How has the affiliate marketing space shifted from an SEO point of view? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter look into the future of affiliate marketing, from profitability to new obstacles ahead. SEO legend Glenn Gabe helps you understand how the SEO landscape for affiliate marketers has changed, and how affiliate marketers can adapt to the new Google UX and content quality standards. Plus, Crystal and Mordy investigate the viability of affiliate marketing as a whole as they take a trip to the great beyond. The rulebook is evolving! Join us this week as we discover the possibilities and pitfalls of affiliate marketing in today’s SEO environment here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Is Google laying the smackdown on affiliate marketing? How has the affiliate marketing space shifted from an SEO point of view? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter look into the future of affiliate marketing, from profitability to new obstacles ahead. SEO legend Glenn Gabe helps you understand how the SEO landscape for affiliate marketers has changed, and how affiliate marketers can adapt to the new Google UX and content quality standards. Plus, Crystal and Mordy investigate the viability of affiliate marketing as a whole as they take a trip to the great beyond. The rulebook is evolving! Join us this week as we discover the possibilities and pitfalls of affiliate marketing in today’s SEO environment here on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 84 | April 24, 2024 | 46 MIN 00:00 / 46:13 This week’s guests Glenn Gabe Glenn Gabe is a digital marketing veteran with over 25 years of experience. As an SEO writer, frequent conference speaker, and a go-to resource for SEO consulting–Glenn has made an impact in a wide range of industries, ranging from e-comm, military, all the way to finance and education. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERPs Up podcast. We're 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 very affiliated Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I do have affiliations. I'm affiliated with many… Mordy Oberstein: But you don't like living in a cave by yourself so you're affiliated. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You want to build relationships and stuff. I'm affiliated with Wix and with Women Tech SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And with other groups. I don't have a Costco membership card, but I do have a Tesco membership card. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I miss Costco. Crystal Carter: I mean, I'm telling you some of those membership cards, they're really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I didn't like the membership. It felt very exclusive. It is a grocery store. I need a membership card? Crystal Carter: I just like the deals. I'm like, they got two for one. I'm about that. I'm about that life. Mordy Oberstein: They don't have any bags. You got to shove everything out in a makeshift box. So problematic. But the prices are great. Anyway, the SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Costco. Not really. Crystal Carter: No it's not. Mordy Oberstein: It's brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter search site over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also join the Wix Studio Partners program and enjoy immediate revenue sharing possibilities. Head over to wix.com/studio/partner-program, link in the show notes to learn more, which is kind of very similar to an affiliate program in a way, but it's not an affiliate program. It's a partner program because today we're talking about the possibility of earning revenue via affiliate marketing, being not as easy as it was from an SEO point-of-view. Is it still a viable channel for marketing? Is Google conducting a war on affiliates? I don't know. To help us find out, all rise, here comes the Judge. SEO sensation and all around good guy and Yankee fan, Supreme founder of G-Squared Interactive, Glenn Gabe will join us live in just a Jiffy to help us understand how the SEO landscape for affiliate marketers has changed significantly. Plus Krista and I will tackle SEO aside, what is the viability of affiliate marketing? And of course we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So join us for episode 84 of the SERPs Up podcast as we take a swing at understanding the viability of affiliate marketing on the Google SERP. As lately, it's been 1, 2, 3 strikes. You're out of the all affiliate marketing ballgame. Crystal Carter: I see what you did there. Mordy Oberstein: Glenn is a massive baseball fan, so that was my ode to Glenn. Glenn Gabe: That was awesome. I loved it. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show. Glenn Gabe: Yeah, that's some intro. I love that. Mordy Oberstein: I try. Glenn Gabe: Yeah. 1, 2, 3 strikes. You're out. That's for sure. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's really true as of late because as we're recording this, we're smack in the middle of the March 2024 Core Update. But if you're not familiar with this, and before I hand it off to Glenn, kind of catch you up on things really quickly. There's been a lot that's changed with the web and that's an understatement. I think from a Google algorithm point-of-view, I guess two major things that have changed in the affiliate space. And that's the product review update, which has now become the review update. Where Google has basically looked at product review websites and web pages and it's trying to up the quality of what it's showing there. And one of the guidances that it put into its guidance has been not showing just one source for the product. So if you're an affiliate marketer, you're usually just stuffing in your affiliate. But the official guidance from Google is, you should really have more than one source for the product. Because your not supposedly pushing the product, you're just reviewing the product. And the other thing, and I say this without judgment, I am just stating a fact. And if you're in an affiliate space, you're going to be very upset with me for saying this. But there is a tendency, I feel like personally, my opinions do not represent the official opinion of my employer. But I personally feel there is a long history of pushing less than overall quality content within the affiliate space. And I'm not saying people are doing that on purpose. I think that might just be the natural outcome of heavily focusing on what you're doing in affiliate marketing, just naturally. But that doesn't really align with where Google is going with the algorithm and with that, Glenn. Oh my god, what's going on? Glenn Gabe: Yeah, that's a really good intro. So I've been neck deep in the product reviews update, to reviews update. I have multiple posts analyzing these big updates, and now it's just reviews update, which now is being updated on an ongoing basis. Behind the scenes, we will not even hear anymore probably when that's updated at all. It's not necessarily part of Core Ranking, but if you could think of it as that, because it's going on behind the scenes. For example, with the March 2024 Core Update, I'm seeing reviews updates impacted, right? Lily Ray just tweeted about that this morning. Same deal, she's seeing the same type of thing. So that has always happened, right? And I called that in my posts and presentations about this, dueling machine learning systems. Where a core update, you surge and then the reviews update, you drop or vice versa. And I always found that crazy. I always said, "Is it quality or is it not?". Because one system saying it is and the other system saying it's not. And I do believe that's part of the reason that the reviews update is now behind the scenes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Glenn Gabe: And by the way, the helpful content system is also now behind the scenes and part of Google's core systems. Not just because of the dueling thing, but that's part of it too, right? I mean it's just madness. So I wrote a post recently where this is before the March updates rolled out and I said, "You know what? Let me take a look. I have have almost 800 sites documented that are review sites, that have seen heavy impact during product reviews, updates or reviews updates.". And I ran them through various visibility tools and I said, "Let me see how they're doing over time.". Because I don't think I'll check with one update versus another, but I'm like, "Let me see, from the beginning of the product reviews update, way back when in 2021 to now.". And it was carnage. I mean most of these sites are either gone, shut down, or at almost no visibility anymore. And I said, is this a foreshadowing of sites impacted by the HCU? Because if you're not significantly improving and it's not easy to do that. You are in really bad shape. So that post is on my blog and I have screenshots on there. It is really ugly. It is not pretty. Mordy Oberstein: Willing to put that in the show notes by the way, in case you're wonder where the post is. The link will be in the show notes. Crystal Carter: And do you think that one of the reasons why this particular sector gets hit by this is because of certain practices that are more common in this sector or do you think it's something else? Glenn Gabe: Yeah, so I've covered this with so many different review sites and site owners of review sites, where it's thin reviews. I mean, what used to rank was if you're reviewing a list of the best men's running shoes. And it's like a little paragraph with a link off to Amazon and a screenshot or a product image from Amazon. It's like nothing's actually original in the entire thing. That type of stuff is what Google just waged war on. And just so you know, I still have review sites reaching out to me and they still have that stuff. I'm doing a big audit right now on a fairly large site that focuses on reviews. And my entire first deliverable, which was almost 30 pages, was all about this. There are thousands of pages like this. And this is not the way to go in actually 2021, but I'll even say 2024. You need insightful, helpful, valuable reviews content based upon real experience with that product for most products, not everyone. But that's what Google wants to reward. And so that that's kind of what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: But that's hard. Well, the thing that's hard for people to get their minds around, there was a website that reached out to Danny Sullivan on Twitter. Danny Sullivan's Google search liaison, and said, "Hey, what happened? We're a product review site. We have a bunch of affiliate links in there, but we offer good content.". And Danny actually kind of did a mini odd and said, "It's not horrible, but you're not really offering anything of value.". And I think when people think, "Well, I'm not doing that, I'm not having all those old school tables with one line of content and multiple Amazon links. I'm writing paragraph after paragraph.". That doesn't mean that it's good. And that doesn't mean that Google should reward it. And I'm wondering, how do you see affiliates succeeding in this space? Has the game from an SEO point-of-view at least shifted for them? Glenn Gabe: Massively. So I've had some very tough conversations with site owners or review sites, and some very big companies by the way. Where the way I explain it, and I've said this from the beginning, it's been in almost all of my posts. I like using Wirecutter as the standard, right? Sure. Not every post on Wirecutter is truly amazing, but overall, really good stuff, right? Super insightful, explains to you how they broke it down. They literally buy and go through sometimes dozens of those products or more, to actually test this stuff out. Anyway, so I call it the Wirecutter standard. If you cannot do that, you probably going to have a really hard time in the review space. Now, I had a site owner recently come back to me and say, well, we're a smaller company. There's no way we can do this. And I'm like, "No, you don't have to go nuts like that.". But when I say have a testing lab, that doesn't mean go buy a lab and have 20 workers in there doing all sorts of stuff. But really have a process in place for getting the products, having multiple people test them, really take original photos, video have animated GIFs, so on and so forth. Pros, cons, graphs, charts, everything that someone would really need to know. That's the way to go. Of course that is very hard to do. It takes time, it takes money and resources. Which is why I've told some site owners, I said, "If you can't do that, you might want to focus on something else.". Crystal Carter: So that point of differentiation, you said, "That takes time, it takes money, it takes effort.". So that I think means that maybe people need to rethink which products they expect to review and which products they don't expect to review. I mean, I've done PPC up before with people and they were like, "Oh yeah, we're selling this, I don't know, this chocolate bar for $2 or something.". And I'm like, "Y'all, why are you doing PPC on that?". It's going to cost you so much to advertise that. Glenn Gabe: Right. Crystal Carter: And the amount of money you're going to get back on that isn't going to be worth it. So do PPC on something that costs $200, do PPC on something that costs that much. Is that something you're thinking about where people are thinking about which things to actually review. Because with their update they're looking at the whole site. So maybe?q Glenn Gabe: Well, great point. Yeah. So first of all, I was going to bring this up before I'm really glad you did. Site owners can't say, "Look at this one URL. It's amazing.". They are looking at the entire site. Just like with Core Updates and Helpful Content Update, which is now part of Core, they're looking at all of your content. So if you have one stellar review that doesn't make up for 50 that are really thin, so that's one thing. But second of all, I don't really get into, with clients, what they should be reviewing. I just get into, if you're going to do this, you really need to do it right? And Mordy brought up linking to multiple sellers, which is in the guidelines. And actually Alan Kent had confirmed for me, it's actually part of the algorithm. A very small part. So the way I would say it's like the Core Web Vitals of the reviews update. Mordy Oberstein: I feel validated by the way, I was looking at one of the product reviews or review updates, I forgot when it was where it switched over at that point or not. I'm like, "Oh, I see it.". I see sites, pages that went up and down based on the number of sellers. So I'm glad to hear that. I feel so validated. Sorry. Glenn Gabe: Yeah, and it makes sense, right? Don't drive everyone just to where you're going to make the most money. Right? Give them an option. If it's on three different sellers, provide links to three different sellers. So really it comes down to is it truly insightful? And I've had site owners go, "Oh, we have the best stuff.". And I'll go and talk to them and take a look. And sometimes I'm like, "It's AI.". Crystal Carter: It doesn't take long to sense it. Glenn Gabe: I mean, I can't tell you how many times, especially on larger scale sites that really are pumping out tons of reviews. You run it through. And I love Originality.AI, it's probably the best of my opinion. They're literally training systems on human versus AI, versus some other AI detection tools, which are not doing that. And you run it through and it's like 98% AI. The probability that it's 98% means it's probably somewhat AI, right? Mordy Oberstein: And if it's not, it's just crap. So, whatever Glenn Gabe: Right. It's so simple and lacks insight that yeah, it's probably that. So you have that, you have the content quality, you have the visuals, you have the first-hand experience. You can really tell when someone hasn't really used something and that comes across. People are like, "How can Google know that?". Well, it's literally training its models on this. Mordy Oberstein: That's the one thing machine learning is trained to do, is look at language profiles and then match them. Glenn Gabe: Right. So when you combine all of this together, and now again, it's being updated internally and for all we know, it's like Panda and when it's in, it's gone. Right? Because Panda's, it's probably just completely retired at this point. Well, they said it's retired, but pieces of it are probably part of the Core updates and stuff like that. And just Helpful Content, now multiple systems are evaluating helpful content. So for all we know, the reviews system is maybe not even doing as much anymore. We don't even know. So it's really just about, listen, do it right or don't do it at all, in my opinion. Crystal Carter: This is a theory that's been rattling around in my head, but how much do you think Google's being like, we can do this better than you. Google's able to aggregate lots of content, they're able to aggregate. For instance, if you had the men's running shoe, I know lots of people are talking about HOKAs, right? If you have a three line review, Hokas are great. Here's the link to Amazon. Google already has a shopping feed. Glenn Gabe: Yeah. Crystal Carter: That has a link to Amazon and has the product description that you probably scraped from Amazon, and they already have that. So why would they need to index your page if it is thin? They can already do that. How much do you think it's to do with that? Glenn Gabe: I don't know if that's their thinking, but they basically don't want to provide a bad user experience. Because that means especially now with so many different options out there like, chat Gpt, perplexity, Bing, etc. You don't want people to go, "Wow, this was really bad.". And by the way, on that note, the massive updates that they're rolling out starting last week were because of all these complaints about content quality, search quality and stuff like that. I don't know if it's necessarily that, but I'll give you a really good example. So the other day, I'm not even going to give it out because I'm sure everyone will go to it, but it was a query I did legitimately for me, not necessarily for analyzing for a client. And my son is doing some stuff he, he's prepping for college and all this stuff and I went, ah, let me look at this. And it went incognito, searched for this thing, a recommendation, and it was amazing. It was Harvard First, which was a great resource. And the second one was a niche site. This guy that writes on this subject, and by the way, I went, "Oh, this sounds like a goofy site or something.". And I went in, it was the most insightful piece of content from one guy that has his niche site. And I was like, that is the reviews update right there. Because it's really good. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I feel that's where the web is going. That's definitely where Google wants the web to go. And I feel what's happening in the affiliate space with the product reviews, it's sort of like a microcosm of the web overall. It's to Crystal's point, you might not be able. Because what happens now is you want to pump out as many reviews as you possibly can. It's almost programmatic to a certain extent, and you're just going to try to sweep in all the rankings you possibly can. But where the web is actually heading, if you're an affiliate listening to this, you're probably going to hate me saying this. But probably the best advice I can give you, is focus on less and just do it better. Because that's where the web is heading. The whole web is heading towards not going after the head terms, not trying to net all of that very broad traffic and sweep into your website, but Google's showing very specific results for very specific things. You have a very specific intent at the end of the day, and you want something that's a little bit more nuanced. If you're in the space where you reviewing all these products and you can offer actual experience, actual insights. I use the Wirecutter also. They're my go-to and actually buy a product. I don't even go to Google. I just go right to the Wirecutter, which is problematic, if you're listening to this and you're in the affiliate space. But that's the way of the web and it's going to hit you at a certain point because forget Google. That's where the web is heading. Crystal Carter: You all mentioned Wirecutter, another one that is a great affiliate that I'm aware of. In the UK there's a website called Money Saving Expert. And if you're looking to buy a new mortgage or you're looking to get a new credit card or something like that, they are the Go-to for that kind of information. He talks to Parliament, the guy who started that as a blog, and they have affiliate links and they have a declaration that says, these affiliate links help us fund the things. The reviews that we're giving are the reviews that we have. But we also have these links, and if they have an affiliate program, we put it in there because it helps us to fund what we do. And they have a declaration that says that, but they have genuine actual reviews. And I think that to me, you were talking about value as well, and more to you were talking about quality and the wire cutter is there as well. Yeah, you know they are talking about products. You go there because they're talking about products and it's good quality information. Yeah, there's a little bit of a sell on there. If it's 90% good with a tiny little bit of sell, fine. Mordy Oberstein: But that's the problem with affiliate marketers though, because they're all gas all the time. But the web as a whole is moving to a place where people are far more skeptical. People are far more savvy, whether they're trying to consume. And if you're an affiliate marketer, it's counterintuitive as it sounds, you're have to take your foot off the gas a little bit. Glen, do you see them doing that? Glenn Gabe: Taking the foot? Yeah, I do. And I'll tell you why. Because when you drop by 70%. No, I'm serious, I mean, when I'm usually helping larger scale sites. It's big hits when I get calls, right? It is not like, "Ah, we dropped by 15%.". It's like a huge crater dropping off a cliff. And they're like, "What do we need to do?". And then you go into a deep audit and it's a lot of work. And some companies move faster than others. I have one I'm helping now from Europe that is moving very fast, which is really cool to see. They have a whole staff of writers obviously, so they're really trying to refine things. But the unfortunate part is that just like with Broad Core Updates and the Helpful Content Update. Google needs to see all that improvement over an extended period of time. So from the time you fix everything, that's when the clock really starts as you're improving things. So it could be three months, four months, five months. I've seen cases with Broad Core Updates where it's over a year and it pays off because they surge back like crazy. If it's really bad, it can take that much time. Crystal Carter: How do you keep the faith when you're working with teams like that? Because I've seen teams who've been hit by something and there's panic. Glenn Gabe: Yeah. Crystal Carter: There's panic. People are like, we are panicking. How do you keep the faith for a year waiting for the recovery? Glenn Gabe: If you do the right things, most do not have to wait that long. But some do, and I explained that from the beginning and they get it. I mean, you could just see, I can share a million screenshots of sites that have had to wait that I know what they've been doing. Because I've either helped them or whatever. The greatest example, by the way, presented this before. It was Broad Core Updates, but a site came to me, I think they lost about 70% overnight with a Broad Core Update. Big authoritative site, by the way, totally authoritative. So they tank, I analyze the site and one of the first things I've said is, "This is maybe the worst aggressive advertising situation I may have ever seen in my life.". And they said to me, "We cannot change that. Business-wise no way.". And I said, "Well, then you might as well, I shouldn't even help you at this point, just go ahead and do whatever you're going to do.". So they went, "Hold on, this is great.". Two years, they flat lined, two years. Then they started fixing all that stuff. And during the next Broad Core Update, which was a few months later, boom, they started coming back. So it's almost like you are hammering users so badly, which by the way, review sites do as well. It's not just over-monetization with affiliate, sometimes they combine tons of aggressive advertising and affiliate. Mordy Oberstein: Those are the worst. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Those are the worst. Glenn Gabe: That is a really tough situation, really tough. Mordy Oberstein: Do you find you're getting clients to buy in on preempting this, if you see they have a problem but haven't gotten hit yet. That they're bought in on the idea we better get moving before we do get hit? Glenn Gabe: Yeah. So I do have companies that reach out and go, we're doing pretty well, but we know we have some issues and we want to future-proof this. Right? And I love that, right? Because usually just because you haven't been hit doesn't mean there's not bad stuff there. And if you're in the gray area, right? And the way I always explain it, if you're in the gray and move into the black during one algorithm update, boom, you're going to tank. Then maybe you come back and go back into the white, but you don't know what took you down and got hit. So yeah, I mean companies do reach out about that, but most of the time it's after the fact, unfortunately. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it can be so tricky. And you were talking about that aggressive advertising as well as the affiliates. I think part of it is making sure that you're saying what you're doing and making sure that it's very clear that you know what it is. If Google's looking at your page and it looks like a product page, just like a product collection page, then it should be a product collection page. Don't say it's reviews because it aint, and if you have something that's affiliate. Like we were talking about the Wirecutter, we're talking about with Money Saving Expert. They're giving value, they're giving valuable reviews. Those are actual reviews. If you go to the Amazon reviews, those are actual reviews of what people experience with the thing. Don't say it's reviews when it ain't reviews. And I think that people don't want to arrive on a website thinking they're getting one thing, and getting something else. Because Google can see that, Google doesn't appreciate that, and users don't appreciate that. Glenn Gabe: Well, that's exactly right. And I always say, I've been saying it for years, "Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned.". Right? I've been saying that since Medieval Panda days. And it was really cool to actually see NavBoost be spoken about, which is exactly that. Which is Google understanding user interaction signals that in aggregate and going, man, a lot of people are coming back to the search results very quickly from this site. So yeah, don't cheat users, it will not end well. Deception is something that in my audits, unfortunately, I have to surface a bunch of times. This isn't labeled, there's no disclaimer here. People are clicking this, they think it's going to content. They're going downstream to ads or to porn sites or to illegal download sites or whatever. They don't even know where they're going. And that's going to come back to bite you big time. Mordy Oberstein: It won't come back to bite you, following Glenn on social media. Where can people find you? Glenn Gabe: Yeah, so I'm very heavy on X. So if you're into Twitter, Glenn Gabe with two N's, and then I'm on LinkedIn heavily as well. And I'm also on Mastodon and threads and stuff like that. And I blog as much as I can on my own blog, which is the Internet Marketing Driver on G-Squared Interactive. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so its gsqi.com and I guarantee you, you'll not be disappointed following Glenn. It's a wealth of knowledge, tech updates. It's everything from news, commentary, insights. I will say this, you're one of the greatest follows in the entire Digital Marketing Industry. Glenn Gabe: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: Hands down. Glenn Gabe: Thank you, man. I appreciate that. That means a lot. Mordy Oberstein: Better than Barry means a lot. Better than Barry. Glenn Gabe: Oh, better than Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and let him know I said that. Glenn Gabe: I will but what about the bread? The bread and butter man? Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay, fine. Nothing beats the bread and the butter. That's a visual, but in terms of reading content and consuming information, you beat the bread and the butter. That's just a sandwich. Well, that's an attempt at a sandwich. Glenn Gabe: Hey, I appreciate that man. That means a lot coming from you. I appreciate it. Mordy Oberstein: No. Link to all the profiles in the show notes. You must follow Glenn. Glenn, thanks so much for coming on. Glenn Gabe: No, hey, it was great speaking with you. Lots to talk about. Maybe we can do it again at some point. Mordy Oberstein: We'll take you up on this. Crystal Carter: Anytime. Glenn Gabe: Okay, cool. All right. See you later guys. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. We've talked about this before. What Google does or tries us to do is a testament to where Google sees the web heading. If Google is making it more difficult and harder for affiliate marketers to do their affiliate thing on the SERP. And rank well and bringing traffic and the same practices that worked five, 10, 15 years ago are not working out. Like we just talked about with Glenn, if that's where Google thinks the consumer is at. Then maybe we need to think about affiliate marketing as a whole, just a little bit differently. Which means it's time for The Great Beyond as we're going beyond SEO and into wider marketing with a segment that I just told you what it's called, The Great Beyond. So pretty much like we talked about with Glenn, I feel and maybe I'm wrong, and I think affiliate marketers are going to hate my guts by the time I'm done with this episode. But I feel like I don't blame affiliate marketers for doing this. I get it, it makes sense. But I think what has to happen is it not making sense for a little while, and that's to take the foot off the brake. If the consumer is looking and thinking in a different way. And you're pushing the affiliate link so hard because you're so anxious. We talked about this in the past, about getting that conversion and rightfully so, because hard to get conversions. But if the audience is in a different place, I feel like affiliate marketers, and you might disagree with me. Need to take that foot off the brake just a little bit and give the user a little bit of space to make a more autonomous decision, and rely on the fact that you've done your job. They'll convert if it makes sense. Crystal Carter: Right and I think that with that, that takes confidence though. Mordy Oberstein: Hell yeah. Crystal Carter: That takes a lot of confidence. That takes a lot of confidence in the content that you're able to create. That takes a lot of time in order to be able to make content that is focused, and that is adding genuine value, and that is maybe less content but better. So being able to do that, you have to have confidence that the content that you're putting out there is actually going to land and is actually going to connect with people. And that's tricky. It's tricky! Mordy Oberstein: It's tricky area, and it's hard. And you don't know, by the way, if it makes you feel better. If you're an affiliate marketer and you're listening to this, I think Google's in the same situation as you are. Google themselves is the same situation you are with AI-SGE because they need to figure out a way. They need to figure out a way to get rid of the Blue Links, the ten Blue Links. I don't think it's a viable solution for how people are going to try to explore content going forward and they need to pivot. And the problem is, and I think SGE acting as an agent and a facilitator to show more topics. I just posted this on Twitter earlier in reply to Sagantha Mohandasen about this. I search for Yankees because I'm a big Yankees fan and there are a lot of storylines going on right now. We're recording this late March, this one's hurt. That one's hurt. An old manager came out in a very nostalgic moment and stepped onto the field to take a pitcher out of the game. All these things are happening, but I only see one narrative when I go to Google. I only see the top stories, carousel, and it's only telling me about this one story. And it's so frustrating because in order to understand all these narratives. I literally had to hear a podcast, had to watch a game, I had to go on social media to hear all these different things going on, where if I just Google Yankees and again, all of the things in one shot, like, wow, that's amazing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And Google needs to figure out a way to facilitate me being able to do that. But I think short term, when you pivot like that and you're trying to figure out ad revenue at the same time, there's no good way. You're going to lose out some ad revenue in the beginning until you figure it out. Crystal Carter: So I think that the Pivot Google's trying to make, if you're thinking about it great beyond, and I think this does affect affiliate marketers. But I think that the pivot that Google is trying to make is quality information. You can get information from anybody. Right? We're recording this mid-March. Kate conspiracies is making the rounds, about Princess Kate and where she is and whether she's okay and all that sort of stuff. And I hope she's fine. But there's lots of information about that everywhere. Twitter is full of people coming up with different theories and there are newspapers that are saying certain things. And then TikTok has its whole own conspiracy theory, sort of element. And this is a prime example, a lot of these conspiracy theories come up because there's a vacuum of information. We haven't heard a lot of information about Kate from Kensington Palace. And so people are making up information. Mordy Oberstein: As you well should, right? Crystal Carter: As people do. So people are making up information, and so then people who are able to put out lots of that information, get a lot of traffic. But is that good traffic? Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: It's not. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: Now, the first time I had this experience was I think during the 2020 election, I was trying to figure out what was going on. And there was lots of stuff, these votes are being counted, those votes aren't being counted. This is happening over here. Four seasons total landscaping, the whole thing. There was all of this different stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Wix website, by the way, Crystal Carter: It was a Wix website. That was some quality local SEO from a Wix website. You can get merch from them. They're still on Wix, like boom. So anyway, so all of these things were going on, and Google was a source of quality for me in that space. So I could see what people were thinking, generally, what kind of theories people had and what kind of concerns people had from social media. But Google was more of a source of truth. And I think that Google is trying to make sure that it's able to maintain being a source of truth. A source of high quality information. Similarly, in the shopping space, people often come for branded searches. People will tend to go to Google. Right? Because they are more confident that they will actually get a legitimate brand on that. If I go on Facebook marketplace and somebody says that they're selling an authentic Starter Jersey or an authentic pair of Air Force Ones or something like that they may or may not be telling the truth, I don't know. But if I go to Google and somebody says that they're selling authentic Air Force Ones or something on their website, I'm more likely to believe that they are. Because Google has certain criteria that they expect people to meet in order for them to rank at the top of the SERP. Or at least that's what they're trying to do. And I think that in the affiliate space, pushing for that quality and pushing for trying to be able to show how quality your information is, and sure you're giving product recommendations. I follow lots of influencers online, I follow a lot of hair stuff, and I follow a lot of influencers in there. And people are like, if they don't share what products they're using, people in the comments are like, "What is the product? What is that conditioner? I want to know. What's that conditioner? Where can I get it?". And people will share, "This is the link for the conditioner that I use.". Why? Not just because they want to make money or they want to make money, but because it's quality information. Somebody saw what that somebody did on that review, they saw it was good. They are like, I want some of that action. I'd also like to have some of that information. And if affiliates are able to add real value and with quality at the four of their activity, then I think they'll do fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but it's always hard to pivot. Like I'm saying with the Google thing or what you're saying with this, when you pivot and you're trying something new, I would expect take a loss for a little while. And that's a very hard ask. I understand that. But long-term, it's better because now you're aligned with what consumers actually want and are not just stuck with because they have nothing else. Crystal Carter: Sometimes when you're doing an SEO audit, sometimes when you're starting SEO. And I've had this before, I've been working with clients and for the first little while we do some adjustments. For instance, getting rid of no indexing certain tags, getting rid of certain tags on the site. No indexing image files or whatever because they have whole pages dedicated to image files, which is very inefficient. Things like that, sometimes your traffic will go down. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a migration, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: You're migrating your strategy. You're not migrating your sight, you're migrating your strategy. There's going to be hiccups, there's going to be blips on the radar. I don't know, potholes on the road. A matter of metaphors, expect that. Doesn't mean you don't do it. Crystal Carter: And sometimes you're going to see, I don't know. Sometimes you're going to see changes. Did we need to lose that stuff? If you see a reduction in the number of searches or whatever, maybe that's good. Maybe it's because people were able to find the information the first time and therefore didn't need to search 12 times. Maybe they were just able to find that information about the Yankees the first time and didn't need to go through 12 different things. And the people have complained about, and sometimes it's warranted, but the instant answers and things. If you have a blog that's dedicated to how far is the sun from the earth, right? And all your answering is literally the number, like this many miles or this many kilometers, Google can tell you in the instant answer what that is. Mordy Oberstein: I don't even get to answer to the SERP anymore. I get push notifications, right? Crystal Carter: Right. They will tell you certain things. