp: Exactly, and you have to look at it bigger than that. I mean, there are lots of topics I recommend because absolutely, I'm like, oh, the search volume is there, but also, it matches search intent. And we talk a lot about a topic clustering as if that is a new thing that somehow magically has appeared. And no, that has been a marketing trend, not just in content marketing, but in other forms of marketing for decades. And when I'm building topic clusters for clients, I absolutely am looking at search volume, but I'm also thinking, okay, what do people actually want to know? And a lot of times I recommend topics that have very low search volume, and sometimes I'll get pushback on that of like, oh, but oh no, nobody's searching for that. And I'm like, listen, search volume numbers are BS, they are guesstimates. They do not necessarily mean that 1,200 people are searching a month for X, Y, Z. Now, that doesn't mean that we should ignore those guesstimates. They do help guide our efforts, but we have to think more outside the box. And especially working with smaller clients, you'll get a lot of zero volume keywords that because the tools are running nationally to aggregate that guesstimate, you actually don't know how many people locally might be searching for that because it's not enough to ping for those tools. And that's another thing people forget about when they're creating content, but also updating content. Just because something has the 1,200 volume search nationally every month doesn't mean that people are actually searching for that to eventually lead to conversion. And so that's why I always go back to the number one thing I'm always looking for when I'm updating content and in this maintenance mode, is search intent. It's the most important part of updating and creating content. And we dance around that because that's a little bit outside the SEO box. We talk about search intent at a very high level, but in the nitty-gritty- Mordy Oberstein: But the micro level, no. Micro intents, what's that? Or we feel like, yeah, we nailed it and don't think, wait, it changed. It's like anything with your content. I want you, if you're listening to this podcast and you write content and you're trying to write content, I want you to go back to something you wrote, I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago, two years ago, and I want you to reread it and I want you to walk away. And how many of you walk away feeling like, that was amazing content? And how many times do you walk away? That's how I used to write and it's good, it's not bad, but- Melissa Popp: No. Mordy Oberstein: ... you're in a different place and you're a better writer, you're a better SEO, you're a better content person and you look back like, I could have done better with that. That's how Google's looking at your content. That was good, that was good. Melissa Popp: Exactly, that's the missing link, is as Google's algorithm gets smarter, faster and larger, encompassing more items into ranking factors, we have to evolve with that. We can sit here in our discussions and blame Google all we want, but at the end of the day, we are at their mercy of how they want to do things, whether we like it or not, and our clients are at that mercy. So we have to evolve with it. And it's like for writers, absolutely, just go back a year and look at some of the things that you wrote. Go look at where they rank. Go look where they rank now and if you still have access to any analytical data around it, how many people are coming to that page? Where are they going from that page? And I guarantee you, in a lot of cases, you're going to find that it's not performing the way you felt when you finished writing and you hit publish, because we publish pieces of content and we're like, yes, this is it. This is awesome, this is the pinnacle we did, we're at the top of the world, but then nobody comes to see it. Nobody comes, but we pretend like that doesn't exist. We pretend that that's not a thing that we need to care about. The SEO team cares about that now and it's like, no, it's like we should also care about that too, especially if we're continuing to write for that business or we work in-house or whatever our role is, and that's just part of the process. Just like you revisit keyword research, with clients, I like to revisit keyword research every six months to a year. I want to see again, where does the search intent just for on-page change that we need to pivot and change things up? Mordy Oberstein: Totally, totally. Melissa Popp: But we just don't do that. Mordy Oberstein: No, we don't get that that's, it's not a checklist. That's a different snarky point for a different time. If people wanted to revisit their processes and get some advice from you, where can they find you out there in ether? Melissa Popp: Oh gosh, everybody knows I live on Twitter and I'm going down with that ship. You can find me at- Mordy Oberstein: Me too. Melissa Popp: ... Popup writer on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Popup writer, okay, we'll link to that in the show notes. Melissa Popp: And yeah, feel free, anybody on my team will tell you I love ripping content apart and not from a place of negativity, but to help people do better. I ask my team all the time, any RicketyRoo blog that you read that I wrote, I guarantee you, two or three people on the team have told me how terrible it is and helped me make it better. I come from a place where I want to support anybody writing content to do better, not just for their clients, but for themselves. We only grow by putting ourselves out there and that's another scary part of all of this, is we have to admit that maybe we didn't do our best or something changed. That means we have to do better. So, I'm always happy to help people. Slide into my DMs, email me, any of that. I'm always around to help with this because I think these are the conversations we need to be having. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa is not only a great SEO and a great content person, just a great follow altogether, and it is why you were a previous follow of the week on the podcast for that reason. Melissa Popp: I was, I know. Mordy Oberstein: You were. Melissa Popp: I was like, oh. Mordy Oberstein: You're one of the best follows on Twitter out there in the SEO space right now. I don't want to say all of Twitter because if you're sports, maybe you don't talk about sports, but in the SEO space, not many better follows at all. So, please follow Melissa. Melissa Popp: Well, I appreciate that. I just telling it like it is. I love what I do and I love to share knowledge and I want us to have more productive conversations about the things we're doing because we're all going through it. It's not us versus one another, it's we're all in this together. And as cheesey that is, there is light at the end of this tunnel. Mordy Oberstein: Melissa, thank you so much for coming on and really say hi to all the great folks over at RicketyRoo. Melissa Popp: I will, I will. I'm sure they'll all send their love to you too. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, bye. Melissa Popp: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you again, Melissa, she's one of the best people in the whole SEO industry. Crystal Carter: Melissa is, she's just the gold star human being. 10 out of 10 recommend following Melissa. Not only is she amazing at SEO, not only is she super warm and friendly and really nice when you meet her, but she also has fantastic music taste. Mordy Oberstein: And movie taste. Crystal Carter: Right, Melissa is just, she's just the best. And also, she's on team RicketyRoo. Team RicketyRoo are the best, they're so good. Don't get me wrong, lots of love to lots of other agencies as well, but team RicketyRoo are fantastic, I'm not going to lie. Amanda, Celeste, Tess, everybody there is fantastic, they're just a great squad. Mordy Oberstein: On that note, you might be fighting for your rankings and your own market share, but you know what else is fighting for their own rankings and market share? Search engines. Like love is a battlefield, so is search engine market share is a battlefield. So, sometimes they do borrow ideas from each other in order to maintain market share. So here's a look at how search engines maintain their market share with a little segment we call, Going, Going, Going, Google. Well, I guess in this case Going, Going, Going, Search Engines. Going back in the day, multifaceted feature snippets and there was, I think I wrote an article about this on the Wix SEO about Google is moving away from the one true answer to a multifaceted kind of approach, because that's what people expect, they don't want one answer, they want options. And to do that, Google had a whole bunch of formats, has been testing with featured snippets and multiple URLs and feature snippets and multifaceted feature snippets, which is a feature snippet on top of a feature snippet on top of another feature snippet. You know what's doing that forever? Crystal Carter: Who? Mordy Oberstein: Bing. Crystal Carter: Bing. Mordy Oberstein: Bing's been doing that for years before Google was doing it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm pretty sure Google took that from Bing. Crystal Carter: One of the things I love about the team at Bing is that they do a lot of innovation. And we had Fabrice Canel from the search team at Bing on a webinar talking about Index Now, which you should definitely check out that webinar, it was great, but also he talked about that we build new things, we drive change and they do a lot of innovation and they're always coming through with that consistently. And so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they were looking over the shoulder a little bit to see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: No, I mean, look at AI on the SERP. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Bing puts in what's called Copilot now, Google go code red, red alert, whatever it was. Also, now we need to add AI onto the SERP the same way, not different, the exact same thing. Crystal Carter: One of the things that we're talking about, at one point Google was talking about contextual links. Bing has been doing that for ages as well. And one of the other things that Bing does is they'll pull in lots of information from other sources into their knowledge panel type things, but they also cite those sources there really, really clearly. I think that's really interesting. Another thing that you sometimes see on Bing is that sometimes Bing has rich results as well. So we think sometimes that rich results only happen on Google, but rich results happen on Bing as well. And so for instance, FAQ schema is no longer as prominent as it was on Google search, but it is still pretty prominent on Bing search, for instance. So that's something to consider as well. And I think that also, there's been some recent discussion about Bing's market share with some interesting statistics coming from World. Is it World Stat? Mordy Oberstein: Something like that, Stat Counter? Crystal Carter: Stat Counter, that's it. Some interesting statistics coming from them, and I think that it's definitely the case that I've heard a lot of folks using Bing. I've started using Bing a little bit more for different things as well. But yeah, they add in lots of different features and they're really innovative. Sometimes the SERP can be a little bit busy at Bing, but I think they're really innovative and it can sometimes give you an idea. Optimizing for Bing can sometimes give you ideas for optimizing for Google in the future. Mordy Oberstein: And I'm not saying this is bad, this is just the nature of how things go. You would open SERP, anyone can look at it, and Bing structures like, for example, you Google who are the Yankees, you get a big sports box at the top of the Bing SERP, that came from Google. The way they have site links, that came from Google. The way they have a people also ask kind of similar result, the related searches in that little gray box, that came from Google and that's fine, that's how it goes, everyone's kind of keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up with the Googles and the Bings, and that's just the way it is to quote Bruce Hornsby. Crystal Carter: But I think also one of the things, Google has started doing those really rich knowledge panel things like particularly for people. For instance, if you look up Beyonce, you'll get a picture of her, her date of birth, the music video panel, a Spotify panel, that sort of thing. And Bing have been doing things like that, particularly for location for a little while. So, one of the ones was like the Paris catacombs was one of my favorite ones because I've never been there but I'm like, oh, that looks really interesting. But I'm looking at one for the Grand Canyon right now and it's got a real mix of stuff all across it and there's lots of different ways that you can connect with it. One of the other things I find really interesting is the way that they parse things out. So this can help you to understand how search engines are seeing your content as well. So for instance, if you go to look up something like the Grand Canyon, they have these little explore this page button on the side, which is a little light bulb. Mordy Oberstein: Right, yeah, that's why I like that feature. Crystal Carter: Right, and it'll pull out different things from it. So it'll pull out the images that are related to it. It will also pull out some of the topics from it. So for instance, I found one that's like, everything you need to know about Grand Canyon National Park, and it's a National Geographic article, and it says, about this website, which talks about, about this website on the little explore this page. And then it says topics on this page and it pulls out some of the headers from the page. So, there you can see whether or not a search engine is able to parse that, is able to see all of it, is able to understand the topics that you're trying to cover and whether it all makes sense. It also allows you to get a summary of some of that information there. And we talked a little bit about competitors. It also lets you see your competitors at a glance really easily as well. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, on that Grand Canyon SERP, Bing had this really cool 3D exploration tool for seeing the Grand Canyon, it's got nothing to do with anything, but you see, it is just interesting to me how one follows the other, how competitive they are, how they borrow from each other. Just for example, Barry Schwartz covered in searches at Round Table that after Google announced that they're getting rid of their cache link, on April 8th, Bing tests removing cache link from search results. Interesting how that is. So they do follow each other's, it's interesting to see what they find. I find it's interesting to see what they find meaningful, that they follow each other on, what they tend to steal and not steal from each other or borrow from each other. And it's just how it goes, it's not good or bad, I guess it's a good thing. It makes everybody better. Rising tide lifts all ships. Crystal Carter: Absolutely, if you are somebody who's interested in search engine marketing and search engine optimization, it's definitely worth becoming familiar with Bing and also with Bing webmaster tools. So that's something that also drives innovation I think on both sides as well. I've spoken to folks at Google before who said, yeah, I think Bing webmaster tools are pretty solid and I think that they're really great. I think it's worth being familiar with both so that you can understand how search engines work overall. Mordy Oberstein: Yep, and if you're looking to understand how search engines work overall, another great resource for you. It's not Google, it's not Bing, it's the king, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine land. So, that means that we're now about to head into Barry Land, also known as the Snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a whole bunch for you this week. So I'll try to keep it snappy, but I also like to talk a lot. So, I'll still try to keep it snappy, but I might not succeed. From Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land, Google Unleashes June 2024, spam update. I like that, Barry, unleashes, it feels so aggressive. Google released it's June 2024 spam update. It is a regular spam update. It's not, I repeat, it's not and do not ask Danny Sullivan on X this question. It is not the algorithmic integration that will result in Google being able to algorithmically go after third party content hosted on websites that should not actually be there, also known as site reputation abuse. That was implemented thus far only with manual actions, this is known as parasite SEO within the SEO industry. The spam update of this June 2024 is not that. I cannot be clearer. It is not that. If you want something clearer, then go to X and look at the search liaison account, it'll be clearer but not much clearer. Perhaps a little bit more aggressive though, unleashes. Anyway, this from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Search bug not indexing or serving new content. So news websites noticed that there are content which they're constantly creating because there's news and they're creating new content for the news wasn't being indexed by Google. This has happened in the past before, it's not the first time, won't be the last time, but it's obviously super, super scary for a publisher. Google said that the problem has been fixed. They said we identified and fixed the issue with indexing. Sites may still experience some delayed indexing until the previously affected URLs have been reprocessed. There will be no more updates, end transmission. They didn't say end transmission, I added that. Crystal pointed out on X, perhaps LinkedIn, I saw it on X. You should make note of this if you are in that category of publisher and make a note because you might see a dip in your search console and traffic data and so forth. And you might go hey, what happened there? But if you make a note, you realize, oh, there was an indexing thing there. So that explains it. Okay, onto Search Engine Land, but not from Barry this time. Barry, you can't have them. This from Danny Goodwin. Google AI overview is showing less often with less Reddit, data shows. We've actually covered a bunch of studies showing there's less AI overviews being produced by Google. In this study by SEO ranking, Danny notes also that Reddit's visibility in the AI overviews is no longer a top 10 most cited domain, which is interesting because on June 19th, Barry Schwartz reported, there's Barry, on seoroundtable.com, report on if Google's showing fewer Reddit links in search. So some guy who's name rhymes with Gordy Boberstein, sent a whole bunch of data from Semrush showing that there's just a little bit of a slight drop off in the Reddit and Quora URLs that Google is showing within its discussion and forms. ERP feature. I'm not talking about, I mean, Gordy Boberstein wasn't talking about the entire SERP on the organic results, only the discussion of form SERP feature, but there's a little bit of a trend from April through June where Reddit URLs used to show in 49% of these SERP features, now is down to 48.56%. Same for Quora and other forums have seen a more noticeable rise in visibility within the platform. The same time, by the way, the Semrush data I looked at, I mean, Gordy looked at, was indicating that there are less instances or fewer instances if I'm going to speak grammatically correctly, of multiple Reddit URLs showing up in the discussion and form SERP feature. So there's less cases of Google using multiple URLs in the same SERP feature box from Reddit. That combined with the data that Danny's showing in the AI overview where Danny's discussing from SEO ranking, creates this picture where we're kind of seeing Reddit being scaled back just a bit. I do think Google realizes that it's a little bit too much on the Reddit front, but I don't see any dramatic shifts, I don't think advantage coming soon, but perhaps it's Google trying to act on that. I don't know, the data story is still to be told. However, continuing on that data story, wow I'm really threading the narratives together. This comes from Lily Ray over Amps of Digital, SEO visibility shifts to review sites to e-commerce and user generated content sites in 2024. What Lily shows is basically, I search for something like best jeans, not bad, or I don't know, I always go blank when I'm trying to figure out query to show an example of, like best cell phone or best mug or best glasses, or I just use Lily's cases, laptops, or bird feeders. There used to be a lot of product review websites showing up. What Lily is showing is that in May 2024, Google seems to have shifted away from the product review site and more to the actual product site, so less URLs being shown in the organic results for, here's my top five best bird feeders and more Homedepot.com, buy a bird feeder. By the way, that's happened in the past in other verticals. One of the cases I used to always study was insurance. So if I search for car insurance. Back in the day, there used to be a lot of informational content about how to buy insurance versus just places to buy insurance. That narrative switched back a little bit, and that's the last time I checked a few months ago, is a little bit more commerce side and less informational side. So, intent does change. But it's interesting to see this considering the fact that Google is not happy with affiliates. We spoke about this on our episode with Glenn Gabe, where we basically asked, is Google at war with affiliate sites? And the answer is yes, Google is at war with affiliate sites. Product review sites tend to be very heavy on the affiliate side, so this makes sense in that context of that narrative. Another thing going, making this full circle that Lily also noticed is that instead of relying on product review sites, she sees a shift from those affiliate review sites to user-generated content like Reddit and Quora and YouTube. So, maybe it's not the end of Reddit on the SERP. It already wasn't, but you get what I'm saying. Do I have another story? No, that's it. Okay. I thought I had another one. Wow. We covered a lot of ground this week. I try to keep each story snappy, so maybe it still is, the snappy news. How was your trip to Barry Land, Crystal? Crystal Carter: It was fantastic. We stand and optimize King. Mordy Oberstein: You have to be this short to ride. Crystal Carter: Leaving that, I have no further comment. Mordy Oberstein: I have another further comment. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: My further comment is that this week you should be following Roxana Stingu as your follow of the week. She's at Roxana, R-O-X-A-N-A S-T-I-N-G-U over on X. Head of SEO over at Alamy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's fantastic. She's so clever and has such a great technical knowledge across lots of different elements, and I think that she works across Alamy, which is trying to maintain brand reputation and maintain ranking across lots of different elements. And I think that it's that in-house play when you're an in-house SEO, you really have to guard your keywords, and she is an in-house SEO, who's been there for a while. And I think that when you've been there for a long time, you're able to, you know your keywords, you know them, and you need to know them inside out, and you need to know who comes for you, who your competitors are, and I think that she does a great job of it. Mordy Oberstein: I can't believe it took us this long to mention how maintaining reign comes into focus when you're in-house, but here we are, took us this long to mention that point. On the ball. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's really, really important in-house. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, make sure to give her a follow over on X and check it out on LinkedIn as well. Links in the show notes. That's all the maintenance I have, I can do today. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Well, we will keep going. We will maintain the podcast for next week. We will also be on the podcast. Mordy Oberstein: We'll maintain our rankings on Spotify. Crystal Carter: And anybody who wants to help us with that, please leave a review. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah and a rating. Yeah, please. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Because maintenance is a team effort. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Indeed. Crystal Carter: And it's so fun. Mordy Oberstein: And a whole bunch of other cliches. Thanks for joining us on The SERPs Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how agency SEO is changing. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or as Crystal already told you, a rating on Spotify. Until next time, piece and love and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

What’s true and what’s not about content duplication and SEO? Mordy and Crystal discuss duplicate content truths, legends, and falsehoods on this episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast. Unbeknownst to many, there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. Google is more likely to just not index duplicate content rather than punish an entire website. It’s pretty common for large websites to have duplicate or near duplicate content. In addition, many websites, especially news websites, syndicate their content to other domains. With proper attribution, Google can recognize the syndication and potentially serve up both without relying on a no-index. Listen in as the duo dispel these content duplication myths and more! Barry Adams of Polemic Digital stops by to share when to worry and when not to worry about duplicate content from an SEO point of view. Plus, Wix’s own Rebecca Tomasis shares how she approaches dealing with duplicate content on the Wix Blog! Can you hear that echo, echo, echo on the SERPs Up SEO Podcast? Let’s explore duplicate content and SEO together! Back How big of an SEO problem is duplicate content? What’s true and what’s not about content duplication and SEO? Mordy and Crystal discuss duplicate content truths, legends, and falsehoods on this episode of the SERPs Up SEO Podcast. Unbeknownst to many, there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. Google is more likely to just not index duplicate content rather than punish an entire website. It’s pretty common for large websites to have duplicate or near duplicate content. In addition, many websites, especially news websites, syndicate their content to other domains. With proper attribution, Google can recognize the syndication and potentially serve up both without relying on a no-index. Listen in as the duo dispel these content duplication myths and more! Barry Adams of Polemic Digital stops by to share when to worry and when not to worry about duplicate content from an SEO point of view. Plus, Wix’s own Rebecca Tomasis shares how she approaches dealing with duplicate content on the Wix Blog! Can you hear that echo, echo, echo on the SERPs Up SEO Podcast? Let’s explore duplicate content and SEO together! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 17 | December 14, 2022 | 37 MIN 00:00 / 36:50 This week’s guests Barry Adams Barry Adams has been building and ranking websites since 1998. Through his Polemic Digital consultancy business, he focuses on technical SEO and specialised services for news publishers. Barry counts some of the world’s biggest media brands among his clients including News UK, The Guardian, FOX, Future Publishing, Euronews, and Hearst. He is a regular speaker at conferences and events around the world, delivers annual guest lectures for local universities, and writes an irregular newsletter on SEOforGoogleNews.com. Rebecca Tomasis Rebecca is an SEO expert, specializing in blogs. Currently she works on the Wix Main Blog. Rebecca's specific focus is the planning and optimization of blog content to generate organic growth, at scale. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to Serps Up! Aloha! Mahalo for joining us on the Serps Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO Branding at Wix, and we're joined by the wonderful, the fantastic, the phenomenal head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello internet people. It's fantastic to see you. Well, not see you because this is a podcast, but it's great to be here and I'm very pleased. Hi, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I feel bad for you. Crystal Carter: Why? Mordy Oberstein: Because you have to hold your mic up. Your stand thing is not working. Crystal Carter: Why are you bothering on that? This is radio! People can't see that! Mordy Oberstein: I know. But now, they get a visual of you having to sit there holding the mic the whole time while we're recording. Crystal Carter: Well, I'm trying to give people the optimal audio experience for this podcast. I could do some ASMR. I could do some crinkling things. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh! I like that. You ever see those videos where they show you the behind the scenes of how they get sound effects in movies? Crystal Carter: Oh, yes! I can't remember what they're called. Mordy Oberstein: That was great. Crystal Carter: It was a special name for it, and it's a really fun name. But yeah, I followed somebody on TikTok, actually, who does that for Shameless, that TV show. Basically, she said, "Oh, a shammy is great." There's the ones they use for cars. They apparently slosh them around all over the place and they're fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing what they do. The sounds that you're actually hearing, what's actually happening behind the mic, two very different things. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the Serps Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where all of your pages are self-canonicalized. Why is that important? You'll find out! It's part of our show today. Kind of totally aligns. Crystal Carter: Totally, completely aligns. Yeah, I think canonicalization is good. I think canonicalization is good. I think canonicalization is good. Mordy Oberstein: I have this same joke planned out for later and I'm still going to do it because now it's even better, because it'll be the same. It'll be a duplicate joke. Get it? Crystal Carter: We're just going to do the same three lines over and over and over again. This show's never going to go anywhere. It's just an entire podcast of deja vu. Just internet deja vu. Mordy Oberstein: To quote Yogi Vera is deja vu all over again. Love that. Great show for you today as we dive into one of the most myth-filled areas of SEO. No, not LSI keywords, but close: duplicate content. That's right. We're diving into the real deal with duplicate content. What is duplicate content really? How does Google's diversity algorithm factor duplicate content in or out? When it makes sense to have duplicate content for user value and, of course, sub-domains, canonical tags and all that good stuff. Plus, Barry Adams stops by to share when you do, and especially don't, need to worry about duplicate content. We'll also talk to Wix's own Rebecca Tomasis as we chat about how Wix handles duplicate content at the enterprise level. And of course, we are the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Welcome to episode 17 of the Serps Up podcast. Welcome to episode 17 of the Serps Up podcast. Crystal Carter: So let's talk about duplicate content. The thing about duplicate content is it comes up a lot in SEO conversations. John Mueller's asked regularly about this and for some reason, it's been something that Google's tried to clarify on a number of occasions, but there's still a lot of mystery around it. So in most cases, when Google's talking about duplicate content, they're literally talking about scraping or copying and pasting content from another website and publishing it on your own. This can happen on a big scale. So a whole website will scrape an entire website and then put it on another website under a different domain with different URLs, but it's essentially the exact same content. This happens with Wikipedia a lot, so a lot of people will scrape Wikipedia and then put it in a different collection on a new domain. But Google's own webmaster guidelines discourage this kind of scraping. They say, "Don't create multiple pages sub-domains with substantially duplicate content. Avoid cookie cutter approaches, such as affiliate programs with little or no content." They also say, "If you are participating in an affiliate program, make sure that your site actually is adding value to what you're doing affiliate content for. Don't just scrape everything from the feed and post it on your site." Now, this is something that can be a bit confusing because people think that, "Oh, well what if I have content that's naturally kind of repetitive?" Like if you have job listings or real estate listings, or even event listings or product collections or things like that, where multiple pages will be really similar. But that's not the kind of thing that Google's actually talking about. And some people think that they're going to get a penalty, but that's not true. There's no duplicate content penalty. They said it in 2008. They said in their article, Demystifying Duplicate Content Penalty, "Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks. There's no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. Period." Mordy Oberstein: No one listens. No one listens. Google talks, no one listens. Crystal Carter: They keep asking. And they've asked John Mueller and he's like, "There's no duplicate content penalty." What there is, though, is basically Google is super busy. If you're publishing content that's essentially the same on your website, and you're publishing multiple pages on your website, they're essentially the same. Google might not index all of them because they don't need to, because they're essentially the same. So in the same way that I was like, "Oh, I got to a joke first," if you've published a collection of red shoes already and then you publish another one a week later, they're probably going to publish the first one, or they're probably going to index the first one if they index it at all. But they're probably going to index the first one rather than indexing every single one after it. If you think about the Spice Girls, you don't need two Sporty Spices. You've got one Sporty spice, you don't need two, right? Mordy Oberstein: I don't need one to begin with. That's a different story. Crystal Carter: I love Sporty Spice! Anyways, basically Google needs signals to understand that the content is different, right? So if you think about your meta descriptions, your page titles, your headers, your image attributes, that sort of thing ... If most of those things are the same on one page, then they will think that that's the same page. So what people think of as a duplicate content penalty is actually Google making a quality choice for the sake of the users. Because the users don't want three Sporty Spices, they want one Sporty Spice. So they're making a quality decision, and they have billions of webpages to index. They've got hundreds of thousands of websites being spun up every single day. They have a lot of content to get through. Google has said 25% to 30% of the web's content is duplicate content, and some of that is for a reason. You have things on your main job's thing. You've got it on different jobs board. You've got it on another jobs board. And then if I'm signed up for Ticketmaster and I want to know what's going on with the Taylor Swift concert, then I want that content from the Ticketmaster website. There's also going to be other people who have tickets and they'll have the same content on that website. That's okay. But Google tries to manage that in different ways. There's lots of ways that you can manage that. A schema is actually one way that they manage that. So if you think about jobs, for instance, they'll have a job and they'll say, "It's on this site, this site, and this site," and then you can pick the one that's most suitable for you. There's also canonicalization, which we'll talk about there as well. But just so we're very, very clear, there's no penalty for duplicate content. You just need to make sure that you're sending Google clear signals that your content is valuable and good signals that your content is unique. And you should also, where possible, make the most unique content most of the time. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and there's so many myths around this. For example, if I had the same product description or a very similar product description. Or let's say, for example, you're syndicating a product, like you mentioned with Taylor Swift tickets, or whatever it is. You're just taking the same description that someone else wrote on their website because that's what the manufacturer listed as a description. John Mueller's gone on, right? That's not a problem. That's not duplicate content. And this feeds right into the whole myth around keyword cannibalization and that whole thing. So keyword cannibalization is this theory ... Well, there is a real keyword cannibalization, but the predominant discussion around this, at least in the past, has been, "Oh. If I have two, very near, duplicate kind of pages, and they're both going to rank on the same serp ... Let's say one is at a number seven and one's at number 10 ... they kill each other's rankings. Google won't rank one page higher or rank both of them lower because it's duplicate content," which is what? That's not true at all. That has nothing to do with that. Google's not saying, "Oh, well you have one page and two page and it's very similar. So instead of ranking that first page number one, we're going to rank it number seven now. A-ha! We got you!" That's not true at all. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: What duplicate content and keyword cannibalization does come into play is ... The classic case I always think to make it really clear for you is let's say you have a page that talks about X and it's a blog post, and you also have a page that talks about X and it's a product page. Google ranks the blog post really high and your product page much lower. But the intent of the keyword is commercial or transactional. You want people to buy. So you don't want the blog post ranking really high where they're not going to buy anything. You'd rather have the page where you're actually selling the thing to rank really high. That's cannibalization. There you're killing yourself off and you're ruining your revenue, so to speak. That's a real case. Crystal Carter: That can definitely happen. But I think, also, it is a question of Google trying to understand the value that it has to the user. One of the things I think about is have you ever been to a supermarket or something and they're playing music? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I've been to a supermarket. And I've been there when they're playing music. Crystal Carter: Thank you. They're playing music and it's essentially ... This is a Taylor Swift episode. Let's say they're playing a Taylor Swift song. Let's say they're playing, I don't know, Shake It Off or whatever, and you're like, "Oh, that's Taylor Swift!" And then you listen a little bit carefully and you're like, "That's not actually Taylor Swift." That's one of those things where they got somebody to do a cover so that they don't have to pay so much for the recording, right? Mordy Oberstein: That's so true. Crystal Carter: You know. You've heard those songs, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah! All the time, totally. A supermarket, great place for it. Crystal Carter: Right. They add no value, right? Those songs add no value at all. None. Now, if you think about other songs that you've heard, where somebody's actually interpreted the song ... Like if you think about All Along the Watch Tower, right? Written by Bob Dylan, and then Jimi Hendrix covered it and it's a totally different song. Mordy Oberstein: Bob Dylan said he wrote it for Jimi Hendrix to play. Crystal Carter: Right, but there's tons of those things. If you think of Walk On By, Dionne Warwick, it's a very Burt Bacharach kind of song. Then you think of Walk On By by Isaac Hayes and it's a completely different song. It's the same source material, but they're actually adding some actual value to the new content. So yeah, you could say, "Oh, yeah. That's the same song. Same notes, same lyrics, same things or whatever." But if you're actually adding different value, then it's worth having them both. I don't need to have the like-for-like Taylor Swift song and the actual Taylor Swift song. I'll just have the Taylor Swift song. Thanks, actually. So I think it's a way of thinking about those things as well. So if Google knows that that's what people value and that people value an actual, substantive bit of content, then that's what they'll give them. And if they notice that you're not adding any value, either to the intent or to the source material, then they'll handle it in a different way. And that might be not ranking your page or it might be aggregating it on ... For instance, Google for Jobs will say, "It's on this site, this site, and this site," and so they'll aggregate them. They'll say, "If you want to buy from Ticketmaster, you can buy it here. If you want to buy from See Tickets or something, you can buy it there," all of that sort of stuff. So they'll aggregate them in some ways and they'll treat the content differently. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and I think people confuse similar content with duplicate content. Similar content could be great. It's very similar, but it meets different users or meets different needs or different intents. And Google does a pretty good job of this. Now, they have indented results. So you search for something and maybe they'll show you a blog post. And then underneath it, indented, is a landing page, and underneath that indented is a knowledge-based page trying to grab all those user intents. So Google does a good job trying to handle similar content. And yes, there is a diversity algorithm where they won't try to rank more than two pages from the same website on one serp. But again, that's not a hard and fast rule anyway. They say it in the documentation. It's not a hard and fast rule. And again, the indented results kind of show you that it's not a hard and fast rule. Crystal Carter: Right. And sometimes, they don't indent everything. And also, there's going to be lots of different things. I think, also, in their recent documentation, they published some confusing information about subdomains as well. I know that a lot people- Mordy Oberstein: I love bringing that up. We're going to bring it up here because that's just different wormholes, a different landmine. Crystal Carter: That's another podcast episode. Mordy Oberstein: We should do one on that, actually. Crystal Carter: But I think a lot of people have help documentation on subdomains, for instance. And your help documentation ... Google can understand that your documentation, your help pages, those have a different intent from, say, your blog. Those have a different intent, say, from your product listings, so that sort of information. They will indent them or they'll list them differently because they understand that the users might want that in a different way. Canonical tags are incredibly helpful for helping Google understand what is the primary content. We have a great article on canonization on the Wix SEO Hub, written by James Clark, that talks about this. But this is a great way to tell Google that maybe this is the collection of, I don't know, plus size t-shirts or something, but it's part of the main collection of t-shirts, so this is a filtered version of this main thing. And you can say the canonical is here, but this is a filtered version, which is useful to users but maybe doesn't necessarily need to be on the index. But if they want to index it, they will. Mordy Oberstein: And if you don't understand canonicalization, it's basically a tag that you can add to a page that tells Google, "This page? It's really this page." They're so similar or perhaps even exact in the case of adding filters and parameters to a URL that, "Google, ignore this page for ranking. This is the one that you want." Crystal Carter: Right. And that's how you can add value to your users so that they can get to the pages that they want and filter all the things, but you're not necessarily diluting what Google's crawling when they're crawling your site. And you're not making it complicated for them to understand which pages are which. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's a lot of things you can do. For example, internal linking and to help Google understand ... Two very similar pages and you keep linking across your website to one page over the other page, that's a strong signal to Google that this is the one that we should really be indexing and showing the users. And the one that you're not internal linking to is probably not the one, even though they're quite similar or duplicate. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. And I think, sometimes, there's a few tools that will tell you you have duplicate content. For instance, if you have the same meta description or the same page title, or some of the other attributes ... metatech sort of things ... They'll tell you you've got duplicate content. And I think that that's not red flag duplicate content, but what you are doing there ... You might be sending confusing signals to Google about which page is which. If you've got the same URLs, loads of times you might be sending confusing signals to Google, so just make sure that they're distinct. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. So basically, make sure you're sending the right signals to Google in terms of crawling and indexing. And also, don't be afraid of writing content that's similar if it meets a different user need. Don't not write good content that your users need because you're worried about duplicate content and the duplicate content penalty. Now, when it comes to when should you and when you shouldn't worry about duplicate content, we've got a treat for you. We have a lot of SEO legends on this show. Barry Adams is a legit SEO legend. He's done a ton of work with news websites, and they often have a lot of duplicate content issues. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So here's Barry Adams on when you do and when you don't need to worry about duplicate content. Barry Adams: When do I and don't I worry about duplicate content? I think I have maybe slightly different opinions on duplicate content than many other people in the SEO industry. But generally, I only worry about duplicate content if it's happening on one website. If you have multiple pages on your website that have identical or near identical content and, thus, are targeting the same keywords, the same topics, the same space in Google search results for the same types of queries. When that happens, you may need to find ways to disambiguate your pages a bit to make them a bit more distinct, to make them more unique, to give them specific, topical focus on one area versus another area so that they don't compete with each other. Because if you have pages on your own website that are competing with each other for the same search results, for the same rankings in Google, you are basically making life a lot more difficult for yourself because you are also, of course, competing with all the other websites out there. So try not to compete with yourself in the process. Another instance where duplicate content is often a worry for a lot of people: if you have your own content distributed on multiple different websites. An example would be a news publisher that syndicates their content to other news websites, and the worry is always there that those other websites are going to outrank the original publisher for keywords and searches related to that article content. That is sort of a valid concern. But it's not a major concern for me because I feel you can use that as a comparative advantage to a certain extent. Duplicate content ... Google does the best to filter it out in search results to a certain extent, but you very often see republished content taken from another publisher ranking quite well in Google search results. Especially in the new search results, but also in regular blue links search results, and I think that is by designed to a certain extent. It is quite difficult for Google to filter out duplicate content in their search results, and I think they deliberately tried to err on the side of coursing and just let content that they feel might be duplicate still show up in search results, and then not filter it out too aggressively. I think as a publisher, you can use syndicated content to your advantage by making sure it is properly attributed. So if you give your content to other websites to publish, make sure there's an attribution link back to your own website. Any internal links in that article you'd ideally point back to your own website, to your own tag pages, your own category pages, and your own related articles. And of course, if you can, put a canonical tag in there. Ask the republishers to canonicalize it back to your original version, which is also part of Google's recommendations when it comes to syndicated content. And beyond that, there's a lot of things, a lot of fear, I think, about duplicate content that isn't entirely warranted. There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, so just make sure all the pages on your own website are unique, are properly structured, well-targeted for specific topics and specific rankings. And don't worry too much about what other websites are doing with taking your content or scraping your content. Just focus on making sure your website is as good as it can be, and that you have all the tools at your disposal to make sure your own content ranks in performance in Google search results to its maximum potential. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, Barry. Don't forget you can check out Barry at @badams on Twitter or at polemicdigital.com. I don't think we could have said that better ourselves. By the way, content syndication ... If you're a news publisher, I do not work on news websites. I do not want to work on news websites because that is such a hard decision to make, because it's a business decision. What do you want to do? What do you do now? Because often, you don't rank. Crystal Carter: Well, I think that a lot of times it has to do with building authority for your site as any publisher would. But maybe we should talk about content syndication on another podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Make it it's own thing. I remember talking to Alli Berry over at The Motley Fool ... and now I think she's at Sports Illustrated now ... about what they would do, and it's complicated. But as Barry mentioned, again, let's reiterate, there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: If there's anything you take away from this show, it's that there's no duplicate content penalty. Crystal Carter: And I think that him talking about canonical tags and about link attributes, this is certainly something ... If you're working with digital PR, this is something that you will see a lot. For instance, if you get coverage in a major news publisher, you'll often get published in lots of their syndicated publications as well. People are like, "Oh, those are all individual links." Kind of. They don't count as much as if they were individual articles, but they're still useful. But a lot of the major publishers will use that canonicalization and will use a lot of the tactics that Barry has recommended, because Barry is the dude for that kind of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: He really is, which is why you could find him again on Twitter at @badams, or polemicdigital.com. Now, if you think duplicate content is a problem for your average website to handle ... which it can be ... it is a nightmare, or can be a nightmare, for enterprise sites with thousands upon thousands and thousands of pages, like Wix. If you are working on a large site, we figured you want to get some insight as to have a better handle on duplicate content on such a large site. Which is why we asked our own Rebecca Tomasis over at Wix what we do on literally our thousands upon thousands of pages of overlapping content, from the blog to the knowledge base and niche hubs like the Wix SEO Learning Hub. So let's travel across the Wixverse as we dive into duplicate content and SEO at the enterprise level. Speaker 4: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So for your listening pleasure today, we have one of the, I would call, biggest SEO experts at Wix because she's part of the blog team, which handles so much of our organic growth and drives so much organic growth. It's such a big focus for us. She's Rebecca Tomasis. She's an organic growth expert on the blog side of Wix, and one of her biggest problems is duplicate content. So that's what we're talking about today, duplicate content with Rebecca. How are you, Rebecca? Rebecca Tomasis: I'm good, thank you. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Sure! Crystal Carter: It's so nice to have you. You're brilliant. Mordy Oberstein: You are amazing, by the way. Rebecca Tomasis: [inaudible 00:21:51] Too many kind things at once, but it's very nice of you. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. Just behind the scenes of all these teams, there's always these people that you don't know who they are. Everyone knows Kyle. Kyle … Siegel, right? All the people talk, talk, talk. I'm just kidding. But the people who are the quieter people, who are actually pushing the thing forward ... I'm just kidding. Everybody's pushing it forward. But there are people who are silently doing it and who are really doing an amazing job with it. You are one of those people. Rebecca Tomasis: Well, thank you very much. That means a lot. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just going to go right to it. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: What do you do with duplicate content, because it's such a problem for us. We have so many different verticals. We have blog. We have knowledge base. We have the, "Oh, no. The SEO Hub coming in with our own content." You're treading foot on your content. Now, it's a turf war. It's the Jets versus the other people on the West Side Story. Rebecca Tomasis: The sharks? Mordy Oberstein: Sharks, yeah! There we go. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, we're an enterprise site, right? It's a headache. And I think in an ideal world, we'd love to avoid it. I know there are a million fixes that we can do and there are all sorts of things that we can do. But I think that on a site level, when we talk about the verticals and we talk about this, I think there needs to be a lot better kind of communication and management of content between us. We all have the same end goal, but we all have very different goals and we're all tracing different intents and different audiences. It shouldn't be so hard for us to have those kind of communications and that sharing of schedules and content ideas and what we're targeting and to be able to make a decision on. I think it's something that the blog and the SEO help now do very, very well, where it's almost like, "This is your content and this is your sphere of expertise. This is what you write about and this is what we write about." Almost to the extent where we avoid it, right? Then there's not even an issue or duplicate content, and I think that's something that definitely comes back to communication and sharing, and it's something that we can all get better with. But I will tell you, honestly, we are a huge blog. We are a legacy blog. The blog is almost 10 years old. Crystal Carter: Wow. Rebecca Tomasis: The number of times that we've duplicated ourselves, and then only realized because we'd run another site audit. It was like, "Where did this URL come from? This wasn't in Screaming Frog last time. Where have you come from?" Seriously. Every time, these URLs keep popping up and we're like, "Oh my goodness," so I think that's also part of it. Running those site audits, a lot of auditing content, checking, checking, checking, checking. We have a very strict redirect budget. We're an enterprise site, right? I think, often, a redirect is thrown around as an easy solution. And yet, technically, and how Google sees it, it is an easy solution. But then, we run into a lot of issues. We run into a lot of issues with crawl budget, with redirect chains. We are potentially preparing for a huge migration. It's just not necessarily always the fix that it is. And a much better fix for us, for example, to de-optimize something or even change the content. Give it to another writer and ask them to turn it into something different. Turn it into something that targets something else. Yeah, that's something that I think we are trialing more and more is how can we be more creative with this content and change it into something that targets a different intent or targets a different audience, or maybe even we'll have a different distribution channel. And actually ... Am I allowed to say it? We won't let it appear somewhere in the search. Everything that we do on the blog because everything we want to be out there. But sometimes, it's on a level of content that we thought was great. We have great pieces of content that were written at a time when the intent was super separate and they were not really duplicate at all, and they really stood their own. And now we find, almost, the more successful we've become with the pieces of content that we really want to be successful ... with our pillar pages and everything ... It seems unavoidable, the duplication, and we really have to ... I don't know, I'm always telling writers, "It's just a piece of content. Stop being so excited about it. I'm de-optimizing it. Live with it." No, I'm joking. Crystal Carter: What I'm getting from this conversation is that when we think about duplicate content, I think a lot of SEOs think about it from the post publish perspective. So, "Oh, there's this duplicate content. Oh, we need to go back and we need to change this around." But it sounds like you're saying that it should start when you're thinking about whether or not content might be duplicate. You should be thinking about it in the planning stages, so when you're planning your content. Rebecca Tomasis: I'm a firm believer in planning content. And I know that we can't plan a year's content in advance, right, but we can plan a content strategy. I mean, we work with a clustering model. Yeah, a very specific, intense change. An intense, specific queries change. But at an entity level, on a topic level, the history of something, or things that are important to designing a logo, these things don't change. Sure, there are trends and different types of font and different types of colors and shapes. But the essence of what's important to, say, designing a logo, this doesn't change. So when we plan a cluster around how to design a logo, we can pull out all of these pieces of content and really plan it better. We used to really try to narrow down with our content like, "This content targets a keyword." And I think this creates a lot of problem with duplicate content, of course, like cannibalization. And now, we're actually at a place where this is a pillar page. This pillar page is going to fall for 100 keywords, 400 keywords, 700 keywords. And then, it also becomes less of an issue there, I think. Look, this is all me speaking. It sounds so easy in theory. Sometimes, I wish I could take our legacy content and just ... I don't know. There's just no way to get rid of it. But it's difficult because we're also a team of different people and different priorities, and somebody wants this and somebody wants that and it's not always so easy to plan. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And I've seen this in work firsthand, where I've done work with you and the blog and I've done work with the SEO Hub. That pre-planning of knowing that certain types of content, even though it might be very similar or not the same topics, but a different kind of intent or for a different kind of audience on one forum versus another kind of intent for another forum. Knowing that in advance, just as a writer, has helped me understand, "Okay, if I'm going to write this, I'm going to go to you for the blog. If I'm going to go for this, I'm going to write this for the Hub." And that clear line of demarcation around intent has been so helpful to me in understanding what goes what and where. It's sort of helped, as you mentioned in advance, prevent duplicate content from showing up. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And I think, also, the other thing that I've seen the team do ... And Mordy, I know you've been a part of this process ... is refreshing content, certainly. And that's one way I think, as well, from a planning point of view, that you can reduce the kind of duplicate content that you're creating, instead of spinning up tons of the same ... Trends for Logos, or whatever, 2023, and then another blog, Trends for Logos 2024, and then another blog, Trends for Logos. Whereas, I know that the blog team spends a lot of time refreshing content so that we've got one URL that holds equity around keywords, around intent, around information. And it means that you're giving users the best information possible, but you're not duplicating yourself necessarily. Rebecca Tomasis: And I think within that, so many best practices, right? Even down to the URL we choose and how we optimize. These things are super, super important because these things are things that cannot be fixed, right? Yeah, I think it's a lot of moving parts and a lot of things to think about. Mordy Oberstein: To quote my favorite movie, "A lot of ins and outs, a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of different people involved," to quote The Big Lebowski. Rebecca Tomasis: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It literally sums it up perfectly. Speaker 4: And I think, to quote The Big Lebowski again ... I mean, you talked about pillar pages a lot and they really hold the room together. Mordy Oberstein: We've got a full Big Lebowski in this segment. Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us. Where can people find you? Rebecca Tomasis: Actually, that's a very good question. I'm not on Twitter, which probably everybody's going to be like, "Oh!" Mordy Oberstein: Are you on TikTok? Rebecca Tomasis: I am not. Are you crazy? I was born in the 80s. I have teenagers. Crystal Carter: They can find you on the blog! You wrote on the blog! They can find you. Mordy Oberstein: You're on the blog! Find me on the blog. Rebecca Tomasis: You can find me on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Okay! Rebecca, thank you so much for coming in and see you soon! Speaker 4: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Always love talking to Rebecca. Literally, whenever I go into the Wix office, which is every once in a while. Love it when people always search out and find to have a little chat with because she's so knowledgeable. Crystal Carter: She's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. She really is. She's a huge driving force behind the Wix blog, and it's amazing when you think about these things. There are all these driving forces. You never see them or meet them if you're on the outside, external world. But they're there, and she's a force to be reckoned with. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's absolutely amazing and she's so committed to making the blog better all the time, which I think is awesome. And I think that in marketing and SEO, what you need is somebody who just keeps going, and Rebecca's absolutely that person. Mordy Oberstein: And the proof is in the pudding because their rankings have gone up. Anyway! Leaving that aside for a minute, what would an episode be if we didn't get into what's happening in the wide world of SEO? So, here is this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. This week, got three little nuggets for you. One from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. He says, "Google's desktop search results are now continuously scrollable." So this has been the case for a while on mobile. No more pagination. You just continuously scroll down for a while. It's not infinite scroll. It does stop at a certain point. Now, this is on desktop. The upshot here is that it may mean the users scroll a little further down the results page, making URLs that ranked towards what was the bottom of page one, a bit more visible. Item number two: Google tests topic search bar refinement on desktop after launching on mobile. This one from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. So here we're seeing, again, something that was very recently launched on mobile now appearing on desktop. So let's say, for example, you're looking for a recipe around ... I don't know, some kind of food. You'll now see filters on mobile being tested on desktop. That might mean you refine it by healthy recipes. And then under "healthy," you can refine even more with high protein recipes with lots of vegetables, whatever it is. All sorts of refinements along the way, which is basically the lesson that I think that you should take away from the results page in general, which is Google's offering users way more opportunities to refine the queries. Because Google knows that users, when they might search for a broad term like meatloaf recipe, they really do want something a little bit more specific, like a healthy meatloaf recipe with lots of protein. Which I don't know how you would do without a lot of protein, but different story, different time. I'm not a meatloaf expert. Item number three. And this one, again, comes from Barry Schwartz, but this time, from Search Engine Land. Barry is everywhere. He says, "Google helpful content system update rolling out now. December 2022 update." This is V2 of Google's helpful content update. If you're looking at the tools that track the algorithm's fluctuations, they'll tend to show not a lot of big movement towards almost no movement. I don't think this is that kind of update. There are reports coming in from particular SEOs, such as Glenn Gabe, of showing sites that are being impacted by the helpful content update. I don't think it's a sort of widespread thing that we're used to seeing with, let's say, the way a core algorithm update may roll out. I think this builds over time. I think the patterns around the rollout will be a little bit different from what we normally see, which is kind of what's happening out there, from what I see with the SEO "weather tools." And that is it for this week's snappiest of Snappy News. And we're back from the Snappy News! Always so newsy, isn't it? Crystal Carter: So newsy. Mordy Oberstein: So newsy. Crystal Carter: So newsy. It's so full of news. Mordy Oberstein: So snappy. Well, since we're talking about duplicate content this week, we figured that there are many, many people across the SEO space who talk about this topic and talk about it well, but we're going to focus on one person this week. That's right. It's time for this week's Follow of the Week, which brings us to one of the nicest people you'll meet in the SEO world. He's really, as my grandmother would say, he's a boogie. His name is Patrick Stox. He's from Ahrefs, and you can find him on Twitter @patrickstox. That's P-A-T-R-I-C-K-S-T-O-X. So Stox is S-T-O-X. Patrick Stox. Crystal Carter: He's such a good guy and he's so clever. I think I met him this year at brightonSEO, and he was just super kind and super just jazzed about SEO, which I think is great. Again, you need people that really want to do stuff and really want to move things forward, and he's that kind of guy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he writes a lot for the Ahrefs blog about topics around, let's say, duplicate content or how to use SEO data the right way, and search console and data stuff. So follow Patrick, take a look at what he's writing. I know when he writes something, it's always well-detailed, always well-thought-out, and always substantial, which is rare. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. He takes a lot of care about the work that he's doing. And Ahrefs is also a great place for some information about content syndication. They've got some great articles there, so check it out! Mordy Oberstein: Definitely check it out, and follow Patrick on Twitter. We'll link to his Twitter profile in the show notes as well. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. I will make the same joke over and over again. I will make the same joke over and over again. Crystal Carter: Is there an echo in here? Mordy Oberstein: My life is an echo. I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds really poetic. Crystal Carter: It sounds so poetic. It sounds like- Mordy Oberstein: It sounds so poetic. Crystal Carter: The kind of thing ... Mordy Oberstein: We can't stop. We're going to end this now before we go down this wormhole way too far. Thank you for joining us on the Serps Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry! We'll be back next week with a new episode as we dive into e-commerce SEO. Is it really a thing? Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinar resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Barry Adams Alli Berry Rebecca Tomasis Patrick Stox Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty Polemic Digital SEO for Google News Canonicalization and why it matters Wix Blog News: Google’s Desktop Search Results Are Now Continuously Scrollable Google Launches +Topic Search Bar Refinements After Several Months Of Testing Google helpful content system update rolling out now (December 2022 update) Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Barry Adams Alli Berry Rebecca Tomasis Patrick Stox Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Demystifying the "duplicate content penalty Polemic Digital SEO for Google News Canonicalization and why it matters Wix Blog News: Google’s Desktop Search Results Are Now Continuously Scrollable Google Launches +Topic Search Bar Refinements After Several Months Of Testing Google helpful content system update rolling out now (December 2022 update) Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to Serps Up! Aloha! Mahalo for joining us on the Serps Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO Branding at Wix, and we're joined by the wonderful, the fantastic, the phenomenal head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello internet people. It's fantastic to see you. Well, not see you because this is a podcast, but it's great to be here and I'm very pleased. Hi, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I feel bad for you. Crystal Carter: Why? Mordy Oberstein: Because you have to hold your mic up. Your stand thing is not working. Crystal Carter: Why are you bothering on that? This is radio! People can't see that! Mordy Oberstein: I know. But now, they get a visual of you having to sit there holding the mic the whole time while we're recording. Crystal Carter: Well, I'm trying to give people the optimal audio experience for this podcast. I could do some ASMR. I could do some crinkling things. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh! I like that. You ever see those videos where they show you the behind the scenes of how they get sound effects in movies? Crystal Carter: Oh, yes! I can't remember what they're called. Mordy Oberstein: That was great. Crystal Carter: It was a special name for it, and it's a really fun name. But yeah, I followed somebody on TikTok, actually, who does that for Shameless, that TV show. Basically, she said, "Oh, a shammy is great." There's the ones they use for cars. They apparently slosh them around all over the place and they're fantastic. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing what they do. The sounds that you're actually hearing, what's actually happening behind the mic, two very different things. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the Serps Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where all of your pages are self-canonicalized. Why is that important? You'll find out! It's part of our show today. Kind of totally aligns. Crystal Carter: Totally, completely aligns. Yeah, I think canonicalization is good. I think canonicalization is good. I think canonicalization is good. Mordy Oberstein: I have this same joke planned out for later and I'm still going to do it because now it's even better, because it'll be the same. It'll be a duplicate joke. Get it? Crystal Carter: We're just going to do the same three lines over and over and over again. This show's never going to go anywhere. It's just an entire podcast of deja vu. Just internet deja vu. Mordy Oberstein: To quote Yogi Vera is deja vu all over again. Love that. Great show for you today as we dive into one of the most myth-filled areas of SEO. No, not LSI keywords, but close: duplicate content. That's right. We're diving into the real deal with duplicate content. What is duplicate content really? How does Google's diversity algorithm factor duplicate content in or out? When it makes sense to have duplicate content for user value and, of course, sub-domains, canonical tags and all that good stuff. Plus, Barry Adams stops by to share when you do, and especially don't, need to worry about duplicate content. We'll also talk to Wix's own Rebecca Tomasis as we chat about how Wix handles duplicate content at the enterprise level. And of course, we are the snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following on social for more SEO awesomeness. Welcome to episode 17 of the Serps Up podcast. Welcome to episode 17 of the Serps Up podcast. Crystal Carter: So let's talk about duplicate content. The thing about duplicate content is it comes up a lot in SEO conversations. John Mueller's asked regularly about this and for some reason, it's been something that Google's tried to clarify on a number of occasions, but there's still a lot of mystery around it. So in most cases, when Google's talking about duplicate content, they're literally talking about scraping or copying and pasting content from another website and publishing it on your own. This can happen on a big scale. So a whole website will scrape an entire website and then put it on another website under a different domain with different URLs, but it's essentially the exact same content. This happens with Wikipedia a lot, so a lot of people will scrape Wikipedia and then put it in a different collection on a new domain. But Google's own webmaster guidelines discourage this kind of scraping. They say, "Don't create multiple pages sub-domains with substantially duplicate content. Avoid cookie cutter approaches, such as affiliate programs with little or no content." They also say, "If you are participating in an affiliate program, make sure that your site actually is adding value to what you're doing affiliate content for. Don't just scrape everything from the feed and post it on your site." Now, this is something that can be a bit confusing because people think that, "Oh, well what if I have content that's naturally kind of repetitive?" Like if you have job listings or real estate listings, or even event listings or product collections or things like that, where multiple pages will be really similar. But that's not the kind of thing that Google's actually talking about. And some people think that they're going to get a penalty, but that's not true. There's no duplicate content penalty. They said it in 2008. They said in their article, Demystifying Duplicate Content Penalty, "Let's put this to bed once and for all, folks. There's no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. Period." Mordy Oberstein: No one listens. No one listens. Google talks, no one listens. Crystal Carter: They keep asking. And they've asked John Mueller and he's like, "There's no duplicate content penalty." What there is, though, is basically Google is super busy. If you're publishing content that's essentially the same on your website, and you're publishing multiple pages on your website, they're essentially the same. Google might not index all of them because they don't need to, because they're essentially the same. So in the same way that I was like, "Oh, I got to a joke first," if you've published a collection of red shoes already and then you publish another one a week later, they're probably going to publish the first one, or they're probably going to index the first one if they index it at all. But they're probably going to index the first one rather than indexing every single one after it. If you think about the Spice Girls, you don't need two Sporty Spices. You've got one Sporty spice, you don't need two, right? Mordy Oberstein: I don't need one to begin with. That's a different story. Crystal Carter: I love Sporty Spice! Anyways, basically Google needs signals to understand that the content is different, right? So if you think about your meta descriptions, your page titles, your headers, your image attributes, that sort of thing ... If most of those things are the same on one page, then they will think that that's the same page. So what people think of as a duplicate content penalty is actually Google making a quality choice for the sake of the users. Because the users don't want three Sporty Spices, they want one Sporty Spice. So they're making a quality decision, and they have billions of webpages to index. They've got hundreds of thousands of websites being spun up every single day. They have a lot of content to get through. Google has said 25% to 30% of the web's content is duplicate content, and some of that is for a reason. You have things on your main job's thing. You've got it on different jobs board. You've got it on another jobs board. And then if I'm signed up for Ticketmaster and I want to know what's going on with the Taylor Swift concert, then I want that content from the Ticketmaster website. There's also going to be other people who have tickets and they'll have the same content on that website. That's okay. But Google tries to manage that in different ways. There's lots of ways that you can manage that. A schema is actually one way that they manage that. So if you think about jobs, for instance, they'll have a job and they'll say, "It's on this site, this site, and this site," and then you can pick the one that's most suitable for you. There's also canonicalization, which we'll talk about there as well. But just so we're very, very clear, there's no penalty for duplicate content. You just need to make sure that you're sending Google clear signals that your content is valuable and good signals that your content is unique. And you should also, where possible, make the most unique content most of the time. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and there's so many myths around this. For example, if I had the same product description or a very similar product description. Or let's say, for example, you're syndicating a product, like you mentioned with Taylor Swift tickets, or whatever it is. You're just taking the same description that someone else wrote on their website because that's what the manufacturer listed as a description. John Mueller's gone on, right? That's not a problem. That's not duplicate content. And this feeds right into the whole myth around keyword cannibalization and that whole thing. So keyword cannibalization is this theory ... Well, there is a real keyword cannibalization, but the predominant discussion around this, at least in the past, has been, "Oh. If I have two, very near, duplicate kind of pages, and they're both going to rank on the same serp ... Let's say one is at a number seven and one's at number 10 ... they kill each other's rankings. Google won't rank one page higher or rank both of them lower because it's duplicate content," which is what? That's not true at all. That has nothing to do with that. Google's not saying, "Oh, well you have one page and two page and it's very similar. So instead of ranking that first page number one, we're going to rank it number seven now. A-ha! We got you!" That's not true at all. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: What duplicate content and keyword cannibalization does come into play is ... The classic case I always think to make it really clear for you is let's say you have a page that talks about X and it's a blog post, and you also have a page that talks about X and it's a product page. Google ranks the blog post really high and your product page much lower. But the intent of the keyword is commercial or transactional. You want people to buy. So you don't want the blog post ranking really high where they're not going to buy anything. You'd rather have the page where you're actually selling the thing to rank really high. That's cannibalization. There you're killing yourself off and you're ruining your revenue, so to speak. That's a real case. Crystal Carter: That can definitely happen. But I think, also, it is a question of Google trying to understand the value that it has to the user. One of the things I think about is have you ever been to a supermarket or something and they're playing music? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I've been to a supermarket. And I've been there when they're playing music. Crystal Carter: Thank you. They're playing music and it's essentially ... This is a Taylor Swift episode. Let's say they're playing a Taylor Swift song. Let's say they're playing, I don't know, Shake It Off or whatever, and you're like, "Oh, that's Taylor Swift!" And then you listen a little bit carefully and you're like, "That's not actually Taylor Swift." That's one of those things where they got somebody to do a cover so that they don't have to pay so much for the recording, right? Mordy Oberstein: That's so true. Crystal Carter: You know. You've heard those songs, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah! All the time, totally. A supermarket, great place for it. Crystal Carter: Right. They add no value, right? Those songs add no value at all. None. Now, if you think about other songs that you've heard, where somebody's actually interpreted the song ... Like if you think about All Along the Watch Tower, right? Written by Bob Dylan, and then Jimi Hendrix covered it and it's a totally different song. Mordy Oberstein: Bob Dylan said he wrote it for Jimi Hendrix to play. Crystal Carter: Right, but there's tons of those things. If you think of Walk On By, Dionne Warwick, it's a very Burt Bacharach kind of song. Then you think of Walk On By by Isaac Hayes and it's a completely different song. It's the same source material, but they're actually adding some actual value to the new content. So yeah, you could say, "Oh, yeah. That's the same song. Same notes, same lyrics, same things or whatever." But if you're actually adding different value, then it's worth having them both. I don't need to have the like-for-like Taylor Swift song and the actual Taylor Swift song. I'll just have the Taylor Swift song. Thanks, actually. So I think it's a way of thinking about those things as well. So if Google knows that that's what people value and that people value an actual, substantive bit of content, then that's what they'll give them. And if they notice that you're not adding any value, either to the intent or to the source material, then they'll handle it in a different way. And that might be not ranking your page or it might be aggregating it on ... For instance, Google for Jobs will say, "It's on this site, this site, and this site," and so they'll aggregate them. They'll say, "If you want to buy from Ticketmaster, you can buy it here. If you want to buy from See Tickets or something, you can buy it there," all of that sort of stuff. So they'll aggregate them in some ways and they'll treat the content differently. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and I think people confuse similar content with duplicate content. Similar content could be great. It's very similar, but it meets different users or meets different needs or different intents. And Google does a pretty good job of this. Now, they have indented results. So you search for something and maybe they'll show you a blog post. And then underneath it, indented, is a landing page, and underneath that indented is a knowledge-based page trying to grab all those user intents. So Google does a good job trying to handle similar content. And yes, there is a diversity algorithm where they won't try to rank more than two pages from the same website on one serp. But again, that's not a hard and fast rule anyway. They say it in the documentation. It's not a hard and fast rule. And again, the indented results kind of show you that it's not a hard and fast rule. Crystal Carter: Right. And sometimes, they don't indent everything. And also, there's going to be lots of different things. I think, also, in their recent documentation, they published some confusing information about subdomains as well. I know that a lot people- Mordy Oberstein: I love bringing that up. We're going to bring it up here because that's just different wormholes, a different landmine. Crystal Carter: That's another podcast episode. Mordy Oberstein: We should do one on that, actually. Crystal Carter: But I think a lot of people have help documentation on subdomains, for instance. And your help documentation ... Google can understand that your documentation, your help pages, those have a different intent from, say, your blog. Those have a different intent, say, from your product listings, so that sort of information. They will indent them or they'll list them differently because they understand that the users might want that in a different way. Canonical tags are incredibly helpful for helping Google understand what is the primary content. We have a great article on canonization on the Wix SEO Hub, written by James Clark, that talks about this. But this is a great way to tell Google that maybe this is the collection of, I don't know, plus size t-shirts or something, but it's part of the main collection of t-shirts, so this is a filtered version of this main thing. And you can say the canonical is here, but this is a filtered version, which is useful to users but maybe doesn't necessarily need to be on the index. But if they want to index it, they will. Mordy Oberstein: And if you don't understand canonicalization, it's basically a tag that you can add to a page that tells Google, "This page? It's really this page." They're so similar or perhaps even exact in the case of adding filters and parameters to a URL that, "Google, ignore this page for ranking. This is the one that you want." Crystal Carter: Right. And that's how you can add value to your users so that they can get to the pages that they want and filter all the things, but you're not necessarily diluting what Google's crawling when they're crawling your site. And you're not making it complicated for them to understand which pages are which. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's a lot of things you can do. For example, internal linking and to help Google understand ... Two very similar pages and you keep linking across your website to one page over the other page, that's a strong signal to Google that this is the one that we should really be indexing and showing the users. And the one that you're not internal linking to is probably not the one, even though they're quite similar or duplicate. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. And I think, sometimes, there's a few tools that will tell you you have duplicate content. For instance, if you have the same meta description or the same page title, or some of the other attributes ... metatech sort of things ... They'll tell you you've got duplicate content. And I think that that's not red flag duplicate content, but what you are doing there ... You might be sending confusing signals to Google about which page is which. If you've got the same URLs, loads of times you might be sending confusing signals to Google, so just make sure that they're distinct. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. So basically, make sure you're sending the right signals to Google in terms of crawling and indexing. And also, don't be afraid of writing content that's similar if it meets a different user need. Don't not write good content that your users need because you're worried about duplicate content and the duplicate content penalty. Now, when it comes to when should you and when you shouldn't worry about duplicate content, we've got a treat for you. We have a lot of SEO legends on this show. Barry Adams is a legit SEO legend. He's done a ton of work with news websites, and they often have a lot of duplicate content issues. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So here's Barry Adams on when you do and when you don't need to worry about duplicate content. Barry Adams: When do I and don't I worry about duplicate content? I think I have maybe slightly different opinions on duplicate content than many other people in the SEO industry. But generally, I only worry about duplicate content if it's happening on one website. If you have multiple pages on your website that have identical or near identical content and, thus, are targeting the same keywords, the same topics, the same space in Google search results for the same types of queries. When that happens, you may need to find ways to disambiguate your pages a bit to make them a bit more distinct, to make them more unique, to give them specific, topical focus on one area versus another area so that they don't compete with each other. Because if you have pages on your own website that are competing with each other for the same search results, for the same rankings in Google, you are basically making life a lot more difficult for yourself because you are also, of course, competing with all the other websites out there. So try not to compete with yourself in the process. Another instance where duplicate content is often a worry for a lot of people: if you have your own content distributed on multiple different websites. An example would be a news publisher that syndicates their content to other news websites, and the worry is always there that those other websites are going to outrank the original publisher for keywords and searches related to that article content. That is sort of a valid concern. But it's not a major concern for me because I feel you can use that as a comparative advantage to a certain extent. Duplicate content ... Google does the best to filter it out in search results to a certain extent, but you very often see republished content taken from another publisher ranking quite well in Google search results. Especially in the new search results, but also in regular blue links search results, and I think that is by designed to a certain extent. It is quite difficult for Google to filter out duplicate content in their search results, and I think they deliberately tried to err on the side of coursing and just let content that they feel might be duplicate still show up in search results, and then not filter it out too aggressively. I think as a publisher, you can use syndicated content to your advantage by making sure it is properly attributed. So if you give your content to other websites to publish, make sure there's an attribution link back to your own website. Any internal links in that article you'd ideally point back to your own website, to your own tag pages, your own category pages, and your own related articles. And of course, if you can, put a canonical tag in there. Ask the republishers to canonicalize it back to your original version, which is also part of Google's recommendations when it comes to syndicated content. And beyond that, there's a lot of things, a lot of fear, I think, about duplicate content that isn't entirely warranted. There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, so just make sure all the pages on your own website are unique, are properly structured, well-targeted for specific topics and specific rankings. And don't worry too much about what other websites are doing with taking your content or scraping your content. Just focus on making sure your website is as good as it can be, and that you have all the tools at your disposal to make sure your own content ranks in performance in Google search results to its maximum potential. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, Barry. Don't forget you can check out Barry at @badams on Twitter or at polemicdigital.com. I don't think we could have said that better ourselves. By the way, content syndication ... If you're a news publisher, I do not work on news websites. I do not want to work on news websites because that is such a hard decision to make, because it's a business decision. What do you want to do? What do you do now? Because often, you don't rank. Crystal Carter: Well, I think that a lot of times it has to do with building authority for your site as any publisher would. But maybe we should talk about content syndication on another podcast. Mordy Oberstein: Make it it's own thing. I remember talking to Alli Berry over at The Motley Fool ... and now I think she's at Sports Illustrated now ... about what they would do, and it's complicated. But as Barry mentioned, again, let's reiterate, there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: If there's anything you take away from this show, it's that there's no duplicate content penalty. Crystal Carter: And I think that him talking about canonical tags and about link attributes, this is certainly something ... If you're working with digital PR, this is something that you will see a lot. For instance, if you get coverage in a major news publisher, you'll often get published in lots of their syndicated publications as well. People are like, "Oh, those are all individual links." Kind of. They don't count as much as if they were individual articles, but they're still useful. But a lot of the major publishers will use that canonicalization and will use a lot of the tactics that Barry has recommended, because Barry is the dude for that kind of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: He really is, which is why you could find him again on Twitter at @badams, or polemicdigital.com. Now, if you think duplicate content is a problem for your average website to handle ... which it can be ... it is a nightmare, or can be a nightmare, for enterprise sites with thousands upon thousands and thousands of pages, like Wix. If you are working on a large site, we figured you want to get some insight as to have a better handle on duplicate content on such a large site. Which is why we asked our own Rebecca Tomasis over at Wix what we do on literally our thousands upon thousands of pages of overlapping content, from the blog to the knowledge base and niche hubs like the Wix SEO Learning Hub. So let's travel across the Wixverse as we dive into duplicate content and SEO at the enterprise level. Speaker 4: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So for your listening pleasure today, we have one of the, I would call, biggest SEO experts at Wix because she's part of the blog team, which handles so much of our organic growth and drives so much organic growth. It's such a big focus for us. She's Rebecca Tomasis. She's an organic growth expert on the blog side of Wix, and one of her biggest problems is duplicate content. So that's what we're talking about today, duplicate content with Rebecca. How are you, Rebecca? Rebecca Tomasis: I'm good, thank you. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Sure! Crystal Carter: It's so nice to have you. You're brilliant. Mordy Oberstein: You are amazing, by the way. Rebecca Tomasis: [inaudible 00:21:51] Too many kind things at once, but it's very nice of you. Mordy Oberstein: No, no, no. Just behind the scenes of all these teams, there's always these people that you don't know who they are. Everyone knows Kyle. Kyle … Siegel, right? All the people talk, talk, talk. I'm just kidding. But the people who are the quieter people, who are actually pushing the thing forward ... I'm just kidding. Everybody's pushing it forward. But there are people who are silently doing it and who are really doing an amazing job with it. You are one of those people. Rebecca Tomasis: Well, thank you very much. That means a lot. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just going to go right to it. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: What do you do with duplicate content, because it's such a problem for us. We have so many different verticals. We have blog. We have knowledge base. We have the, "Oh, no. The SEO Hub coming in with our own content." You're treading foot on your content. Now, it's a turf war. It's the Jets versus the other people on the West Side Story. Rebecca Tomasis: The sharks? Mordy Oberstein: Sharks, yeah! There we go. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, we're an enterprise site, right? It's a headache. And I think in an ideal world, we'd love to avoid it. I know there are a million fixes that we can do and there are all sorts of things that we can do. But I think that on a site level, when we talk about the verticals and we talk about this, I think there needs to be a lot better kind of communication and management of content between us. We all have the same end goal, but we all have very different goals and we're all tracing different intents and different audiences. It shouldn't be so hard for us to have those kind of communications and that sharing of schedules and content ideas and what we're targeting and to be able to make a decision on. I think it's something that the blog and the SEO help now do very, very well, where it's almost like, "This is your content and this is your sphere of expertise. This is what you write about and this is what we write about." Almost to the extent where we avoid it, right? Then there's not even an issue or duplicate content, and I think that's something that definitely comes back to communication and sharing, and it's something that we can all get better with. But I will tell you, honestly, we are a huge blog. We are a legacy blog. The blog is almost 10 years old. Crystal Carter: Wow. Rebecca Tomasis: The number of times that we've duplicated ourselves, and then only realized because we'd run another site audit. It was like, "Where did this URL come from? This wasn't in Screaming Frog last time. Where have you come from?" Seriously. Every time, these URLs keep popping up and we're like, "Oh my goodness," so I think that's also part of it. Running those site audits, a lot of auditing content, checking, checking, checking, checking. We have a very strict redirect budget. We're an enterprise site, right? I think, often, a redirect is thrown around as an easy solution. And yet, technically, and how Google sees it, it is an easy solution. But then, we run into a lot of issues. We run into a lot of issues with crawl budget, with redirect chains. We are potentially preparing for a huge migration. It's just not necessarily always the fix that it is. And a much better fix for us, for example, to de-optimize something or even change the content. Give it to another writer and ask them to turn it into something different. Turn it into something that targets something else. Yeah, that's something that I think we are trialing more and more is how can we be more creative with this content and change it into something that targets a different intent or targets a different audience, or maybe even we'll have a different distribution channel. And actually ... Am I allowed to say it? We won't let it appear somewhere in the search. Everything that we do on the blog because everything we want to be out there. But sometimes, it's on a level of content that we thought was great. We have great pieces of content that were written at a time when the intent was super separate and they were not really duplicate at all, and they really stood their own. And now we find, almost, the more successful we've become with the pieces of content that we really want to be successful ... with our pillar pages and everything ... It seems unavoidable, the duplication, and we really have to ... I don't know, I'm always telling writers, "It's just a piece of content. Stop being so excited about it. I'm de-optimizing it. Live with it." No, I'm joking. Crystal Carter: What I'm getting from this conversation is that when we think about duplicate content, I think a lot of SEOs think about it from the post publish perspective. So, "Oh, there's this duplicate content. Oh, we need to go back and we need to change this around." But it sounds like you're saying that it should start when you're thinking about whether or not content might be duplicate. You should be thinking about it in the planning stages, so when you're planning your content. Rebecca Tomasis: I'm a firm believer in planning content. And I know that we can't plan a year's content in advance, right, but we can plan a content strategy. I mean, we work with a clustering model. Yeah, a very specific, intense change. An intense, specific queries change. But at an entity level, on a topic level, the history of something, or things that are important to designing a logo, these things don't change. Sure, there are trends and different types of font and different types of colors and shapes. But the essence of what's important to, say, designing a logo, this doesn't change. So when we plan a cluster around how to design a logo, we can pull out all of these pieces of content and really plan it better. We used to really try to narrow down with our content like, "This content targets a keyword." And I think this creates a lot of problem with duplicate content, of course, like cannibalization. And now, we're actually at a place where this is a pillar page. This pillar page is going to fall for 100 keywords, 400 keywords, 700 keywords. And then, it also becomes less of an issue there, I think. Look, this is all me speaking. It sounds so easy in theory. Sometimes, I wish I could take our legacy content and just ... I don't know. There's just no way to get rid of it. But it's difficult because we're also a team of different people and different priorities, and somebody wants this and somebody wants that and it's not always so easy to plan. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And I've seen this in work firsthand, where I've done work with you and the blog and I've done work with the SEO Hub. That pre-planning of knowing that certain types of content, even though it might be very similar or not the same topics, but a different kind of intent or for a different kind of audience on one forum versus another kind of intent for another forum. Knowing that in advance, just as a writer, has helped me understand, "Okay, if I'm going to write this, I'm going to go to you for the blog. If I'm going to go for this, I'm going to write this for the Hub." And that clear line of demarcation around intent has been so helpful to me in understanding what goes what and where. It's sort of helped, as you mentioned in advance, prevent duplicate content from showing up. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And I think, also, the other thing that I've seen the team do ... And Mordy, I know you've been a part of this process ... is refreshing content, certainly. And that's one way I think, as well, from a planning point of view, that you can reduce the kind of duplicate content that you're creating, instead of spinning up tons of the same ... Trends for Logos, or whatever, 2023, and then another blog, Trends for Logos 2024, and then another blog, Trends for Logos. Whereas, I know that the blog team spends a lot of time refreshing content so that we've got one URL that holds equity around keywords, around intent, around information. And it means that you're giving users the best information possible, but you're not duplicating yourself necessarily. Rebecca Tomasis: And I think within that, so many best practices, right? Even down to the URL we choose and how we optimize. These things are super, super important because these things are things that cannot be fixed, right? Yeah, I think it's a lot of moving parts and a lot of things to think about. Mordy Oberstein: To quote my favorite movie, "A lot of ins and outs, a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of different people involved," to quote The Big Lebowski. Rebecca Tomasis: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It literally sums it up perfectly. Speaker 4: And I think, to quote The Big Lebowski again ... I mean, you talked about pillar pages a lot and they really hold the room together. Mordy Oberstein: We've got a full Big Lebowski in this segment. Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us. Where can people find you? Rebecca Tomasis: Actually, that's a very good question. I'm not on Twitter, which probably everybody's going to be like, "Oh!" Mordy Oberstein: Are you on TikTok? Rebecca Tomasis: I am not. Are you crazy? I was born in the 80s. I have teenagers. Crystal Carter: They can find you on the blog! You wrote on the blog! They can find you. Mordy Oberstein: You're on the blog! Find me on the blog. Rebecca Tomasis: You can find me on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: Okay! Rebecca, thank you so much for coming in and see you soon! Speaker 4: Three, two, one. Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: Always love talking to Rebecca. Literally, whenever I go into the Wix office, which is every once in a while. Love it when people always search out and find to have a little chat with because she's so knowledgeable. Crystal Carter: She's amazing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. She really is. She's a huge driving force behind the Wix blog, and it's amazing when you think about these things. There are all these driving forces. You never see them or meet them if you're on the outside, external world. But they're there, and she's a force to be reckoned with. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's absolutely amazing and she's so committed to making the blog better all the time, which I think is awesome. And I think that in marketing and SEO, what you need is somebody who just keeps going, and Rebecca's absolutely that person. Mordy Oberstein: And the proof is in the pudding because their rankings have gone up. Anyway! Leaving that aside for a minute, what would an episode be if we didn't get into what's happening in the wide world of SEO? So, here is this week's Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. This week, got three little nuggets for you. One from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal. He says, "Google's desktop search results are now continuously scrollable." So this has been the case for a while on mobile. No more pagination. You just continuously scroll down for a while. It's not infinite scroll. It does stop at a certain point. Now, this is on desktop. The upshot here is that it may mean the users scroll a little further down the results page, making URLs that ranked towards what was the bottom of page one, a bit more visible. Item number two: Google tests topic search bar refinement on desktop after launching on mobile. This one from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable. So here we're seeing, again, something that was very recently launched on mobile now appearing on desktop. So let's say, for example, you're looking for a recipe around ... I don't know, some kind of food. You'll now see filters on mobile being tested on desktop. That might mean you refine it by healthy recipes. And then under "healthy," you can refine even more with high protein recipes with lots of vegetables, whatever it is. All sorts of refinements along the way, which is basically the lesson that I think that you should take away from the results page in general, which is Google's offering users way more opportunities to refine the queries. Because Google knows that users, when they might search for a broad term like meatloaf recipe, they really do want something a little bit more specific, like a healthy meatloaf recipe with lots of protein. Which I don't know how you would do without a lot of protein, but different story, different time. I'm not a meatloaf expert. Item number three. And this one, again, comes from Barry Schwartz, but this time, from Search Engine Land. Barry is everywhere. He says, "Google helpful content system update rolling out now. December 2022 update." This is V2 of Google's helpful content update. If you're looking at the tools that track the algorithm's fluctuations, they'll tend to show not a lot of big movement towards almost no movement. I don't think this is that kind of update. There are reports coming in from particular SEOs, such as Glenn Gabe, of showing sites that are being impacted by the helpful content update. I don't think it's a sort of widespread thing that we're used to seeing with, let's say, the way a core algorithm update may roll out. I think this builds over time. I think the patterns around the rollout will be a little bit different from what we normally see, which is kind of what's happening out there, from what I see with the SEO "weather tools." And that is it for this week's snappiest of Snappy News. And we're back from the Snappy News! Always so newsy, isn't it? Crystal Carter: So newsy. Mordy Oberstein: So newsy. Crystal Carter: So newsy. It's so full of news. Mordy Oberstein: So snappy. Well, since we're talking about duplicate content this week, we figured that there are many, many people across the SEO space who talk about this topic and talk about it well, but we're going to focus on one person this week. That's right. It's time for this week's Follow of the Week, which brings us to one of the nicest people you'll meet in the SEO world. He's really, as my grandmother would say, he's a boogie. His name is Patrick Stox. He's from Ahrefs, and you can find him on Twitter @patrickstox. That's P-A-T-R-I-C-K-S-T-O-X. So Stox is S-T-O-X. Patrick Stox. Crystal Carter: He's such a good guy and he's so clever. I think I met him this year at brightonSEO, and he was just super kind and super just jazzed about SEO, which I think is great. Again, you need people that really want to do stuff and really want to move things forward, and he's that kind of guy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, he writes a lot for the Ahrefs blog about topics around, let's say, duplicate content or how to use SEO data the right way, and search console and data stuff. So follow Patrick, take a look at what he's writing. I know when he writes something, it's always well-detailed, always well-thought-out, and always substantial, which is rare. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. He takes a lot of care about the work that he's doing. And Ahrefs is also a great place for some information about content syndication. They've got some great articles there, so check it out! Mordy Oberstein: Definitely check it out, and follow Patrick on Twitter. We'll link to his Twitter profile in the show notes as well. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week. I will make the same joke over and over again. I will make the same joke over and over again. Crystal Carter: Is there an echo in here? Mordy Oberstein: My life is an echo. I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds really poetic. Crystal Carter: It sounds so poetic. It sounds like- Mordy Oberstein: It sounds so poetic. Crystal Carter: The kind of thing ... Mordy Oberstein: We can't stop. We're going to end this now before we go down this wormhole way too far. Thank you for joining us on the Serps Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry! We'll be back next week with a new episode as we dive into e-commerce SEO. Is it really a thing? Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content webinar resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. 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 view the relationship between SEO and marketing? Should SEO be primarily associated with marketing, or should it have a broader scope? SEO is multi-faceted by nature and can lead to diverse perspectives on its classification and delegation within an organization. Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, are joined once again by SEO legend Barry Adams to discuss how SEO fits into a broader marketing approach and how to incorporate these overlapping aspects of SEO as a discipline into your strategy. PM at Groundworks, Kristal Audain, also joins the show to unveil her insights into how SEO can impact product decisions. Plus, prepare yourself for Google’s August 2023 broad core update… based on rank instability, this is going to be a big one. If you want to utilize SEO and marketing as tools, this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you surpass all of your goals! Back Is SEO part of marketing? How do you view the relationship between SEO and marketing? Should SEO be primarily associated with marketing, or should it have a broader scope? SEO is multi-faceted by nature and can lead to diverse perspectives on its classification and delegation within an organization. Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, are joined once again by SEO legend Barry Adams to discuss how SEO fits into a broader marketing approach and how to incorporate these overlapping aspects of SEO as a discipline into your strategy. PM at Groundworks, Kristal Audain, also joins the show to unveil her insights into how SEO can impact product decisions. Plus, prepare yourself for Google’s August 2023 broad core update… based on rank instability, this is going to be a big one. If you want to utilize SEO and marketing as tools, this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast will help you surpass all of your goals! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 53 | August 30, 2023 | 35 MIN 00:00 / 34:29 This week’s guests Barry Adams Barry Adams has been building and ranking websites since 1998. Through his Polemic Digital consultancy business, he focuses on technical SEO and specialised services for news publishers. Barry counts some of the world’s biggest media brands among his clients including News UK, The Guardian, FOX, Future Publishing, Euronews, and Hearst. He is a regular speaker at conferences and events around the world, delivers annual guest lectures for local universities, and writes an irregular newsletter on SEOforGoogleNews.com. Kristal Audain Manick Bhan is the Founder and CTO of The Search Atlas Group, an SEO automation platform used by thousands of brands and agencies. Search Atlas is chosen as the #1 SEO platform on Gartner, a ProductHunt product of the day and week, and has been nominated for the Best SEO Platform by the Global Search Awards. With over 10 years of experience in SEO from both the in-house and agency sides, Bhan has taught startups and Fortune 500 companies how to scale their brands with a data-driven SEO strategy that can break into any market with ease and outrank even the biggest competitors. His thought leadership has appeared in leading publications like Forbes, Search Engine Journal, and VentureBeat, and he has spoken at events such as TechCrunch Disrupt, Traffic & Conversion Summit, and Ad World. Bhan enjoys writing and speaking on topics ranging from digital marketing to artificial intelligence and machine learning to socially conscious brand building. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing us with groovy new insights round what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I am joined one of the best, most fabulous, most proficient marketers on the planet you can possibly find. She's brilliant. She's a fabulous marketer. She is our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I'm going to have to increase the fee for the introductions that you give me because- Mordy Oberstein: Just Venmo me later. Crystal Carter: ... it's getting ridiculous. Right. Okay. Will do. I will do. Mordy Oberstein: $1 per compliment. Crystal Carter: Very kind of you. You're not so bad yourself there, Mordy. You're fantastic as well. Mordy Oberstein: As you have told me many times when people compliment you, Mordy, just say thank you, which I have a hard time doing. Crystal Carter: Exactly. It's good. Mordy Oberstein: Jamar Rainwell's called me out on Twitter was like, "Can you take a compliment?" I'm like, "Nope." Crystal Carter: Which is why it's so good on your birthday... Which everyone should know that his birthday is in February- Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: So- Mordy Oberstein: But no- Crystal Carter: Oh sorry. Mordy Oberstein: ... Not March. It's make up a month. What doesn't exist? Marchtober. My birthday is in Marchtober. Crystal Carter: Mordy's a Pisces. Anyways, so Mordy's a Pisces. When his birthday comes up, make sure that you shower him with compliments and appreciation because he absolutely hates it. So it does two things. It tells him you appreciate him and also irritates him to no end, so- Mordy Oberstein: Can I say, so you were at a conference when it was my birthday. You went around to all the conference people had them wish me and they thought they were doing a great thing, and it was making me nuts. What do I do now? Crystal Carter: Mordy was like, "No, stop. No, really no stop." And I was like, "No, keep going." Mordy Oberstein: Best is Barry Schwartz who just writes thank you with the period for everything. Happy birthday, Barry. Thank you. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix. Where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, searchlight over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also dive into our suite of marketing tools and inbuilt integrations. Or you could bring your own as you can add scripts to your Wix website and pull in tools like Hotjar and far beyond, do marketing the way you want to with Wix. As today, I ask, is SEO part of marketing? I've been teasing this the entire intro because we're going to get into it. It's the age-old question. Is SEO part of product? Is it part of IT? Is it part marketing? If you're wondering, is there a place for you and SEO, I think this is your episode because today we're asking is SEO marketing? Is it beyond marketing? Do you need to be a good marketer to be a good SEO? What's the difference anyway? Who actually caress? And to help us work our way through this, we have our first, second time guest, one of our personal favorites, the one the only Barry Adams, who'll be buying just a few minutes to join us as we dive into SEO and marketing. We'll also get into some hard decisions, decisions, decisions. How does SEO inform product decisions? Kristal Audain will share her outlook. Plus we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So grab your place card and hope for the best as episode number 53 of the SERP's Up podcast welcomes you to the reception and tells you which table you are sitting at. Crystal Carter: This is a great discussion because it comes up a lot. So I've heard a lot of people discuss this, Areej AbuAli has discussed this as well. So whether or not SEO sits in development with the dev teams or whether or not it sits in marketing. Some people think that it's just at a more strategic level, and I think that not to start too soon with the SEO platitude, but it kind of depends. I think it absolutely depends on your business, but I'm sure we'll get into that. But I think one of the reasons why this comes up is because there's a lot of overlap. And the reason why I say it depends is because what's going on in your business will cause some of the reasons why it might overlap. So for instance, if there's lots of technical fixes that are needed, then your SEO might want to sit more with the tech team, more with the dev team. If it's more a content thing, they might want to sit more with a marketing team, that sort of thing potentially. But because SEO as a discipline is so vast, I think this is where some of the challenges arise. So I'm really excited to get into this with our guest, Barry, who's absolutely somebody who's worked with lots and lots of teams around SEO and around marketing and around other things as well to discuss this in more detail. Mordy Oberstein: So cue dramatic music, because the founder of Polemic Digital, SEO legend himself, Barry Adams is here right now with us. Hey, Barry. Barry Adams: Hey Mordy. Hey Crystal, how are you doing? Crystal Carter: We are very, very pleased to have you here on the podcast. We've both spent some good amount of time with you at conferences and things around the world, so it's a real pleasure to have you here on the podcast today. Barry Adams: Thank you. Thank you very much. But I may be in the wrong room. Because I hear that I'm in the room with marketers. I mean, I'm not a marketer. What am I doing here? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I set that up, right. It's okay. A little bit of background. First off, Barry likes to say that I get him drunk at conferences and it's all my fault, which it is. Barry Adams: Every time I'm hung over, Mordy, I blame you, every time. Mordy Oberstein: As well you should. And for all other things, you should just blame me. But I know that we might have a little bit of a different of opinion here about where SEO fits in and out. Spoiler alert, I think at the end of this we're going to conclude that there's all sorts of ways that you can fit into SEO, which is great because SEO is for everybody at the end of the day. By the way, and I did set up Crystal as a great marketer to sort of put her on my camp to start off, which I feel is horrible Barry Adams: You're stacked the deck today Mordy, you're stacked the deck today. You're cheating. Mordy Oberstein: I'm putting my thumb on the scale, but I do think that there's a large overlap between SEO and marketing, and I'm wondering if you disagree. Barry Adams: I definitely disagree. I mean, I have been doing SEO for, well, probably way too long, to be entirely honest. In-house for about of 15 years, agency side and now freelance. I think my touchpoint with marketing in all those years have been fairly minimal. Most of my work has been focused on what you would call development or product. And in recent years, a lot of it has been focused on editorial, working with journalists and editors when it comes to publishing and writing content optimized for visibility in SERP's, and none of those would ever come close to marketing. In fact, in some of the circles that I work in, especially in publishing, marketing is seen as a dirty word because it has a very different connotation in the news industry. Marketing is monetization, marketing is the commercial side. It's selling ads and content partnerships, and that's not what the dev team nor the editorial teams really want to worry themselves with. Now, I do agree there are aspects of SEO that are what I call marketing adjacent. But at its core, I don't think that most of what SEO does is marketing, because SEO is very process driven. I think it's more of a product discipline or even a project discipline than it is a marketing discipline. Mordy Oberstein: So if I could counter- Barry Adams: Please do. Mordy Oberstein: Say, pull my gloves off, and then slip on the brass knuckles. No, just kidding. Crystal Carter: Mordy, you'll not stand a chance. Mordy Oberstein: They're not brass. They're gold. Barry Adams: We have met Mordy. You do realize there's a significant size difference. Mordy Oberstein: So what do my favorite things about going to conferences, after so many years of talking to people and then you finally meet them in real life and then you realize I am a short person, and everybody is taller. Crystal Carter: To be fair, Barry's taller than most people. Mordy Oberstein: It's true. Crystal Carter: So, there's also that. Mordy Oberstein: But right now we're sitting down on Zoom, so we're all the same height. Crystal Carter: On Zoom, everyone's the same. Mordy Oberstein: Everyone is the same. No, but in all serious, I definitely understand where you're coming from and I definitely agree, and I think it's one of those things where we're going to end up saying, well, there's different ways to look at it, and all of them are great ways to look at it. I came into SEO from the content side, I got into SEO because someone asked me, Hey, could you write content for our company that ranks? And I'm like, sure. How do I do that? And a lot of the things that I ended up doing over the years when I was at Rank Ranger, I was managing their blog, was a lot of content strategy focused on SEO. So finding opportunities to rank, finding opportunities to pivot the brand, finding opportunities for expansion, and all of those things are very, very heavy on the SEO side. But at the end of the day, I'm also going to be talking to a lot of marketers. I'm going to talk to brag. Okay, great, you're writing this content, but does the tone fit the brand? How does it position the brand? That kind of thing. So there's a lot of SEO work, but because it's very heavy on the content side, you're going into content marketing. Now we're talking the pivoting to other channels. Now we're talking about brand marketing. And I feel that a lot of the work I've done over the years has very, very, very easily slid into marketing. And especially because I think what some of the things Google's done on the... Mordy Oberstein: ... marketing, and especially because I think some of the things Google's done on the algorithmic side around quality and content have kind of united content marketing and SEO closer than ever before. So, hah! Take that. Barry Adams: I'd love to disagree but I can't really. But what you just portrayed is definitely part of SEO and I don't dispute that. I do think there is a very big part of SEO that is, like you said, marketing adjacent, has some overlap. But there's an equally big part, if not a bigger part, that has nothing to do with marketing. And I think calling that marketing by saying all SEO is marketing, you're doing a disservice to both marketing and to SEO as well as to the dev side, tech side, product side, editorial side that the other aspects overlap with. In that regard, I don't think SEO is unique. If you talk to UI/UX developers, the designers for example, they don't like to be boxed in either. They're not marketing. They're not design. They're not product. They're all of those things and none of those things. So, I think we need to try not to box SEO into, "Oh, SEO is marketing," or, "Oh no, SEO is product." SEO is SEO, and it has a lot of different touchpoints and it needs to have the freedom to spread out in a process-focused way throughout organizations so that every part of the organization that has a role to play in SEO has the right processes in place to facilitate that and to help make websites a success in search. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, I brought you on to have a Royal Rumble, but I completely agree with everything you just said. Crystal Carter: I think it comes down to also thinking of SEO, thinking of marketing, thinking of whatever as a tool for achieving your goals. So, to offer another journey, I studied marketing. So, I studied CIM, the Chartered Institute of Marketing. I did all of that stuff and I learned about PEST analysis and I learned about SWOT analysis and I learned about the cash cow and the star and all of that sort of stuff, all of this classic old school marketing stuff. And I apply that to SEO things. I was reading something and they were saying, "Oh, you need to be looking at technical considerations and political...." I was like, "That's a PEST analysis. That's a PEST analysis. There's a diagram for that that somebody made years and years ago." And it's the same thing. You do that in SEO. You do need to look at those factors when you're making your assessments and things like that. And it's a tool for it. And I think that when you think of these things as a tool for achieving your goals overall, I think that's when it works really well. Probably the biggest example that I've seen recently of SEO and marketing working really well together is the Barbie movie SERP. So, I don't know if people have seen this, but if you Google the Barbie movie, the marketing team have worked with the actual SERP and the whole SERP turns pink and sparkles. And that- Barry Adams: I loved that. I absolutely loved it. I was googling Margo Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and they all just show up as big sparkly pink SERPs. It was fantastic. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. And that's a fantastic example of marketing and SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it sparkles! If you do Oppenheimer, does the whole thing blow up? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that they've taken the whole thing into consideration, but I think that when you see those things work really well, they work really well. And I think it's a question of, again, thinking of these things as a tool in order to achieve your goals. And you mentioned editorial teams and the business arm and things like that, and sometimes there's a bit of overlap. Sometimes that makes sense. The ad team, that's going to help the editorial team pay the bills as well. But I think that, yeah, like you said, people don't want to be boxed in, but people want resources to be able to execute the things that they want. So, do you find when you're working with marketing teams that being able to speak their language helps you to achieve your goals? Barry Adams: That's a very good question. I'll be honest, it's been a while since I've actually worked with a marketing team specific in SEO. I work with audience growth teams. I work with development and product teams. Marketing teams, yes, I think sometimes marketing teams, it helps when you cast it in a certain format and sell it as a process or a part of what they have budget and sign off for. But it also informs me when I start talking with prospective clients or other businesses that I have an understanding of where they see SEO fit in, because it tells me how far along in the SEO journey they actually are. And I'll be entirely honest with you, when I see that SEO is seen as part of marketing or even online marketing or digital marketing, I'm a little bit worried because it means that they're probably not as far along as they think they are. It is very much a cross-disciplinary effort. And if you box it into one thing, "Oh, that's marketing," then I like, "Right, okay, we might need to change some habits here." Because in those scenarios, in my experience, it tends to be very difficult to get them to release resources on the product dev side, because that's not part of the remit and it's only about the onsite content and it's about the link building efforts and all of that stuff. I'm like, "Yeah, but if we need to make technical changes to the website, we're sort of hindered. We're sort of boxed in there." Mordy Oberstein: It's funny because that's how we operate at Wix, because we have an SEO team that's under marketing. They're a growth marketing team. And then we have SEO on the actual product side. And one of the nice things is that we work really well together, and it really is a cross-company endeavor, and SEO isn't boxed in. Crystal Carter: And I think that your point about marketing team maturity is absolutely clutch, certainly when you're talking about a very granulated marketing team. So, they'll all sit maybe under the overall umbrella of marketing, but there'll be a growth team and a UX team and a whatever. And like you were saying, that's a sign that somebody has thought about the journey here. Barry Adams: Yeah. But at the same, and let's be honest, a lot of small businesses don't have those sort of resources. They might have one person responsible for the whole website. And I work with those sorts of businesses as well, in which case you have to adjust expectations and be almost more of an educational resource rather than a transactional resource. Where you teach them the good habits. You teach them what the long-term pathway is. And I always have the same advice for all clients that always... I get asked a lot, "What do we need to do in the long-term to become successful in search?" And I say, "Hire in-house people who have the mandate to do that." If you don't commit internal resources for it and you're always going to be relying on external agencies and consultants, you're never really going to develop that specialty and that internal focus that you need. And that's a business decision for a company to make, how important they see search as a channel, whether or not they want to invest in that. And I also think it's a perfectly valid decision not to keep relying on external resources because there's other channels that are more important to you, be that a B2B channel or some other channel that drives revenue for your business, but it needs to be an informed business decision. But in terms of the aspect of marketing versus product versus tech or whatever you call it, I also feel very, very strongly that SEO is one of those very rare disciplines where pretty much anyone can be successful regardless of your background, and that we should be welcoming to people from all kinds of different walks of life into our industry because of the incredibly wide and varied skillset that is useful for SEO. So, I have an almost allergic reaction to people saying, "Oh, that's not SEO." Because I used to be, in my earlier days of SEO, I was part of an SEO community that everything that wasn't on onsite, like link building, wasn't seen as SEO. And I sort of rebelled against that because I felt then that no, you need to do more than just the onsite stuff to be successful. You need to do something in brand marketing, link building, PR, whatever you call it, to help your website succeed. Now, well, that's not something I'm good at because I think to be a good marketer and a good digital PR person, you need to be a people person. You need to like people. I don't like people generally, so give me a computer any day of the week. But I do realize it's part of the whole SEO ecosystem and it needs to be recognized. As I say, everybody has their role to play. Everybody brings something strong and unique to the table. I don't think we need to be exclusionary and very focused on specific niches and say, "Oh, if you don't do that, you're not an SEO." It's like, "No." Pretty much anything that a person can be good at can be useful for SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, you're like Meat Loaf, because you took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to ask how you felt the fact that SEO is so dynamic and it's so broad and it can't be boxed in impacts someone coming into the industry, someone just trying to find a career in SEO, but you kind of answered my question. And that's sort of, I guess, the practical implication of this discussion. Does it matter? Who cares if it's marketing or not marketing? I think the answer, it does matter. Because if you look at it as just marketing or just IT or just whatever you want to pigeonhole SEO, it does set up a barrier to entry like, "Oh, I can't do SEO because I'm coming from this angle," or, "I can't do SEO because I'm coming from another angle." No, the answer is, you can do SEO. Especially in today's market, I feel like SEO has become far more specialized than it was back in the day when there only was an SEO generalist. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think also, you know when you're talking about different channels as well, when we say... I'm a big advocate of omnichannel marketing, and again, I've been fascinated by the Barbie movie campaign. I think there's a lot of old school marketing going on there. There's a lot of billboards just everywhere. I've never seen so many... Crystal Carter: Going on there. There's a lot of billboards just everywhere. I've never seen so many billboards in recently. And I think that when we think about that, even if you, as an SEO, aren't on the team that's handling the billboards, for whatever it is, or maybe buses or something, even if you're not doing that sort of thing, it's worth having a good relationship with them so that they have some SEO in mind, so that they make sure that they put the website on the billboard as well, so that they make sure that they put the website on the side of the bus as well, so that you are using terminology on the page that reflects what they've put into the newspaper print ad, for instance. Barry Adams: But also, for example, that you have a webpage or set of pages dedicated to showing the billboards that you have, like have big images and downloadable images for that and let people download wallpapers and all that sort of stuff. So that when people search in Barbie billboard in Google, your web pages show up first so that you are in control over that particular part of the narrative. Mordy Oberstein: There's so many times that's actually happened when you see an in-person ad or a non-digital ad and you go, "Okay, I need to Google that now and get more information about it." That's, I guess, the point, SEO is not the only, or head of SEO likes to say, SEO touches everything, including billboards. Billboard optimization. Barry Adams: Billboard optimization. We're going to be rebranding SEO for the 15th time. Mordy Oberstein: Have you all seen the Barbie movie? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Barry Adams: Not yet, but that's because I've been flu-ridden and I don't want to spread germs in the movie theater, but I want to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer, ideally back to back. Mordy Oberstein: Back to back. That's my goal. Barry Adams: I'm just not sure which I want to see first. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly what, I want the contrast of life. Crystal Carter: I've been told that you should see Barbie first. I've heard on the radio that if you see Oppenheimer first, it's like... Barry Adams: Yeah, I think that in the back of my head, I want to see Barbie first and then go straight into Oppenheimer to come down from the hyper Barbie experience. Mordy Oberstein: By the time you walk out, you're balanced and have a well- Barry Adams: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Well centered outlook. Barry Adams: Well, Barbie will make me feel good about life and the world and then Oppenheimer will make me feel like nothing ever matters and everything's going to die, so will come out as a perfectly balanced person in the end. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Like therapy, basically. Crystal Carter: Like a well-balanced marketing team. Mordy Oberstein: You become optimized. It's movie optimization. Crystal Carter: Entirely. Barry Adams: Mind state optimization. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Barry Adams: MSO. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, where can folks find you? Barry Adams: Well, I'd like to say Twitter, but who the hell knows what it's called? Crystal Carter: X now. Barry Adams: Yeah, I'll be entirely honest. Mordy Oberstein: We're recording the day after Twitter decided to rebrand. So by the time this episode comes out, we don't know what Twitter will be. Barry Adams: Yeah, find me on x.com/badams. No, I'm on LinkedIn. That's actually probably one of the most reliable- Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Barry Adams: Channels. I have my own newsletter, SEOforgooglenews.com, and polemicdigital.com is my consultancy website. Crystal Carter: And almost certainly at an SEO conference near you, because Barry Adams gets to the places and tells the people the things. Barry Adams: They keep asking me to come back, Crystal, and why would I say no? It's nice. Nice to see people and hang out and go on stage and talk. Yeah, it's lovely. Mordy Oberstein: And be taller than most of the other people there. We get it. Barry Adams: Well, not if you go to conferences in the Netherlands, I'm slightly below average height there. Mordy Oberstein: That's why don't go, I don't want to feel too bad about myself. Barry Adams: We do enough to make that happen already, don't we, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: It's inherent. If you have a question about SEO and news related websites, definitely look for Barry on all of those locations. We'll link to all of his profiles and all of his websites in the show notes. Barry, thank you so much for coming on and offering your perspective on where SEO fits in. Barry Adams: Thank you very much for having me. It's been a blast. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Thank you very much, Barry. Again, again, I cannot repeat how amazing Barry is. Please give him a follow on whatever social media platform you so choose to follow people on. So as SEO straddles multiple areas of the digital world, from marketing to tech, and beyond as we already discussed, we wanted to explore how SEO might impact your product decisions. Whether you're creating something as complex as a SaaS product or spitting up an ebook, how should SEO impact your product decisions? And to help us, we asked Kristal Audain, the PM at Groundworks, how she factors SEO into her decisions, as we launch a brand new segment, first time ever on the SERP's Up Podcast, and we're calling it Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. Kristal Audain: Hey, Mordy and Crystal. So as a product manager, where my primary product is websites, well not just one, but 19 different websites, SEO definitely plays a role in my product decisions every single day. It's actually pretty cool though because our scrum master is a former SEO, our head of data is a former SEO, our senior director of product ran SEO for a while, and then as a product manager, I am a former SEO as well. So SEO is definitely top of mind when it comes to our team. But also working directly hand in hand with our head of SEO and our technical SEO, making sure that everything that we do as far as development wise, features and benefits on the site, any new dev work that we do doesn't play too hard with our Core Web Vitals. Making sure LCP stays pretty firm. It's actually one of our QA process items that we have for everything that we put out there to make sure that PACE performance stays peak and on top of things. Also looking at our content team for that on page keyword targeting, making sure that they have exactly what they need as far as layout, any blocks that they need, any new features that they need that might help them do their job a little bit better, we're on top of that. As well as talking to them about new things that we're putting out to make sure it's helpful to them. And also looking at URL structure, that's something we're taking a look at right now to make sure that our users can utilize our sites in the best way, UX is important, but also that we are giving them what they need in order to target those keywords that they need without cannibalizing themselves by having resource articles and glossary terms and service pages trying to target the same keyword more than once. So working hand in hand with our SEO team and head of content on that to make sure that we're good to go across the board. So I would definitely say that SEO is top of mind in my day-to-day. We used to sit in marketing and report to the CMO. Now we're over in IT, but we are definitely still on a daily basis having those conversations, making sure that whatever they need, we can get into our sprints, and just nurturing that relationship across the board. So SEO and content and product can work together, it doesn't have to work in silos. We can be friends and work across the aisle without much of an issue, especially when you have so many SEOs on the team of either former or current, putting it all together. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Kristal, for that. Make sure you follow Kristal over @SEOKristal. It's @S-E-O-K-R-I-S-T-A-L on the Twitter. It's a great point, kind of speaking to what Barry was saying before, we were talking about this whole time, that there's so many things that SEO touches, SEO considers, that border on SEO. That if you don't consider SEO into the decision making process, relate to whatever product that you're touching, whatever product you're developing, you're missing out. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting that she described her team as being very SEO rich in terms of knowledge, that they will all be considering the SEO potential of every decision because they all have a grounding in SEO knowledge. And again, this also ties in a little bit with what Barry was saying about making sure that there's the education piece, that everyone has a base level knowledge of how search works and why certain things matter and what things should be prioritized in order to make sure that the SEO is baked in. And I think that when you have that, it makes a lot of the decisions a lot more streamlined, and it sounds ideal and it sounds like they think about it a lot. Mordy Oberstein: And the thing is, when you don't consider SEO into the decision process from the outset, it gets messy, and you're either faced with two decisions. One is you don't consider the SEO aspects, or you have to go back and work them in and that could be a little bit messy. So let's just say for example, you're working on, I don't know, an ebook, you have a landing page built around the ebook, and the landing page doesn't think about SEOs, a really simple classic example. And you've used a lot of the language from the book itself on the landing page, but that doesn't really jive with what you need to do from an SEO point of view and now you have to take one style, which is very much like a branding and marketing messaging, and integrate it with an SEO content strategy. And sometimes when you do that, it can be not harmonious or not seamless, but that's what you're left with now because you didn't consider SEO early on in the process when you're considering, okay, what's going into the ebook? What are the various assets? And where does SEO come in? Crystal Carter: Right, and the worst case scenario you get is when nobody's considered it, nobody's thought about it, and then the thing launches. Crystal Carter: Is when nobody's considered it, nobody's thought about it, and then the thing launches, and then it's a complete catastrophe from a search point of view because no one spoke to an SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, which is why you need, when you're deciding on what to do for a product, decide on SEO first, or SEO at the beginning, maybe second. Could be third. Crystal Carter: First. First people. Mordy Oberstein: First. Fine, SEO is first, no matter what. Crystal Carter: Always start with the SEOs first. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, forget like even the product, just SEO. On what, we don't know. It doesn't matter. Just SEO, first. That's all that matters. Okay, again, big thanks to Crystal and make sure you're putting your SEO decisions, prioritizing your SEO decisions early on in the product stage, and now, you know what's a really important thing to consider into your process, that's a really important decision to make about your SEO? Crystal Carter: What could it be? Mordy Oberstein: It's to follow the news every day because you never know what's going to be in there, and it gives you a nice little directional understanding of where things are heading, what's coming down the pike, and how the ecosystem is changing. So, decide on SEO news. Crystal Carter: I agree. Let's decide on some SEO news. Let's get into some snappy... Mordy Oberstein: Oh, we should make it snappy. Crystal Carter: I think so. Mordy Oberstein: We could make it snappy too. We decided on this. It should be snappy. All right, let's snap to it with some snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy News. Snappy News. Oh boy, it's here. Burberry Schwartz over on search engine land, Google releases August 2023, broad core update. So Google actually, prior to this at some point, John Muller over the course of the summer said, "Yeah, well kind of expect one to come." So here it is, the official release of the August 2023 broad core update. Generally speaking, the updates take around two weeks to complete. My recommendation to you is to wait for it to completely roll out. Google will announce when it's done rolling out before you start freaking out about anything, because at the very tail end of updates, there's often another set of fluctuations that occur and they can reverse what you saw at the very beginning of the updates. So we saw great wins in the beginning. Don't get over joyous, those can reverse by the time the update is over. If you see ranking losses at the beginning of the update, don't freak out. Those can reverse. By the time the update is completely finished out, wait until the update's finished before you really get either super happy or super upset about it. Also, this is a really tricky one because your rankings most likely happen off the wall, up and down, back and forth, in and out. Well, not in and out, up and down, over the course of the last month, if not more. If you look at the SEO weather tools, whether it's summer sensor or MozCast, you'll have noticed that there has been an insane amount of rank volatility. Rank has been moving more than ever before. My personal opinion. I don't think I've ever recalled a period where some of the tools are just showing such a high level of rank movement up and down for such a long period of time. Meaning, usually before an update you might've seen a little bit here, a little bit there, maybe more than normal, but when the update comes, you're like, "Oh wow, this update's really moving by rankings around." You might've been seeing that for the past month or so, so it'll be hard to see the exact impact of the update, at least at the onset of it. It's been a really weird time. The bones in my body tell me this is going to be a big one. I'm recording this at the early onset of the update, so I could be wrong. I could be right. Just my gut tells me it's going to be a big one. Again, we've seen the weather tools, the summer sensor for example, showing incredible amounts of very, very unusually long sustained periods of incredible rank volatility, of rank instability on the Google results pages. That coupled with the fact that there's just so much going on in the ecosystem now between AI content, SG, everything is sort of changing at the moment. My gut just sort of tells me this is going to be a big one. I guess we'll have to wait until the update completes its rollout to really see. May the force be with you and with us all, and that is this week's Snappy News. I'm really glad we decided to do that. Snappy SEO news. Crystal Carter: I mean, I definitely felt like a decider in that process, which is always something that is important to me. Mordy Oberstein: I always decide to see what Barry has to say. Crystal Carter: He's got some good news. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes, not the greatest news, but sometimes important news nonetheless, like, "Oh, no big update. Ah, freak out." Crystal Carter: That's a song, isn't it, by Chic, isn't it? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it's. "Ah! Google Algorithm Update Freak Out!" Crystal Carter: That's what I always think of every time there's a Google algorithm update, I think what we need right now is a little bit of disco. That's what's required. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, but beyond now you know what I think about when I hear about all the various SEO topics that are out there. I think of Jackie Chu who is a follow of the week. It's at Jackie Chu over on Twitter, this's at J-A-C-K-I-E-C-C-H-U, on the Twitter. She's the SEO over at Uber, and she talks about all sorts of SEO topics and no matter where you are coming from into the SEO ecosystem to the SEO industry, she's got something to say for you, which is why she's our follow of the week this week. Crystal Carter: She's a great follow. She speaks at a select few conferences and whenever she does, it's always such a treat because she has a really wide marketing knowledge and when we're talking about marketing and SEO and where they overlap and that sort of thing, and she has a great grounding in both. I think she started in, I think doing YouTube way back in the day and she's now working at Uber and does some great stuff there, and she's got a really good grounding in a wide range of marketing skills and knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like today's episode is like the Mr. Rogers of SERP's Up podcast episodes, "So no matter where you are, no matter who you are, you are special and you have a seat at the SEO table just because of who you are." Crystal Carter: I feel like I could put on my cardigan, get out some comfortable shoes, put my shopping down... Mordy Oberstein: I need some comfortable shoes. Invite the mailman over. Crystal Carter: Right. And then just as a grown adult, just play with some puppets in my house by myself. Mordy Oberstein: As we ride the trolley to the land of SEO make believe. Crystal Carter: I really did love Mr. Rogers. That was really good... Mordy Oberstein: Oh, good. Crystal Carter: That that was a good time of day. Like you had Sesame Street, you got Mr. Rogers, your Reading Rainbow. Just like wholesome. Just some wholesomeness. Mordy Oberstein: It's a whole different wormhole. That's not our podcast. That's a different podcast somewhere out there, I guess is a Mr. Rogers podcast. Thank you for joining this SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episode as we dive into the power of SEO fundamentals, we're pour the fun back in SEO fun-damentals. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, all the great 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, oral rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace of love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Barry Adams Kristal Audain Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Polemic Digital SEO for Google News Groundworks News: Google releases August 2023 broad core update Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Barry Adams Kristal Audain Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Polemic Digital SEO for Google News Groundworks News: Google releases August 2023 broad core update Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's a new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing us with groovy new insights round what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I am joined one of the best, most fabulous, most proficient marketers on the planet you can possibly find. She's brilliant. She's a fabulous marketer. She is our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I'm going to have to increase the fee for the introductions that you give me because- Mordy Oberstein: Just Venmo me later. Crystal Carter: ... it's getting ridiculous. Right. Okay. Will do. I will do. Mordy Oberstein: $1 per compliment. Crystal Carter: Very kind of you. You're not so bad yourself there, Mordy. You're fantastic as well. Mordy Oberstein: As you have told me many times when people compliment you, Mordy, just say thank you, which I have a hard time doing. Crystal Carter: Exactly. It's good. Mordy Oberstein: Jamar Rainwell's called me out on Twitter was like, "Can you take a compliment?" I'm like, "Nope." Crystal Carter: Which is why it's so good on your birthday... Which everyone should know that his birthday is in February- Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: So- Mordy Oberstein: But no- Crystal Carter: Oh sorry. Mordy Oberstein: ... Not March. It's make up a month. What doesn't exist? Marchtober. My birthday is in Marchtober. Crystal Carter: Mordy's a Pisces. Anyways, so Mordy's a Pisces. When his birthday comes up, make sure that you shower him with compliments and appreciation because he absolutely hates it. So it does two things. It tells him you appreciate him and also irritates him to no end, so- Mordy Oberstein: Can I say, so you were at a conference when it was my birthday. You went around to all the conference people had them wish me and they thought they were doing a great thing, and it was making me nuts. What do I do now? Crystal Carter: Mordy was like, "No, stop. No, really no stop." And I was like, "No, keep going." Mordy Oberstein: Best is Barry Schwartz who just writes thank you with the period for everything. Happy birthday, Barry. Thank you. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix. Where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, searchlight over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also dive into our suite of marketing tools and inbuilt integrations. Or you could bring your own as you can add scripts to your Wix website and pull in tools like Hotjar and far beyond, do marketing the way you want to with Wix. As today, I ask, is SEO part of marketing? I've been teasing this the entire intro because we're going to get into it. It's the age-old question. Is SEO part of product? Is it part of IT? Is it part marketing? If you're wondering, is there a place for you and SEO, I think this is your episode because today we're asking is SEO marketing? Is it beyond marketing? Do you need to be a good marketer to be a good SEO? What's the difference anyway? Who actually caress? And to help us work our way through this, we have our first, second time guest, one of our personal favorites, the one the only Barry Adams, who'll be buying just a few minutes to join us as we dive into SEO and marketing. We'll also get into some hard decisions, decisions, decisions. How does SEO inform product decisions? Kristal Audain will share her outlook. Plus we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social media. So grab your place card and hope for the best as episode number 53 of the SERP's Up podcast welcomes you to the reception and tells you which table you are sitting at. Crystal Carter: This is a great discussion because it comes up a lot. So I've heard a lot of people discuss this, Areej AbuAli has discussed this as well. So whether or not SEO sits in development with the dev teams or whether or not it sits in marketing. Some people think that it's just at a more strategic level, and I think that not to start too soon with the SEO platitude, but it kind of depends. I think it absolutely depends on your business, but I'm sure we'll get into that. But I think one of the reasons why this comes up is because there's a lot of overlap. And the reason why I say it depends is because what's going on in your business will cause some of the reasons why it might overlap. So for instance, if there's lots of technical fixes that are needed, then your SEO might want to sit more with the tech team, more with the dev team. If it's more a content thing, they might want to sit more with a marketing team, that sort of thing potentially. But because SEO as a discipline is so vast, I think this is where some of the challenges arise. So I'm really excited to get into this with our guest, Barry, who's absolutely somebody who's worked with lots and lots of teams around SEO and around marketing and around other things as well to discuss this in more detail. Mordy Oberstein: So cue dramatic music, because the founder of Polemic Digital, SEO legend himself, Barry Adams is here right now with us. Hey, Barry. Barry Adams: Hey Mordy. Hey Crystal, how are you doing? Crystal Carter: We are very, very pleased to have you here on the podcast. We've both spent some good amount of time with you at conferences and things around the world, so it's a real pleasure to have you here on the podcast today. Barry Adams: Thank you. Thank you very much. But I may be in the wrong room. Because I hear that I'm in the room with marketers. I mean, I'm not a marketer. What am I doing here? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I set that up, right. It's okay. A little bit of background. First off, Barry likes to say that I get him drunk at conferences and it's all my fault, which it is. Barry Adams: Every time I'm hung over, Mordy, I blame you, every time. Mordy Oberstein: As well you should. And for all other things, you should just blame me. But I know that we might have a little bit of a different of opinion here about where SEO fits in and out. Spoiler alert, I think at the end of this we're going to conclude that there's all sorts of ways that you can fit into SEO, which is great because SEO is for everybody at the end of the day. By the way, and I did set up Crystal as a great marketer to sort of put her on my camp to start off, which I feel is horrible Barry Adams: You're stacked the deck today Mordy, you're stacked the deck today. You're cheating. Mordy Oberstein: I'm putting my thumb on the scale, but I do think that there's a large overlap between SEO and marketing, and I'm wondering if you disagree. Barry Adams: I definitely disagree. I mean, I have been doing SEO for, well, probably way too long, to be entirely honest. In-house for about of 15 years, agency side and now freelance. I think my touchpoint with marketing in all those years have been fairly minimal. Most of my work has been focused on what you would call development or product. And in recent years, a lot of it has been focused on editorial, working with journalists and editors when it comes to publishing and writing content optimized for visibility in SERP's, and none of those would ever come close to marketing. In fact, in some of the circles that I work in, especially in publishing, marketing is seen as a dirty word because it has a very different connotation in the news industry. Marketing is monetization, marketing is the commercial side. It's selling ads and content partnerships, and that's not what the dev team nor the editorial teams really want to worry themselves with. Now, I do agree there are aspects of SEO that are what I call marketing adjacent. But at its core, I don't think that most of what SEO does is marketing, because SEO is very process driven. I think it's more of a product discipline or even a project discipline than it is a marketing discipline. Mordy Oberstein: So if I could counter- Barry Adams: Please do. Mordy Oberstein: Say, pull my gloves off, and then slip on the brass knuckles. No, just kidding. Crystal Carter: Mordy, you'll not stand a chance. Mordy Oberstein: They're not brass. They're gold. Barry Adams: We have met Mordy. You do realize there's a significant size difference. Mordy Oberstein: So what do my favorite things about going to conferences, after so many years of talking to people and then you finally meet them in real life and then you realize I am a short person, and everybody is taller. Crystal Carter: To be fair, Barry's taller than most people. Mordy Oberstein: It's true. Crystal Carter: So, there's also that. Mordy Oberstein: But right now we're sitting down on Zoom, so we're all the same height. Crystal Carter: On Zoom, everyone's the same. Mordy Oberstein: Everyone is the same. No, but in all serious, I definitely understand where you're coming from and I definitely agree, and I think it's one of those things where we're going to end up saying, well, there's different ways to look at it, and all of them are great ways to look at it. I came into SEO from the content side, I got into SEO because someone asked me, Hey, could you write content for our company that ranks? And I'm like, sure. How do I do that? And a lot of the things that I ended up doing over the years when I was at Rank Ranger, I was managing their blog, was a lot of content strategy focused on SEO. So finding opportunities to rank, finding opportunities to pivot the brand, finding opportunities for expansion, and all of those things are very, very heavy on the SEO side. But at the end of the day, I'm also going to be talking to a lot of marketers. I'm going to talk to brag. Okay, great, you're writing this content, but does the tone fit the brand? How does it position the brand? That kind of thing. So there's a lot of SEO work, but because it's very heavy on the content side, you're going into content marketing. Now we're talking the pivoting to other channels. Now we're talking about brand marketing. And I feel that a lot of the work I've done over the years has very, very, very easily slid into marketing. And especially because I think what some of the things Google's done on the... Mordy Oberstein: ... marketing, and especially because I think some of the things Google's done on the algorithmic side around quality and content have kind of united content marketing and SEO closer than ever before. So, hah! Take that. Barry Adams: I'd love to disagree but I can't really. But what you just portrayed is definitely part of SEO and I don't dispute that. I do think there is a very big part of SEO that is, like you said, marketing adjacent, has some overlap. But there's an equally big part, if not a bigger part, that has nothing to do with marketing. And I think calling that marketing by saying all SEO is marketing, you're doing a disservice to both marketing and to SEO as well as to the dev side, tech side, product side, editorial side that the other aspects overlap with. In that regard, I don't think SEO is unique. If you talk to UI/UX developers, the designers for example, they don't like to be boxed in either. They're not marketing. They're not design. They're not product. They're all of those things and none of those things. So, I think we need to try not to box SEO into, "Oh, SEO is marketing," or, "Oh no, SEO is product." SEO is SEO, and it has a lot of different touchpoints and it needs to have the freedom to spread out in a process-focused way throughout organizations so that every part of the organization that has a role to play in SEO has the right processes in place to facilitate that and to help make websites a success in search. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, I brought you on to have a Royal Rumble, but I completely agree with everything you just said. Crystal Carter: I think it comes down to also thinking of SEO, thinking of marketing, thinking of whatever as a tool for achieving your goals. So, to offer another journey, I studied marketing. So, I studied CIM, the Chartered Institute of Marketing. I did all of that stuff and I learned about PEST analysis and I learned about SWOT analysis and I learned about the cash cow and the star and all of that sort of stuff, all of this classic old school marketing stuff. And I apply that to SEO things. I was reading something and they were saying, "Oh, you need to be looking at technical considerations and political...." I was like, "That's a PEST analysis. That's a PEST analysis. There's a diagram for that that somebody made years and years ago." And it's the same thing. You do that in SEO. You do need to look at those factors when you're making your assessments and things like that. And it's a tool for it. And I think that when you think of these things as a tool for achieving your goals overall, I think that's when it works really well. Probably the biggest example that I've seen recently of SEO and marketing working really well together is the Barbie movie SERP. So, I don't know if people have seen this, but if you Google the Barbie movie, the marketing team have worked with the actual SERP and the whole SERP turns pink and sparkles. And that- Barry Adams: I loved that. I absolutely loved it. I was googling Margo Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and they all just show up as big sparkly pink SERPs. It was fantastic. Crystal Carter: It's fantastic. And that's a fantastic example of marketing and SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it sparkles! If you do Oppenheimer, does the whole thing blow up? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that they've taken the whole thing into consideration, but I think that when you see those things work really well, they work really well. And I think it's a question of, again, thinking of these things as a tool in order to achieve your goals. And you mentioned editorial teams and the business arm and things like that, and sometimes there's a bit of overlap. Sometimes that makes sense. The ad team, that's going to help the editorial team pay the bills as well. But I think that, yeah, like you said, people don't want to be boxed in, but people want resources to be able to execute the things that they want. So, do you find when you're working with marketing teams that being able to speak their language helps you to achieve your goals? Barry Adams: That's a very good question. I'll be honest, it's been a while since I've actually worked with a marketing team specific in SEO. I work with audience growth teams. I work with development and product teams. Marketing teams, yes, I think sometimes marketing teams, it helps when you cast it in a certain format and sell it as a process or a part of what they have budget and sign off for. But it also informs me when I start talking with prospective clients or other businesses that I have an understanding of where they see SEO fit in, because it tells me how far along in the SEO journey they actually are. And I'll be entirely honest with you, when I see that SEO is seen as part of marketing or even online marketing or digital marketing, I'm a little bit worried because it means that they're probably not as far along as they think they are. It is very much a cross-disciplinary effort. And if you box it into one thing, "Oh, that's marketing," then I like, "Right, okay, we might need to change some habits here." Because in those scenarios, in my experience, it tends to be very difficult to get them to release resources on the product dev side, because that's not part of the remit and it's only about the onsite content and it's about the link building efforts and all of that stuff. I'm like, "Yeah, but if we need to make technical changes to the website, we're sort of hindered. We're sort of boxed in there." Mordy Oberstein: It's funny because that's how we operate at Wix, because we have an SEO team that's under marketing. They're a growth marketing team. And then we have SEO on the actual product side. And one of the nice things is that we work really well together, and it really is a cross-company endeavor, and SEO isn't boxed in. Crystal Carter: And I think that your point about marketing team maturity is absolutely clutch, certainly when you're talking about a very granulated marketing team. So, they'll all sit maybe under the overall umbrella of marketing, but there'll be a growth team and a UX team and a whatever. And like you were saying, that's a sign that somebody has thought about the journey here. Barry Adams: Yeah. But at the same, and let's be honest, a lot of small businesses don't have those sort of resources. They might have one person responsible for the whole website. And I work with those sorts of businesses as well, in which case you have to adjust expectations and be almost more of an educational resource rather than a transactional resource. Where you teach them the good habits. You teach them what the long-term pathway is. And I always have the same advice for all clients that always... I get asked a lot, "What do we need to do in the long-term to become successful in search?" And I say, "Hire in-house people who have the mandate to do that." If you don't commit internal resources for it and you're always going to be relying on external agencies and consultants, you're never really going to develop that specialty and that internal focus that you need. And that's a business decision for a company to make, how important they see search as a channel, whether or not they want to invest in that. And I also think it's a perfectly valid decision not to keep relying on external resources because there's other channels that are more important to you, be that a B2B channel or some other channel that drives revenue for your business, but it needs to be an informed business decision. But in terms of the aspect of marketing versus product versus tech or whatever you call it, I also feel very, very strongly that SEO is one of those very rare disciplines where pretty much anyone can be successful regardless of your background, and that we should be welcoming to people from all kinds of different walks of life into our industry because of the incredibly wide and varied skillset that is useful for SEO. So, I have an almost allergic reaction to people saying, "Oh, that's not SEO." Because I used to be, in my earlier days of SEO, I was part of an SEO community that everything that wasn't on onsite, like link building, wasn't seen as SEO. And I sort of rebelled against that because I felt then that no, you need to do more than just the onsite stuff to be successful. You need to do something in brand marketing, link building, PR, whatever you call it, to help your website succeed. Now, well, that's not something I'm good at because I think to be a good marketer and a good digital PR person, you need to be a people person. You need to like people. I don't like people generally, so give me a computer any day of the week. But I do realize it's part of the whole SEO ecosystem and it needs to be recognized. As I say, everybody has their role to play. Everybody brings something strong and unique to the table. I don't think we need to be exclusionary and very focused on specific niches and say, "Oh, if you don't do that, you're not an SEO." It's like, "No." Pretty much anything that a person can be good at can be useful for SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, you're like Meat Loaf, because you took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to ask how you felt the fact that SEO is so dynamic and it's so broad and it can't be boxed in impacts someone coming into the industry, someone just trying to find a career in SEO, but you kind of answered my question. And that's sort of, I guess, the practical implication of this discussion. Does it matter? Who cares if it's marketing or not marketing? I think the answer, it does matter. Because if you look at it as just marketing or just IT or just whatever you want to pigeonhole SEO, it does set up a barrier to entry like, "Oh, I can't do SEO because I'm coming from this angle," or, "I can't do SEO because I'm coming from another angle." No, the answer is, you can do SEO. Especially in today's market, I feel like SEO has become far more specialized than it was back in the day when there only was an SEO generalist. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think also, you know when you're talking about different channels as well, when we say... I'm a big advocate of omnichannel marketing, and again, I've been fascinated by the Barbie movie campaign. I think there's a lot of old school marketing going on there. There's a lot of billboards just everywhere. I've never seen so many... Crystal Carter: Going on there. There's a lot of billboards just everywhere. I've never seen so many billboards in recently. And I think that when we think about that, even if you, as an SEO, aren't on the team that's handling the billboards, for whatever it is, or maybe buses or something, even if you're not doing that sort of thing, it's worth having a good relationship with them so that they have some SEO in mind, so that they make sure that they put the website on the billboard as well, so that they make sure that they put the website on the side of the bus as well, so that you are using terminology on the page that reflects what they've put into the newspaper print ad, for instance. Barry Adams: But also, for example, that you have a webpage or set of pages dedicated to showing the billboards that you have, like have big images and downloadable images for that and let people download wallpapers and all that sort of stuff. So that when people search in Barbie billboard in Google, your web pages show up first so that you are in control over that particular part of the narrative. Mordy Oberstein: There's so many times that's actually happened when you see an in-person ad or a non-digital ad and you go, "Okay, I need to Google that now and get more information about it." That's, I guess, the point, SEO is not the only, or head of SEO likes to say, SEO touches everything, including billboards. Billboard optimization. Barry Adams: Billboard optimization. We're going to be rebranding SEO for the 15th time. Mordy Oberstein: Have you all seen the Barbie movie? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Barry Adams: Not yet, but that's because I've been flu-ridden and I don't want to spread germs in the movie theater, but I want to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer, ideally back to back. Mordy Oberstein: Back to back. That's my goal. Barry Adams: I'm just not sure which I want to see first. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly what, I want the contrast of life. Crystal Carter: I've been told that you should see Barbie first. I've heard on the radio that if you see Oppenheimer first, it's like... Barry Adams: Yeah, I think that in the back of my head, I want to see Barbie first and then go straight into Oppenheimer to come down from the hyper Barbie experience. Mordy Oberstein: By the time you walk out, you're balanced and have a well- Barry Adams: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Well centered outlook. Barry Adams: Well, Barbie will make me feel good about life and the world and then Oppenheimer will make me feel like nothing ever matters and everything's going to die, so will come out as a perfectly balanced person in the end. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Like therapy, basically. Crystal Carter: Like a well-balanced marketing team. Mordy Oberstein: You become optimized. It's movie optimization. Crystal Carter: Entirely. Barry Adams: Mind state optimization. Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Barry Adams: MSO. Mordy Oberstein: Barry, where can folks find you? Barry Adams: Well, I'd like to say Twitter, but who the hell knows what it's called? Crystal Carter: X now. Barry Adams: Yeah, I'll be entirely honest. Mordy Oberstein: We're recording the day after Twitter decided to rebrand. So by the time this episode comes out, we don't know what Twitter will be. Barry Adams: Yeah, find me on x.com/badams. No, I'm on LinkedIn. That's actually probably one of the most reliable- Mordy Oberstein: There we go. Barry Adams: Channels. I have my own newsletter, SEOforgooglenews.com, and polemicdigital.com is my consultancy website. Crystal Carter: And almost certainly at an SEO conference near you, because Barry Adams gets to the places and tells the people the things. Barry Adams: They keep asking me to come back, Crystal, and why would I say no? It's nice. Nice to see people and hang out and go on stage and talk. Yeah, it's lovely. Mordy Oberstein: And be taller than most of the other people there. We get it. Barry Adams: Well, not if you go to conferences in the Netherlands, I'm slightly below average height there. Mordy Oberstein: That's why don't go, I don't want to feel too bad about myself. Barry Adams: We do enough to make that happen already, don't we, Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: It's inherent. If you have a question about SEO and news related websites, definitely look for Barry on all of those locations. We'll link to all of his profiles and all of his websites in the show notes. Barry, thank you so much for coming on and offering your perspective on where SEO fits in. Barry Adams: Thank you very much for having me. It's been a blast. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Thank you very much, Barry. Again, again, I cannot repeat how amazing Barry is. Please give him a follow on whatever social media platform you so choose to follow people on. So as SEO straddles multiple areas of the digital world, from marketing to tech, and beyond as we already discussed, we wanted to explore how SEO might impact your product decisions. Whether you're creating something as complex as a SaaS product or spitting up an ebook, how should SEO impact your product decisions? And to help us, we asked Kristal Audain, the PM at Groundworks, how she factors SEO into her decisions, as we launch a brand new segment, first time ever on the SERP's Up Podcast, and we're calling it Decisions, Decisions, Decisions. Kristal Audain: Hey, Mordy and Crystal. So as a product manager, where my primary product is websites, well not just one, but 19 different websites, SEO definitely plays a role in my product decisions every single day. It's actually pretty cool though because our scrum master is a former SEO, our head of data is a former SEO, our senior director of product ran SEO for a while, and then as a product manager, I am a former SEO as well. So SEO is definitely top of mind when it comes to our team. But also working directly hand in hand with our head of SEO and our technical SEO, making sure that everything that we do as far as development wise, features and benefits on the site, any new dev work that we do doesn't play too hard with our Core Web Vitals. Making sure LCP stays pretty firm. It's actually one of our QA process items that we have for everything that we put out there to make sure that PACE performance stays peak and on top of things. Also looking at our content team for that on page keyword targeting, making sure that they have exactly what they need as far as layout, any blocks that they need, any new features that they need that might help them do their job a little bit better, we're on top of that. As well as talking to them about new things that we're putting out to make sure it's helpful to them. And also looking at URL structure, that's something we're taking a look at right now to make sure that our users can utilize our sites in the best way, UX is important, but also that we are giving them what they need in order to target those keywords that they need without cannibalizing themselves by having resource articles and glossary terms and service pages trying to target the same keyword more than once. So working hand in hand with our SEO team and head of content on that to make sure that we're good to go across the board. So I would definitely say that SEO is top of mind in my day-to-day. We used to sit in marketing and report to the CMO. Now we're over in IT, but we are definitely still on a daily basis having those conversations, making sure that whatever they need, we can get into our sprints, and just nurturing that relationship across the board. So SEO and content and product can work together, it doesn't have to work in silos. We can be friends and work across the aisle without much of an issue, especially when you have so many SEOs on the team of either former or current, putting it all together. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Kristal, for that. Make sure you follow Kristal over @SEOKristal. It's @S-E-O-K-R-I-S-T-A-L on the Twitter. It's a great point, kind of speaking to what Barry was saying before, we were talking about this whole time, that there's so many things that SEO touches, SEO considers, that border on SEO. That if you don't consider SEO into the decision making process, relate to whatever product that you're touching, whatever product you're developing, you're missing out. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting that she described her team as being very SEO rich in terms of knowledge, that they will all be considering the SEO potential of every decision because they all have a grounding in SEO knowledge. And again, this also ties in a little bit with what Barry was saying about making sure that there's the education piece, that everyone has a base level knowledge of how search works and why certain things matter and what things should be prioritized in order to make sure that the SEO is baked in. And I think that when you have that, it makes a lot of the decisions a lot more streamlined, and it sounds ideal and it sounds like they think about it a lot. Mordy Oberstein: And the thing is, when you don't consider SEO into the decision process from the outset, it gets messy, and you're either faced with two decisions. One is you don't consider the SEO aspects, or you have to go back and work them in and that could be a little bit messy. So let's just say for example, you're working on, I don't know, an ebook, you have a landing page built around the ebook, and the landing page doesn't think about SEOs, a really simple classic example. And you've used a lot of the language from the book itself on the landing page, but that doesn't really jive with what you need to do from an SEO point of view and now you have to take one style, which is very much like a branding and marketing messaging, and integrate it with an SEO content strategy. And sometimes when you do that, it can be not harmonious or not seamless, but that's what you're left with now because you didn't consider SEO early on in the process when you're considering, okay, what's going into the ebook? What are the various assets? And where does SEO come in? Crystal Carter: Right, and the worst case scenario you get is when nobody's considered it, nobody's thought about it, and then the thing launches. Crystal Carter: Is when nobody's considered it, nobody's thought about it, and then the thing launches, and then it's a complete catastrophe from a search point of view because no one spoke to an SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly, which is why you need, when you're deciding on what to do for a product, decide on SEO first, or SEO at the beginning, maybe second. Could be third. Crystal Carter: First. First people. Mordy Oberstein: First. Fine, SEO is first, no matter what. Crystal Carter: Always start with the SEOs first. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, forget like even the product, just SEO. On what, we don't know. It doesn't matter. Just SEO, first. That's all that matters. Okay, again, big thanks to Crystal and make sure you're putting your SEO decisions, prioritizing your SEO decisions early on in the product stage, and now, you know what's a really important thing to consider into your process, that's a really important decision to make about your SEO? Crystal Carter: What could it be? Mordy Oberstein: It's to follow the news every day because you never know what's going to be in there, and it gives you a nice little directional understanding of where things are heading, what's coming down the pike, and how the ecosystem is changing. So, decide on SEO news. Crystal Carter: I agree. Let's decide on some SEO news. Let's get into some snappy... Mordy Oberstein: Oh, we should make it snappy. Crystal Carter: I think so. Mordy Oberstein: We could make it snappy too. We decided on this. It should be snappy. All right, let's snap to it with some snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy News. Snappy News. Oh boy, it's here. Burberry Schwartz over on search engine land, Google releases August 2023, broad core update. So Google actually, prior to this at some point, John Muller over the course of the summer said, "Yeah, well kind of expect one to come." So here it is, the official release of the August 2023 broad core update. Generally speaking, the updates take around two weeks to complete. My recommendation to you is to wait for it to completely roll out. Google will announce when it's done rolling out before you start freaking out about anything, because at the very tail end of updates, there's often another set of fluctuations that occur and they can reverse what you saw at the very beginning of the updates. So we saw great wins in the beginning. Don't get over joyous, those can reverse by the time the update is over. If you see ranking losses at the beginning of the update, don't freak out. Those can reverse. By the time the update is completely finished out, wait until the update's finished before you really get either super happy or super upset about it. Also, this is a really tricky one because your rankings most likely happen off the wall, up and down, back and forth, in and out. Well, not in and out, up and down, over the course of the last month, if not more. If you look at the SEO weather tools, whether it's summer sensor or MozCast, you'll have noticed that there has been an insane amount of rank volatility. Rank has been moving more than ever before. My personal opinion. I don't think I've ever recalled a period where some of the tools are just showing such a high level of rank movement up and down for such a long period of time. Meaning, usually before an update you might've seen a little bit here, a little bit there, maybe more than normal, but when the update comes, you're like, "Oh wow, this update's really moving by rankings around." You might've been seeing that for the past month or so, so it'll be hard to see the exact impact of the update, at least at the onset of it. It's been a really weird time. The bones in my body tell me this is going to be a big one. I'm recording this at the early onset of the update, so I could be wrong. I could be right. Just my gut tells me it's going to be a big one. Again, we've seen the weather tools, the summer sensor for example, showing incredible amounts of very, very unusually long sustained periods of incredible rank volatility, of rank instability on the Google results pages. That coupled with the fact that there's just so much going on in the ecosystem now between AI content, SG, everything is sort of changing at the moment. My gut just sort of tells me this is going to be a big one. I guess we'll have to wait until the update completes its rollout to really see. May the force be with you and with us all, and that is this week's Snappy News. I'm really glad we decided to do that. Snappy SEO news. Crystal Carter: I mean, I definitely felt like a decider in that process, which is always something that is important to me. Mordy Oberstein: I always decide to see what Barry has to say. Crystal Carter: He's got some good news. Mordy Oberstein: Sometimes, not the greatest news, but sometimes important news nonetheless, like, "Oh, no big update. Ah, freak out." Crystal Carter: That's a song, isn't it, by Chic, isn't it? Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it's. "Ah! Google Algorithm Update Freak Out!" Crystal Carter: That's what I always think of every time there's a Google algorithm update, I think what we need right now is a little bit of disco. That's what's required. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, but beyond now you know what I think about when I hear about all the various SEO topics that are out there. I think of Jackie Chu who is a follow of the week. It's at Jackie Chu over on Twitter, this's at J-A-C-K-I-E-C-C-H-U, on the Twitter. She's the SEO over at Uber, and she talks about all sorts of SEO topics and no matter where you are coming from into the SEO ecosystem to the SEO industry, she's got something to say for you, which is why she's our follow of the week this week. Crystal Carter: She's a great follow. She speaks at a select few conferences and whenever she does, it's always such a treat because she has a really wide marketing knowledge and when we're talking about marketing and SEO and where they overlap and that sort of thing, and she has a great grounding in both. I think she started in, I think doing YouTube way back in the day and she's now working at Uber and does some great stuff there, and she's got a really good grounding in a wide range of marketing skills and knowledge. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like today's episode is like the Mr. Rogers of SERP's Up podcast episodes, "So no matter where you are, no matter who you are, you are special and you have a seat at the SEO table just because of who you are." Crystal Carter: I feel like I could put on my cardigan, get out some comfortable shoes, put my shopping down... Mordy Oberstein: I need some comfortable shoes. Invite the mailman over. Crystal Carter: Right. And then just as a grown adult, just play with some puppets in my house by myself. Mordy Oberstein: As we ride the trolley to the land of SEO make believe. Crystal Carter: I really did love Mr. Rogers. That was really good... Mordy Oberstein: Oh, good. Crystal Carter: That that was a good time of day. Like you had Sesame Street, you got Mr. Rogers, your Reading Rainbow. Just like wholesome. Just some wholesomeness. Mordy Oberstein: It's a whole different wormhole. That's not our podcast. That's a different podcast somewhere out there, I guess is a Mr. Rogers podcast. Thank you for joining this SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episode as we dive into the power of SEO fundamentals, we're pour the fun back in SEO fun-damentals. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content, all the great 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, oral rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace 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

Where is the line between good and bad link-building practices? In what scenarios can links make the difference in a site’s rankings? Understand the pivotal role that links have in your overall SEO scheme this week, as we uncover what links look like in the eyes of Google and how you should be incorporating them into your website. Ashwin Balakrishnan joins hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein the show to share his experience in curating and managing links. Plus, Alexandra Tachalova joins to explore situations where links are a real difference maker in optimizing results on the SERP. We’re not golfing, but we’re definitely hitting the links today, as we clear up all the confusion related to link building on this episode of The SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back I would do anything for links, but I won't do that Where is the line between good and bad link-building practices? In what scenarios can links make the difference in a site’s rankings? Understand the pivotal role that links have in your overall SEO scheme this week, as we uncover what links look like in the eyes of Google and how you should be incorporating them into your website. Ashwin Balakrishnan joins hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein the show to share his experience in curating and managing links. Plus, Alexandra Tachalova joins to explore situations where links are a real difference maker in optimizing results on the SERP. We’re not golfing, but we’re definitely hitting the links today, as we clear up all the confusion related to link building on this episode of The SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 64 | November 29, 2023 | 39 MIN 00:00 / 38:31 This week’s guests Alexandra Tachalova Alex Tachalova is the founder and CEO of Digital Olympus, a link building agency that delivers links the clients are proud of. She is a frequent speaker who has presented at conferences such as BrightonSEO, Ungagged, SMX, and many others. Her insights and ideas also find their way into her writing, featured on well-known blogs such as HubSpot, SEMrush, Moz, SEJ, and more. Ashwin Balakrishnan Ashwin Balakrishnan is a B2B SaaS marketer specializing in organic growth, backlinks, and content SEO. He leads the marketing team at Optmyzr, where he hosts the Search Marketing Academy podcast. His personal backlink profile includes gaming, Lego, and electronic music. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, where you get some groovy insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined with the fabulously, amazing, incredible, the always annotative, Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: Hello, you content goblins. Mordy Oberstein: And gators. Crystal Carter: And gators. Welcome to the gator party of the internet. Hello everyone. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: For context, this is coming out like six weeks, five weeks after that article from The Verge, which said basically that SEO folks are goblins and gators. Crystal Carter: Spend all our time at gator parties and I have never been to a gator party. Mordy Oberstein: I've never been... Is that like a Miami football thing? Like Miami Gators? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I feel like people have all kinds of fun and I've never had that kind of fun. I did go to a turtle race though. Mordy Oberstein: I've been been to turtle race as a kid. I do remember. That's fun. Crystal Carter: I went to a turtle race. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if- Crystal Carter: I'm sure that the turtles were treated humanely, so I'm sure that that's true. Mordy Oberstein: They seem to be having a great time. They actually got some ooze on them and turned into the giant ninjas afterwards, but that seemed kind of traumatic on- Crystal Carter: I'm sure they're treated humanely. Anyway. Anyway, anyway, people have all sorts of fun. I've never been to a gator party, so I will keep my eye out for the- Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure I want to be. Crystal Carter: I know, honestly, Mordy Oberstein: Steve Irwin went to that one, and you see what happened to him. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/SEO/newsletter, but where you can also utilize our integrations with the likes of Content Contact, Klaviyo and beyond to get your content out there to more people via some solid email marketing, because email marketing is a fabulous way to spread your content so it can get links. So go ahead, email your entire list asking for links. That's how it works. No, don't do that by the way. Don't do that. I'm being facetious. Don't do that. Crystal Carter: No, please don't. Don't. Don't. It's not... Don't. Please don't. Mordy Oberstein: That's a bad idea. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm saying that, I'm making that joke because this week we're covering, "I Would Do Anything for Links, but I Won't Do That." Sing with me Crystal. (Singing). By the way, that baritone they're chiming in is Ashwin Balakrishnan, who is going to join us in just a Jiffy as we are going to explore the fine line between energetic link building and full on spamming as we get into guest posting for links, how and when to ask for links, where are the line between good and bad link practices is. As I mentioned, to help make the right connection, Optimizer's own Ashwin Balakrishnan is going to join us in just a few minutes. We'll also hear from Digital Olympus's Alexandra Tachalova about when links can make all the difference. And of course, we have your snappy SEO news, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So buckle up as objects in the link view mirror may appear closer than they are, as episode number 64 of the SERP's Up podcast comes at you like a Bat Out of Hell to tell you we would do anything for links, but we won't do that. No, we won't do that. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Meatloaf. Shout out to Meatloaf. Mordy Oberstein: Objects in the Rear View Mirror. I remember that came on VH1. By the way, wait, wait before we get going, welcome to the show, Ashwin. Ashwin Balakrishnan: It's a show, for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Ashwin Balakrishnan: And for the record, I am Team Crocodile all the way. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Crocodiles over alligators. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, crocodile party. Crystal Carter: If people don't don't know the difference, you can remember it because an A is pointy and actually alligators have round noses and crocodiles have pointy noses, which is the opposite of a C. There we go. Fun facts. Mordy Oberstein: My life is so much better now. Crystal Carter: I read National Geographic Kids, what can I say? Mordy Oberstein: Back to what's important, Meatloaf. Objects in the Rear View Mirror, when that came on VH1, I remember the video so clearly. Crystal Carter: I can see it in my brain right now. Mordy Oberstein: I could see it in my brain. I'm thinking, who is this dude and why is he singing about what it says on the car mirror thing? Crystal Carter: Yeah, but fully committed. Fully committed. He's 100% committed to all of his overdramatic things. To be honest, if I can just pivot, I think that's how people have to approach link building. You have to be fully committed to what you're doing and fully confident in what you're doing when you get into that. Ashwin, what's your thoughts on that? Ashwin Balakrishnan: I actually discovered Meatloaf through, I guess you could call it, a referral. You remember Pizza Hut back in the 90s had those jukeboxes? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I would flip through that. There was this album of a motorcycle and dude riding a motorcycle and it's like flying through the sky. It's called Meatloaf. I'm like, who the hell names their band Meatloaf? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I never listened to it throughout my entire childhood. I guess that's a good thing. But then when I hit my teens, I was like, all right, let's check out what this Meatloaf music is about. And yeah, it never caught on for me. Mordy Oberstein: But it's a great name, Meatloaf. So wait, before we get into it, let me catch everybody up. Links have been this sort of linchpin of SEO since God knows when, and we do know when, but for dramatic effect, since God knows when, and there's all sorts of theories about how important links are and are they central, are they losing their... I don't want to get into any of that right now. Links are a part of doing SEO. They are a part of ranking, they are a part of the SEO picture. Okay, we can split hairs about how and when. What I want to focus on, what you want to focus on in this episode is when you start trying to get links, when you have one website linking to your own website and the content and the pages on your own website, things get spammy faster than you can say "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are." There's all sorts of confusion, even if you're a pro SEO, about what is and what is not a good idea or against Google's guidelines. That's why we're talking about, again, I would do anything for links, but it won't do that. It's really what works, what doesn't work, and what's legal, what's barely legal and what's completely illegal when it comes to Google's guidelines in garnering links. Hi, Ashwin. Let's have you weigh in on that. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Let me begin by telling you what I would never do. What I would never do for links is the same thing that I would never do for love, which is beg. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, come through action. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Most of my emails these days are people begging, lying, trying to scam me into putting links to their content on Optimizer's website. I've had people email me saying, "Oh, we've worked together before, or I emailed you back in the day for a link when I was managing another domain." I'm like, "No, you didn't." Why just lie about it? I've got people flooding me with requests for links that have nothing to do with digital marketing, let alone PPC. I have people who keep asking me for links like 10 follow-ups in eight days, stuff like that. It's just immediate spam. I just put you in my spam folder and you're done. I never want to hear from you again. That's one thing that I would never do is beg. Don't beg. It's not illegal to beg, but man, it makes you look really, really bad. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Right. I think that I admire the gumption. I admire the energy that goes behind that, but I think that people could potentially put that energy somewhere else because like you, if I get somebody in my inbox giving me that information, immediately block. Somebody on LinkedIn because you get them on LinkedIn as well, if somebody on LinkedIn's like, "Hi, do you want-" I'm like, block, unfollow, done. No, thank you. We're done. I think that I would agree begging doesn't... I mean, there's a theory that says don't ask, don't get, but there's a difference I think. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, yeah. There's a pretty big difference and I have no admiration for it. I think it's just the worst type of energy. Mordy Oberstein: It's bad for your brand too. Ashwin Balakrishnan: It is. Mordy Oberstein: People get those emails. This happens, by the way, even outside of links where you have a, "Hey there, we want to sell you some ad space on our website," and it's a cold outreach and it's really just templatized. You're like, I don't really want to, because that doesn't come across well for your brand. Links to the same thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: You don't want to come across and put your brand in a negative light to people who aren't maybe actually important to you, what your brand does. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Don't beg and don't lie. Don't tell me you worked with me when I know for sure that we haven't. If I can search your name in my email and it's not going to pop up, I know we haven't worked together. Don't say you signed up for my product or my newsletter when you haven't. I can check that quite easily as well. Just be honest. If you don't have anything helpful or worthwhile, maybe that's something you need to fix before you go asking for links. It's not even maybe. You absolutely should fix that first. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. I think that comes down to sometimes, I think John Mueller said this before and it's certainly something I've observed, sometimes SEO is not the answer. Sometimes it's that you need to do better, you need to have a better product, or you need to make better content, or you need to do... I guess that's kind of an SEO thing, but sometimes it has to do with other things that aren't specific to SEO or specific to links. Sometimes there's a reason why people aren't linking to your content and maybe because it's not overly unique or maybe because the right people don't know about it or there might be other reasons why, but it's not just because you didn't ask them. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah. If your site is poorly structured, if your architecture's all over the place, you've got errors riddled throughout your website, your content isn't useful, or if it's outdated, fix all of that stuff first before you go out and asking for links. Do the internal linking first as well. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing about that sort of stuff is that kind of thing can improve your performance and improve your natural likeability. For instance, if you had an article that was talking about something like let's say you were an early mover on a particular topic. Let's say you were in an early article on, I don't know, ChatGPT or something like when it ChatGPT had first sort of splashed on the scene. Let's say you go back six months later and you update it because obviously things have changed exponentially in the six months and you go back and you update it to the latest information on that and you add new links or you add new content and things like that. If you tell people on your socials, you tell people on your email newsletters, you tell people in various different things, "Hey guys, I've updated this article that you remember I was one of the first people to write about this. I've updated it now and it's got this new information about this, this and this," then you are more likely to get some natural backlinks from that piece of content than if you just let it sit around and just ask for links to this thing that you're not even looking after. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, yeah. Fully agree with that. Then the other thing I would say is you should be trying to create the type of content that does earn passive patents with no outreach, no effort. If you've got a product that has data that nobody else has, if you're collecting surveys and doing research that nobody else is doing, all of that is excellent content that people will naturally want to cite and link to without you even asking for it. Mordy Oberstein: Let's dive into what you do. You mentioned before, hey, let's get into some of the things that you're doing at your company for building links. What are some of the things that you do and what are some of the things that you don't do? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yes. Like I mentioned, I've been there about three and a half years now, just a little over three and a half years. For the first year, we did absolutely no backlinking outside of the website. We focused on improving the content, improving site architecture, redesigning layouts, all of that stuff. When we did start the backlink program, we started by publishing studies, research from our product data that nobody else had, and then we started using the community to distribute that. We published a study around a new type of ad campaign that Google had put out a few years ago. That took off. A lot of people started linking into it. Really high quality sites, really high quality authors started citing it without us even asking for it. So we said, "All right, there's something in here that's really good." Then over the next six months, what we started to do is we started to blend our guest log program and our rapid program. We still do the guest posts approach, which is where we write for other sites, and we insert our links over there. What we also do is we have PPC experts write for us on our blog, and once they publish that, then there's incentive for them when they write for a search engine lab, a search engine journal or another blog post, there's an incentive for them to link to the content being published on our site. We also then have a massive arsenal of content that we can say, "Look, it's published on our site, but it's published by experts who are renowned and respected in their particular domains." And so we can then go out and ask for links and it might be benefiting us, but the content itself is really deep-rooted in expertise, very rich, very unique insights, a lot of business angle to it. There's no way that people can turn down that kind of richness. We have a really good success rate with outreach, but also passing a backlink by doing this. Mordy Oberstein: It's almost like guest posting is one of these major backlink strategies. I say to you, "Hey, I'll write a post on your website and it'll link back to my website. You write a post on my website and it'll link back to your website." That's a little bit like maybe I wouldn't do that for links. What you're saying is there's ways to get that very similar result by just working with people on content naturally. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Like Crystal said, if you go back and you update an older piece of content and you tell people about it, you're more likely to get that support and get those backlinks. It's just one step further from that to where you say, "I'm going to involve these other people in the creation process and not just the distribution process, and because they have-" We're a pretty solid team in terms of our marketing team understands how PPC works, but we're not PPC marketers, so we can't speak on these topics with the kind of nuance and depth that the experts in themselves can. We figured, why not allow them the real estate to put their information and their learning across? We're just a platform where that happens, so we benefit from the SEO, they get a place to publish their ideas, which is high profile, high visibility, high authority, and then everybody wins at the end of the day. They have another thing that they get into in terms of, "Hey, here's another showcase of my expertise." And we are able to go out and use that content to showcase how valuable we are, get backlinks for it, and of course, something that they can use in future content that they published last spring. Crystal Carter: This is something that you discussed in your fantastic primer on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, if I could just shout that out. The Backlinks 101 article, which goes into lots of the different... For anybody who's new to the idea of backlinks, it's a great place to start. It covers all of this sort of terminology that you need to know, how backlinks work, how you can use them, how they benefit you, all of that sort of stuff. It also gets into some of these tactics. In the section where you talk about this precisely around nurturing relationships with top industry creators and brands, you cover also a few things when you're talking to people not pitching for things that are irrelevant or pitching for people to write about content that's irrelevant. Are you able to talk a little bit about that? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, I mean, when you do want to ask for a backlink or ask for an opportunity to write a guest post so that we can insert backlinks, we make sure that... I mean, if you're trying to work with another company, they need to get some kind of benefit out it. If you're writing about gardening, for example, if that's your area of expertise you're going to want to go to maybe related, not necessarily that it has to be an exchange with another gardening site, you could go into a home care or do-it-yourself kind of niche. There's a lot of adjacent options where there's some synergy, but if you're a gardening expert, you don't want to go to a blog that's about, I don't know for example, baseball and write about that. Mordy Oberstein: You did it on purpose, by the way. Ashwin Balakrishnan: No, I really didn't. It was very subconscious. I saw you and I thought baseball. I was just thinking of sports and I was like all right. Mordy Oberstein: I'm letting it slide. Get it? I'm letting it slide. Crystal Carter: How do you think they keep the grass so green at Wrigley Field? I feel like- Ashwin Balakrishnan: Bad example. Bowling. Crystal Carter: Bowling, okay, all right. Okay. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I mean, there's no gardening in bowling, so you don't want to create a complete clash. For example, this week alone, I've had link requests from one site that publishes niche content on how to find discarded furniture and refurbish it, which has nothing to do with digital marketing. I got another request from- Mordy Oberstein: Just like you refurbish your old furniture, you should refurbish your digital presence. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I mean, at least you're drawing a connection there. Then the way they portrayed it was, "You can write something for our site." I was like, "What am I going to write about refurbishing discarded sofas and chairs and stuff like that?" Crystal Carter: I think that this is one of the things that people... Google talks about unnatural links and being able to identify unnatural links, and I think that that's one of the ways that they're able to see that is that sort of thing. That's not a natural place for you to be. It would be natural, for you Ashwin, to have a link on Wix SEO, because you write for us, you are in the same industry. That makes sense. However, it wouldn't make sense. I don't know what your hobbies are, but it wouldn't make sense for you to be on an ice skating website, for instance. That wouldn't make sense. Or refurbishing furniture, for instance, that wouldn't make sense. That's an unnatural link regardless as to how good the content is necessarily. When they crawl it, they understand what the page is about and those two things are connected. That's not going to benefit you. Ashwin Balakrishnan: That's probably the one place that I would actually recommend still disallowing links is you get a lot of those really buggy, spammy sites that have nothing to do with your domain linking to. You just want to make sure Google knows that, "Hey, I did not ask for this. I have nothing to do with it. I don't want anything to do with it." If you're getting a bunch of work in digital marketing, or if you work in finance and there's a bunch of spammy sites in the same domain that are linking to you, you can safely ignore those because it's purely about the quality of the site. But yeah, domains that have nothing to do with your website, we should absolutely put distance between them, whether it's through you or without your knowledge. You just want to put that distance between you and them. The other area which is slightly controversial, which I've been hearing a lot about lately, is buying links. A bit of a gray area. Like Google, officially their position is don't buy links, but realistically it happens a lot more than we care to admit. I think the thing there again is if you're going to buy links, make sure A, you are willing to accept the risk, and if you are willing to accept the risk, at least play it smart and don't go out. If you've only got three links in the last six months, don't go out and buy a thousand links in the next six months. Make it look natural, if that's what you're going to do. Otherwise, all you're going to do is just attract attention that you put up. Mordy Oberstein: We generally advise, if you're listening, don't buy links. I was going to ask you, what are some practices that are kind of on the borderline for you? You answered my question. I'll be honest. I think there are cases where if you bought links, it would have an impact. Big companies do this. I know for a fact there's a lot of companies out there who do this, who you would be surprised do this. Whether or not it worked... But for the average SEO and for the average site owner for sure, I very much recommend you stay away from that as much as possible. Crystal Carter: I think also having come at it from a backlink audit point of view, like when you're an SEO and you go to a site and you're like, "Oh, I'm just going to audit your backlinks," you can tell if somebody's bought links. Because there's a lot of business owners... Again, if business owners are listening or people who are maybe in charge of marketing, but not necessarily SEO experts, for instance, if you're working with someone and they say, "Oh yeah, we'll do some SEO. We'll just do link building," pay attention to what they're doing for you and pay attention to which links they're talking about getting you because at Bias an SEO can look at your backlink profile and go, "Oh yeah, you bought all those links. Those are all just trash links." Google can too. So be aware of that. I think some of the things with the affiliate, the affiliate updates that they're doing, the spam updates and things like that, and previously they've had previous Google updates, like big ones that were particularly focused on backlink profiles for people, it's something that you have to pay attention to. Make sure. Again, you have in the article about monitoring your backlinks, paying attention to your backlinks. That's an important thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: It's just entirely possible that you pay a lot of money for links and Google might not penalize you, but they do with Penguin, which is completely ignore them, and you've wasted all that money for nothing. I wanted to ask you a few questions. Listen, we titled all this episode, "I Would Do Anything for Links, but I Won't Do That," so I was wondering if you could get a million relevant links from high quality websites, follow links, would you donate a kidney? Would you give away a kidney? Would you sell a kidney? Because you have two. Ashwin Balakrishnan: No, no, Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay, so you wouldn't do that for links. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Okay, so clarify. I wouldn't do it for a website belonging to an organization that employs me. I would consider it for my own website. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, good distinction. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I would consider it. Mordy Oberstein: I should have clarified that. Okay. For your own website, again, lots of links, high quality websites, yada, yada, yada, would you eat spoiled cheese? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: A lot of it? Ashwin Balakrishnan: All cheese is spoiled, Mordy. Crystal Carter: How old is this cheese though? Mordy Oberstein: It's like six months, but it's like cream cheese, six months cream cheese. It's all molding and everything. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Can I scrape the top layer off? Mordy Oberstein: No, you can't even put it on bread. You have to just spoon it out and eat it. Ashwin Balakrishnan: All right. If I can put it on a double garlic bagel, yeah, I would. Mordy Oberstein: All right, that's a level. Okay, so you would do that for links. Would you listen to Abba straight? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Oh yeah, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: For two minutes? Ashwin Balakrishnan: I love Abba. I love Abba. Mordy Oberstein: But you don't like Meatloaf? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, it's a weird thing. Mordy Oberstein: That's a weird one. All right. Crystal Carter: Here we go again. Ashwin Balakrishnan: When I was a kid, they had this Abba cover group, The Eighteens. I went from The Eighteens to Abba. So, I kind of like it. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. All right. My last one, would you stick your fingers into an outlet that you're not sure is on or off? It could be that it's off, but it could also be that it's on. Ashwin Balakrishnan: No, I hate the feeling of electricity. Absolutely hate it. Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting. So you would donate the kidney possibly. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Possibly. Mordy Oberstein: But theoretically, not even do anything to yourself because the outlet's disconnected. It doesn't work. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, I'm not taking conventions. I hate static shock to begin with. Crystal Carter: I'm guessing you've never been on one of those plastic slides. They've got those plastic slides all over the park now. Your kid…. They're just like, and you're like, "What is going on? I don't-" Ashwin Balakrishnan: It's like sensory overlord, just thinking about it. Crystal Carter: Their hair's all sticking out. Mordy Oberstein: It's the worst. Crystal Carter: And there's literal... They come out like an action hero or something. It's like, ah, the power electricity, and you're like, "What's going on here?" Mordy Oberstein: My kid asked me to go down the slide and my only apprehension is static electricity. I'm like, "Ah, I can't. I'm too big." Crystal Carter: I'm wearing polyester. Ashwin Balakrishnan: When I was a kid, they took us on a field trip to the Science Center and they had that big electric metal ball. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah. Ashwin Balakrishnan: They had me put my hand on it and your hair stands up and everything. Then the dude just grabbed my hand and all of this electricity started crackling around me. Ever since then, I've hated the feeling of electricity. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry, we didn't mean to … Ashwin Balakrishnan: It's not like a trauma thing or anything, but yeah, I would absolutely not do it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so there you have it, folks. Don't stick your fingers into electric sockets for links. You heard it here first. So now that you know that, Ashwin, where can people find you? Ashwin Balakrishnan: I'm on Twitter, I say this all the time when people ask me where you can find me. You can find me on Twitter until that product dies. It explodes, sinks, whatever you want to call it. Mordy Oberstein: I'm currently @shadowman, so don't get me started. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, look up the copy trail on Twitter. You can also look me on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's where you'll find me and always happy to talk about marketing SEO stuff, but you'll have to pry that out in me. Crystal Carter: You can also find him on the Wix SEO Learning Hub as one of our expert contributors, contributing lots of expertise. Yeah, do check them out. The article, the backlink article, it's one of our favorite articles on the hub. We love them all, but we also love this one particularly. Do check it out. It covers it in so many different levels and it's useful for whether you're a pro, whether you're a beginner, whether you need a refresher. Do check it out. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well thanks Ashwin, and talk to you soon. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Happy to be on. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking about links and what we discussed with Ashwin, so Google said a lot about links lately, more recently, not like lately, lately, but over the past few months, maybe even a year. They've kind of said links are not as important as you think they are, which I think that makes a lot of sense because links are a secondary signal. So Google's getting better at understanding primary signals than why we're relying on a secondary signal, but that doesn't mean that they're not important. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. The way I kind of think about it is like this, and I try to explain this to folks, a link is like somebody vouching for you. It's like if you stood in the line trying to get into Club Page One and you can hear the music is bumping and you stood in the line with all the other schmos, if somebody who is in the VIP lounge goes, "Hey, they're with me," sometimes that can get you into the VIP lounge, but you still have to actually- Mordy Oberstein: Be cool. Crystal Carter: ... represent yourself. You still have to be cool. You still have to show up and, I don't know, have some decent dance moves or whatever it is that makes you stay in that space. If you don't, then you might not stay. You know what I mean? Just having somebody vouch for you doesn't necessarily mean... That's not the end all be all. It might get you in the door, but it's not going to necessarily keep you there. I think that it's part of the mix. It's not the only thing. It's super useful and it's also useful for discoverability and for- Mordy Oberstein: Traffic. Crystal Carter: ... traffic. Mordy Oberstein: Traffic. Crystal Carter: And also for showing the company that you keep. People say you know somebody by who their friends are. If you're hanging out with those folks, it does say something about you. If you're getting a link from a high profile, high authority site that does say something about you. Mordy Oberstein: What we're trying to say basically is links are still important and we don't want you to think that they're not important. And because of that, we wanted to take a look at the Top of the SERP to see cases or situations or thinking where links actually can be a difference maker. Here's a very special Top of the SERP all about link building. To help us out, we asked famed link builder and founder of Digital Olympus Alexandra Tachalova if she can help describe some cases where links made all the difference and what happened and how did it play out. Here's Alex on what actually worked at the Top of the SERP. \nAlexandra Tachalova: \n Hello everyone. My name is Alex and I am the founder of Digital Olympus. Links still play a significant role in shaping Google service. You can't expect to outrun brand that have been in the market for ages accommodating thousands of links from reputable sites with better content, site structure on page, SO elements and so on. In well-established niches, niches links are a long-term investment. In contrast, we've noted that in recently emerging niches, links become a solid rhythm that results in a rapid boost in organic traffic. Today you acquire link, and tomorrow you see changes in organic traffic. We have a client in the LinkedIn sales niche representing a tool that helps marketers and sales professionals automate certain actions on LinkedIn. This niche is very new, obviously, and the overall level of brand awareness across all the competitor power climates is relatively low. With fewer than 50 links back to the client's main page, we've been able to double their organic traffic from 100,000 to 200,000 in less than six months. We've rarely seen anything like this in other niches we've ever worked with. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Alex, for that. It's a great point, by the way. It kind of speaks to what we just said before. If you're talking about an emerging situation or an emerging topic, so Google doesn't understand the topic the same way that it understands something that's been around for a while. I've seen this myself a gazillion times when I've worked with some semi-news related topics. You really, in order to crack the results, especially when you're competing with, in this case I was talking about a news case where you have other really established websites and Google on top of that is still trying to figure out what the heck this topic actually is, links do play a major role for the reason that we said before that Google doesn't have a grasp on the primary signal, which is the content itself and the topic itself. So it's going to inevitably rely on things like links. It makes a great deal of sense to focus on links, especially like Alex said, where the content or the topic is an emerging area on the web. Crystal Carter: I think that it's something that can help users to give you more clout when they're connecting with your new content. If you're a new brand, it's also something that's super important to make sure that people know who you are based on the links that you have. I think people forget people are crawling from link to link to link. That's how web crawlers work. They crawl from one to the other and they take information from the original place to provide context for the new place that they find themselves at. It's super valuable and you can see some good impact from link building. It's not the end all be all, of course, but it's certainly very, very, very important. Mordy Oberstein: Would you like to buy some of my links? I have high DA. Crystal Carter: The most high DA. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the most high. Crystal Carter: 300 high DA. Mordy Oberstein: You only have 300? I have have 4 million and fire electric power. It's like a Pokemon card. Crystal Carter: I posted that and someone was like, "You can only get 100. Where are you getting 300?" I was like, "Dude, it's not. Dude, honestly." Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah, no, I know people. I know Dr. Pete. I get a high DA. Crystal Carter: Right? Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's the inside scoop. Now speaking of inside scoops, why don't we get into the scoop on this week's news with some Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Oh no, we're losing another tool in Google Search Console, except it doesn't matter. From the great Barry Schwartz in the sky, Googlebot Crawl Rate Tool in Search Console is going away, that coming from Search Engine Land. For the record, the tool didn't help you increase crawling, only decrease crawling, which basically, I don't know if you was having a technical issue, you wanted to slow down crawling until it got fixed, you might use this. Basically for 99.9% of the internet, it doesn't matter. So, thank you Barry. Also, again from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Round Table, follower count, fully live in Google search result snippets. So now you can see the number of followers listed within the actual organic result when that organic result of the social media account. So if you're googling Barry Schwartz and you see a Twitter account there, it'll show all the number of followers there. But I don't see this, so maybe either it's not live globally, although I did try to check it in the US, or Barry's wrong. Who knows? Thanks again, Barry. Article number three from, you guessed it, also from Barry Schwartz, who by the way, at some point, the DOJ, you're going to hit their radar for your monopoly over to the SEO News, Barry. This coming from Search Engine Round Table, Google Bard can now understand YouTube videos. Basically Bard can understand the visual and audio in a YouTube video and then use it to serve up answers to your questions within Bard. I don't know, I personally really don't care, but it does reflect Google investing and understanding audio, and I think there's a lot more that Google can do with leveraging audio onto the SERP, which I think we plan on taking up on this very podcast down the line in a few weeks or so. Other than that, meh, whatever. Thanks again, Barry. That's this week's Snappy News. I just want to say that I could have stopped and said, "Well, that was a great pivot," but I didn't, but now I am, but it's after the fact so it's kind of like my compromise. I didn't want to ruin the pivot by talking about the pivot, but now I'm talking about the pivot we did before. Crystal Carter: Well done. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Crystal Carter: Good job. Mordy Oberstein: Yep, this is the one thing I'm good at. Crystal Carter: You can get a gold star. I feel like we should get patches or something. Mordy Oberstein: I don't want a gold star. I want high DA links. Crystal Carter: Fair enough. Fair enough. That's what everyone dreams of. That's what all little SEOs dream of… Mordy Oberstein: On my tombstone, I want my DA score. Crystal Carter: He had high authority. Mordy Oberstein: He had a DA score of 78. Anyway, we were talking about links and there's plenty of link builders out there who do things like sell high DA links, whatever that even means. I don't even know what that means, but there are people who talk about links and offer some really great SEO advice, which brings us to our Follow of the Week, which is this week BiBi the Link Builder, BiBi Raven @BibiBuzzcom, over on the old Twitter/X/X/Twitter. She's hilarious. She's spunky and she knows what she's talking about, about links. It's like all the things you want in one from a follow on social media. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. She shares a lot of great insights and you can also find her speaking at different events as well. Do keep an eye out for Bibi. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well I have no link to our ending. Crystal Carter: Like Bat Out of Hell. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. We're so far off the beginning of the show, I totally forgot about the Meatloaf thing. Crystal Carter: I mean, you hit it really hard at the beginning. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I should have hit it on the back end. Crystal Carter: To be fair though, the Meatloaf songs that I know I really appreciate, but my Meatloaf playlist is pretty short. Mordy Oberstein: There's only two songs, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I mean pretty much. But then... There's three. There's the Objects and there's the... Oh, I'm falling really short. The other one. Mordy Oberstein: I Would Do Anything for Love, and then that's basically it. Crystal Carter: Yes, and Bat Out of Hell. Mordy Oberstein: There was the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Crystal Carter: He was very good in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Janet. Janet. Mordy Oberstein: There's no more Meatloaf leftover, basically. Crystal Carter: That's so dark. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? We're back next week with a new episode as we get into SEO testing. It's going to get a little testy with the SEO testing next week, huh? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO alerting of it, you guessed it, at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking at a little more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ashwin Balakrishnan Alexandra Tachalova Bibi Raven Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Digital Olympus Backlinks 101: What they are and why they matter News: Googlebot crawl rate tool in Search Console is going away Follower Count Fully Live In Google Search Result Snippets Google Bard Can Now Understand YouTube Videos Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ashwin Balakrishnan Alexandra Tachalova Bibi Raven Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Digital Olympus Backlinks 101: What they are and why they matter News: Googlebot crawl rate tool in Search Console is going away Follower Count Fully Live In Google Search Result Snippets Google Bard Can Now Understand YouTube Videos Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast, where you get some groovy insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined with the fabulously, amazing, incredible, the always annotative, Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: Hello, you content goblins. Mordy Oberstein: And gators. Crystal Carter: And gators. Welcome to the gator party of the internet. Hello everyone. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: For context, this is coming out like six weeks, five weeks after that article from The Verge, which said basically that SEO folks are goblins and gators. Crystal Carter: Spend all our time at gator parties and I have never been to a gator party. Mordy Oberstein: I've never been... Is that like a Miami football thing? Like Miami Gators? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I feel like people have all kinds of fun and I've never had that kind of fun. I did go to a turtle race though. Mordy Oberstein: I've been been to turtle race as a kid. I do remember. That's fun. Crystal Carter: I went to a turtle race. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if- Crystal Carter: I'm sure that the turtles were treated humanely, so I'm sure that that's true. Mordy Oberstein: They seem to be having a great time. They actually got some ooze on them and turned into the giant ninjas afterwards, but that seemed kind of traumatic on- Crystal Carter: I'm sure they're treated humanely. Anyway. Anyway, anyway, people have all sorts of fun. I've never been to a gator party, so I will keep my eye out for the- Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure I want to be. Crystal Carter: I know, honestly, Mordy Oberstein: Steve Irwin went to that one, and you see what happened to him. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/SEO/newsletter, but where you can also utilize our integrations with the likes of Content Contact, Klaviyo and beyond to get your content out there to more people via some solid email marketing, because email marketing is a fabulous way to spread your content so it can get links. So go ahead, email your entire list asking for links. That's how it works. No, don't do that by the way. Don't do that. I'm being facetious. Don't do that. Crystal Carter: No, please don't. Don't. Don't. It's not... Don't. Please don't. Mordy Oberstein: That's a bad idea. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'm saying that, I'm making that joke because this week we're covering, "I Would Do Anything for Links, but I Won't Do That." Sing with me Crystal. (Singing). By the way, that baritone they're chiming in is Ashwin Balakrishnan, who is going to join us in just a Jiffy as we are going to explore the fine line between energetic link building and full on spamming as we get into guest posting for links, how and when to ask for links, where are the line between good and bad link practices is. As I mentioned, to help make the right connection, Optimizer's own Ashwin Balakrishnan is going to join us in just a few minutes. We'll also hear from Digital Olympus's Alexandra Tachalova about when links can make all the difference. And of course, we have your snappy SEO news, who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So buckle up as objects in the link view mirror may appear closer than they are, as episode number 64 of the SERP's Up podcast comes at you like a Bat Out of Hell to tell you we would do anything for links, but we won't do that. No, we won't do that. Crystal Carter: Shout out to Meatloaf. Shout out to Meatloaf. Mordy Oberstein: Objects in the Rear View Mirror. I remember that came on VH1. By the way, wait, wait before we get going, welcome to the show, Ashwin. Ashwin Balakrishnan: It's a show, for sure. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Ashwin Balakrishnan: And for the record, I am Team Crocodile all the way. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Crocodiles over alligators. Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, crocodile party. Crystal Carter: If people don't don't know the difference, you can remember it because an A is pointy and actually alligators have round noses and crocodiles have pointy noses, which is the opposite of a C. There we go. Fun facts. Mordy Oberstein: My life is so much better now. Crystal Carter: I read National Geographic Kids, what can I say? Mordy Oberstein: Back to what's important, Meatloaf. Objects in the Rear View Mirror, when that came on VH1, I remember the video so clearly. Crystal Carter: I can see it in my brain right now. Mordy Oberstein: I could see it in my brain. I'm thinking, who is this dude and why is he singing about what it says on the car mirror thing? Crystal Carter: Yeah, but fully committed. Fully committed. He's 100% committed to all of his overdramatic things. To be honest, if I can just pivot, I think that's how people have to approach link building. You have to be fully committed to what you're doing and fully confident in what you're doing when you get into that. Ashwin, what's your thoughts on that? Ashwin Balakrishnan: I actually discovered Meatloaf through, I guess you could call it, a referral. You remember Pizza Hut back in the 90s had those jukeboxes? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I would flip through that. There was this album of a motorcycle and dude riding a motorcycle and it's like flying through the sky. It's called Meatloaf. I'm like, who the hell names their band Meatloaf? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I never listened to it throughout my entire childhood. I guess that's a good thing. But then when I hit my teens, I was like, all right, let's check out what this Meatloaf music is about. And yeah, it never caught on for me. Mordy Oberstein: But it's a great name, Meatloaf. So wait, before we get into it, let me catch everybody up. Links have been this sort of linchpin of SEO since God knows when, and we do know when, but for dramatic effect, since God knows when, and there's all sorts of theories about how important links are and are they central, are they losing their... I don't want to get into any of that right now. Links are a part of doing SEO. They are a part of ranking, they are a part of the SEO picture. Okay, we can split hairs about how and when. What I want to focus on, what you want to focus on in this episode is when you start trying to get links, when you have one website linking to your own website and the content and the pages on your own website, things get spammy faster than you can say "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are." There's all sorts of confusion, even if you're a pro SEO, about what is and what is not a good idea or against Google's guidelines. That's why we're talking about, again, I would do anything for links, but it won't do that. It's really what works, what doesn't work, and what's legal, what's barely legal and what's completely illegal when it comes to Google's guidelines in garnering links. Hi, Ashwin. Let's have you weigh in on that. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Let me begin by telling you what I would never do. What I would never do for links is the same thing that I would never do for love, which is beg. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, come through action. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Most of my emails these days are people begging, lying, trying to scam me into putting links to their content on Optimizer's website. I've had people email me saying, "Oh, we've worked together before, or I emailed you back in the day for a link when I was managing another domain." I'm like, "No, you didn't." Why just lie about it? I've got people flooding me with requests for links that have nothing to do with digital marketing, let alone PPC. I have people who keep asking me for links like 10 follow-ups in eight days, stuff like that. It's just immediate spam. I just put you in my spam folder and you're done. I never want to hear from you again. That's one thing that I would never do is beg. Don't beg. It's not illegal to beg, but man, it makes you look really, really bad. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Right. I think that I admire the gumption. I admire the energy that goes behind that, but I think that people could potentially put that energy somewhere else because like you, if I get somebody in my inbox giving me that information, immediately block. Somebody on LinkedIn because you get them on LinkedIn as well, if somebody on LinkedIn's like, "Hi, do you want-" I'm like, block, unfollow, done. No, thank you. We're done. I think that I would agree begging doesn't... I mean, there's a theory that says don't ask, don't get, but there's a difference I think. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, yeah. There's a pretty big difference and I have no admiration for it. I think it's just the worst type of energy. Mordy Oberstein: It's bad for your brand too. Ashwin Balakrishnan: It is. Mordy Oberstein: People get those emails. This happens, by the way, even outside of links where you have a, "Hey there, we want to sell you some ad space on our website," and it's a cold outreach and it's really just templatized. You're like, I don't really want to, because that doesn't come across well for your brand. Links to the same thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: You don't want to come across and put your brand in a negative light to people who aren't maybe actually important to you, what your brand does. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Don't beg and don't lie. Don't tell me you worked with me when I know for sure that we haven't. If I can search your name in my email and it's not going to pop up, I know we haven't worked together. Don't say you signed up for my product or my newsletter when you haven't. I can check that quite easily as well. Just be honest. If you don't have anything helpful or worthwhile, maybe that's something you need to fix before you go asking for links. It's not even maybe. You absolutely should fix that first. Crystal Carter: Right, absolutely. I think that comes down to sometimes, I think John Mueller said this before and it's certainly something I've observed, sometimes SEO is not the answer. Sometimes it's that you need to do better, you need to have a better product, or you need to make better content, or you need to do... I guess that's kind of an SEO thing, but sometimes it has to do with other things that aren't specific to SEO or specific to links. Sometimes there's a reason why people aren't linking to your content and maybe because it's not overly unique or maybe because the right people don't know about it or there might be other reasons why, but it's not just because you didn't ask them. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah. If your site is poorly structured, if your architecture's all over the place, you've got errors riddled throughout your website, your content isn't useful, or if it's outdated, fix all of that stuff first before you go out and asking for links. Do the internal linking first as well. Crystal Carter: I think the other thing about that sort of stuff is that kind of thing can improve your performance and improve your natural likeability. For instance, if you had an article that was talking about something like let's say you were an early mover on a particular topic. Let's say you were in an early article on, I don't know, ChatGPT or something like when it ChatGPT had first sort of splashed on the scene. Let's say you go back six months later and you update it because obviously things have changed exponentially in the six months and you go back and you update it to the latest information on that and you add new links or you add new content and things like that. If you tell people on your socials, you tell people on your email newsletters, you tell people in various different things, "Hey guys, I've updated this article that you remember I was one of the first people to write about this. I've updated it now and it's got this new information about this, this and this," then you are more likely to get some natural backlinks from that piece of content than if you just let it sit around and just ask for links to this thing that you're not even looking after. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, yeah. Fully agree with that. Then the other thing I would say is you should be trying to create the type of content that does earn passive patents with no outreach, no effort. If you've got a product that has data that nobody else has, if you're collecting surveys and doing research that nobody else is doing, all of that is excellent content that people will naturally want to cite and link to without you even asking for it. Mordy Oberstein: Let's dive into what you do. You mentioned before, hey, let's get into some of the things that you're doing at your company for building links. What are some of the things that you do and what are some of the things that you don't do? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yes. Like I mentioned, I've been there about three and a half years now, just a little over three and a half years. For the first year, we did absolutely no backlinking outside of the website. We focused on improving the content, improving site architecture, redesigning layouts, all of that stuff. When we did start the backlink program, we started by publishing studies, research from our product data that nobody else had, and then we started using the community to distribute that. We published a study around a new type of ad campaign that Google had put out a few years ago. That took off. A lot of people started linking into it. Really high quality sites, really high quality authors started citing it without us even asking for it. So we said, "All right, there's something in here that's really good." Then over the next six months, what we started to do is we started to blend our guest log program and our rapid program. We still do the guest posts approach, which is where we write for other sites, and we insert our links over there. What we also do is we have PPC experts write for us on our blog, and once they publish that, then there's incentive for them when they write for a search engine lab, a search engine journal or another blog post, there's an incentive for them to link to the content being published on our site. We also then have a massive arsenal of content that we can say, "Look, it's published on our site, but it's published by experts who are renowned and respected in their particular domains." And so we can then go out and ask for links and it might be benefiting us, but the content itself is really deep-rooted in expertise, very rich, very unique insights, a lot of business angle to it. There's no way that people can turn down that kind of richness. We have a really good success rate with outreach, but also passing a backlink by doing this. Mordy Oberstein: It's almost like guest posting is one of these major backlink strategies. I say to you, "Hey, I'll write a post on your website and it'll link back to my website. You write a post on my website and it'll link back to your website." That's a little bit like maybe I wouldn't do that for links. What you're saying is there's ways to get that very similar result by just working with people on content naturally. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Like Crystal said, if you go back and you update an older piece of content and you tell people about it, you're more likely to get that support and get those backlinks. It's just one step further from that to where you say, "I'm going to involve these other people in the creation process and not just the distribution process, and because they have-" We're a pretty solid team in terms of our marketing team understands how PPC works, but we're not PPC marketers, so we can't speak on these topics with the kind of nuance and depth that the experts in themselves can. We figured, why not allow them the real estate to put their information and their learning across? We're just a platform where that happens, so we benefit from the SEO, they get a place to publish their ideas, which is high profile, high visibility, high authority, and then everybody wins at the end of the day. They have another thing that they get into in terms of, "Hey, here's another showcase of my expertise." And we are able to go out and use that content to showcase how valuable we are, get backlinks for it, and of course, something that they can use in future content that they published last spring. Crystal Carter: This is something that you discussed in your fantastic primer on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, if I could just shout that out. The Backlinks 101 article, which goes into lots of the different... For anybody who's new to the idea of backlinks, it's a great place to start. It covers all of this sort of terminology that you need to know, how backlinks work, how you can use them, how they benefit you, all of that sort of stuff. It also gets into some of these tactics. In the section where you talk about this precisely around nurturing relationships with top industry creators and brands, you cover also a few things when you're talking to people not pitching for things that are irrelevant or pitching for people to write about content that's irrelevant. Are you able to talk a little bit about that? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, I mean, when you do want to ask for a backlink or ask for an opportunity to write a guest post so that we can insert backlinks, we make sure that... I mean, if you're trying to work with another company, they need to get some kind of benefit out it. If you're writing about gardening, for example, if that's your area of expertise you're going to want to go to maybe related, not necessarily that it has to be an exchange with another gardening site, you could go into a home care or do-it-yourself kind of niche. There's a lot of adjacent options where there's some synergy, but if you're a gardening expert, you don't want to go to a blog that's about, I don't know for example, baseball and write about that. Mordy Oberstein: You did it on purpose, by the way. Ashwin Balakrishnan: No, I really didn't. It was very subconscious. I saw you and I thought baseball. I was just thinking of sports and I was like all right. Mordy Oberstein: I'm letting it slide. Get it? I'm letting it slide. Crystal Carter: How do you think they keep the grass so green at Wrigley Field? I feel like- Ashwin Balakrishnan: Bad example. Bowling. Crystal Carter: Bowling, okay, all right. Okay. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I mean, there's no gardening in bowling, so you don't want to create a complete clash. For example, this week alone, I've had link requests from one site that publishes niche content on how to find discarded furniture and refurbish it, which has nothing to do with digital marketing. I got another request from- Mordy Oberstein: Just like you refurbish your old furniture, you should refurbish your digital presence. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I mean, at least you're drawing a connection there. Then the way they portrayed it was, "You can write something for our site." I was like, "What am I going to write about refurbishing discarded sofas and chairs and stuff like that?" Crystal Carter: I think that this is one of the things that people... Google talks about unnatural links and being able to identify unnatural links, and I think that that's one of the ways that they're able to see that is that sort of thing. That's not a natural place for you to be. It would be natural, for you Ashwin, to have a link on Wix SEO, because you write for us, you are in the same industry. That makes sense. However, it wouldn't make sense. I don't know what your hobbies are, but it wouldn't make sense for you to be on an ice skating website, for instance. That wouldn't make sense. Or refurbishing furniture, for instance, that wouldn't make sense. That's an unnatural link regardless as to how good the content is necessarily. When they crawl it, they understand what the page is about and those two things are connected. That's not going to benefit you. Ashwin Balakrishnan: That's probably the one place that I would actually recommend still disallowing links is you get a lot of those really buggy, spammy sites that have nothing to do with your domain linking to. You just want to make sure Google knows that, "Hey, I did not ask for this. I have nothing to do with it. I don't want anything to do with it." If you're getting a bunch of work in digital marketing, or if you work in finance and there's a bunch of spammy sites in the same domain that are linking to you, you can safely ignore those because it's purely about the quality of the site. But yeah, domains that have nothing to do with your website, we should absolutely put distance between them, whether it's through you or without your knowledge. You just want to put that distance between you and them. The other area which is slightly controversial, which I've been hearing a lot about lately, is buying links. A bit of a gray area. Like Google, officially their position is don't buy links, but realistically it happens a lot more than we care to admit. I think the thing there again is if you're going to buy links, make sure A, you are willing to accept the risk, and if you are willing to accept the risk, at least play it smart and don't go out. If you've only got three links in the last six months, don't go out and buy a thousand links in the next six months. Make it look natural, if that's what you're going to do. Otherwise, all you're going to do is just attract attention that you put up. Mordy Oberstein: We generally advise, if you're listening, don't buy links. I was going to ask you, what are some practices that are kind of on the borderline for you? You answered my question. I'll be honest. I think there are cases where if you bought links, it would have an impact. Big companies do this. I know for a fact there's a lot of companies out there who do this, who you would be surprised do this. Whether or not it worked... But for the average SEO and for the average site owner for sure, I very much recommend you stay away from that as much as possible. Crystal Carter: I think also having come at it from a backlink audit point of view, like when you're an SEO and you go to a site and you're like, "Oh, I'm just going to audit your backlinks," you can tell if somebody's bought links. Because there's a lot of business owners... Again, if business owners are listening or people who are maybe in charge of marketing, but not necessarily SEO experts, for instance, if you're working with someone and they say, "Oh yeah, we'll do some SEO. We'll just do link building," pay attention to what they're doing for you and pay attention to which links they're talking about getting you because at Bias an SEO can look at your backlink profile and go, "Oh yeah, you bought all those links. Those are all just trash links." Google can too. So be aware of that. I think some of the things with the affiliate, the affiliate updates that they're doing, the spam updates and things like that, and previously they've had previous Google updates, like big ones that were particularly focused on backlink profiles for people, it's something that you have to pay attention to. Make sure. Again, you have in the article about monitoring your backlinks, paying attention to your backlinks. That's an important thing to do. Mordy Oberstein: It's just entirely possible that you pay a lot of money for links and Google might not penalize you, but they do with Penguin, which is completely ignore them, and you've wasted all that money for nothing. I wanted to ask you a few questions. Listen, we titled all this episode, "I Would Do Anything for Links, but I Won't Do That," so I was wondering if you could get a million relevant links from high quality websites, follow links, would you donate a kidney? Would you give away a kidney? Would you sell a kidney? Because you have two. Ashwin Balakrishnan: No, no, Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay, so you wouldn't do that for links. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Okay, so clarify. I wouldn't do it for a website belonging to an organization that employs me. I would consider it for my own website. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, good distinction. Ashwin Balakrishnan: I would consider it. Mordy Oberstein: I should have clarified that. Okay. For your own website, again, lots of links, high quality websites, yada, yada, yada, would you eat spoiled cheese? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: A lot of it? Ashwin Balakrishnan: All cheese is spoiled, Mordy. Crystal Carter: How old is this cheese though? Mordy Oberstein: It's like six months, but it's like cream cheese, six months cream cheese. It's all molding and everything. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Can I scrape the top layer off? Mordy Oberstein: No, you can't even put it on bread. You have to just spoon it out and eat it. Ashwin Balakrishnan: All right. If I can put it on a double garlic bagel, yeah, I would. Mordy Oberstein: All right, that's a level. Okay, so you would do that for links. Would you listen to Abba straight? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Oh yeah, absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: For two minutes? Ashwin Balakrishnan: I love Abba. I love Abba. Mordy Oberstein: But you don't like Meatloaf? Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, it's a weird thing. Mordy Oberstein: That's a weird one. All right. Crystal Carter: Here we go again. Ashwin Balakrishnan: When I was a kid, they had this Abba cover group, The Eighteens. I went from The Eighteens to Abba. So, I kind of like it. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. All right. My last one, would you stick your fingers into an outlet that you're not sure is on or off? It could be that it's off, but it could also be that it's on. Ashwin Balakrishnan: No, I hate the feeling of electricity. Absolutely hate it. Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting. So you would donate the kidney possibly. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Possibly. Mordy Oberstein: But theoretically, not even do anything to yourself because the outlet's disconnected. It doesn't work. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, I'm not taking conventions. I hate static shock to begin with. Crystal Carter: I'm guessing you've never been on one of those plastic slides. They've got those plastic slides all over the park now. Your kid…. They're just like, and you're like, "What is going on? I don't-" Ashwin Balakrishnan: It's like sensory overlord, just thinking about it. Crystal Carter: Their hair's all sticking out. Mordy Oberstein: It's the worst. Crystal Carter: And there's literal... They come out like an action hero or something. It's like, ah, the power electricity, and you're like, "What's going on here?" Mordy Oberstein: My kid asked me to go down the slide and my only apprehension is static electricity. I'm like, "Ah, I can't. I'm too big." Crystal Carter: I'm wearing polyester. Ashwin Balakrishnan: When I was a kid, they took us on a field trip to the Science Center and they had that big electric metal ball. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah. Ashwin Balakrishnan: They had me put my hand on it and your hair stands up and everything. Then the dude just grabbed my hand and all of this electricity started crackling around me. Ever since then, I've hated the feeling of electricity. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry, we didn't mean to … Ashwin Balakrishnan: It's not like a trauma thing or anything, but yeah, I would absolutely not do it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so there you have it, folks. Don't stick your fingers into electric sockets for links. You heard it here first. So now that you know that, Ashwin, where can people find you? Ashwin Balakrishnan: I'm on Twitter, I say this all the time when people ask me where you can find me. You can find me on Twitter until that product dies. It explodes, sinks, whatever you want to call it. Mordy Oberstein: I'm currently @shadowman, so don't get me started. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, look up the copy trail on Twitter. You can also look me on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's where you'll find me and always happy to talk about marketing SEO stuff, but you'll have to pry that out in me. Crystal Carter: You can also find him on the Wix SEO Learning Hub as one of our expert contributors, contributing lots of expertise. Yeah, do check them out. The article, the backlink article, it's one of our favorite articles on the hub. We love them all, but we also love this one particularly. Do check it out. It covers it in so many different levels and it's useful for whether you're a pro, whether you're a beginner, whether you need a refresher. Do check it out. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well thanks Ashwin, and talk to you soon. Ashwin Balakrishnan: Happy to be on. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking about links and what we discussed with Ashwin, so Google said a lot about links lately, more recently, not like lately, lately, but over the past few months, maybe even a year. They've kind of said links are not as important as you think they are, which I think that makes a lot of sense because links are a secondary signal. So Google's getting better at understanding primary signals than why we're relying on a secondary signal, but that doesn't mean that they're not important. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. The way I kind of think about it is like this, and I try to explain this to folks, a link is like somebody vouching for you. It's like if you stood in the line trying to get into Club Page One and you can hear the music is bumping and you stood in the line with all the other schmos, if somebody who is in the VIP lounge goes, "Hey, they're with me," sometimes that can get you into the VIP lounge, but you still have to actually- Mordy Oberstein: Be cool. Crystal Carter: ... represent yourself. You still have to be cool. You still have to show up and, I don't know, have some decent dance moves or whatever it is that makes you stay in that space. If you don't, then you might not stay. You know what I mean? Just having somebody vouch for you doesn't necessarily mean... That's not the end all be all. It might get you in the door, but it's not going to necessarily keep you there. I think that it's part of the mix. It's not the only thing. It's super useful and it's also useful for discoverability and for- Mordy Oberstein: Traffic. Crystal Carter: ... traffic. Mordy Oberstein: Traffic. Crystal Carter: And also for showing the company that you keep. People say you know somebody by who their friends are. If you're hanging out with those folks, it does say something about you. If you're getting a link from a high profile, high authority site that does say something about you. Mordy Oberstein: What we're trying to say basically is links are still important and we don't want you to think that they're not important. And because of that, we wanted to take a look at the Top of the SERP to see cases or situations or thinking where links actually can be a difference maker. Here's a very special Top of the SERP all about link building. To help us out, we asked famed link builder and founder of Digital Olympus Alexandra Tachalova if she can help describe some cases where links made all the difference and what happened and how did it play out. Here's Alex on what actually worked at the Top of the SERP. \nAlexandra Tachalova: \n Hello everyone. My name is Alex and I am the founder of Digital Olympus. Links still play a significant role in shaping Google service. You can't expect to outrun brand that have been in the market for ages accommodating thousands of links from reputable sites with better content, site structure on page, SO elements and so on. In well-established niches, niches links are a long-term investment. In contrast, we've noted that in recently emerging niches, links become a solid rhythm that results in a rapid boost in organic traffic. Today you acquire link, and tomorrow you see changes in organic traffic. We have a client in the LinkedIn sales niche representing a tool that helps marketers and sales professionals automate certain actions on LinkedIn. This niche is very new, obviously, and the overall level of brand awareness across all the competitor power climates is relatively low. With fewer than 50 links back to the client's main page, we've been able to double their organic traffic from 100,000 to 200,000 in less than six months. We've rarely seen anything like this in other niches we've ever worked with. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Alex, for that. It's a great point, by the way. It kind of speaks to what we just said before. If you're talking about an emerging situation or an emerging topic, so Google doesn't understand the topic the same way that it understands something that's been around for a while. I've seen this myself a gazillion times when I've worked with some semi-news related topics. You really, in order to crack the results, especially when you're competing with, in this case I was talking about a news case where you have other really established websites and Google on top of that is still trying to figure out what the heck this topic actually is, links do play a major role for the reason that we said before that Google doesn't have a grasp on the primary signal, which is the content itself and the topic itself. So it's going to inevitably rely on things like links. It makes a great deal of sense to focus on links, especially like Alex said, where the content or the topic is an emerging area on the web. Crystal Carter: I think that it's something that can help users to give you more clout when they're connecting with your new content. If you're a new brand, it's also something that's super important to make sure that people know who you are based on the links that you have. I think people forget people are crawling from link to link to link. That's how web crawlers work. They crawl from one to the other and they take information from the original place to provide context for the new place that they find themselves at. It's super valuable and you can see some good impact from link building. It's not the end all be all, of course, but it's certainly very, very, very important. Mordy Oberstein: Would you like to buy some of my links? I have high DA. Crystal Carter: The most high DA. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, the most high. Crystal Carter: 300 high DA. Mordy Oberstein: You only have 300? I have have 4 million and fire electric power. It's like a Pokemon card. Crystal Carter: I posted that and someone was like, "You can only get 100. Where are you getting 300?" I was like, "Dude, it's not. Dude, honestly." Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah, no, I know people. I know Dr. Pete. I get a high DA. Crystal Carter: Right? Precisely. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's the inside scoop. Now speaking of inside scoops, why don't we get into the scoop on this week's news with some Snappy SEO News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Oh no, we're losing another tool in Google Search Console, except it doesn't matter. From the great Barry Schwartz in the sky, Googlebot Crawl Rate Tool in Search Console is going away, that coming from Search Engine Land. For the record, the tool didn't help you increase crawling, only decrease crawling, which basically, I don't know if you was having a technical issue, you wanted to slow down crawling until it got fixed, you might use this. Basically for 99.9% of the internet, it doesn't matter. So, thank you Barry. Also, again from Barry Schwarz, but this time from Search Engine Round Table, follower count, fully live in Google search result snippets. So now you can see the number of followers listed within the actual organic result when that organic result of the social media account. So if you're googling Barry Schwartz and you see a Twitter account there, it'll show all the number of followers there. But I don't see this, so maybe either it's not live globally, although I did try to check it in the US, or Barry's wrong. Who knows? Thanks again, Barry. Article number three from, you guessed it, also from Barry Schwartz, who by the way, at some point, the DOJ, you're going to hit their radar for your monopoly over to the SEO News, Barry. This coming from Search Engine Round Table, Google Bard can now understand YouTube videos. Basically Bard can understand the visual and audio in a YouTube video and then use it to serve up answers to your questions within Bard. I don't know, I personally really don't care, but it does reflect Google investing and understanding audio, and I think there's a lot more that Google can do with leveraging audio onto the SERP, which I think we plan on taking up on this very podcast down the line in a few weeks or so. Other than that, meh, whatever. Thanks again, Barry. That's this week's Snappy News. I just want to say that I could have stopped and said, "Well, that was a great pivot," but I didn't, but now I am, but it's after the fact so it's kind of like my compromise. I didn't want to ruin the pivot by talking about the pivot, but now I'm talking about the pivot we did before. Crystal Carter: Well done. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. Crystal Carter: Good job. Mordy Oberstein: Yep, this is the one thing I'm good at. Crystal Carter: You can get a gold star. I feel like we should get patches or something. Mordy Oberstein: I don't want a gold star. I want high DA links. Crystal Carter: Fair enough. Fair enough. That's what everyone dreams of. That's what all little SEOs dream of… Mordy Oberstein: On my tombstone, I want my DA score. Crystal Carter: He had high authority. Mordy Oberstein: He had a DA score of 78. Anyway, we were talking about links and there's plenty of link builders out there who do things like sell high DA links, whatever that even means. I don't even know what that means, but there are people who talk about links and offer some really great SEO advice, which brings us to our Follow of the Week, which is this week BiBi the Link Builder, BiBi Raven @BibiBuzzcom, over on the old Twitter/X/X/Twitter. She's hilarious. She's spunky and she knows what she's talking about, about links. It's like all the things you want in one from a follow on social media. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. She shares a lot of great insights and you can also find her speaking at different events as well. Do keep an eye out for Bibi. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well I have no link to our ending. Crystal Carter: Like Bat Out of Hell. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. We're so far off the beginning of the show, I totally forgot about the Meatloaf thing. Crystal Carter: I mean, you hit it really hard at the beginning. Mordy Oberstein: I know. I should have hit it on the back end. Crystal Carter: To be fair though, the Meatloaf songs that I know I really appreciate, but my Meatloaf playlist is pretty short. Mordy Oberstein: There's only two songs, right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I mean pretty much. But then... There's three. There's the Objects and there's the... Oh, I'm falling really short. The other one. Mordy Oberstein: I Would Do Anything for Love, and then that's basically it. Crystal Carter: Yes, and Bat Out of Hell. Mordy Oberstein: There was the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Crystal Carter: He was very good in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Janet. Janet. Mordy Oberstein: There's no more Meatloaf leftover, basically. Crystal Carter: That's so dark. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? We're back next week with a new episode as we get into SEO testing. It's going to get a little testy with the SEO testing next week, huh? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO alerting of it, you guessed it, at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking at a little more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Who is SEO testing for? When is it worthwhile to run an SEO test? What if you don’t have a huge amount of data, is SEO testing still a viable option? Subjecting your website's SEO to testing can be extremely insightful. It can also be extremely complex. Will Critchlow, CEO and founder of SearchPilot joins Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein, and Crystal Carter to evaluate how you should conduct SEO tests on your website. Get insights into the guidelines for when it’s appropriate to run an SEO test and when the tactic may not be worth your while. Go beyond the SEO testing process by understanding how to analyze your findings and apply them to your SEO strategy. Keep your eyes on your own paper as this week we discuss the ins and outs of SEO testing here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Putting SEO to the test Who is SEO testing for? When is it worthwhile to run an SEO test? What if you don’t have a huge amount of data, is SEO testing still a viable option? Subjecting your website's SEO to testing can be extremely insightful. It can also be extremely complex. Will Critchlow, CEO and founder of SearchPilot joins Wix’s own Mordy Oberstein, and Crystal Carter to evaluate how you should conduct SEO tests on your website. Get insights into the guidelines for when it’s appropriate to run an SEO test and when the tactic may not be worth your while. Go beyond the SEO testing process by understanding how to analyze your findings and apply them to your SEO strategy. Keep your eyes on your own paper as this week we discuss the ins and outs of SEO testing here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 65 | December 6, 2023 | 48 MIN 00:00 / 48:17 This week’s guests Will Critchlow Will Critchlow is CEO of SearchPilot, a company that spun out of his previous business Distilled, which was acquired by Brainlabs in early 2020. SearchPilot is an enterprise SEO A/B testing platform that proves the value of SEO for the world’s biggest websites by empowering them to make agile changes and test their impact. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahala, for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm already over to the SEO Branding here at Wix. I'm joined by our Head of SEO Communications, the true tried and tested, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: That was a shorter intro than normal. Are you testing out something different? Mordy Oberstein: Because I didn't know how to... The tested part is a part on today's topic, but I didn't know how to tie that into a longer... Crystal Carter: So you're experimenting, are you? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, maybe testing the... Yeah. If you're listening, which one do you like better, when I do a pun tied into the Crystal's title or I just go full on, "The incredible, the fabulous, the amazing, the unparalleled Crystal Carter"? Crystal Carter: Don't know where you get all of the adjectives from. I don't know where they all come from. Literally, I ran out of adjectives years ago. I just do a fire emoji, whatever it is in my fire Emoji. Mordy Oberstein: I officially have diarrhea of the mouth. So it helps. Crystal Carter: That's clinical condition. I hope it's not. I hope you're okay. Mordy Oberstein: You can talk to my wife, ask her. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also create custom widgets that you can use across all the sites that you manage for your clients, or just some of the sites or many of the sites that you manage for your clients. Really, what I'm saying is it's up to you where you want to replicate those custom widgets that you create. And I'm saying you can do it with Wix Studio. Perhaps by the way, you can take two versions of that widget and test each one as today's topic is SEO testing. That's right. We are the Doc Browns of the digital world. And unlike fourth graders everywhere, in SEO, we love tests and testing. We're diving into what you should or shouldn't run with an SEO test, when you should or shouldn't run an SEO test. And how do you run an SEO test if you need a gargantuan amount of data to draw any conclusions. To help us prep for this SEO test in the sky, CEO and founder of SearchPilot, Will Critchlow is set to join us in just a few minutes. We'll also give you a great and classic run through of a tool to help you run some SEO research that kind of touches upon SEO testing in a unique way. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So close your books and keep your eyes on your own damn papers as episode number 64 of the SERP's Up Podcast, which is your conceptions of SEO experimentations to the test. By the way, when I say, "Eyes on your damn own paper," I say that with full conviction as a former teacher, "Eyes on your own damn paper." Crystal Carter: I think that's a really important thing to think about. But although it's strange though, because at school, they're always like, "No, no, no, your own thing, your own thing." But then when you get into the world of work, they're like, "You have to work together." And I'm like, "No, it's mine. It's mine. I know this and they don't. And I should get a gold star." But that's not how life is. You have to share. Mordy Oberstein: I used to always like making jokes that went a little bit, just a little bit over the kids' heads. That's my way of being aggressive. It was a fifth grade, sixth grade class and every year, it was Baltimore City. The whole state rather, makes you do this whole ridiculous testing, set of testing every year. And everyone, it's a whole day of inspectors coming around to see who's doing what and make sure all the rules are being followed. Some kid had his notebook on his desk. I'm like, "Dude, you can't have a notebook on your desk." He's like, "What notebook? Where did that come from?" I'm like, "Oh, it must be the Immaculate Notebook." Anyway, anyway, as the idea of testing children brings up a lot of anxiety for me and the children, we would like to welcome to the show, Will Critchlow. Hey Will, how are you? Will Critchlow: Hey, good to join you. Thanks for having me on the show. Crystal Carter: So absolutely honored. I think when we think of as you're testing, you're the first person I think of- Will Critchlow: Good. Good. Crystal Carter: ... if I'm completely honest. And so yeah, it's a real honor to have you and to have you go through your methods, and talk about how you can get some good results and set some good hypotheses, and set out to get something that's actually actionable out of a test. Will Critchlow: Looking forward to it. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: So great. Before we get going, Mark is going to mark a quick plug for what you do. Will Critchlow: Yeah. So as you said, I'm founder and CEO at SearchPilot. You can find us at searchpilot.com or at SearchPilot on the social channels. So we focus really at the enterprise end of the market. We make software that helps really big websites test for SEO. And so our customers tend to be in travel, real estate, jobs, E-commerce, those kinds of verticals where you have really huge websites. And our software helps them run SEO tests just like the ones that we're going to talk about today. And out of the back of that, we obviously get a load of learnings, things that we discover, and we try and give some of that back to the community and publish a bunch of tests and test results on our website at searchpilot.com. Crystal Carter: I should highly recommend anybody who's interested in this to visit the SearchPilot case studies folder. They've got it broken down into a lot of different things. So they've got test inconclusive, negative, winning, things like that, and they've always got a control at a variant and they really break down a lot of good examples of how you can test and things you can test. One of the ones that's currently at the top is then, how valuable is unique content for SEO and testing? That is interesting. Will, I can see your eyes lighting up on that. I don't know if you want to jump in on that one. Will Critchlow: Well, the whole area of the site, you're absolutely right. So we basically try to produce the stuff that I wish had existed as content when I was a consultant. And so it all feeds into, we have an email newsletter you can sign up on the case study section and we just send these out every couple of weeks. And they're all coming from these tests that we've run with our customers. And I find it fascinating. I find it fascinating to test myself and figure out if I can work out what's going to have gone on. And yet, specifically things like that one where you're saying we all have the best practices in mind, we all know what Google says, we all know what the soundbites are. And many of us, we can give them conference presentations about this stuff. But when you try and quantify it, it gets really tough to kind of actually say, "Is it worth investing the money that it's going to take to upgrade this particular piece of content or this particular section of the page? Mordy Oberstein: So maybe that's a good place to start, sort of loop in everybody who's listening to this podcast, what is an SEO test exactly and what are you testing? Will Critchlow: Yeah. Great question. So most people can be familiar with conversion rate testing or user experience testing, the kind of thing that you'd run typically with a JavaScript plugin on your website, where you show different versions of a page to different website visitors. And then you see whether the group who saw version A convert better or the group who saw version B convert better. And that's been around for well over a decade now and folks are generally familiar with that kind of technology. We're trying to bring that same level of rigor and statistical approach to the SEO world, which as we all know, we've all been in it for a while, has a history of being less than scientific in some areas. So the kinds of tests that we are talking about when I say SEO tests, we're trying to run these controlled scientific experiments. And unlike a CRO test where you show two versions of the same page to half your users at a time, the way an SEO test works, because you kind of have to think of Googlebot as one visitor, is we take a large site section, so a whole bunch of pages that are in what we call a site section, a group of pages with a similar page template. So think for example, product listing pages on an E-commerce website and we make changes to some of those pages and not to others. So we have a controlled group of pages and a variant group of pages. And all users including Googlebot, see that there's no cloaking, no duplication, all that kind of stuff. And then by looking at the relative performance of the different groups of pages, you can run a bunch of statistics and figure out a confidence interval on the impact of the specific change that you made. And the crucial thing here is that that then allows us to account for all of the confounding variables. So whether it's seasonality, other changes to the website, Google algorithm updates, things your competitors are doing, all these things that mean your analytics moves around all over the place, we're controlling for all of that. And we're saying, "Given all of the stuff that's going on in the outside world, here's the impact of this specific, very small, very specific change to those pages." Crystal Carter: And I think just to break down a couple of those things, so you mentioned a few things showing. So just to catch up anybody who's new to these ideas, so you said showing one set of information to one group and showing another group to another one that's referred to as an AD test. So that's if anybody wants to look up more and more of that. You also talked about controls and variables, and I think that that's a really important thing to dive into a little bit about how you identify the controls. So if you were to think of, I don't know, I'm trying to think of something like a medicine for instance. Normally, if they're testing a new medicine, they'll have a control group which gets a placebo, which is essentially sugar pill. So it changes nothing. They've changed to nothing. So essentially on a website, you're doing something similar where you have one site where you haven't changed anything. Will Critchlow: That's right. So yeah, the control pages are exactly like that. They're the ones where nothing has changed. And so that doesn't of course, mean that traffic stays completely flat on those pages. Right? It can increase or decrease for a million other reasons. But the fact that we know that we didn't do anything to those pages means that we can take that data, apply it to our analysis of what happened to the pages that did change, and we can tease out what happened because we did something versus what happened just because the world changed. Crystal Carter: And you're doing those things at the same time. So let's say over the month of July, so let's say you had the blog, right? Let's say you had the blog and you had one set of things and you're like, "We're not going to change these blogs at all. We're going to change these blogs, so that one is the control group, one is the other, and it happens at the same time." And so just to catch few people up. And presumably, you also have to tell everyone involved in the team not to touch anything on those pages, including devs. Will Critchlow: So actually, there is a lot of coordination and communication needed, which we can kind of get into. But actually, it is okay for that to be site-wide changes to the site in the meantime, as this stuff is happening. Because that all gets taken care of by the control and variant because those changes tend to happen randomly. They don't happen to every page across the control group and the variant group and therefore, they count seasonality or algorithm updates or whatever else, or they happen randomly. It's like this page gets it, that page doesn't. But those pages, some of them will be in the control group and some of them will be in the variant group. So where we are coming from is as I say, we're working on these really big websites and that's where you can get into this really detail-level statistical analysis. Some of our tests, we're calling us statistically confident result of plus 2% of organic traffic, which just disappears into the noise on a small business website, or a typical blog or whatever else. And really, what I'm hoping, and this will again, we'll get deeper into this, what I'm hoping is that the work that we are doing on these big websites by publishing some of that analysis and by deconstructing it and doing the thinking about it, we get to help even those small business owners or those folks who are working on smaller websites. And that's kind of like as I say, I wish that had existed when I was a consultant, kind of paying it forward into that part of the industry as well. Crystal Carter: Well, I think it's so valuable because even 2%, and I know that if you're starting with a small blog, let's say you've got... I don't know, you've got a thousand views a month or something like that and let's say you think 2%, the thing about SEO is it compounds. And I think the other thing is once you learn how to test hypothesis in SEO, then you can grow really quickly. So it might be that you learn how to test that, and then the next time, you can test another thing, and then you're adding and adding and adding. Because I think so often, people will just do something and have no idea what impact they expect it to have, have no idea whether it had any impact. And I think even with small teams, one of the things I've seen, and this is why I wanted to pull up the control thing, is that sometimes they'll be like, "Oh, but we did a PPC change," or "Oh, but we did this, that, and the other change." And I think sometimes with SEO, particularly if you're helping someone with their SEO, you need to be able to evidence that you did the work. Do your tests help with that process? Will Critchlow: So definitely, they do on the kind of sites that we're working with where we get to... Because we're controlling out all that other stuff, so we get to say notwithstanding all these other effects, "Here's the impact of this change." And without going deep into our specialism too much, you get some really quite cool dashboards where you have a list of SEO initiatives and each one has an associated uplift or decrease associated with it and a degree of statistical confidence attached to it. And that's the kind of thing that really helps with broader communication with the business and I mentioned earlier, the lack of scientific rigor is one problem in SEO. I think another one is too many of us historically, have not been great at talking business. I'm guilty of this. I'd love geeking out about robots.txt or whatever it might be, hreflang, the business doesn't speak that language. That's not what the CMO, CFO, whoever else cares about, CEO. And we're trying to bridge that gap and help bring those metrics that the business cares about connected to the effort and the work that folks are putting in as well. Mordy Oberstein: What's a case off the top of your head, that you really saw that come through? You run an SEO test, and then you run through the whole thing and the outcome was, "Hey look, if we did this, your bottom line's going to increase by whatever percent." Will Critchlow: So actually, I don't think it's specifically the case study that you were mentioning, Crystal, but we had a very similar one, testing content quality, which we've had a few really fascinating ones that have led to businesses making specific investments in different areas or not investing in different areas. Because the big thing about this is very contextual. So it depends on your website, your industry, your place in the market, what your competitors are doing. But I remember one case where the team we were working with built a business case to invest in a whole load of high quality freelance written... Basically, bring in a bunch of editors and writers and overhaul a whole site section's worth of content. And they did that with an initial test on, I think it was like a hundred pieces of content, proved the substantial uplift that came from it, quantified it, turned that into business metrics and said, "Look, the cost of doing this is X thousand dollars. The benefit is a bigger number. Should we go for it?" And that definitely helped with that kind of sign off. But the great thing about testing is you see the inverse where we've definitely had cases where folks are like, "Should we do this, run the numbers?" No, probably not. Actually, time and effort and money is better spent elsewhere. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And running the test, that can save you so much of that hassle between going all the way down. And then people are like, "How come we didn't see? We did all that stuff and how come nothing happened?" And I think the other thing that's really important is that if you have that too many times, you lose some momentum with regards to SEO buy-in and SEO investment and things. So it's really important to- Will Critchlow: Yeah, for sure. So you definitely see it with the executives. Executives get bored of just hearing these pie-in-the-sky numbers that maybe are going to materialize year after year. We also see it in trust between SEO teams and product and engineering teams as well, because a lot of SEO requests are not very exciting engineering requests. It's like, "Hey guys, we want you to change the titles again." And they're like, "I mean, I was hoping to do some machine learning." And there's a disconnect sometimes between the things that the SEO team wants the engineering product team to work on and what's exciting and interesting for an engineering product team to work on. And one of the things that we found is by running these tests, we're able to reduce the number of requests that go to engineering because we're now only asking them to do the good stuff, which might only be 20% of the work that we previously would've asked for to get all of the benefit. And crucially, each ticket that's raised has an uplift associated with it. And so even if it's not the most exciting day at work, it's a rewarding day at work because they know that they've added to the bottom line and- Crystal Carter: Right. And you can get a gold star. Will Critchlow: A gold star, a raise, a bonus, whatever it might be. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. I think also, when you're working with devs, engineering teams, et cetera, it's always great to tell them about those uplifts like, "Hey, remember those title tags we asked you for?" Will Critchlow: Your work did this. Yeah, absolutely. And everybody wants to know their work is meaningful and that it makes a difference to the organization that they're working for. And part of our purpose at SearchPilot, part of it is the kind of SEO-centric. We want to prove the value of SEO for the world's biggest websites, is how we phrase it. But we have another piece, which is about creating great jobs. And that is almost like a layered approach where we're saying, "First of all, we want to have good jobs at SearchPilot," in like a direct sphere of influence. But the next layer out is we want to make the jobs better for the folks that we're interacting with, whether it's our customers, whether it's their colleagues and their stakeholders, whether it's all these different things and we see that coming together. I love it. We occasionally share in our Slack when one of our customers posts a job ad that says, "We are hiring for an SEO manager," and there's a line item that says, "It's going to get to run SEO tests." And we're like, "Yes." That means that folks are going to work at this company because they're going to work with SearchPilot. Crystal Carter: That's awesome. Will Critchlow: If those dots join up, that's what gets me out of bed still, whatever. I'm 18 years into my SEO career now. Mordy Oberstein: Pushing gears just a little bit, if you're let's say the average site, it's not a huge enterprise site and you're looking at let's say both the content on the SearchPilot blog, you're trying to take away some lessons and you're saying, "You know what? Maybe I should run some tests." Can they take away lessons from what you're putting out in terms of the content and can they run some sort of equivalent test even though statistically speaking, they do not have the amount of data that you're working with? Will Critchlow: For sure. So I've been in this boat. Yeah, I've consulted with small organizations. I mean, SearchPilot, our own website in fact, is the kind of site you're talking about. We are not in our own target market. We unfortunately, can't really run these statistically significant SEO tests on our own site. So I feel you. If the folks who are listening, who are in that situation, I have a couple of recommendations. I think the biggest lessons that I've applied in those situations from the work that we are doing at scale is first of all, do read that content. We are putting out these test results that are tested on very large websites. And the fact that they won't apply exactly perfectly in your niche, in your industry on your site, doesn't mean that they're not directionally useful. And so in particular, consuming that it tells you, look, if this is only consistently we're seeing that these kinds of tests are very small uplifts or typically no big impact, that's probably going to not be a massive impact on your site either. So it's a source of inspiration, a source of ideas, source of direction. The second piece I would say is there are things you can do that fall short of a full scientific double-blind controlled, whatever gold standard test that are still valuable. The first of those goes back to what you were saying Crystal, about communication, that a big part of it is communication and documentation. So one of the great things that we have is that every time we roll out a test, we know exactly when it started, we know exactly what we changed, we have that record of... And that could just be an Excel file, right? It does not have to be some kind of sophisticated platform, but knowing what you changed when, why you changed it, what your hypothesis was, why you thought this was a good idea, even just having that list of stuff you did and when and why, that's a huge part of building that business case when the boss comes back or the client comes back and says, "What have you been up to and what was the benefit of that?" It also lets you then do basically, the next best thing to the kind of testing that we're talking about, which is before and after testing, which is to say you can at least look at how things have gone since you made the change, compared to how they were prior to making that change. I was going to say it's the thing I'm most sad about on the GA-III to GA-IV transition, but let's probably not go there, but the loss of the annotations is killing me. Crystal Carter: It's so simple. Will Critchlow: It's so sad. I mean, there's so much that's so sad, but that's so sad. But literally, you can just do the before and after. And you just have to be aware that that can easily be confounded by outside effects. So like your saying Crystal, if somebody releases a major update to your website or you change other things in your advertising or your strategy or whatever, that's going to screw with your data. And I have a presentation, a conference deck that I run through sometimes, which highlights this where I show the before and after data, but we managed to launch right over the time that a Google algorithm update happened. And then two weeks later, it was Thanksgiving or whatever, there was some kind of holiday, and so the traffic goes all over the place. And you're like, you just can't expect to detect a couple of percentage points. You can tell if it's up 20%. You can tell if it's down 20%, but you're not going to be able to tell that kind of fine-grained data. But my argument is that's okay, because if you are in that spot where you were talking about earlier, you're getting a thousand organic visits a month to your blog, an extra two visits a month, that's not what you're getting out of bed for. You're probably better putting that effort into writing a new blog post or connecting with some folks and doing some outreach or whatever it might be doing the thing, rather than doing the micro-level optimizations that can make all the difference in the kind of hyper-competitive big website space. Mordy Oberstein: If you are in that position and you do want to start doing some testing, what might be a good way to say, "Okay, this is not worth my time. I shouldn't bother testing it." Or you know what? This scenario might be worthwhile to run to try something and see maybe it did, maybe it didn't work. What are some, I guess, guidelines around when it might be worth it? Will Critchlow: So I've got some guidelines. I've also got a really specific example of a time when I did this. So as I mentioned on SearchPilot.com, our website isn't big enough to run our own kinds of tests. So what I did for ours was those case studies that we were talking about earlier, I literally downloaded a kind of CSV file of the titles and method descriptions on, however, many it was at the time when I did it, 100, 200. So that kind of order of magnitude and did a manual rewrite of titles and methods. And I think that's worked out well for us. Basically, we'd got in the habit of being quite introspective in how we described those things and I wanted to make them a bit more problem-centric, figuring that folks would be going on Google searching things like, should I put the brand at the beginning or end of my title tags? And so I was like, our title should answer that question or should at least tell you that the answer to that question is in this post. So I just did that kind of quite opinionated, not very scientific rewrite, kept track of when I did it and could see the... Can't quantify exactly, but could see that it was performing better afterwards versus before. So my general rule of thumb is on small sites in particular, the place I would start is things that overlap between ranking signals and display in the search results signal. So title is the place that I would start. Because if you remember before machine learning, our paid search colleagues, almost their whole job was optimizing the advert to get more people to click on it. It was like tons of people's jobs in the industry. But on the SEO side, I feel like folks have massively under-invested in click-through rate. Even if you don't rank better, even if you stay ranky in the position you are already in, you can double, triple your click-through rate by writing a better, more compelling whatever. And the great thing about the title is you might even rank better as well. And so that's why I did start on SearchPilot and that's where I'd recommend folks start if they've got a smaller website. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There's some great case studies. Adding a question mark into a title tag is a case study on SearchPilot and it's like a 5% uplift on that. Will Critchlow: We've got all kinds of little data points. I also would say, if you're in a small business space, trust your intuition as well. Make these things... Just take kind of a customer-centric approach. What's your target market? What are they actually looking for? Are you actually solving their problem or answering their question? When we get deep into this in our enterprise space, we end up running what we call full funnel tests, which is where we get to test SEO performance and conversion rate offer specific change. So you can say this was positive for one, but negative for the other. How are we going to mitigate that problem or whatever? We can get deeper into that. Point being, there can be attention. And in particular, there can be attention... If you're a B2B desk, SearchPilot is a great example, we actually want to appear for things that in-house SEOs at very large websites are searching for. If we write something that gets a whole load of, I don't know, analysts or agencies searching for it, then our traffic stats might increase, but our business metrics aren't going to. And so again, we are running scientific tests on this stuff. If you are at the smaller size, that's where you have to trust the fact that you are the business, you know the business, you know your market, you know the audience, and you have to hone in on those things that are going to appeal to them and are going to work for them. Crystal Carter: And I think also certainly, what I've found, I wonder if you'd also recommend this for smaller businesses, one of the benefits of working at an agency or working with an agency is that agencies are able to test techniques across multiple websites at the same time. And so if you have a small business, and I know a lot of people who recommend having your main site and also having a test site, that's a similar thing or maybe something else where you can sort of test something in a sort of low, low-risk area. Is that something that you would also recommend for smaller businesses, that they also maybe have, particularly if they're SEO nerds, although I guess not everybody who's a business owner is an SEO nerd. Shame, but... Will Critchlow: It's a shame. One day. So where I would come from on that is test sites are useful to the SEO nerds. They're not particularly useful to the business. That's my kind of controversial, maybe controversial position. If I'm in the business owner's shoes, I'm saying, "Let's not waste our time messing around over there. Let's write some more blog posts or produce some more content," or whatever it might be. Where the test bed site is useful in my opinion, is answering questions for nerds like us. And you can get some great conference presentations out of it. We've probably seen Olly Mason's stuff, for example, where he'll do the kind of destructive testing. What happens if I make my site map take 30 seconds to load or whatever? And you're like, you don't want to do that on your money maker. Crystal Carter: No. Will Critchlow: So he's doing that kind of testing where he's saying, "I want to really figure out what happens with Google at these edge cases. If I do something that seems odd or that seems weird, can I poke at the algorithm in specific ways?" And I get answers out of that. I'm glad he's doing that work. I'm also glad none of my customers are doing it on their stuff. And so that is valuable work. And so that's the third kind of testing. So we have the kind of stuff that we are doing, the big kind of controlled experiment. We have the before and after type analysis that we talked about, which doesn't quite reach the threshold for scientific testing, but it's the best you can do in certain situations. And the third kind, which is kind of more like what Olly is often doing, is what I call kind of laboratory testing. So you're taking a completely artificial situation and you're doing something weird and you're saying, "When I poke Google like this, what happens?" And that's like, I know I indexed every page on my site or I tried to use temporary redirects across the whole thing just to see what would happen and... Yeah, but we learn. So like I said, I'm glad other people do those experiments and we can learn from them. In particular, that's where folks run these experiments with made up words. Right? So you make up some words, put them out on domains that have never been indexed before and see if does the link order matter, right? So on one website, you put the links in one order on the menu, and then on the other website, you put them in a different order in the menu and you see which one ranks for this made up nonsense word that nobody's ever searched for before. That's closer to doing science, right? You're kind of saying, Google is this black box and we really want to understand into the minutiae of what's going on. It's not always actionable. It doesn't always turn into, "I should do this on my business website and make more money." So it's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, I think if you're a business owner, that's kind of the mentality you should be walking away after listening to this podcast. You should always be looking at things, testing things, seeing what's working, what's not working, changing things around when it does make sense. Don't just change things around for the sake of changing things around. Don't change big things around for the sake of changing big things around because that will not end up well for you. But you do want to be in a learning mode and seeing what works, what doesn't work. Sometimes correlation doesn't equal causation, sometimes it does. I'll quote Barry Adams. "Having some data is better than having no data." So work with what you got. Will Critchlow: I think that's particularly true if in the small business world, you do your best to understand what's going on and you use your instinct and you use your understanding of the industry and the market, along with that data. And I think where it's dangerous if we're quoting random quotes at each other, there's that saying about some people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost for support, not illumination. And if you go looking for the answer that you think you want to find- Mordy Oberstein: You will find it. Will Critchlow: Especially in a small amount of data, you can find anything you want. You just look on different days, look on different... Keep digging into the data until you find that one thing that backs up the thing you hoped or you wished was true. And my experience at the small business end is that when stuff is good, it moves the needle enough that you can spot it. Right? You start getting more inquiries, you start getting better inquiries. Folks start to set, they'll call you up and they say, "I was reading this thing on your website." And it's that qualitative subjective feedback that layers on top of the stats in the small business world, for me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. If people wanted to learn from you, where could they find you? Will Critchlow: So I'm @willcritchlow on all the social places. I have historically, been most active on Twitter, but it's kind of a weird place right now, isn't it? Crystal Carter: It's somewhere with GA-III. Will Critchlow: So sad. So sad. I am on threads. I'm probably most active on a combination of Twitter and LinkedIn still. So yeah, I haven't quite figured out my long-term home, but I'm definitely more about the writing and reading than the taking photos and looking at photos. So I'm more likely to be found on the Twitter and LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: You're not on Instagram? Will Critchlow: I have an Instagram account. I think I have 10 photos on there. The last one was like two years ago. They're mainly pictures of my dog and that kind of stuff these days. Yeah, nobody's getting any SEO insight out of my Instagram. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But they did see what you ate for dinner though. Will Critchlow: Three years ago. Sure. Mordy Oberstein: That works. Well, thank you so much. Folks, check out the show notes and check out all of links, all the links to Will's various profiles, probably not his Instagram profile. I don't think I'm going to throw that in there. If you really want me to, Will, I will put the Instagram. No? Will Critchlow: I think it's probably for the best that we leave folks to find that themselves if they really want to. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Thank you so much. Will Critchlow: Thank you. It's been great. Thanks for having me on. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of testing things, one tool that can help you do more than testing, but I also think it can help you do testing, is the Wayback Machine. What is the Wayback Machine? Let's go back and find out as we go tool time on the SERP's Up Podcast. The Wayback Machine is the coolest name for anything on the planet. Well, you will not find it at waybackmachine.com. It's internet Archive. I want you to be aware of this. If you're looking for like, "Hey, the Wayback Machine," I recommend you just Google it, as opposed to putting in wayback.machine.com. I don't know what that will give you. Crystal Carter: No. So the actual address is archive.org/web and that gets lead to- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Google Wayback Machine. You'll be good to go. That's how I find it. Crystal Carter: Basically, what the Wayback Machine is, and the first time I found out about this, I was like, "Oh my gosh." Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. I just showed this to somebody last week and they were, "What? What is this voodoo? What is this magic that you have?" Crystal Carter: Right. Right. So for those of y'all who are civilians in the SEO community, for those of y'all who are deep, deep in the weeds of SEO, the Wayback Machine is this fantastic, incredible archive of over 840 billion web pages saved over time. Some of these for years, and years, and years, and years. If you have a new client who's had a domain for a while, you can go into Wayback Machine and you can see old versions of their website. You can see old versions of certain pages on the website. And I've had this before where I had a client who came to me and we were just doing a migration, but they had recently had another migration a couple of years ago. And two years ago isn't that long in terms of a website migration. So I was able to see what their website not before, not the one that I was looking at now, but before that, what that was, and that can give you some insights into that. What's really great and the reason why it's a great tool for testing and for understanding testing stuff is that if you're looking at the analytics and you're seeing that they used to have this great conversion rate on a particular page or they used to have tons of traffic to a particular page- Mordy Oberstein: What happened? Crystal Carter: What happened, why did it change? Well, you can cross-reference the dates that you see that activity happening, or the ranking or the whatever. And with the Wayback Machine, and you can see... So it says, okay, let's say in 2020, they were ranking really, really well for potato mashers. I don't know why we're mashing potatoes today, but that's what we're doing. Mordy Oberstein: I'm making potato salad for lunch. Crystal Carter: Okay. You're mashing potatoes for potato salad? You're chopping them. You're cubing them. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So that's the ones I know about potato salad. Crystal Carter: We're cubing the potatoes. We're not using the potato masher for the potato salad. We're mashing potatoes for mashed potatoes. Okay. Anyways, maybe we're doing stuffed mashed potato skins. You mash them, and then you put the skins back in with other tasty treats. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know what that is. Crystal Carter: Okay. I'm distracted. Anyway, okay, so what you do, so you have a potato masher webpage, and let's say it used to convert really, really well in 2020. And now, it's not converting really well or maybe it dropped off a cliff recently. And if someone saying, "We used to do really well with this page. I don't understand," you can go back to 2020 and look at the potato masher page and see what was on that page and maybe it used to have the picture right at the top. And now, it has the picture further down the bottom and you can go, "Okay, well, it seems like this is an issue and we should fix that. It's a fantastic tool for illustrating those kinds of changes. And when you compare it with traffic and when you compare it with activity, it can be really, really useful for helping you to understand things that you can do with the website, things that you used to do with the website, things that maybe you should bring back, things maybe you should burn with fire, whatever you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: It's really great for contextualizing. Essentially, that's what it is. It's a way to contextualize if you have a new client and you want to go back and see. Okay, they have a whole ranking history. I can see the ranking history. What happened? What went on here? For a lot of the things that you're going to look at, particularly the content, you can go back and see what happened. If all of a sudden they changed their content, it's right around the same time as the helpful content let's say, comes out. There you go. That's the first place to start looking. If it's a competitor, what happened? All of a sudden, their rankings are up and what do they do? What happened? What's going on? You can take a look. I've used it to analyze content trends. I recently did this to... There's whole focus on experience in content and rankings using the actual experience. And I went back and looking at a whole bunch of product review sites. Seeing how many times he used the word, our and we two years ago, three years ago, how often they're using our and we now, a lot more now by the way. So for those kinds of things, it's amazing. Crystal Carter: It's really useful. And I think it's also really great when you're looking at your competitors because sometimes if you've got a client for instance, and they're on your vertical and they've said, "We've done this, this, and this, and this website started... We fell behind at this time," you can go and you can look on their competitor's site and say, "Okay, did they have a migration at that time?" And you can say, "Does this website from two years ago still look the same as it does now? Does this website from six months ago still look the same as it does now?" Because you can't really call up the competitors and go, "Hey, can you just tell me your full web history?" They're not going to tell you that. So you can go onto Wayback Machine and you can look that up and it's super, super useful. There's an API that's attached to it as well that can help you to understand. And also, you can see information about... Sometimes you can see things like the site map even on Wayback Machine, which can be useful and you can see different elements of it. It's a super useful tool. Every year, they say, "Would you like to donate money to the Wayback Machine?" And every year, I'm like, "Yeah, you know what? You guys can have a fiber." Because there's been so many times on the Wayback Machine that it has saved my bacon. There's a situation though... I think the one that really stood out for me was I had a client and we did a migration. And suddenly, their pages weren't getting indexed at the same rate. And I was like, "We need these pages indexed. They need to be indexed now. Why aren't they being indexed?" And I compared the new homepage to the old homepage, and the old homepage had a feed of the new content. And the new homepage did not have a feed of the new content. And I was like, "Y'all, do you see this?" Mordy Oberstein: Feed the content. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And they were like, "Oh, okay." So they put the feed on and everything was exactly as I expected it to be. So absolutely, use Wayback Machine to solve issues. It's particularly useful for migrations and it's also useful for trying to fill gaps maybe between what a client knows. Because sometimes, you get a client and they know the full history of the website. Sometimes it's a brand new marketing manager and they have no idea what did or didn't happen before. So yeah, it's really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: Cool. Go back. See previous versions of web pages. Not all of them show up because if it's a random, random, random page, they didn't archive it, but a lot of the ones that you would think wouldn't be there, are there. And the best part is, you don't need a flux capacitor and going 88 miles an hour in DeLorean to go back in time. You could just go to the Wayback Machine. Now, speaking of the Wayback Machine, I was just looking at somebody recently who was using the Wayback Machine. It was Barry Schwartz using the way- Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he just had it saved. I'm pretty sure he is using the Wayback Machine to see, and he used it to see changes in Google's guidelines. Crystal Carter: So Barry Schwartz is himself or the- Mordy Oberstein: A Wayback Machine? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Are you saying that because his dress and design style, that's what I'm looking for, is not up-to-date? Crystal Carter: Barry, I didn't say that. Okay. What I'm saying is that I've done research on featured snippets. And if you want to, for instance, see research on featured snippets, he's been covering featured snippets the entire time. So for decks and stuff, I very often reference photos that he shared of different things from 2016. This is what a product carousel looked like in 2016, and now I can compare it to what it looks like now. They'll share things from like, "This is what this looked like, this is what an instant answer looked like in 2014. And I can compare it to what it looks like now." Barry Schwartz is an incredible- Mordy Oberstein: It's the way back machine of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Of the SERP, precisely. And it's really useful for understanding, again, if you're thinking about there's traffic changes, why does my traffic change? If you're looking and you're looking at some of the SERP photos of what it said, what it looked like in 2018 versus what it looks like now, then you can say, "Okay, well, that's our future changed." And I have evidence of this, thanks to Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: What we're basically trying to say is, it's now time for the Snappy news as brought to you by Barry Schwartz. So here's the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news this week on trifecta from none other, but Barry Schwartz. This one coming from Search Engine Land. Google Search now supports discussion form and profile page structure data. So basically, Google is on a first person first hand knowledge, first hand experience kick as well they should be. The E for experience in E-A-T being a prime example of this, but Google has said they want to show they haven't made a couple announcements trying to show more first hand knowledge on the SERP. This structured data would allow such content from forums to show up as a rich result. So Google said, "that the functionality allows them to show" first person perspectives on social media platforms, forums, and other communities. By the way, I think Google needs to go beyond social media for this content, which is why I think they're focusing on forums here with the profile page structure data. They know they need to go beyond social media and actually have content specifically generated for this kind of purpose. The "Search Engine Land," the new profile page structure data and markup is for any site where creators, either people or organizations, share first hand perspectives. The markup will help Google highlight the creator's name or social handle, profile photo, follower account, or the popularity of their content in the Google Search results. So if someone on your forum, you want to make sure that they're kind of prominent because Google's going to pull on their profile information. I think forum SEO is going to be a thing. Google is very serious about showing first hand knowledge on the SERP. It's a wider content trend that if Google wants to deal with, I don't know, TikTok, is going to have to do. Google's made a variety of announcements kind of showing that they are going to do that, this being one of them. First hand knowledge, first person knowledge experience is going to be a thing, just like forum content SEO, which I termed I have just coined, is going to be a thing. Next up from Barry Schwartz, this is from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Discover showing older content since follow feature. This was spotted by Glenn Gabe. If you don't know who Glenn Gabe is, please follow Glenn Gabe on Twitter, X, whatever it is. And Glenn basically said that he's noticing more content showing on the Discover feed that is not from the last day or so. So generally speaking, Google Discover shows current event-ish kind of content. So the content is generally very fresh, a couple of hours a day, maybe two days old. Once in a while, it'll sprinkle in a four-day-old post, but Glenn's noticing that he's getting articles that are two months old. I personally noticed that the last month or so, my feed has changed. The topics have sort of opened up a little bit. The type of content that Google shows in my personal Discover feed is opening up a little bit. I wonder if Google is making some more foundational changes to the Discover feed as it tries. Because again, Discover feed is a great place where Google can kind of be a sort of social media-ish kind of content provider. So I wonder if they're going to make some significant changes as time goes along, and wider preferences and content consumption trends change. Okay. Last up from Barry Schwartz, this one from seroundtable.com. Google November 2023 core update rollout is now complete. So as of the time of this recording, the November 2023 review update is still rolling out, but by the time you hear this, it might be done. So check your local news provider, AKA Barry, to see if that is finished. But check your rankings because the core update from the November 2023 core update rather, is done rolling out. I have some fresh Semrush data in my hands. It looks like generally speaking, the November 2023 core update was slightly more comprehensive, powerful, potent, however, you want to volatile, however, you want to phrase it. Then the October 2023 core update is a little bit tricky to pull the data out because you could only look at the really very beginning of the November 2023 core update. Otherwise, you start getting that mixed, that volatility/ranking data mixing in with the November 2023 review update, and that makes it hard to decipher. So the beginning of the November 2023 core update looked to be a little bit more impactful overall, but that needs to be explained or qualified than the October 2023 core update. Check your ranking is what I'm trying to say in a nutshell. And with that, that is this week's snappy news. The best part is, I'm going to drop the fourth wall here. We recorded the main section of the podcast before we actually recorded the news. We're waiting for the last second to see what actually broke in the news, but we're so confident that Barry's going to be the one covering it, that we tease out Barry beforehand. So thank you Barry, for that. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of SEO testing, going back full circle to where we all started, there's somebody we used to be following on social media because she's done some pretty nifty things around SEO testing. And she is Maria Amelie White over on Twitter. It's @Maria_Amelie on X/Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes, but Crystal's got a great thing about what she tried doing with Spanglish. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So Maria is an in-house SEO at Kurt Geiger. I'm not jealous at all. But yeah, she's an in-house SEO. She's super smart, super clever. And I was on a discussion with her and she was talking about a fantastic test that she did around SEO and PPC that was around language. So I think her team was advertising in a Spanish language market and also in an English language market. And they found that sometimes some of their Spanish judges shown in the US, for instance, and also in Mexico for instance, where there's a border. But she also said to the team, she was like, "Hey, this is something that I've seen. What about Spanglish?" And they were like, "Oh, I don't know." And she said, "No, we should test Spanglish." And she found that... And a lot of people are searching this way, and if people speak this way where there's sort of areas where people are speaking multiple languages, there's plenty of countries like that, and she found that they got some great results from incorporating Spanglish into their ads. And I think that that's something that Will was talking about as well, is that sometimes it's worth following your instinct as well. So that was something that she knew from lived experience and she was able to apply that, and to test it and to get great results. And I think that with regards to testing, if you've got a hunch, absolutely test your hunch. And she got some great results from that, and that was one of the reasons why I thought of her. She's also super knowledgeable and is really active in the community. Mordy Oberstein: Very active in the community. Writes for Search Engine Land. You can check all of her articles there. Look for her Twitter profile in our show notes, and then read her articles across the web. Thanks, Maria. By the way, Spanglish is a terrible Adam Sandler movie. I'm literally here like, why does Spanglish sound so familiar? This is the third time you mentioned that case to me before. I'm like, "Something's not right." I'm like, "Oh snap, it's an Adam Sandler movie from years ago." Crystal Carter: When you say it's terrible, do you mean that it's terrible within the pantheon of Adam Sandler movies or that it's terrible in full stop? Mordy Oberstein: No. He's got some great movies. Uncut Gems, that's a gem right there. Crystal Carter: I don't know that one. Mordy Oberstein: It's great. Crystal Carter: I mean, Happy Gilmore. I'm there for that one. I'm there for... Oh gosh, there's a few other ones. Mordy Oberstein: The Waterboy? Crystal Carter: Waterboy. It's terrible because I don't think it's one of his best, but I even like Little Nicky. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's the devil one. I barely remember that. Then there was the one where- Crystal Carter: It's like a basketball skit. Mordy Oberstein: ... he adopts a kid. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Big Daddy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. He's also done some good animated stuff recently. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crazy Eight Nights. That's a classic in my household. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. He's got some good stuff. He's got some good stuff. Mordy Oberstein: He's got great stuff. He did a bunch of stuff like an NBA movie kind of thing, where he's a scout. That was a great movie. All right. All right. I think we're off the rails. No, no. You got one more. Go for it. You've got one more. Just do it. Crystal Carter: I can't think of the words. I can't think. I was just thinking of as far as terrible Adam Sandler movies, there's one where they go camping or something. It's awful. It's got a great cast, but the movie is fundamentally awful. Mordy Oberstein: There was a point in his career where it was kind of hit or miss. And I think lately, he's been consistently awesome. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Adam. 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 with a new episode as we dive into. I'm not telling you, it's a surprise. It's a very special episode. That'll be a live recording from one of SEO's biggest conferences on the planet. That's right. Look for it whenever 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 on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, @wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Will Critchlow Maria Amelie Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube SearchPilot News: Google Search now supports discussion forum and profile page structured data Google November 2023 core update rollout is now complete Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Will Critchlow Maria Amelie Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube SearchPilot News: Google Search now supports discussion forum and profile page structured data Google November 2023 core update rollout is now complete Google Discover Showing Older Content Since Follow Feature Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahala, for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm already over to the SEO Branding here at Wix. I'm joined by our Head of SEO Communications, the true tried and tested, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: That was a shorter intro than normal. Are you testing out something different? Mordy Oberstein: Because I didn't know how to... The tested part is a part on today's topic, but I didn't know how to tie that into a longer... Crystal Carter: So you're experimenting, are you? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, maybe testing the... Yeah. If you're listening, which one do you like better, when I do a pun tied into the Crystal's title or I just go full on, "The incredible, the fabulous, the amazing, the unparalleled Crystal Carter"? Crystal Carter: Don't know where you get all of the adjectives from. I don't know where they all come from. Literally, I ran out of adjectives years ago. I just do a fire emoji, whatever it is in my fire Emoji. Mordy Oberstein: I officially have diarrhea of the mouth. So it helps. Crystal Carter: That's clinical condition. I hope it's not. I hope you're okay. Mordy Oberstein: You can talk to my wife, ask her. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also create custom widgets that you can use across all the sites that you manage for your clients, or just some of the sites or many of the sites that you manage for your clients. Really, what I'm saying is it's up to you where you want to replicate those custom widgets that you create. And I'm saying you can do it with Wix Studio. Perhaps by the way, you can take two versions of that widget and test each one as today's topic is SEO testing. That's right. We are the Doc Browns of the digital world. And unlike fourth graders everywhere, in SEO, we love tests and testing. We're diving into what you should or shouldn't run with an SEO test, when you should or shouldn't run an SEO test. And how do you run an SEO test if you need a gargantuan amount of data to draw any conclusions. To help us prep for this SEO test in the sky, CEO and founder of SearchPilot, Will Critchlow is set to join us in just a few minutes. We'll also give you a great and classic run through of a tool to help you run some SEO research that kind of touches upon SEO testing in a unique way. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So close your books and keep your eyes on your own damn papers as episode number 64 of the SERP's Up Podcast, which is your conceptions of SEO experimentations to the test. By the way, when I say, "Eyes on your damn own paper," I say that with full conviction as a former teacher, "Eyes on your own damn paper." Crystal Carter: I think that's a really important thing to think about. But although it's strange though, because at school, they're always like, "No, no, no, your own thing, your own thing." But then when you get into the world of work, they're like, "You have to work together." And I'm like, "No, it's mine. It's mine. I know this and they don't. And I should get a gold star." But that's not how life is. You have to share. Mordy Oberstein: I used to always like making jokes that went a little bit, just a little bit over the kids' heads. That's my way of being aggressive. It was a fifth grade, sixth grade class and every year, it was Baltimore City. The whole state rather, makes you do this whole ridiculous testing, set of testing every year. And everyone, it's a whole day of inspectors coming around to see who's doing what and make sure all the rules are being followed. Some kid had his notebook on his desk. I'm like, "Dude, you can't have a notebook on your desk." He's like, "What notebook? Where did that come from?" I'm like, "Oh, it must be the Immaculate Notebook." Anyway, anyway, as the idea of testing children brings up a lot of anxiety for me and the children, we would like to welcome to the show, Will Critchlow. Hey Will, how are you? Will Critchlow: Hey, good to join you. Thanks for having me on the show. Crystal Carter: So absolutely honored. I think when we think of as you're testing, you're the first person I think of- Will Critchlow: Good. Good. Crystal Carter: ... if I'm completely honest. And so yeah, it's a real honor to have you and to have you go through your methods, and talk about how you can get some good results and set some good hypotheses, and set out to get something that's actually actionable out of a test. Will Critchlow: Looking forward to it. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Thank you so much. Mordy Oberstein: So great. Before we get going, Mark is going to mark a quick plug for what you do. Will Critchlow: Yeah. So as you said, I'm founder and CEO at SearchPilot. You can find us at searchpilot.com or at SearchPilot on the social channels. So we focus really at the enterprise end of the market. We make software that helps really big websites test for SEO. And so our customers tend to be in travel, real estate, jobs, E-commerce, those kinds of verticals where you have really huge websites. And our software helps them run SEO tests just like the ones that we're going to talk about today. And out of the back of that, we obviously get a load of learnings, things that we discover, and we try and give some of that back to the community and publish a bunch of tests and test results on our website at searchpilot.com. Crystal Carter: I should highly recommend anybody who's interested in this to visit the SearchPilot case studies folder. They've got it broken down into a lot of different things. So they've got test inconclusive, negative, winning, things like that, and they've always got a control at a variant and they really break down a lot of good examples of how you can test and things you can test. One of the ones that's currently at the top is then, how valuable is unique content for SEO and testing? That is interesting. Will, I can see your eyes lighting up on that. I don't know if you want to jump in on that one. Will Critchlow: Well, the whole area of the site, you're absolutely right. So we basically try to produce the stuff that I wish had existed as content when I was a consultant. And so it all feeds into, we have an email newsletter you can sign up on the case study section and we just send these out every couple of weeks. And they're all coming from these tests that we've run with our customers. And I find it fascinating. I find it fascinating to test myself and figure out if I can work out what's going to have gone on. And yet, specifically things like that one where you're saying we all have the best practices in mind, we all know what Google says, we all know what the soundbites are. And many of us, we can give them conference presentations about this stuff. But when you try and quantify it, it gets really tough to kind of actually say, "Is it worth investing the money that it's going to take to upgrade this particular piece of content or this particular section of the page? Mordy Oberstein: So maybe that's a good place to start, sort of loop in everybody who's listening to this podcast, what is an SEO test exactly and what are you testing? Will Critchlow: Yeah. Great question. So most people can be familiar with conversion rate testing or user experience testing, the kind of thing that you'd run typically with a JavaScript plugin on your website, where you show different versions of a page to different website visitors. And then you see whether the group who saw version A convert better or the group who saw version B convert better. And that's been around for well over a decade now and folks are generally familiar with that kind of technology. We're trying to bring that same level of rigor and statistical approach to the SEO world, which as we all know, we've all been in it for a while, has a history of being less than scientific in some areas. So the kinds of tests that we are talking about when I say SEO tests, we're trying to run these controlled scientific experiments. And unlike a CRO test where you show two versions of the same page to half your users at a time, the way an SEO test works, because you kind of have to think of Googlebot as one visitor, is we take a large site section, so a whole bunch of pages that are in what we call a site section, a group of pages with a similar page template. So think for example, product listing pages on an E-commerce website and we make changes to some of those pages and not to others. So we have a controlled group of pages and a variant group of pages. And all users including Googlebot, see that there's no cloaking, no duplication, all that kind of stuff. And then by looking at the relative performance of the different groups of pages, you can run a bunch of statistics and figure out a confidence interval on the impact of the specific change that you made. And the crucial thing here is that that then allows us to account for all of the confounding variables. So whether it's seasonality, other changes to the website, Google algorithm updates, things your competitors are doing, all these things that mean your analytics moves around all over the place, we're controlling for all of that. And we're saying, "Given all of the stuff that's going on in the outside world, here's the impact of this specific, very small, very specific change to those pages." Crystal Carter: And I think just to break down a couple of those things, so you mentioned a few things showing. So just to catch up anybody who's new to these ideas, so you said showing one set of information to one group and showing another group to another one that's referred to as an AD test. So that's if anybody wants to look up more and more of that. You also talked about controls and variables, and I think that that's a really important thing to dive into a little bit about how you identify the controls. So if you were to think of, I don't know, I'm trying to think of something like a medicine for instance. Normally, if they're testing a new medicine, they'll have a control group which gets a placebo, which is essentially sugar pill. So it changes nothing. They've changed to nothing. So essentially on a website, you're doing something similar where you have one site where you haven't changed anything. Will Critchlow: That's right. So yeah, the control pages are exactly like that. They're the ones where nothing has changed. And so that doesn't of course, mean that traffic stays completely flat on those pages. Right? It can increase or decrease for a million other reasons. But the fact that we know that we didn't do anything to those pages means that we can take that data, apply it to our analysis of what happened to the pages that did change, and we can tease out what happened because we did something versus what happened just because the world changed. Crystal Carter: And you're doing those things at the same time. So let's say over the month of July, so let's say you had the blog, right? Let's say you had the blog and you had one set of things and you're like, "We're not going to change these blogs at all. We're going to change these blogs, so that one is the control group, one is the other, and it happens at the same time." And so just to catch few people up. And presumably, you also have to tell everyone involved in the team not to touch anything on those pages, including devs. Will Critchlow: So actually, there is a lot of coordination and communication needed, which we can kind of get into. But actually, it is okay for that to be site-wide changes to the site in the meantime, as this stuff is happening. Because that all gets taken care of by the control and variant because those changes tend to happen randomly. They don't happen to every page across the control group and the variant group and therefore, they count seasonality or algorithm updates or whatever else, or they happen randomly. It's like this page gets it, that page doesn't. But those pages, some of them will be in the control group and some of them will be in the variant group. So where we are coming from is as I say, we're working on these really big websites and that's where you can get into this really detail-level statistical analysis. Some of our tests, we're calling us statistically confident result of plus 2% of organic traffic, which just disappears into the noise on a small business website, or a typical blog or whatever else. And really, what I'm hoping, and this will again, we'll get deeper into this, what I'm hoping is that the work that we are doing on these big websites by publishing some of that analysis and by deconstructing it and doing the thinking about it, we get to help even those small business owners or those folks who are working on smaller websites. And that's kind of like as I say, I wish that had existed when I was a consultant, kind of paying it forward into that part of the industry as well. Crystal Carter: Well, I think it's so valuable because even 2%, and I know that if you're starting with a small blog, let's say you've got... I don't know, you've got a thousand views a month or something like that and let's say you think 2%, the thing about SEO is it compounds. And I think the other thing is once you learn how to test hypothesis in SEO, then you can grow really quickly. So it might be that you learn how to test that, and then the next time, you can test another thing, and then you're adding and adding and adding. Because I think so often, people will just do something and have no idea what impact they expect it to have, have no idea whether it had any impact. And I think even with small teams, one of the things I've seen, and this is why I wanted to pull up the control thing, is that sometimes they'll be like, "Oh, but we did a PPC change," or "Oh, but we did this, that, and the other change." And I think sometimes with SEO, particularly if you're helping someone with their SEO, you need to be able to evidence that you did the work. Do your tests help with that process? Will Critchlow: So definitely, they do on the kind of sites that we're working with where we get to... Because we're controlling out all that other stuff, so we get to say notwithstanding all these other effects, "Here's the impact of this change." And without going deep into our specialism too much, you get some really quite cool dashboards where you have a list of SEO initiatives and each one has an associated uplift or decrease associated with it and a degree of statistical confidence attached to it. And that's the kind of thing that really helps with broader communication with the business and I mentioned earlier, the lack of scientific rigor is one problem in SEO. I think another one is too many of us historically, have not been great at talking business. I'm guilty of this. I'd love geeking out about robots.txt or whatever it might be, hreflang, the business doesn't speak that language. That's not what the CMO, CFO, whoever else cares about, CEO. And we're trying to bridge that gap and help bring those metrics that the business cares about connected to the effort and the work that folks are putting in as well. Mordy Oberstein: What's a case off the top of your head, that you really saw that come through? You run an SEO test, and then you run through the whole thing and the outcome was, "Hey look, if we did this, your bottom line's going to increase by whatever percent." Will Critchlow: So actually, I don't think it's specifically the case study that you were mentioning, Crystal, but we had a very similar one, testing content quality, which we've had a few really fascinating ones that have led to businesses making specific investments in different areas or not investing in different areas. Because the big thing about this is very contextual. So it depends on your website, your industry, your place in the market, what your competitors are doing. But I remember one case where the team we were working with built a business case to invest in a whole load of high quality freelance written... Basically, bring in a bunch of editors and writers and overhaul a whole site section's worth of content. And they did that with an initial test on, I think it was like a hundred pieces of content, proved the substantial uplift that came from it, quantified it, turned that into business metrics and said, "Look, the cost of doing this is X thousand dollars. The benefit is a bigger number. Should we go for it?" And that definitely helped with that kind of sign off. But the great thing about testing is you see the inverse where we've definitely had cases where folks are like, "Should we do this, run the numbers?" No, probably not. Actually, time and effort and money is better spent elsewhere. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And running the test, that can save you so much of that hassle between going all the way down. And then people are like, "How come we didn't see? We did all that stuff and how come nothing happened?" And I think the other thing that's really important is that if you have that too many times, you lose some momentum with regards to SEO buy-in and SEO investment and things. So it's really important to- Will Critchlow: Yeah, for sure. So you definitely see it with the executives. Executives get bored of just hearing these pie-in-the-sky numbers that maybe are going to materialize year after year. We also see it in trust between SEO teams and product and engineering teams as well, because a lot of SEO requests are not very exciting engineering requests. It's like, "Hey guys, we want you to change the titles again." And they're like, "I mean, I was hoping to do some machine learning." And there's a disconnect sometimes between the things that the SEO team wants the engineering product team to work on and what's exciting and interesting for an engineering product team to work on. And one of the things that we found is by running these tests, we're able to reduce the number of requests that go to engineering because we're now only asking them to do the good stuff, which might only be 20% of the work that we previously would've asked for to get all of the benefit. And crucially, each ticket that's raised has an uplift associated with it. And so even if it's not the most exciting day at work, it's a rewarding day at work because they know that they've added to the bottom line and- Crystal Carter: Right. And you can get a gold star. Will Critchlow: A gold star, a raise, a bonus, whatever it might be. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. I think also, when you're working with devs, engineering teams, et cetera, it's always great to tell them about those uplifts like, "Hey, remember those title tags we asked you for?" Will Critchlow: Your work did this. Yeah, absolutely. And everybody wants to know their work is meaningful and that it makes a difference to the organization that they're working for. And part of our purpose at SearchPilot, part of it is the kind of SEO-centric. We want to prove the value of SEO for the world's biggest websites, is how we phrase it. But we have another piece, which is about creating great jobs. And that is almost like a layered approach where we're saying, "First of all, we want to have good jobs at SearchPilot," in like a direct sphere of influence. But the next layer out is we want to make the jobs better for the folks that we're interacting with, whether it's our customers, whether it's their colleagues and their stakeholders, whether it's all these different things and we see that coming together. I love it. We occasionally share in our Slack when one of our customers posts a job ad that says, "We are hiring for an SEO manager," and there's a line item that says, "It's going to get to run SEO tests." And we're like, "Yes." That means that folks are going to work at this company because they're going to work with SearchPilot. Crystal Carter: That's awesome. Will Critchlow: If those dots join up, that's what gets me out of bed still, whatever. I'm 18 years into my SEO career now. Mordy Oberstein: Pushing gears just a little bit, if you're let's say the average site, it's not a huge enterprise site and you're looking at let's say both the content on the SearchPilot blog, you're trying to take away some lessons and you're saying, "You know what? Maybe I should run some tests." Can they take away lessons from what you're putting out in terms of the content and can they run some sort of equivalent test even though statistically speaking, they do not have the amount of data that you're working with? Will Critchlow: For sure. So I've been in this boat. Yeah, I've consulted with small organizations. I mean, SearchPilot, our own website in fact, is the kind of site you're talking about. We are not in our own target market. We unfortunately, can't really run these statistically significant SEO tests on our own site. So I feel you. If the folks who are listening, who are in that situation, I have a couple of recommendations. I think the biggest lessons that I've applied in those situations from the work that we are doing at scale is first of all, do read that content. We are putting out these test results that are tested on very large websites. And the fact that they won't apply exactly perfectly in your niche, in your industry on your site, doesn't mean that they're not directionally useful. And so in particular, consuming that it tells you, look, if this is only consistently we're seeing that these kinds of tests are very small uplifts or typically no big impact, that's probably going to not be a massive impact on your site either. So it's a source of inspiration, a source of ideas, source of direction. The second piece I would say is there are things you can do that fall short of a full scientific double-blind controlled, whatever gold standard test that are still valuable. The first of those goes back to what you were saying Crystal, about communication, that a big part of it is communication and documentation. So one of the great things that we have is that every time we roll out a test, we know exactly when it started, we know exactly what we changed, we have that record of... And that could just be an Excel file, right? It does not have to be some kind of sophisticated platform, but knowing what you changed when, why you changed it, what your hypothesis was, why you thought this was a good idea, even just having that list of stuff you did and when and why, that's a huge part of building that business case when the boss comes back or the client comes back and says, "What have you been up to and what was the benefit of that?" It also lets you then do basically, the next best thing to the kind of testing that we're talking about, which is before and after testing, which is to say you can at least look at how things have gone since you made the change, compared to how they were prior to making that change. I was going to say it's the thing I'm most sad about on the GA-III to GA-IV transition, but let's probably not go there, but the loss of the annotations is killing me. Crystal Carter: It's so simple. Will Critchlow: It's so sad. I mean, there's so much that's so sad, but that's so sad. But literally, you can just do the before and after. And you just have to be aware that that can easily be confounded by outside effects. So like your saying Crystal, if somebody releases a major update to your website or you change other things in your advertising or your strategy or whatever, that's going to screw with your data. And I have a presentation, a conference deck that I run through sometimes, which highlights this where I show the before and after data, but we managed to launch right over the time that a Google algorithm update happened. And then two weeks later, it was Thanksgiving or whatever, there was some kind of holiday, and so the traffic goes all over the place. And you're like, you just can't expect to detect a couple of percentage points. You can tell if it's up 20%. You can tell if it's down 20%, but you're not going to be able to tell that kind of fine-grained data. But my argument is that's okay, because if you are in that spot where you were talking about earlier, you're getting a thousand organic visits a month to your blog, an extra two visits a month, that's not what you're getting out of bed for. You're probably better putting that effort into writing a new blog post or connecting with some folks and doing some outreach or whatever it might be doing the thing, rather than doing the micro-level optimizations that can make all the difference in the kind of hyper-competitive big website space. Mordy Oberstein: If you are in that position and you do want to start doing some testing, what might be a good way to say, "Okay, this is not worth my time. I shouldn't bother testing it." Or you know what? This scenario might be worthwhile to run to try something and see maybe it did, maybe it didn't work. What are some, I guess, guidelines around when it might be worth it? Will Critchlow: So I've got some guidelines. I've also got a really specific example of a time when I did this. So as I mentioned on SearchPilot.com, our website isn't big enough to run our own kinds of tests. So what I did for ours was those case studies that we were talking about earlier, I literally downloaded a kind of CSV file of the titles and method descriptions on, however, many it was at the time when I did it, 100, 200. So that kind of order of magnitude and did a manual rewrite of titles and methods. And I think that's worked out well for us. Basically, we'd got in the habit of being quite introspective in how we described those things and I wanted to make them a bit more problem-centric, figuring that folks would be going on Google searching things like, should I put the brand at the beginning or end of my title tags? And so I was like, our title should answer that question or should at least tell you that the answer to that question is in this post. So I just did that kind of quite opinionated, not very scientific rewrite, kept track of when I did it and could see the... Can't quantify exactly, but could see that it was performing better afterwards versus before. So my general rule of thumb is on small sites in particular, the place I would start is things that overlap between ranking signals and display in the search results signal. So title is the place that I would start. Because if you remember before machine learning, our paid search colleagues, almost their whole job was optimizing the advert to get more people to click on it. It was like tons of people's jobs in the industry. But on the SEO side, I feel like folks have massively under-invested in click-through rate. Even if you don't rank better, even if you stay ranky in the position you are already in, you can double, triple your click-through rate by writing a better, more compelling whatever. And the great thing about the title is you might even rank better as well. And so that's why I did start on SearchPilot and that's where I'd recommend folks start if they've got a smaller website. Crystal Carter: Yeah. There's some great case studies. Adding a question mark into a title tag is a case study on SearchPilot and it's like a 5% uplift on that. Will Critchlow: We've got all kinds of little data points. I also would say, if you're in a small business space, trust your intuition as well. Make these things... Just take kind of a customer-centric approach. What's your target market? What are they actually looking for? Are you actually solving their problem or answering their question? When we get deep into this in our enterprise space, we end up running what we call full funnel tests, which is where we get to test SEO performance and conversion rate offer specific change. So you can say this was positive for one, but negative for the other. How are we going to mitigate that problem or whatever? We can get deeper into that. Point being, there can be attention. And in particular, there can be attention... If you're a B2B desk, SearchPilot is a great example, we actually want to appear for things that in-house SEOs at very large websites are searching for. If we write something that gets a whole load of, I don't know, analysts or agencies searching for it, then our traffic stats might increase, but our business metrics aren't going to. And so again, we are running scientific tests on this stuff. If you are at the smaller size, that's where you have to trust the fact that you are the business, you know the business, you know your market, you know the audience, and you have to hone in on those things that are going to appeal to them and are going to work for them. Crystal Carter: And I think also certainly, what I've found, I wonder if you'd also recommend this for smaller businesses, one of the benefits of working at an agency or working with an agency is that agencies are able to test techniques across multiple websites at the same time. And so if you have a small business, and I know a lot of people who recommend having your main site and also having a test site, that's a similar thing or maybe something else where you can sort of test something in a sort of low, low-risk area. Is that something that you would also recommend for smaller businesses, that they also maybe have, particularly if they're SEO nerds, although I guess not everybody who's a business owner is an SEO nerd. Shame, but... Will Critchlow: It's a shame. One day. So where I would come from on that is test sites are useful to the SEO nerds. They're not particularly useful to the business. That's my kind of controversial, maybe controversial position. If I'm in the business owner's shoes, I'm saying, "Let's not waste our time messing around over there. Let's write some more blog posts or produce some more content," or whatever it might be. Where the test bed site is useful in my opinion, is answering questions for nerds like us. And you can get some great conference presentations out of it. We've probably seen Olly Mason's stuff, for example, where he'll do the kind of destructive testing. What happens if I make my site map take 30 seconds to load or whatever? And you're like, you don't want to do that on your money maker. Crystal Carter: No. Will Critchlow: So he's doing that kind of testing where he's saying, "I want to really figure out what happens with Google at these edge cases. If I do something that seems odd or that seems weird, can I poke at the algorithm in specific ways?" And I get answers out of that. I'm glad he's doing that work. I'm also glad none of my customers are doing it on their stuff. And so that is valuable work. And so that's the third kind of testing. So we have the kind of stuff that we are doing, the big kind of controlled experiment. We have the before and after type analysis that we talked about, which doesn't quite reach the threshold for scientific testing, but it's the best you can do in certain situations. And the third kind, which is kind of more like what Olly is often doing, is what I call kind of laboratory testing. So you're taking a completely artificial situation and you're doing something weird and you're saying, "When I poke Google like this, what happens?" And that's like, I know I indexed every page on my site or I tried to use temporary redirects across the whole thing just to see what would happen and... Yeah, but we learn. So like I said, I'm glad other people do those experiments and we can learn from them. In particular, that's where folks run these experiments with made up words. Right? So you make up some words, put them out on domains that have never been indexed before and see if does the link order matter, right? So on one website, you put the links in one order on the menu, and then on the other website, you put them in a different order in the menu and you see which one ranks for this made up nonsense word that nobody's ever searched for before. That's closer to doing science, right? You're kind of saying, Google is this black box and we really want to understand into the minutiae of what's going on. It's not always actionable. It doesn't always turn into, "I should do this on my business website and make more money." So it's interesting. Mordy Oberstein: I mean, I think if you're a business owner, that's kind of the mentality you should be walking away after listening to this podcast. You should always be looking at things, testing things, seeing what's working, what's not working, changing things around when it does make sense. Don't just change things around for the sake of changing things around. Don't change big things around for the sake of changing big things around because that will not end up well for you. But you do want to be in a learning mode and seeing what works, what doesn't work. Sometimes correlation doesn't equal causation, sometimes it does. I'll quote Barry Adams. "Having some data is better than having no data." So work with what you got. Will Critchlow: I think that's particularly true if in the small business world, you do your best to understand what's going on and you use your instinct and you use your understanding of the industry and the market, along with that data. And I think where it's dangerous if we're quoting random quotes at each other, there's that saying about some people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost for support, not illumination. And if you go looking for the answer that you think you want to find- Mordy Oberstein: You will find it. Will Critchlow: Especially in a small amount of data, you can find anything you want. You just look on different days, look on different... Keep digging into the data until you find that one thing that backs up the thing you hoped or you wished was true. And my experience at the small business end is that when stuff is good, it moves the needle enough that you can spot it. Right? You start getting more inquiries, you start getting better inquiries. Folks start to set, they'll call you up and they say, "I was reading this thing on your website." And it's that qualitative subjective feedback that layers on top of the stats in the small business world, for me. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. If people wanted to learn from you, where could they find you? Will Critchlow: So I'm @willcritchlow on all the social places. I have historically, been most active on Twitter, but it's kind of a weird place right now, isn't it? Crystal Carter: It's somewhere with GA-III. Will Critchlow: So sad. So sad. I am on threads. I'm probably most active on a combination of Twitter and LinkedIn still. So yeah, I haven't quite figured out my long-term home, but I'm definitely more about the writing and reading than the taking photos and looking at photos. So I'm more likely to be found on the Twitter and LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: You're not on Instagram? Will Critchlow: I have an Instagram account. I think I have 10 photos on there. The last one was like two years ago. They're mainly pictures of my dog and that kind of stuff these days. Yeah, nobody's getting any SEO insight out of my Instagram. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. But they did see what you ate for dinner though. Will Critchlow: Three years ago. Sure. Mordy Oberstein: That works. Well, thank you so much. Folks, check out the show notes and check out all of links, all the links to Will's various profiles, probably not his Instagram profile. I don't think I'm going to throw that in there. If you really want me to, Will, I will put the Instagram. No? Will Critchlow: I think it's probably for the best that we leave folks to find that themselves if they really want to. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Thank you so much. Will Critchlow: Thank you. It's been great. Thanks for having me on. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of testing things, one tool that can help you do more than testing, but I also think it can help you do testing, is the Wayback Machine. What is the Wayback Machine? Let's go back and find out as we go tool time on the SERP's Up Podcast. The Wayback Machine is the coolest name for anything on the planet. Well, you will not find it at waybackmachine.com. It's internet Archive. I want you to be aware of this. If you're looking for like, "Hey, the Wayback Machine," I recommend you just Google it, as opposed to putting in wayback.machine.com. I don't know what that will give you. Crystal Carter: No. So the actual address is archive.org/web and that gets lead to- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Google Wayback Machine. You'll be good to go. That's how I find it. Crystal Carter: Basically, what the Wayback Machine is, and the first time I found out about this, I was like, "Oh my gosh." Mordy Oberstein: Right? Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. I just showed this to somebody last week and they were, "What? What is this voodoo? What is this magic that you have?" Crystal Carter: Right. Right. So for those of y'all who are civilians in the SEO community, for those of y'all who are deep, deep in the weeds of SEO, the Wayback Machine is this fantastic, incredible archive of over 840 billion web pages saved over time. Some of these for years, and years, and years, and years. If you have a new client who's had a domain for a while, you can go into Wayback Machine and you can see old versions of their website. You can see old versions of certain pages on the website. And I've had this before where I had a client who came to me and we were just doing a migration, but they had recently had another migration a couple of years ago. And two years ago isn't that long in terms of a website migration. So I was able to see what their website not before, not the one that I was looking at now, but before that, what that was, and that can give you some insights into that. What's really great and the reason why it's a great tool for testing and for understanding testing stuff is that if you're looking at the analytics and you're seeing that they used to have this great conversion rate on a particular page or they used to have tons of traffic to a particular page- Mordy Oberstein: What happened? Crystal Carter: What happened, why did it change? Well, you can cross-reference the dates that you see that activity happening, or the ranking or the whatever. And with the Wayback Machine, and you can see... So it says, okay, let's say in 2020, they were ranking really, really well for potato mashers. I don't know why we're mashing potatoes today, but that's what we're doing. Mordy Oberstein: I'm making potato salad for lunch. Crystal Carter: Okay. You're mashing potatoes for potato salad? You're chopping them. You're cubing them. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So that's the ones I know about potato salad. Crystal Carter: We're cubing the potatoes. We're not using the potato masher for the potato salad. We're mashing potatoes for mashed potatoes. Okay. Anyways, maybe we're doing stuffed mashed potato skins. You mash them, and then you put the skins back in with other tasty treats. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know what that is. Crystal Carter: Okay. I'm distracted. Anyway, okay, so what you do, so you have a potato masher webpage, and let's say it used to convert really, really well in 2020. And now, it's not converting really well or maybe it dropped off a cliff recently. And if someone saying, "We used to do really well with this page. I don't understand," you can go back to 2020 and look at the potato masher page and see what was on that page and maybe it used to have the picture right at the top. And now, it has the picture further down the bottom and you can go, "Okay, well, it seems like this is an issue and we should fix that. It's a fantastic tool for illustrating those kinds of changes. And when you compare it with traffic and when you compare it with activity, it can be really, really useful for helping you to understand things that you can do with the website, things that you used to do with the website, things that maybe you should bring back, things maybe you should burn with fire, whatever you need to do. Mordy Oberstein: It's really great for contextualizing. Essentially, that's what it is. It's a way to contextualize if you have a new client and you want to go back and see. Okay, they have a whole ranking history. I can see the ranking history. What happened? What went on here? For a lot of the things that you're going to look at, particularly the content, you can go back and see what happened. If all of a sudden they changed their content, it's right around the same time as the helpful content let's say, comes out. There you go. That's the first place to start looking. If it's a competitor, what happened? All of a sudden, their rankings are up and what do they do? What happened? What's going on? You can take a look. I've used it to analyze content trends. I recently did this to... There's whole focus on experience in content and rankings using the actual experience. And I went back and looking at a whole bunch of product review sites. Seeing how many times he used the word, our and we two years ago, three years ago, how often they're using our and we now, a lot more now by the way. So for those kinds of things, it's amazing. Crystal Carter: It's really useful. And I think it's also really great when you're looking at your competitors because sometimes if you've got a client for instance, and they're on your vertical and they've said, "We've done this, this, and this, and this website started... We fell behind at this time," you can go and you can look on their competitor's site and say, "Okay, did they have a migration at that time?" And you can say, "Does this website from two years ago still look the same as it does now? Does this website from six months ago still look the same as it does now?" Because you can't really call up the competitors and go, "Hey, can you just tell me your full web history?" They're not going to tell you that. So you can go onto Wayback Machine and you can look that up and it's super, super useful. There's an API that's attached to it as well that can help you to understand. And also, you can see information about... Sometimes you can see things like the site map even on Wayback Machine, which can be useful and you can see different elements of it. It's a super useful tool. Every year, they say, "Would you like to donate money to the Wayback Machine?" And every year, I'm like, "Yeah, you know what? You guys can have a fiber." Because there's been so many times on the Wayback Machine that it has saved my bacon. There's a situation though... I think the one that really stood out for me was I had a client and we did a migration. And suddenly, their pages weren't getting indexed at the same rate. And I was like, "We need these pages indexed. They need to be indexed now. Why aren't they being indexed?" And I compared the new homepage to the old homepage, and the old homepage had a feed of the new content. And the new homepage did not have a feed of the new content. And I was like, "Y'all, do you see this?" Mordy Oberstein: Feed the content. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And they were like, "Oh, okay." So they put the feed on and everything was exactly as I expected it to be. So absolutely, use Wayback Machine to solve issues. It's particularly useful for migrations and it's also useful for trying to fill gaps maybe between what a client knows. Because sometimes, you get a client and they know the full history of the website. Sometimes it's a brand new marketing manager and they have no idea what did or didn't happen before. So yeah, it's really, really useful. Mordy Oberstein: Cool. Go back. See previous versions of web pages. Not all of them show up because if it's a random, random, random page, they didn't archive it, but a lot of the ones that you would think wouldn't be there, are there. And the best part is, you don't need a flux capacitor and going 88 miles an hour in DeLorean to go back in time. You could just go to the Wayback Machine. Now, speaking of the Wayback Machine, I was just looking at somebody recently who was using the Wayback Machine. It was Barry Schwartz using the way- Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe he just had it saved. I'm pretty sure he is using the Wayback Machine to see, and he used it to see changes in Google's guidelines. Crystal Carter: So Barry Schwartz is himself or the- Mordy Oberstein: A Wayback Machine? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Are you saying that because his dress and design style, that's what I'm looking for, is not up-to-date? Crystal Carter: Barry, I didn't say that. Okay. What I'm saying is that I've done research on featured snippets. And if you want to, for instance, see research on featured snippets, he's been covering featured snippets the entire time. So for decks and stuff, I very often reference photos that he shared of different things from 2016. This is what a product carousel looked like in 2016, and now I can compare it to what it looks like now. They'll share things from like, "This is what this looked like, this is what an instant answer looked like in 2014. And I can compare it to what it looks like now." Barry Schwartz is an incredible- Mordy Oberstein: It's the way back machine of the SERP. Crystal Carter: Of the SERP, precisely. And it's really useful for understanding, again, if you're thinking about there's traffic changes, why does my traffic change? If you're looking and you're looking at some of the SERP photos of what it said, what it looked like in 2018 versus what it looks like now, then you can say, "Okay, well, that's our future changed." And I have evidence of this, thanks to Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: What we're basically trying to say is, it's now time for the Snappy news as brought to you by Barry Schwartz. So here's the snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news this week on trifecta from none other, but Barry Schwartz. This one coming from Search Engine Land. Google Search now supports discussion form and profile page structure data. So basically, Google is on a first person first hand knowledge, first hand experience kick as well they should be. The E for experience in E-A-T being a prime example of this, but Google has said they want to show they haven't made a couple announcements trying to show more first hand knowledge on the SERP. This structured data would allow such content from forums to show up as a rich result. So Google said, "that the functionality allows them to show" first person perspectives on social media platforms, forums, and other communities. By the way, I think Google needs to go beyond social media for this content, which is why I think they're focusing on forums here with the profile page structure data. They know they need to go beyond social media and actually have content specifically generated for this kind of purpose. The "Search Engine Land," the new profile page structure data and markup is for any site where creators, either people or organizations, share first hand perspectives. The markup will help Google highlight the creator's name or social handle, profile photo, follower account, or the popularity of their content in the Google Search results. So if someone on your forum, you want to make sure that they're kind of prominent because Google's going to pull on their profile information. I think forum SEO is going to be a thing. Google is very serious about showing first hand knowledge on the SERP. It's a wider content trend that if Google wants to deal with, I don't know, TikTok, is going to have to do. Google's made a variety of announcements kind of showing that they are going to do that, this being one of them. First hand knowledge, first person knowledge experience is going to be a thing, just like forum content SEO, which I termed I have just coined, is going to be a thing. Next up from Barry Schwartz, this is from Search Engine Roundtable. Google Discover showing older content since follow feature. This was spotted by Glenn Gabe. If you don't know who Glenn Gabe is, please follow Glenn Gabe on Twitter, X, whatever it is. And Glenn basically said that he's noticing more content showing on the Discover feed that is not from the last day or so. So generally speaking, Google Discover shows current event-ish kind of content. So the content is generally very fresh, a couple of hours a day, maybe two days old. Once in a while, it'll sprinkle in a four-day-old post, but Glenn's noticing that he's getting articles that are two months old. I personally noticed that the last month or so, my feed has changed. The topics have sort of opened up a little bit. The type of content that Google shows in my personal Discover feed is opening up a little bit. I wonder if Google is making some more foundational changes to the Discover feed as it tries. Because again, Discover feed is a great place where Google can kind of be a sort of social media-ish kind of content provider. So I wonder if they're going to make some significant changes as time goes along, and wider preferences and content consumption trends change. Okay. Last up from Barry Schwartz, this one from seroundtable.com. Google November 2023 core update rollout is now complete. So as of the time of this recording, the November 2023 review update is still rolling out, but by the time you hear this, it might be done. So check your local news provider, AKA Barry, to see if that is finished. But check your rankings because the core update from the November 2023 core update rather, is done rolling out. I have some fresh Semrush data in my hands. It looks like generally speaking, the November 2023 core update was slightly more comprehensive, powerful, potent, however, you want to volatile, however, you want to phrase it. Then the October 2023 core update is a little bit tricky to pull the data out because you could only look at the really very beginning of the November 2023 core update. Otherwise, you start getting that mixed, that volatility/ranking data mixing in with the November 2023 review update, and that makes it hard to decipher. So the beginning of the November 2023 core update looked to be a little bit more impactful overall, but that needs to be explained or qualified than the October 2023 core update. Check your ranking is what I'm trying to say in a nutshell. And with that, that is this week's snappy news. The best part is, I'm going to drop the fourth wall here. We recorded the main section of the podcast before we actually recorded the news. We're waiting for the last second to see what actually broke in the news, but we're so confident that Barry's going to be the one covering it, that we tease out Barry beforehand. So thank you Barry, for that. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of SEO testing, going back full circle to where we all started, there's somebody we used to be following on social media because she's done some pretty nifty things around SEO testing. And she is Maria Amelie White over on Twitter. It's @Maria_Amelie on X/Twitter. We'll link to her profile in the show notes, but Crystal's got a great thing about what she tried doing with Spanglish. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So Maria is an in-house SEO at Kurt Geiger. I'm not jealous at all. But yeah, she's an in-house SEO. She's super smart, super clever. And I was on a discussion with her and she was talking about a fantastic test that she did around SEO and PPC that was around language. So I think her team was advertising in a Spanish language market and also in an English language market. And they found that sometimes some of their Spanish judges shown in the US, for instance, and also in Mexico for instance, where there's a border. But she also said to the team, she was like, "Hey, this is something that I've seen. What about Spanglish?" And they were like, "Oh, I don't know." And she said, "No, we should test Spanglish." And she found that... And a lot of people are searching this way, and if people speak this way where there's sort of areas where people are speaking multiple languages, there's plenty of countries like that, and she found that they got some great results from incorporating Spanglish into their ads. And I think that that's something that Will was talking about as well, is that sometimes it's worth following your instinct as well. So that was something that she knew from lived experience and she was able to apply that, and to test it and to get great results. And I think that with regards to testing, if you've got a hunch, absolutely test your hunch. And she got some great results from that, and that was one of the reasons why I thought of her. She's also super knowledgeable and is really active in the community. Mordy Oberstein: Very active in the community. Writes for Search Engine Land. You can check all of her articles there. Look for her Twitter profile in our show notes, and then read her articles across the web. Thanks, Maria. By the way, Spanglish is a terrible Adam Sandler movie. I'm literally here like, why does Spanglish sound so familiar? This is the third time you mentioned that case to me before. I'm like, "Something's not right." I'm like, "Oh snap, it's an Adam Sandler movie from years ago." Crystal Carter: When you say it's terrible, do you mean that it's terrible within the pantheon of Adam Sandler movies or that it's terrible in full stop? Mordy Oberstein: No. He's got some great movies. Uncut Gems, that's a gem right there. Crystal Carter: I don't know that one. Mordy Oberstein: It's great. Crystal Carter: I mean, Happy Gilmore. I'm there for that one. I'm there for... Oh gosh, there's a few other ones. Mordy Oberstein: The Waterboy? Crystal Carter: Waterboy. It's terrible because I don't think it's one of his best, but I even like Little Nicky. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that's the devil one. I barely remember that. Then there was the one where- Crystal Carter: It's like a basketball skit. Mordy Oberstein: ... he adopts a kid. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Big Daddy. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah. He's also done some good animated stuff recently. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crazy Eight Nights. That's a classic in my household. Crystal Carter: There we go. There we go. He's got some good stuff. He's got some good stuff. Mordy Oberstein: He's got great stuff. He did a bunch of stuff like an NBA movie kind of thing, where he's a scout. That was a great movie. All right. All right. I think we're off the rails. No, no. You got one more. Go for it. You've got one more. Just do it. Crystal Carter: I can't think of the words. I can't think. I was just thinking of as far as terrible Adam Sandler movies, there's one where they go camping or something. It's awful. It's got a great cast, but the movie is fundamentally awful. Mordy Oberstein: There was a point in his career where it was kind of hit or miss. And I think lately, he's been consistently awesome. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Adam. 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 with a new episode as we dive into. I'm not telling you, it's a surprise. It's a very special episode. That'll be a live recording from one of SEO's biggest conferences on the planet. That's right. Look for it whenever 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 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. 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Can gated content behind a paywall rank? Is there anything you need to be doing to make sure it does? Fear not, because gated content can certainly rank on the SERP. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein explore strategies for ensuring rankings for gated content. They connect with Amalia Fowler, Principal Strategist at Good AF Consulting, to discuss how to ensure gated content is relevant and properly reflects the buyers’ journey (it’s one thing to rank - it’s another thing to convert). Join us as we explore how to do SEO for gated content on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back SEO for gates, paywalls and exclusive content Can gated content behind a paywall rank? Is there anything you need to be doing to make sure it does? Fear not, because gated content can certainly rank on the SERP. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein explore strategies for ensuring rankings for gated content. They connect with Amalia Fowler, Principal Strategist at Good AF Consulting, to discuss how to ensure gated content is relevant and properly reflects the buyers’ journey (it’s one thing to rank - it’s another thing to convert). Join us as we explore how to do SEO for gated content on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 32 | April 5, 2023 | 43 MIN 00:00 / 42:35 This week’s guests Amalia Fowler Amalia is an experienced digital marketing strategist who has previously been dubbed a “PPC Wizard” by someone on Twitter. Her passions include ridding the world of terrible marketing and helping small businesses understand the world of digital marketing. Amalia excels at building great marketing teams, explaining tough marketing concepts and brewing really strong coffee. When she isn’t teaching marketing at college or optimizing PPC accounts, you can find her paddleboarding in the mountain rivers and lakes of the Pacific Northwest. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing fabric, the incredible, fantastic... Is she behind a paywall? Is she not behind a paywall? Can you exit a... We don't know, we'll find out. The head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hi, I'm Crystal Carter. And yes you do. If you pay me five pounds, I'll chat to you, I promise, like $5, rubles, rand, what other currency is acceptable. Mordy Oberstein: That's not a random joke, by the way. Dear audience, you will see why that joke makes sense in a few minutes because otherwise it is completely random. Makes absolutely no sense why I would say that. Crystal Carter: Right. Completely random. But that is why we're here today. We're here to talk about... What are we going to talk about Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Not yet. Crystal Carter: Not yet. It's it exclusive? Mordy Oberstein: You have to first send in your email address and then- Crystal Carter: Oh wait, do we have to like and subscribe? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. There's so many hints of what we're talking about today already. But before we get to that, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where we've added two new reports to our Google Search Console analytics around search console performance over time and search console, average position reporting. Check out both of those reports in addition to the two other reports we already have for you within your Wix analytics, which has absolutely nothing to do with the concept that we're talking about today. Usually, I try to tie them in. But the writing of the outline for this podcast episode came out along with the release of the two reports. So I felt like, let's go with it. Crystal Carter: It's important for all SEO and actually a lot of standard SEO, it also applies to exclusive VIP gated behind a membership subscriber space as well. So there are lots of SEO overlap that you need to pay attention to. Mordy Oberstein: Well, you know what? No, I got to pivot. I got to pivot. Crystal Carter: You got to pivot. Mordy Oberstein: These reports will come mightily in hand if, say you were to track organics performance for, I don't know, gated content. Crystal Carter: For gated content, for content that is behind maybe a login- Mordy Oberstein: Or some other paywall Crystal Carter: Or some sort of lead gen form. That sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: Correct. You can track your performance with these analytical reports because today, guess what we're talking about, SEO for content that's behind some sort of gate paywall or other sort of exclusivity that you're trying to use to possibly generate more leads for yourself. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: To be honest, that's why you're collecting those emails. That's not for the fun of it. Crystal Carter: This is it. This is it. And sometimes it's a question of being able to deliver somebody something that maybe is a big file. And so sometimes there's just a way of doing it that way. Mordy Oberstein: Right. There's legitimate reasons other than the lead gen to collect the emails. But now that you have the email. Crystal Carter: I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Right? Now that we're here. We're talking all about SEO and gated content, when to get your content, how to handle the SEO considerations around gated content, and even how ChatGPT and AI writers plays into the gated content equation. Because no podcast episode is safe when we're talking about AI these days. Crystal Carter: Nope. No, the bots are here. Mordy Oberstein: Plus, we'll explore what some gated pages that our ranking well are doing so you can take away some lessons for your own pages. And of course, we have the Snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness out there on social media. So enter your name, company, and email address as episode number 32 of the SERP's Up podcast is now downloading. You don't really need to enter your email address or name or anything. Crystal Carter: No, you don't. Although, you can sign up for our newsletter. You can do that. And then whenever we drop the latest, most exclusive podcast, you can get it. It's not that exclusive at all. We're literally on all of the podcast networks that we're not exclusive. But as soon as it drops, you'll get an email in your inbox, which is a great service that we're happy to provide. Mordy Oberstein: So we're not using it for lead gen, we're using it because legitimately, we need to know where to email the newsletter too. Crystal Carter: So we're going to be talking today about gates, paywalls and exclusive content. And one of the things that I did as soon as I started looking at this topic was to go to the news people, the people who are managing news websites because they have been in this space for longer than anyone. Because one of the things that folks who are looking at news websites will say that is that they had to deal with a big shift because there was one point where the news was essentially where you got a lot of information. And then, with the advent of the internet, lots of people were getting information from lots of places. And so news folks had to find another way to manage their things and to make sure that they can pay their reporters and bills and all that sort of stuff. So there's some fantastic people who are working in the news SEO space. Shout out to Barry Adams. Shout out to Shelby Blackley. Shout out to Jessie Willms over at WTF SEO. Basically, when I was looking at this topic, I find it really fascinating and there's a few things that we can think about. So there's paywalls, and paywalls are not necessarily a bad thing. One of the things that they talk about in WTF SEO is that the New York Times, for instance, was getting a lot of good activity out of their paywall. So they're generating millions of pounds every year based on their paywall because they make very, very good content, for instance. So they're able to charge a little bit of money for that. And so they're not necessarily a bad thing. You do need to manage them correctly. Google has a specific documentation about how you can make sure that you have structured data that supports your paywall content. So for instance, you need to say to Google in declaring your structured data whether or not it's accessible for free. So there's a property within structured data it says is accessible for free. And if it is not, then you say false. And that's something that you should consider when you're thinking about paywalls. And what kind of paywalls are there? Well, there's hard paywalls, which is essentially where you have to subscribe and pay for everything and callers can't access it and other people can't access it unless they either pay you or subscribe or join or whichever. There's soft paywalls where you essentially gate part of your content for a few articles for a month. So the Washington Post for instance, does this where you go onto their website and they're like, "You've got three free articles. There's your one. Thank you very much." Then the next time they're like, "You've got two left," that sort of thing. So that's a soft paywall. And then there's combination paywall where you have a few paywalls that are free, a few pieces of content that are free and some that are gated. This often happens during big events. So for instance, The Financial Times generally gates a lot of their content. But during peak COVID, they had a lot of COVID data and that was freely accessible. This is a really good opportunity to get people to understand your brand and see the robustness of your reporting. So The Financial Times, their COVID reporting was really, really good. And so that made me think, well, maybe it is worth paying for that sort of thing. I didn't, but I could. The thing that's important to think about is if you were trying to rank hard paywalls, all right, no. If you have an audience that is engaged and an audience that is your subscriber list and an audience that you are giving exclusive, exclusive content, then cool, go through the hard paywall. But if you're expecting to rank, then Google's not calling your site and other folks aren't being able to see it. One of the other challenges that a lot of people have discussed, this is something that Barry Adams and WTF SEO talked about and a few other folks talk about, is one of the things that's a challenge for paywall content is pogo sticking. So people will go to say, The New York Times, or they'll go to a website that has a paywall and they'll go, "I'm interested in this." And then they go, "Oh, I have to pay for it?" And then they go back to the SERP. So that's something that you have to think about. And then the other thing you have to think about is that you might get fewer backlinks . And I looked at this. So thinking about news, again, I compared The New York Times to The Guardian, for instance. The Guardian doesn't have a paywall, they just say, "Please, would you contribute? Would you mind, so kindly?" And for instance, The New York Times has all a lot more organic traffic overall, and they have a lot more keywords overall. But The Guardian has 1.6 billion backlinks and the New York Times has, according to Semrush, has 967 million backlinks. And so that a thing to consider as well. Mordy Oberstein: Also, qualify your traffic data. Just because they're there, doesn't mean... They might have just came and left. Crystal Carter: Also, I think that you'll want to think about the value of that traffic. So if you have subscribed to traffic, then that value is potentially going to be more. So this is something to think about. So then we have gated content, general gated content. And this is something that folks who are big into their content marketing will use very strategically in order to add real deep value to their users and to engage their audience. And it's nice to think of this as part of your funnel. So I know that Semrush has some of their webinars where you have to log in, you give them their email address, they give you the webinar link, you give them one thing. And sometimes this is also a way to sort of satisfy content that's on school domains. So for instance, if you have your webinars hosted on a webinar platform and you have your website on your main platform, then it might be that you gate it so that you can direct them to the landing page. That's the appropriate page in a way that you're able to track. Also, it's a way for you to build in your funnel so that somebody maybe gets one, you get their email and you're able to send them resources and then you're able to add more value on top of that. Gated content is great for things like white papers, for research, for eBooks, for media, webinars and things like that. And for those ones, you're going to want to optimize your landing page for instance. And yeah, it's a really interesting topic. A lot of people have written about it and it's something that I think is really fascinating. Mordy Oberstein: It's really interesting because you have so many things going. On the news side, the news side's a little bit different than your typical gated content because it's gated, let's say The New York Times, but Google needs to be able to crawl it and then index it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Its own thing. Crystal Carter: Barry Adams wrote a great article recently called Best Practices for Paywalls and SEOs, and he talks a lot about that. So essentially, the bot needs to have free access in order to be able to call it and see the content appropriately. And there's lots of other things that news sites do. They have like RSS set up so that they're able to submit their content to Google in a certain way so that Google can read it that way as well. And there's lots of other things that they do there. But if you really want to get into the details, I cannot recommend enough Barry's article, Best Practices for Paywalls and SEO. There's also the article, WTF SEO, they have two articles on new SEO paywall strategies. They have a part one and a part two where they go into it as well and they talk about lots of different strategies. It's really fascinating and it's something that we might see a little bit more of. I think you hinted at this a little bit, but I think it's something that people might want to be considering when we're thinking about a space where the nature of content is changing because of the AI space. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, let's just dive into that I guess at this point, because that's a point you illuminated to me about. I thought it was a great point that AI writers, whatever you want, the ChatGPTs of the world are built on scraping content and then spitting that out. And if you don't want to lend your voice to that, if everybody else is doing it and I don't do it, am I then left out of the equation or do I say, "Do I not be part of this," and just differentiate myself? That is a very top level brand content strategy, SEO everything kind of question. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And there's no simple answer to that, but one of the things you might want to consider is, you know what? Let's not let them crawl this. Crystal Carter: So a lot of the chatGPT for instance, is using Common Crawl as one of their data sources, for instance. And I had a look in web archive and you look at web archive and you see the common crawls that they've done, it doubled between 2020 and 2021. And chatGPT, their data has taken extensively up till 2021. So there has been an influx in data coming from then. And what we're seeing with some of the AI image generators, for instance, they're scraping Getty Images and we can tell because when they generate images, it still has the Getty Image watermark on it. So a company like Getty Images for instance, might think, well, we might potentially want to block that crawler. But then when we have AI search, if you think about new Bing, if you think about Google's proposed Bard situation, then it might be that you're less visible on those search engines. So I think that your brand point is really important because if you think about someone like The New York Times, they have an established name, they have an established brand and they can say, "Hey, subscribe to us, you're going to get really good stuff. It's going to be really good." And a lot of people from doing this with Patreon and YouTube and stuff because they're like, this takes me a lot of time and effort to create. If you want it, pay me a fiver a month and I'll give you really great content and you'll enjoy it. And lots of people make a living out of that, and lots of people make great content out of that. So I think it's something lots of people should be considering of lots of different business styles. Mordy Oberstein: The New York Times is literally a great example. I was at Semrush's Global Marketing Day and one of the people I was on a panel with, she was actually presenting, was from the New York Times. And she was going through their strategy around they want to show the value how complicated and hard it is to get good news and get good reporting. What you have to do as a reporter to be accurate, to be novel, to get this information and that because it's so hard, that's not something that should be free necessarily, you should pay for. And that's a very much a brand decision for them. And that's something where I think your SEO value may contradict the brand if you're now not going to show up when Bing does an AI chat, now you're not going to be cited by Bing like, okay, because as a brand, don't care. Crystal Carter: It's a very interesting business proposition because, and I think that this is why a lot of folks are saying that a combination paywall or a combination of gated and free stuff works really well. So if you think its social media, there's something that people talk about. They talk about a thirst trap, which is essentially where you have a celebrity or something and they generally post things about, "Hey, look at me, I'm on set" or whatever. And then every now and then they post an amazing picture where they're just looking very sultry or they're giving it blue steel or whatever. And people call it a thirst trap. Essentially, what you'll need to do is have a few things that are maybe a pillar post or maybe a high traffic thing or something that gets a lot of attention on search. And then maybe be more selective about the kinds of content that you keep back for your team. And I think this is something that we see with newsletters. Newsletters is something that's changing as well. There's people who are like, you can pay to be on my newsletter. And people pay to get a high quality newsletter. And I think that in a space where we're going to see a high volume of content coming from ChatGPT, because literally I could create something without even typing. I could talk into my phone and say, "Make me an article about something," and then it could spit something out. And I think in a space where we're seeing a lot of volume, quality is going to be equality based on brand recognition, based on entity, based on trust, is going to be a big difference. And I think that people will be interested in potentially paying for that, potentially being in a community where that's available. And in order to manage that, we'll have to think more strategically about it. And I think that people who are building up their mailing lists are going to be more resilient to that. People who are building up their communities are going to be more resilient to that going forward. Mordy Oberstein: And I think, by the way, leaving the gated side of it alone for just one second, in an AI era, one of the things that's going to be important is being recognized as someone with differentiated content. Meaning if there's a mass influx of generic-ish kind of content out there, you as a brand being known when your site shows up on the SERP and there's three other sites with you above the fold, you might think, well, I'm not ranking number one, I'm not ranking number two, I'm number three or four. But in a world where that brand differentiation is going to be a thing, people might skip over one or two because they know that's whatever, but you are known for your great content and then click. It's going to become, if I can make a prediction, that service association two brands as having great content is going to become a thing going forward. And I want to hit back to something you mentioned before about having different forms of content is at times putting out the blog post or the articles and then at time is doing a gated piece. One thing that I think works really well, and I think you'll see companies, Semrush does this lot, where they'll do a state of search. Remember I wrote a state of search for them 2022. And what we did was we put out a few sections that we thought were really interesting and that was free. And it was a regular blog post. It wasn't thin, it was a good couple of pages. Or if you wanted to really dive into the whole thing, then you go behind the paywall. So you got the best of both worlds. You got the organic whatever out of it, juice for lack of a better word, but you also got that ability to show up behind a paywall to get the leads, which is the other part of it. Crystal Carter: Right. And this is something that you see a lot of people do with extract. So I used to do a lot of work with the food industry, so you'd have somebody who'd written them an amazing book. I know that Mordy is apparently the chef du jour on the General Tso's chicken. And so let's say he's got his book on how to make these amazing meals, what you would do is you'd have one recipe that you feature in one magazine and you say, "This is an extract from this book." And it's that sort of thing. This is a great recipe. And it's just in the same way that you have singles that you released from your album and then you have the whole album. You want to make sure that... I say as if I released an album. I'm like, yeah, last week. Mordy Oberstein: You have the good songs and the crap songs. Crystal Carter: I didn't say it. Mordy Oberstein: No, but sometimes as you won the whole album, you want to feel the album. I really like to feel the album with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I always like to feel the album. Crystal Carter: What's that Marvin Gaye song, the album, what's going on? It's actually pretty much a whole album. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's themed albums like The Who's Quadrophenia is a whole theme of an album. Crystal Carter: It's a whole album. If you listen to one at a time, you don't get the same experiences if you listen to the whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, this is true. I'm being facetious. Crystal Carter: Music podcast later. One thing that I think people should be considering now in the AI era is thinking about whether or not you have the kind of content that people would be willing to pay for. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: If you needed to, is your content good enough Where if you were like, "I'm charging for this now," and people would be like, "Yeah, okay." Mordy Oberstein: That's a great sniff test. That's a great sniff test. Crystal Carter: Yeah, would you pay for this? It's like, yeah, I would, this is really good. I would like. And I've seen people who've had things that they, or communities or something they have and they're like, "I'm putting buy me a coffee thing on that." And I'm like, yeah, I will buy you a coffee because I value this so much that I want to make sure that you're able to continue making this content for me because I really, really value it. I think it's really good. Mordy Oberstein: We might end up turning the engine on its head a little bit from going from volume to focus audience, but it's a whole different conversation for a different time. One thing I do want to bring up really quickly is that gated content or areas that are segmented off without having immediate access apply more often than you think. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So there's a lot of pages, forums, for example are like this, membership. So you may not realize, we're talking about gated content. I don't have any gated content, I don't have any blog posts or eBooks or whatever. But there could be many pages on your website that if you started thinking about, wait a second, they actually are gated. I didn't even realize it. Crystal Carter: Right. Wix has a tool that allows you, if somebody wants to comment on your blog, you can make it- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, that's what I was thinking. Crystal Carter: ... That they're a member. And this has benefits for a couple of reasons. So this means that you'll have less spam. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say keep the riffraff out. Crystal Carter: Right. So it means you'll have less spam in your comments because spam in your comments can bring down the quality of your content. For instance, it also means that you are able to engage your mailing list, for instance. So it means that if you open up your comments and that people have to subscribe or whatever in order to comment, then that means you're going to be on a mailing list just from people being able to comment. I've seen content which has very little SEO optimization on the actual page itself, but is ranking for hundreds of keywords because it has a very engaged comment section, like a recipe site in particular that I know, because it's like, "Best recipe ever," in the comments, like seven times. And that's really useful. Mordy Oberstein: Don't go to your recipe now and start leaving comments for yourself. Please don't do that. Crystal Carter: SEOs are going to SEO, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry, just had to say that. Now since you're talking about using gated content to get email addresses to get leads, we thought it may make sense to offer you some tips about how to do that most effectively. And to do that, we brought Amalia Fowler over and she's going to talk to us now about how to get max value, even max leads out of gated content. Amalia Fowler: Gated content. It's one of those things people think is really easy to do, but so many things can go wrong. And this is especially true if you're not paying attention to the little things that matter. And a lot of what matters actually happens before the user even accesses the content itself. One of the first ways to get maximum value out of gated content is to make sure that you not only know who you're speaking to, but also where they are in their user journey. What content is going to appeal to them? What pain point are you helping them overcome? What motivation are you tapping into and how does everything you are putting together speak to that, but also fit into the larger user journey? Once you know who you're speaking to, you've got to make sure that your value proposition is clear. If I cannot immediately understand what I am going to receive for giving you my information, then you're not going to get me to fill out a form. I need some incentive. This is because filling out a form is an information exchange. One sentence that I've heard, and I don't know who said it originally, is that information is the currency of the internet. And I find this to be so true. I know, the average user knows, that a business is going to get value from my information, from my name or from my email. So the value that they're offering in return has to be proportional. The more a business wants from someone, the more they have to give in return. This is especially true if you're going to ask for a phone number and if you've made that a mandatory field and you don't want to fake number in there, you have got to make the gated content worth the person's while of giving you that level of information. After all of that, finally, the content itself needs to be super high quality and deliver on your promise. If it's not high quality, why is it gated? It should be relevant, clear, actionable, unique, and much like the content we write on blogs or on webpages, it also needs to solve a problem, that initial problem that you've understood from understanding your audience. The risks are higher with gated content than with content that users access for free because they've given you their information and the law of reciprocity dictates that they get something of value in return. So if somebody doesn't feel like they've received value from the content or submitting their information was a waste of time, then you've probably lost them at a point in the journey where you really want to be nurturing them. To get maximum value from your gated content, you've got to make sure that you know who you're speaking to, your value proposition is clear, that your form asks for proportional information and that the content is actionable, unique and relevant to the user. This is how you get somebody going, "Oh man, that was really worth it," as opposed to going, "Oh crap, now I need to change my phone number." Mordy Oberstein: That last line is gold. Amalia Fowler: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Gold. When you're putting something behind a gate and people are entering their personal information, i.e. their email address and their name, you feel vulnerable as a person. And now you're in a very precarious spot as a brand because the goal is not to get the email address. I think people think, got my email, I have succeeded. The goal is to use that email address effectively. So now you have the email address. Now you're going to email them all about your product and your newsletter or whatever you're going to email them about and they see your brand, like those SOBs, those are the people I gave them my... How do I get out? I don't want nothing to do with them, which is not what you want, not what you want. Crystal Carter: It's not what you want, it's not what you want. And she's like, you got to change your phone number. This is the thing. If I gave my email address, I don't want to give it to somebody who I trust. It's about trust. If you're gating the content and you're telling me that this content is gated, it needs to be good. Like she says like, oh my gosh, if it's not good, why is it gated? Facts, big facts. And I think that nobody wants to get onto an email list for a bunch of junk. However, if you get onto someone's mailing list and they're sending you good stuff, good quality things like, "Hey, we think this will help you. Hey, we think this is good. Hey, you asked for this ebook. We also have this other thing that you might be interested in," or "Because you signed up for this webinar, we also have this other thing you might be interested in." That's great. Like you said, it's not about getting the email address, it's about having the opportunity to build a relationship. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes, thank you. Crystal Carter: And what she was saying was that it's high risk because if you don't deliver, then yeah, you can burn that bridge and that's awful. You don't want to do that. So you want to make sure that yeah, it's good quality when you gate something and it's good quality when you're creating it. I remember working with somebody who was a client and they were really into, look, get this brochure downloaded. The brochure was six pages and had very little stuff and they were like, "How come no one's downloading the brochure?" I was like, "It's not a good brochure." And also, they wanted a phone number for it. And I think that's something to remember as well. Be careful with the data that you're asking for. There's no reason for them to ask for a phone number for you to download a PDF. None. And yet, they were trying to do this. And I was like, "Guys, no, don't do that. Ask for what you need." I've had it before where people are like, "What's your first name and what was your dog's name?" Mordy Oberstein: You don't need any of that. Why do you need to know any of that? It's super annoying. Super annoying. And also, be careful. They read it. It's an amazing asset you created and they love you now, and they gave you the email address and they're glad, and then they get 400 emails from you the next day. It's a relationship, everything is all part of the funnel. You can't be good at one spot, you need to be good at all of the spots. Crystal Carter: Right, right. It's like if somebody opens the gate to your house and you welcome them in, you don't want to. . , you welcome them. Mordy Oberstein: They were a great dinner guest for the first course. Once the dessert came out, they were destroying everything, throwing plates and all sorts of whatnot. So thank you, Amalia. Look for Amalia out in there on Twitter @AmaliaEFowler. That's A-M-A-L-I-A-E-F-O-W-L-E-R. We'll link to that in the show notes. And big shout out to RicketyRoo, where she's a senior PPC manager. So good folks over there, the RicketyRoo agency, Blake, Amanda, a lot of good folks over there. All right. Now, there are plenty of sites or plenty of pages rather, that have some great gated content that rank well. But we thought, well, even more great reason to go have a look at what's ranking that is behind the gate and look why is that ranking, even though it's behind a gate or what's happening there and what's not happening there, and what could we learn for ourselves and our own gated content. So welcome to the gated version From the Top of the SERP. Just kidding, again, it's not actually gated. Crystal Carter: No. You don't have to give us your email in order to read this part of.. Read? Listen to this part of- Mordy Oberstein: Listen. Or you could read it, I guess. We have a transcript on the- Crystal Carter: There's a transcript because we like to add value for our users. Mordy Oberstein: See? And that's not behind a gate either. Only the newsletter is behind the gate. But again, how are we going to email it to you- Crystal Carter: If we don't have your email? Mordy Oberstein: We don't have your email address. We're not prophets. Crystal Carter: We like to do combinations. We have the complete guide Wix SEO, as written by one Mordy Oberstein. And if you go to that website, you can have it as a webpage, or you can enter your email and we'll email it to you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you can download it and do that thing that you do with whatever you download. So there's a bunch of keywords we were looking at, that bring up gated content. For example, I was looking at state of marketing reports. So marketing reports about the state of marketing. And the second result is from HubSpot, and it's gated. And interesting by the way, the result after that is Semrush. They have a state of content marketing 2023. And that used to be behind a gate. And that's an interesting strategy by the way. For the first, let's say month or so, I don't remember the exact time, they had it behind a gate or they had a very limited version that was not gated. And then they had the full version that was gated. And then eventually, after that... which makes so much sense because after a while, it's not about the leads at that point, it's about the ranking. So switch it up. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. Mordy Oberstein: And now the whole thing is there and you can download it if you want to. But you don't have to, you can read the whole thing. So that's one cool strategy. And the HubSpot page is you just have to download the thing. It's a data marketing report. It's a little outdated, Google, some 2022. But okay, leave that aside. What they do is they have a little paragraph about the content and then they have download the free report. What I would say with them is they're known for this kind of thing and a lot of that topical authority and links back into them ranking for this particular keyword. Crystal Carter: They're trusted for what they're known for. So people know, hey, if I give them my email address, they're not going to spam me with a bunch of stuff or any of the things that they do send me are probably going to be relevant to the thing that I'm interested in and it's not a big deal. I know where they are. I can find the information again, et cetera, et cetera. So these are a prime example of... And then also these, again, Amalia talked about the funnel. These are teams that have a marketing funnel that includes the data content as part of the funnel, or they're using it strategically to support that funnel. Because sometimes it might be that if you have something that's maybe a high ticket item that maybe you're not going to get a lot of people who are buying that 7,000 pound or $7,000 thing all the time, but you might get people who want to know about it, for instance. So if you had a luxury car or something that had a special kind of engine, you might have somebody who wants to know more about those kinds of engines, like a USP. And it might be that you can have a gated piece of content or the state of electric vehicles, for instance, that sort of thing. And that will give you potential leads. And you might not even expect to see a big return on it straight away, but it's about building trust in the long term. So it's interesting to see that ready for that and building their relationships. Mordy Oberstein: And by the way, one of the things that they have, by the way, you start to fill out your name and whatever, that they have a little percentage completed icon so that you're not like, "Oh my God, how much more information do I have to give to get this." But again, there's a lot of things you can do. You can still rank and be behind a gate. It is possible. I know you were looking for a bunch of keywords also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So one of the ones I found, we talked a lot about the New York Times. One of the things I found, and this goes back to what you were saying about how sometimes you think about gated content, but not everything we think of gated content is a hard gate or whatever. So cooking.nytimes.com is a recipe website. They have one piece of content called old fashioned beef stew, and it ranks for 400 number one keywords according to Semrush, for instance. So they rank for beef stew. According to Semrush, they're getting 27,000 bit's traffic every month from that. They rank for beef stew recipe, for instance. And if you go into their website, then if they have the article, but if you want to continue reading the article, you have to log in. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's another great strategy. Crystal Carter: Right. So the thing that's interesting about this is that this is also dealing with some of the changes that we're seeing around the way the web is. The web is becoming a lot less anonymous. And so if you log in, then the website will be able to track the analytics because when you log in, you're also agreeing to certain analytic conditions, like cookies, et cetera, et cetera. And we're moving away from being able to just put cookies on everything, track whatever we like, any honest person. We're moving away from that. And so having content, any sort of, you have to log in first space allows a brand to get permission from that person in order to track the activity on the website, which sometimes is people being cheeky. Sometimes it's people being like, "I'm going to follow you around so that can sell you this lawnmower 25 times," even though you already bought the lawnmower. Oh my gosh, sometimes it's those people. But sometimes it's also just a case of making sure that you're able to make content that the people that are coming to your website are actually... So if you're seeing that lots of people are going to that beach, maybe you should make more about that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's a great point by the web itself is becoming a little bit more less anonymous for a variety of reasons. I think users want that. I think obviously, the websites want it because the state of analytics is just, the whole reason there's a GA4 is because of this. And again, you need to make sure that when you're doing this sort of thing where you're having a login that you let Google know this is how the content is accessed. So you have structured data, is accessible for free kind of thing. You need to let them know what this content is so that they know how to handle the content and they can make sure they can actually crawl and read the content. Crystal Carter: Right. And if you do that well, as this piece of content is doing, like I said, they're ranking for hundreds of keywords, best recipe for beef stew. So they're not suffering by managing their content. Mordy Oberstein: That is the moral of this story. You do not need to suffer just because you have decided to put your content behind some kind of gate. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: If you're taking anything away from this segment, you can absolutely do this. Crystal Carter: You can absolutely do this. Mordy Oberstein: There are many ways. Crystal Carter: There are many ways, and there's people who can support you. As I said, the space with news publishers, they're doing amazing stuff in this space, a great place to start. And you can experiment really, really easily. So for instance, like I said, Wix has a membership space which will allow you to gate some things and gate other things, allow you to put a price tag on some things. And it can also do it with certain tools as well. So it might be that you have, for instance, there's certain courses as well that you can add a paywall to, and you can use certain tools to help you do that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: A course is another great case of you're going to have gated content, but you want to rank, like I have a free course on this, or you want to make sure that you rank for that. And again, I think with gated content kind of behind a paywall, you can get creative with how you go about doing this, what you show, when you show it, how you change it, what you're asking for. You can get really, really creative with all this stuff. Crystal Carter: One of the things that news publishers do a lot, particularly if you have a hard paywall, or not necessarily a hard paywall, but maybe a free paywall or something like that, is it makes the headline that much more important. You need to lure people in. Mordy Oberstein: Don't go too crazy. Crystal Carter: Don't go too crazy, but you need to make sure that you're making it seem enticing. The telegraph always trends on Twitter for different things and then like, that's interesting. And then I click it and they're like, "You have to pay to be on the telegraph." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh." So your content distribution strategy should also help you to build your brand in order to increase the possibility that people are more likely to pay for whatever it is you're offering. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of news publishers who are not behind a paywall, most of the SEO news publishers are not behind a paywall. In fact, if you were to put it behind a paywall, that would probably be a very bad idea because all of the great news publishers are not behind a paywall. So think about what your competitors are doing when you're putting your content behind a paywall. Because if you're going to get the same thing and you don't have to enter an email address, I'm just going to do that. So here's this week's snappiest of SEO news from all the SEO news sites that are not behind a paywall. Okay, now it's time to panic. Just kidding, just kidding. The March, 2023 core update is now complete for are some of the data that the folks over at Semrush had me review, the update was far more impactful than the previous core update back in September, 2022. I'll link to Barry Schwartz's full write up over at Search Engine Land in the show notes. Now, here's a fascinating one. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land again, Google Maps can attack fake phone numbers and photos and remove them. So when the evildoers of the web known as spammers throw their phone number onto a user contributed photo, Google said they can tell and remove it. The question of is this enough to fight spam, which Barry raises in his article is always a loaded one when it comes to local. Just the other day, Jason Brown showed how spammers are using ChatGPT to create fake reviews. Bet you didn't see that coming. I can't even. Speaking of the great AI in the sky, Bard's team is getting beefed up. Per reports, Google is pulling folks from the Google Assistant division to work on Bard. I always think it's fascinating who Google pulls over for different projects. Not that I know the entire roster over at Google, by heart. I'm into Google, but they're not the Yankees. But it's more interesting to see what types of folks Google is moving over from what team. So for example, the VP of Google's e-com efforts got pulled into the Bard team, right? Fascinating. Some kind of e-com element coming to Bard, possibly. Who knows? Anyway, you can see the full writeup from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal in the show notes. And finally, also from the great Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, Bing Chat, they feature ads shaking up the ad free experience. Oh no, right? No, wrong. Good thing. What? It means Bing is focusing on having clicks from its AI experience. You can't run ads and then not have people click. No one will run an ad with you. So ads means focus on clicks, as crazy and ironic as that sounds. It's really healthy for the web, my experience or my opinion rather, and completely ironic again when you think about it, Bing by the way, is I think very publisher focused with its AI experience. Matt reports that they're thinking about a hover experience from the AI chat for the sighted links showing more links from that website. I really do think Bing looks at the AI chat experience as an accent to, not replacement of websites. And I think Bing will be one of the forces out there to force other search engines to think the same way. And with that, that is the Snappiest of SEO news. Wasn't it great to get that SEO content that wasn't behind a paywall? What an inappropriate time to have a paywall. Crystal Carter: That would be inappropriate. Mordy Oberstein: It would be really inappropriate. Crystal Carter: Inappropriate. Although, there are definitely some people who have unique insights. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. So for example, you can super follow Barry Schwartz on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And Marie Haynes has two versions of her newsletter, for instance. So she has one that gives you the top level and then they have another one that adds a lot more detail and a lot more nuance and a lot more information. And that sets up premium pay list. Mordy Oberstein: So yes, there is SEO news out there that is behind a gate that is worth paying for. I don't personally super follow Barry, but if I were to, I probably would be very satisfied just knowing Barry. So I recommend super following Barry. Hear that Barry? Super follow. Send Barry your sheckles. Crystal Carter: So you're going to super follow Barry? Mordy Oberstein: What I'm doing now is I want to see if Barry's really listening this far into the episode. Crystal Carter: Okay. We'll see if he's listening because yeah, Barry is an absolute legend. Mordy Oberstein: Barry's an international treasure. Crystal Carter: Indeed. He's coming to London. Mordy Oberstein: He's coming to London. I was shocked. Crystal Carter: I know. He's coming to London. Mordy Oberstein: If you don't know who we're talking about, Barry Schwartz, who almost all the SEO news articles that we do on this show come from Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: All the SEO news comes from Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: He's written something like 30,000, 40,000 SEO news articles. So it's incredible. Anyway, so as time ebbs away on us this week, Crystal, who should we be following for more SEO awesomeness? Crystal Carter: I'm going to throw an international follow in for this week. So this is a follow from someone called, please forgive me if I've mispronounced your name, but Antoine Eripret. It's a French name, so it might be Eripret. Who wrote a really great thread on gated content and SEO. I think he's originally French speaking, but it says that he lives in Spain. And he wrote a really great thread all about gated content and SEO and about interstitials and all of these sort of technical things. And he talks in this thread a lot about the sort of accessible for free things that you need to do and a lot about some of the other elements that you can add in to see. So he gets into some of the technical details of paywall content. And he generally shares great content. He's an SEO for something called Liligo, and he shares some great content. He's got a good follower base of folks and he is really interested and curious about SEO topics. So yeah, follow him. Although I believe he's French speaking, he publishes lots of things in English as well. So yeah, just a shout out to an international SEO person. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. So if you're looking to follow, @antoineripret over on Twitter, link to it in the show notes and that'll do it for us this week. Crystal Carter: That's it. Did you get your email address? Did you send me your email address? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. But please don't spam me, I will unsubscribe. If only you could unsubscribe from people emailing you. Crystal Carter: Sad about right now to spam your email address or to spam your email with lots of random things. I can't decide what I should spam your email about. Maybe about spam. Maybe I should just send you literal pictures of spam over and over again. Mordy Oberstein: That doesn't sound kosher to me. 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 need to know if you want to go enterprise SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to a 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 over at iTunes, and or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Amalia Fowler Barry Adams Shelby Blackley Jessie Willms Antoine Eripret Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Polemic Digital WTFSEO Best Practices for Paywalls and SEO Guide to Wix SEO The Searchlight Newsletter News : How the March 2023 Google core update compared to previous core updates Google Maps can detect fake phone numbers in photos and remove them Google Restructures Company To Prioritize Bard AI Chatbot Bing Chat To Feature Ads, Shaking Up The Ad-Free Experience Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Amalia Fowler Barry Adams Shelby Blackley Jessie Willms Antoine Eripret Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Polemic Digital WTFSEO Best Practices for Paywalls and SEO Guide to Wix SEO The Searchlight Newsletter News : How the March 2023 Google core update compared to previous core updates Google Maps can detect fake phone numbers in photos and remove them Google Restructures Company To Prioritize Bard AI Chatbot Bing Chat To Feature Ads, Shaking Up The Ad-Free Experience Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing fabric, the incredible, fantastic... Is she behind a paywall? Is she not behind a paywall? Can you exit a... We don't know, we'll find out. The head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hi, I'm Crystal Carter. And yes you do. If you pay me five pounds, I'll chat to you, I promise, like $5, rubles, rand, what other currency is acceptable. Mordy Oberstein: That's not a random joke, by the way. Dear audience, you will see why that joke makes sense in a few minutes because otherwise it is completely random. Makes absolutely no sense why I would say that. Crystal Carter: Right. Completely random. But that is why we're here today. We're here to talk about... What are we going to talk about Mordy? Mordy Oberstein: Not yet. Crystal Carter: Not yet. It's it exclusive? Mordy Oberstein: You have to first send in your email address and then- Crystal Carter: Oh wait, do we have to like and subscribe? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. There's so many hints of what we're talking about today already. But before we get to that, this SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where we've added two new reports to our Google Search Console analytics around search console performance over time and search console, average position reporting. Check out both of those reports in addition to the two other reports we already have for you within your Wix analytics, which has absolutely nothing to do with the concept that we're talking about today. Usually, I try to tie them in. But the writing of the outline for this podcast episode came out along with the release of the two reports. So I felt like, let's go with it. Crystal Carter: It's important for all SEO and actually a lot of standard SEO, it also applies to exclusive VIP gated behind a membership subscriber space as well. So there are lots of SEO overlap that you need to pay attention to. Mordy Oberstein: Well, you know what? No, I got to pivot. I got to pivot. Crystal Carter: You got to pivot. Mordy Oberstein: These reports will come mightily in hand if, say you were to track organics performance for, I don't know, gated content. Crystal Carter: For gated content, for content that is behind maybe a login- Mordy Oberstein: Or some other paywall Crystal Carter: Or some sort of lead gen form. That sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: Correct. You can track your performance with these analytical reports because today, guess what we're talking about, SEO for content that's behind some sort of gate paywall or other sort of exclusivity that you're trying to use to possibly generate more leads for yourself. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: To be honest, that's why you're collecting those emails. That's not for the fun of it. Crystal Carter: This is it. This is it. And sometimes it's a question of being able to deliver somebody something that maybe is a big file. And so sometimes there's just a way of doing it that way. Mordy Oberstein: Right. There's legitimate reasons other than the lead gen to collect the emails. But now that you have the email. Crystal Carter: I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Right? Now that we're here. We're talking all about SEO and gated content, when to get your content, how to handle the SEO considerations around gated content, and even how ChatGPT and AI writers plays into the gated content equation. Because no podcast episode is safe when we're talking about AI these days. Crystal Carter: Nope. No, the bots are here. Mordy Oberstein: Plus, we'll explore what some gated pages that our ranking well are doing so you can take away some lessons for your own pages. And of course, we have the Snappiest of SEO news for you and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness out there on social media. So enter your name, company, and email address as episode number 32 of the SERP's Up podcast is now downloading. You don't really need to enter your email address or name or anything. Crystal Carter: No, you don't. Although, you can sign up for our newsletter. You can do that. And then whenever we drop the latest, most exclusive podcast, you can get it. It's not that exclusive at all. We're literally on all of the podcast networks that we're not exclusive. But as soon as it drops, you'll get an email in your inbox, which is a great service that we're happy to provide. Mordy Oberstein: So we're not using it for lead gen, we're using it because legitimately, we need to know where to email the newsletter too. Crystal Carter: So we're going to be talking today about gates, paywalls and exclusive content. And one of the things that I did as soon as I started looking at this topic was to go to the news people, the people who are managing news websites because they have been in this space for longer than anyone. Because one of the things that folks who are looking at news websites will say that is that they had to deal with a big shift because there was one point where the news was essentially where you got a lot of information. And then, with the advent of the internet, lots of people were getting information from lots of places. And so news folks had to find another way to manage their things and to make sure that they can pay their reporters and bills and all that sort of stuff. So there's some fantastic people who are working in the news SEO space. Shout out to Barry Adams. Shout out to Shelby Blackley. Shout out to Jessie Willms over at WTF SEO. Basically, when I was looking at this topic, I find it really fascinating and there's a few things that we can think about. So there's paywalls, and paywalls are not necessarily a bad thing. One of the things that they talk about in WTF SEO is that the New York Times, for instance, was getting a lot of good activity out of their paywall. So they're generating millions of pounds every year based on their paywall because they make very, very good content, for instance. So they're able to charge a little bit of money for that. And so they're not necessarily a bad thing. You do need to manage them correctly. Google has a specific documentation about how you can make sure that you have structured data that supports your paywall content. So for instance, you need to say to Google in declaring your structured data whether or not it's accessible for free. So there's a property within structured data it says is accessible for free. And if it is not, then you say false. And that's something that you should consider when you're thinking about paywalls. And what kind of paywalls are there? Well, there's hard paywalls, which is essentially where you have to subscribe and pay for everything and callers can't access it and other people can't access it unless they either pay you or subscribe or join or whichever. There's soft paywalls where you essentially gate part of your content for a few articles for a month. So the Washington Post for instance, does this where you go onto their website and they're like, "You've got three free articles. There's your one. Thank you very much." Then the next time they're like, "You've got two left," that sort of thing. So that's a soft paywall. And then there's combination paywall where you have a few paywalls that are free, a few pieces of content that are free and some that are gated. This often happens during big events. So for instance, The Financial Times generally gates a lot of their content. But during peak COVID, they had a lot of COVID data and that was freely accessible. This is a really good opportunity to get people to understand your brand and see the robustness of your reporting. So The Financial Times, their COVID reporting was really, really good. And so that made me think, well, maybe it is worth paying for that sort of thing. I didn't, but I could. The thing that's important to think about is if you were trying to rank hard paywalls, all right, no. If you have an audience that is engaged and an audience that is your subscriber list and an audience that you are giving exclusive, exclusive content, then cool, go through the hard paywall. But if you're expecting to rank, then Google's not calling your site and other folks aren't being able to see it. One of the other challenges that a lot of people have discussed, this is something that Barry Adams and WTF SEO talked about and a few other folks talk about, is one of the things that's a challenge for paywall content is pogo sticking. So people will go to say, The New York Times, or they'll go to a website that has a paywall and they'll go, "I'm interested in this." And then they go, "Oh, I have to pay for it?" And then they go back to the SERP. So that's something that you have to think about. And then the other thing you have to think about is that you might get fewer backlinks . And I looked at this. So thinking about news, again, I compared The New York Times to The Guardian, for instance. The Guardian doesn't have a paywall, they just say, "Please, would you contribute? Would you mind, so kindly?" And for instance, The New York Times has all a lot more organic traffic overall, and they have a lot more keywords overall. But The Guardian has 1.6 billion backlinks and the New York Times has, according to Semrush, has 967 million backlinks. And so that a thing to consider as well. Mordy Oberstein: Also, qualify your traffic data. Just because they're there, doesn't mean... They might have just came and left. Crystal Carter: Also, I think that you'll want to think about the value of that traffic. So if you have subscribed to traffic, then that value is potentially going to be more. So this is something to think about. So then we have gated content, general gated content. And this is something that folks who are big into their content marketing will use very strategically in order to add real deep value to their users and to engage their audience. And it's nice to think of this as part of your funnel. So I know that Semrush has some of their webinars where you have to log in, you give them their email address, they give you the webinar link, you give them one thing. And sometimes this is also a way to sort of satisfy content that's on school domains. So for instance, if you have your webinars hosted on a webinar platform and you have your website on your main platform, then it might be that you gate it so that you can direct them to the landing page. That's the appropriate page in a way that you're able to track. Also, it's a way for you to build in your funnel so that somebody maybe gets one, you get their email and you're able to send them resources and then you're able to add more value on top of that. Gated content is great for things like white papers, for research, for eBooks, for media, webinars and things like that. And for those ones, you're going to want to optimize your landing page for instance. And yeah, it's a really interesting topic. A lot of people have written about it and it's something that I think is really fascinating. Mordy Oberstein: It's really interesting because you have so many things going. On the news side, the news side's a little bit different than your typical gated content because it's gated, let's say The New York Times, but Google needs to be able to crawl it and then index it. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Its own thing. Crystal Carter: Barry Adams wrote a great article recently called Best Practices for Paywalls and SEOs, and he talks a lot about that. So essentially, the bot needs to have free access in order to be able to call it and see the content appropriately. And there's lots of other things that news sites do. They have like RSS set up so that they're able to submit their content to Google in a certain way so that Google can read it that way as well. And there's lots of other things that they do there. But if you really want to get into the details, I cannot recommend enough Barry's article, Best Practices for Paywalls and SEO. There's also the article, WTF SEO, they have two articles on new SEO paywall strategies. They have a part one and a part two where they go into it as well and they talk about lots of different strategies. It's really fascinating and it's something that we might see a little bit more of. I think you hinted at this a little bit, but I think it's something that people might want to be considering when we're thinking about a space where the nature of content is changing because of the AI space. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, let's just dive into that I guess at this point, because that's a point you illuminated to me about. I thought it was a great point that AI writers, whatever you want, the ChatGPTs of the world are built on scraping content and then spitting that out. And if you don't want to lend your voice to that, if everybody else is doing it and I don't do it, am I then left out of the equation or do I say, "Do I not be part of this," and just differentiate myself? That is a very top level brand content strategy, SEO everything kind of question. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And there's no simple answer to that, but one of the things you might want to consider is, you know what? Let's not let them crawl this. Crystal Carter: So a lot of the chatGPT for instance, is using Common Crawl as one of their data sources, for instance. And I had a look in web archive and you look at web archive and you see the common crawls that they've done, it doubled between 2020 and 2021. And chatGPT, their data has taken extensively up till 2021. So there has been an influx in data coming from then. And what we're seeing with some of the AI image generators, for instance, they're scraping Getty Images and we can tell because when they generate images, it still has the Getty Image watermark on it. So a company like Getty Images for instance, might think, well, we might potentially want to block that crawler. But then when we have AI search, if you think about new Bing, if you think about Google's proposed Bard situation, then it might be that you're less visible on those search engines. So I think that your brand point is really important because if you think about someone like The New York Times, they have an established name, they have an established brand and they can say, "Hey, subscribe to us, you're going to get really good stuff. It's going to be really good." And a lot of people from doing this with Patreon and YouTube and stuff because they're like, this takes me a lot of time and effort to create. If you want it, pay me a fiver a month and I'll give you really great content and you'll enjoy it. And lots of people make a living out of that, and lots of people make great content out of that. So I think it's something lots of people should be considering of lots of different business styles. Mordy Oberstein: The New York Times is literally a great example. I was at Semrush's Global Marketing Day and one of the people I was on a panel with, she was actually presenting, was from the New York Times. And she was going through their strategy around they want to show the value how complicated and hard it is to get good news and get good reporting. What you have to do as a reporter to be accurate, to be novel, to get this information and that because it's so hard, that's not something that should be free necessarily, you should pay for. And that's a very much a brand decision for them. And that's something where I think your SEO value may contradict the brand if you're now not going to show up when Bing does an AI chat, now you're not going to be cited by Bing like, okay, because as a brand, don't care. Crystal Carter: It's a very interesting business proposition because, and I think that this is why a lot of folks are saying that a combination paywall or a combination of gated and free stuff works really well. So if you think its social media, there's something that people talk about. They talk about a thirst trap, which is essentially where you have a celebrity or something and they generally post things about, "Hey, look at me, I'm on set" or whatever. And then every now and then they post an amazing picture where they're just looking very sultry or they're giving it blue steel or whatever. And people call it a thirst trap. Essentially, what you'll need to do is have a few things that are maybe a pillar post or maybe a high traffic thing or something that gets a lot of attention on search. And then maybe be more selective about the kinds of content that you keep back for your team. And I think this is something that we see with newsletters. Newsletters is something that's changing as well. There's people who are like, you can pay to be on my newsletter. And people pay to get a high quality newsletter. And I think that in a space where we're going to see a high volume of content coming from ChatGPT, because literally I could create something without even typing. I could talk into my phone and say, "Make me an article about something," and then it could spit something out. And I think in a space where we're seeing a lot of volume, quality is going to be equality based on brand recognition, based on entity, based on trust, is going to be a big difference. And I think that people will be interested in potentially paying for that, potentially being in a community where that's available. And in order to manage that, we'll have to think more strategically about it. And I think that people who are building up their mailing lists are going to be more resilient to that. People who are building up their communities are going to be more resilient to that going forward. Mordy Oberstein: And I think, by the way, leaving the gated side of it alone for just one second, in an AI era, one of the things that's going to be important is being recognized as someone with differentiated content. Meaning if there's a mass influx of generic-ish kind of content out there, you as a brand being known when your site shows up on the SERP and there's three other sites with you above the fold, you might think, well, I'm not ranking number one, I'm not ranking number two, I'm number three or four. But in a world where that brand differentiation is going to be a thing, people might skip over one or two because they know that's whatever, but you are known for your great content and then click. It's going to become, if I can make a prediction, that service association two brands as having great content is going to become a thing going forward. And I want to hit back to something you mentioned before about having different forms of content is at times putting out the blog post or the articles and then at time is doing a gated piece. One thing that I think works really well, and I think you'll see companies, Semrush does this lot, where they'll do a state of search. Remember I wrote a state of search for them 2022. And what we did was we put out a few sections that we thought were really interesting and that was free. And it was a regular blog post. It wasn't thin, it was a good couple of pages. Or if you wanted to really dive into the whole thing, then you go behind the paywall. So you got the best of both worlds. You got the organic whatever out of it, juice for lack of a better word, but you also got that ability to show up behind a paywall to get the leads, which is the other part of it. Crystal Carter: Right. And this is something that you see a lot of people do with extract. So I used to do a lot of work with the food industry, so you'd have somebody who'd written them an amazing book. I know that Mordy is apparently the chef du jour on the General Tso's chicken. And so let's say he's got his book on how to make these amazing meals, what you would do is you'd have one recipe that you feature in one magazine and you say, "This is an extract from this book." And it's that sort of thing. This is a great recipe. And it's just in the same way that you have singles that you released from your album and then you have the whole album. You want to make sure that... I say as if I released an album. I'm like, yeah, last week. Mordy Oberstein: You have the good songs and the crap songs. Crystal Carter: I didn't say it. Mordy Oberstein: No, but sometimes as you won the whole album, you want to feel the album. I really like to feel the album with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I always like to feel the album. Crystal Carter: What's that Marvin Gaye song, the album, what's going on? It's actually pretty much a whole album. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, there's themed albums like The Who's Quadrophenia is a whole theme of an album. Crystal Carter: It's a whole album. If you listen to one at a time, you don't get the same experiences if you listen to the whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, this is true. I'm being facetious. Crystal Carter: Music podcast later. One thing that I think people should be considering now in the AI era is thinking about whether or not you have the kind of content that people would be willing to pay for. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: If you needed to, is your content good enough Where if you were like, "I'm charging for this now," and people would be like, "Yeah, okay." Mordy Oberstein: That's a great sniff test. That's a great sniff test. Crystal Carter: Yeah, would you pay for this? It's like, yeah, I would, this is really good. I would like. And I've seen people who've had things that they, or communities or something they have and they're like, "I'm putting buy me a coffee thing on that." And I'm like, yeah, I will buy you a coffee because I value this so much that I want to make sure that you're able to continue making this content for me because I really, really value it. I think it's really good. Mordy Oberstein: We might end up turning the engine on its head a little bit from going from volume to focus audience, but it's a whole different conversation for a different time. One thing I do want to bring up really quickly is that gated content or areas that are segmented off without having immediate access apply more often than you think. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So there's a lot of pages, forums, for example are like this, membership. So you may not realize, we're talking about gated content. I don't have any gated content, I don't have any blog posts or eBooks or whatever. But there could be many pages on your website that if you started thinking about, wait a second, they actually are gated. I didn't even realize it. Crystal Carter: Right. Wix has a tool that allows you, if somebody wants to comment on your blog, you can make it- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, that's what I was thinking. Crystal Carter: ... That they're a member. And this has benefits for a couple of reasons. So this means that you'll have less spam. Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say keep the riffraff out. Crystal Carter: Right. So it means you'll have less spam in your comments because spam in your comments can bring down the quality of your content. For instance, it also means that you are able to engage your mailing list, for instance. So it means that if you open up your comments and that people have to subscribe or whatever in order to comment, then that means you're going to be on a mailing list just from people being able to comment. I've seen content which has very little SEO optimization on the actual page itself, but is ranking for hundreds of keywords because it has a very engaged comment section, like a recipe site in particular that I know, because it's like, "Best recipe ever," in the comments, like seven times. And that's really useful. Mordy Oberstein: Don't go to your recipe now and start leaving comments for yourself. Please don't do that. Crystal Carter: SEOs are going to SEO, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry, just had to say that. Now since you're talking about using gated content to get email addresses to get leads, we thought it may make sense to offer you some tips about how to do that most effectively. And to do that, we brought Amalia Fowler over and she's going to talk to us now about how to get max value, even max leads out of gated content. Amalia Fowler: Gated content. It's one of those things people think is really easy to do, but so many things can go wrong. And this is especially true if you're not paying attention to the little things that matter. And a lot of what matters actually happens before the user even accesses the content itself. One of the first ways to get maximum value out of gated content is to make sure that you not only know who you're speaking to, but also where they are in their user journey. What content is going to appeal to them? What pain point are you helping them overcome? What motivation are you tapping into and how does everything you are putting together speak to that, but also fit into the larger user journey? Once you know who you're speaking to, you've got to make sure that your value proposition is clear. If I cannot immediately understand what I am going to receive for giving you my information, then you're not going to get me to fill out a form. I need some incentive. This is because filling out a form is an information exchange. One sentence that I've heard, and I don't know who said it originally, is that information is the currency of the internet. And I find this to be so true. I know, the average user knows, that a business is going to get value from my information, from my name or from my email. So the value that they're offering in return has to be proportional. The more a business wants from someone, the more they have to give in return. This is especially true if you're going to ask for a phone number and if you've made that a mandatory field and you don't want to fake number in there, you have got to make the gated content worth the person's while of giving you that level of information. After all of that, finally, the content itself needs to be super high quality and deliver on your promise. If it's not high quality, why is it gated? It should be relevant, clear, actionable, unique, and much like the content we write on blogs or on webpages, it also needs to solve a problem, that initial problem that you've understood from understanding your audience. The risks are higher with gated content than with content that users access for free because they've given you their information and the law of reciprocity dictates that they get something of value in return. So if somebody doesn't feel like they've received value from the content or submitting their information was a waste of time, then you've probably lost them at a point in the journey where you really want to be nurturing them. To get maximum value from your gated content, you've got to make sure that you know who you're speaking to, your value proposition is clear, that your form asks for proportional information and that the content is actionable, unique and relevant to the user. This is how you get somebody going, "Oh man, that was really worth it," as opposed to going, "Oh crap, now I need to change my phone number." Mordy Oberstein: That last line is gold. Amalia Fowler: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Gold. When you're putting something behind a gate and people are entering their personal information, i.e. their email address and their name, you feel vulnerable as a person. And now you're in a very precarious spot as a brand because the goal is not to get the email address. I think people think, got my email, I have succeeded. The goal is to use that email address effectively. So now you have the email address. Now you're going to email them all about your product and your newsletter or whatever you're going to email them about and they see your brand, like those SOBs, those are the people I gave them my... How do I get out? I don't want nothing to do with them, which is not what you want, not what you want. Crystal Carter: It's not what you want, it's not what you want. And she's like, you got to change your phone number. This is the thing. If I gave my email address, I don't want to give it to somebody who I trust. It's about trust. If you're gating the content and you're telling me that this content is gated, it needs to be good. Like she says like, oh my gosh, if it's not good, why is it gated? Facts, big facts. And I think that nobody wants to get onto an email list for a bunch of junk. However, if you get onto someone's mailing list and they're sending you good stuff, good quality things like, "Hey, we think this will help you. Hey, we think this is good. Hey, you asked for this ebook. We also have this other thing that you might be interested in," or "Because you signed up for this webinar, we also have this other thing you might be interested in." That's great. Like you said, it's not about getting the email address, it's about having the opportunity to build a relationship. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes, thank you. Crystal Carter: And what she was saying was that it's high risk because if you don't deliver, then yeah, you can burn that bridge and that's awful. You don't want to do that. So you want to make sure that yeah, it's good quality when you gate something and it's good quality when you're creating it. I remember working with somebody who was a client and they were really into, look, get this brochure downloaded. The brochure was six pages and had very little stuff and they were like, "How come no one's downloading the brochure?" I was like, "It's not a good brochure." And also, they wanted a phone number for it. And I think that's something to remember as well. Be careful with the data that you're asking for. There's no reason for them to ask for a phone number for you to download a PDF. None. And yet, they were trying to do this. And I was like, "Guys, no, don't do that. Ask for what you need." I've had it before where people are like, "What's your first name and what was your dog's name?" Mordy Oberstein: You don't need any of that. Why do you need to know any of that? It's super annoying. Super annoying. And also, be careful. They read it. It's an amazing asset you created and they love you now, and they gave you the email address and they're glad, and then they get 400 emails from you the next day. It's a relationship, everything is all part of the funnel. You can't be good at one spot, you need to be good at all of the spots. Crystal Carter: Right, right. It's like if somebody opens the gate to your house and you welcome them in, you don't want to. . , you welcome them. Mordy Oberstein: They were a great dinner guest for the first course. Once the dessert came out, they were destroying everything, throwing plates and all sorts of whatnot. So thank you, Amalia. Look for Amalia out in there on Twitter @AmaliaEFowler. That's A-M-A-L-I-A-E-F-O-W-L-E-R. We'll link to that in the show notes. And big shout out to RicketyRoo, where she's a senior PPC manager. So good folks over there, the RicketyRoo agency, Blake, Amanda, a lot of good folks over there. All right. Now, there are plenty of sites or plenty of pages rather, that have some great gated content that rank well. But we thought, well, even more great reason to go have a look at what's ranking that is behind the gate and look why is that ranking, even though it's behind a gate or what's happening there and what's not happening there, and what could we learn for ourselves and our own gated content. So welcome to the gated version From the Top of the SERP. Just kidding, again, it's not actually gated. Crystal Carter: No. You don't have to give us your email in order to read this part of.. Read? Listen to this part of- Mordy Oberstein: Listen. Or you could read it, I guess. We have a transcript on the- Crystal Carter: There's a transcript because we like to add value for our users. Mordy Oberstein: See? And that's not behind a gate either. Only the newsletter is behind the gate. But again, how are we going to email it to you- Crystal Carter: If we don't have your email? Mordy Oberstein: We don't have your email address. We're not prophets. Crystal Carter: We like to do combinations. We have the complete guide Wix SEO, as written by one Mordy Oberstein. And if you go to that website, you can have it as a webpage, or you can enter your email and we'll email it to you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And you can download it and do that thing that you do with whatever you download. So there's a bunch of keywords we were looking at, that bring up gated content. For example, I was looking at state of marketing reports. So marketing reports about the state of marketing. And the second result is from HubSpot, and it's gated. And interesting by the way, the result after that is Semrush. They have a state of content marketing 2023. And that used to be behind a gate. And that's an interesting strategy by the way. For the first, let's say month or so, I don't remember the exact time, they had it behind a gate or they had a very limited version that was not gated. And then they had the full version that was gated. And then eventually, after that... which makes so much sense because after a while, it's not about the leads at that point, it's about the ranking. So switch it up. Crystal Carter: Right, right, right. Mordy Oberstein: And now the whole thing is there and you can download it if you want to. But you don't have to, you can read the whole thing. So that's one cool strategy. And the HubSpot page is you just have to download the thing. It's a data marketing report. It's a little outdated, Google, some 2022. But okay, leave that aside. What they do is they have a little paragraph about the content and then they have download the free report. What I would say with them is they're known for this kind of thing and a lot of that topical authority and links back into them ranking for this particular keyword. Crystal Carter: They're trusted for what they're known for. So people know, hey, if I give them my email address, they're not going to spam me with a bunch of stuff or any of the things that they do send me are probably going to be relevant to the thing that I'm interested in and it's not a big deal. I know where they are. I can find the information again, et cetera, et cetera. So these are a prime example of... And then also these, again, Amalia talked about the funnel. These are teams that have a marketing funnel that includes the data content as part of the funnel, or they're using it strategically to support that funnel. Because sometimes it might be that if you have something that's maybe a high ticket item that maybe you're not going to get a lot of people who are buying that 7,000 pound or $7,000 thing all the time, but you might get people who want to know about it, for instance. So if you had a luxury car or something that had a special kind of engine, you might have somebody who wants to know more about those kinds of engines, like a USP. And it might be that you can have a gated piece of content or the state of electric vehicles, for instance, that sort of thing. And that will give you potential leads. And you might not even expect to see a big return on it straight away, but it's about building trust in the long term. So it's interesting to see that ready for that and building their relationships. Mordy Oberstein: And by the way, one of the things that they have, by the way, you start to fill out your name and whatever, that they have a little percentage completed icon so that you're not like, "Oh my God, how much more information do I have to give to get this." But again, there's a lot of things you can do. You can still rank and be behind a gate. It is possible. I know you were looking for a bunch of keywords also. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So one of the ones I found, we talked a lot about the New York Times. One of the things I found, and this goes back to what you were saying about how sometimes you think about gated content, but not everything we think of gated content is a hard gate or whatever. So cooking.nytimes.com is a recipe website. They have one piece of content called old fashioned beef stew, and it ranks for 400 number one keywords according to Semrush, for instance. So they rank for beef stew. According to Semrush, they're getting 27,000 bit's traffic every month from that. They rank for beef stew recipe, for instance. And if you go into their website, then if they have the article, but if you want to continue reading the article, you have to log in. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That's another great strategy. Crystal Carter: Right. So the thing that's interesting about this is that this is also dealing with some of the changes that we're seeing around the way the web is. The web is becoming a lot less anonymous. And so if you log in, then the website will be able to track the analytics because when you log in, you're also agreeing to certain analytic conditions, like cookies, et cetera, et cetera. And we're moving away from being able to just put cookies on everything, track whatever we like, any honest person. We're moving away from that. And so having content, any sort of, you have to log in first space allows a brand to get permission from that person in order to track the activity on the website, which sometimes is people being cheeky. Sometimes it's people being like, "I'm going to follow you around so that can sell you this lawnmower 25 times," even though you already bought the lawnmower. Oh my gosh, sometimes it's those people. But sometimes it's also just a case of making sure that you're able to make content that the people that are coming to your website are actually... So if you're seeing that lots of people are going to that beach, maybe you should make more about that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's a great point by the web itself is becoming a little bit more less anonymous for a variety of reasons. I think users want that. I think obviously, the websites want it because the state of analytics is just, the whole reason there's a GA4 is because of this. And again, you need to make sure that when you're doing this sort of thing where you're having a login that you let Google know this is how the content is accessed. So you have structured data, is accessible for free kind of thing. You need to let them know what this content is so that they know how to handle the content and they can make sure they can actually crawl and read the content. Crystal Carter: Right. And if you do that well, as this piece of content is doing, like I said, they're ranking for hundreds of keywords, best recipe for beef stew. So they're not suffering by managing their content. Mordy Oberstein: That is the moral of this story. You do not need to suffer just because you have decided to put your content behind some kind of gate. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: If you're taking anything away from this segment, you can absolutely do this. Crystal Carter: You can absolutely do this. Mordy Oberstein: There are many ways. Crystal Carter: There are many ways, and there's people who can support you. As I said, the space with news publishers, they're doing amazing stuff in this space, a great place to start. And you can experiment really, really easily. So for instance, like I said, Wix has a membership space which will allow you to gate some things and gate other things, allow you to put a price tag on some things. And it can also do it with certain tools as well. So it might be that you have, for instance, there's certain courses as well that you can add a paywall to, and you can use certain tools to help you do that sort of thing. Mordy Oberstein: A course is another great case of you're going to have gated content, but you want to rank, like I have a free course on this, or you want to make sure that you rank for that. And again, I think with gated content kind of behind a paywall, you can get creative with how you go about doing this, what you show, when you show it, how you change it, what you're asking for. You can get really, really creative with all this stuff. Crystal Carter: One of the things that news publishers do a lot, particularly if you have a hard paywall, or not necessarily a hard paywall, but maybe a free paywall or something like that, is it makes the headline that much more important. You need to lure people in. Mordy Oberstein: Don't go too crazy. Crystal Carter: Don't go too crazy, but you need to make sure that you're making it seem enticing. The telegraph always trends on Twitter for different things and then like, that's interesting. And then I click it and they're like, "You have to pay to be on the telegraph." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh." So your content distribution strategy should also help you to build your brand in order to increase the possibility that people are more likely to pay for whatever it is you're offering. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of news publishers who are not behind a paywall, most of the SEO news publishers are not behind a paywall. In fact, if you were to put it behind a paywall, that would probably be a very bad idea because all of the great news publishers are not behind a paywall. So think about what your competitors are doing when you're putting your content behind a paywall. Because if you're going to get the same thing and you don't have to enter an email address, I'm just going to do that. So here's this week's snappiest of SEO news from all the SEO news sites that are not behind a paywall. Okay, now it's time to panic. Just kidding, just kidding. The March, 2023 core update is now complete for are some of the data that the folks over at Semrush had me review, the update was far more impactful than the previous core update back in September, 2022. I'll link to Barry Schwartz's full write up over at Search Engine Land in the show notes. Now, here's a fascinating one. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land again, Google Maps can attack fake phone numbers and photos and remove them. So when the evildoers of the web known as spammers throw their phone number onto a user contributed photo, Google said they can tell and remove it. The question of is this enough to fight spam, which Barry raises in his article is always a loaded one when it comes to local. Just the other day, Jason Brown showed how spammers are using ChatGPT to create fake reviews. Bet you didn't see that coming. I can't even. Speaking of the great AI in the sky, Bard's team is getting beefed up. Per reports, Google is pulling folks from the Google Assistant division to work on Bard. I always think it's fascinating who Google pulls over for different projects. Not that I know the entire roster over at Google, by heart. I'm into Google, but they're not the Yankees. But it's more interesting to see what types of folks Google is moving over from what team. So for example, the VP of Google's e-com efforts got pulled into the Bard team, right? Fascinating. Some kind of e-com element coming to Bard, possibly. Who knows? Anyway, you can see the full writeup from Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal in the show notes. And finally, also from the great Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal, Bing Chat, they feature ads shaking up the ad free experience. Oh no, right? No, wrong. Good thing. What? It means Bing is focusing on having clicks from its AI experience. You can't run ads and then not have people click. No one will run an ad with you. So ads means focus on clicks, as crazy and ironic as that sounds. It's really healthy for the web, my experience or my opinion rather, and completely ironic again when you think about it, Bing by the way, is I think very publisher focused with its AI experience. Matt reports that they're thinking about a hover experience from the AI chat for the sighted links showing more links from that website. I really do think Bing looks at the AI chat experience as an accent to, not replacement of websites. And I think Bing will be one of the forces out there to force other search engines to think the same way. And with that, that is the Snappiest of SEO news. Wasn't it great to get that SEO content that wasn't behind a paywall? What an inappropriate time to have a paywall. Crystal Carter: That would be inappropriate. Mordy Oberstein: It would be really inappropriate. Crystal Carter: Inappropriate. Although, there are definitely some people who have unique insights. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. So for example, you can super follow Barry Schwartz on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Right, right. And Marie Haynes has two versions of her newsletter, for instance. So she has one that gives you the top level and then they have another one that adds a lot more detail and a lot more nuance and a lot more information. And that sets up premium pay list. Mordy Oberstein: So yes, there is SEO news out there that is behind a gate that is worth paying for. I don't personally super follow Barry, but if I were to, I probably would be very satisfied just knowing Barry. So I recommend super following Barry. Hear that Barry? Super follow. Send Barry your sheckles. Crystal Carter: So you're going to super follow Barry? Mordy Oberstein: What I'm doing now is I want to see if Barry's really listening this far into the episode. Crystal Carter: Okay. We'll see if he's listening because yeah, Barry is an absolute legend. Mordy Oberstein: Barry's an international treasure. Crystal Carter: Indeed. He's coming to London. Mordy Oberstein: He's coming to London. I was shocked. Crystal Carter: I know. He's coming to London. Mordy Oberstein: If you don't know who we're talking about, Barry Schwartz, who almost all the SEO news articles that we do on this show come from Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: All the SEO news comes from Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: He's written something like 30,000, 40,000 SEO news articles. So it's incredible. Anyway, so as time ebbs away on us this week, Crystal, who should we be following for more SEO awesomeness? Crystal Carter: I'm going to throw an international follow in for this week. So this is a follow from someone called, please forgive me if I've mispronounced your name, but Antoine Eripret. It's a French name, so it might be Eripret. Who wrote a really great thread on gated content and SEO. I think he's originally French speaking, but it says that he lives in Spain. And he wrote a really great thread all about gated content and SEO and about interstitials and all of these sort of technical things. And he talks in this thread a lot about the sort of accessible for free things that you need to do and a lot about some of the other elements that you can add in to see. So he gets into some of the technical details of paywall content. And he generally shares great content. He's an SEO for something called Liligo, and he shares some great content. He's got a good follower base of folks and he is really interested and curious about SEO topics. So yeah, follow him. Although I believe he's French speaking, he publishes lots of things in English as well. So yeah, just a shout out to an international SEO person. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. So if you're looking to follow, @antoineripret over on Twitter, link to it in the show notes and that'll do it for us this week. Crystal Carter: That's it. Did you get your email address? Did you send me your email address? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. But please don't spam me, I will unsubscribe. If only you could unsubscribe from people emailing you. Crystal Carter: Sad about right now to spam your email address or to spam your email with lots of random things. I can't decide what I should spam your email about. Maybe about spam. Maybe I should just send you literal pictures of spam over and over again. Mordy Oberstein: That doesn't sound kosher to me. 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 need to know if you want to go enterprise SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to a 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 over at iTunes, and or a rating on Spotify. 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Can you have too much of a good thing? SEOs and marketers often rely on data - but is it too much sometimes? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter tackle the paradox of data overload with Katy Powell, PR Director & Co-founder of Bottled Imagination. They explore why a high search volume for a keyword like “buy shoes” doesn’t necessarily mean more traffic and conversions, and how Google’s search query filtering is reshaping SEO strategies. Qualifying the data is the most important factor as we swim in the SEO seas. Plus, we dive into LLM training and the cycle of updates to the datasets of all of the most popular Large Language Model tools. Join us as we unravel the art of data-driven creativity on episode 116 of SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Can you have TOO much SEO data? Can you have too much of a good thing? SEOs and marketers often rely on data - but is it too much sometimes? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter tackle the paradox of data overload with Katy Powell, PR Director & Co-founder of Bottled Imagination. They explore why a high search volume for a keyword like “buy shoes” doesn’t necessarily mean more traffic and conversions, and how Google’s search query filtering is reshaping SEO strategies. Qualifying the data is the most important factor as we swim in the SEO seas. Plus, we dive into LLM training and the cycle of updates to the datasets of all of the most popular Large Language Model tools. Join us as we unravel the art of data-driven creativity on episode 116 of SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 116 | January 8, 2025 | 36 MIN 00:00 / 36:44 This week’s guests Katy Powell Paul Andre de Vera is a 15+ year B2B digital marketer who creates engaging, educational, and entertaining video content that ranks. His innovative approach has made "Dre" a sought-after speaker, online educator, and organic growth strategist for B2B companies like SAP and Workday. He's a diehard Raiders fan who lives with his two Yorkies, Buddha and Santo. You'll find "Dre" hosting the livestream SEO Video Show during Friday lunch, which has accumulated over 75k watch hours. He always looks for the next great place to devour a delicious rib-eye steak and occasionally sip a glass of whiskey. Today, you'll find him providing SEO consultation to hyper-growth startups 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 loves all things data, SEO data, LLM data, AI data, analytics data, GSC data, third party tool data, head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello people of the internet. I hope you are well. Mordy Oberstein: They can't answer. How do we ever know if they're well or not? Tell us. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Do you think that we are going to be able to hear from them? They should tell us. They should tag us. Mordy Oberstein: Oh no, no. That opens up Pandora's box for all the hypochondriacs of the world to be like, "Oh, I'll tell you why I'm not doing well." Crystal Carter: "Hey, my sciatica's playing up, the weather's gone and I'm really struggling." Mordy Oberstein: Like, "Hey, how are you doing?" passing by in the grocery store, like somebody you don't really know so well, I don't know, a neighbor down the block kind of thing you never talk to and they're like, "Oh well, you know..." No, no, no. Didn't really mean it. Crystal Carter: Fine. Fine is the answer. Fine. Mordy Oberstein: Fine. Or, "Yeah, I've been better, but things will get better." That's fine too. Tolerable. Fine. As long as a conversation results in three seconds and me going to get a jar of pickles and you going to get whatever you're buying. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly. I think sometimes you just got to keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Just keep it moving. Too spicy early on the podcast? Crystal Carter: I don't know, I don't know. It's like maybe they'll just start sharing stats. Maybe they'll pull out their health monitor thing and start telling me about their BMI and stuff. Just like too much data. Maybe that's what they'll give you. Mordy Oberstein: You know what my blood sugar is right now? Nope. This Service Hub podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can subscribe to our SEO newsletter. Search for it over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter and take our SEO course. But it's also where you can get keyword data right inside the platform with our native integrations with Semrush, SE Ranking, Wincher, as this week we ask, can you ever have too much data? Let's explore the side that says you can never have too much of a good thing, as well as a side that says too much data might be a distraction, but also how is SEO data used today and how does it differ from yesteryear? Bottled imaginations, PR director and co-founder Katy Powell chimes in on using data for creative campaigns that get links, high DA ones too, plus we'll chat about the different data LLM based search engines may use. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So throw on another scoop onto that cone and order an extra slice, because like carbs, you can never have too much of a good thing, which is SEO data on this, the 106th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Wow, that really tied into the blood sugar thing. Blood sugar now, extra slices and scoops. I didn't plan that. Crystal Carter: What? You've lost me, but I hope everything is well with you. Mordy Oberstein: I'm fine. Crystal Carter: Okay, good. I am fine, I'm fine. Yeah, there was a lot of data for my little brain to handle. So on this topic, this is something that's been rattling around in my head for a little while. We are inundated with data. And speaking of those health tracker things, I saw somebody who was like, "I don't need to know all of this stuff about myself. It's too much information." I've got one of those apps and it tells you all of this stuff, your oxygen... I don't even know. I don't know what it means. And I think that this is something that happens a lot of time in marketing. Marketing is full of charts and stats and graphs and everything. And it's really, really good to have great information about what's going on on your website. We, in our Wix studio tools, we've got Google Search Console data, we have Wix Analytics data, we have stuff that will tell you about people who have come in and what pages they've clicked on and where they've gone to and which channels people are coming to your website. Lots of that sort of stuff. And these things are fantastic, but sometimes if you have too much data, for clients, it can be a little bit overwhelming, for instance. So if you're talking to clients, and I've had this before, where I had a client who was new to us as an agency, when I was working in agency side, and they said, "We get these reports," from their current or previous agency. They said, "We get these reports, but we have no idea what they mean." And there were so many charts on that, and they had so much information, but the client didn't understand them. And I think that from a reporting side, there can definitely be data overload. We have a fantastic article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, and in fact we also have a fantastic course from Judith Lewis, and she talks about these in both of these. When you're talking to stakeholders, the executive summary is your friend. So have the data. If you're the person who's managing the data, who's looking at all of the information, the executive summary is your friend. Give me the TLDR of why I should care about this stack of stats and bubble charts and pie graphs and bar charts and all of that sort of stuff. Sum it up with some key indicators. And Judith Lewis, in her article about talking to multi-stakeholder reporting, talks about all of this. And in her course in the Wix Studio Academy, she gets into all of these details as well. And it's absolutely super, super valuable and will absolutely upgrade how you relate to clients. Because you need to make sure that they only have the data that they need, otherwise their eyes will glaze over and they will get bored. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sorry, you lost me. I got glazed over and talking about numbers. I blacked out there for a minute. Crystal Carter: Right? And I think it's important to remember that, that there's some people who, if you give them too many numbers and too many digits and too many charts, they will just tune out. I've been in meetings before where I've been pitching to clients, where I've been presenting my data, and I'm like, "Yeah, look at this and look at that," and it's too granular. They need to know sales went up, conversions went up, traffic went up. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Also, even when they do, let's say they are a numbers person, and you're going into this little minutia of this and this. We fixed this for having broken links. And they're not an SEO person, you're talking about number of broken links, like yes, they might understand, they might even be a former SEO person. It's a distraction and it can show, by the way, that you're distracted, that you're not focused on the right thing. And maybe you are, by the way, maybe you are distracted. Because sometimes data is distracting. So much data that you look here, you look there. And I'll say data, I know in certain things or for certain types of things, data is really linear, it's very direct and it's very logical. The number of broken links was 100, now it's 50. Or maybe it's five now, you did a better job. When you're starting to look at things that are a little more complex than the number of broken links, so then you start to look at activities. What was the user activity? They went to this page. But it doesn't explain the behavior. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: They're two different things. Crystal Carter: So here's another thing. So for instance, I've got an article on bounce rate. For GA4 they updated what bounce rate means. And bounce rate for GA4, before it was like people went to the site, they didn't click anything and they left. And now on GA4, essentially bounce rate is the inverse of engagement rate. So if they engaged by 10%, then the bounce rate was 90%. And that's the inverse of it. And it has to do with clicks and things like that. Now, one of the things that I was looking at is people are very, in terms of data, this is something that people get really hung up on, as bounce rate, is certainly clients, also because it's kind of got a good name. But one of the things that's tricky is if you just look at bounce rate as a data point, it doesn't tell the full story. Whereas if you use something like Microsoft Clarity, and I'm shouting out loads of articles, we've got a great article on Microsoft Clarity by Celeste Gonzalez. Mordy Oberstein: And integration with Microsoft Clarity. Crystal Carter: Right? Where you can check it out on your Wix studio website. And one of the things that they point out is that for that tool, not only can you see how far people scroll, but you can also see rage clicks, where people are like, "Why can't I click this? Why isn't this working?" And they've clicked it seven times, expecting for the word that's bold to be a link and it's not a link, and they clicked it a bunch of times. And that tells you a different story. So I think the other thing about data is making sure that you have the right tool to measure what you're seeing. So it might be that maybe you see the bounce rate thing and maybe that goes, okay, that's a clue. That bit of data is a clue, but that's a clue that you might need another tool to help you get into that information. And I think that's really, really important. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it gets especially more complicated when you're looking at things. Okay, it's not like a UI or UX interface issue. You're trying to explain why did the user take this action? Why didn't they take it? Why did they share this post? Everyone went online, they read this article, they all shared it, why? What happened? So the data will tell you that everyone shared it, where they shared it to, who shared it, when they shared it, but it can't exactly explain why they shared it and what was different. And that's something where you have to actually create a narrative. Data should help you create narratives. And that's where you can put together, if you look at the other articles that people shared, when they shared them, and now you're looking at this article, you can find, hey, there's a common theme between the articles that people tend to share, now I can create a narrative. Because I know SEOs balk at this, sometimes correlation does equal causation. Well, it doesn't actually equal causation, but sometimes causation is good enough, and sometimes causation is accurate, and sometimes causation, it's life is the best that you have. And if you have very strong correlation, you can create a narrative. And you can use data to create a narrative, but don't get lost in, I don't know, it's not one-to-one. Crystal Carter: Right. And so I think this brings us on to what you should use data for. So sometimes you get loads of data, like SEO tools will spit out lots of data points. They'll say, "Oh, this has low HTML on this page." And you're like, that may or may not be an issue, because maybe it's just a thank you page and maybe that's fine. And so there's lots of data points that you get. But how can you use the data? Once you have good data, how can you use it? One of the ways, you use this really, really regularly, Mordy, and I'm a big fan of how you do this really, really well, is data studies. So data studies, where you're able to concentrate on a particular data point and look at how that plays out in different scenarios and things like that, that can be incredibly valuable for progressing an idea in your industry. But it can also be incredibly valuable for bringing together lots of information from a research point of view. And I think that that is something that can be super, super useful. But when you're doing that, you need to be really targeted with the kinds of data that you're looking at. And you need to, again, I think we have another podcast on this, so do check that out, about data studies and how you can make sure that you're looking at the right points. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I mean, by the way, one of the advantages of using a data study is you get the insight yourself out of it. Crystal Carter: And telling that story, as you were saying. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but also, so with the data it's realizing what are the boundaries of that story? What does it say? What doesn't it say? And yes, I can draw a conclusion, but how far can I go with a conclusion, or how strong is a conclusion? And sometimes it's fine to say, you know what, I conclude X, but I'm not 100% sure. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Also helpful. Also helpful. Crystal Carter: Definitely helpful. Definitely helpful. And I think that that's really important. So I think also it's important to sometimes, particularly if you're thinking about getting into thought leadership, sometimes if you're in a thought leadership space, you might be the first person talking about this topic. And so it might be that there's not a lot of data out there. So you can go like, this is what I can see, or this is what I've concluded from the data that I have. And people will take you at your word and they'll say, "Okay, well I will investigate this further," and they will add to that conversation. And so that's really, really useful as well. And this is a thought leadership tactic that is useful in any industry. So if you are somebody who's advising somebody or some of your clients to do some thought leadership, it's also okay for them to take a little bit of a risk and say, "I know this is a new idea, but I think this." And what I see very often is people who do that, people who are confident enough to set out their stall and take the information they have and to run with it, they get a lot of engagement, they get a lot of people interested in what they're saying, because that is an evolving conversation. If conversations that are already where we've got already got all of the information already sent out, that's ground that's already been covered. But if you've got something that's new, even if you don't have every single data point, that doesn't mean that the conversation isn't worth having, as long as you caveat with the fact that you're coming at it from your perspective and using the tools that you've got. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's like the abundance of SEO data. I don't know, keyword difficulty, keyword score this, that metric, search volume, there's a plethora of these metrics. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: They're all good. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They're all great. By the way, Semrush has a cool new plugin its like a personalized keyword difficulty based on the assessment of your own site, how difficult is it for you. Which makes so much more sense, because I don't know if you want to rank for buy shoes, it's not difficult for Nike, they're ranking number two or number one. But here, we're super difficult. Anyway, but all of that, that's actually a good point. You have all this data, there's a ton of it out there, and I think if you're looking at doing SEO today, it needs to be qualified way more than it was ever. Crystal Carter: Yeah, definitely. If somebody says, oh, you just need to... People would look at a keyword like buy shoes. And Nike, as you said, they say, "Oh, there's tons of keyword search volume for that." And the other thing about it, is that just because a big search volume, that data point, just because there's big search volume doesn't mean you're going to get all of that. Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't mean it's for you anyway. Crystal Carter: It doesn't mean it's for you anyway. And it doesn't mean that the people that go to that keyword, that Google is sending them to a website. We have another podcast on this with people talking about this as well, but for those head terms, Google's very often like, "That's not enough information, hun, can we filter you? What kind of shoes do you want? You want sandals, you want sneakers, you want high tops? What do you need, hun?" They're going to filter those people. So that's a starter query, and they will filter those people. And also, just because there's such high search volume doesn't mean there's high search intent, or doesn't mean there's high click intent at all. So it might just be that they're searching for how far is it from the moon to the sun? There might be an instant answer there. Nobody's necessarily expecting to click on anything. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: So those data points, they're a clue, but you have to look into it as well. You can't just take those points at face value. Mordy Oberstein: Somebody asked me for my SEO predictions like 2025 kind of thing and I wrote, it's going to be less about overall visibility, and being at the right place at the right time, with the right tone, with the right message, at the exact right time, and resonance. Because just the way the internet is structured with AI ends, AI overviews and direct answers, and then consumers looking for being more specific and knowing what they want a little bit more, being more informed, not wanting to be nudged the same way, all those kind of things coming together. So you being able to use that data, not just to find the keyword, but using the data to find the right keyword or the right kind of keyword or the right kind of keywords or phrases or topics for the right audience, that you could be there at the right time, is how you should be using this data now versus how you should have been using this data 10 years ago maybe. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think the audience point is so key, because the audiences are so clutch right now. The way that people are doing spray and pray SEO of just going after big keywords and doing skyscraper posts and things like that, cool, you'll still get some traffic from that, but the data that you have on your audiences will give you a lot more information on what will actually resonate and what will actually cut through when we are in the sea of content that we find ourselves in with the proliferation of AI tools and AI capability for creating content. So if everybody has the ability to write pretty good content, then you need to have content, like you said, that's the right place, for the right audience, at the right time that they need to hear, and they go, "Oh yes, thank you Mordy, thank you Crystal." This is exactly what they needed. And that's genuinely helpful and I think that that's really important. Speaking of AI models, if you're building your AI models, data is super, super useful for this. It can help you to make sure that your models are doing the right things. AI models are also incredibly helpful for tidying up data. So if you get a massive data set for someone, one of my favorite uses for AI is to pull out the data points to sort of clean it up, so that you can use it for creating articles, so you can use it for telling that data story, so that you can use it for sharing online and things like that. So if you're not using AI for helping you to shape your data, then I highly recommend it. We have a great webinar with Ross Hudgens where he talks about that, and the team at Siege Media do this really, really well. So highly recommend that too. Mordy Oberstein: If you're looking to use data to shape not just your AI models, but your creative campaigns in a way that gets links, well, here's the PR director and co-founder of Bottled Imagination, Katy Powell, on how to do just that. Katy Powell: We use data at all parts of the ideation process really when it comes to our creative campaigns. So first of all, researching into the topic area, we use content analysis tools which allow us to see really how many articles are written about a certain topic in our client's field at a certain time to validate whether that's a topic that the audience actually cares about. If we're going to do a big creative campaign, we still back this by insight. I think this really helps to answer that, "So what? Who cares?" point. Also, it really helps to remove the subjectivity of this campaign when we pitch it to the client. If we're able to say, there's been this many thousand articles written about this topic in this last year, so we really feel like it's something that A, your audience really reads about, and also cares about too. Then once we've got the topics, we can kind of start to delve into the types of stories that are being talked about around this. So something we see works quite well is if we see a topic's being talked about a lot within the client's field, but it's all opinion led, is there a way we can find some data and turn this into facts? So rather than just an opinion piece, we actually bring the facts and bring the data and create something kind of ownable to our client that acts as the sort of true resource for this information. For example, we've got a B2B Tech client. They want to land their marketing press. We saw that rebranding's talked about a lot within this kind of press. So we created a rebranding kind of hub of information of stats, which is now ranking, and it's also picking up links organically without us outreaching, because it's a true, strong resource of information for rebranding. That was also coupled with a really nice creative. I think we find if we've got some really solid data that's ownable to the client, plus a lovely creative, a beautiful piece of imagery or a video or whatever it is, and whatever the format is, that can be kind outreach gold. And then the kind of data that we would use within these campaigns could be anything really from search data. So Google search data. We use Glimpse quite a lot. Big online databases, social media stats, government reports. I love YouGov. I think YouGov is brilliant for even just getting your brain going in that field. I think unfortunately there's not really a quick fix for the data part. I think it is getting your hands dirty and research. We would usually say let's try and find a free resource before we go to something like a survey, unless it's a client that is in a field where we really do need to do a survey, and then we will do that. I do think though, it's always good just to kind of get stuck into research and try and find some free databases before you pay for something, because it can be quite expensive. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much, Katy. Make sure to give Katy Powell a big follow on social media. Links to our social media profiles in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, their team are fantastic. Katy and everyone over at Bottled Imagination are doing some fantastic work. When we were thinking about this, they were the first folks that I thought of because they are amazing at, like she said, their owned data. So some of the clients owned data to shape a newsworthy story. A prime example of this is they were working with someone with Dap Gamble and they were looking at NFTs, and they ended up getting tons and tons of media, 1500 pieces of coverage around the world, because they figured out from the data that they had that most NFTs are worth nothing. So they found out that when they looked at this, that most NFTs were dead NFTs, and they were able to pull something over. So they examined an entire asset class of 73,000 collection NFTs, and they found that most of them are worth nothing. And it went everywhere. It went absolutely everywhere. They have another campaign where they were looking at studies that said that public restrooms were likely to be removed, and so they had the toilets are endangered species or something was a thing. And they're really, really great at pulling together noteworthy information from data and driving a story. Mordy Oberstein: Finding gems. Crystal Carter: Yeah, finding gems. And I think that we think about this in our day-to-day. If you find one of those articles that has all of the data points for the thing that you're interested in, then you go back to that page loads. You'll go back to that page because it'll have lots of information. If you're interested in, I don't know, sheds or something, I recently bought a shed, and you wanted, what different types of wood, what different types of roofs, what different types of this? How long does a shed last? What's the average size of a shed? All of those different data points. If you've got people who are pulling together all of those data points from lots of different sources, then you're saving them time by creating something that's one big data set. And if you have that data set as part of your own information, then all the better. So that means that, for instance, with the case of the NFTs, there was only one place that had that much data. So if anybody wanted to talk about this topic, they have to come back to that piece of content. And this is the thing that Bottled Imagination are really great at, and this is something that I think that people talk about, how do we build links? It's like, do something link worthy. And they're really good at this, and data's a great way to do that. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of data and having lots of it, LLM search engines are looking at a wide variety of big data sources, which means it's time for us to run the little segment we call so many search engines. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like all we do is talk about LLM search engines now, by the way. That's the thing. I wake up in the morning, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm really bothered by LLM search engines. I really need to ponder them this morning for an hour over a cup of coffee." Crystal Carter: Dude, I've been doing a deck on this. Mordy Oberstein: This thing has gone viral. Your deck has gone viral. Queen of the LLM search engines. Crystal Carter: Do you know what it was? The reason why, it comes back to it, it's basically like people ask me, and then I ask myself. So people are like, "How do I show up in ChatGPT? How do I show up in Claude or Gemini?" and that sort of thing. And so then you start thinking. And I find that I end up writing things, and I think this is a data thing as well, and you do this with your studies, I know this, where you're like, what is this? You'll have a thing that sticks in your brain, and you're like, I really want to know if this equals this. And you can't get it out of your brain. If you can't get it out of your brain, you have to write it down. So that's the thing. Mordy Oberstein: So LLM search engines, they're obviously looking at lots of different data sources like, I don't know, the web, Wikipedia, all these mentions of you across the web, articles about you, kind of everything. They're kind of looking at everything. I wonder about social. How much you're looking at social. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Probably not. Reddit maybe. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So here's the thing. So a lot of these tools have content partnerships with various different folks. So Reddit has content partnerships. Mordy Oberstein: Right. And so maybe switch that. I don't think X does, but Reddit does. Crystal Carter: Reddit has content partnerships with OpenAI, and they have content partnerships with Google. Mordy Oberstein: The Goog. Crystal Carter: The Goog. So they've got partnerships with that. In terms of Wikipedia, all of the LLMs are trained on Wikipedia. Mordy Oberstein: LLM has been training in all your stuff for years, you haven't even noticed. Crystal Carter: Right. So they've all been trained on Wikipedia. There's 66 million pages on Wikipedia, plus all of the Wiki data stuff that comes with it. And it's all comments. It's all copyright free. So of course, if I was building an LLM, I would absolutely train it on Wikipedia. But the thing that people forget is that if it's trained on Wikipedia, it's essentially trained on entities. So all of the data that's backed up, that's on your entity, all of the information that's on your entity is attached to that as part of that. So I think that that's really important to think about. But in terms of other data, some of the content partnerships, OpenAI is out here like Thanos, collecting big publishers. So there's that post from Detailed that talks about 16 companies dominating Google search results. I'm sure we've all seen that diagram, which I find fascinating. And OpenAI already has content partnerships with three out of 16 of those publishers. Mordy Oberstein: So that's the whole thing, they have partnership with these publishers. Crystal Carter: Right. And that means that basically they have access to their whole archive of stuff. So that includes Hearst, Fox Media and Conde Nast, just from those top 16 publishers. But if you look at the web wider, another big one is News Corp. News Corp has tons and tons of properties. They also have a partnership with OpenAI, and it also includes, they also cover Prisa, Le Monde, Time, GDI, The Atlantic. So these are all things that are publisher collapse. I talk about this in my article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub or Wix Studio Learning Hub, which talks about SEO for brand visibility and LLMs, I talk about it there. So there's a list of these as well, but Perplexity also has content partnerships. So with Time, Entrepreneur, Texas Tribune, Der Spiegel. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, Der Spiegel. Just saying... Crystal Carter: To be honest, from a little sidebar, it's a little bit of a random collection of publications there. But do you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Der Spiegel. Crystal Carter: So I think that it's important when you're looking at, if you're thinking about LLMs, the training data forms the basis for their knowledge. So with these LLMs, they will have a training data. They'll have a knowledge cutoff date that their training data goes up to, and it will vary by LLM. So for instance, and it will also vary within the LLM. So if you're using the free version of ChatGPT, for instance, if they don't have you on a test or something, which they sometimes do for mine, if you're using the free version of ChatGPT, the knowledge cutoff date for you is probably going to be around like September, 2021. But if you're using the premium version of ChatGPT, it could be as up to date as December, 2023. Claude- Mordy Oberstein: It's super up to date. Crystal Carter: Well, Claude is pulling in data from April, 2024 for their premium version. And Gemini won't say, they'll guarantee you to 2023, but I've also seen them update. They update on top of that as well. Mordy Oberstein: They'll be on the fly. They're kind of like Bing, because they're pulling in from... They have the whole search index. I don't feel it's as big of a problem for them. They have the connection, they have it all right there. They just have this sort of like left hand needs talk to the right hand. Crystal Carter: Right. And they're still testing everything and all of that sort of stuff. And then Copilot has an app, and their data goes up to October, 2023. And those are for the ones that are the, I call them sort of static pre-trained data sets. So those are the ones that aren't necessarily jacked into the web. The ones that are search augmented, like perplexity, like ChatGPT Premium, which has the search one, and also Copilot on 365, those ones will have the legacy information from their static pre-trained dataset, but the ones that are search augmented will also have search data. So I tested this on Copilot for instance, and I tested it, it was a while back, but I tested this on Copilot and I said, what did Zendaya wear to the Oscars last week? And it was in a year when Zendaya didn't actually go to the Oscars. But online there were people sharing AI images of Zendaya in an outfit, and people were like, "Oh my God, slay queen." And she wasn't there. She wasn't there. And so I asked Copilot, I said, what did she wear? And Copilot said, "She did not go to the Oscars. She was spending time with her boyfriend Tom Holland," and that was that. And I was like, okay, Copilot, well done. Good job. Yeah, it's good. So they will update. But I think that when you're thinking about the difference between a search augmented one like Perplexity, like Copilot on 365, like ChatGPT with search, versus a more static one like Claude, like ChatGPT basic I guess you would say, and Copilot the app, the data, understanding when the data cut off happens is really important, especially if your client or another stakeholder comes to you and says, why aren't we ranking in ChatGPT for this thing that we just launched a month ago? And you're like, because their knowledge cut off data hasn't updated. It's a little bit like thinking about an encyclopedia. So the encyclopedia or the phone book would come out every year. If you launched your business in January and the phone book came out in the December before, then you're going to have to wait until the next time the phone book comes out or the next time the encyclopedia comes out before you're in it. And they will update their data training sets periodically. And if you're really interested in where you're in ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, you're going to need to keep up to date with how often they're updating their data sets and which new data sets they're adding to it. Mordy Oberstein: You who's constantly updating and constantly adding to his data set? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Who could it be? Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Damn right. Crystal Carter: Just talking about Schwartz. Who is the man who writes for a search engine land? Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: Damn right. That's this time. It's this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. It's going to be really snappy because we're covering basically what happened right around the new year, which was not a whole lot because everybody was on vacation. Anywho, Google wasn't on vacation, and neither was Barry Schwartz. He doesn't take vacations, he doesn't rest. He'll sleep when he dies. Google December 2024 spam update done rolling out. By the way, that's what Barry actually told me when I say, "It's three o'clock in the morning your time, why are you answering me?" Anywho, the spam update took seven days to roll out, and Barry thinks that it was really big. Sites are hit really hard. He actually did a whole YouTube video about it. You should check out Barry. Barry, by the way, since you've been gone, which I'm dying to break out into song, Barry has become a YouTube sensation. An actual YouTuber. So check out Barry's YouTube channel and see all of that for all of its, I'll call it glory. Barry does seem to think that this was a bigger spam update than usual. Lots of chatter, lots of ins and outs, a lot of what have yous, a lot of different people involved. Next up from Roger Monte over at Search Engine Journal. Google Speculates if SEO is on a dying path. This comes from Google's latest Search Off the Record podcast episode where they talk about search is dying and blah, blah, blah. There was an interesting part of the conversation where I think it was John Mueller were talking about how a lot of the things that SEOs currently do in terms of retrieval, data retrieval, kind of falls into what will happen with getting registered with AI platforms, AI search engines. So John says specifically, and when you talk about kind of the retrieval augmented part, that's basically what SEOs work on, making content that's crawlable, indexable for search, and that kind of flows into all of these AI overviews, basically saying a lot of the things that SEOs are already doing kind of speaks to what will happen as the AI era continues to emerge. My take is we keep having these conversations in very fragmented ways. That part is true on the data retrieval side, crawling and indexing. Then there's all these sorts of SEO conversations about how to get into these AI systems so that you register, I don't want to use the word rank again, but you register with them, and conversations around marketing and other channels and brand marketing and what you should be doing and thinking holistically. We keep having these different parts of the conversation, but we've yet to come sit down as an industry and talk about the entire conversation from one part of the spectrum to the complete opposite side of the SEO spectrum. That would be a great conference, by the way. I don't know who out there is listening to this who creates SEO conferences. Calvin, are you out there? That would be a great SEO conference. Like it just goes through every single part of the entire conversation of the implications of AI and SEO from start to finish. Because I keep feeling like we keep having these fragmented conversations. Maybe it's something Barry can do that on his YouTube channel. Because he creates a lot of really great YouTube content now, if I haven't said that already. Check out, by the way, it's new, our daily SEO new series with Barry, which are not nearly as good as just Barry on his actual YouTube extravaganza that he's on right now. And with that, that's this week's snappy news. We should buy Barry like a long leather jacket. Crystal Carter: Right? And a turtle-neck and a chain. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. So good. Crystal Carter: Barry. Mordy Oberstein: I'll pay you. Whatever it costs. It's worth it. Crystal Carter: Totally worth it. Mordy Oberstein: Totally worth it. Or Barry in an Elvis costume I think would be interesting too. Crystal Carter: I feel like he could pull that off. Because we have that... I got a picture of him with the arm up. And the cutout we have was him with an arm up. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Interesting. Crystal Carter: That could work. I don't know, does he like peanut butter sandwiches? Mordy Oberstein: No. Only butter sandwiches and ripped bread. Crystal Carter: This is correct. Mordy Oberstein: As this show goes off the rails, we want to make sure that you follow Debbie Chu online. Debbie Chu, part of our Wix Studio SEO course, did the link building offline SEO section of that course, is our follow of the week. Crystal Carter: Yes, and she is fantastic at this, and this is something that she's been working on for a while. She's got a great article about how to do link building and how to get links the right way. And she's a big, big fan of using data studies to do this, and she outlines some great tips on how to do that in her article. And she outlines some great tips on how to do that in the course, which is absolutely free, and I highly recommend. In fact, Eli Schwartz just recommended this course just a few weeks ago as well. So do tune in for the quality education. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. And check out Debbie's social link in the show notes so you can follow her on social media. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Hope that's enough data and information for you about following Debbie. Too much data? Crystal Carter: No, I don't think that we have enough Debbie data. Mordy Oberstein: Not enough Debbie data. Crystal Carter: More data on Debbie. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting. Debbie, share more data. Crystal Carter: Yay. Mordy Oberstein: There could never be enough data about Debbie. We can just call it Debbie data. It really flows. It's like alliteration. Crystal Carter: I'm enjoying saying it, but knowing Debbie, I don't think she'd be over the moon about us saying it a million times. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so we'll stop here. Crystal Carter: Okay. 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 a new episode as we dive into, watch out bosses of the world, here's how you can negotiate your SEO salary. Look for 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 out all the great content webinars and courses on the Wix Studio 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 Katy Powell Debbie Chew Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course It's New - Daily SEO News SEO for brand visibility in LLMs Bottled Imagination News: Google Speculates If SEO ‘Is On A Dying Path Google December 2024 spam update done rolling out Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Katy Powell Debbie Chew Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course It's New - Daily SEO News SEO for brand visibility in LLMs Bottled Imagination News: Google Speculates If SEO ‘Is On A Dying Path Google December 2024 spam update done rolling out 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 loves all things data, SEO data, LLM data, AI data, analytics data, GSC data, third party tool data, head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello people of the internet. I hope you are well. Mordy Oberstein: They can't answer. How do we ever know if they're well or not? Tell us. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Do you think that we are going to be able to hear from them? They should tell us. They should tag us. Mordy Oberstein: Oh no, no. That opens up Pandora's box for all the hypochondriacs of the world to be like, "Oh, I'll tell you why I'm not doing well." Crystal Carter: "Hey, my sciatica's playing up, the weather's gone and I'm really struggling." Mordy Oberstein: Like, "Hey, how are you doing?" passing by in the grocery store, like somebody you don't really know so well, I don't know, a neighbor down the block kind of thing you never talk to and they're like, "Oh well, you know..." No, no, no. Didn't really mean it. Crystal Carter: Fine. Fine is the answer. Fine. Mordy Oberstein: Fine. Or, "Yeah, I've been better, but things will get better." That's fine too. Tolerable. Fine. As long as a conversation results in three seconds and me going to get a jar of pickles and you going to get whatever you're buying. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly. I think sometimes you just got to keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Just keep it moving. Too spicy early on the podcast? Crystal Carter: I don't know, I don't know. It's like maybe they'll just start sharing stats. Maybe they'll pull out their health monitor thing and start telling me about their BMI and stuff. Just like too much data. Maybe that's what they'll give you. Mordy Oberstein: You know what my blood sugar is right now? Nope. This Service Hub podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can subscribe to our SEO newsletter. Search for it over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter and take our SEO course. But it's also where you can get keyword data right inside the platform with our native integrations with Semrush, SE Ranking, Wincher, as this week we ask, can you ever have too much data? Let's explore the side that says you can never have too much of a good thing, as well as a side that says too much data might be a distraction, but also how is SEO data used today and how does it differ from yesteryear? Bottled imaginations, PR director and co-founder Katy Powell chimes in on using data for creative campaigns that get links, high DA ones too, plus we'll chat about the different data LLM based search engines may use. And of course we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So throw on another scoop onto that cone and order an extra slice, because like carbs, you can never have too much of a good thing, which is SEO data on this, the 106th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Wow, that really tied into the blood sugar thing. Blood sugar now, extra slices and scoops. I didn't plan that. Crystal Carter: What? You've lost me, but I hope everything is well with you. Mordy Oberstein: I'm fine. Crystal Carter: Okay, good. I am fine, I'm fine. Yeah, there was a lot of data for my little brain to handle. So on this topic, this is something that's been rattling around in my head for a little while. We are inundated with data. And speaking of those health tracker things, I saw somebody who was like, "I don't need to know all of this stuff about myself. It's too much information." I've got one of those apps and it tells you all of this stuff, your oxygen... I don't even know. I don't know what it means. And I think that this is something that happens a lot of time in marketing. Marketing is full of charts and stats and graphs and everything. And it's really, really good to have great information about what's going on on your website. We, in our Wix studio tools, we've got Google Search Console data, we have Wix Analytics data, we have stuff that will tell you about people who have come in and what pages they've clicked on and where they've gone to and which channels people are coming to your website. Lots of that sort of stuff. And these things are fantastic, but sometimes if you have too much data, for clients, it can be a little bit overwhelming, for instance. So if you're talking to clients, and I've had this before, where I had a client who was new to us as an agency, when I was working in agency side, and they said, "We get these reports," from their current or previous agency. They said, "We get these reports, but we have no idea what they mean." And there were so many charts on that, and they had so much information, but the client didn't understand them. And I think that from a reporting side, there can definitely be data overload. We have a fantastic article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub, and in fact we also have a fantastic course from Judith Lewis, and she talks about these in both of these. When you're talking to stakeholders, the executive summary is your friend. So have the data. If you're the person who's managing the data, who's looking at all of the information, the executive summary is your friend. Give me the TLDR of why I should care about this stack of stats and bubble charts and pie graphs and bar charts and all of that sort of stuff. Sum it up with some key indicators. And Judith Lewis, in her article about talking to multi-stakeholder reporting, talks about all of this. And in her course in the Wix Studio Academy, she gets into all of these details as well. And it's absolutely super, super valuable and will absolutely upgrade how you relate to clients. Because you need to make sure that they only have the data that they need, otherwise their eyes will glaze over and they will get bored. Mordy Oberstein: I'm sorry, you lost me. I got glazed over and talking about numbers. I blacked out there for a minute. Crystal Carter: Right? And I think it's important to remember that, that there's some people who, if you give them too many numbers and too many digits and too many charts, they will just tune out. I've been in meetings before where I've been pitching to clients, where I've been presenting my data, and I'm like, "Yeah, look at this and look at that," and it's too granular. They need to know sales went up, conversions went up, traffic went up. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Also, even when they do, let's say they are a numbers person, and you're going into this little minutia of this and this. We fixed this for having broken links. And they're not an SEO person, you're talking about number of broken links, like yes, they might understand, they might even be a former SEO person. It's a distraction and it can show, by the way, that you're distracted, that you're not focused on the right thing. And maybe you are, by the way, maybe you are distracted. Because sometimes data is distracting. So much data that you look here, you look there. And I'll say data, I know in certain things or for certain types of things, data is really linear, it's very direct and it's very logical. The number of broken links was 100, now it's 50. Or maybe it's five now, you did a better job. When you're starting to look at things that are a little more complex than the number of broken links, so then you start to look at activities. What was the user activity? They went to this page. But it doesn't explain the behavior. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: They're two different things. Crystal Carter: So here's another thing. So for instance, I've got an article on bounce rate. For GA4 they updated what bounce rate means. And bounce rate for GA4, before it was like people went to the site, they didn't click anything and they left. And now on GA4, essentially bounce rate is the inverse of engagement rate. So if they engaged by 10%, then the bounce rate was 90%. And that's the inverse of it. And it has to do with clicks and things like that. Now, one of the things that I was looking at is people are very, in terms of data, this is something that people get really hung up on, as bounce rate, is certainly clients, also because it's kind of got a good name. But one of the things that's tricky is if you just look at bounce rate as a data point, it doesn't tell the full story. Whereas if you use something like Microsoft Clarity, and I'm shouting out loads of articles, we've got a great article on Microsoft Clarity by Celeste Gonzalez. Mordy Oberstein: And integration with Microsoft Clarity. Crystal Carter: Right? Where you can check it out on your Wix studio website. And one of the things that they point out is that for that tool, not only can you see how far people scroll, but you can also see rage clicks, where people are like, "Why can't I click this? Why isn't this working?" And they've clicked it seven times, expecting for the word that's bold to be a link and it's not a link, and they clicked it a bunch of times. And that tells you a different story. So I think the other thing about data is making sure that you have the right tool to measure what you're seeing. So it might be that maybe you see the bounce rate thing and maybe that goes, okay, that's a clue. That bit of data is a clue, but that's a clue that you might need another tool to help you get into that information. And I think that's really, really important. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it gets especially more complicated when you're looking at things. Okay, it's not like a UI or UX interface issue. You're trying to explain why did the user take this action? Why didn't they take it? Why did they share this post? Everyone went online, they read this article, they all shared it, why? What happened? So the data will tell you that everyone shared it, where they shared it to, who shared it, when they shared it, but it can't exactly explain why they shared it and what was different. And that's something where you have to actually create a narrative. Data should help you create narratives. And that's where you can put together, if you look at the other articles that people shared, when they shared them, and now you're looking at this article, you can find, hey, there's a common theme between the articles that people tend to share, now I can create a narrative. Because I know SEOs balk at this, sometimes correlation does equal causation. Well, it doesn't actually equal causation, but sometimes causation is good enough, and sometimes causation is accurate, and sometimes causation, it's life is the best that you have. And if you have very strong correlation, you can create a narrative. And you can use data to create a narrative, but don't get lost in, I don't know, it's not one-to-one. Crystal Carter: Right. And so I think this brings us on to what you should use data for. So sometimes you get loads of data, like SEO tools will spit out lots of data points. They'll say, "Oh, this has low HTML on this page." And you're like, that may or may not be an issue, because maybe it's just a thank you page and maybe that's fine. And so there's lots of data points that you get. But how can you use the data? Once you have good data, how can you use it? One of the ways, you use this really, really regularly, Mordy, and I'm a big fan of how you do this really, really well, is data studies. So data studies, where you're able to concentrate on a particular data point and look at how that plays out in different scenarios and things like that, that can be incredibly valuable for progressing an idea in your industry. But it can also be incredibly valuable for bringing together lots of information from a research point of view. And I think that that is something that can be super, super useful. But when you're doing that, you need to be really targeted with the kinds of data that you're looking at. And you need to, again, I think we have another podcast on this, so do check that out, about data studies and how you can make sure that you're looking at the right points. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I mean, by the way, one of the advantages of using a data study is you get the insight yourself out of it. Crystal Carter: And telling that story, as you were saying. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but also, so with the data it's realizing what are the boundaries of that story? What does it say? What doesn't it say? And yes, I can draw a conclusion, but how far can I go with a conclusion, or how strong is a conclusion? And sometimes it's fine to say, you know what, I conclude X, but I'm not 100% sure. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Also helpful. Also helpful. Crystal Carter: Definitely helpful. Definitely helpful. And I think that that's really important. So I think also it's important to sometimes, particularly if you're thinking about getting into thought leadership, sometimes if you're in a thought leadership space, you might be the first person talking about this topic. And so it might be that there's not a lot of data out there. So you can go like, this is what I can see, or this is what I've concluded from the data that I have. And people will take you at your word and they'll say, "Okay, well I will investigate this further," and they will add to that conversation. And so that's really, really useful as well. And this is a thought leadership tactic that is useful in any industry. So if you are somebody who's advising somebody or some of your clients to do some thought leadership, it's also okay for them to take a little bit of a risk and say, "I know this is a new idea, but I think this." And what I see very often is people who do that, people who are confident enough to set out their stall and take the information they have and to run with it, they get a lot of engagement, they get a lot of people interested in what they're saying, because that is an evolving conversation. If conversations that are already where we've got already got all of the information already sent out, that's ground that's already been covered. But if you've got something that's new, even if you don't have every single data point, that doesn't mean that the conversation isn't worth having, as long as you caveat with the fact that you're coming at it from your perspective and using the tools that you've got. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and it's like the abundance of SEO data. I don't know, keyword difficulty, keyword score this, that metric, search volume, there's a plethora of these metrics. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: They're all good. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They're all great. By the way, Semrush has a cool new plugin its like a personalized keyword difficulty based on the assessment of your own site, how difficult is it for you. Which makes so much more sense, because I don't know if you want to rank for buy shoes, it's not difficult for Nike, they're ranking number two or number one. But here, we're super difficult. Anyway, but all of that, that's actually a good point. You have all this data, there's a ton of it out there, and I think if you're looking at doing SEO today, it needs to be qualified way more than it was ever. Crystal Carter: Yeah, definitely. If somebody says, oh, you just need to... People would look at a keyword like buy shoes. And Nike, as you said, they say, "Oh, there's tons of keyword search volume for that." And the other thing about it, is that just because a big search volume, that data point, just because there's big search volume doesn't mean you're going to get all of that. Mordy Oberstein: Doesn't mean it's for you anyway. Crystal Carter: It doesn't mean it's for you anyway. And it doesn't mean that the people that go to that keyword, that Google is sending them to a website. We have another podcast on this with people talking about this as well, but for those head terms, Google's very often like, "That's not enough information, hun, can we filter you? What kind of shoes do you want? You want sandals, you want sneakers, you want high tops? What do you need, hun?" They're going to filter those people. So that's a starter query, and they will filter those people. And also, just because there's such high search volume doesn't mean there's high search intent, or doesn't mean there's high click intent at all. So it might just be that they're searching for how far is it from the moon to the sun? There might be an instant answer there. Nobody's necessarily expecting to click on anything. Mordy Oberstein: That's right. Crystal Carter: So those data points, they're a clue, but you have to look into it as well. You can't just take those points at face value. Mordy Oberstein: Somebody asked me for my SEO predictions like 2025 kind of thing and I wrote, it's going to be less about overall visibility, and being at the right place at the right time, with the right tone, with the right message, at the exact right time, and resonance. Because just the way the internet is structured with AI ends, AI overviews and direct answers, and then consumers looking for being more specific and knowing what they want a little bit more, being more informed, not wanting to be nudged the same way, all those kind of things coming together. So you being able to use that data, not just to find the keyword, but using the data to find the right keyword or the right kind of keyword or the right kind of keywords or phrases or topics for the right audience, that you could be there at the right time, is how you should be using this data now versus how you should have been using this data 10 years ago maybe. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think the audience point is so key, because the audiences are so clutch right now. The way that people are doing spray and pray SEO of just going after big keywords and doing skyscraper posts and things like that, cool, you'll still get some traffic from that, but the data that you have on your audiences will give you a lot more information on what will actually resonate and what will actually cut through when we are in the sea of content that we find ourselves in with the proliferation of AI tools and AI capability for creating content. So if everybody has the ability to write pretty good content, then you need to have content, like you said, that's the right place, for the right audience, at the right time that they need to hear, and they go, "Oh yes, thank you Mordy, thank you Crystal." This is exactly what they needed. And that's genuinely helpful and I think that that's really important. Speaking of AI models, if you're building your AI models, data is super, super useful for this. It can help you to make sure that your models are doing the right things. AI models are also incredibly helpful for tidying up data. So if you get a massive data set for someone, one of my favorite uses for AI is to pull out the data points to sort of clean it up, so that you can use it for creating articles, so you can use it for telling that data story, so that you can use it for sharing online and things like that. So if you're not using AI for helping you to shape your data, then I highly recommend it. We have a great webinar with Ross Hudgens where he talks about that, and the team at Siege Media do this really, really well. So highly recommend that too. Mordy Oberstein: If you're looking to use data to shape not just your AI models, but your creative campaigns in a way that gets links, well, here's the PR director and co-founder of Bottled Imagination, Katy Powell, on how to do just that. Katy Powell: We use data at all parts of the ideation process really when it comes to our creative campaigns. So first of all, researching into the topic area, we use content analysis tools which allow us to see really how many articles are written about a certain topic in our client's field at a certain time to validate whether that's a topic that the audience actually cares about. If we're going to do a big creative campaign, we still back this by insight. I think this really helps to answer that, "So what? Who cares?" point. Also, it really helps to remove the subjectivity of this campaign when we pitch it to the client. If we're able to say, there's been this many thousand articles written about this topic in this last year, so we really feel like it's something that A, your audience really reads about, and also cares about too. Then once we've got the topics, we can kind of start to delve into the types of stories that are being talked about around this. So something we see works quite well is if we see a topic's being talked about a lot within the client's field, but it's all opinion led, is there a way we can find some data and turn this into facts? So rather than just an opinion piece, we actually bring the facts and bring the data and create something kind of ownable to our client that acts as the sort of true resource for this information. For example, we've got a B2B Tech client. They want to land their marketing press. We saw that rebranding's talked about a lot within this kind of press. So we created a rebranding kind of hub of information of stats, which is now ranking, and it's also picking up links organically without us outreaching, because it's a true, strong resource of information for rebranding. That was also coupled with a really nice creative. I think we find if we've got some really solid data that's ownable to the client, plus a lovely creative, a beautiful piece of imagery or a video or whatever it is, and whatever the format is, that can be kind outreach gold. And then the kind of data that we would use within these campaigns could be anything really from search data. So Google search data. We use Glimpse quite a lot. Big online databases, social media stats, government reports. I love YouGov. I think YouGov is brilliant for even just getting your brain going in that field. I think unfortunately there's not really a quick fix for the data part. I think it is getting your hands dirty and research. We would usually say let's try and find a free resource before we go to something like a survey, unless it's a client that is in a field where we really do need to do a survey, and then we will do that. I do think though, it's always good just to kind of get stuck into research and try and find some free databases before you pay for something, because it can be quite expensive. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much, Katy. Make sure to give Katy Powell a big follow on social media. Links to our social media profiles in the show notes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, their team are fantastic. Katy and everyone over at Bottled Imagination are doing some fantastic work. When we were thinking about this, they were the first folks that I thought of because they are amazing at, like she said, their owned data. So some of the clients owned data to shape a newsworthy story. A prime example of this is they were working with someone with Dap Gamble and they were looking at NFTs, and they ended up getting tons and tons of media, 1500 pieces of coverage around the world, because they figured out from the data that they had that most NFTs are worth nothing. So they found out that when they looked at this, that most NFTs were dead NFTs, and they were able to pull something over. So they examined an entire asset class of 73,000 collection NFTs, and they found that most of them are worth nothing. And it went everywhere. It went absolutely everywhere. They have another campaign where they were looking at studies that said that public restrooms were likely to be removed, and so they had the toilets are endangered species or something was a thing. And they're really, really great at pulling together noteworthy information from data and driving a story. Mordy Oberstein: Finding gems. Crystal Carter: Yeah, finding gems. And I think that we think about this in our day-to-day. If you find one of those articles that has all of the data points for the thing that you're interested in, then you go back to that page loads. You'll go back to that page because it'll have lots of information. If you're interested in, I don't know, sheds or something, I recently bought a shed, and you wanted, what different types of wood, what different types of roofs, what different types of this? How long does a shed last? What's the average size of a shed? All of those different data points. If you've got people who are pulling together all of those data points from lots of different sources, then you're saving them time by creating something that's one big data set. And if you have that data set as part of your own information, then all the better. So that means that, for instance, with the case of the NFTs, there was only one place that had that much data. So if anybody wanted to talk about this topic, they have to come back to that piece of content. And this is the thing that Bottled Imagination are really great at, and this is something that I think that people talk about, how do we build links? It's like, do something link worthy. And they're really good at this, and data's a great way to do that. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of data and having lots of it, LLM search engines are looking at a wide variety of big data sources, which means it's time for us to run the little segment we call so many search engines. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like all we do is talk about LLM search engines now, by the way. That's the thing. I wake up in the morning, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm really bothered by LLM search engines. I really need to ponder them this morning for an hour over a cup of coffee." Crystal Carter: Dude, I've been doing a deck on this. Mordy Oberstein: This thing has gone viral. Your deck has gone viral. Queen of the LLM search engines. Crystal Carter: Do you know what it was? The reason why, it comes back to it, it's basically like people ask me, and then I ask myself. So people are like, "How do I show up in ChatGPT? How do I show up in Claude or Gemini?" and that sort of thing. And so then you start thinking. And I find that I end up writing things, and I think this is a data thing as well, and you do this with your studies, I know this, where you're like, what is this? You'll have a thing that sticks in your brain, and you're like, I really want to know if this equals this. And you can't get it out of your brain. If you can't get it out of your brain, you have to write it down. So that's the thing. Mordy Oberstein: So LLM search engines, they're obviously looking at lots of different data sources like, I don't know, the web, Wikipedia, all these mentions of you across the web, articles about you, kind of everything. They're kind of looking at everything. I wonder about social. How much you're looking at social. That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Probably not. Reddit maybe. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So here's the thing. So a lot of these tools have content partnerships with various different folks. So Reddit has content partnerships. Mordy Oberstein: Right. And so maybe switch that. I don't think X does, but Reddit does. Crystal Carter: Reddit has content partnerships with OpenAI, and they have content partnerships with Google. Mordy Oberstein: The Goog. Crystal Carter: The Goog. So they've got partnerships with that. In terms of Wikipedia, all of the LLMs are trained on Wikipedia. Mordy Oberstein: LLM has been training in all your stuff for years, you haven't even noticed. Crystal Carter: Right. So they've all been trained on Wikipedia. There's 66 million pages on Wikipedia, plus all of the Wiki data stuff that comes with it. And it's all comments. It's all copyright free. So of course, if I was building an LLM, I would absolutely train it on Wikipedia. But the thing that people forget is that if it's trained on Wikipedia, it's essentially trained on entities. So all of the data that's backed up, that's on your entity, all of the information that's on your entity is attached to that as part of that. So I think that that's really important to think about. But in terms of other data, some of the content partnerships, OpenAI is out here like Thanos, collecting big publishers. So there's that post from Detailed that talks about 16 companies dominating Google search results. I'm sure we've all seen that diagram, which I find fascinating. And OpenAI already has content partnerships with three out of 16 of those publishers. Mordy Oberstein: So that's the whole thing, they have partnership with these publishers. Crystal Carter: Right. And that means that basically they have access to their whole archive of stuff. So that includes Hearst, Fox Media and Conde Nast, just from those top 16 publishers. But if you look at the web wider, another big one is News Corp. News Corp has tons and tons of properties. They also have a partnership with OpenAI, and it also includes, they also cover Prisa, Le Monde, Time, GDI, The Atlantic. So these are all things that are publisher collapse. I talk about this in my article on the Wix SEO Learning Hub or Wix Studio Learning Hub, which talks about SEO for brand visibility and LLMs, I talk about it there. So there's a list of these as well, but Perplexity also has content partnerships. So with Time, Entrepreneur, Texas Tribune, Der Spiegel. Mordy Oberstein: Ah, Der Spiegel. Just saying... Crystal Carter: To be honest, from a little sidebar, it's a little bit of a random collection of publications there. But do you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Der Spiegel. Crystal Carter: So I think that it's important when you're looking at, if you're thinking about LLMs, the training data forms the basis for their knowledge. So with these LLMs, they will have a training data. They'll have a knowledge cutoff date that their training data goes up to, and it will vary by LLM. So for instance, and it will also vary within the LLM. So if you're using the free version of ChatGPT, for instance, if they don't have you on a test or something, which they sometimes do for mine, if you're using the free version of ChatGPT, the knowledge cutoff date for you is probably going to be around like September, 2021. But if you're using the premium version of ChatGPT, it could be as up to date as December, 2023. Claude- Mordy Oberstein: It's super up to date. Crystal Carter: Well, Claude is pulling in data from April, 2024 for their premium version. And Gemini won't say, they'll guarantee you to 2023, but I've also seen them update. They update on top of that as well. Mordy Oberstein: They'll be on the fly. They're kind of like Bing, because they're pulling in from... They have the whole search index. I don't feel it's as big of a problem for them. They have the connection, they have it all right there. They just have this sort of like left hand needs talk to the right hand. Crystal Carter: Right. And they're still testing everything and all of that sort of stuff. And then Copilot has an app, and their data goes up to October, 2023. And those are for the ones that are the, I call them sort of static pre-trained data sets. So those are the ones that aren't necessarily jacked into the web. The ones that are search augmented, like perplexity, like ChatGPT Premium, which has the search one, and also Copilot on 365, those ones will have the legacy information from their static pre-trained dataset, but the ones that are search augmented will also have search data. So I tested this on Copilot for instance, and I tested it, it was a while back, but I tested this on Copilot and I said, what did Zendaya wear to the Oscars last week? And it was in a year when Zendaya didn't actually go to the Oscars. But online there were people sharing AI images of Zendaya in an outfit, and people were like, "Oh my God, slay queen." And she wasn't there. She wasn't there. And so I asked Copilot, I said, what did she wear? And Copilot said, "She did not go to the Oscars. She was spending time with her boyfriend Tom Holland," and that was that. And I was like, okay, Copilot, well done. Good job. Yeah, it's good. So they will update. But I think that when you're thinking about the difference between a search augmented one like Perplexity, like Copilot on 365, like ChatGPT with search, versus a more static one like Claude, like ChatGPT basic I guess you would say, and Copilot the app, the data, understanding when the data cut off happens is really important, especially if your client or another stakeholder comes to you and says, why aren't we ranking in ChatGPT for this thing that we just launched a month ago? And you're like, because their knowledge cut off data hasn't updated. It's a little bit like thinking about an encyclopedia. So the encyclopedia or the phone book would come out every year. If you launched your business in January and the phone book came out in the December before, then you're going to have to wait until the next time the phone book comes out or the next time the encyclopedia comes out before you're in it. And they will update their data training sets periodically. And if you're really interested in where you're in ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, you're going to need to keep up to date with how often they're updating their data sets and which new data sets they're adding to it. Mordy Oberstein: You who's constantly updating and constantly adding to his data set? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Who could it be? Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Damn right. Crystal Carter: Just talking about Schwartz. Who is the man who writes for a search engine land? Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: Damn right. That's this time. It's this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. It's going to be really snappy because we're covering basically what happened right around the new year, which was not a whole lot because everybody was on vacation. Anywho, Google wasn't on vacation, and neither was Barry Schwartz. He doesn't take vacations, he doesn't rest. He'll sleep when he dies. Google December 2024 spam update done rolling out. By the way, that's what Barry actually told me when I say, "It's three o'clock in the morning your time, why are you answering me?" Anywho, the spam update took seven days to roll out, and Barry thinks that it was really big. Sites are hit really hard. He actually did a whole YouTube video about it. You should check out Barry. Barry, by the way, since you've been gone, which I'm dying to break out into song, Barry has become a YouTube sensation. An actual YouTuber. So check out Barry's YouTube channel and see all of that for all of its, I'll call it glory. Barry does seem to think that this was a bigger spam update than usual. Lots of chatter, lots of ins and outs, a lot of what have yous, a lot of different people involved. Next up from Roger Monte over at Search Engine Journal. Google Speculates if SEO is on a dying path. This comes from Google's latest Search Off the Record podcast episode where they talk about search is dying and blah, blah, blah. There was an interesting part of the conversation where I think it was John Mueller were talking about how a lot of the things that SEOs currently do in terms of retrieval, data retrieval, kind of falls into what will happen with getting registered with AI platforms, AI search engines. So John says specifically, and when you talk about kind of the retrieval augmented part, that's basically what SEOs work on, making content that's crawlable, indexable for search, and that kind of flows into all of these AI overviews, basically saying a lot of the things that SEOs are already doing kind of speaks to what will happen as the AI era continues to emerge. My take is we keep having these conversations in very fragmented ways. That part is true on the data retrieval side, crawling and indexing. Then there's all these sorts of SEO conversations about how to get into these AI systems so that you register, I don't want to use the word rank again, but you register with them, and conversations around marketing and other channels and brand marketing and what you should be doing and thinking holistically. We keep having these different parts of the conversation, but we've yet to come sit down as an industry and talk about the entire conversation from one part of the spectrum to the complete opposite side of the SEO spectrum. That would be a great conference, by the way. I don't know who out there is listening to this who creates SEO conferences. Calvin, are you out there? That would be a great SEO conference. Like it just goes through every single part of the entire conversation of the implications of AI and SEO from start to finish. Because I keep feeling like we keep having these fragmented conversations. Maybe it's something Barry can do that on his YouTube channel. Because he creates a lot of really great YouTube content now, if I haven't said that already. Check out, by the way, it's new, our daily SEO new series with Barry, which are not nearly as good as just Barry on his actual YouTube extravaganza that he's on right now. And with that, that's this week's snappy news. We should buy Barry like a long leather jacket. Crystal Carter: Right? And a turtle-neck and a chain. Mordy Oberstein: Oh. So good. Crystal Carter: Barry. Mordy Oberstein: I'll pay you. Whatever it costs. It's worth it. Crystal Carter: Totally worth it. Mordy Oberstein: Totally worth it. Or Barry in an Elvis costume I think would be interesting too. Crystal Carter: I feel like he could pull that off. Because we have that... I got a picture of him with the arm up. And the cutout we have was him with an arm up. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Interesting. Crystal Carter: That could work. I don't know, does he like peanut butter sandwiches? Mordy Oberstein: No. Only butter sandwiches and ripped bread. Crystal Carter: This is correct. Mordy Oberstein: As this show goes off the rails, we want to make sure that you follow Debbie Chu online. Debbie Chu, part of our Wix Studio SEO course, did the link building offline SEO section of that course, is our follow of the week. Crystal Carter: Yes, and she is fantastic at this, and this is something that she's been working on for a while. She's got a great article about how to do link building and how to get links the right way. And she's a big, big fan of using data studies to do this, and she outlines some great tips on how to do that in her article. And she outlines some great tips on how to do that in the course, which is absolutely free, and I highly recommend. In fact, Eli Schwartz just recommended this course just a few weeks ago as well. So do tune in for the quality education. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. And check out Debbie's social link in the show notes so you can follow her on social media. Crystal Carter: Indeed. Mordy Oberstein: Hope that's enough data and information for you about following Debbie. Too much data? Crystal Carter: No, I don't think that we have enough Debbie data. Mordy Oberstein: Not enough Debbie data. Crystal Carter: More data on Debbie. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting. Debbie, share more data. Crystal Carter: Yay. Mordy Oberstein: There could never be enough data about Debbie. We can just call it Debbie data. It really flows. It's like alliteration. Crystal Carter: I'm enjoying saying it, but knowing Debbie, I don't think she'd be over the moon about us saying it a million times. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so we'll stop here. Crystal Carter: Okay. 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 a new episode as we dive into, watch out bosses of the world, here's how you can negotiate your SEO salary. Look for 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 out all the great content webinars and courses on the Wix Studio 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

What works and what doesn’t work when connecting with your audience and customer base? Are audience expectations changing? Creator of Confidence Live! and founder of Roar Training, Kirsty Hulse joins Wix’s own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter to discuss the optimal strategies for engaging with your customers. Kirsty urges marketers not to showcase yourselves, but to offer customers a mirror to connect your brand to their own experiences. Plus, we go in-depth into how AI can be used to establish a connection with your customers while preserving genuine human emotion. Make meaningful connections with your customers with this month’s SERP’s Up+ Podcast. Back How to connect to your customers What works and what doesn’t work when connecting with your audience and customer base? Are audience expectations changing? Creator of Confidence Live! and founder of Roar Training, Kirsty Hulse joins Wix’s own Mordy Oberstien and Crystal Carter to discuss the optimal strategies for engaging with your customers. Kirsty urges marketers not to showcase yourselves, but to offer customers a mirror to connect your brand to their own experiences. Plus, we go in-depth into how AI can be used to establish a connection with your customers while preserving genuine human emotion. Make meaningful connections with your customers with this month’s SERP’s Up+ Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode SERP's Up+ 04 | November 6, 2023 | 31 MIN 00:00 / 30:35 This week’s guests Kirsty Hulse Kirsty Hulse is an award winning Confidence Coach and motivational speaker. She founded her first company at 26, a marketing agency with global clients like Virgin Atlantic and IBM, which turned over nearly a million dollars in its first year of trading. She has delivered training programs at the world’s biggest companies, and her work has been described as “game changing”, “life changing” and from the thousands of people she has worked with, 100% of attendees would recommend her work to a colleague. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of marketing podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up Plus. Aloha, Mahalo, for joining the SERP's Up Plus Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in digital marketing. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix Central with the fabulously incredible, the amazing, the unparalleled uncompromised Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello? Kidding. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the best response yet. That's the best response yet. So good, Crystal. Hi. Crystal Carter: Hey, guys. Mordy Oberstein: How are you? Crystal Carter: What's up? Really happy to be here. It's my favorite thing about Andy Murray. He's a tennis player in the U.K. and I remember he won Wimbledon or something like that, and he was there giving a reception speech. He was like, "I'm really happy right now. I know I don't sound that happy, but I'm really happy." Mordy Oberstein: It's like Latka from taxi, "Thank you very much." Crystal Carter: People express emotion in different ways. That's fine. It's a rich tapestry of humanity. Mordy Oberstein: We haven't done this podcast in a month, it's a monthly podcast, so I'm excited for this. We have a great guest coming at you. But first, the SERP's Up Plus podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can dive into the connection between you and your audience by using all of the social media tools, templates, and integrations found in both Wix and Wix Studio. Get more details over wix.com/studio. I bring up connections because we are here today to help you connect to your audience and consumers in an ever-changing digital landscape. That was so cliche. We're going to dive into what works, what doesn't work when connecting with your audience and consumer base. How are audience expectations changing? We'll probably get into something around AI, I imagine, about that, and what are consumers actually looking for that perhaps they weren't looking for in the past? To help us dial up the connection, creator of Confidence Live and Founder of Roar, a real world training agency that works, Kirsty Hulse will join us in just a jiffy. So unplug your landline and jimmy the modem as this month's SERP's Up Plus Podcast helps you connect to the web of interest and expectations that is your audience and consumer base. Crystal Carter: That was incredible breath control there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I even put it in my notes, "Pause for effects." Crystal Carter: I mean, you missed your calling. You could have been an auctioneer or a grime emcee Mordy Oberstein: I'm telling you. Crystal Carter: Have you ever been to a live auction? Mordy Oberstein: No, but that sounds horrible. Crystal Carter: It's incredible. I walked into a cattle market once and it was like, "da, da, da, da, da ,da…]. Sold. And I was like, "What just happened?" Mordy Oberstein: A cattle market? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They were selling like it it's at Yellowstone? They're selling... Crystal Carter: You love Yellowstone. Mordy Oberstein: I do. Crystal Carter: You love that TV show? Yes, they were literally selling cows. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Crystal Carter: It was one of the highlights of my life. I find that fantastic. Anyway, so there you go. Mordy Oberstein: I normally find that with our regular weekly series, SERP's Up, which is an SEO focused podcast, that sometimes we really have to dive into some background on whatever the particular topic is, because SEO is weird and technical or niche and that sort of thing. But I find on this podcast there's really no introduction needed. Crystal Carter: I mean, I hope we're going to give Kirsty an introduction. Mordy Oberstein: That was my pivot. That was my pivot. That was my pivot. I was going to say there's no need for introducing the topic. I feel like we all understand the importance of connecting to your audience and your consumer base, but we do need to introduce our guest. I was this close. Crystal Carter: So close, so close. Great lines. I'm so, so pleased that Kirsty Hulse responded to my message of invite because when we were thinking about this, Kirsty was the first person that came to mind because I absolutely have been such a fan of Kirsty's approach to marketing and particularly her approach to, and I'm thinking about Kirsty in the third person as if she's not in the room, the virtual room, but she is, I'm introducing you anyway, Kirsty, but yeah, the incredible way that Kirsty speaks very plainly about marketing like, "It's not that complicated." And I've just always been in such awe of that and so giving. I'm a member of the Women in Tech SEO group and Kirsty has given bespoke training there. Kirsty does her Confidence Life courses and events and things like that, and she's incredibly giving with marketing knowledge and it's always super valuable and always on point. And she also is the patron saint of making sure that people get their window seat when they're owed their window seat. So I think that we're so pleased to have Kirsty here at the podcast, and thank you so much for joining us. Kirsty Hulse: Thank you. Thank you so much. What a wonderful introduction. I will take that I'm the patron saint of window seats. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I need context. Kirsty Hulse: No. Mordy Oberstein: No? Okay. Kirsty Hulse: No context. Crystal Carter: There was a tweet and I saw the tweet and I was like, "Yes. Absolutely, yes." So that's what I will say about that. Mordy Oberstein: Was there a fight over a window seat? Kirsty Hulse: I basically went low-key viral on Twitter because some dude wasn't giving this woman her window seat, and I stepped in. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Kirsty Hulse: So yeah Crystal Carter: She didn't even go to the details. I remember this very clearly, and the tweet was something like, "I went to go get in my seat. This lady sad in my seat and she was like, "Oh, there's this man sat in my window seat." And Kirsty was like, "Needless to say, he's not sat in that seat anymore." And I was on a plate and somebody else was like, "You're in my seat," and that came to mind and I was like, "I am not in your seat. I am in my seat. Thank you very much. End." Anyway, it was very important to communicate the needs in that situation and Kirsty did so effortlessly for all people who have booked a window seat because they like the window seat. So there we go. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. End of podcast. Kirsty Hulse: Goodbye. Mordy Oberstein: But in all seriousness, let's talk about connecting with your audience and your consumer base and I guess let's start off very, very, very basic. What works, what doesn't work when you're trying to connect to a consumer base and your overall audience? Kirsty Hulse: Lovely, thank you. And so maybe just a bit of context about the lens that I'm going to talk about this through. So my background's marketing, my background's SEO, I run an SEO agency, and then the past few years I've been a speaker predominantly. So I'm really in the connection game. Whether that's in blog content or Instagram captions or on a stage, same rules apply. So a lot of the things that I teach and that I'm actually really passionate about, the format doesn't really matter. I think the most important cardinal rule of connection, it's first and foremost, you have to be a living human being with living human experiences. And you have to give yourself away a little bit so that people can connect to that. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we got to the AI thing so quickly. That was the fastest rocket into AI. Kirsty Hulse: I know. Mordy Oberstein: So I can't put a prompt in to say, "Hey, connect to my audience for me, large language model." Kirsty Hulse: Well, there's a distinction here. AI is incredibly good at informational content, and people respect that kind of content and people will learn from that kind of content. But people attach to emotional content. So actually I use AI. It has huge amounts of value to help structure and organize and somewhat with that informational data-based content. But if you're trying to move someone, so that moving someone could be, are you trying to sell a product, are you trying to get them to change their behavior in any kind of way, then it can be done through AI everything it can, but I think it's more powerful and more meaningful when we do that through our... Kirsty Hulse: It's more powerful and more meaningful when we do that through our own lived human experiences. And that's through things like storytelling and the modeling of emotion, which maybe we'll come onto later. Crystal Carter: And I think it's interesting that, and one of the first points that you made, was that it doesn't matter what platform you're on when you're speaking to people, that you aim for connecting with people. And certainly I'm a follower of yours on multiple platforms, and I've definitely seen that. Like, Kirsty does Kirsty when Kirsty is doing Kirsty. There was that meme that was going around that was like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and it was different pictures of different things, whatever. And I think that one of the things that you're very good at, and one of the things that I would guess you might advocate is having the same picture of them. Do you know what I mean? Having the same sort of tone of voice where your audience knows you wherever you go. Is that something you'd advocate for? Kirsty Hulse: Yes. 100%. I think the main thing that I advocate for generally in life, it's almost this de-masking of ourselves. This kind of like, let's just stop for a hot minute acting or pretending that we don't have warmth or charisma or humor and taking our personalities and zipping them up in some kind of professional straight jacket in the name of being businesslike. I hate that. And I actually think that's something that really gets in the way of our ability to connect. Which, whether we're trying to get that connection from a marketing perspective or just a human perspective, same. That's all we want to do as humans. We just want to see and be seen. Mordy Oberstein: I really think that that point, one, is so profound, so easy to understand, but so completely glossed over. It's literally why we had a podcast interview with Rand fishing about the genuine self and the role in marketing. But I also think it's something we discussed internally a lot when we were building, say, landing pages. I know there's been many discussions about this that when you look at your traditional landing page it's very businesslike and it's slightly over-promising, if not completely over-promising, and highly actionable, get this, do this, ultimate this, the best this, get it now. And I feel like perhaps, and maybe I'm wrong, I don’t know what your thoughts are, that people are sort of starting to see through that and seeing that as a mask and they're looking for something a little bit more emotional, a little bit more genuine, a little bit more conversational. And I think that we as marketers and SEOs and content writers are a little bit behind the curve on that. And we're still creating content like it's 2009 or 2019, rather, and not in a way that's actually connective. And I think we're running the risk of putting a schism between us and our audience. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Kirsty Hulse: Yeah, totally. And the reason that I'm on this podcast is because I have become known and associated with certain topics, that's not an accident. And all of the content pretty much that I create is story-based. But I think sometimes when you are creating content that's a story and a narrative I think the mistake or maybe the incorrect assumption that marketers make is that we just wing it and we just tell stories and just be yourself. It's not that actually, so the process that I go on whenever I'm trying to connect with an audience on a stage, on an email, doesn't matter, the process that I go on is I think about the main point that I'm trying to make. Am I trying to sell some training? Am I trying to position myself as an expert? What is the one thing that I'm trying to do with this piece of content? And then the second question I ask myself is, what experiences have I got from my life that demonstrate that point? And then you tell that story. And then you tell the story, like the research on MRI scans show that we use emotional information when making decisions, that humans are built for stories. So the justification as to why you would do stories is unlimited. The difficult thing we can sometimes find is how. So I have a spreadsheet that has a list of things like what are the main points I'm trying to make in my marketing and what are the stories that relate to that? And I tell those stories. And actually for my audience, they're receiving nourishing content because it's story based, and at the same time it's reinforcing my brand. And it's not an accident, it's an intentional considered process. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that the interesting thing about stories, the interesting thing about experience, we recently had a conversation with Lily Ray about experience, about the E-E-A-T, and I mean to tie this back into SEO, SEOs they've added in that experience element on the EEAT. And I think that one of the things that's interesting about that is something that I think about, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on this podcast but it's certainly something that was a core realization of mine. But I had my kid, I got lots of advice about parenting and that is tiresome. However, hearing other people's experience about what happened with their kid or that kid or whatever, that was useful because you can take whatever nuggets from that experience. So the thing you're talking about, about tying in experience to a point that you're trying to make, there'll be a reason why there'll almost certainly be an experience that prompted you to start that business or prompted you to make that product or prompted you to write that piece of content that is connected to you. So yeah, I think it is worth explaining what that is to people so that people know why you're writing that piece of content. I remember reading someone's thing and it was shocking about gut health stuff, and I'm like, why are you writing this? Is it because you had some problems with your gut and you found some stuff out? Or is it because you're a clinically trained microbiome person? What is it? Explain your connection to the content and people can understand that. Kirsty Hulse: And I think one of the things that I know to be true, I know this will be true, the more specific a story is to the individual the more universal it becomes. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Kirsty Hulse: If I'm doing storytelling training, people will say, well, people don't care about me. And I'm like, you're right, they don't. They don't. But they do care about themselves. The value of stories isn't to show off or tell people about you. The value of stories is to give people a mirror to view their own experiences internally. That's why books are generally better than movies. If you have a favorite movie that's turned into a book, the book is better because it's your imagination. That's the value of storytelling. Mordy Oberstein: That's such a great point. We talked about this internally before at Wix, where we're going, the story of Wix, here's our story. We're running through a couple of brand positioning dialogues. I love brand marketing. One of the things I think brand marketers make a mistake with is that what you're trying to do is to deal with your audience's pain points and to show your audience that you solve those pain points. Whereas I think in reality, what you're really trying to do is to get the audience to see themselves in you. And there's so many different aspects that go into that. And that could be showing that you're an expert in the area. Oh, I'm also an expert in this. You're also an expert in this. Great, now we're on the same page. There's so many layers that go into that. But you're really trying to create a real association between your audience and you in so far as that they see themselves in you. And that's why I think in terms of brand marketing, brand marketing's very, very wide. And if you want to be successful with it and to really resonate with your audience, you have to think holistically. Otherwise, you cannot create that association between yourself and the audience. Kirsty Hulse: Yeah, absolutely. And I think on that kind of brand stories, you get a lot of websites who will do exactly like you said, be like our story. That's not actually storytelling, that's product sharing. What a storytelling would be, would be something like, I was sitting at my computer and my heart was racing in frustration and I threw my mouse on the floor, and that was when I knew it needed to be different. Good stories are specific, specific tiny moments in time. So, if you want to be better at storytelling- Kirsty Hulse: So, if you want to be better at storytelling, just be really specific. Think about a 30-second moment and articulate that tiny moment. That's how you tell good stories, I think. Crystal Carter: So I want to flip that around a little bit. If you'll bear with me. And I know you do a lot of training, so you must have this pop up all the time, what about the risks of this? What are the risks associated with bearing... Not necessarily bearing all, I guess, but with telling some of those stories? When do you hit TMI, or where do you find the challenges around that? Kirsty Hulse: Yes. Thank you, that's a lovely question. One of the things that I always say is, there's a big difference between authenticity and disclosure. And I think sometimes, people think that they need to bear all. The majority of my life is secret from me. I share freely on the internet, but the majority of my experiences are for me. They're to be earned, they're private. So, I think the idea that we all have to share our stuff in order to be considered authentic and to be able to connect just isn't true. I think first, it's kind of like… authenticity doesn't mean you have to tell everything. Authenticity means you can pick moments from your life, illustrate the point you're trying to make. And also, I think maybe we'll come on to this when we talk about connection. Connecting with people isn't about what you say. It's really about the energy that you are bringing into that moment and the intentionality. If someone is dumping, we can feel that if someone is just truthfully sharing from a place of service, we can feel that. As the content creator, as the marketer, whatever we want to use, it's important that we can feel the difference. And we're talking about emotions, and this is emotional resonance that we can feel the difference in our bodies really, like is this coming from a true place of serving and helping others? The answer to that question always has to be, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's really the difference between messaging and positioning, the two different things sometimes. There's the message, and then, how you're positioning yourself to deliver that message. And they're not the same always. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Kirsty Hulse: Sure. Crystal Carter: There's a thing where they're like... Is it you sell the... People talk about how do you sell me this pen? And it's like, "Oh, it does this, this, this, this." And it's like write something down. And then, someone's like, "I don't have a pen." It's like, "You want a pen"? Mordy Oberstein: Where's the spoon? Crystal Carter: Right, right. You're selling someone a solution. So, we talked to them about solutions. There we go. But yeah, I don't know if you want to get onto the AI questions there, Mordy, or the other questions. Mordy Oberstein: No, honestly, I'm sick of the AI stuff for a few minutes. Whatever. Use AI, don't use AI, see if I care. No, I don't mean it that way. You should use AI, use it responsibly. Reference our podcast with Kim Garst about how you can use it in your marketing responsibly. What I'm interested in actually is how do you see, what resonates with consumers changing, and how has it changed? Has it changed? Where is it headed? And I'm sure AI factors into that actually. Kirsty Hulse: I think what I'm seeing changing is like we touched upon earlier. There really is, and this has always been true, but I think it's just becoming more the case. There is a deep desire for meaningful connection. And I don't know about you, but I can tell if someone's content is written by an AI. We can just tell. We know. We know your tweets were written by AI. We know. We can feel this stuff. It's subtle, and that subtlety is going to get increasingly subtle, which I think is cool and exciting. But I think what consumers are wanting, and we're all consumers, I wonder if consumers don't want to be thought of as consumers. I wonder if actually what we want is to just really come back to our humanity. And I think the value of using AI is, I don't think AI is going to take people jobs, but I do think people who use AI in alongside of their humanity, that's when it gets really powerful when you connect those two things together. Again, I think just people want to see their lived experiences reflected in whatever you're trying to share with them. Crystal Carter: Do you find that the need to connect across these different spaces becomes more acute as it becomes more and more fractioned, I guess? There's Instagram, there's Twitter, there's WhatsApp, there's Threads, there's TikTok, there's this, and there's that. So, I think that there's a feeling that like, oh, maybe I need to be always on in order to connect. But sometimes, somebody says, "Oh, I sent you a message," and you're like, "Where? Which channel did you send me a message on?" Mordy Oberstein: Hangouts. I put it on on Hangouts. Crystal Carter: I wonder if that's affecting how we connect. What's that? Mordy Oberstein: I sent it on Hangouts just to throw you off. Kirsty Hulse: No, my mind just gone blank. Was it Google Plus? Crystal Carter: Yeah, Google Hangouts. I was on Google Plus. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I hijacked that. Yeah. What do you do then? Kirsty Hulse: So, the question is how do we deal with all of these multiple platforms? Do you know what? I'm probably, I'm maybe a naughty person to ask this question too, because I ran businesses and worked in marketing for a long time, but I've never really done... In fact, no, there's no really, I've never done a marketing content strategy really other than this story mining process I was telling you about. So, I've never thought about how I'm going to be on LinkedIn, versus how I'm going to be on Twitter, versus how I'm going to be on Instagram. I think what I do is I have a person, an individual, not a group of people, not personas, not demographics, one human person that I know deeply that I picture and I communicate to them, that one person, and that one person is on LinkedIn. That one person is on Instagram. And even though these platforms do different things, the person that you might be your ideal customer on LinkedIn is maybe thinking about things slightly differently, but they still have heartache, and grief, and children, and put their socks on in the mornings. So, I think for me, I've never changed my approach by platform. I just rinse and repeat across the different things. And I think that's easier when you have the individual that you are talking to, rather than, I think sometimes, as marketers, we can bucket people into groups. Mordy Oberstein: Personas. Kirsty Hulse: Like we're talking to CMOs of this age. Personas. Exactly. Yeah. And they can be really helpful, especially if you're doing paid stuff, they can be very helpful. And I think for me, coming back to this desire for connection, where's the human within this data? Where's the emotion? Where's the... And so whenever I do something, I'm thinking about one individual, and I know her, and I can see her, and she has a face, and I talk directly to her. Crystal Carter: I remember working on an account that was a golf account, and I've never golfed a day in my life. I don't golf, but I have a good friend who is golf mad who when the sun shines, he's out and he's golfing. And I was working, doing some social media stuff for this golf account. And basically, whenever I wrote anything, I just imagined my golf friend who goes on and on and on about how much he loves golf all the time. And I wrote all of the content with him in mind and things, and we got great responses from it, and checked it with people who were in the community, et cetera, et cetera. And it worked really, really well. So, yeah, absolutely. If you're listening to this podcast, take Kirsty's advice on that because it's a great tip. Kirsty Hulse: One of the things I've observed is we go on three phases when we're communicating with people. And again, that's one person, 10 people, 10,000 people, doesn't make a difference. We start by trying to impress others. We start by being like, "Will people think I'm smart? Will they think I'm cool? Will they think I'm funny? Will they think my product's good?" Whatever. We start with this very, it's about us trying to impress people. And then, eventually maybe that fades, and we get into what I call inform. And inform is when we're good at sharing information. Inform is like, "Here's the information, and I'm going to give you the information." But then, if we're lucky, we get into the third category, which is what I call inspire. And inspire is when you're like what you were just talking about, Crystal... Kirsty Hulse: And inspire is when you are like, what you were just talking about, Crystal, "I'm here to meaningfully inspire action." And I think if we're trying to connect with our consumers, the most important thing is it isn't about you. It's not about you. It's never about you. And when we can remove ourselves from the picture, it's only ever about your audience's joy or your audience's understanding or your audiences. And I think just that little subtle shift can change the way that we start creating. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like we're in such an environment right now where you have all those subtle little shifts happening right now in terms of expectations, in terms of the way content is generated, but not only the way content is generated, but the type of content you're putting out. I think it touches back on something that you were talking about earlier. I guess now I do want to swing back around to the AI thing. I'm sorry, I can't stop myself. But I know we talk about, and you hit on this a little bit, we talk about in general, AI and content writing and AI can produce all this content for you, and that's this huge impact of what AI will do for the web, but what you hit on before was, the fact that you have all this AI content coming out makes people look at content in general a little bit differently. Is this really real? Is this really the content that I want to consume? How do I know it's the content that I want to consume? If it's AI, is it okay if it's AI? I guess it's okay in this context if it's AI. And I feel like the biggest change that AI theoretically can make is not just in the volume of content that's able to be generated, but what it means for the skepticism of people looking at content and what they want out of content and what they're expecting out of the content that you're producing. Do you think that, that changes the way that we need to go about communicating and connecting to our audiences, realizing that perhaps they're a little bit more, I'd say skeptical is a bad word, I don't have a better one on the top of my head, but a little more skeptical or a little bit more thoughtful rather about what they're looking at and what they're expecting to consume? Kirsty Hulse: Yeah. And I think it's skeptical, but I think more than that it's saturated. And so I think AI poses huge amounts of opportunity. We can create so much content. And that's good, actually. I'm not anti-AI at all. And I also think it's going to encourage all of us to be better, because the barrier to entry to market, to write, to connect is now just so much lower that I think in order to be good, everyone now is already good, in order to be absolutely incredible, impactful, amazing, that still remains within the realm of the human. But we can all be good now. We can all create good, solid, decent content in AI. And so if you want to be good, go ahead. If you want to be really powerful, then add in a little bit more. And increasingly I think people are a little bit more skeptical, and I also think that we can somehow intuitively feel when things are generated by AI, which is fine. It's really good in some instances. So I think there's that distinction that it's really possible to be really good with AI generated content, and I think in order to be really exceptional, we still need a big sprinkle of humanity alongside it. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. I think that's so true, such a good point. With that, where can people find you in case they want to connect with you and experience all of your storytelling out there in the ether that is the internet? Kirsty Hulse: Well, we were joking about this before, weren't we? That I'm very fortunate in that my name, there's nobody else with my name. My name is Kirsty Hulse. You Google me and I'm all over the place. I own those SERPs. Crystal Carter: Indeed. You're like Beyonce. There's only one Beyonce. There's only one Kirsty Hulse. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Like we told Lily Ray the other day, we'll link to your Google search in our show notes. Crystal Carter: To your SERP. Kirsty Hulse: I feel like a a lot of your guests feel like, "Yeah, just Google me." But I got that down. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, we haven't said that. I feel like it's such a snarky, "Where can we find you?" Whatever. Just Google them. You'll find them there. It makes my life doing the show notes far easier, by the way. Crystal Carter: I would say though it's worth visiting Kirsty's website. Kirsty has talked a lot about storytelling. Your about page is a fantastic about page. It's like an origin story and I think that there's some great stuff in terms of seeing in action how you can shape a story that is connective, that is rich, and that is not oversharing, but is being open at the same time. And I think that, that vulnerability. Because you share some personal stuff on it. Not every single detail, but you share a few personal elements there as well and I think that, that kind of vulnerability also makes people connect more to you as well. So I think that Kirsty's about page is a fantastic page. It's kirstyhulse.com/about. Kirsty Hulse: Well, I actually have, which I think would be genuinely really valuable, because I get asked. I think sometimes people assume that when we tell stories, it happens by accident, and it really, really, really doesn't. Crystal, if you've ever read one of my emails and thought, "Oh, that was emotionally compelling," it doesn't just happen. There's a whole process. The spreadsheets, once a nerd, always a nerd. But there's a spreadsheet. So actually I'll send it to you so you can put it in the show notes. I've got, it's totally free, a template for how to craft more storytelling into your marketing in a way that's really simple. People tend to add it into their content marketing calendars. So if anybody loves a spreadsheet, I got you. Crystal Carter: Oh, that's me. So yeah, if you can just drop that in my inbox, that'd be great. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Thank you so much, Kristy, for coming on and enlightening our audience. We really appreciate it. Kirsty Hulse: Thank you both so much. This was really lovely. I appreciate you chatting to me. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And dear audience, well, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Plus Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode of SERP's Up, our regular SEO podcast, and back next month with another SERP's Up Plus for more marketing talk. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO and marketing with all sorts of great content and webinars? Then head over to 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 marketing. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Kirsty Hulse Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Kirsty Hulse Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Kirsty Hulse Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Kirsty Hulse Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of marketing podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up Plus. Aloha, Mahalo, for joining the SERP's Up Plus Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in digital marketing. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO Brand here at Wix Central with the fabulously incredible, the amazing, the unparalleled uncompromised Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello? Kidding. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's the best response yet. That's the best response yet. So good, Crystal. Hi. Crystal Carter: Hey, guys. Mordy Oberstein: How are you? Crystal Carter: What's up? Really happy to be here. It's my favorite thing about Andy Murray. He's a tennis player in the U.K. and I remember he won Wimbledon or something like that, and he was there giving a reception speech. He was like, "I'm really happy right now. I know I don't sound that happy, but I'm really happy." Mordy Oberstein: It's like Latka from taxi, "Thank you very much." Crystal Carter: People express emotion in different ways. That's fine. It's a rich tapestry of humanity. Mordy Oberstein: We haven't done this podcast in a month, it's a monthly podcast, so I'm excited for this. We have a great guest coming at you. But first, the SERP's Up Plus podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can dive into the connection between you and your audience by using all of the social media tools, templates, and integrations found in both Wix and Wix Studio. Get more details over wix.com/studio. I bring up connections because we are here today to help you connect to your audience and consumers in an ever-changing digital landscape. That was so cliche. We're going to dive into what works, what doesn't work when connecting with your audience and consumer base. How are audience expectations changing? We'll probably get into something around AI, I imagine, about that, and what are consumers actually looking for that perhaps they weren't looking for in the past? To help us dial up the connection, creator of Confidence Live and Founder of Roar, a real world training agency that works, Kirsty Hulse will join us in just a jiffy. So unplug your landline and jimmy the modem as this month's SERP's Up Plus Podcast helps you connect to the web of interest and expectations that is your audience and consumer base. Crystal Carter: That was incredible breath control there, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I even put it in my notes, "Pause for effects." Crystal Carter: I mean, you missed your calling. You could have been an auctioneer or a grime emcee Mordy Oberstein: I'm telling you. Crystal Carter: Have you ever been to a live auction? Mordy Oberstein: No, but that sounds horrible. Crystal Carter: It's incredible. I walked into a cattle market once and it was like, "da, da, da, da, da ,da…]. Sold. And I was like, "What just happened?" Mordy Oberstein: A cattle market? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: They were selling like it it's at Yellowstone? They're selling... Crystal Carter: You love Yellowstone. Mordy Oberstein: I do. Crystal Carter: You love that TV show? Yes, they were literally selling cows. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Crystal Carter: It was one of the highlights of my life. I find that fantastic. Anyway, so there you go. Mordy Oberstein: I normally find that with our regular weekly series, SERP's Up, which is an SEO focused podcast, that sometimes we really have to dive into some background on whatever the particular topic is, because SEO is weird and technical or niche and that sort of thing. But I find on this podcast there's really no introduction needed. Crystal Carter: I mean, I hope we're going to give Kirsty an introduction. Mordy Oberstein: That was my pivot. That was my pivot. That was my pivot. I was going to say there's no need for introducing the topic. I feel like we all understand the importance of connecting to your audience and your consumer base, but we do need to introduce our guest. I was this close. Crystal Carter: So close, so close. Great lines. I'm so, so pleased that Kirsty Hulse responded to my message of invite because when we were thinking about this, Kirsty was the first person that came to mind because I absolutely have been such a fan of Kirsty's approach to marketing and particularly her approach to, and I'm thinking about Kirsty in the third person as if she's not in the room, the virtual room, but she is, I'm introducing you anyway, Kirsty, but yeah, the incredible way that Kirsty speaks very plainly about marketing like, "It's not that complicated." And I've just always been in such awe of that and so giving. I'm a member of the Women in Tech SEO group and Kirsty has given bespoke training there. Kirsty does her Confidence Life courses and events and things like that, and she's incredibly giving with marketing knowledge and it's always super valuable and always on point. And she also is the patron saint of making sure that people get their window seat when they're owed their window seat. So I think that we're so pleased to have Kirsty here at the podcast, and thank you so much for joining us. Kirsty Hulse: Thank you. Thank you so much. What a wonderful introduction. I will take that I'm the patron saint of window seats. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I need context. Kirsty Hulse: No. Mordy Oberstein: No? Okay. Kirsty Hulse: No context. Crystal Carter: There was a tweet and I saw the tweet and I was like, "Yes. Absolutely, yes." So that's what I will say about that. Mordy Oberstein: Was there a fight over a window seat? Kirsty Hulse: I basically went low-key viral on Twitter because some dude wasn't giving this woman her window seat, and I stepped in. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Kirsty Hulse: So yeah Crystal Carter: She didn't even go to the details. I remember this very clearly, and the tweet was something like, "I went to go get in my seat. This lady sad in my seat and she was like, "Oh, there's this man sat in my window seat." And Kirsty was like, "Needless to say, he's not sat in that seat anymore." And I was on a plate and somebody else was like, "You're in my seat," and that came to mind and I was like, "I am not in your seat. I am in my seat. Thank you very much. End." Anyway, it was very important to communicate the needs in that situation and Kirsty did so effortlessly for all people who have booked a window seat because they like the window seat. So there we go. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. End of podcast. Kirsty Hulse: Goodbye. Mordy Oberstein: But in all seriousness, let's talk about connecting with your audience and your consumer base and I guess let's start off very, very, very basic. What works, what doesn't work when you're trying to connect to a consumer base and your overall audience? Kirsty Hulse: Lovely, thank you. And so maybe just a bit of context about the lens that I'm going to talk about this through. So my background's marketing, my background's SEO, I run an SEO agency, and then the past few years I've been a speaker predominantly. So I'm really in the connection game. Whether that's in blog content or Instagram captions or on a stage, same rules apply. So a lot of the things that I teach and that I'm actually really passionate about, the format doesn't really matter. I think the most important cardinal rule of connection, it's first and foremost, you have to be a living human being with living human experiences. And you have to give yourself away a little bit so that people can connect to that. Mordy Oberstein: Well, we got to the AI thing so quickly. That was the fastest rocket into AI. Kirsty Hulse: I know. Mordy Oberstein: So I can't put a prompt in to say, "Hey, connect to my audience for me, large language model." Kirsty Hulse: Well, there's a distinction here. AI is incredibly good at informational content, and people respect that kind of content and people will learn from that kind of content. But people attach to emotional content. So actually I use AI. It has huge amounts of value to help structure and organize and somewhat with that informational data-based content. But if you're trying to move someone, so that moving someone could be, are you trying to sell a product, are you trying to get them to change their behavior in any kind of way, then it can be done through AI everything it can, but I think it's more powerful and more meaningful when we do that through our... Kirsty Hulse: It's more powerful and more meaningful when we do that through our own lived human experiences. And that's through things like storytelling and the modeling of emotion, which maybe we'll come onto later. Crystal Carter: And I think it's interesting that, and one of the first points that you made, was that it doesn't matter what platform you're on when you're speaking to people, that you aim for connecting with people. And certainly I'm a follower of yours on multiple platforms, and I've definitely seen that. Like, Kirsty does Kirsty when Kirsty is doing Kirsty. There was that meme that was going around that was like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and it was different pictures of different things, whatever. And I think that one of the things that you're very good at, and one of the things that I would guess you might advocate is having the same picture of them. Do you know what I mean? Having the same sort of tone of voice where your audience knows you wherever you go. Is that something you'd advocate for? Kirsty Hulse: Yes. 100%. I think the main thing that I advocate for generally in life, it's almost this de-masking of ourselves. This kind of like, let's just stop for a hot minute acting or pretending that we don't have warmth or charisma or humor and taking our personalities and zipping them up in some kind of professional straight jacket in the name of being businesslike. I hate that. And I actually think that's something that really gets in the way of our ability to connect. Which, whether we're trying to get that connection from a marketing perspective or just a human perspective, same. That's all we want to do as humans. We just want to see and be seen. Mordy Oberstein: I really think that that point, one, is so profound, so easy to understand, but so completely glossed over. It's literally why we had a podcast interview with Rand fishing about the genuine self and the role in marketing. But I also think it's something we discussed internally a lot when we were building, say, landing pages. I know there's been many discussions about this that when you look at your traditional landing page it's very businesslike and it's slightly over-promising, if not completely over-promising, and highly actionable, get this, do this, ultimate this, the best this, get it now. And I feel like perhaps, and maybe I'm wrong, I don’t know what your thoughts are, that people are sort of starting to see through that and seeing that as a mask and they're looking for something a little bit more emotional, a little bit more genuine, a little bit more conversational. And I think that we as marketers and SEOs and content writers are a little bit behind the curve on that. And we're still creating content like it's 2009 or 2019, rather, and not in a way that's actually connective. And I think we're running the risk of putting a schism between us and our audience. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Kirsty Hulse: Yeah, totally. And the reason that I'm on this podcast is because I have become known and associated with certain topics, that's not an accident. And all of the content pretty much that I create is story-based. But I think sometimes when you are creating content that's a story and a narrative I think the mistake or maybe the incorrect assumption that marketers make is that we just wing it and we just tell stories and just be yourself. It's not that actually, so the process that I go on whenever I'm trying to connect with an audience on a stage, on an email, doesn't matter, the process that I go on is I think about the main point that I'm trying to make. Am I trying to sell some training? Am I trying to position myself as an expert? What is the one thing that I'm trying to do with this piece of content? And then the second question I ask myself is, what experiences have I got from my life that demonstrate that point? And then you tell that story. And then you tell the story, like the research on MRI scans show that we use emotional information when making decisions, that humans are built for stories. So the justification as to why you would do stories is unlimited. The difficult thing we can sometimes find is how. So I have a spreadsheet that has a list of things like what are the main points I'm trying to make in my marketing and what are the stories that relate to that? And I tell those stories. And actually for my audience, they're receiving nourishing content because it's story based, and at the same time it's reinforcing my brand. And it's not an accident, it's an intentional considered process. Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that the interesting thing about stories, the interesting thing about experience, we recently had a conversation with Lily Ray about experience, about the E-E-A-T, and I mean to tie this back into SEO, SEOs they've added in that experience element on the EEAT. And I think that one of the things that's interesting about that is something that I think about, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned it on this podcast but it's certainly something that was a core realization of mine. But I had my kid, I got lots of advice about parenting and that is tiresome. However, hearing other people's experience about what happened with their kid or that kid or whatever, that was useful because you can take whatever nuggets from that experience. So the thing you're talking about, about tying in experience to a point that you're trying to make, there'll be a reason why there'll almost certainly be an experience that prompted you to start that business or prompted you to make that product or prompted you to write that piece of content that is connected to you. So yeah, I think it is worth explaining what that is to people so that people know why you're writing that piece of content. I remember reading someone's thing and it was shocking about gut health stuff, and I'm like, why are you writing this? Is it because you had some problems with your gut and you found some stuff out? Or is it because you're a clinically trained microbiome person? What is it? Explain your connection to the content and people can understand that. Kirsty Hulse: And I think one of the things that I know to be true, I know this will be true, the more specific a story is to the individual the more universal it becomes. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Kirsty Hulse: If I'm doing storytelling training, people will say, well, people don't care about me. And I'm like, you're right, they don't. They don't. But they do care about themselves. The value of stories isn't to show off or tell people about you. The value of stories is to give people a mirror to view their own experiences internally. That's why books are generally better than movies. If you have a favorite movie that's turned into a book, the book is better because it's your imagination. That's the value of storytelling. Mordy Oberstein: That's such a great point. We talked about this internally before at Wix, where we're going, the story of Wix, here's our story. We're running through a couple of brand positioning dialogues. I love brand marketing. One of the things I think brand marketers make a mistake with is that what you're trying to do is to deal with your audience's pain points and to show your audience that you solve those pain points. Whereas I think in reality, what you're really trying to do is to get the audience to see themselves in you. And there's so many different aspects that go into that. And that could be showing that you're an expert in the area. Oh, I'm also an expert in this. You're also an expert in this. Great, now we're on the same page. There's so many layers that go into that. But you're really trying to create a real association between your audience and you in so far as that they see themselves in you. And that's why I think in terms of brand marketing, brand marketing's very, very wide. And if you want to be successful with it and to really resonate with your audience, you have to think holistically. Otherwise, you cannot create that association between yourself and the audience. Kirsty Hulse: Yeah, absolutely. And I think on that kind of brand stories, you get a lot of websites who will do exactly like you said, be like our story. That's not actually storytelling, that's product sharing. What a storytelling would be, would be something like, I was sitting at my computer and my heart was racing in frustration and I threw my mouse on the floor, and that was when I knew it needed to be different. Good stories are specific, specific tiny moments in time. So, if you want to be better at storytelling- Kirsty Hulse: So, if you want to be better at storytelling, just be really specific. Think about a 30-second moment and articulate that tiny moment. That's how you tell good stories, I think. Crystal Carter: So I want to flip that around a little bit. If you'll bear with me. And I know you do a lot of training, so you must have this pop up all the time, what about the risks of this? What are the risks associated with bearing... Not necessarily bearing all, I guess, but with telling some of those stories? When do you hit TMI, or where do you find the challenges around that? Kirsty Hulse: Yes. Thank you, that's a lovely question. One of the things that I always say is, there's a big difference between authenticity and disclosure. And I think sometimes, people think that they need to bear all. The majority of my life is secret from me. I share freely on the internet, but the majority of my experiences are for me. They're to be earned, they're private. So, I think the idea that we all have to share our stuff in order to be considered authentic and to be able to connect just isn't true. I think first, it's kind of like… authenticity doesn't mean you have to tell everything. Authenticity means you can pick moments from your life, illustrate the point you're trying to make. And also, I think maybe we'll come on to this when we talk about connection. Connecting with people isn't about what you say. It's really about the energy that you are bringing into that moment and the intentionality. If someone is dumping, we can feel that if someone is just truthfully sharing from a place of service, we can feel that. As the content creator, as the marketer, whatever we want to use, it's important that we can feel the difference. And we're talking about emotions, and this is emotional resonance that we can feel the difference in our bodies really, like is this coming from a true place of serving and helping others? The answer to that question always has to be, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And that's really the difference between messaging and positioning, the two different things sometimes. There's the message, and then, how you're positioning yourself to deliver that message. And they're not the same always. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Kirsty Hulse: Sure. Crystal Carter: There's a thing where they're like... Is it you sell the... People talk about how do you sell me this pen? And it's like, "Oh, it does this, this, this, this." And it's like write something down. And then, someone's like, "I don't have a pen." It's like, "You want a pen"? Mordy Oberstein: Where's the spoon? Crystal Carter: Right, right. You're selling someone a solution. So, we talked to them about solutions. There we go. But yeah, I don't know if you want to get onto the AI questions there, Mordy, or the other questions. Mordy Oberstein: No, honestly, I'm sick of the AI stuff for a few minutes. Whatever. Use AI, don't use AI, see if I care. No, I don't mean it that way. You should use AI, use it responsibly. Reference our podcast with Kim Garst about how you can use it in your marketing responsibly. What I'm interested in actually is how do you see, what resonates with consumers changing, and how has it changed? Has it changed? Where is it headed? And I'm sure AI factors into that actually. Kirsty Hulse: I think what I'm seeing changing is like we touched upon earlier. There really is, and this has always been true, but I think it's just becoming more the case. There is a deep desire for meaningful connection. And I don't know about you, but I can tell if someone's content is written by an AI. We can just tell. We know. We know your tweets were written by AI. We know. We can feel this stuff. It's subtle, and that subtlety is going to get increasingly subtle, which I think is cool and exciting. But I think what consumers are wanting, and we're all consumers, I wonder if consumers don't want to be thought of as consumers. I wonder if actually what we want is to just really come back to our humanity. And I think the value of using AI is, I don't think AI is going to take people jobs, but I do think people who use AI in alongside of their humanity, that's when it gets really powerful when you connect those two things together. Again, I think just people want to see their lived experiences reflected in whatever you're trying to share with them. Crystal Carter: Do you find that the need to connect across these different spaces becomes more acute as it becomes more and more fractioned, I guess? There's Instagram, there's Twitter, there's WhatsApp, there's Threads, there's TikTok, there's this, and there's that. So, I think that there's a feeling that like, oh, maybe I need to be always on in order to connect. But sometimes, somebody says, "Oh, I sent you a message," and you're like, "Where? Which channel did you send me a message on?" Mordy Oberstein: Hangouts. I put it on on Hangouts. Crystal Carter: I wonder if that's affecting how we connect. What's that? Mordy Oberstein: I sent it on Hangouts just to throw you off. Kirsty Hulse: No, my mind just gone blank. Was it Google Plus? Crystal Carter: Yeah, Google Hangouts. I was on Google Plus. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I hijacked that. Yeah. What do you do then? Kirsty Hulse: So, the question is how do we deal with all of these multiple platforms? Do you know what? I'm probably, I'm maybe a naughty person to ask this question too, because I ran businesses and worked in marketing for a long time, but I've never really done... In fact, no, there's no really, I've never done a marketing content strategy really other than this story mining process I was telling you about. So, I've never thought about how I'm going to be on LinkedIn, versus how I'm going to be on Twitter, versus how I'm going to be on Instagram. I think what I do is I have a person, an individual, not a group of people, not personas, not demographics, one human person that I know deeply that I picture and I communicate to them, that one person, and that one person is on LinkedIn. That one person is on Instagram. And even though these platforms do different things, the person that you might be your ideal customer on LinkedIn is maybe thinking about things slightly differently, but they still have heartache, and grief, and children, and put their socks on in the mornings. So, I think for me, I've never changed my approach by platform. I just rinse and repeat across the different things. And I think that's easier when you have the individual that you are talking to, rather than, I think sometimes, as marketers, we can bucket people into groups. Mordy Oberstein: Personas. Kirsty Hulse: Like we're talking to CMOs of this age. Personas. Exactly. Yeah. And they can be really helpful, especially if you're doing paid stuff, they can be very helpful. And I think for me, coming back to this desire for connection, where's the human within this data? Where's the emotion? Where's the... And so whenever I do something, I'm thinking about one individual, and I know her, and I can see her, and she has a face, and I talk directly to her. Crystal Carter: I remember working on an account that was a golf account, and I've never golfed a day in my life. I don't golf, but I have a good friend who is golf mad who when the sun shines, he's out and he's golfing. And I was working, doing some social media stuff for this golf account. And basically, whenever I wrote anything, I just imagined my golf friend who goes on and on and on about how much he loves golf all the time. And I wrote all of the content with him in mind and things, and we got great responses from it, and checked it with people who were in the community, et cetera, et cetera. And it worked really, really well. So, yeah, absolutely. If you're listening to this podcast, take Kirsty's advice on that because it's a great tip. Kirsty Hulse: One of the things I've observed is we go on three phases when we're communicating with people. And again, that's one person, 10 people, 10,000 people, doesn't make a difference. We start by trying to impress others. We start by being like, "Will people think I'm smart? Will they think I'm cool? Will they think I'm funny? Will they think my product's good?" Whatever. We start with this very, it's about us trying to impress people. And then, eventually maybe that fades, and we get into what I call inform. And inform is when we're good at sharing information. Inform is like, "Here's the information, and I'm going to give you the information." But then, if we're lucky, we get into the third category, which is what I call inspire. And inspire is when you're like what you were just talking about, Crystal... Kirsty Hulse: And inspire is when you are like, what you were just talking about, Crystal, "I'm here to meaningfully inspire action." And I think if we're trying to connect with our consumers, the most important thing is it isn't about you. It's not about you. It's never about you. And when we can remove ourselves from the picture, it's only ever about your audience's joy or your audience's understanding or your audiences. And I think just that little subtle shift can change the way that we start creating. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like we're in such an environment right now where you have all those subtle little shifts happening right now in terms of expectations, in terms of the way content is generated, but not only the way content is generated, but the type of content you're putting out. I think it touches back on something that you were talking about earlier. I guess now I do want to swing back around to the AI thing. I'm sorry, I can't stop myself. But I know we talk about, and you hit on this a little bit, we talk about in general, AI and content writing and AI can produce all this content for you, and that's this huge impact of what AI will do for the web, but what you hit on before was, the fact that you have all this AI content coming out makes people look at content in general a little bit differently. Is this really real? Is this really the content that I want to consume? How do I know it's the content that I want to consume? If it's AI, is it okay if it's AI? I guess it's okay in this context if it's AI. And I feel like the biggest change that AI theoretically can make is not just in the volume of content that's able to be generated, but what it means for the skepticism of people looking at content and what they want out of content and what they're expecting out of the content that you're producing. Do you think that, that changes the way that we need to go about communicating and connecting to our audiences, realizing that perhaps they're a little bit more, I'd say skeptical is a bad word, I don't have a better one on the top of my head, but a little more skeptical or a little bit more thoughtful rather about what they're looking at and what they're expecting to consume? Kirsty Hulse: Yeah. And I think it's skeptical, but I think more than that it's saturated. And so I think AI poses huge amounts of opportunity. We can create so much content. And that's good, actually. I'm not anti-AI at all. And I also think it's going to encourage all of us to be better, because the barrier to entry to market, to write, to connect is now just so much lower that I think in order to be good, everyone now is already good, in order to be absolutely incredible, impactful, amazing, that still remains within the realm of the human. But we can all be good now. We can all create good, solid, decent content in AI. And so if you want to be good, go ahead. If you want to be really powerful, then add in a little bit more. And increasingly I think people are a little bit more skeptical, and I also think that we can somehow intuitively feel when things are generated by AI, which is fine. It's really good in some instances. So I think there's that distinction that it's really possible to be really good with AI generated content, and I think in order to be really exceptional, we still need a big sprinkle of humanity alongside it. Mordy Oberstein: I love that. I think that's so true, such a good point. With that, where can people find you in case they want to connect with you and experience all of your storytelling out there in the ether that is the internet? Kirsty Hulse: Well, we were joking about this before, weren't we? That I'm very fortunate in that my name, there's nobody else with my name. My name is Kirsty Hulse. You Google me and I'm all over the place. I own those SERPs. Crystal Carter: Indeed. You're like Beyonce. There's only one Beyonce. There's only one Kirsty Hulse. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Like we told Lily Ray the other day, we'll link to your Google search in our show notes. Crystal Carter: To your SERP. Kirsty Hulse: I feel like a a lot of your guests feel like, "Yeah, just Google me." But I got that down. Mordy Oberstein: Honestly, we haven't said that. I feel like it's such a snarky, "Where can we find you?" Whatever. Just Google them. You'll find them there. It makes my life doing the show notes far easier, by the way. Crystal Carter: I would say though it's worth visiting Kirsty's website. Kirsty has talked a lot about storytelling. Your about page is a fantastic about page. It's like an origin story and I think that there's some great stuff in terms of seeing in action how you can shape a story that is connective, that is rich, and that is not oversharing, but is being open at the same time. And I think that, that vulnerability. Because you share some personal stuff on it. Not every single detail, but you share a few personal elements there as well and I think that, that kind of vulnerability also makes people connect more to you as well. So I think that Kirsty's about page is a fantastic page. It's kirstyhulse.com/about. Kirsty Hulse: Well, I actually have, which I think would be genuinely really valuable, because I get asked. I think sometimes people assume that when we tell stories, it happens by accident, and it really, really, really doesn't. Crystal, if you've ever read one of my emails and thought, "Oh, that was emotionally compelling," it doesn't just happen. There's a whole process. The spreadsheets, once a nerd, always a nerd. But there's a spreadsheet. So actually I'll send it to you so you can put it in the show notes. I've got, it's totally free, a template for how to craft more storytelling into your marketing in a way that's really simple. People tend to add it into their content marketing calendars. So if anybody loves a spreadsheet, I got you. Crystal Carter: Oh, that's me. So yeah, if you can just drop that in my inbox, that'd be great. Mordy Oberstein: Amazing. Thank you so much, Kristy, for coming on and enlightening our audience. We really appreciate it. Kirsty Hulse: Thank you both so much. This was really lovely. I appreciate you chatting to me. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. And dear audience, well, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Plus Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode of SERP's Up, our regular SEO podcast, and back next month with another SERP's Up Plus for more marketing talk. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on the Wix SEO learning over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO and marketing with all sorts of great content and webinars? Then head over to 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 marketing. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Back SEO competitor audit Google Sheet Analyze the SERP competition by conducting a data-driven audit with this SEO worksheet. 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 Google Sheet to: Analyze the datasets most relevant to your SEO competitors Create an overview of relevant keywords using the domains that currently rank for them and metrics like difficulty, volume and CPC Assess competitors’ keywords and get data-driven insights on their search activity Lidia Infante Senior SEO Manager, Sanity.io LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram Lidia Infante has been working in SEO for almost a decade, helping businesses in SaaS, media and eCommerce grow online. She has a BSc in Psychology and a Masters in Digital Business, and is a regular speaker at international SEO events such as MozCon, BrightonSEO, and WTSFest. More about this topic Read this post on SEO competitor audits from 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