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me things. The weather outside, its sunny today, great. Up in the window, I saw the same thing, anyway. Whatever. Crystal Carter: Right? Don't need a weather man to know way the wind blows. But I think that with those things, you need to say, did you need a click? Did that actually need a click? Did you deserve a click in the first place? And are you adding more value, if the earth from the sun question is just a really basic on a question? If you're not able to add more value to that, then Google's probably not going to send you that traffic. Think about the quality. I think they're trying to make sure that they are a quality source of information. And if you think about the people you know in your life who tell you information. I know some people who don't always qualify what they repeat. I know some people, they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I heard this is happening.". And I'm like, "Uh-huh?". You know those people, you take it with a grain of salt, with a pinch of salt, and you're like, "Okay.". Mordy Oberstein: Nod your head yes and move on. Crystal Carter: Yeah, okay. And then you go, if you actually need to know that information. You will go and you will search that just in case, because they might be completely full of it. I don't think Google wants to be that person. Google wants to be the encyclopedia Britannica. They want to be the source that you know will get top-notch quality information. And if they're able to provide it, I think that's what they want to be able to do with SGE. And if they're not able to provide it, then they want to be able to provide it with high quality publishers, good quality people. Mordy Oberstein: Right? So the swing back around to affiliate marketers, if you see the entire trend on the web is going in X-direction and you're still operating in the opposite direction. It might work for a while, but you're fighting against a hurricane. It doesn't make any sense. And it might mean that you need to pivot, even though, in the short term you might see some dips in the revenue that you're bringing in. But you know what we're going to do now? We're going to pivot. We're going to pivot, ourselves, and hope there's no dip in our listenership as we do. Because he deserves all your ears. He is Barry Schwartz. And we are now pivoting to the Snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. First up from Roger Monte over at Search Engine Journal. Google ends Video Carousel structured Data Test. So Google has removed the support for Video Host Carousel, which was a limited test it was doing, anyway. Google wrote that the reason why they're doing this is because, well, first off, they said "Removing Video Carousel", quote documentation what? "Removed Video Carousel guidance from the Video Structured Data Documentation, why? We initially tested video carousel market with a group of site owners, ultimately found that it wasn't useful for the ecosystem at scale. you can leave the markup on your site so that search engines and other systems can better understand your webpage.". So if you had a list of videos or multiple videos on a webpage that you had this markup that you could have added to make a show up as a carousel possibly on the SERP as a rich result, that is now being removed because Google said not good enough for us to support for the wider ecosystem, but Google rightfully so is recommending that you don't remove the markup. There is added value to having that markup still on the page. So there's that. Next up, for on Barry Schwartz, over at Search Engine Roundtable. Google search test, thumbs up, down buttons in product grade results. We covered this also on It's New, our daily news video series with Barry. Which you can on the Wix SEO Hub as well. But basically Google was found testing at the bottom up, they have little cards for products. So you search for best shoes and you have all these little product cards that show up and a thumbs up, thumbs down saying, I do like these shoes, I don't like those shoes. Or another variation of the same thing within the product card. In this case, a pair of shoes. You had a little thing of more like this. I mean, I want to see more like this style. Obviously, what Google's trying to do is personalize the experience, which they have to do if they want to compete with Amazon. Because if you go to Amazon, you get a whole heap of recommendations and customization and personalization rather within the Amazon ecosystem. So Google does want to be an ecosystem that rivals Amazon. This does seem like a logical direction for it to go in, and it's done so in the past in many other ways. From movie recommendations to what we saw reported on weeks ago, actually about style recommendations for you as well. Google has been trying and is trying to personalize the shopping experience for you in many ways, and this is just another continuation of that. Okay? Again, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google will fight site reputation abuse spam, both with manual actions and check this out, algorithms. So in May, Google said they're going to go after Parasite SEO, where you're basically posting content you can never hope to rank for on a more authoritative website that has nothing to do with the content that you're actually writing about. Google has said that they're going to go after this, both with the spam algorithms, being automatically, but also with actual manual actions. Where Google will manually review the content and say, "Wow, that's really not good. That's spam.". Why is this website hosting this content that's got nothing to do with anything just for a couple of bucks? It's not good for anybody, other than the website earning a couple of bucks. Google said they're going to use again, manual reviews, manual actions for that. We saw with the October 2023 spam update. We haven't reached October 2024 yet have we? We saw they issued a heap of thousands of manual actions. I personally think we've seen Google do this in the past with the Penguin update. Google does seemingly train its spam algorithms on actual behavior, actual actions, actual manual human activity that happens in various ways, not just with manual actions. Again, referencing Penguin of yesteryear. So it does seem to me like if they want to better train their algorithms around Parasite SEO, they might issue huge numbers of manual actions. If they do, if they rephrase this, if they are trying to train the algorithm here. Then you will probably see thousands of manual actions because you're going to need thousands of manual actions to better train their algorithm. I'm speculating that that's what's happening. I guess we will see come May when this goes live. So until then, don't do things that are spammy. And this has been this week's snappy news. Crystal Carter: Snap and turn. Mordy Oberstein: Snap and turn. And now we pivot back from the news. Back to the other parts of the podcast. Crystal Carter: I feel like I should grab my partner, Dosey Doe. I'm sorry. So we're going to pivot on the right and we're going to snap on the left with the Snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to do some, yeah, with Barry. All three of us to do a line dance if we pivot around. Crystal Carter: I'm not sure Barry dances. I'd be interested to know. Now I know that Mordy Oberstein dances. If you're wondering if Mordy Oberstein dances, please go to Brighton SEO Website. Mordy Oberstein: Go to the Brighton SEO website. Crystal Carter: Brighton San Diego, and you can see some of those top tier high quality dance moves. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, I got good hips. Crystal Carter: Like Shakira. Mordy Oberstein: I like to see Barry in a cowboy hat and boots. He wears a flannel already. I feel like the shirt's good to go. Needs a boots and a hat. Crystal Carter: I have cowboy boots. Mordy Oberstein: Bring them next time we see Barry. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'll buy a cowboy hat for him. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. You know who else wears a cowboy hat? I don't know, but you know who else he should be following? Crystal Carter: Beyonce. Mordy Oberstein: Does she? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Also, I guess Garry Lewis, I assume I don't really know any cowboys. I assume they wear cowboy hats. Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: That's a good assumption. But you know who doesn't wear a cowboy hat? Who you should be following in social media, for more SEO O awesomeness, that would be Joshua Harding from Ahrefs and Si. Kwan Nang from Ahrefs, because both of them have written on the Ahrefs blog about affiliate marketing and SEO. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Oberstein: I got that little pivot there. Crystal Carter: And the Ahrefs blog is such a great resource, and the team there, we've spoken to Patrick Stocks, and a few different guys. Mordy Oberstein: I think he's a booby. Crystal Carter: They've got some great content there. They're really open about their traffic and about visibility and about their methods as well. So they're a great resource for some high quality information around affiliate marketing and other things as well. So they're a prime example of how you can lead with quality. So obviously they are a brand blog and they have many things associated with their brand, but they're a prime example of somebody who's leading with value. And if you're interested in buying a thing as well, great, but they're leading with value. Mordy Oberstein: So make sure to give both Joshua Harding and Si Kwan Nang a follow over on X link, both of their profiles in the show notes. Ya, I don't know how we got from affiliate marketing and algorithm updates to Cowboys. That was a turn of events. Crystal Carter: Cowboy Carter album is coming out. It's going to be like a whole vibe. Mordy Oberstein: I never got into country. I like all sorts of music. I like jazz, I like rock. I even like a little bit of rap. Country never got me. Crystal Carter: I think in the nineties. You couldn't deny Shania Twain. Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay, so I was just going to go the opposite direction with that. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say, I think my problem is that in the nineties I could not escape Shania Twain. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. When that song kicks in. I'm like, oh yeah, let's do it. So yeah, Shania Twain, Leanne Rimes. Mordy Oberstein: Leanne Rimes is great. I like Leanne Rimes. Crystal Carter: Reba McEntire. Okay, Faith Hill. Tim Mcgraw. Mordy Oberstein: I like Dolly Parton. Crystal Carter: Dolly Parton. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm not saying they're not great. Crystal Carter: Garth Brooks. Mordy Oberstein: Garth Brooks and Billy Joel did a bunch of stuff together. I think the Shania Twain thing has ruined the genre for me. Wow. Look at that. Crystal Carter: Wow. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Very similar to me for Celine Dion. Who has ruined all of Celine Dion music. Crystal Carter: Whoa, I will not stand for Celine Slander on this podcast. I'm sorry. She's a queen. She's amazing. I'll not stand for Celine Slander if you don't have nice things to say about Celine. That's it, I won't. Mordy Oberstein: Agree to disagree. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Well, near, far, wherever you are. We're done with this podcast. Thanks for joining us on the Serves 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 should Google do with all that Reddit on the SERP. Look forward wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check all the great content of webinars and resources on the Wix SEO learning about, 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 of love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Glenn Gabe on X Glenn Gabe on LinkedIn Glenn Gabe on Mastodon Si Quan Ong Joshua Hardwick Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Wix Studio Partners Program G-Squared Interactive 5 ways that Google’s helpful content system could evolve Glenn Gabe: Google Reviews Update News: Google Ends Video Carousel Structured Data Test Google Search Tests Thumbs Up/Down Buttons In Product Grid Results Google Will Fight Site Reputation Abuse Spam Both With Manual Actions & Algorithms Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Glenn Gabe on X Glenn Gabe on LinkedIn Glenn Gabe on Mastodon Si Quan Ong Joshua Hardwick Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Wix Studio Partners Program G-Squared Interactive 5 ways that Google’s helpful content system could evolve Glenn Gabe: Google Reviews Update News: Google Ends Video Carousel Structured Data Test Google Search Tests Thumbs Up/Down Buttons In Product Grid Results Google Will Fight Site Reputation Abuse Spam Both With Manual Actions & Algorithms Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERPs 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 very affiliated Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I do have affiliations. I'm affiliated with many… Mordy Oberstein: But you don't like living in a cave by yourself so you're affiliated. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You want to build relationships and stuff. I'm affiliated with Wix and with Women Tech SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And with other groups. I don't have a Costco membership card, but I do have a Tesco membership card. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I miss Costco. Crystal Carter: I mean, I'm telling you some of those membership cards, they're really useful. Mordy Oberstein: I didn't like the membership. It felt very exclusive. It is a grocery store. I need a membership card? Crystal Carter: I just like the deals. I'm like, they got two for one. I'm about that. I'm about that life. Mordy Oberstein: They don't have any bags. You got to shove everything out in a makeshift box. So problematic. But the prices are great. Anyway, the SERPs Up podcast is brought to you by Costco. Not really. Crystal Carter: No it's not. Mordy Oberstein: It's brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter search site over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also join the Wix Studio Partners program and enjoy immediate revenue sharing possibilities. Head over to wix.com/studio/partner-program, link in the show notes to learn more, which is kind of very similar to an affiliate program in a way, but it's not an affiliate program. It's a partner program because today we're talking about the possibility of earning revenue via affiliate marketing, being not as easy as it was from an SEO point-of-view. Is it still a viable channel for marketing? Is Google conducting a war on affiliates? I don't know. To help us find out, all rise, here comes the Judge. SEO sensation and all around good guy and Yankee fan, Supreme founder of G-Squared Interactive, Glenn Gabe will join us live in just a Jiffy to help us understand how the SEO landscape for affiliate marketers has changed significantly. Plus Krista and I will tackle SEO aside, what is the viability of affiliate marketing? And of course we have the snappiest of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So join us for episode 84 of the SERPs Up podcast as we take a swing at understanding the viability of affiliate marketing on the Google SERP. As lately, it's been 1, 2, 3 strikes. You're out of the all affiliate marketing ballgame. Crystal Carter: I see what you did there. Mordy Oberstein: Glenn is a massive baseball fan, so that was my ode to Glenn. Glenn Gabe: That was awesome. I loved it. Mordy Oberstein: Welcome to the show. Glenn Gabe: Yeah, that's some intro. I love that. Mordy Oberstein: I try. Glenn Gabe: Yeah. 1, 2, 3 strikes. You're out. That's for sure. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's really true as of late because as we're recording this, we're smack in the middle of the March 2024 Core Update. But if you're not familiar with this, and before I hand it off to Glenn, kind of catch you up on things really quickly. There's been a lot that's changed with the web and that's an understatement. I think from a Google algorithm point-of-view, I guess two major things that have changed in the affiliate space. And that's the product review update, which has now become the review update. Where Google has basically looked at product review websites and web pages and it's trying to up the quality of what it's showing there. And one of the guidances that it put into its guidance has been not showing just one source for the product. So if you're an affiliate marketer, you're usually just stuffing in your affiliate. But the official guidance from Google is, you should really have more than one source for the product. Because your not supposedly pushing the product, you're just reviewing the product. And the other thing, and I say this without judgment, I am just stating a fact. And if you're in an affiliate space, you're going to be very upset with me for saying this. But there is a tendency, I feel like personally, my opinions do not represent the official opinion of my employer. But I personally feel there is a long history of pushing less than overall quality content within the affiliate space. And I'm not saying people are doing that on purpose. I think that might just be the natural outcome of heavily focusing on what you're doing in affiliate marketing, just naturally. But that doesn't really align with where Google is going with the algorithm and with that, Glenn. Oh my god, what's going on? Glenn Gabe: Yeah, that's a really good intro. So I've been neck deep in the product reviews update, to reviews update. I have multiple posts analyzing these big updates, and now it's just reviews update, which now is being updated on an ongoing basis. Behind the scenes, we will not even hear anymore probably when that's updated at all. It's not necessarily part of Core Ranking, but if you could think of it as that, because it's going on behind the scenes. For example, with the March 2024 Core Update, I'm seeing reviews updates impacted, right? Lily Ray just tweeted about that this morning. Same deal, she's seeing the same type of thing. So that has always happened, right? And I called that in my posts and presentations about this, dueling machine learning systems. Where a core update, you surge and then the reviews update, you drop or vice versa. And I always found that crazy. I always said, "Is it quality or is it not?". Because one system saying it is and the other system saying it's not. And I do believe that's part of the reason that the reviews update is now behind the scenes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Glenn Gabe: And by the way, the helpful content system is also now behind the scenes and part of Google's core systems. Not just because of the dueling thing, but that's part of it too, right? I mean it's just madness. So I wrote a post recently where this is before the March updates rolled out and I said, "You know what? Let me take a look. I have have almost 800 sites documented that are review sites, that have seen heavy impact during product reviews, updates or reviews updates.". And I ran them through various visibility tools and I said, "Let me see how they're doing over time.". Because I don't think I'll check with one update versus another, but I'm like, "Let me see, from the beginning of the product reviews update, way back when in 2021 to now.". And it was carnage. I mean most of these sites are either gone, shut down, or at almost no visibility anymore. And I said, is this a foreshadowing of sites impacted by the HCU? Because if you're not significantly improving and it's not easy to do that. You are in really bad shape. So that post is on my blog and I have screenshots on there. It is really ugly. It is not pretty. Mordy Oberstein: Willing to put that in the show notes by the way, in case you're wonder where the post is. The link will be in the show notes. Crystal Carter: And do you think that one of the reasons why this particular sector gets hit by this is because of certain practices that are more common in this sector or do you think it's something else? Glenn Gabe: Yeah, so I've covered this with so many different review sites and site owners of review sites, where it's thin reviews. I mean, what used to rank was if you're reviewing a list of the best men's running shoes. And it's like a little paragraph with a link off to Amazon and a screenshot or a product image from Amazon. It's like nothing's actually original in the entire thing. That type of stuff is what Google just waged war on. And just so you know, I still have review sites reaching out to me and they still have that stuff. I'm doing a big audit right now on a fairly large site that focuses on reviews. And my entire first deliverable, which was almost 30 pages, was all about this. There are thousands of pages like this. And this is not the way to go in actually 2021, but I'll even say 2024. You need insightful, helpful, valuable reviews content based upon real experience with that product for most products, not everyone. But that's what Google wants to reward. And so that that's kind of what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: But that's hard. Well, the thing that's hard for people to get their minds around, there was a website that reached out to Danny Sullivan on Twitter. Danny Sullivan's Google search liaison, and said, "Hey, what happened? We're a product review site. We have a bunch of affiliate links in there, but we offer good content.". And Danny actually kind of did a mini odd and said, "It's not horrible, but you're not really offering anything of value.". And I think when people think, "Well, I'm not doing that, I'm not having all those old school tables with one line of content and multiple Amazon links. I'm writing paragraph after paragraph.". That doesn't mean that it's good. And that doesn't mean that Google should reward it. And I'm wondering, how do you see affiliates succeeding in this space? Has the game from an SEO point-of-view at least shifted for them? Glenn Gabe: Massively. So I've had some very tough conversations with site owners or review sites, and some very big companies by the way. Where the way I explain it, and I've said this from the beginning, it's been in almost all of my posts. I like using Wirecutter as the standard, right? Sure. Not every post on Wirecutter is truly amazing, but overall, really good stuff, right? Super insightful, explains to you how they broke it down. They literally buy and go through sometimes dozens of those products or more, to actually test this stuff out. Anyway, so I call it the Wirecutter standard. If you cannot do that, you probably going to have a really hard time in the review space. Now, I had a site owner recently come back to me and say, well, we're a smaller company. There's no way we can do this. And I'm like, "No, you don't have to go nuts like that.". But when I say have a testing lab, that doesn't mean go buy a lab and have 20 workers in there doing all sorts of stuff. But really have a process in place for getting the products, having multiple people test them, really take original photos, video have animated GIFs, so on and so forth. Pros, cons, graphs, charts, everything that someone would really need to know. That's the way to go. Of course that is very hard to do. It takes time, it takes money and resources. Which is why I've told some site owners, I said, "If you can't do that, you might want to focus on something else.". Crystal Carter: So that point of differentiation, you said, "That takes time, it takes money, it takes effort.". So that I think means that maybe people need to rethink which products they expect to review and which products they don't expect to review. I mean, I've done PPC up before with people and they were like, "Oh yeah, we're selling this, I don't know, this chocolate bar for $2 or something.". And I'm like, "Y'all, why are you doing PPC on that?". It's going to cost you so much to advertise that. Glenn Gabe: Right. Crystal Carter: And the amount of money you're going to get back on that isn't going to be worth it. So do PPC on something that costs $200, do PPC on something that costs that much. Is that something you're thinking about where people are thinking about which things to actually review. Because with their update they're looking at the whole site. So maybe?q Glenn Gabe: Well, great point. Yeah. So first of all, I was going to bring this up before I'm really glad you did. Site owners can't say, "Look at this one URL. It's amazing.". They are looking at the entire site. Just like with Core Updates and Helpful Content Update, which is now part of Core, they're looking at all of your content. So if you have one stellar review that doesn't make up for 50 that are really thin, so that's one thing. But second of all, I don't really get into, with clients, what they should be reviewing. I just get into, if you're going to do this, you really need to do it right? And Mordy brought up linking to multiple sellers, which is in the guidelines. And actually Alan Kent had confirmed for me, it's actually part of the algorithm. A very small part. So the way I would say it's like the Core Web Vitals of the reviews update. Mordy Oberstein: I feel validated by the way, I was looking at one of the product reviews or review updates, I forgot when it was where it switched over at that point or not. I'm like, "Oh, I see it.". I see sites, pages that went up and down based on the number of sellers. So I'm glad to hear that. I feel so validated. Sorry. Glenn Gabe: Yeah, and it makes sense, right? Don't drive everyone just to where you're going to make the most money. Right? Give them an option. If it's on three different sellers, provide links to three different sellers. So really it comes down to is it truly insightful? And I've had site owners go, "Oh, we have the best stuff.". And I'll go and talk to them and take a look. And sometimes I'm like, "It's AI.". Crystal Carter: It doesn't take long to sense it. Glenn Gabe: I mean, I can't tell you how many times, especially on larger scale sites that really are pumping out tons of reviews. You run it through. And I love Originality.AI, it's probably the best of my opinion. They're literally training systems on human versus AI, versus some other AI detection tools, which are not doing that. And you run it through and it's like 98% AI. The probability that it's 98% means it's probably somewhat AI, right? Mordy Oberstein: And if it's not, it's just crap. So, whatever Glenn Gabe: Right. It's so simple and lacks insight that yeah, it's probably that. So you have that, you have the content quality, you have the visuals, you have the first-hand experience. You can really tell when someone hasn't really used something and that comes across. People are like, "How can Google know that?". Well, it's literally training its models on this. Mordy Oberstein: That's the one thing machine learning is trained to do, is look at language profiles and then match them. Glenn Gabe: Right. So when you combine all of this together, and now again, it's being updated internally and for all we know, it's like Panda and when it's in, it's gone. Right? Because Panda's, it's probably just completely retired at this point. Well, they said it's retired, but pieces of it are probably part of the Core updates and stuff like that. And just Helpful Content, now multiple systems are evaluating helpful content. So for all we know, the reviews system is maybe not even doing as much anymore. We don't even know. So it's really just about, listen, do it right or don't do it at all, in my opinion. Crystal Carter: This is a theory that's been rattling around in my head, but how much do you think Google's being like, we can do this better than you. Google's able to aggregate lots of content, they're able to aggregate. For instance, if you had the men's running shoe, I know lots of people are talking about HOKAs, right? If you have a three line review, Hokas are great. Here's the link to Amazon. Google already has a shopping feed. Glenn Gabe: Yeah. Crystal Carter: That has a link to Amazon and has the product description that you probably scraped from Amazon, and they already have that. So why would they need to index your page if it is thin? They can already do that. How much do you think it's to do with that? Glenn Gabe: I don't know if that's their thinking, but they basically don't want to provide a bad user experience. Because that means especially now with so many different options out there like, chat Gpt, perplexity, Bing, etc. You don't want people to go, "Wow, this was really bad.". And by the way, on that note, the massive updates that they're rolling out starting last week were because of all these complaints about content quality, search quality and stuff like that. I don't know if it's necessarily that, but I'll give you a really good example. So the other day, I'm not even going to give it out because I'm sure everyone will go to it, but it was a query I did legitimately for me, not necessarily for analyzing for a client. And my son is doing some stuff he, he's prepping for college and all this stuff and I went, ah, let me look at this. And it went incognito, searched for this thing, a recommendation, and it was amazing. It was Harvard First, which was a great resource. And the second one was a niche site. This guy that writes on this subject, and by the way, I went, "Oh, this sounds like a goofy site or something.". And I went in, it was the most insightful piece of content from one guy that has his niche site. And I was like, that is the reviews update right there. Because it's really good. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I feel that's where the web is going. That's definitely where Google wants the web to go. And I feel what's happening in the affiliate space with the product reviews, it's sort of like a microcosm of the web overall. It's to Crystal's point, you might not be able. Because what happens now is you want to pump out as many reviews as you possibly can. It's almost programmatic to a certain extent, and you're just going to try to sweep in all the rankings you possibly can. But where the web is actually heading, if you're an affiliate listening to this, you're probably going to hate me saying this. But probably the best advice I can give you, is focus on less and just do it better. Because that's where the web is heading. The whole web is heading towards not going after the head terms, not trying to net all of that very broad traffic and sweep into your website, but Google's showing very specific results for very specific things. You have a very specific intent at the end of the day, and you want something that's a little bit more nuanced. If you're in the space where you reviewing all these products and you can offer actual experience, actual insights. I use the Wirecutter also. They're my go-to and actually buy a product. I don't even go to Google. I just go right to the Wirecutter, which is problematic, if you're listening to this and you're in the affiliate space. But that's the way of the web and it's going to hit you at a certain point because forget Google. That's where the web is heading. Crystal Carter: You all mentioned Wirecutter, another one that is a great affiliate that I'm aware of. In the UK there's a website called Money Saving Expert. And if you're looking to buy a new mortgage or you're looking to get a new credit card or something like that, they are the Go-to for that kind of information. He talks to Parliament, the guy who started that as a blog, and they have affiliate links and they have a declaration that says, these affiliate links help us fund the things. The reviews that we're giving are the reviews that we have. But we also have these links, and if they have an affiliate program, we put it in there because it helps us to fund what we do. And they have a declaration that says that, but they have genuine actual reviews. And I think that to me, you were talking about value as well, and more to you were talking about quality and the wire cutter is there as well. Yeah, you know they are talking about products. You go there because they're talking about products and it's good quality information. Yeah, there's a little bit of a sell on there. If it's 90% good with a tiny little bit of sell, fine. Mordy Oberstein: But that's the problem with affiliate marketers though, because they're all gas all the time. But the web as a whole is moving to a place where people are far more skeptical. People are far more savvy, whether they're trying to consume. And if you're an affiliate marketer, it's counterintuitive as it sounds, you're have to take your foot off the gas a little bit. Glen, do you see them doing that? Glenn Gabe: Taking the foot? Yeah, I do. And I'll tell you why. Because when you drop by 70%. No, I'm serious, I mean, when I'm usually helping larger scale sites. It's big hits when I get calls, right? It is not like, "Ah, we dropped by 15%.". It's like a huge crater dropping off a cliff. And they're like, "What do we need to do?". And then you go into a deep audit and it's a lot of work. And some companies move faster than others. I have one I'm helping now from Europe that is moving very fast, which is really cool to see. They have a whole staff of writers obviously, so they're really trying to refine things. But the unfortunate part is that just like with Broad Core Updates and the Helpful Content Update. Google needs to see all that improvement over an extended period of time. So from the time you fix everything, that's when the clock really starts as you're improving things. So it could be three months, four months, five months. I've seen cases with Broad Core Updates where it's over a year and it pays off because they surge back like crazy. If it's really bad, it can take that much time. Crystal Carter: How do you keep the faith when you're working with teams like that? Because I've seen teams who've been hit by something and there's panic. Glenn Gabe: Yeah. Crystal Carter: There's panic. People are like, we are panicking. How do you keep the faith for a year waiting for the recovery? Glenn Gabe: If you do the right things, most do not have to wait that long. But some do, and I explained that from the beginning and they get it. I mean, you could just see, I can share a million screenshots of sites that have had to wait that I know what they've been doing. Because I've either helped them or whatever. The greatest example, by the way, presented this before. It was Broad Core Updates, but a site came to me, I think they lost about 70% overnight with a Broad Core Update. Big authoritative site, by the way, totally authoritative. So they tank, I analyze the site and one of the first things I've said is, "This is maybe the worst aggressive advertising situation I may have ever seen in my life.". And they said to me, "We cannot change that. Business-wise no way.". And I said, "Well, then you might as well, I shouldn't even help you at this point, just go ahead and do whatever you're going to do.". So they went, "Hold on, this is great.". Two years, they flat lined, two years. Then they started fixing all that stuff. And during the next Broad Core Update, which was a few months later, boom, they started coming back. So it's almost like you are hammering users so badly, which by the way, review sites do as well. It's not just over-monetization with affiliate, sometimes they combine tons of aggressive advertising and affiliate. Mordy Oberstein: Those are the worst. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Those are the worst. Glenn Gabe: That is a really tough situation, really tough. Mordy Oberstein: Do you find you're getting clients to buy in on preempting this, if you see they have a problem but haven't gotten hit yet. That they're bought in on the idea we better get moving before we do get hit? Glenn Gabe: Yeah. So I do have companies that reach out and go, we're doing pretty well, but we know we have some issues and we want to future-proof this. Right? And I love that, right? Because usually just because you haven't been hit doesn't mean there's not bad stuff there. And if you're in the gray area, right? And the way I always explain it, if you're in the gray and move into the black during one algorithm update, boom, you're going to tank. Then maybe you come back and go back into the white, but you don't know what took you down and got hit. So yeah, I mean companies do reach out about that, but most of the time it's after the fact, unfortunately. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it can be so tricky. And you were talking about that aggressive advertising as well as the affiliates. I think part of it is making sure that you're saying what you're doing and making sure that it's very clear that you know what it is. If Google's looking at your page and it looks like a product page, just like a product collection page, then it should be a product collection page. Don't say it's reviews because it aint, and if you have something that's affiliate. Like we were talking about the Wirecutter, we're talking about with Money Saving Expert. They're giving value, they're giving valuable reviews. Those are actual reviews. If you go to the Amazon reviews, those are actual reviews of what people experience with the thing. Don't say it's reviews when it ain't reviews. And I think that people don't want to arrive on a website thinking they're getting one thing, and getting something else. Because Google can see that, Google doesn't appreciate that, and users don't appreciate that. Glenn Gabe: Well, that's exactly right. And I always say, I've been saying it for years, "Hell hath no fury, like a user scorned.". Right? I've been saying that since Medieval Panda days. And it was really cool to actually see NavBoost be spoken about, which is exactly that. Which is Google understanding user interaction signals that in aggregate and going, man, a lot of people are coming back to the search results very quickly from this site. So yeah, don't cheat users, it will not end well. Deception is something that in my audits, unfortunately, I have to surface a bunch of times. This isn't labeled, there's no disclaimer here. People are clicking this, they think it's going to content. They're going downstream to ads or to porn sites or to illegal download sites or whatever. They don't even know where they're going. And that's going to come back to bite you big time. Mordy Oberstein: It won't come back to bite you, following Glenn on social media. Where can people find you? Glenn Gabe: Yeah, so I'm very heavy on X. So if you're into Twitter, Glenn Gabe with two N's, and then I'm on LinkedIn heavily as well. And I'm also on Mastodon and threads and stuff like that. And I blog as much as I can on my own blog, which is the Internet Marketing Driver on G-Squared Interactive. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so its gsqi.com and I guarantee you, you'll not be disappointed following Glenn. It's a wealth of knowledge, tech updates. It's everything from news, commentary, insights. I will say this, you're one of the greatest follows in the entire Digital Marketing Industry. Glenn Gabe: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: Hands down. Glenn Gabe: Thank you, man. I appreciate that. That means a lot. Mordy Oberstein: Better than Barry means a lot. Better than Barry. Glenn Gabe: Oh, better than Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and let him know I said that. Glenn Gabe: I will but what about the bread? The bread and butter man? Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay, fine. Nothing beats the bread and the butter. That's a visual, but in terms of reading content and consuming information, you beat the bread and the butter. That's just a sandwich. Well, that's an attempt at a sandwich. Glenn Gabe: Hey, I appreciate that man. That means a lot coming from you. I appreciate it. Mordy Oberstein: No. Link to all the profiles in the show notes. You must follow Glenn. Glenn, thanks so much for coming on. Glenn Gabe: No, hey, it was great speaking with you. Lots to talk about. Maybe we can do it again at some point. Mordy Oberstein: We'll take you up on this. Crystal Carter: Anytime. Glenn Gabe: Okay, cool. All right. See you later guys. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. We've talked about this before. What Google does or tries us to do is a testament to where Google sees the web heading. If Google is making it more difficult and harder for affiliate marketers to do their affiliate thing on the SERP. And rank well and bringing traffic and the same practices that worked five, 10, 15 years ago are not working out. Like we just talked about with Glenn, if that's where Google thinks the consumer is at. Then maybe we need to think about affiliate marketing as a whole, just a little bit differently. Which means it's time for The Great Beyond as we're going beyond SEO and into wider marketing with a segment that I just told you what it's called, The Great Beyond. So pretty much like we talked about with Glenn, I feel and maybe I'm wrong, and I think affiliate marketers are going to hate my guts by the time I'm done with this episode. But I feel like I don't blame affiliate marketers for doing this. I get it, it makes sense. But I think what has to happen is it not making sense for a little while, and that's to take the foot off the brake. If the consumer is looking and thinking in a different way. And you're pushing the affiliate link so hard because you're so anxious. We talked about this in the past, about getting that conversion and rightfully so, because hard to get conversions. But if the audience is in a different place, I feel like affiliate marketers, and you might disagree with me. Need to take that foot off the brake just a little bit and give the user a little bit of space to make a more autonomous decision, and rely on the fact that you've done your job. They'll convert if it makes sense. Crystal Carter: Right and I think that with that, that takes confidence though. Mordy Oberstein: Hell yeah. Crystal Carter: That takes a lot of confidence. That takes a lot of confidence in the content that you're able to create. That takes a lot of time in order to be able to make content that is focused, and that is adding genuine value, and that is maybe less content but better. So being able to do that, you have to have confidence that the content that you're putting out there is actually going to land and is actually going to connect with people. And that's tricky. It's tricky! Mordy Oberstein: It's tricky area, and it's hard. And you don't know, by the way, if it makes you feel better. If you're an affiliate marketer and you're listening to this, I think Google's in the same situation as you are. Google themselves is the same situation you are with AI-SGE because they need to figure out a way. They need to figure out a way to get rid of the Blue Links, the ten Blue Links. I don't think it's a viable solution for how people are going to try to explore content going forward and they need to pivot. And the problem is, and I think SGE acting as an agent and a facilitator to show more topics. I just posted this on Twitter earlier in reply to Sagantha Mohandasen about this. I search for Yankees because I'm a big Yankees fan and there are a lot of storylines going on right now. We're recording this late March, this one's hurt. That one's hurt. An old manager came out in a very nostalgic moment and stepped onto the field to take a pitcher out of the game. All these things are happening, but I only see one narrative when I go to Google. I only see the top stories, carousel, and it's only telling me about this one story. And it's so frustrating because in order to understand all these narratives. I literally had to hear a podcast, had to watch a game, I had to go on social media to hear all these different things going on, where if I just Google Yankees and again, all of the things in one shot, like, wow, that's amazing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And Google needs to figure out a way to facilitate me being able to do that. But I think short term, when you pivot like that and you're trying to figure out ad revenue at the same time, there's no good way. You're going to lose out some ad revenue in the beginning until you figure it out. Crystal Carter: So I think that the Pivot Google's trying to make, if you're thinking about it great beyond, and I think this does affect affiliate marketers. But I think that the pivot that Google is trying to make is quality information. You can get information from anybody. Right? We're recording this mid-March. Kate conspiracies is making the rounds, about Princess Kate and where she is and whether she's okay and all that sort of stuff. And I hope she's fine. But there's lots of information about that everywhere. Twitter is full of people coming up with different theories and there are newspapers that are saying certain things. And then TikTok has its whole own conspiracy theory, sort of element. And this is a prime example, a lot of these conspiracy theories come up because there's a vacuum of information. We haven't heard a lot of information about Kate from Kensington Palace. And so people are making up information. Mordy Oberstein: As you well should, right? Crystal Carter: As people do. So people are making up information, and so then people who are able to put out lots of that information, get a lot of traffic. But is that good traffic? Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: It's not. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. Crystal Carter: Now, the first time I had this experience was I think during the 2020 election, I was trying to figure out what was going on. And there was lots of stuff, these votes are being counted, those votes aren't being counted. This is happening over here. Four seasons total landscaping, the whole thing. There was all of this different stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Wix website, by the way, Crystal Carter: It was a Wix website. That was some quality local SEO from a Wix website. You can get merch from them. They're still on Wix, like boom. So anyway, so all of these things were going on, and Google was a source of quality for me in that space. So I could see what people were thinking, generally, what kind of theories people had and what kind of concerns people had from social media. But Google was more of a source of truth. And I think that Google is trying to make sure that it's able to maintain being a source of truth. A source of high quality information. Similarly, in the shopping space, people often come for branded searches. People will tend to go to Google. Right? Because they are more confident that they will actually get a legitimate brand on that. If I go on Facebook marketplace and somebody says that they're selling an authentic Starter Jersey or an authentic pair of Air Force Ones or something like that they may or may not be telling the truth, I don't know. But if I go to Google and somebody says that they're selling authentic Air Force Ones or something on their website, I'm more likely to believe that they are. Because Google has certain criteria that they expect people to meet in order for them to rank at the top of the SERP. Or at least that's what they're trying to do. And I think that in the affiliate space, pushing for that quality and pushing for trying to be able to show how quality your information is, and sure you're giving product recommendations. I follow lots of influencers online, I follow a lot of hair stuff, and I follow a lot of influencers in there. And people are like, if they don't share what products they're using, people in the comments are like, "What is the product? What is that conditioner? I want to know. What's that conditioner? Where can I get it?". And people will share, "This is the link for the conditioner that I use.". Why? Not just because they want to make money or they want to make money, but because it's quality information. Somebody saw what that somebody did on that review, they saw it was good. They are like, I want some of that action. I'd also like to have some of that information. And if affiliates are able to add real value and with quality at the four of their activity, then I think they'll do fine. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but it's always hard to pivot. Like I'm saying with the Google thing or what you're saying with this, when you pivot and you're trying something new, I would expect take a loss for a little while. And that's a very hard ask. I understand that. But long-term, it's better because now you're aligned with what consumers actually want and are not just stuck with because they have nothing else. Crystal Carter: Sometimes when you're doing an SEO audit, sometimes when you're starting SEO. And I've had this before, I've been working with clients and for the first little while we do some adjustments. For instance, getting rid of no indexing certain tags, getting rid of certain tags on the site. No indexing image files or whatever because they have whole pages dedicated to image files, which is very inefficient. Things like that, sometimes your traffic will go down. Mordy Oberstein: It's like a migration, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: You're migrating your strategy. You're not migrating your sight, you're migrating your strategy. There's going to be hiccups, there's going to be blips on the radar. I don't know, potholes on the road. A matter of metaphors, expect that. Doesn't mean you don't do it. Crystal Carter: And sometimes you're going to see, I don't know. Sometimes you're going to see changes. Did we need to lose that stuff? If you see a reduction in the number of searches or whatever, maybe that's good. Maybe it's because people were able to find the information the first time and therefore didn't need to search 12 times. Maybe they were just able to find that information about the Yankees the first time and didn't need to go through 12 different things. And the people have complained about, and sometimes it's warranted, but the instant answers and things. If you have a blog that's dedicated to how far is the sun from the earth, right? And all your answering is literally the number, like this many miles or this many kilometers, Google can tell you in the instant answer what that is. Mordy Oberstein: I don't even get to answer to the SERP anymore. I get push notifications, right? Crystal Carter: Right. They will tell you certain things. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me things. The weather outside, its sunny today, great. Up in the window, I saw the same thing, anyway. Whatever. Crystal Carter: Right? Don't need a weather man to know way the wind blows. But I think that with those things, you need to say, did you need a click? Did that actually need a click? Did you deserve a click in the first place? And are you adding more value, if the earth from the sun question is just a really basic on a question? If you're not able to add more value to that, then Google's probably not going to send you that traffic. Think about the quality. I think they're trying to make sure that they are a quality source of information. And if you think about the people you know in your life who tell you information. I know some people who don't always qualify what they repeat. I know some people, they'll be like, "Oh yeah, I heard this is happening.". And I'm like, "Uh-huh?". You know those people, you take it with a grain of salt, with a pinch of salt, and you're like, "Okay.". Mordy Oberstein: Nod your head yes and move on. Crystal Carter: Yeah, okay. And then you go, if you actually need to know that information. You will go and you will search that just in case, because they might be completely full of it. I don't think Google wants to be that person. Google wants to be the encyclopedia Britannica. They want to be the source that you know will get top-notch quality information. And if they're able to provide it, I think that's what they want to be able to do with SGE. And if they're not able to provide it, then they want to be able to provide it with high quality publishers, good quality people. Mordy Oberstein: Right? So the swing back around to affiliate marketers, if you see the entire trend on the web is going in X-direction and you're still operating in the opposite direction. It might work for a while, but you're fighting against a hurricane. It doesn't make any sense. And it might mean that you need to pivot, even though, in the short term you might see some dips in the revenue that you're bringing in. But you know what we're going to do now? We're going to pivot. We're going to pivot, ourselves, and hope there's no dip in our listenership as we do. Because he deserves all your ears. He is Barry Schwartz. And we are now pivoting to the Snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. First up from Roger Monte over at Search Engine Journal. Google ends Video Carousel structured Data Test. So Google has removed the support for Video Host Carousel, which was a limited test it was doing, anyway. Google wrote that the reason why they're doing this is because, well, first off, they said "Removing Video Carousel", quote documentation what? "Removed Video Carousel guidance from the Video Structured Data Documentation, why? We initially tested video carousel market with a group of site owners, ultimately found that it wasn't useful for the ecosystem at scale. you can leave the markup on your site so that search engines and other systems can better understand your webpage.". So if you had a list of videos or multiple videos on a webpage that you had this markup that you could have added to make a show up as a carousel possibly on the SERP as a rich result, that is now being removed because Google said not good enough for us to support for the wider ecosystem, but Google rightfully so is recommending that you don't remove the markup. There is added value to having that markup still on the page. So there's that. Next up, for on Barry Schwartz, over at Search Engine Roundtable. Google search test, thumbs up, down buttons in product grade results. We covered this also on It's New, our daily news video series with Barry. Which you can on the Wix SEO Hub as well. But basically Google was found testing at the bottom up, they have little cards for products. So you search for best shoes and you have all these little product cards that show up and a thumbs up, thumbs down saying, I do like these shoes, I don't like those shoes. Or another variation of the same thing within the product card. In this case, a pair of shoes. You had a little thing of more like this. I mean, I want to see more like this style. Obviously, what Google's trying to do is personalize the experience, which they have to do if they want to compete with Amazon. Because if you go to Amazon, you get a whole heap of recommendations and customization and personalization rather within the Amazon ecosystem. So Google does want to be an ecosystem that rivals Amazon. This does seem like a logical direction for it to go in, and it's done so in the past in many other ways. From movie recommendations to what we saw reported on weeks ago, actually about style recommendations for you as well. Google has been trying and is trying to personalize the shopping experience for you in many ways, and this is just another continuation of that. Okay? Again, from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google will fight site reputation abuse spam, both with manual actions and check this out, algorithms. So in May, Google said they're going to go after Parasite SEO, where you're basically posting content you can never hope to rank for on a more authoritative website that has nothing to do with the content that you're actually writing about. Google has said that they're going to go after this, both with the spam algorithms, being automatically, but also with actual manual actions. Where Google will manually review the content and say, "Wow, that's really not good. That's spam.". Why is this website hosting this content that's got nothing to do with anything just for a couple of bucks? It's not good for anybody, other than the website earning a couple of bucks. Google said they're going to use again, manual reviews, manual actions for that. We saw with the October 2023 spam update. We haven't reached October 2024 yet have we? We saw they issued a heap of thousands of manual actions. I personally think we've seen Google do this in the past with the Penguin update. Google does seemingly train its spam algorithms on actual behavior, actual actions, actual manual human activity that happens in various ways, not just with manual actions. Again, referencing Penguin of yesteryear. So it does seem to me like if they want to better train their algorithms around Parasite SEO, they might issue huge numbers of manual actions. If they do, if they rephrase this, if they are trying to train the algorithm here. Then you will probably see thousands of manual actions because you're going to need thousands of manual actions to better train their algorithm. I'm speculating that that's what's happening. I guess we will see come May when this goes live. So until then, don't do things that are spammy. And this has been this week's snappy news. Crystal Carter: Snap and turn. Mordy Oberstein: Snap and turn. And now we pivot back from the news. Back to the other parts of the podcast. Crystal Carter: I feel like I should grab my partner, Dosey Doe. I'm sorry. So we're going to pivot on the right and we're going to snap on the left with the Snappy news. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to do some, yeah, with Barry. All three of us to do a line dance if we pivot around. Crystal Carter: I'm not sure Barry dances. I'd be interested to know. Now I know that Mordy Oberstein dances. If you're wondering if Mordy Oberstein dances, please go to Brighton SEO Website. Mordy Oberstein: Go to the Brighton SEO website. Crystal Carter: Brighton San Diego, and you can see some of those top tier high quality dance moves. Mordy Oberstein: Hey, I got good hips. Crystal Carter: Like Shakira. Mordy Oberstein: I like to see Barry in a cowboy hat and boots. He wears a flannel already. I feel like the shirt's good to go. Needs a boots and a hat. Crystal Carter: I have cowboy boots. Mordy Oberstein: Bring them next time we see Barry. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I'll buy a cowboy hat for him. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Perfect. You know who else wears a cowboy hat? I don't know, but you know who else he should be following? Crystal Carter: Beyonce. Mordy Oberstein: Does she? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Also, I guess Garry Lewis, I assume I don't really know any cowboys. I assume they wear cowboy hats. Crystal Carter: Probably. Mordy Oberstein: That's a good assumption. But you know who doesn't wear a cowboy hat? Who you should be following in social media, for more SEO O awesomeness, that would be Joshua Harding from Ahrefs and Si. Kwan Nang from Ahrefs, because both of them have written on the Ahrefs blog about affiliate marketing and SEO. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Oberstein: I got that little pivot there. Crystal Carter: And the Ahrefs blog is such a great resource, and the team there, we've spoken to Patrick Stocks, and a few different guys. Mordy Oberstein: I think he's a booby. Crystal Carter: They've got some great content there. They're really open about their traffic and about visibility and about their methods as well. So they're a great resource for some high quality information around affiliate marketing and other things as well. So they're a prime example of how you can lead with quality. So obviously they are a brand blog and they have many things associated with their brand, but they're a prime example of somebody who's leading with value. And if you're interested in buying a thing as well, great, but they're leading with value. Mordy Oberstein: So make sure to give both Joshua Harding and Si Kwan Nang a follow over on X link, both of their profiles in the show notes. Ya, I don't know how we got from affiliate marketing and algorithm updates to Cowboys. That was a turn of events. Crystal Carter: Cowboy Carter album is coming out. It's going to be like a whole vibe. Mordy Oberstein: I never got into country. I like all sorts of music. I like jazz, I like rock. I even like a little bit of rap. Country never got me. Crystal Carter: I think in the nineties. You couldn't deny Shania Twain. Mordy Oberstein: No. Okay, so I was just going to go the opposite direction with that. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: I was going to say, I think my problem is that in the nineties I could not escape Shania Twain. Crystal Carter: I'm sorry. When that song kicks in. I'm like, oh yeah, let's do it. So yeah, Shania Twain, Leanne Rimes. Mordy Oberstein: Leanne Rimes is great. I like Leanne Rimes. Crystal Carter: Reba McEntire. Okay, Faith Hill. Tim Mcgraw. Mordy Oberstein: I like Dolly Parton. Crystal Carter: Dolly Parton. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm not saying they're not great. Crystal Carter: Garth Brooks. Mordy Oberstein: Garth Brooks and Billy Joel did a bunch of stuff together. I think the Shania Twain thing has ruined the genre for me. Wow. Look at that. Crystal Carter: Wow. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Very similar to me for Celine Dion. Who has ruined all of Celine Dion music. Crystal Carter: Whoa, I will not stand for Celine Slander on this podcast. I'm sorry. She's a queen. She's amazing. I'll not stand for Celine Slander if you don't have nice things to say about Celine. That's it, I won't. Mordy Oberstein: Agree to disagree. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Well, near, far, wherever you are. We're done with this podcast. Thanks for joining us on the Serves 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 should Google do with all that Reddit on the SERP. Look forward wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO Learning over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO. Check all the great content of webinars and resources on the Wix SEO learning about, 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 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

Maddy Osman is the bestselling author of Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style, and one of Semrush and BuzzSumo's Top 100 Content Marketers. She's also a digital native with a decade-long devotion to creating engaging SEO content and the founder of The Blogsmith content agency. Maddy Osman Founder, The Blogsmith Maddy Osman is the bestselling author of Writing for Humans and Robots: The New Rules of Content Style , and one of Semrush and BuzzSumo's Top 100 Content Marketers. She's also a digital native with a decade-long devotion to creating engaging SEO content and the founder of The Blogsmith content agency. Articles & Resources 19 Dec 2024 Your digital marketing agency sales process: How to craft a winning pipeline 20 Jul 2022 Everything you need to know about your robots.txt file 30 Jan 2022 What is a 301 redirect and how can you use it to improve your SEO? 27 Jan 2022 Everything you need to know about redirects for your Wix website 24 Jan 2022 9 steps to creating the best content strategy for SEO 24 Oct 2021 Why your Google Business Profile matters and how to set it up on Wix 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

Feel like your SEO strategy is swerving all over the digital highway? Buckle up, as Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter explore the art of staying in your SEO lane, or not. Tales of daring digital detours help us explore how big names like Rolling Stones have taken the road less traveled - and hit a few bumps along the way. The team discusses the balance between branching out for those quick wins versus traveling the straight and narrow of true brand alignment. Laval Chissester offers expert advice on owning your niche and knowing when to switch it up. Join us for a ride as we navigate the chaotic freeway of SEO strategies on this episode of the SERP’s Up podcast. Back Site focus? Should SEOs stay in their lane? Feel like your SEO strategy is swerving all over the digital highway? Buckle up, as Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter explore the art of staying in your SEO lane, or not. Tales of daring digital detours help us explore how big names like Rolling Stones have taken the road less traveled - and hit a few bumps along the way. The team discusses the balance between branching out for those quick wins versus traveling the straight and narrow of true brand alignment. Laval Chissester offers expert advice on owning your niche and knowing when to switch it up. Join us for a ride as we navigate the chaotic freeway of SEO strategies on this episode of the SERP’s Up podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 120 | February 5, 2025 | 24 MIN 00:00 / 24:05 This week’s guests Lavall Chichester Lavall Chichester is the founder and CEO of Growth Skills, Flavor Fix and non-profit SpreadLove.org. He is an AdAge 40 under 40 award winner for advertising & marketing innovation. Mr.Chichester is a Growth Marketing expert and has led SEO & Content Marketing strategies for brands like Apple, Seamless AI, MoneyLion, Western Union and others. He has deep experience in tech, finance, cannabis, CBD, spirits, gaming (casinos/sports betting) and other highly regulated industries. Mr.Chichester has written for Forbes, AdWeek, TheNextWeb, eMarketer, and others. In 2022, Mr.Chichester won Best SEO Campaign from Search Engine Land’s Landy Awards and Most Innovative SEO Campaign from the U.S Search Awards. He is a second-degree black belt, a bare-knuckle Karate champion, and a proud father. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast to bring you some groovy insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm your host, Mordy Oberstein. I am joined by she who always drives very carefully, never swerves out of her lane, and if she does, puts on that signal, checks her mirrors, carefully moves over, and then carefully moves back when passing that slow person in front of her, headmaster of communications here at Wix Studio, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. I hope all the listeners today are keeping their hands at 10 and 2 and are making sure that they are paying attention to what they're doing while they are listening to this podcast transmission. If you're listening in your vehicle, then I hope you are minding the rules of the road and staying in that lane. Mordy Oberstein: You know what the worst is? When you have a merge and the merge just suddenly happen, they don't put the actual lines there. Because by the way, I'm from America originally and they're pretty good about doing that. That's not true in all countries. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It makes me angry. Why can't you just put a merge, slowly merge? Crystal Carter: I don't like when the merge is too short when you're getting on the motorway or on the freeway or whatever and it's too short and you're like, "Okay, I'm just going to pray for the best here." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You're just like, "All right, here we go." Crystal Carter: Right. Then sometimes people don't let you on. It's like, "Let me on the freeway. You don't own the freeway. Let me on, man. Get over or something. Let me on the freeway." Freeway, freeway. Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Of the freeway. Crystal Carter: Freeway. Mordy Oberstein: Free to go my way. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I mean you knew. Did you drive when you were in New York? Mordy Oberstein: I used to love driving in New York. Yes. Crystal Carter: Because you have to drive, if you're in a city, the driving is very different. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Once you accept that, I found driving in traffic in New York, because I used to drive all over New York City as part of my job, so relaxing. Crystal Carter: I think it's because you just take your opportunity. You're just like, "I'm going now. Just do it." Mordy Oberstein: I go. If there's traffic people, I'm like stuck in traffic. I'm not going to freak out. I'm just not going to try to get around the guy. I'm just going to go. Crystal Carter: Just going to go. Mordy Oberstein: Going 10 miles an hour, fine. I got a sports podcast to listen to. We're good. Crystal Carter: Driving in LA is mad because the streets in LA are the sizes of freeways in other places. If you're going down Sepulveda or something like that, it's like five lanes going north and there's five lanes going south. If you're all the way on the one side and you need to make a left-hand turn and you have to, my aunt does this, the light would turn green, she'd floor it and then swerve over five lanes and then get over a bit. Sometimes it's what you got to do, I don't know. On the freeway, you have to wait. You're like, "Okay, go, go, go swoop" to get into the next lane. Mordy Oberstein: You can't see what Crystal did. Like moving your hand, swoop. That's great. Crystal Carter: Right. It's like double dutch. Mordy Oberstein: Double dutch. Crystal Carter: You got to time it and then get in there. Mordy Oberstein: God, I never do double dutch. Crystal Carter: I'm okay. Adult. It's been a long time. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like now we're going to go down a whole jump roping Wormhole. The SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: Have we strayed? Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you Wix Studio, where you can use our SEO assistant to make sure your opinions are optimized and focus on the one true path for ranking success. As today we're talking about staying in your lane and path for SEO success. How far is too far? How far is not far enough, and what are the parameters for staying or not staying in your lane? Lavall Chichester chimes in on how to pivot that content strategy of yours, and of course we have who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Pardon me as I go full New York on you. What the (beep) are you doing? You can't see there's (beep) laying there. You (beep) moron. Go back to Jersey with that stupid (beep) jug handle (beep). (Beep) lanes are painted right there and this (beep) can't stay in his lane, on episode 120 of the SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: That was a fantastic introduction. However, it did contradict your previous statement of feeling relaxed whilst in traffic. Just saying. Mordy Oberstein: I'm from New York. You still scream at people when they do something stupid. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's just, it's very cathartic. It's all part of the process. Mordy Oberstein: It is what you do. Crystal Carter: It's what you do. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not angry. It's just what you do. I don't know. When someone steps on your foot, you say, "Ouch." Crystal Carter: That's true. This is true. Do you know what? I had to curb the road rage. I used to be a little shouty a little bit. I stopped being shouty because I became a cyclist at one point and I was cycling and was also being shouty as if I was in my own little container that's a car. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. You're very vulnerable on the bike. Crystal Carter: You're very vulnerable. I was on my bicycle complaining that somebody had cut me up, and to be fair, they had. They were bad. I was like, "I can't believe you did that!" And I was like, "Oh, is that Jeff? Oh, hey. Oh, hey Jeff. Hi. Hey, my bad." That sort of thing. You got to be careful. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. You don't want Tony who's driving that Ryder truck that's probably filled with things that are not legal to actually hear you say what you just said about the way he's driving. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Because Tony has no neck and he looks very scary. Crystal Carter: This brings us to my point about staying in your lane. We have strayed very far from the lane of this podcast Mordy Oberstein: We have done the complete opposite. Okay. Been on a soapbox about this all the way back at SMX in like 2019. Actually, ironically, George Winnar, a writer of the SEO Hub, actually wrote an article about this talk that I did. Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: Way back when. Yeah. That's when the first time George had to edit me. Crystal Carter: Memories. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Anyway, I was talking about if you sell Derek Jeter jerseys, Derek Jeter's a baseball player, I always talk about baseball and I use examples, you can also sell baseballs. That makes sense. Signed Derek Jeter baseballs, fine. You can't sell garden furniture. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Google's going to figure that out at some point. You got to stay in your lane. Back at the time we were talking about Google just being able to start to do this algorithmically, now fast-forward to now in 2024, we're seeing manual actions against sites like big websites who are getting hit on those sections of the sites that are talking about garden furniture when all they do is sell Derek Jeter jerseys. Google's saying, "Stay in your lane. We do have algorithms that kind of see where you're supposed to be. I'm not saying you can't expand and branch out, but you need to stay in that lane." Here we are now in 2024. Five. We're in 2025, sorry. Crystal Carter: I think that this whole thing has been such an interesting journey, particularly over the last year. Essentially, if people haven't been keeping up with it, there's been this whole discussion around Parasite SEO, around big websites using their domain authority to set up shops and set up content that's not really relevant. I think probably one of the best examples was Rolling Stone selling microwaves and doing big things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's my favorite example. Crystal Carter: Right. I think that it comes down to when you're thinking about whether you stay in your lane or whether you don't stay in your lane, if I can take the, for devil's advocate, just keep it spicy, keep it interesting, if I can take the side of straying out of your lane. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so you're okay. No signal. Go ahead. No problem. Crystal Carter: If I can take that side, to my mind, there's a certain element of don't hate the player, hate the game. Where if it works for a little while, and if you're not expecting it to be your be all, end all, your core thing for forever, and if you are getting that traffic. Before the algorithm or whatever catches up with you, there's an argument that you can make that money while you can. Get those clicks while you can and then just slash and burn it, which is what we've actually seen from a lot of these websites. Some of these websites who were using this as a tactic basically just like de-indexed, deleted, took that content off. They still keep their domain authority, they're still authoritative sites and they made money at the time, but they just nixed that for the minute. There is an argument that if it's getting clicks, then why would you look a gift horse in the mouth? Mordy Oberstein: I understand what you're saying and I hear what you're saying and I validate all the things that you are saying. Your voice is important to me. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: But if I could be Jiminy Cricket for one minute and be your conscience. Also, if you ever swerve out of your lane like that again, I will give you the business like there's nothing else. Double fingers everywhere. Crystal Carter: That is a risk. That's a potential risk. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: That actually, all jokes aside, that's kind of the risk. That's where I'm saying be cautious. Because yes, from a performance side, that is totally true. What you're saying is absolutely true, but there's a few things on the more marketing strategy side that would say maybe don't do that. One of them is eventually the bill's going to come due and how do you deal with that and do you want to deal with that? Leaving that aside, I have one of these sites in mind. I'm not going to say the F word on the podcast, but that's the site that I'm talking about. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: People have been, what's the word I'm looking for? Defecating on that website for years. Yes, they did get clicks and they did get that, but they lost a lot of brand efficacy and brand sentiment and brand power from that point of view, and they'll never be able to get that back. Now that they've lost their performance, they're really left with nothing to assert anything, because they lost that brand, at least in this space that we're talking about. The other issue is, and I think this is a bigger issue, is that when you do things like that and you get out of your lane, it's a slippery slope. Because if you have established core identity, we have a certain mission, certain values, this is what we're doing and we are about this, then that should be your guide. If it's out of your lane, you don't do it. Now you could stretch that definition a little bit and you can play around. Fine, I get that. I'm not saying you can't expand the lane, repaint the lines, make a one-lane road, now it's a two-lane road. Fine. I don't know if that analogy actually works, then you would have to transfer the lane. Whatever, you know what I'm saying. You made the lanes wider. Yeah. I'm not saying you can't do that, but when you don't make that core mission identity the guiding light, it's easy to start chasing all sorts of things. Some of those things may end up performing well for you and some of them may not. By the way, I'll give you an example of what I mean. You see brands doing this with AI all the time. Oh, AI, let's chase that AI thing and that AI thing and that AI thing and that AI thing. They don't know yet if they actually are going to be fruitful or not. Maybe some of these companies are just chasing the latest, greatest AI thing and they'll make a lot of money with them, but a lot of companies may not. If they had that aura of, "I know who I am, I know what I'm doing, I know what my mission is, I'm not going to steer away from this" they wouldn't have chased that latest, greatest AI thing, spent all that time, all of that money doing it, ended up with nothing. That's the counter argument. Crystal Carter: I mean, I see what you're saying there, but I also see that there doesn't necessarily have to be, even if you take that short-term gains for a potential risk. Basically with any business decision, you have a risk versus reward. When you're thinking about whether or not to stray out of your lane, you have to think about those risks and rewards. If you take it from a full on, let's just stack that paper perspective, you can weigh up the potential risk versus potential reward for that short-term gain. I think there's also, even when you stray out of your lane, there's also potential for low risk and not necessarily unethical sort elements. Ahrefs has an example. They've got a blog on Parasite SEO and they talk about how it's not always bad. They use an example of Moz doing something that they call gray hat or whatever, and Moz doing something where they're talking about a blog on SEO services for instance, and that's essentially talking about something that kind of works and they're using their brand authority to leverage things. Lots of people do lots of those sorts of things. You see people, we talked about microwaves, you have, I don't know, Panasonic or whatever has a best microwaves thing. They're using their brand authority to boost their brand and they're of course going to put themselves as number one on that. Now when you think about straying out of your lane in a low risk kind of way, sometimes you can mitigate those risks in a couple of different ways. For instance, you can put it on a subdomain. If for instance, it's like you said, you're selling Derek Jeter t-shirts or whatever, maybe there are Derek Jeter... What was it? Mordy Oberstein: Jerseys. Crystal Carter: Jersey. Okay, Derek Jeter jerseys, which are completely different from t-shirts, obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: You're selling Derek Jeter jerseys. Let's say it's game day, and let's say you are a physical shop. On game day, let's say you sell water bottles, because you're located near the stadium. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's fine. Crystal Carter: That's not your core business, but that is relevant to your audience. Mordy Oberstein: Correct. Yes. Crystal Carter: Even though it's not your core business, even though it's not what you normally do, it's still relevant to your audience and your audience will immediately connect with why you're telling them about that thing right there. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Totally agree with you on that. My only thing though with that though, is if you do that too often. I'll call that a neutral moment. I am selling water. It's a great example because water is neutral. It's a neutral form. Crystal Carter: It's not an acid, it's not a base, it's neutral. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's neutral. Crystal Carter: Science. We're getting scientific people. Mordy Oberstein: Neutral moments are fine, but too many neutral moments is actually a negative. If you have too many of them in aggregate, when they compound on themselves, you lose that like, "Oh, I forgot, are they the water bottle place or are they the jersey place? I can't remember what they do." That's my only concern sometimes. Crystal Carter: Yeah. No, I think that that can be the case. I think that sometimes I think that at that point, in terms of straying out of your lane, you need to decide whether or not you need to make a new lane. We see this with businesses all the time where they'll start in one space and then they'll go, "Oh, actually we should actually define this as a separate entity for its own thing." For instance, I don't know if you think about Nike, Nike also has Air Jordans and Air Jordan is its own space within. It has its own space, it's still part of Nike, but it's its own space. Sometimes, again, risk and reward. You have to look at whether or not this warrants, whether your water bottle sales warrants you putting that effort into that. In those cases, I do think it's worth because that can help your business grow. Sometimes straying out of your lane can be like your litmus test, if we want to keep going scientific on you guys because that's how we are. If you can take that as a litmus test as to whether or not you can expand your business into a new area. Sometimes your audience will go, "What is that?" Let's say instead of selling water bottles on game day, you're selling, I don't know, tiramisu or something. That's not a- Mordy Oberstein: If you're going, "Oh, more science" there needs to be an element in the compound. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You're going to that shop on game day to get the jersey that you can wear and go, "Oh, I showed up to the game. I didn't get a jersey, I looked like a fool. I'm going to get a jersey." That's the same intent. That could be the same intent as the water bottle leaving. I'm readying myself to watch the game. Just making that up. There's the old thing you're doing and the new thing you're doing, there's an element that string... It's string theory. Yeah, going full-on quantum here. It strings it together. If there's no string, you end up like Jaguar, which is like, "What the hell are you even doing?" There has to be a string that connects what you were doing to what you are doing now so the audience is not like, "What in the world just happened?" Crystal Carter: This is the reason why the microwaves on Rolling Stone doesn't make sense, because it's not an instrument. I don't know if Beyonce has a new line of microwaves. I don't know what's going on with those things, but that's why it doesn't make sense. Rolling Stone isn't going to open up a microwave business anytime. They're not selling home appliances. That's not what they do, so that thread doesn't work. However, if they were reviewing musical instruments, that would make sense. Mordy Oberstein: That would totally make sense. Absolutely. Crystal Carter: If they were reviewing stereo equipment, that would kind of make sense. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's a good natural evolution of the brand. Crystal Carter: You have people that like music, you can be like, "Hey, you like music? You might like a thing to play your music on." That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: That's next step. That's not bonkers. "What are you doing? Yeah, you don't sell microwaves, dude." Crystal Carter: I think that when you're thinking about your lane, I don't think it comes down to don't stay in your lane, don't go out of your lane. So many things with online marketing come down to is this relevant to your audience? Can you justify that this is relevant to your audience? As Google likes to say, "Is it genuinely helpful?" On game day, the person who come in to buy the jersey, it is helpful to give them a water bottle if they are thirsty. It is a person and they're going to be at a baseball game all day, it's going to be hot, it is helpful to give them a water bottle. It's not helpful to give them a tiramisu that they have to eat with a fork because you're walking when you don't have time. You're moving. It's not a knife and fork situation. Mordy Oberstein: You should have a core, don't stray away from that core. It should naturally move, naturally evolve, and that core can move along with you. There's a core there. If you start telling microwaves when your core is music, that makes no sense. Do you know who can help you pivot? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: If you're looking to pivot to your content strategy, Fractional CMO, Lavall Chichester. Here's Lavall Chichester on how to pivot your content strategy. Lavall Chichester: When it comes to targeting topics for your website or web page, how far should you go out of your lane? I think my advice straight off the bat is that you have to really own a niche and then branch out from there. When you look at what Forbes and Rolling Stone and even The Wall Street Journal are able to do, the reason they're able to rank for all sorts of terms like CBD oil or anything like that, credit cards, is because first they started with news. When you're covering news and those types of things, even lifestyle topics and entertainment topics, you're covering a broad range of topics. Something new with CBD, something new with this, something new with that. From the beginning of when these sites were created, they were able to cast a broader net because news is just broad lifestyle things, is broad. Then what they did was they were able to expand with experts. Forbes and Rolling Stone rolled out their councils, and if you look at their councils, they contact experts to actually write articles and create content for their sites. Then they also find expert writers, and they've built armies of writers who are experts within CBD or auto and those types of verticals, and they have very detailed author pages. They're tapping into EEAT, which is experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. They're tapping into EEAT because on especially Forbes, you'll see their articles, so you see the expert who actually wrote the topic and their credentials, and then you'll see that it was also reviewed by another person. This sends the signals to Google that two people have actually reviewed this type of content and that's why Google allows it to rank. What's interesting to me is Google came after About.com, which used to rank for everything years ago and hit them pretty hard. About.com actually, I talked to one of their lead SEOs. They had to change into a subdomain strategy to actually protect their sites from getting hit. This was years ago, but now you see Forbes and other sites really leaning into this and being able to tap into this. Then again, Wall Street Journal, the way they did it is they launched a brand within a brand, so they launched Buy Side. Buy Side is their sort of product recommendation email type of thing. It's an affiliate play where people, when you go to that site, you know that they're going to recommend products and a bunch of lists. That's headphones and gadgets and all that kind of stuff. That's a different way, but again, focus on owning a niche. If you are a FinTech company, you shouldn't be writing about hot dogs. Own your niche and then go and branch out from there. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much Lavall. Really appreciate your insights. Make sure you give Lavall a big old follow on LinkedIn and wherever else he is present across social media. Link in the show notes. Speaking of great people to follow. Crystal Carter: Yes? Mordy Oberstein: Look at that pivot. Our follow of the week is none only than Preeti Gupta who is sharing stuff all over the place. She's on Bluesky, she's on LinkedIn. She's sharing news articles that you should check out on Aleyda Solis' SEOFOMO news website, which we can link to in the show notes if you want to check that out. She's one of the people always sharing news there. Preeti's a great follow too. I just saw it pop up literally on my Chrome extension. She just shared Google on losing a link fast, submitted by Preeti Gupta. Crystal Carter: She's really active and in the Women of Tech SEO community as well. She's a really active and interested and engaged SEO, and it's somebody who very much stays in the lane of SEO and makes sure that she's keeping up with what's going on. Yeah, she's a great person to follow. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well that's it. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. I know you're going to miss us. Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into are marketers flying Blind with their GA4 data? Look for it wherever you can consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Look into more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Lavall Chichester Preeti Gupta Resources: Topical Authority Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Lavall Chichester Preeti Gupta Resources: Topical Authority Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast to bring you some groovy insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm your host, Mordy Oberstein. I am joined by she who always drives very carefully, never swerves out of her lane, and if she does, puts on that signal, checks her mirrors, carefully moves over, and then carefully moves back when passing that slow person in front of her, headmaster of communications here at Wix Studio, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. I hope all the listeners today are keeping their hands at 10 and 2 and are making sure that they are paying attention to what they're doing while they are listening to this podcast transmission. If you're listening in your vehicle, then I hope you are minding the rules of the road and staying in that lane. Mordy Oberstein: You know what the worst is? When you have a merge and the merge just suddenly happen, they don't put the actual lines there. Because by the way, I'm from America originally and they're pretty good about doing that. That's not true in all countries. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It makes me angry. Why can't you just put a merge, slowly merge? Crystal Carter: I don't like when the merge is too short when you're getting on the motorway or on the freeway or whatever and it's too short and you're like, "Okay, I'm just going to pray for the best here." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You're just like, "All right, here we go." Crystal Carter: Right. Then sometimes people don't let you on. It's like, "Let me on the freeway. You don't own the freeway. Let me on, man. Get over or something. Let me on the freeway." Freeway, freeway. Come on. Mordy Oberstein: Of the freeway. Crystal Carter: Freeway. Mordy Oberstein: Free to go my way. Crystal Carter: Honestly, I mean you knew. Did you drive when you were in New York? Mordy Oberstein: I used to love driving in New York. Yes. Crystal Carter: Because you have to drive, if you're in a city, the driving is very different. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Once you accept that, I found driving in traffic in New York, because I used to drive all over New York City as part of my job, so relaxing. Crystal Carter: I think it's because you just take your opportunity. You're just like, "I'm going now. Just do it." Mordy Oberstein: I go. If there's traffic people, I'm like stuck in traffic. I'm not going to freak out. I'm just not going to try to get around the guy. I'm just going to go. Crystal Carter: Just going to go. Mordy Oberstein: Going 10 miles an hour, fine. I got a sports podcast to listen to. We're good. Crystal Carter: Driving in LA is mad because the streets in LA are the sizes of freeways in other places. If you're going down Sepulveda or something like that, it's like five lanes going north and there's five lanes going south. If you're all the way on the one side and you need to make a left-hand turn and you have to, my aunt does this, the light would turn green, she'd floor it and then swerve over five lanes and then get over a bit. Sometimes it's what you got to do, I don't know. On the freeway, you have to wait. You're like, "Okay, go, go, go swoop" to get into the next lane. Mordy Oberstein: You can't see what Crystal did. Like moving your hand, swoop. That's great. Crystal Carter: Right. It's like double dutch. Mordy Oberstein: Double dutch. Crystal Carter: You got to time it and then get in there. Mordy Oberstein: God, I never do double dutch. Crystal Carter: I'm okay. Adult. It's been a long time. Anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like now we're going to go down a whole jump roping Wormhole. The SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: Have we strayed? Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you Wix Studio, where you can use our SEO assistant to make sure your opinions are optimized and focus on the one true path for ranking success. As today we're talking about staying in your lane and path for SEO success. How far is too far? How far is not far enough, and what are the parameters for staying or not staying in your lane? Lavall Chichester chimes in on how to pivot that content strategy of yours, and of course we have who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. Pardon me as I go full New York on you. What the (beep) are you doing? You can't see there's (beep) laying there. You (beep) moron. Go back to Jersey with that stupid (beep) jug handle (beep). (Beep) lanes are painted right there and this (beep) can't stay in his lane, on episode 120 of the SERP's Up Podcast. Crystal Carter: That was a fantastic introduction. However, it did contradict your previous statement of feeling relaxed whilst in traffic. Just saying. Mordy Oberstein: I'm from New York. You still scream at people when they do something stupid. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's just, it's very cathartic. It's all part of the process. Mordy Oberstein: It is what you do. Crystal Carter: It's what you do. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not angry. It's just what you do. I don't know. When someone steps on your foot, you say, "Ouch." Crystal Carter: That's true. This is true. Do you know what? I had to curb the road rage. I used to be a little shouty a little bit. I stopped being shouty because I became a cyclist at one point and I was cycling and was also being shouty as if I was in my own little container that's a car. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, no. You're very vulnerable on the bike. Crystal Carter: You're very vulnerable. I was on my bicycle complaining that somebody had cut me up, and to be fair, they had. They were bad. I was like, "I can't believe you did that!" And I was like, "Oh, is that Jeff? Oh, hey. Oh, hey Jeff. Hi. Hey, my bad." That sort of thing. You got to be careful. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, yeah. You don't want Tony who's driving that Ryder truck that's probably filled with things that are not legal to actually hear you say what you just said about the way he's driving. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Because Tony has no neck and he looks very scary. Crystal Carter: This brings us to my point about staying in your lane. We have strayed very far from the lane of this podcast Mordy Oberstein: We have done the complete opposite. Okay. Been on a soapbox about this all the way back at SMX in like 2019. Actually, ironically, George Winnar, a writer of the SEO Hub, actually wrote an article about this talk that I did. Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: Way back when. Yeah. That's when the first time George had to edit me. Crystal Carter: Memories. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Anyway, I was talking about if you sell Derek Jeter jerseys, Derek Jeter's a baseball player, I always talk about baseball and I use examples, you can also sell baseballs. That makes sense. Signed Derek Jeter baseballs, fine. You can't sell garden furniture. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Google's going to figure that out at some point. You got to stay in your lane. Back at the time we were talking about Google just being able to start to do this algorithmically, now fast-forward to now in 2024, we're seeing manual actions against sites like big websites who are getting hit on those sections of the sites that are talking about garden furniture when all they do is sell Derek Jeter jerseys. Google's saying, "Stay in your lane. We do have algorithms that kind of see where you're supposed to be. I'm not saying you can't expand and branch out, but you need to stay in that lane." Here we are now in 2024. Five. We're in 2025, sorry. Crystal Carter: I think that this whole thing has been such an interesting journey, particularly over the last year. Essentially, if people haven't been keeping up with it, there's been this whole discussion around Parasite SEO, around big websites using their domain authority to set up shops and set up content that's not really relevant. I think probably one of the best examples was Rolling Stone selling microwaves and doing big things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's my favorite example. Crystal Carter: Right. I think that it comes down to when you're thinking about whether you stay in your lane or whether you don't stay in your lane, if I can take the, for devil's advocate, just keep it spicy, keep it interesting, if I can take the side of straying out of your lane. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, so you're okay. No signal. Go ahead. No problem. Crystal Carter: If I can take that side, to my mind, there's a certain element of don't hate the player, hate the game. Where if it works for a little while, and if you're not expecting it to be your be all, end all, your core thing for forever, and if you are getting that traffic. Before the algorithm or whatever catches up with you, there's an argument that you can make that money while you can. Get those clicks while you can and then just slash and burn it, which is what we've actually seen from a lot of these websites. Some of these websites who were using this as a tactic basically just like de-indexed, deleted, took that content off. They still keep their domain authority, they're still authoritative sites and they made money at the time, but they just nixed that for the minute. There is an argument that if it's getting clicks, then why would you look a gift horse in the mouth? Mordy Oberstein: I understand what you're saying and I hear what you're saying and I validate all the things that you are saying. Your voice is important to me. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: But if I could be Jiminy Cricket for one minute and be your conscience. Also, if you ever swerve out of your lane like that again, I will give you the business like there's nothing else. Double fingers everywhere. Crystal Carter: That is a risk. That's a potential risk. That's true. Mordy Oberstein: That actually, all jokes aside, that's kind of the risk. That's where I'm saying be cautious. Because yes, from a performance side, that is totally true. What you're saying is absolutely true, but there's a few things on the more marketing strategy side that would say maybe don't do that. One of them is eventually the bill's going to come due and how do you deal with that and do you want to deal with that? Leaving that aside, I have one of these sites in mind. I'm not going to say the F word on the podcast, but that's the site that I'm talking about. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: People have been, what's the word I'm looking for? Defecating on that website for years. Yes, they did get clicks and they did get that, but they lost a lot of brand efficacy and brand sentiment and brand power from that point of view, and they'll never be able to get that back. Now that they've lost their performance, they're really left with nothing to assert anything, because they lost that brand, at least in this space that we're talking about. The other issue is, and I think this is a bigger issue, is that when you do things like that and you get out of your lane, it's a slippery slope. Because if you have established core identity, we have a certain mission, certain values, this is what we're doing and we are about this, then that should be your guide. If it's out of your lane, you don't do it. Now you could stretch that definition a little bit and you can play around. Fine, I get that. I'm not saying you can't expand the lane, repaint the lines, make a one-lane road, now it's a two-lane road. Fine. I don't know if that analogy actually works, then you would have to transfer the lane. Whatever, you know what I'm saying. You made the lanes wider. Yeah. I'm not saying you can't do that, but when you don't make that core mission identity the guiding light, it's easy to start chasing all sorts of things. Some of those things may end up performing well for you and some of them may not. By the way, I'll give you an example of what I mean. You see brands doing this with AI all the time. Oh, AI, let's chase that AI thing and that AI thing and that AI thing and that AI thing. They don't know yet if they actually are going to be fruitful or not. Maybe some of these companies are just chasing the latest, greatest AI thing and they'll make a lot of money with them, but a lot of companies may not. If they had that aura of, "I know who I am, I know what I'm doing, I know what my mission is, I'm not going to steer away from this" they wouldn't have chased that latest, greatest AI thing, spent all that time, all of that money doing it, ended up with nothing. That's the counter argument. Crystal Carter: I mean, I see what you're saying there, but I also see that there doesn't necessarily have to be, even if you take that short-term gains for a potential risk. Basically with any business decision, you have a risk versus reward. When you're thinking about whether or not to stray out of your lane, you have to think about those risks and rewards. If you take it from a full on, let's just stack that paper perspective, you can weigh up the potential risk versus potential reward for that short-term gain. I think there's also, even when you stray out of your lane, there's also potential for low risk and not necessarily unethical sort elements. Ahrefs has an example. They've got a blog on Parasite SEO and they talk about how it's not always bad. They use an example of Moz doing something that they call gray hat or whatever, and Moz doing something where they're talking about a blog on SEO services for instance, and that's essentially talking about something that kind of works and they're using their brand authority to leverage things. Lots of people do lots of those sorts of things. You see people, we talked about microwaves, you have, I don't know, Panasonic or whatever has a best microwaves thing. They're using their brand authority to boost their brand and they're of course going to put themselves as number one on that. Now when you think about straying out of your lane in a low risk kind of way, sometimes you can mitigate those risks in a couple of different ways. For instance, you can put it on a subdomain. If for instance, it's like you said, you're selling Derek Jeter t-shirts or whatever, maybe there are Derek Jeter... What was it? Mordy Oberstein: Jerseys. Crystal Carter: Jersey. Okay, Derek Jeter jerseys, which are completely different from t-shirts, obviously. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: You're selling Derek Jeter jerseys. Let's say it's game day, and let's say you are a physical shop. On game day, let's say you sell water bottles, because you're located near the stadium. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's fine. Crystal Carter: That's not your core business, but that is relevant to your audience. Mordy Oberstein: Correct. Yes. Crystal Carter: Even though it's not your core business, even though it's not what you normally do, it's still relevant to your audience and your audience will immediately connect with why you're telling them about that thing right there. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Totally agree with you on that. My only thing though with that though, is if you do that too often. I'll call that a neutral moment. I am selling water. It's a great example because water is neutral. It's a neutral form. Crystal Carter: It's not an acid, it's not a base, it's neutral. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's neutral. Crystal Carter: Science. We're getting scientific people. Mordy Oberstein: Neutral moments are fine, but too many neutral moments is actually a negative. If you have too many of them in aggregate, when they compound on themselves, you lose that like, "Oh, I forgot, are they the water bottle place or are they the jersey place? I can't remember what they do." That's my only concern sometimes. Crystal Carter: Yeah. No, I think that that can be the case. I think that sometimes I think that at that point, in terms of straying out of your lane, you need to decide whether or not you need to make a new lane. We see this with businesses all the time where they'll start in one space and then they'll go, "Oh, actually we should actually define this as a separate entity for its own thing." For instance, I don't know if you think about Nike, Nike also has Air Jordans and Air Jordan is its own space within. It has its own space, it's still part of Nike, but it's its own space. Sometimes, again, risk and reward. You have to look at whether or not this warrants, whether your water bottle sales warrants you putting that effort into that. In those cases, I do think it's worth because that can help your business grow. Sometimes straying out of your lane can be like your litmus test, if we want to keep going scientific on you guys because that's how we are. If you can take that as a litmus test as to whether or not you can expand your business into a new area. Sometimes your audience will go, "What is that?" Let's say instead of selling water bottles on game day, you're selling, I don't know, tiramisu or something. That's not a- Mordy Oberstein: If you're going, "Oh, more science" there needs to be an element in the compound. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You're going to that shop on game day to get the jersey that you can wear and go, "Oh, I showed up to the game. I didn't get a jersey, I looked like a fool. I'm going to get a jersey." That's the same intent. That could be the same intent as the water bottle leaving. I'm readying myself to watch the game. Just making that up. There's the old thing you're doing and the new thing you're doing, there's an element that string... It's string theory. Yeah, going full-on quantum here. It strings it together. If there's no string, you end up like Jaguar, which is like, "What the hell are you even doing?" There has to be a string that connects what you were doing to what you are doing now so the audience is not like, "What in the world just happened?" Crystal Carter: This is the reason why the microwaves on Rolling Stone doesn't make sense, because it's not an instrument. I don't know if Beyonce has a new line of microwaves. I don't know what's going on with those things, but that's why it doesn't make sense. Rolling Stone isn't going to open up a microwave business anytime. They're not selling home appliances. That's not what they do, so that thread doesn't work. However, if they were reviewing musical instruments, that would make sense. Mordy Oberstein: That would totally make sense. Absolutely. Crystal Carter: If they were reviewing stereo equipment, that would kind of make sense. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. That's a good natural evolution of the brand. Crystal Carter: You have people that like music, you can be like, "Hey, you like music? You might like a thing to play your music on." That makes sense. Mordy Oberstein: That's next step. That's not bonkers. "What are you doing? Yeah, you don't sell microwaves, dude." Crystal Carter: I think that when you're thinking about your lane, I don't think it comes down to don't stay in your lane, don't go out of your lane. So many things with online marketing come down to is this relevant to your audience? Can you justify that this is relevant to your audience? As Google likes to say, "Is it genuinely helpful?" On game day, the person who come in to buy the jersey, it is helpful to give them a water bottle if they are thirsty. It is a person and they're going to be at a baseball game all day, it's going to be hot, it is helpful to give them a water bottle. It's not helpful to give them a tiramisu that they have to eat with a fork because you're walking when you don't have time. You're moving. It's not a knife and fork situation. Mordy Oberstein: You should have a core, don't stray away from that core. It should naturally move, naturally evolve, and that core can move along with you. There's a core there. If you start telling microwaves when your core is music, that makes no sense. Do you know who can help you pivot? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: If you're looking to pivot to your content strategy, Fractional CMO, Lavall Chichester. Here's Lavall Chichester on how to pivot your content strategy. Lavall Chichester: When it comes to targeting topics for your website or web page, how far should you go out of your lane? I think my advice straight off the bat is that you have to really own a niche and then branch out from there. When you look at what Forbes and Rolling Stone and even The Wall Street Journal are able to do, the reason they're able to rank for all sorts of terms like CBD oil or anything like that, credit cards, is because first they started with news. When you're covering news and those types of things, even lifestyle topics and entertainment topics, you're covering a broad range of topics. Something new with CBD, something new with this, something new with that. From the beginning of when these sites were created, they were able to cast a broader net because news is just broad lifestyle things, is broad. Then what they did was they were able to expand with experts. Forbes and Rolling Stone rolled out their councils, and if you look at their councils, they contact experts to actually write articles and create content for their sites. Then they also find expert writers, and they've built armies of writers who are experts within CBD or auto and those types of verticals, and they have very detailed author pages. They're tapping into EEAT, which is experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. They're tapping into EEAT because on especially Forbes, you'll see their articles, so you see the expert who actually wrote the topic and their credentials, and then you'll see that it was also reviewed by another person. This sends the signals to Google that two people have actually reviewed this type of content and that's why Google allows it to rank. What's interesting to me is Google came after About.com, which used to rank for everything years ago and hit them pretty hard. About.com actually, I talked to one of their lead SEOs. They had to change into a subdomain strategy to actually protect their sites from getting hit. This was years ago, but now you see Forbes and other sites really leaning into this and being able to tap into this. Then again, Wall Street Journal, the way they did it is they launched a brand within a brand, so they launched Buy Side. Buy Side is their sort of product recommendation email type of thing. It's an affiliate play where people, when you go to that site, you know that they're going to recommend products and a bunch of lists. That's headphones and gadgets and all that kind of stuff. That's a different way, but again, focus on owning a niche. If you are a FinTech company, you shouldn't be writing about hot dogs. Own your niche and then go and branch out from there. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks so much Lavall. Really appreciate your insights. Make sure you give Lavall a big old follow on LinkedIn and wherever else he is present across social media. Link in the show notes. Speaking of great people to follow. Crystal Carter: Yes? Mordy Oberstein: Look at that pivot. Our follow of the week is none only than Preeti Gupta who is sharing stuff all over the place. She's on Bluesky, she's on LinkedIn. She's sharing news articles that you should check out on Aleyda Solis' SEOFOMO news website, which we can link to in the show notes if you want to check that out. She's one of the people always sharing news there. Preeti's a great follow too. I just saw it pop up literally on my Chrome extension. She just shared Google on losing a link fast, submitted by Preeti Gupta. Crystal Carter: She's really active and in the Women of Tech SEO community as well. She's a really active and interested and engaged SEO, and it's somebody who very much stays in the lane of SEO and makes sure that she's keeping up with what's going on. Yeah, she's a great person to follow. Mordy Oberstein: All right, well that's it. Thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. I know you're going to miss us. Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into are marketers flying Blind with their GA4 data? Look for it wherever you can consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Look into more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, Wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. 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

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In what ways does systematic team collaboration drive success in SEO? Wix’s Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, travels over to Brighton SEO to lead a deep discussion into ‘SEO as a team’ with a group of esteemed panelists. What does task delegation mean to overall team evolution? Learn the processes industry leaders use to move their team along collectively and progress as a whole. In addition, understand how team collaboration has changed overtime with the evolution of Google, and how you can adapt as an SEO. Plus, hear the varying perspectives of panelists on some of the most commonly contested SEO questions. Brighten your day and tune in to this special feature of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast recorded live from Brighton SEO as we discover the roots of team collaboration in SEO! Back Play ball! Why SEO is a team sport - Live from BrightonSEO In what ways does systematic team collaboration drive success in SEO? Wix’s Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter, travels over to Brighton SEO to lead a deep discussion into ‘SEO as a team’ with a group of esteemed panelists. What does task delegation mean to overall team evolution? Learn the processes industry leaders use to move their team along collectively and progress as a whole. In addition, understand how team collaboration has changed overtime with the evolution of Google, and how you can adapt as an SEO. Plus, hear the varying perspectives of panelists on some of the most commonly contested SEO questions. Brighten your day and tune in to this special feature of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast recorded live from Brighton SEO as we discover the roots of team collaboration in SEO! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 89 | May 29, 2024 | 64 MIN 00:00 / 1:03:55 This week’s guests Grace Frohlich Grace is a SEO consultant at Brainlabs. She has extensive knowledge and experience in SEO fundamentals, and leads strategic direction for her clients in the ecommerce space. Grace has spoken at SEO conferences, most recently BrightonSEO and SearchLove. Sukhjinder Singh Sukhjinder is a freelance SEO consultant with over 13 years of experience mainly on the agency side as a head of SEO. He's got to work with some great brands on national and international SEO campaigns, and is excited to share his mistakes and successes with you in his talk. 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. Carmen Dominguez A Spanish expat living in Leeds for 10 years, I have been working in the Digital industry for the past 8 years. While I like all Digital aspects: I have done PR, Paid and Social - I am an SEO girl at heart and I can talk about eCommerce SEO & Google’s Natural Language processing for hours. I have worked at an agency and inhouse and I always thought the best SEO work is done with others. I believe in empathy and trust when managing teams and continuous learning for success. Feminist, believer of equality and a foodie, I would kill for a good espresso! Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We've put together some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand at Wix, and I'm joined by the fabulous, amazing, the incredible Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello everyone. Hello on the internet. Hello Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Hi. Crystal Carter: It's been a minute. Mordy Oberstein: It has been a minute. A lot has happened since we last recorded. Crystal Carter: Yeah, internet land podcast people, it has not been a minute. It's been the same amount of time- Mordy Oberstein: No, it's been a week. Crystal Carter: ... it normally is because we just plan things and stuff. But in real life, it's been a minute. Mordy Oberstein: So much has happened. Yeah, things have happened. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I went to BrightonSEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I went to New York. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: The Knicks won three playoff games, lost two. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, that's all right. That's all right. But yeah, we've been out in the world meeting people, talking to folks. Mordy Oberstein: I went on vacation. Well, not vacation, like stay-cation and a holiday. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's fine. That's when you get gardening done, that's when somebody gives you a list, they're like, "You know that shelf?" Mordy Oberstein: Gardening, that's where you kill plants, right? Crystal Carter: First you have to buy them. You buy them, and then you just- Mordy Oberstein: And then you kill them. Crystal Carter: ... watch them slowly die. Mordy Oberstein: That's how it goes at my house. You buy the plant and then you kill it. Slowly. A slow death. Crystal Carter: I try. I have a cactus that's clearly… Mordy Oberstein: No, cactus does not count. You don't have to do nothing, it just sits there. Crystal Carter: I didn't do anything and it's dead. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Crystal Carter: It died very, very slowly, but it still looks like a cactus, but I know it's not. I know it's dying. Mordy Oberstein: I have a cactus, a giant cactus. Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: Like a desert cactus. Oh, yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: In the garden, giant cactus. Crystal Carter: That's cool. That's cool. Is it like one of the ones from the cartoons with the arms? Mordy Oberstein: It does. Yeah, it has arms. Crystal Carter: That's nice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll send you a picture. Crystal Carter: Cool. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter Searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use Wix Studio to work more efficiently with your team, with real time collaboration technology built right into the editor. Because as we all know, SEO is a team sport. And to help us explore how SEO is indeed a team sport, we took the show on the road to BrightonSEO's UK conference where Crystal sat down with Carmen Dominguez, Sukh Singh, Grace Frohlich, and the other Barry. So we won't have your snappiest of SEO news or you should be following this week on social media, because we were in the flesh, well, Crystal was in the flesh, I was on vacation, at one of the industries most prestigious SEO events of the year, BrightonSEO UK. So move over golf, cycling and non doubles tennis, because SEO is a real sport like baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and curling. On this, the 89th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. I left you speechless. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know how to jump in. I feel like you did everything you... I feel like you like mic dropped. I feel like that's great. That's a great intro. I'm going to be talking for most of it anyway with the guys. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm done. This is all you're going to hear from me for the entire episode because I could not make the conference. Crystal Carter: But it's all good because I think that certainly we as a team do a lot of stuff together. Obviously we plan out the podcast, we do all of that sort of stuff, and I think that the way that you work as a team will inform the SEO that you're able to do, and I certainly think that our approach was there in presence, even if you were not there at the moment. And it was a great conversation. And also shout out to the audience because we were flagship for this, I don't think anybody else is doing this, but if you come to a SERP's Up live broadcast, we might have one of these things that we do, which basically we give the audience paddles and the audience will give us their opinions on some of the questions. And we did this at BrightonSEO in San Diego. Mordy Oberstein: That was great. We went real heavy on the audience interaction. It was a lot of fun. Crystal Carter: It was a lot of fun. And then the people on the squads were asking questions to the audience as well, so some of our panelists were asking questions to the audience as well, which I didn't expect, but was a lot of fun. So it's great to get some feedback on how folks in the audience are feeling about some of the questions as well as some of the great insights from our incredible panel. It was a really, really great panel. Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, I'll see you in the next episode, because here's that panel. Crystal Carter: Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of SERP's Up live. This is the live BrightonSEO Spring 2024 edition of the SERP's Up podcast. I'm going to be joined by some incredible guests who you can see on my left and right for the people who are here. And also, members of the audience, we have some paddles there for you, which are basically for a little bit of interaction. So one side, green is yes, purple is no. So if there's any questions and basically you'd be like, I agree, I do not agree, then please make yourselves heard. We found this to be a little bit of fun, so we hope that you enjoy it as well. I'm going to get started by introducing my fantastic panelists who I have harangued to join me today. First up, all the way over on my left is Mr. Barry Adams, the founder of Award-winning agency, Polemic Digital, and he's a specialist SEO consultant for news publishers focusing on technical SEO, editorial SEO. His clients include many, many publishers including The New York Times, The Independent, lots of other folks as well. Thank you so much for joining us today, Barry. Barry Adams: Thank you very much for having me. Crystal Carter: It's always a pleasure. Barry may or may not swear so if you are sensitive to such things, I'm just going to warn you there now. So yeah, thank you for that. Hello. Hi there, David Bain. David Bain: Hey. Crystal Carter: Welcome, welcome. Welcome lots of other people as well. And so our next person that I'm going to be introducing is the incredible Carmen Dominguez who is joining us from Hallam Digital. She's the head of Organic at Hallam. I first met her at the Hallam Organic event, which was a great event that took place in Nottingham, and it was a warm day. Carmen Dominguez: It was. We had free ice cream though. Crystal Carter: It was, it was delightful and very well received. And it was lovely to have her there, and she spoke about some great stuff. And so I thought if we could get Carmen along, that'd be lovely. She has worked for agencies, she's worked in-house and led a team of many people. You've built a team. Carmen Dominguez: 23 last year and 15 this year. There we go. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So she's got great experience in-house and also working agency side, and she's going to be sharing her insights as well. Thank you, Carmen, for joining us. Carmen Dominguez: Thank you. I'm super excited to be here today. Crystal Carter: And next up is Sukh Singh, who is from I Do SEO, and I've met him at BrightonSEO a few times over the last few years. And I was really excited to get Sukh along for this session, because Sukh has a great perspective from having worked as the head of SEO at an agency for many, many years and now working freelance, working with agency partners and other clients as well. So thank you so much for joining us, Sukh. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome to be here. Crystal Carter: Thank you. And finally on my left is the amazing Grace Frohlich, fellow Californian, and she is joining us from Brain Labs where she works as an SEO consultant, and is managing clients and managing lots of different projects and has both project management experience and also SEO experience, and is a fantastic speaker and a big fan of The Parent Trap as well. And we are really pleased to have you here today, Grace. Grace Frohlich: Thank you. I'm excited. Looking forward to this. Crystal Carter: Wonderful. And then finally, it's me. My name is Crystal Carter. I am the Head of SEO Communications at Wix. I am currently working there, but I have a lot of experience working in agencies, working alongside agencies, working across teams, and I hope to be able to share those insights. And finally, there is y'all good selves, the folks here for BrightonSEO, thank you so much for joining us and for making the trek, because I timed it and it's about five minutes walk from the front door. So we appreciate you and we appreciate you getting your steps in today to join us. If you are not familiar with the SERP's Up podcast, then I thank you for taking that leap of faith and joining us here. The SERP's Up podcast comes out every Wednesday. We get some fantastic speakers. Barry's contributed, Grace has contributed, we've had lots of people contribute as well, some of the people in this room. And yeah, check it out every Wednesday. We have over 80 episodes now, so if you are a fan of podcasts, go and check out the archive. So the topic that we are covering today is SEO as a team sport. And when I say that, I do not mean this kind of team, though, bless the team from Screaming Frog for showing up for cardiovascular exercise with the annual charity BrightonSEO football match. They did a great job there. But we're more thinking about the way that marketing has become so spread out and includes so many different disciplines and so many different specialisms even within SEO. So you have a space where somebody says, "Oh, you're the SEO, you must know every single thing about image SEO." Or, "You must know every single thing about international SEO," or Google Merchant Center or Local SEO. And it can be very, very fractional and very specific. And so I think that SEO, certainly from my perspective, has become a little bit more of a team sport. So we're going to talk a little bit about that and how that works and what that means for us. On the podcast, we have different sections. One of the sections that we do is a section called Deep Thoughts. Thank you. So when we talk deep thoughts, one of the things we think about is the way that Google is progressing. And essentially just on this slide, so for instance, if you were to think about the way Google, as Google's progressing, I'm sure you've all seen this, that it's not just that you have plain blue links or one sort of SERP experience, but that you have SERP experience that includes lots of different channels, particularly for your organic stuff. So you have your YouTube, you'll also have the social that will show on the SERP, you might also have products. And even on the products, they'll have lots of different pages that show up within that. And then everyone's favorite SEO feature is Reddit. So Reddit is showing up in lots of different ways as well. And this is an evolution of Google. And I would like to ask my illustrious panelists, because I've spoken enough now, how has the way that you collaborate across channels evolved as Google has become much more diversified in its SERP as we see more and more of these SERP features? How has the way that you collaborate across channels, across teams changed? Grace Frohlich: Well, I actually first want to know from the audience, how many of you already have SEO Plus paid or other channel collaboration currently? Green, if yes- Crystal Carter: So there's paddles on the chairs. Grace Frohlich: ... purple with no. A lot of green. Crystal Carter: That is coming about, for the listening audience, that's coming up about 80% yes, is what I would say. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, I mean that's great to see, 'cause we really should be working at least with the paid channel already. Google, it's one SERP. Well, it's two channels, but we should be already collaborating with paid at least if not more channels. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And I think that for users, certainly, they don't even always know whether or not it's paid and they sometimes can't even tell the difference. So if you're trying to connect with the users, and you're trying to connect with the user journey, that should certainly be a part of it. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, absolutely. Especially with the little sponsored, the little label that's barely noticeable now. I remember when it was very, very obvious in the SERP that, oh, you're clicking an ad, but now it's like... Exactly, a lot of users don't really know what they're clicking on. Barry Adams: I miss the days of a yellow background on the ads. Crystal Carter: And I think certainly with product images, it can be sometimes difficult to tell whether or not it's an ad, or whether or not it's organic. Do you find that across your teams that you're working in paid and organic as well? Carmen Dominguez: Absolutely. And I think one of the impacts of not working together, particularly in brand campaigns is that if PPC is not working, or paid in this case, is not working with organic, they don't understand the impact of putting a little bit more of budget in brand will have in the conversions of organic. So it's not only for the clients and the users, it's also for when you are reporting to your clients the results of your work. If you don't collaborate with paid enough, you can maybe put a lot of effort in organic that in the end doesn't get the results, because paid is doing whatever they want on their own. So it's not only within paid and organic, it's also within all the different sub channels that there is in organic images or SERPs, sorry, the snippets. And it's also within the different type of paid and the different types of organic, which I'll want to talk a little bit more about it before. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I was thinking about in terms of the algorithm changes in the last few years, I think that's forced people to be a bit more multichannel, at least in their thought. And I was thinking of actually promoting Grace's blog posts from a few years ago, the T-shaped marketer being the T being having depth or knowledge in, say SEO for example, being SEO, but also touching on paid search, paid social, PR, et cetera, and recognizing the opportunities to pull in additional traffic where you see, oh, there's more opportunity for paid rather than organic for these keywords might take a bit longer to rank, et cetera. So that together with the algorithm thing and an agency environment, I guess, it just comes, that collaboration comes naturally, I think. Crystal Carter: And do you find that it also has to do with skills like different skillset? Because I certainly know that we are now, within the organic side, really having to think much more about LLMs and AI and how that all works. But paid have been working with AI and, oh, this ad has to learn, although it's machine learning and you just wait for days while it spends money and you have no idea how. And people have been working on that for years. And so I feel like a lot of the skills that people have acquired during that paid space can translate more into how we think about organic as well. Carmen Dominguez: I think it's also the other way around. It plays for both. So I wanted to talk a little bit about skills as well within organic. You cannot have the same person, for example, doing tech then is doing content, even though both need to know a little bit about each other. It's a little bit the same with paid, right? If paid doesn't understand EEAT, for example, and EEAT is purely organic, but EEAT is based on how the user engage with your content. So EEAT should also be applicable for paid in the same way that, for example, paid talk about CTR should also be applicable for organic. So in the end, we are talking about getting so many skills with one person in order to be successful, and it's impossible, which actually goes very well into the conversation that we're talking, that specializing and specializing within a specialization, if that makes sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think that when you're thinking about channels and we think about where to specialize in things, which channels do you find are most helpful for growing clients? We've talked a little bit about paid, but are we finding that digital PR, for instance, is as helping with a lot of things? Or are we finding that other elements are helping clients to grow at the moment? Grace Frohlich: I think it's going to be social- Crystal Carter: Social? Grace Frohlich: ... with SEO. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Why do you think that? Grace Frohlich: Well, yeah, I don't have the definitive proof, but from talking with clients and talking cross channely, and strategists within my agency, it's just one of those trends that keeps popping up over and over, basically getting more organic traffic through social. Crystal Carter: Right. I think also there's a question of, with it, you're trying to connect with users and users are on social, and also that with the social thing you get both visibility and you also get clicks, links, et cetera. So there's a potential there. Barry Adams: I think it's not even one specific channel, when I look at how my clients grow their audiences, I work primarily with news publishers, it's all about original reporting and quality of reporting. The news websites that report the news that other websites have first reported are the ones that tend to lose out. Whereas if you're a news publisher that invested in quality investigative journalism and original reporting, you tend to win in the long run. And I think that translates to a lot of other companies as well. If you have a dropshipping e-commerce website, you should have low expectations of long-term success because you're just another middleman. Whereas if you have an original product, you're an original manufacturer or original brand, I think you're probably looking at a healthier future. And I think that's fairly channel independent, be that paid or social or search or email. I think you can always find channels to min/max your growth within the confines of your business. But if your business isn't inherently sound and you don't have a strong brand, I think you should probably change your business. Crystal Carter: So you think that originality is still cutting through in terms of growth? Barry Adams: I see that more and more. I think that's also something that search engines like Google and also organic platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they want to reward originality, they want to reward authenticity. It's hard to do that algorithmically, because it's very much engagement based and you can sort of manipulate engagement figures. But I think they are trying to find ways to measure that and improve that algorithmically so that original brands and quality brands surface more and more, because they realize that's also what our audience wants. The audience wants quality brands and original content and not just rehashed stuff that other websites have done before and maybe worse or better. Crystal Carter: And I think in the space of LLMs, I think it's even more important to be unique in that space in order to see growth. And I don't know if you all wanted to add anything more. Sukhjinder Singh: I was thinking about EEAT bolstering social as well, or social bolstering EEAT. So the experience and authority of the authors and the website as well, and seeing that engagement on social. And also with social being a good research tool, I just saw... Oh God, his name's blanking me now. I'm going to have to comment on it later. Crystal Carter: Steven Bartlett? He's on all the socials. Sukhjinder Singh: No, actually I was at an SEO talk about an hour ago on using TikTok for keyword research in terms of topical research. And then even if the resulting keywords have zero search volume, he did a case study where he still used those keywords and saw an uptick in search console data in impressions and click-throughs, et cetera, even with such volume zero keywords. So I think it's a good tool there. Carmen Dominguez: I'm sorry, go. No, no. I was going to say that I think in the end, everything is related. Right? If you have a good brand, probably you're going to be all over social, and if you are all over social, your users are going to be engaging with you and they're going to end up going back to your website. So I think the whole point of change is not specific areas, it's actually looking at the overall. So we have a good brand, we have to showcase EEAT in every single possible channel, and that is what is going to make you successful. And on that, what you were saying, I also recently did a test on particularly TikTok and Instagram with one of my e-commerce clients, and actually getting lots of links coming from TikTok made all the people clicking on my products. And my products now rank, even though I don't have no longer people coming from TikTok just because the clicks made Google to recognize my products. So it does have an impact being in social, but also my brand now is much better recognized in TikTok as well because of that. So people come from brand much, much often. So I think it's all related into making sure that we do all an organic strategy where we look at all the different channels all at once rather than just single pointing different areas, if that makes sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So I think that flows in next to our next session where we're talking about team evolution. So if you're in a space where you are finding, for instance, that TikTok is a really good channel for your brand or that you're getting good traffic from Instagram, for instance, how are you thinking about which skills... How are you thinking about how you're connecting with your team and how you need to evolve your team in order to sit alongside those channels? Are you thinking that you need to maybe get another social media person or maybe work alongside a social media person? Or are you thinking that one person needs to suddenly become an SEO and a social media? Carmen Dominguez: And it's super difficult actually. And one of the things I have done with my team recently is changed the whole structure of it. So in agency, normally we're used to having one SEO person, one technical SEO person, content, digital PR, and they all work in silos even though they work toward the same objective. For me, what I have done is try to make sure that everyone has the basic SEO knowledge of everything, but then they specialize farther away. But they work together in squads, which actually every week they're like, "Okay, I found this issue in the technical SEO that might have an impact in content. I'm not an expert in content. Content person, tell me what you think." And then the content person also knows about EEAT, who collaborates with the social media person to try to elevate EEAT. And then social media also communicates. It's way harder, because it means that you need to be upskilling constantly, right? You cannot just know one thing and that's it. And it means that collaboration needs to be tighter, which is very difficult, particularly if you work remote. So because Google is changing so fast and the SERPs are changing so fast, you need to change as fast. But humans, we are slower, right? So it is difficult. I think we need to change a lot how we collaborate as teams and we need to forget about silos. How do we do that, become a reality, is another thing. And I'm not sure how you feel. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, exactly the same. Yeah. So I was working in an agency up until a year and a half ago, and at that time we did try to bring in processes and loads of opportunities to have these collaborative conversations. And as a freelancer now I can attest to how easy it was to upskill and how that comes in an agency versus now, like I spend way more time reading and stuff, which is great because there's lots more podcasts like this now. But also, you have to work harder as a freelancer to collaborate. But if you're in an agency where you have a team, you've got that immediacy there, which is great. But then what I struggled with was the same thing with you, with communication. So creating enough opportunities like team huddles and all this stuff, but also incentivizing it and saying, "Okay, what are our shared KPIs? And how can we help you guys?" And vice versa. And just getting them bought into the other channels outside of SEO and get them bought into the multichannel collaboration or how it contributes to the global KPIs and the SEO and vice versa. So yeah, I can't quite explain it. I used slides at the time on all this stuff, but basically just getting them bought in and having way more meetings. And then finding out what's the important KPIs to them and what motivates them and getting collaboration that way. Grace Frohlich: Yes, I agree with both of you actually. I actually spoke about this in the Women in Tech SEO conference in March about cross channel with paid, how to get paid and SEO to work together. So if you want to check that out, I think that can be a transferable kind of a process that I talked about. But yeah, everything you just said, getting to know their challenges for the other channel, getting to know what their goals are and KPIs, and aligning with regular meetings. Of course, easier said than done, I can attest to that. But a lot of it... And also don't underestimate building a relationship with the other channel, the people. There's people behind these channels, so that's also really important. Crystal Carter: And I think, can I just, questions from the audience? So if you've seen the little paddles, so green is yes, and it's like purply blue is no. Do you find that you're collaborating with more people who are working outside of your core channel? Yes for green, or purple for no. Wow. I have 100% green y'all, that's 100% yes. I think that's really fascinating and I think that's really, really good to see, especially in the dynamic SERP space that we're working in. Barry, you're working with a lot of clients who are working, like we were talking earlier about the Mail for instance, and they are huge on social, they're huge on lots of different channels. How are you finding, because we're talking about ways that people communicate, how do you find that you keep in the loop or you connected between what's happening in the different spaces? Barry Adams: I’ll tell you almost most of my clients engage me for a very small specific role. And I personally haven't worked in a team for over 10 years, just me and the voices in my head as a freelancer. But I do find it very interesting how it's evolved in who hires me and in the context that they hire me. Where previously when I came in in the early stages of my freelance career, I was sort of like the SEO guy, and everything SEO related I had to take that by the scruff of the neck for that client and do it. Whereas now, a lot of them have very detailed in-house capabilities. They have good editorial SEOs, for example, and they have good technical people who have some SEO knowledge. So when they engage with a freelancer like myself, it's a much more specific skillset and specific project that they need that they don't have or don't want to develop in-house. And for me, that shows how far the industry has already come and how far the specialties with the industry have already come. Especially in news where I work, you have people who are very, very good at, for example, the editorial side of SEO, optimizing articles and site structures. But the technical side is something that they probably don't need hardcore internal capabilities for when you can just once every year or two years get an outsider in to do a sanity check on your website. And that shows to me that they already have the defined roles. It's not enough to be an SEO anymore, you need to be a specific type of SEO. I think as your career progresses in SEO, again the concept of the T-shaped marketer, you even have a T-shape within the T-shape where it becomes a much more narrow T. When I started doing this, I'm old enough to remember when the job title was webmaster. I had that job title for a while and you did everything. You did email, you did social, you did SERPs, you did the whole thing. And then I picked one specialty, SEO, and now within SEO it became technical. And within there it's now news SEO. So I think that's where if you want your career to develop, you sort of have to hang your coat on a specific skillset and discipline. That doesn't mean that's always going to be your career because there's overlaps with other channels and other capabilities that you can develop. I mean, fortunately, search is not going to die anytime soon, no matter how often SEO has been proclaimed deceased. We're still alive and kicking and growing. But I think you sort have to find out what you like doing, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and say, "Right, let's go and try and make this work." Let's become a great analytical SEO or a great tech SEO or a great editorial SEO, and there will always be roles within those specialties that really work for you. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think that within that space, there's always devs. No matter what kind of thing there's always devs. And when we're thinking about this, because I feel like, I don't know, maybe this is just me in my little silo, but I feel like devs are devs and they do deving. And so do you have to explain to them when you're having conversations with devs that are taking into account multichannel traffic, multichannel dependencies, for instance, are you finding that those conversations are changing that you need to give them more context about this is a landing page, not just for SEO, this is a landing page for somebody coming from TikTok or that sort of thing? Are you finding that you're having those conversations? Grace Frohlich: I'm finding that we have to explain to devs less of the importance of SEO, because I think more and more, at least clients, they have a foundational understanding of what it is. So because those clients are like the C-suite and the upper management, they give the devs, okay, these are your goals, your KPIs, and a lot of times they align with SEO KPIs. Carmen Dominguez: Yeah, I was going to say too. Yeah, actually when you asked that question, I was thinking when I said I haven't been in SEO as long as Barry has been, but I remember when I started and I started writing content for websites, it was an eternal fight, constantly, constantly fighting. And now most of the time when you talk to devs, they know that there are certain things that they cannot do. They know that there are SEO areas that they shouldn't take so personally when they get feedback on. And I actually, I'm enjoying very much working with devs recently. Once you are able to understand the basics, I think the key is being able to communicate what you're doing, the changes or what you need to do, and what's the point of a website. It's not just to be there. Once you explain that and you create relationship, because that's very important, I think it's particularly easy. Or I think I found, in recent times, it's easier to work with them. Crystal Carter: Okay. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I was going to second that because I started in 2009 with SEO and working with devs at that point. And I guess fair play on their side, they didn't really know the impact or the value, it wasn't part of their roadmap or KPIs or anything. So I learned from that point how to get to know them, I guess. It comes back to relationship building. And I guess, sounds a bit wishy-washy, but emotional intelligence, trying to figure out, okay, what really motivates you? Trying to figure out the body language. Oh, they didn't like that request. Or at the start of my career, I'd have to create a standards document literally on paper and grade their websites, brand new websites, so there's a website division of my first agency. And then I put it on their desk, and then so immediately they're being like, "Oh, yeah, cool." And then they're just like, whatever. And so you're immediately not their favorite person, and I have to find myself to ingratiate myself to them, go to the pub, whatever, I think, but also figure out, okay, how can I get my stuff signed off and kind of relate it all to them? And I think it's become way easier now with SEO integrations in CMSs, whatever. And also it's a bit more word from Google on what impacts what on the website. So it's way easier, but for me it's always been relationship building and figuring out what motivates them. Crystal Carter: Barry? Barry Adams: Yeah, I have a notorious example where I was presenting my findings in a Zoom call to a client and the lead dev was in the call as well, and he counted me on a specific point, and I was maybe lacking emotional intelligence in my response, and frankly, I was a bit of a dick. Anyway, the call went on and we went through the audit and then the CEO wanted to show me something, so he started sharing his screen. He didn't realize he had a Slack channel open where that lead dev had just messaged him saying, this guy is a dick. I actually still want that on a T-shirt. But he was fair, I was being a dick, but I was also right. But it also taught me something that if you want to get stuff done, don't be a dick. And I think in the past, and sometimes even now, I come across as maybe too forceful and too sure of myself, and sometimes we need to look at the context in which we make these recommendations. 'Cause I am an SEO guy with a big SEO hammer, so for me, everything looks like an SEO nail. But I've learned that there's a lot of other moving pieces in an organization that have very different goals, very different objectives, and you have to weigh these things up. And I think I've gotten better at providing the context of a recommendation where I say, "Well, this would be an ideal scenario for SEO, but it might hurt your commercials," or it might hurt usability, or it might have another impact on another aspect of the website. And I think if you frame recommendations or best practices in that context, you actually end up getting done more often than not, because they realize that you realize there's other stuff happening, but you still make that recommendation knowing that the other stuff is happening. So it's probably worthwhile doing the recommendation, whereas if you just say, "Oh, you need to get this shit done right now," that's just not going to fly. Crystal Carter: And question to the audience, are you finding that working with devs is... So green is easier and blue for not easier? Okay, that's probably like 90% easier. I'm finding that really interesting. There's someone in the audience who's like, "Mm-hmm." So yeah, I think that's really interesting. So yeah, I think that's really interesting. Let's go on to squad goals. So here's the scenario. You need to assemble a squad for a new project. You need to get your crew together. It might be people within your team, it might be freelancers, it might be a co-agency, it might be whoever that you're thinking of. What are the things that you're looking for in a new collaborator, and how do you know that this is the match for you? Is it swipe right or swipe left know? No, it's swipe left? Is that right? Sukhjinder Singh: Right? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't do them. Okay. So yeah, Sukh, can we start with you? How do you know that this is a good match, we can collaborate, this is going to be a good setup? Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I'm actually doing this at the moment. So as a freelancer, I'm trying to build a network of people in other channels like I had with the agency setup, and I guess I'm doing my own EEAT evaluation of them. So I'm looking at all of their engagements, so not just on their website to say what they've done, but their recommendations on LinkedIn, see if they're legitimate, and then talking to them and looking at case studies, anything like that, and the work history. It's really revealing, so if they're listening to it... So trying to figure out, because as you know, even when hiring people on the agency side, it's really hard to drill down the people that have got real experience. So trying to do that evaluation and then chatting to them and then just starting with a small project. So something that I can get them to chip in on with a small amount of budget and see how they do. And for me, it's important to see the results, but also their personality and if I can work well with them, and if they're reasonable and flexible to a point. So that's how I do it. Carmen Dominguez: And the personality part for me is very important. Beyond the skills, there are lots of people who are very good skills, and that doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to be working well with them. So for me, being aware of my own personality, I might be a little bit intense just to say, it's my Spanish blood. So when I have an idea, I want to go after the idea, but I know that I need to have someone who calms me down. So having someone that is the contrary of me in my team is going to be better for the project. So I look for that, I look for someone who's a doer because I'm a dreamer. So I want to do this, I want to do it now, everyone focused. I need someone who actually will do it, because then if I don't put the time in to do the thing, then it won't happen. So I need someone who is a realistic, someone who is a doer and someone who also has visibility of everything. So independently of the skill sets that everyone has, which is important, I also need to have all of this. But there are also core attitudes that are very important for me, which is honesty. I prefer someone to tell me, "You are a dickhead, Carmen." Ooh, sorry, I said that word, I realize. But I prefer someone who is honest to me than actually says, "Yes, yes, yes," and nothing comes across. And I judge people on actions and not words, so if someone delivers what they say they do and they tell me this is feasible or not, I'm definitely going to be working with them. So core attitudes and people who have different personalities is, for me, what makes a team work well. Crystal Carter: Amazing. Yeah, I think hiring for complimentary skills for the gaps that you have and also being aware of those gaps that you have gets really important. Carmen Dominguez: Which is actually not that common, doing this self-analysis of, okay, who am I? Because maybe I think I'm perfect, but not really. So being aware of the things that you are good at and you are not as good at, it's very important for you to build a good team. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I agree. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, I agree with those points. I will also say if you're trying to build a team, going back to the football, well, soccer, soccer analogy, you don't want a team full of strikers. And also you don't want a team full of keepers like goalkeepers, so you want to diversify. So I would say choose people with different backgrounds. Don't underestimate the value of diversity when you're choosing a team, because they'll have different perspectives, they'll have different backgrounds, different ways of thinking. So that can only make your team stronger. Crystal Carter: And Barry? Barry Adams: I haven't worked in a team for a very long time, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I think I enjoy that part of it. I've never been a real people person, to be highly honest. I do find the clients that I enjoy working with the most are the ones who, I don't know how to describe that common denominator, but they're all in one way or another, extremely good at their jobs and know exactly what they want from external parties. And I'm grateful that I get to be that external partner. I find it very educational, projects where I learn as much from the client as the client hopefully learns from me. And I think that's hard to select for, either somebody has that passion and is that good at their job or they're not. But there's clients who bring me along whenever they move jobs, they work with one publisher and then a few years later they move to a different publisher and they get to work with them again in a different context. But it's still just a really pleasant collaboration, because you get to know each other's ins and outs and know exactly what they're good at and how you can compliment their skillset. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah. That's awesome. And I have a question to the squad as well, or to the squad here. Also, if you're in the back, you can come in. There's spaces. There are spaces, it's totally fine. Please do come in. Yeah. So one of the things that we've been finding across our teams is that when we're thinking about these things, one of the things you mentioned, Sukh, was that sometimes when you're trying to hire, it's hard to tell which skills people have. Question to the audience. When you're thinking about either hiring or collaborating or whichever with folks, are you finding that AI, people using AI, is a help or a hindrance? Are you finding that people with AI profiles or you finding that people are having AI in their CVs? Are you finding that help is a help or hindrance? So green for help and blue for hindrance on that. Okay, we got a lot of blue. We're about 50/50 there, so that's very interesting. I think that that goes back to one of the points from Carmen that you'd rather know where somebody's limits are in terms of their skills for sure, rather than somebody faking it until they make it necessarily. We are tight on time, so I'm going to move to the next section, which kind of covers that, which is awkward conversations. So when you're working with partners, also the partners are also teams, Barry. So when you're working with partners, when you're working with clients, when you're working across your team, when you're working as part of a collaborative SEO venture, sometimes there's awkward conversations. Sometimes somebody takes credit for something that you're pretty sure was you, and I get a bit upset about that because I'm like, that's my gold star, thank you very much. Or sometimes you're working with a client and they say, "Hey, we want to bring in this other agency." And you're like, "Who are they?" I can see somebody shaking their head. So actually I saw a little bit of reaction to that, so another question to the audience. Okay, and so the client is on the phone with you and they say, "Hey, I like to get this other agency involved." And green for this is good, or blue for I don't know on that. Okay, that's mostly blue. Okay. One more second. This is George. So that's mostly blue. That's my gut instinct. My gut instinct is why, why do you need somebody else? But yeah, other people in the panel, how do you feel about these conversations when this happens? Sukhjinder Singh: I was trying to think of a good example because yeah, it's difficult. I guess early on in the career, I struggled to figure out how to... I used data basically to say, "Oh, but you can see by the last report like, oh, we're hitting your KPIs," or this, that and the other. And if we're not, I'm like, "Boss, what could we do about this kind of thing?" And then obviously I've learned to look at, so basically always using the KPIs as the goal in the reports and trying to develop that customer relationship where I can tell ahead of time, hopefully, if they're thinking of doing that. And I've been in that situation early in my career a few times where it came down to them deciding between us and the other agency based on maybe trivial things as well. Like, price, obviously not trivial, but other things like, oh, the last two reports had an error on it or something like that. And so I'd always try to plan from that point in advance to say, okay, I'm not going to make any mistakes. And I make sure all the communications are on point and even look out for cues like, oh, you're not happy with this and that, or something bad happened a few times in a row, maybe they're going to look at another agency. And obviously if an email pops up on Google Analytics or something, as a user I always think, oh crap, someone's doing an audit or something. So I try and future-proof that, but if I was confronted with that combo, I'd kind of fall back on the data, but also hopefully use the relationship that we'd built up by that point to say, "Look, what's going on?" I'll be completely honest with you, if you could be honest with me. This didn't go too well. This went okay. Here's our actual strengths and weaknesses. And I learned that from my old boss as well, Ann Stanley, where she was really honest with people to say, oh, this is what we're good at and bad at. And they appreciated that and say, oh, actually we'll stick with you, going back to your point, Carmen, on honesty, like, oh, we actually trust these guys. So maybe they can help us find a good PR person or whatever, 'cause they've got that gap in the team at the moment. So a bit of a long answer on that one. Crystal Carter: No, no. Carmen Dominguez: No, actually, I was going to just... I agree with you 100%. And having been in the client side, so having been a client myself and now working in agency, one of the things that I see as a negative when I see in an agency is when someone try to bullshit me. If you are trying to bullshit me with whatever, I'm going to say another bad word, crap, then the trust is broken. So I think for me, the most important part when building relationship is being able to have the hard conversations at the very beginning. If you don't have the hard conversations, trust breaks. And if trust breaks, you're going to have a competitor coming in. And that is actually your own fault. Sorry for being scared. And I know that it takes guts to be able to have the hard conversations because it's scary, if you are a freelancer particularly, you might even lose the food on your plate. But it's building that relationship, in my opinion, will actually will make your clients defend you, even if you are not meeting the KPI. So always building relationships with trust, even if things go wrong, I think is a way. Because in the end, we're all humans, and if we get attached to people that are honest to us and we are honest to them, then they're going to defend us more. So in the end, it's having a good relationship with people and being human I think is... I don't get scared when they bring other people, even being honest, of course. But yeah, I think that's my recommendation. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Interesting. Grace Frohlich: I think my knee-jerk reaction is why would they bring in someone? Crystal Carter: Right. Grace Frohlich: But at the same time, if you think about it, it's really the client's right to have a second opinion. We do it all the time with doctors, for example, if you want a second opinion from another doctor because your health is on the line. This client's website health is on the line, so yeah, it's their right to bring in a second opinion. So in that sense, I think I'm more okay with it, especially if that other agency proves my point. So it's more of an opportunity to do that. Sukhjinder Singh: That's a good feeling as well. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Barry Adams: I had this exact thing actually happen to me where I was brought in to do a specific piece of work for a client and they told me, "Oh, there's another agency who's also doing the exact same piece of work, so no pressure, Barry." And I was a little bit, like this was a fairly big, well-known agency, and I'm just a freelancer sitting in a dinky office in Belfast. So I was feeling the pressure and I felt a bit like, oh crap, I really need to be on my A-game here. But that actually motivated me to do a really, really good job, which I hope I would've done anyway, to be entirely honest. And it turned out that what that other agency presented and what I presented had slightly different angles and complimented each other really, really well, and gave the client the whole holistic view that they were looking for. So that turned out to be a fantastic project for the client as well as for both the other agency and for me. So yeah, I mean, I suck at awkward conversations in general. I think most of us don't like those. I fully agree with what's said before, honesty is always the best approach there as well. And just try not to shy away from saying the hard things that sometimes need to be said. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easier said than done, but definitely something to think about. Okay, so we're going to move on to another section. In the podcast we sometimes have a fun game I like to play, Fun with People Also Ask. So we can do this with everyone on the audience and also everyone on the panel as well. So this is the first question from People Also Ask, so green for yes and blue for no. Do social links help SEO? We have mostly green. I have some blue. And Google keeps going back and forth being like, oh, it's not a big deal. Yes, it is a big deal. Oh, you're flipping around. Any opinions on this? Barry Adams: Yeah, correlation, not causation. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Anyone else, any two cents on that particular one? Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I'm going to go with the indirectly for the safe bet. I think, okay, long spiel, the visibility of the content and all that. Yeah, the more people see your content, they give you legit links and all that. So, yeah. Crystal Carter: So kind of sort of. Okay. All right. Okay. Here's another one in the same sort of thing. So green for yes, and blue for no. Is social media marketing off-page SEO? It's in the same sort of area. Would you call it the same? People are like, I don't know about this question at all. I've got a lot of blue, there's absolutely no... Interesting. Very, very interesting. Any opinions on that? It's a similar question to the one before, if I'm completely honest. No? Okay. We'll move on. We'll move on. We'll move on. Okay. Okay. People also ask, which is harder, SEO or PPC? So I'm going to go... Oh, we have intakes of breath from the audience here. Okay, so we have green for SEO and blue for PPC. Oh. Carmen Dominguez: I think we're biased. Crystal Carter: We're biased. Let's look- Grace Frohlich: I mean, this looks like a biased audience, right? Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. That's fine. Barry Adams: I actually think advertising is harder than SEO nowadays. Carmen Dominguez: Really? Crystal Carter: What? Barry Adams: I really do think that. Carmen Dominguez: But AI does everything for you in PPC. So... Barry Adams: AI could do everything for you in SEO. Carmen Dominguez: Well, that's true. That's true for an answer. Barry Adams: Yeah. Not in the same end result, everything being quite... Yeah. Carmen Dominguez: Yeah, it's true, it's true. Barry Adams: I think- Crystal Carter: Barry, read the room. Barry Adams: Yeah, I know I'm at BrightonSEO and I'm an SEO guy, but the paid advertising landscape nowadays, I mean, my goodness, the technology stacks and the targeting. I mean, I'm not an ad guy, but I talk to ad people, I'm like, I really don't want that job. I really don't want that job. But they spend more money every year and they get less and less back for it. Whereas with SEO, I think we're still on a growth curve. With advertising, the margins are narrower and narrower and narrower, and it's becoming really, really hard to have success in advertising. Carmen Dominguez: I think there is more pressure as well in PPC. You need to be reporting on a weekly basis. You need to be checking all the data constantly. But I also think that there are lots of people applying the same rules to SEO and PPC these days. So the pressure is coming. It really depends how you look at it. If you do SEO properly, I think it's more difficult, but a little bit chiller, less pressure. Depends. Crystal Carter: Okay. And just to say these are all actual People Also Ask questions, so yeah. Okay. So this is just a little shout-out to the grammatical incorrections, I did it myself, to the grammar that you see in People Also Ask. Is digital PR a SEO? So green for yes, and a blue for no. I got a lot of green. And I would probably say that's like 75-ish with my ballpark sort of thing. I find digital PR really fascinating. There's some really interesting campaigns. I think though it's kind of just campaign marketing, if I'm completely honest. I think it covers the same. Do other people have various- Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, it's definitely, it's its own beast. Because I used to partner with a colleague that did pure content and PR, digital PR, and she was really good at it because there's so many aspects of it. The journalist relationship, knowing what stuff they need in a brief and all that. Finding the story and that loads of data. And just from doing ideation sessions with her and other elements of the team just for ideas out there, she'd be able to structure a story and find it way easier. And so there was a lot of upskilling involved on my part to figure out, okay, how can I build links like this? And it was just a case of, well, to what Barry said before that, know what your strengths are and specialize in that and recognize it in other people. And so that's why I'm trying to partner with digital PRs as well to fill that link building gap. Carmen Dominguez: I mean, I was a digital PR and we did everything with SEO in our heads. So I will say yes, because we were using the SEO strategy to follow and create the links. Obviously, it's beyond just simple SEO, it also depends on how you see SEO. I see digital PR as part of organic and SEO is part of organic, so it depends on your definition of SEO. But I will say it is. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay, so we're moving on to the next one. This is specifically for the live podcast session. This is the one that I like. This is a section. These are again, actual predictive text from Google, and this one is for the predictive text for Can You Learn SEO, which is can you learn SEO by yourself? I know a lot of people... I've got somebody up already. So from the audience, green for yes, blue for no. Very interesting. So that's lots and lots of green. I've got a little bit of no, or a little bit of blue, so I'd probably say that's probably 90-ish percent saying yes. And I think this is interesting. So Barry, you're close to the microphone, so I'm going to come to you. What are the advantages or disadvantages of being a self-taught SEO? Barry Adams: As a self-taught SEO and one who teaches SEO now, I wish there were courses in SEO when I first learned it. The best learning environment that I learned as a self thought SEO was become part of an SEO community where you could ask questions, where there was no stupid questions basically, where you could just ask anything. That for me was a real breakthrough moment when I think I really embraced SEO and really started to learn it. So self-taught, yes, but still self-taught within a community. I think you will need to have people around you to ask these questions. I don't think there's such a thing as a completely self-taught SEO, 'cause you always learn from other people who are willing to share information, answer your questions. And I think if you're an experienced SEO, you should see it as maybe part of your remit to pass that on to others and be generous with your time and your knowledge and allow people to ask those questions, 'cause realistically that's how you learned it as well. Carmen Dominguez: I was going to say I learned by myself, but really it wasn't by myself because I went to the internet, I asked people. I tested things on my own, and I put the results on forums that people replied to me. So really, is it? Yeah, I didn't have a teacher and I didn't learn at university, but I had a whole community, which I think is one of the most beautiful things of the SEO industry is the community that we have. So you can, but it's not on your own. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, the community is great now, because when I started there wasn't really much of that. And also no SEO courses, at university anyway, so I'd have to do a couple of smaller courses. And then mostly learnt in the agency environment. And also, funnily, I was talking to a colleague of mine who didn't go to uni, and we both worked at the first agency I did in 2010. And straight out of college, he just got an internship and doing SEO, and now he's head of a big department and he's doing really well. Didn't have to pay any of his uni fees and all that stuff, and so he saved with all of that, and he just learned on the job. Pretty much what I did, 'cause I did a web design course and I quit web design to do SEO. And I just thought that's a perfect example of being able to learn in that environment as an internship, or if someone just gives you a chance and you just slowly build up your salary according to how much you learn kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I don't know if you wanted to jump in on that one. No? That's fine. That's fine. Okay. Okay. Okay. Next one. Next one. Next one. Okay. So the next one, this I thought was interesting. So if you type in, what is SEO in, you get a lot of different things. So it's like what is SEO in marketing? What is SEO in business? What is SEO in YouTube? What is SEO in web development? What is SEO in social media? What is SEO in journalism? What is SEO in Etsy? Okay. So my question is is that, do you find that SEO is different in these different spaces, or do you think SEO is SEO? So green for SEO is SEO, and blue for SEO is different in these different spaces. Interesting. Okay. So we have probably 70% people saying that SEO is different in all these different spaces. I think that's really interesting. And I think to the panel, my question is, do you think that clients understand that there are differences in these spaces? Carmen Dominguez: Clients don't understand SEO. So let alone in all the different channels. The amount of times I have to five, because I cannot get them to rank number one in one week is just mental. So no, I don't think they understand the difference, but I also think SEO is SEO. So the point is, you get your content to be visible to users and users engaged with it and that applies to Chat, to YouTube, to Google, to TikTok, to whatever you do. So I think SEO is always the same, but it's done in different ways. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I was thinking about it in terms of the definition of SEO versus an SEO job spec and to see if there's any correlation. And nine times out of 10, because I was looking at job specs, I was like, oh, there's way more things people are asking for versus what you would define as SEO typically. Which is weird because I've always had a problem with SEO as a term, because I thought, well, is it more like organic marketing? But then you can't say organic marketing 'cause then clients aren't aware really what that is, and they think, oh, I'm just going to go with the SEO. So yeah, I think it's something that we're stuck with in terms of a term for lead generation, whatever. But really I think it's way more than what you define as SEO. Grace Frohlich: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. If we're talking about semantics, SEO is just search engines for search engines, right? But as you said, are we talking about organic search or just organic anything? Then yeah, I mean, I think it can be diversified into all these different spaces. Carmen Dominguez: Actually, I'm talking to more about that if anyone wants to come to my talk. It's no SEO. Let's talk about organic. So, self-promotion. Crystal Carter: Carmen, when's your talk? Carmen Dominguez: When? At 3:00. Crystal Carter: Three o'clock, go see Carmen. Carmen Dominguez: I think. Auditorium one. Just find me, I'm the only Carmen, I think. Crystal Carter: Barry, Is SEO, SEO or is SEO different? Barry Adams: I think I agree with what Carmen said earlier. It's still SEO, but the tactics are different. When I do SEO for news websites, you cannot apply the same tactics as you do for e-commerce. But in the end, it is about getting your content in front of an audience that uses an organic search engine. So, yeah. Crystal Carter: Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Finally, we have another section. So I looked up digital marketers needs and Google changed it to digital marketing needs. And it said, digital marketing needs coding, digital marketing needs a degree, digital marketing needs math, digital marketing needs a laptop, which I thought was interesting. Does digital marketing need a degree? And I think this is interesting, 'cause I've heard people say that you cannot be a technical SEO or you can't be an SEO if you don't know HTML or you don't know how to code. I've heard people say you can't be a marketer without a degree, I've heard people say that sort of thing. And so I'm interested in this idea of gatekeeping. So here's a question to the audience and the last question of the day before... And thank you so much for joining us for this session. Do you think there is one way to be a digital marketer? Green for yes and blue for no. That is 100% no. People listening on the internet, there are many ways to become a digital marketer. I have an English literature degree and I've worked in marketing my entire life. And I know somebody else who's a fantastic SEO and his degree is in anthropology. He's amazing. So I think that there's many, many ways to be an SEO, a digital marketer. What are your thoughts on that? Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, my degree was in multimedia computing, so it didn't really specialize in anything. A bit of coding, a bit of 3D, whatever. And then I did web design for four years and then quit, and then there was a credit crunch, and then I changed careers. I thought, let me try something different, no jobs anymore. So yeah, I think... What was I going to say? Yeah, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, learning from scratch. And yeah, I just found my way to SEO. I completely lost my train of thought. Crystal Carter: It's all good. It's all good. Sukhjinder Singh: It's almost finished as well. Crystal Carter: Took a new journey. Carmen Dominguez: I think that I know where you're trying to go. Myself, I am a translator. I'd never studied marketing. I didn't know what marketing was when I got into it, but I knew that what I needed to do is someone to read my content. So I needed, as a translator, I needed someone to read my content. As a journalist, you need someone to read your content. So in the end, that is what you want to do as a digital marketer. You need to convince your user to read your contents, basically. Yes, there is one way to be a digital marketer, which is making sure that you engage with the user and the user comes to you. How do you do that? There are a thousand of other ways to do it, but the clarity is what the purpose of digital marketing, and I think it's always the same. Get your users to come to you. And I guess it doesn't matter where you come from, you can come from computing, you can come from, I don't know, cleaning windows, so long as you know that you need to get your user, you are a digital marketer. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah. Sorry, I was just going to add to that. Yeah, I fell into it from designing websites, and I wanted to know what the websites can do after you produce them, and then also from necessity as well. And I thought, okay, there's a whole different new career that's blowing up. And a few of my mates were doing it outside of uni who did do elements of SEO in their courses. And I thought, let me just try that out. But it's definitely led on from web design and necessity just for me. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, I used to work in fashion in New York, so completely different industry. I did that for about 10 years, and then I just switched one day. I was like, I want to do something else. And here I am. So I know, exactly, marketers can come from anywhere really. I'm reminded of Ratatouille. Anyway, yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, agreed. Barry Adams: And this is the point where I admit I don't have a degree. I never finished uni. I started working at a call center two years after I started uni and decided that learning that was not for me, was way too hard. Became an IT guy, server management, and somehow found myself managing a server farm that had intranet pages on it. And then because I hacked together my own website, in my spare time, I knew a bit of HTML. My boss asked me, "Can you change what's on the web servers?" And that's how the whole ball just started rolling basically. And I think in the podcast we did a while ago with SERP's Up where we talked about how people get into a career in digital and in SERPs, we discussed this as well. No matter what your skillset is, what your passion is, there is a role for you in digital and in SERPs. If you're analytical, great. If you're not, but you're very creative, great. If you just like writing stuff, great. If you're a total tech nerd, great. There's always a job role that really suits your skillset and that can really give you fulfillment and achievement within your career. So yeah, it doesn't matter where you come from, it's what you do with it really. Crystal Carter: Yes. And on that motivational note, I'd like to thank you all for joining us today for this episode of SERP's Up. Thank you so much for taking part in my little paddle board thing. I really love seeing all the little cards. Have a wonderful, fantastic rest of BrightonSEO. And bonsoir, goodbye. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Grace Frolich Barry Adams Carmen Dominguez Sukhjinder Singh Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube SEO Resource Center BrightonSEO Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Grace Frolich Barry Adams Carmen Dominguez Sukhjinder Singh Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube SEO Resource Center BrightonSEO Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We've put together some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand at Wix, and I'm joined by the fabulous, amazing, the incredible Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello everyone. Hello on the internet. Hello Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Hi. Crystal Carter: It's been a minute. Mordy Oberstein: It has been a minute. A lot has happened since we last recorded. Crystal Carter: Yeah, internet land podcast people, it has not been a minute. It's been the same amount of time- Mordy Oberstein: No, it's been a week. Crystal Carter: ... it normally is because we just plan things and stuff. But in real life, it's been a minute. Mordy Oberstein: So much has happened. Yeah, things have happened. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I went to BrightonSEO. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I went to New York. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: The Knicks won three playoff games, lost two. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, that's all right. That's all right. But yeah, we've been out in the world meeting people, talking to folks. Mordy Oberstein: I went on vacation. Well, not vacation, like stay-cation and a holiday. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's fine. That's when you get gardening done, that's when somebody gives you a list, they're like, "You know that shelf?" Mordy Oberstein: Gardening, that's where you kill plants, right? Crystal Carter: First you have to buy them. You buy them, and then you just- Mordy Oberstein: And then you kill them. Crystal Carter: ... watch them slowly die. Mordy Oberstein: That's how it goes at my house. You buy the plant and then you kill it. Slowly. A slow death. Crystal Carter: I try. I have a cactus that's clearly… Mordy Oberstein: No, cactus does not count. You don't have to do nothing, it just sits there. Crystal Carter: I didn't do anything and it's dead. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Crystal Carter: It died very, very slowly, but it still looks like a cactus, but I know it's not. I know it's dying. Mordy Oberstein: I have a cactus, a giant cactus. Crystal Carter: Really? Mordy Oberstein: Like a desert cactus. Oh, yeah. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Mordy Oberstein: In the garden, giant cactus. Crystal Carter: That's cool. That's cool. Is it like one of the ones from the cartoons with the arms? Mordy Oberstein: It does. Yeah, it has arms. Crystal Carter: That's nice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I'll send you a picture. Crystal Carter: Cool. Thanks. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter Searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use Wix Studio to work more efficiently with your team, with real time collaboration technology built right into the editor. Because as we all know, SEO is a team sport. And to help us explore how SEO is indeed a team sport, we took the show on the road to BrightonSEO's UK conference where Crystal sat down with Carmen Dominguez, Sukh Singh, Grace Frohlich, and the other Barry. So we won't have your snappiest of SEO news or you should be following this week on social media, because we were in the flesh, well, Crystal was in the flesh, I was on vacation, at one of the industries most prestigious SEO events of the year, BrightonSEO UK. So move over golf, cycling and non doubles tennis, because SEO is a real sport like baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and curling. On this, the 89th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. I left you speechless. Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't know how to jump in. I feel like you did everything you... I feel like you like mic dropped. I feel like that's great. That's a great intro. I'm going to be talking for most of it anyway with the guys. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I'm done. This is all you're going to hear from me for the entire episode because I could not make the conference. Crystal Carter: But it's all good because I think that certainly we as a team do a lot of stuff together. Obviously we plan out the podcast, we do all of that sort of stuff, and I think that the way that you work as a team will inform the SEO that you're able to do, and I certainly think that our approach was there in presence, even if you were not there at the moment. And it was a great conversation. And also shout out to the audience because we were flagship for this, I don't think anybody else is doing this, but if you come to a SERP's Up live broadcast, we might have one of these things that we do, which basically we give the audience paddles and the audience will give us their opinions on some of the questions. And we did this at BrightonSEO in San Diego. Mordy Oberstein: That was great. We went real heavy on the audience interaction. It was a lot of fun. Crystal Carter: It was a lot of fun. And then the people on the squads were asking questions to the audience as well, so some of our panelists were asking questions to the audience as well, which I didn't expect, but was a lot of fun. So it's great to get some feedback on how folks in the audience are feeling about some of the questions as well as some of the great insights from our incredible panel. It was a really, really great panel. Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, I'll see you in the next episode, because here's that panel. Crystal Carter: Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of SERP's Up live. This is the live BrightonSEO Spring 2024 edition of the SERP's Up podcast. I'm going to be joined by some incredible guests who you can see on my left and right for the people who are here. And also, members of the audience, we have some paddles there for you, which are basically for a little bit of interaction. So one side, green is yes, purple is no. So if there's any questions and basically you'd be like, I agree, I do not agree, then please make yourselves heard. We found this to be a little bit of fun, so we hope that you enjoy it as well. I'm going to get started by introducing my fantastic panelists who I have harangued to join me today. First up, all the way over on my left is Mr. Barry Adams, the founder of Award-winning agency, Polemic Digital, and he's a specialist SEO consultant for news publishers focusing on technical SEO, editorial SEO. His clients include many, many publishers including The New York Times, The Independent, lots of other folks as well. Thank you so much for joining us today, Barry. Barry Adams: Thank you very much for having me. Crystal Carter: It's always a pleasure. Barry may or may not swear so if you are sensitive to such things, I'm just going to warn you there now. So yeah, thank you for that. Hello. Hi there, David Bain. David Bain: Hey. Crystal Carter: Welcome, welcome. Welcome lots of other people as well. And so our next person that I'm going to be introducing is the incredible Carmen Dominguez who is joining us from Hallam Digital. She's the head of Organic at Hallam. I first met her at the Hallam Organic event, which was a great event that took place in Nottingham, and it was a warm day. Carmen Dominguez: It was. We had free ice cream though. Crystal Carter: It was, it was delightful and very well received. And it was lovely to have her there, and she spoke about some great stuff. And so I thought if we could get Carmen along, that'd be lovely. She has worked for agencies, she's worked in-house and led a team of many people. You've built a team. Carmen Dominguez: 23 last year and 15 this year. There we go. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So she's got great experience in-house and also working agency side, and she's going to be sharing her insights as well. Thank you, Carmen, for joining us. Carmen Dominguez: Thank you. I'm super excited to be here today. Crystal Carter: And next up is Sukh Singh, who is from I Do SEO, and I've met him at BrightonSEO a few times over the last few years. And I was really excited to get Sukh along for this session, because Sukh has a great perspective from having worked as the head of SEO at an agency for many, many years and now working freelance, working with agency partners and other clients as well. So thank you so much for joining us, Sukh. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome to be here. Crystal Carter: Thank you. And finally on my left is the amazing Grace Frohlich, fellow Californian, and she is joining us from Brain Labs where she works as an SEO consultant, and is managing clients and managing lots of different projects and has both project management experience and also SEO experience, and is a fantastic speaker and a big fan of The Parent Trap as well. And we are really pleased to have you here today, Grace. Grace Frohlich: Thank you. I'm excited. Looking forward to this. Crystal Carter: Wonderful. And then finally, it's me. My name is Crystal Carter. I am the Head of SEO Communications at Wix. I am currently working there, but I have a lot of experience working in agencies, working alongside agencies, working across teams, and I hope to be able to share those insights. And finally, there is y'all good selves, the folks here for BrightonSEO, thank you so much for joining us and for making the trek, because I timed it and it's about five minutes walk from the front door. So we appreciate you and we appreciate you getting your steps in today to join us. If you are not familiar with the SERP's Up podcast, then I thank you for taking that leap of faith and joining us here. The SERP's Up podcast comes out every Wednesday. We get some fantastic speakers. Barry's contributed, Grace has contributed, we've had lots of people contribute as well, some of the people in this room. And yeah, check it out every Wednesday. We have over 80 episodes now, so if you are a fan of podcasts, go and check out the archive. So the topic that we are covering today is SEO as a team sport. And when I say that, I do not mean this kind of team, though, bless the team from Screaming Frog for showing up for cardiovascular exercise with the annual charity BrightonSEO football match. They did a great job there. But we're more thinking about the way that marketing has become so spread out and includes so many different disciplines and so many different specialisms even within SEO. So you have a space where somebody says, "Oh, you're the SEO, you must know every single thing about image SEO." Or, "You must know every single thing about international SEO," or Google Merchant Center or Local SEO. And it can be very, very fractional and very specific. And so I think that SEO, certainly from my perspective, has become a little bit more of a team sport. So we're going to talk a little bit about that and how that works and what that means for us. On the podcast, we have different sections. One of the sections that we do is a section called Deep Thoughts. Thank you. So when we talk deep thoughts, one of the things we think about is the way that Google is progressing. And essentially just on this slide, so for instance, if you were to think about the way Google, as Google's progressing, I'm sure you've all seen this, that it's not just that you have plain blue links or one sort of SERP experience, but that you have SERP experience that includes lots of different channels, particularly for your organic stuff. So you have your YouTube, you'll also have the social that will show on the SERP, you might also have products. And even on the products, they'll have lots of different pages that show up within that. And then everyone's favorite SEO feature is Reddit. So Reddit is showing up in lots of different ways as well. And this is an evolution of Google. And I would like to ask my illustrious panelists, because I've spoken enough now, how has the way that you collaborate across channels evolved as Google has become much more diversified in its SERP as we see more and more of these SERP features? How has the way that you collaborate across channels, across teams changed? Grace Frohlich: Well, I actually first want to know from the audience, how many of you already have SEO Plus paid or other channel collaboration currently? Green, if yes- Crystal Carter: So there's paddles on the chairs. Grace Frohlich: ... purple with no. A lot of green. Crystal Carter: That is coming about, for the listening audience, that's coming up about 80% yes, is what I would say. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, I mean that's great to see, 'cause we really should be working at least with the paid channel already. Google, it's one SERP. Well, it's two channels, but we should be already collaborating with paid at least if not more channels. Crystal Carter: Right. Absolutely. And I think that for users, certainly, they don't even always know whether or not it's paid and they sometimes can't even tell the difference. So if you're trying to connect with the users, and you're trying to connect with the user journey, that should certainly be a part of it. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, absolutely. Especially with the little sponsored, the little label that's barely noticeable now. I remember when it was very, very obvious in the SERP that, oh, you're clicking an ad, but now it's like... Exactly, a lot of users don't really know what they're clicking on. Barry Adams: I miss the days of a yellow background on the ads. Crystal Carter: And I think certainly with product images, it can be sometimes difficult to tell whether or not it's an ad, or whether or not it's organic. Do you find that across your teams that you're working in paid and organic as well? Carmen Dominguez: Absolutely. And I think one of the impacts of not working together, particularly in brand campaigns is that if PPC is not working, or paid in this case, is not working with organic, they don't understand the impact of putting a little bit more of budget in brand will have in the conversions of organic. So it's not only for the clients and the users, it's also for when you are reporting to your clients the results of your work. If you don't collaborate with paid enough, you can maybe put a lot of effort in organic that in the end doesn't get the results, because paid is doing whatever they want on their own. So it's not only within paid and organic, it's also within all the different sub channels that there is in organic images or SERPs, sorry, the snippets. And it's also within the different type of paid and the different types of organic, which I'll want to talk a little bit more about it before. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I was thinking about in terms of the algorithm changes in the last few years, I think that's forced people to be a bit more multichannel, at least in their thought. And I was thinking of actually promoting Grace's blog posts from a few years ago, the T-shaped marketer being the T being having depth or knowledge in, say SEO for example, being SEO, but also touching on paid search, paid social, PR, et cetera, and recognizing the opportunities to pull in additional traffic where you see, oh, there's more opportunity for paid rather than organic for these keywords might take a bit longer to rank, et cetera. So that together with the algorithm thing and an agency environment, I guess, it just comes, that collaboration comes naturally, I think. Crystal Carter: And do you find that it also has to do with skills like different skillset? Because I certainly know that we are now, within the organic side, really having to think much more about LLMs and AI and how that all works. But paid have been working with AI and, oh, this ad has to learn, although it's machine learning and you just wait for days while it spends money and you have no idea how. And people have been working on that for years. And so I feel like a lot of the skills that people have acquired during that paid space can translate more into how we think about organic as well. Carmen Dominguez: I think it's also the other way around. It plays for both. So I wanted to talk a little bit about skills as well within organic. You cannot have the same person, for example, doing tech then is doing content, even though both need to know a little bit about each other. It's a little bit the same with paid, right? If paid doesn't understand EEAT, for example, and EEAT is purely organic, but EEAT is based on how the user engage with your content. So EEAT should also be applicable for paid in the same way that, for example, paid talk about CTR should also be applicable for organic. So in the end, we are talking about getting so many skills with one person in order to be successful, and it's impossible, which actually goes very well into the conversation that we're talking, that specializing and specializing within a specialization, if that makes sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think that when you're thinking about channels and we think about where to specialize in things, which channels do you find are most helpful for growing clients? We've talked a little bit about paid, but are we finding that digital PR, for instance, is as helping with a lot of things? Or are we finding that other elements are helping clients to grow at the moment? Grace Frohlich: I think it's going to be social- Crystal Carter: Social? Grace Frohlich: ... with SEO. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Why do you think that? Grace Frohlich: Well, yeah, I don't have the definitive proof, but from talking with clients and talking cross channely, and strategists within my agency, it's just one of those trends that keeps popping up over and over, basically getting more organic traffic through social. Crystal Carter: Right. I think also there's a question of, with it, you're trying to connect with users and users are on social, and also that with the social thing you get both visibility and you also get clicks, links, et cetera. So there's a potential there. Barry Adams: I think it's not even one specific channel, when I look at how my clients grow their audiences, I work primarily with news publishers, it's all about original reporting and quality of reporting. The news websites that report the news that other websites have first reported are the ones that tend to lose out. Whereas if you're a news publisher that invested in quality investigative journalism and original reporting, you tend to win in the long run. And I think that translates to a lot of other companies as well. If you have a dropshipping e-commerce website, you should have low expectations of long-term success because you're just another middleman. Whereas if you have an original product, you're an original manufacturer or original brand, I think you're probably looking at a healthier future. And I think that's fairly channel independent, be that paid or social or search or email. I think you can always find channels to min/max your growth within the confines of your business. But if your business isn't inherently sound and you don't have a strong brand, I think you should probably change your business. Crystal Carter: So you think that originality is still cutting through in terms of growth? Barry Adams: I see that more and more. I think that's also something that search engines like Google and also organic platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they want to reward originality, they want to reward authenticity. It's hard to do that algorithmically, because it's very much engagement based and you can sort of manipulate engagement figures. But I think they are trying to find ways to measure that and improve that algorithmically so that original brands and quality brands surface more and more, because they realize that's also what our audience wants. The audience wants quality brands and original content and not just rehashed stuff that other websites have done before and maybe worse or better. Crystal Carter: And I think in the space of LLMs, I think it's even more important to be unique in that space in order to see growth. And I don't know if you all wanted to add anything more. Sukhjinder Singh: I was thinking about EEAT bolstering social as well, or social bolstering EEAT. So the experience and authority of the authors and the website as well, and seeing that engagement on social. And also with social being a good research tool, I just saw... Oh God, his name's blanking me now. I'm going to have to comment on it later. Crystal Carter: Steven Bartlett? He's on all the socials. Sukhjinder Singh: No, actually I was at an SEO talk about an hour ago on using TikTok for keyword research in terms of topical research. And then even if the resulting keywords have zero search volume, he did a case study where he still used those keywords and saw an uptick in search console data in impressions and click-throughs, et cetera, even with such volume zero keywords. So I think it's a good tool there. Carmen Dominguez: I'm sorry, go. No, no. I was going to say that I think in the end, everything is related. Right? If you have a good brand, probably you're going to be all over social, and if you are all over social, your users are going to be engaging with you and they're going to end up going back to your website. So I think the whole point of change is not specific areas, it's actually looking at the overall. So we have a good brand, we have to showcase EEAT in every single possible channel, and that is what is going to make you successful. And on that, what you were saying, I also recently did a test on particularly TikTok and Instagram with one of my e-commerce clients, and actually getting lots of links coming from TikTok made all the people clicking on my products. And my products now rank, even though I don't have no longer people coming from TikTok just because the clicks made Google to recognize my products. So it does have an impact being in social, but also my brand now is much better recognized in TikTok as well because of that. So people come from brand much, much often. So I think it's all related into making sure that we do all an organic strategy where we look at all the different channels all at once rather than just single pointing different areas, if that makes sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So I think that flows in next to our next session where we're talking about team evolution. So if you're in a space where you are finding, for instance, that TikTok is a really good channel for your brand or that you're getting good traffic from Instagram, for instance, how are you thinking about which skills... How are you thinking about how you're connecting with your team and how you need to evolve your team in order to sit alongside those channels? Are you thinking that you need to maybe get another social media person or maybe work alongside a social media person? Or are you thinking that one person needs to suddenly become an SEO and a social media? Carmen Dominguez: And it's super difficult actually. And one of the things I have done with my team recently is changed the whole structure of it. So in agency, normally we're used to having one SEO person, one technical SEO person, content, digital PR, and they all work in silos even though they work toward the same objective. For me, what I have done is try to make sure that everyone has the basic SEO knowledge of everything, but then they specialize farther away. But they work together in squads, which actually every week they're like, "Okay, I found this issue in the technical SEO that might have an impact in content. I'm not an expert in content. Content person, tell me what you think." And then the content person also knows about EEAT, who collaborates with the social media person to try to elevate EEAT. And then social media also communicates. It's way harder, because it means that you need to be upskilling constantly, right? You cannot just know one thing and that's it. And it means that collaboration needs to be tighter, which is very difficult, particularly if you work remote. So because Google is changing so fast and the SERPs are changing so fast, you need to change as fast. But humans, we are slower, right? So it is difficult. I think we need to change a lot how we collaborate as teams and we need to forget about silos. How do we do that, become a reality, is another thing. And I'm not sure how you feel. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, exactly the same. Yeah. So I was working in an agency up until a year and a half ago, and at that time we did try to bring in processes and loads of opportunities to have these collaborative conversations. And as a freelancer now I can attest to how easy it was to upskill and how that comes in an agency versus now, like I spend way more time reading and stuff, which is great because there's lots more podcasts like this now. But also, you have to work harder as a freelancer to collaborate. But if you're in an agency where you have a team, you've got that immediacy there, which is great. But then what I struggled with was the same thing with you, with communication. So creating enough opportunities like team huddles and all this stuff, but also incentivizing it and saying, "Okay, what are our shared KPIs? And how can we help you guys?" And vice versa. And just getting them bought into the other channels outside of SEO and get them bought into the multichannel collaboration or how it contributes to the global KPIs and the SEO and vice versa. So yeah, I can't quite explain it. I used slides at the time on all this stuff, but basically just getting them bought in and having way more meetings. And then finding out what's the important KPIs to them and what motivates them and getting collaboration that way. Grace Frohlich: Yes, I agree with both of you actually. I actually spoke about this in the Women in Tech SEO conference in March about cross channel with paid, how to get paid and SEO to work together. So if you want to check that out, I think that can be a transferable kind of a process that I talked about. But yeah, everything you just said, getting to know their challenges for the other channel, getting to know what their goals are and KPIs, and aligning with regular meetings. Of course, easier said than done, I can attest to that. But a lot of it... And also don't underestimate building a relationship with the other channel, the people. There's people behind these channels, so that's also really important. Crystal Carter: And I think, can I just, questions from the audience? So if you've seen the little paddles, so green is yes, and it's like purply blue is no. Do you find that you're collaborating with more people who are working outside of your core channel? Yes for green, or purple for no. Wow. I have 100% green y'all, that's 100% yes. I think that's really fascinating and I think that's really, really good to see, especially in the dynamic SERP space that we're working in. Barry, you're working with a lot of clients who are working, like we were talking earlier about the Mail for instance, and they are huge on social, they're huge on lots of different channels. How are you finding, because we're talking about ways that people communicate, how do you find that you keep in the loop or you connected between what's happening in the different spaces? Barry Adams: I’ll tell you almost most of my clients engage me for a very small specific role. And I personally haven't worked in a team for over 10 years, just me and the voices in my head as a freelancer. But I do find it very interesting how it's evolved in who hires me and in the context that they hire me. Where previously when I came in in the early stages of my freelance career, I was sort of like the SEO guy, and everything SEO related I had to take that by the scruff of the neck for that client and do it. Whereas now, a lot of them have very detailed in-house capabilities. They have good editorial SEOs, for example, and they have good technical people who have some SEO knowledge. So when they engage with a freelancer like myself, it's a much more specific skillset and specific project that they need that they don't have or don't want to develop in-house. And for me, that shows how far the industry has already come and how far the specialties with the industry have already come. Especially in news where I work, you have people who are very, very good at, for example, the editorial side of SEO, optimizing articles and site structures. But the technical side is something that they probably don't need hardcore internal capabilities for when you can just once every year or two years get an outsider in to do a sanity check on your website. And that shows to me that they already have the defined roles. It's not enough to be an SEO anymore, you need to be a specific type of SEO. I think as your career progresses in SEO, again the concept of the T-shaped marketer, you even have a T-shape within the T-shape where it becomes a much more narrow T. When I started doing this, I'm old enough to remember when the job title was webmaster. I had that job title for a while and you did everything. You did email, you did social, you did SERPs, you did the whole thing. And then I picked one specialty, SEO, and now within SEO it became technical. And within there it's now news SEO. So I think that's where if you want your career to develop, you sort of have to hang your coat on a specific skillset and discipline. That doesn't mean that's always going to be your career because there's overlaps with other channels and other capabilities that you can develop. I mean, fortunately, search is not going to die anytime soon, no matter how often SEO has been proclaimed deceased. We're still alive and kicking and growing. But I think you sort have to find out what you like doing, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and say, "Right, let's go and try and make this work." Let's become a great analytical SEO or a great tech SEO or a great editorial SEO, and there will always be roles within those specialties that really work for you. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think that within that space, there's always devs. No matter what kind of thing there's always devs. And when we're thinking about this, because I feel like, I don't know, maybe this is just me in my little silo, but I feel like devs are devs and they do deving. And so do you have to explain to them when you're having conversations with devs that are taking into account multichannel traffic, multichannel dependencies, for instance, are you finding that those conversations are changing that you need to give them more context about this is a landing page, not just for SEO, this is a landing page for somebody coming from TikTok or that sort of thing? Are you finding that you're having those conversations? Grace Frohlich: I'm finding that we have to explain to devs less of the importance of SEO, because I think more and more, at least clients, they have a foundational understanding of what it is. So because those clients are like the C-suite and the upper management, they give the devs, okay, these are your goals, your KPIs, and a lot of times they align with SEO KPIs. Carmen Dominguez: Yeah, I was going to say too. Yeah, actually when you asked that question, I was thinking when I said I haven't been in SEO as long as Barry has been, but I remember when I started and I started writing content for websites, it was an eternal fight, constantly, constantly fighting. And now most of the time when you talk to devs, they know that there are certain things that they cannot do. They know that there are SEO areas that they shouldn't take so personally when they get feedback on. And I actually, I'm enjoying very much working with devs recently. Once you are able to understand the basics, I think the key is being able to communicate what you're doing, the changes or what you need to do, and what's the point of a website. It's not just to be there. Once you explain that and you create relationship, because that's very important, I think it's particularly easy. Or I think I found, in recent times, it's easier to work with them. Crystal Carter: Okay. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I was going to second that because I started in 2009 with SEO and working with devs at that point. And I guess fair play on their side, they didn't really know the impact or the value, it wasn't part of their roadmap or KPIs or anything. So I learned from that point how to get to know them, I guess. It comes back to relationship building. And I guess, sounds a bit wishy-washy, but emotional intelligence, trying to figure out, okay, what really motivates you? Trying to figure out the body language. Oh, they didn't like that request. Or at the start of my career, I'd have to create a standards document literally on paper and grade their websites, brand new websites, so there's a website division of my first agency. And then I put it on their desk, and then so immediately they're being like, "Oh, yeah, cool." And then they're just like, whatever. And so you're immediately not their favorite person, and I have to find myself to ingratiate myself to them, go to the pub, whatever, I think, but also figure out, okay, how can I get my stuff signed off and kind of relate it all to them? And I think it's become way easier now with SEO integrations in CMSs, whatever. And also it's a bit more word from Google on what impacts what on the website. So it's way easier, but for me it's always been relationship building and figuring out what motivates them. Crystal Carter: Barry? Barry Adams: Yeah, I have a notorious example where I was presenting my findings in a Zoom call to a client and the lead dev was in the call as well, and he counted me on a specific point, and I was maybe lacking emotional intelligence in my response, and frankly, I was a bit of a dick. Anyway, the call went on and we went through the audit and then the CEO wanted to show me something, so he started sharing his screen. He didn't realize he had a Slack channel open where that lead dev had just messaged him saying, this guy is a dick. I actually still want that on a T-shirt. But he was fair, I was being a dick, but I was also right. But it also taught me something that if you want to get stuff done, don't be a dick. And I think in the past, and sometimes even now, I come across as maybe too forceful and too sure of myself, and sometimes we need to look at the context in which we make these recommendations. 'Cause I am an SEO guy with a big SEO hammer, so for me, everything looks like an SEO nail. But I've learned that there's a lot of other moving pieces in an organization that have very different goals, very different objectives, and you have to weigh these things up. And I think I've gotten better at providing the context of a recommendation where I say, "Well, this would be an ideal scenario for SEO, but it might hurt your commercials," or it might hurt usability, or it might have another impact on another aspect of the website. And I think if you frame recommendations or best practices in that context, you actually end up getting done more often than not, because they realize that you realize there's other stuff happening, but you still make that recommendation knowing that the other stuff is happening. So it's probably worthwhile doing the recommendation, whereas if you just say, "Oh, you need to get this shit done right now," that's just not going to fly. Crystal Carter: And question to the audience, are you finding that working with devs is... So green is easier and blue for not easier? Okay, that's probably like 90% easier. I'm finding that really interesting. There's someone in the audience who's like, "Mm-hmm." So yeah, I think that's really interesting. So yeah, I think that's really interesting. Let's go on to squad goals. So here's the scenario. You need to assemble a squad for a new project. You need to get your crew together. It might be people within your team, it might be freelancers, it might be a co-agency, it might be whoever that you're thinking of. What are the things that you're looking for in a new collaborator, and how do you know that this is the match for you? Is it swipe right or swipe left know? No, it's swipe left? Is that right? Sukhjinder Singh: Right? Crystal Carter: I don't know. I don't do them. Okay. So yeah, Sukh, can we start with you? How do you know that this is a good match, we can collaborate, this is going to be a good setup? Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I'm actually doing this at the moment. So as a freelancer, I'm trying to build a network of people in other channels like I had with the agency setup, and I guess I'm doing my own EEAT evaluation of them. So I'm looking at all of their engagements, so not just on their website to say what they've done, but their recommendations on LinkedIn, see if they're legitimate, and then talking to them and looking at case studies, anything like that, and the work history. It's really revealing, so if they're listening to it... So trying to figure out, because as you know, even when hiring people on the agency side, it's really hard to drill down the people that have got real experience. So trying to do that evaluation and then chatting to them and then just starting with a small project. So something that I can get them to chip in on with a small amount of budget and see how they do. And for me, it's important to see the results, but also their personality and if I can work well with them, and if they're reasonable and flexible to a point. So that's how I do it. Carmen Dominguez: And the personality part for me is very important. Beyond the skills, there are lots of people who are very good skills, and that doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to be working well with them. So for me, being aware of my own personality, I might be a little bit intense just to say, it's my Spanish blood. So when I have an idea, I want to go after the idea, but I know that I need to have someone who calms me down. So having someone that is the contrary of me in my team is going to be better for the project. So I look for that, I look for someone who's a doer because I'm a dreamer. So I want to do this, I want to do it now, everyone focused. I need someone who actually will do it, because then if I don't put the time in to do the thing, then it won't happen. So I need someone who is a realistic, someone who is a doer and someone who also has visibility of everything. So independently of the skill sets that everyone has, which is important, I also need to have all of this. But there are also core attitudes that are very important for me, which is honesty. I prefer someone to tell me, "You are a dickhead, Carmen." Ooh, sorry, I said that word, I realize. But I prefer someone who is honest to me than actually says, "Yes, yes, yes," and nothing comes across. And I judge people on actions and not words, so if someone delivers what they say they do and they tell me this is feasible or not, I'm definitely going to be working with them. So core attitudes and people who have different personalities is, for me, what makes a team work well. Crystal Carter: Amazing. Yeah, I think hiring for complimentary skills for the gaps that you have and also being aware of those gaps that you have gets really important. Carmen Dominguez: Which is actually not that common, doing this self-analysis of, okay, who am I? Because maybe I think I'm perfect, but not really. So being aware of the things that you are good at and you are not as good at, it's very important for you to build a good team. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I agree. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, I agree with those points. I will also say if you're trying to build a team, going back to the football, well, soccer, soccer analogy, you don't want a team full of strikers. And also you don't want a team full of keepers like goalkeepers, so you want to diversify. So I would say choose people with different backgrounds. Don't underestimate the value of diversity when you're choosing a team, because they'll have different perspectives, they'll have different backgrounds, different ways of thinking. So that can only make your team stronger. Crystal Carter: And Barry? Barry Adams: I haven't worked in a team for a very long time, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I think I enjoy that part of it. I've never been a real people person, to be highly honest. I do find the clients that I enjoy working with the most are the ones who, I don't know how to describe that common denominator, but they're all in one way or another, extremely good at their jobs and know exactly what they want from external parties. And I'm grateful that I get to be that external partner. I find it very educational, projects where I learn as much from the client as the client hopefully learns from me. And I think that's hard to select for, either somebody has that passion and is that good at their job or they're not. But there's clients who bring me along whenever they move jobs, they work with one publisher and then a few years later they move to a different publisher and they get to work with them again in a different context. But it's still just a really pleasant collaboration, because you get to know each other's ins and outs and know exactly what they're good at and how you can compliment their skillset. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah. That's awesome. And I have a question to the squad as well, or to the squad here. Also, if you're in the back, you can come in. There's spaces. There are spaces, it's totally fine. Please do come in. Yeah. So one of the things that we've been finding across our teams is that when we're thinking about these things, one of the things you mentioned, Sukh, was that sometimes when you're trying to hire, it's hard to tell which skills people have. Question to the audience. When you're thinking about either hiring or collaborating or whichever with folks, are you finding that AI, people using AI, is a help or a hindrance? Are you finding that people with AI profiles or you finding that people are having AI in their CVs? Are you finding that help is a help or hindrance? So green for help and blue for hindrance on that. Okay, we got a lot of blue. We're about 50/50 there, so that's very interesting. I think that that goes back to one of the points from Carmen that you'd rather know where somebody's limits are in terms of their skills for sure, rather than somebody faking it until they make it necessarily. We are tight on time, so I'm going to move to the next section, which kind of covers that, which is awkward conversations. So when you're working with partners, also the partners are also teams, Barry. So when you're working with partners, when you're working with clients, when you're working across your team, when you're working as part of a collaborative SEO venture, sometimes there's awkward conversations. Sometimes somebody takes credit for something that you're pretty sure was you, and I get a bit upset about that because I'm like, that's my gold star, thank you very much. Or sometimes you're working with a client and they say, "Hey, we want to bring in this other agency." And you're like, "Who are they?" I can see somebody shaking their head. So actually I saw a little bit of reaction to that, so another question to the audience. Okay, and so the client is on the phone with you and they say, "Hey, I like to get this other agency involved." And green for this is good, or blue for I don't know on that. Okay, that's mostly blue. Okay. One more second. This is George. So that's mostly blue. That's my gut instinct. My gut instinct is why, why do you need somebody else? But yeah, other people in the panel, how do you feel about these conversations when this happens? Sukhjinder Singh: I was trying to think of a good example because yeah, it's difficult. I guess early on in the career, I struggled to figure out how to... I used data basically to say, "Oh, but you can see by the last report like, oh, we're hitting your KPIs," or this, that and the other. And if we're not, I'm like, "Boss, what could we do about this kind of thing?" And then obviously I've learned to look at, so basically always using the KPIs as the goal in the reports and trying to develop that customer relationship where I can tell ahead of time, hopefully, if they're thinking of doing that. And I've been in that situation early in my career a few times where it came down to them deciding between us and the other agency based on maybe trivial things as well. Like, price, obviously not trivial, but other things like, oh, the last two reports had an error on it or something like that. And so I'd always try to plan from that point in advance to say, okay, I'm not going to make any mistakes. And I make sure all the communications are on point and even look out for cues like, oh, you're not happy with this and that, or something bad happened a few times in a row, maybe they're going to look at another agency. And obviously if an email pops up on Google Analytics or something, as a user I always think, oh crap, someone's doing an audit or something. So I try and future-proof that, but if I was confronted with that combo, I'd kind of fall back on the data, but also hopefully use the relationship that we'd built up by that point to say, "Look, what's going on?" I'll be completely honest with you, if you could be honest with me. This didn't go too well. This went okay. Here's our actual strengths and weaknesses. And I learned that from my old boss as well, Ann Stanley, where she was really honest with people to say, oh, this is what we're good at and bad at. And they appreciated that and say, oh, actually we'll stick with you, going back to your point, Carmen, on honesty, like, oh, we actually trust these guys. So maybe they can help us find a good PR person or whatever, 'cause they've got that gap in the team at the moment. So a bit of a long answer on that one. Crystal Carter: No, no. Carmen Dominguez: No, actually, I was going to just... I agree with you 100%. And having been in the client side, so having been a client myself and now working in agency, one of the things that I see as a negative when I see in an agency is when someone try to bullshit me. If you are trying to bullshit me with whatever, I'm going to say another bad word, crap, then the trust is broken. So I think for me, the most important part when building relationship is being able to have the hard conversations at the very beginning. If you don't have the hard conversations, trust breaks. And if trust breaks, you're going to have a competitor coming in. And that is actually your own fault. Sorry for being scared. And I know that it takes guts to be able to have the hard conversations because it's scary, if you are a freelancer particularly, you might even lose the food on your plate. But it's building that relationship, in my opinion, will actually will make your clients defend you, even if you are not meeting the KPI. So always building relationships with trust, even if things go wrong, I think is a way. Because in the end, we're all humans, and if we get attached to people that are honest to us and we are honest to them, then they're going to defend us more. So in the end, it's having a good relationship with people and being human I think is... I don't get scared when they bring other people, even being honest, of course. But yeah, I think that's my recommendation. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Interesting. Grace Frohlich: I think my knee-jerk reaction is why would they bring in someone? Crystal Carter: Right. Grace Frohlich: But at the same time, if you think about it, it's really the client's right to have a second opinion. We do it all the time with doctors, for example, if you want a second opinion from another doctor because your health is on the line. This client's website health is on the line, so yeah, it's their right to bring in a second opinion. So in that sense, I think I'm more okay with it, especially if that other agency proves my point. So it's more of an opportunity to do that. Sukhjinder Singh: That's a good feeling as well. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Barry Adams: I had this exact thing actually happen to me where I was brought in to do a specific piece of work for a client and they told me, "Oh, there's another agency who's also doing the exact same piece of work, so no pressure, Barry." And I was a little bit, like this was a fairly big, well-known agency, and I'm just a freelancer sitting in a dinky office in Belfast. So I was feeling the pressure and I felt a bit like, oh crap, I really need to be on my A-game here. But that actually motivated me to do a really, really good job, which I hope I would've done anyway, to be entirely honest. And it turned out that what that other agency presented and what I presented had slightly different angles and complimented each other really, really well, and gave the client the whole holistic view that they were looking for. So that turned out to be a fantastic project for the client as well as for both the other agency and for me. So yeah, I mean, I suck at awkward conversations in general. I think most of us don't like those. I fully agree with what's said before, honesty is always the best approach there as well. And just try not to shy away from saying the hard things that sometimes need to be said. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easier said than done, but definitely something to think about. Okay, so we're going to move on to another section. In the podcast we sometimes have a fun game I like to play, Fun with People Also Ask. So we can do this with everyone on the audience and also everyone on the panel as well. So this is the first question from People Also Ask, so green for yes and blue for no. Do social links help SEO? We have mostly green. I have some blue. And Google keeps going back and forth being like, oh, it's not a big deal. Yes, it is a big deal. Oh, you're flipping around. Any opinions on this? Barry Adams: Yeah, correlation, not causation. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Anyone else, any two cents on that particular one? Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I'm going to go with the indirectly for the safe bet. I think, okay, long spiel, the visibility of the content and all that. Yeah, the more people see your content, they give you legit links and all that. So, yeah. Crystal Carter: So kind of sort of. Okay. All right. Okay. Here's another one in the same sort of thing. So green for yes, and blue for no. Is social media marketing off-page SEO? It's in the same sort of area. Would you call it the same? People are like, I don't know about this question at all. I've got a lot of blue, there's absolutely no... Interesting. Very, very interesting. Any opinions on that? It's a similar question to the one before, if I'm completely honest. No? Okay. We'll move on. We'll move on. We'll move on. Okay. Okay. People also ask, which is harder, SEO or PPC? So I'm going to go... Oh, we have intakes of breath from the audience here. Okay, so we have green for SEO and blue for PPC. Oh. Carmen Dominguez: I think we're biased. Crystal Carter: We're biased. Let's look- Grace Frohlich: I mean, this looks like a biased audience, right? Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. That's fine. Barry Adams: I actually think advertising is harder than SEO nowadays. Carmen Dominguez: Really? Crystal Carter: What? Barry Adams: I really do think that. Carmen Dominguez: But AI does everything for you in PPC. So... Barry Adams: AI could do everything for you in SEO. Carmen Dominguez: Well, that's true. That's true for an answer. Barry Adams: Yeah. Not in the same end result, everything being quite... Yeah. Carmen Dominguez: Yeah, it's true, it's true. Barry Adams: I think- Crystal Carter: Barry, read the room. Barry Adams: Yeah, I know I'm at BrightonSEO and I'm an SEO guy, but the paid advertising landscape nowadays, I mean, my goodness, the technology stacks and the targeting. I mean, I'm not an ad guy, but I talk to ad people, I'm like, I really don't want that job. I really don't want that job. But they spend more money every year and they get less and less back for it. Whereas with SEO, I think we're still on a growth curve. With advertising, the margins are narrower and narrower and narrower, and it's becoming really, really hard to have success in advertising. Carmen Dominguez: I think there is more pressure as well in PPC. You need to be reporting on a weekly basis. You need to be checking all the data constantly. But I also think that there are lots of people applying the same rules to SEO and PPC these days. So the pressure is coming. It really depends how you look at it. If you do SEO properly, I think it's more difficult, but a little bit chiller, less pressure. Depends. Crystal Carter: Okay. And just to say these are all actual People Also Ask questions, so yeah. Okay. So this is just a little shout-out to the grammatical incorrections, I did it myself, to the grammar that you see in People Also Ask. Is digital PR a SEO? So green for yes, and a blue for no. I got a lot of green. And I would probably say that's like 75-ish with my ballpark sort of thing. I find digital PR really fascinating. There's some really interesting campaigns. I think though it's kind of just campaign marketing, if I'm completely honest. I think it covers the same. Do other people have various- Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, it's definitely, it's its own beast. Because I used to partner with a colleague that did pure content and PR, digital PR, and she was really good at it because there's so many aspects of it. The journalist relationship, knowing what stuff they need in a brief and all that. Finding the story and that loads of data. And just from doing ideation sessions with her and other elements of the team just for ideas out there, she'd be able to structure a story and find it way easier. And so there was a lot of upskilling involved on my part to figure out, okay, how can I build links like this? And it was just a case of, well, to what Barry said before that, know what your strengths are and specialize in that and recognize it in other people. And so that's why I'm trying to partner with digital PRs as well to fill that link building gap. Carmen Dominguez: I mean, I was a digital PR and we did everything with SEO in our heads. So I will say yes, because we were using the SEO strategy to follow and create the links. Obviously, it's beyond just simple SEO, it also depends on how you see SEO. I see digital PR as part of organic and SEO is part of organic, so it depends on your definition of SEO. But I will say it is. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay, so we're moving on to the next one. This is specifically for the live podcast session. This is the one that I like. This is a section. These are again, actual predictive text from Google, and this one is for the predictive text for Can You Learn SEO, which is can you learn SEO by yourself? I know a lot of people... I've got somebody up already. So from the audience, green for yes, blue for no. Very interesting. So that's lots and lots of green. I've got a little bit of no, or a little bit of blue, so I'd probably say that's probably 90-ish percent saying yes. And I think this is interesting. So Barry, you're close to the microphone, so I'm going to come to you. What are the advantages or disadvantages of being a self-taught SEO? Barry Adams: As a self-taught SEO and one who teaches SEO now, I wish there were courses in SEO when I first learned it. The best learning environment that I learned as a self thought SEO was become part of an SEO community where you could ask questions, where there was no stupid questions basically, where you could just ask anything. That for me was a real breakthrough moment when I think I really embraced SEO and really started to learn it. So self-taught, yes, but still self-taught within a community. I think you will need to have people around you to ask these questions. I don't think there's such a thing as a completely self-taught SEO, 'cause you always learn from other people who are willing to share information, answer your questions. And I think if you're an experienced SEO, you should see it as maybe part of your remit to pass that on to others and be generous with your time and your knowledge and allow people to ask those questions, 'cause realistically that's how you learned it as well. Carmen Dominguez: I was going to say I learned by myself, but really it wasn't by myself because I went to the internet, I asked people. I tested things on my own, and I put the results on forums that people replied to me. So really, is it? Yeah, I didn't have a teacher and I didn't learn at university, but I had a whole community, which I think is one of the most beautiful things of the SEO industry is the community that we have. So you can, but it's not on your own. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, the community is great now, because when I started there wasn't really much of that. And also no SEO courses, at university anyway, so I'd have to do a couple of smaller courses. And then mostly learnt in the agency environment. And also, funnily, I was talking to a colleague of mine who didn't go to uni, and we both worked at the first agency I did in 2010. And straight out of college, he just got an internship and doing SEO, and now he's head of a big department and he's doing really well. Didn't have to pay any of his uni fees and all that stuff, and so he saved with all of that, and he just learned on the job. Pretty much what I did, 'cause I did a web design course and I quit web design to do SEO. And I just thought that's a perfect example of being able to learn in that environment as an internship, or if someone just gives you a chance and you just slowly build up your salary according to how much you learn kind of thing. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. I don't know if you wanted to jump in on that one. No? That's fine. That's fine. Okay. Okay. Okay. Next one. Next one. Next one. Okay. So the next one, this I thought was interesting. So if you type in, what is SEO in, you get a lot of different things. So it's like what is SEO in marketing? What is SEO in business? What is SEO in YouTube? What is SEO in web development? What is SEO in social media? What is SEO in journalism? What is SEO in Etsy? Okay. So my question is is that, do you find that SEO is different in these different spaces, or do you think SEO is SEO? So green for SEO is SEO, and blue for SEO is different in these different spaces. Interesting. Okay. So we have probably 70% people saying that SEO is different in all these different spaces. I think that's really interesting. And I think to the panel, my question is, do you think that clients understand that there are differences in these spaces? Carmen Dominguez: Clients don't understand SEO. So let alone in all the different channels. The amount of times I have to five, because I cannot get them to rank number one in one week is just mental. So no, I don't think they understand the difference, but I also think SEO is SEO. So the point is, you get your content to be visible to users and users engaged with it and that applies to Chat, to YouTube, to Google, to TikTok, to whatever you do. So I think SEO is always the same, but it's done in different ways. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, I was thinking about it in terms of the definition of SEO versus an SEO job spec and to see if there's any correlation. And nine times out of 10, because I was looking at job specs, I was like, oh, there's way more things people are asking for versus what you would define as SEO typically. Which is weird because I've always had a problem with SEO as a term, because I thought, well, is it more like organic marketing? But then you can't say organic marketing 'cause then clients aren't aware really what that is, and they think, oh, I'm just going to go with the SEO. So yeah, I think it's something that we're stuck with in terms of a term for lead generation, whatever. But really I think it's way more than what you define as SEO. Grace Frohlich: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. If we're talking about semantics, SEO is just search engines for search engines, right? But as you said, are we talking about organic search or just organic anything? Then yeah, I mean, I think it can be diversified into all these different spaces. Carmen Dominguez: Actually, I'm talking to more about that if anyone wants to come to my talk. It's no SEO. Let's talk about organic. So, self-promotion. Crystal Carter: Carmen, when's your talk? Carmen Dominguez: When? At 3:00. Crystal Carter: Three o'clock, go see Carmen. Carmen Dominguez: I think. Auditorium one. Just find me, I'm the only Carmen, I think. Crystal Carter: Barry, Is SEO, SEO or is SEO different? Barry Adams: I think I agree with what Carmen said earlier. It's still SEO, but the tactics are different. When I do SEO for news websites, you cannot apply the same tactics as you do for e-commerce. But in the end, it is about getting your content in front of an audience that uses an organic search engine. So, yeah. Crystal Carter: Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Finally, we have another section. So I looked up digital marketers needs and Google changed it to digital marketing needs. And it said, digital marketing needs coding, digital marketing needs a degree, digital marketing needs math, digital marketing needs a laptop, which I thought was interesting. Does digital marketing need a degree? And I think this is interesting, 'cause I've heard people say that you cannot be a technical SEO or you can't be an SEO if you don't know HTML or you don't know how to code. I've heard people say you can't be a marketer without a degree, I've heard people say that sort of thing. And so I'm interested in this idea of gatekeeping. So here's a question to the audience and the last question of the day before... And thank you so much for joining us for this session. Do you think there is one way to be a digital marketer? Green for yes and blue for no. That is 100% no. People listening on the internet, there are many ways to become a digital marketer. I have an English literature degree and I've worked in marketing my entire life. And I know somebody else who's a fantastic SEO and his degree is in anthropology. He's amazing. So I think that there's many, many ways to be an SEO, a digital marketer. What are your thoughts on that? Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah, my degree was in multimedia computing, so it didn't really specialize in anything. A bit of coding, a bit of 3D, whatever. And then I did web design for four years and then quit, and then there was a credit crunch, and then I changed careers. I thought, let me try something different, no jobs anymore. So yeah, I think... What was I going to say? Yeah, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, learning from scratch. And yeah, I just found my way to SEO. I completely lost my train of thought. Crystal Carter: It's all good. It's all good. Sukhjinder Singh: It's almost finished as well. Crystal Carter: Took a new journey. Carmen Dominguez: I think that I know where you're trying to go. Myself, I am a translator. I'd never studied marketing. I didn't know what marketing was when I got into it, but I knew that what I needed to do is someone to read my content. So I needed, as a translator, I needed someone to read my content. As a journalist, you need someone to read your content. So in the end, that is what you want to do as a digital marketer. You need to convince your user to read your contents, basically. Yes, there is one way to be a digital marketer, which is making sure that you engage with the user and the user comes to you. How do you do that? There are a thousand of other ways to do it, but the clarity is what the purpose of digital marketing, and I think it's always the same. Get your users to come to you. And I guess it doesn't matter where you come from, you can come from computing, you can come from, I don't know, cleaning windows, so long as you know that you need to get your user, you are a digital marketer. Sukhjinder Singh: Yeah. Sorry, I was just going to add to that. Yeah, I fell into it from designing websites, and I wanted to know what the websites can do after you produce them, and then also from necessity as well. And I thought, okay, there's a whole different new career that's blowing up. And a few of my mates were doing it outside of uni who did do elements of SEO in their courses. And I thought, let me just try that out. But it's definitely led on from web design and necessity just for me. Grace Frohlich: Yeah, I used to work in fashion in New York, so completely different industry. I did that for about 10 years, and then I just switched one day. I was like, I want to do something else. And here I am. So I know, exactly, marketers can come from anywhere really. I'm reminded of Ratatouille. Anyway, yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, agreed. Barry Adams: And this is the point where I admit I don't have a degree. I never finished uni. I started working at a call center two years after I started uni and decided that learning that was not for me, was way too hard. Became an IT guy, server management, and somehow found myself managing a server farm that had intranet pages on it. And then because I hacked together my own website, in my spare time, I knew a bit of HTML. My boss asked me, "Can you change what's on the web servers?" And that's how the whole ball just started rolling basically. And I think in the podcast we did a while ago with SERP's Up where we talked about how people get into a career in digital and in SERPs, we discussed this as well. No matter what your skillset is, what your passion is, there is a role for you in digital and in SERPs. If you're analytical, great. If you're not, but you're very creative, great. If you just like writing stuff, great. If you're a total tech nerd, great. There's always a job role that really suits your skillset and that can really give you fulfillment and achievement within your career. So yeah, it doesn't matter where you come from, it's what you do with it really. Crystal Carter: Yes. And on that motivational note, I'd like to thank you all for joining us today for this episode of SERP's Up. Thank you so much for taking part in my little paddle board thing. I really love seeing all the little cards. Have a wonderful, fantastic rest of BrightonSEO. And bonsoir, goodbye. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

What is the future of SEO shaping up to be? How will AI change the landscape in SEO? What impact will Google have for SEO in the future? Brace yourselves for this blimey incredible feature of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as Wix’s own Crystal Carter travels to the land of The Beatles and Buckingham Palace to take on BrightonSEO UK! For this special edition episode, we have not one, not two, but THREE super guests to shed light on all things SEO. Joshua George, Lidia Infante, and Rebecca Tomasis join the show live in Brighton to evaluate the potential future of SEO as we know it. We explore answers to Google content, AI utilization, and brand strategy and much more in this comprehensive SEO special. Adapt to the future of SEO and learn how to find ultimate value in your content on this MEGA episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast… UK style! Back Trending topics for SEO in 2024 What is the future of SEO shaping up to be? How will AI change the landscape in SEO? What impact will Google have for SEO in the future? Brace yourselves for this blimey incredible feature of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast as Wix’s own Crystal Carter travels to the land of The Beatles and Buckingham Palace to take on BrightonSEO UK! For this special edition episode, we have not one, not two, but THREE super guests to shed light on all things SEO. Joshua George, Lidia Infante, and Rebecca Tomasis join the show live in Brighton to evaluate the potential future of SEO as we know it. We explore answers to Google content, AI utilization, and brand strategy and much more in this comprehensive SEO special. Adapt to the future of SEO and learn how to find ultimate value in your content on this MEGA episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast… UK style! Previous Episode Next Episode Special episode | October 4, 2023 | 65 MIN 00:00 / 1:05:34 This week’s guests Lidia Infante 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 Master in Digital Business, and is a regular speaker at international SEO events such as MozCon, BrightonSEO, and WTSFest. Joshua George Joshua is the founder of ClickSlice, a results driven SEO agency in London. He has almost a decade of experience as an SEO consultant and has provided SEO training for the British government. 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 SERP's Up. Aloha Mahala for joining the SUP podcast. We're projecting out some group new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the incredible, the fabulous, the absolutely unparalleled, unequivocal, un... I don't have any more adjectives. The head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, Mordy Oberstein, and hello people of the internet. Thank you for that. Fantastic. Amazing, incredible, stupendous, fantastic- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. I guess that- Crystal Carter: I did fantastic twice. Mordy Oberstein: No, I always do that by the way. How uncouth of me to not have another un to have added to that. Also, uncouth is a very underrated word. Crystal Carter: Oh. I think it's underused. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Don't underestimate it. You can under evaluate its importance in the English language. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's undefeated. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's not undeserving of whatever amount. Okay. The SURP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can also be a part of the future of website building with the all new Wix Studio. Explore how your agency can level up with the new customization abilities added to Wix Studio over at wix.com/studio. This as we take up the future of SEO in 2024. Not 2025, we're stopping in 2024 and that's it. In this very special episode of the SURP's Up podcast live from BrightonSEO in the UK. The future is nigh as we blast backwards to the past in what is surely some sort of sci-fi time warp contradiction. That's why we're going backwards to go forwards. And if only I would tell you what I actually mean by that, because even I don't know at this point. What I mean is, we're going back to September 14th to BrightonSEO in the UK where Crystal sat down with some well smart SEO folks, including our own Rebecca Tomasis, as well as Lidia Infante and Joshua George to discuss the future of SEO in a special live recording from the conference itself. So this episode was taped in front of a live audience. But alas, there was no laugh track. As Crystal and crew dived into how AI factors into the content creation process and then the SEO process, the impact of when Google does and doesn't get content right and the future overlap between SEO and brand. So step into the wormhole, open up the door to the DeLorean and step into a traveling phone booth. Whatever your time machine preference is, as this special Brian SEO UK edition of the SURP's Up podcast takes you into the great unknown that is the very near future of SEO. That was a mouthful. What I'm trying to say is, Crystal went to BrightonSEO in the UK, sat down with the really smart people and recorded a live session of the SURP's Up podcast, and I wasn't even there. Crystal Carter: You were there in spirit, because we were using a lot of the fun things that we do across the podcast. A lot of the segments which we all came up with together. Mordy Oberstein: So my spirit was hovering over. Crystal Carter: I also put your on the deck for the podcast. I also put your Twitter handle, not mine, to make sure that if anybody had anything to say about it, they could tweet you and not me. So that's very important. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, I do appreciate that. So we're going to cut to that. But before we cut to that, Crystal, why don't you tell us a little bit about what y'all covered at BrightonSEO? Crystal Carter: Yes. So we did a version of Going Going Googled, talking about SGE. We also talked about some predictive text. We also talked about people also asked. We talked about a few other things as well. So I hope you enjoy this collection of... I think it was really interesting. I'll tell you what, there were some great, great surprising answers that we got from our fantastic panel of the way that people are using some of these new technologies, and the trends that people are seeing there as well. So it was a really great panel. I'd expect a few magical moments across the podcast recording. Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, here's Crystal and crew over at BrightonSEO in the UK. Crystal Carter: Hi everyone. It's short notice and it was quite a hike. So thank you all for joining us today. We are going to be doing the SERP's Up live podcast. I have some fantastic, wonderful, incredible guests who are joining us. We're going to be here for the whole time, so please, I hope you enjoy this. I am going to be calling to the stage today a wonderful collection of fantastic human beings. First up is Mr. Joshua George, who is the founder of Click's Slice, which is a fantastic SEO agency based in London. He has over a decade of experience doing SEO as a consultant, and he ranks number one for SEO at London which is fantastic. And he also drove here in his McLaren. If you're parking near a McLaren, don't mess up his paint job. Okay, Joshua George, coming up to the stage. Thank you. Thank you. And next up, we have Lidia Infante, who is the SEO extraordinaire over at Sanity, which is the headless CNS. And they are doing incredible things, and she is also a contributor for the Wix SEO Learning Hub. And is also an international SEO extraordinaire, and a speaker and fantastic. And she is a fellow Cardi B fan. Thank you Lidia Infante coming to this stage. Next up is from my team at Wix. This is Rebecca Tomasis, she's an SEO expert who is currently managing the Wix blog. If you've entered into Google something that says like, "Oh, blog, what is blogging?" You will find Rebecca's handiwork there. Because the featured snippets that she collects are incredible. Some people do Pokemon, she collects featured snippets. She's incredible, she's fantastic, she's wonderful, she's Rebecca Tomasis. And I should introduce myself. Obviously I am Crystal Carter, a lot of y'all know me. Hi everybody, hello friends. And I am the co-host of the SERP's Up SEO podcast, which I co-host with Mordy Oberstein who is not here today. However, throughout this podcast, if you have anything to say about the podcast, please do at him on Twitter. His Twitter handle is at Mordy Oberstein. If you're in the back, you can see his thing. So it's at Mordy Oberstein on Twitter. So if you have anything to say about that, please do at Mordy. We publish our podcast every Wednesday. So we published one yesterday, and we will be publishing one next week, and this will be out later on. So thank you all for joining us. Okay, so we're going to get into a few of the features that we normally do on the SERP's Up SEO podcast. We do fun different things. And the first thing we're going to talk about, and these guys have not seen these slides, so we're all just winging it. But yeah. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about generative AI. So how many people have heard about AI today at the thing? For those of you listening on the podcast, everyone's already heard about it. It's only 11 o'clock in the morning that we've all already heard about generative AI. And the reason why is because we all know that Bing put out all of this stuff this year, and everybody went mad after ChatGPT blowing up last autumn. Bing introduced New Bing, and really, as they said, the CEO from Bing's search team said, we made Google dance. And after firing their shots, Google finally released their search generative experience, and they finally started putting in links which people are really excited about. And that's all well and fantastic. But one of the sections that we do in our podcast is we ask, is this new? Is this actually new? How are we thinking that people are using this in new ways? So my first question is, is AI in search actually new? How new are you finding that the search generative experience and how new are you finding people experiencing generative search in this space? Lidia Infante: Technically it is newish, but not really. Essentially, machine learning has been used to train the Google algorithm since the dawn of time. And what I think has really triggered this big AI movement is actually making it available. Because we used to have AI driven SEO tools. For years there was Frase and Jasper, which used to be Jarvis, but probably Marvel sued them or something. Rebecca Tomasis: They did. Lidia Infante: So yeah, it's not really new. But it is available to everybody, so you don't have to be bought in and make an investment before starting to test it out. Also, the generative large language models are very much improved. That's the stuff that's new. Also, our panic about SEO dying, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Thank you. Crystal Carter: It's all something new. And how are you using AI in your new workflows? Joshua, if you're able to share on that? Joshua George: Yeah. So for us, we still have human content. I'm a massive fan of that. I sell it a lot on our discovery calls as well, and clients value that. So I don't think we'll ever get rid of completely using human writers. But we do use it for our blog briefs, it just speeds up a lot more time. And that's currently how we use it at the moment. We haven't rolled it out properly in the whole agency yet. I'm still on the fence of it, because clients pay us a good amount of money to get them results so I'm going to be testing stuff on the site that... I have got an AI site that I'm playing around with testing strategies and see what's working, and that way I have my own data to make my own decisions on instead of seeing what someone says on Twitter, and just basing the whole thing on that basically. Crystal Carter: And people are saying a lot on Twitter. There's a lot on Twitter, a lot of things floating around and a lot of this is a brand new thing, and change everything that you are doing again. Rebecca Tomasis: But I find it takes so much testing to understand, is this going to make my work so efficient that sometimes you're like, "Well, I'm spending so much time testing this. Maybe in this time, I could've..." You have to be able to see I think the long-term benefit of the efficiency or scale, it will be able to bring you. Because it is new, and I think, like you said, the accessibility is new. So it's like, "I need to really take the time to test this and understand the impact." Crystal Carter: I think that the scalability point and how you're rolling out is really important. 'Cause I think that and the accessibility point is really important because yeah, Jasper's been around for ages. I know that Mike King, his team has been using AI for years and things like that. But when it's going mainstream, that means there's more competitors that are using it, which means if you want to be competitive, you have to think about how that works. And that's definitely changing the landscape of how people are interacting on search, and how people are creating content and things like that. I certainly see that. And where do you all feel like having seen the last six months of ChatGPT really going big, and New Bing going big, and generative search coming to Google and Bard and all of that? Where do you think in six months' time from the next BrightonSEO, where do you think we'll be then? Lidia Infante: I think we are going to be a lot less scared and a lot more empowered to actually use AI not as a replacement of us and our work, but as an enhancer of us and our work. I use AI all the time in my workflows now, and I absolutely love it. It's accelerated my output and productivity massively. It's much easier for me to edit stuff to fit tone guidelines, and to make it just detect where did I spell the thing that I'm not supposed to spell that way in the way that's for the company? And you also mentioned, Rebecca, that it takes some investment in time to get it done. So what I try to do is I try to create templatable prompts that I can just reuse, reuse and reuse endlessly. You were mentioning that you use them for content briefs. I use it somewhat for content briefs as well, but I use it more as an assistant of like, "Hello, go into the world of the web and tell me what are questions being asked about this?" Or I go, "Imagine that you are a product owner trying to find a new CMS. What are the questions that you're going to have to answer to your stakeholders?" Now you can feed it sources of truth so it stops making stuff up. Yeah. I almost am very proud that I said making stuff up instead of making (beep) up. I'm doing a really good job on those today. Lidia Infante: All right. So you feed it sources of truth, and you give it your own information of what you want it to base on. If you do really good prompting, you can recycle it forever. And I also really like using it for repurposing and content distribution. So I feed it some of my tweets. This is my tone of voice, this is how I speak in my tone of voice. Make me five tweets to promote this article. And that is a superpower. You go on a scheduler, and you have your content strategy distribution- Rebecca Tomasis: You can think consistency at scale also. And I think for me, I think sometimes I do need a blog post that's super unique and creative, and sometimes I'm like, "Please just follow this structure." And that's something that I can create within that first draft or something with AI, and there is the structure. And then okay, let's now put in the expertise and some of the creativity. But the meat or the bones is like, "Don't change this." Crystal Carter: Right. Right, right. And I think that people who are organized, like you were talking about your content briefs. If you're organized and you already have your content briefs, and you know how to structure a content brief and you know how to which content distribution points you want to hit, then it allows you to... You're already organized, it allows you to really, really work with that. I feel like you want to jump in here. Joshua George: Yeah, I was saying the same reason we're using ChatGPT, it all comes down to prompt. You put rubbish in, you're going to get rubbish out. So once you finalize and really narrow down what prompts actually work, it's pretty much just copy and paste. You just change out the niche. So yeah, we can produce blog briefs super, super quick now at scale. And I don't know how many briefs I'll do in a month at the moment. Loads. Don't tell me you didn't. Hundreds are what we're doing for our clients at the moment, and it's so much quicker. It makes it easier for our content team as well. Because when they're writing the content, they really know the anchor text to use and they know what page to link to. And there's loads of like, "We're using ChatGPT and the custom parameters, prompt engineering." I literally just made a whole call from ChatGPT two weeks ago. Nine hours of video content. I'll be playing around with it so much. And yeah, it's game changing. So I'm personally excited for the future. I can't wait for AI to roll out. I know a lot of people are scared of AI. Like, "Oh, it's going to take my job, is a content writer going to die?" Nah, that's rubbish. There's been so many changes in the SEO industry, and our job as SEO is just that. Rebecca Tomasis: And I think also because that whole conversation, the AI content rank. And I know from my experience it still takes so much human optimization, and strategy, and testing, and going back into the article to get it to rank. That's the process anyway. And in the short term or even the midterm, I don't see any tool that's necessarily able to replicate that. Even if we can get to the point where it creates a perfect piece of content for intent and all of that, it still needs tweaking, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Rebecca Tomasis: Next week, somebody's above you. What do I need to now do right? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that with the velocity, with great velocity comes great responsibility. Rebecca Tomasis: Yes. And a lot of optimizations. Crystal Carter: Right. Rebecca Tomasis: Wow, I have all this content, and now it needs to rank. Crystal Carter: And I think also sometimes it's like if you're moving really quickly, it's also really easy to make a mistake at a large scale. So if you make one mistake across all over the place, 50, 60 blogs or something, it's like, "Okay, I have to go and unpick all those 50, 60 blogs or whatever." Rebecca Tomasis: You used the wrong angle. Crystal Carter: Right, on every single one. So yeah, that's something to think about as well. And I think also you talked about all of the optimizations you have to make as somebody who is skilled with your skills. You still have to make sure that that works. And if there is a lot of people, if there are a lot of people who are putting out just straight from the machine onto... Quality is still going to rise to the top, and quality comes from skill, and that skill is something you cultivate. Lidia Infante: I have something to say. I think what this has really done is it's changed what is table stakes. So being able to produce content at scale used to be a competitive advantage. But it's not anymore. So what is a competitive advantage right now is surfacing the human within your content, the experience of the person that's writing the specific anecdotes. Their wisdom, rather Than just copycat content. 'Cause now everybody can do copycat content. Grab what's ranking on the search and regurgitate it is something that is table stakes for literally your mom. Your dad- Rebecca Tomasis: ….without AI, right? We will regurgitate. Like, "Okay, this is what X ranks to be number one, and I need to write exactly the same thing." Lidia Infante: But we've had the resources to do- Rebecca Tomasis: To be number one, I need to write exactly the same thing. Lidia Infante: But we've had the resources to do it, and we needed the resources to do it. Now it's no longer needed. Right now, it's table stakes. So now to rise above the noise of what I imagine is going to be an increase of trash content running the web made by ChatGPT, it's going to be differentiation. And for me, differentiation is going to be human experience, and authority and personality. Rebecca Tomasis: So what I'm seeing now though with competitors is taking an article... And I actually talked to our editor, because I wanted her opinion on the content. Because at first glance, the expert tips are there, the sources are there, there's nice data, it's really well optimized and nicely structured. And then you go into the content and it's like, "Well, this was AI." I sent it to our editor and she's like, "This content is a train wreck." So I think this is also interesting to see people generating with... It's very obvious when you generate with AI, and then you're trying to force the expert quotes and everything in. Lidia Infante: Yeah. Crystal Carter: In Clueless they say, "Oh, she's a full on Monet." It's good from far away, but when you get up it's a hot mess. Lidia Infante: Gotcha, good. Crystal Carter: So it's something you need to think about, and making sure that you're maintaining that tone and maintaining that quality as you go along. We can absolutely talk about AI all day, as I'm sure many people are today. But we are going to get into our next section, which is fun with People Also Ask. People also ask sometimes referred to as a universal SERP feature. It is seen on almost every single search that you do on Google. And there are some fun questions that show up on People Also Ask, and we're going to go through a couple of them. So the first question that people also ask is where can we find mermaids? That's a question that people also ask. Rebecca Tomasis: There were actual answers? Crystal Carter: No, don't look at the answers. Y'all are supposed to look at the... They're looking at the answers. Okay, so do you have any ideas before we could find mermaids? Rebecca, you can't say because you looked. Rebecca Tomasis: I already know. Lidia Infante: I can find mermaids in the documentary that you shared with me on Netflix. Crystal Carter: That's true, there is a mermaid thing- Rebecca Tomasis: It's what? People wear the tails, right? Lidia Infante: A fantastic documentary. MerPeople I think it is. Crystal Carter: MerPeople, it's fantastic, it's wonderful. Lidia Infante: So she recommended it to me. I wasn't going to watch it, but now I'm very happy with it. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. If you have nothing to watch on Netflix, watch MerPeople, it's fantastic. Joshua George: Do we have the age group of people who also- Crystal Carter: No, they don't get out of ages. Joshua George: What? Crystal Carter: I literally entered mermaids into Google, and they were like, people also ask. And Google has tons of these. If you enter Google mom, they're like, "Who is Google's mom?" And it's like, "No, that's not the question to ask." Y'all, that's not it. But yeah, where do you think you find mermaids? Joshua George: Well, we have that joke we say in the SEO industry. The best place to hide a dead body is on page two, 'cause nobody looks there, it's perfect. The mermaids are going to be on page two. Crystal Carter: Okay. So Atlas Obscura is actually answering this question legitimately. They're saying that you can find mermaids in Japan. They're also saying that you can find mermaids in Florida, and that you can find mermaids in Vermont. So I think that's fascinating that there is a place- Lidia Infante: Is there sea in Vermont? Crystal Carter: There is not. I think Vermont is landlocked. But apparently there's mermaids there, so that's interesting. Joshua George: Probably. Crystal Carter: Our next question from People Also Ask is vibranium the strongest metal on earth? And this is a serious question that people are asking. And the thing I find you're- Rebecca Tomasis: Vibranium, is it from a Marvel- Lidia Infante: Yes. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly. Rebecca Tomasis: Is it Thor's hammer? Crystal Carter: Yeah, no. No, that's not vibranium. Lidia Infante: What they have on Wakanda. Crystal Carter: Captain America's shield is vibranium. Joshua George: I'm sorry too, I don't want any Marvel. Crystal Carter: You don't want any Marvel? Joshua George: I don't watch Marvel. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. So Google here is being very interesting, because Google is not just telling them no, that's a dumb question. Google is saying identified in 1781, Tungsten is the strongest pure metal on earth. And this is from- Lidia Infante: In the real world. Crystal Carter: In the real world. Rebecca Tomasis: So it's basically just saying you are an idiot, this- Crystal Carter: Kind of. Joshua George: Wouldn't it be better if Google just said, "Hey, are you okay?" Rebecca Tomasis: It's a website that might say, "Are you better?" Crystal Carter: So yeah. So this is from a blog called what are earth's mightiest fictional metals? So again, they're trying to help people, to slowly guide them towards reality. Rebecca Tomasis: But are they very expensive? How can they be expensive if they are fictional? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's in the movie. Okay, so anyway. Rebecca Tomasis: I don't know. Crystal Carter: Okay, so our next one. So our next people also ask is, what are the five types of unicorns? Rebecca Tomasis: No. Crystal Carter: This is a very important question that people are asking. Lidia Infante: It's a very important question Crystal Carter: Why is this important? Lidia Infante: So my first website, I made it when I was six years old, on FrontPage. Obviously as a six-year-old, I was very interested in unicorns. Crystal Carter: Of course. Lidia Infante: So it was basically a bundle of images of unicorns that I had been downloading from Google Search, which was my hobby when I was six. Go on Google Search and look at unicorns. Crystal Carter: Of course. Rebecca Tomasis: So obviously a lot of people's hobbies. Lidia Infante: So since then, every time I learn a new technology to make content, I try it out with a unicorn website. I have six websites in- Joshua George: Yeah, you should know this inside out then. Lidia Infante: So if they're saying five, because there's many different classifications- Crystal Carter: Okay, let's get to that. Lidia Infante: If they're saying there's five, it's 'cause they're using the elements type of classification. Crystal Carter: Of course. Lidia Infante: This is going to be like water, sand, ice, fire, electric unicorns. But you can classify them by color, or by whether or not they will give you magic. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Okay, so that's a thorough... You should really be ranking for this to be honest. Joshua George: She probably is. We don't even know. Crystal Carter: She's probably a low-key unicorn queen. Okay, so this is from mombooks.com, and they're saying that the seven types in the world today, that is what they're saying in the world today. There are mountain jewels, water moons, woodland flowers, desert flames, ice wanderers, storm classic, shadow knights. I know you all didn't think you were coming to talk about unicorns, but we're here, we're enjoying it, et cetera, et cetera. But these are the kinds of things that people are seeing on People Also Ask. Lidia Infante: The only thing…. Crystal Carter: The thing I find fascinating about this is that Google is not only placating these kinds of questions, and they say it's a mythical creature, y'all. This is a mythical creature, the unicorns are mythical. But they also give you more questions. So they're also saying why is it called a unicorn? And they're saying, where can I find a unicorn? Location, where can I find a unicorn? Rebecca Tomasis: Again, in Vermont. Crystal Carter: Again in Vermont. Apparently, Vermont- Lidia Infante: Oh my God. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... it's a super magical place where we should all be looking for unicorns and mermaids. So my question here is this. With regards to People Also Ask, are y'all making content for some of these questions that are terrible questions? Are y'all engaging with these? Joshua George: Hell yeah. Crystal Carter: You are? Joshua George: Absolutely, to build relevancy. So when you carry out a search for anything, those people also ask questions. It's questions that relate to the topic of what you just searched for. So Google already deems those topics relevant to that search term. So if you build out content around that, link it back to the page you're trying to rank, you increase your page's relevancy. Lidia Infante: Even if it's a dumb question? Joshua George: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Joshua George: Yeah, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: I didn't know about the- Joshua George: I wouldn't say unicorns, other stuff. Rebecca Tomasis: There are a lot of repetitive things also, right? Joshua George: Yeah, it's on there. Rebecca Tomasis: Why should I start a business? That's a very bad example, but I'm not going to necessarily directly answer every question. But I think in terms of intent and what people are looking for, and I think they're super insightful. And they got a lot longer, some queries now, it's like... Lidia Infante: Yeah. Joshua George: When you click, you get more as well. They expand- Rebecca Tomasis: And then you're down a warren hole of... Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lidia Infante: I only use PAAs to look at what the content journey is going to be. What is my audience interested in? But where I'm currently at, I'm trying to sell expensive software to enterprises. So if the question is dumb, it's probably not for my audience. Crystal Carter: Okay. But it's a question of sometimes there'll be people... Maybe it's a question of competition. Maybe most people are going to be like, "That's a silly question, I'm not going to answer that." And so maybe if you get in there and address it, maybe not directly. Maybe not put it as the header, but low-key address it. Maybe you're more likely to show instead of mom books.com on something about unicorns. Though the other thing I find also really interesting is that on the right here I have name, origin. Why is it called a unicorn location? Where can I find a unicorn? And then there were other questions as well that come up there. So we're starting to see more of these query-based questions that are popping up on the SERP. I recently was on Google, and got to the bottom of the page. And I saw instead of related searches, it had the query, and then it had a knowledge panel looking thing about... You've seen this as well, about the question, and then another question and then another question. Do you think we're going to see more of this going forward? Yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: No, because I think it also directly links, which we started to see a lot of last week, is especially on some of our big strategic keywords was Reddit threads ranking. Ranking high, ranking five, four, out of nowhere. And I think it's all related, because a lot of these questions are the very insightful questions people ask on Reddit. So I think there is obviously a huge connection between, again, what people are really looking for, and what they're really looking for is the experience. Somebody who's actually, I don't know, seen a unicorn or- Lidia Infante: The human. The human instead of the SEO, right? Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. I think they're really trying to tap into that. And that complaint of it. If this is a machine delivering me an answer, it's not useful and... Yeah. Crystal Carter: That's really interesting. I think also, do you think that with SGE for instance, and with ChatGPT, and Bard, and New Bing and all of that stuff. When you go to New Bing for instance, they're like, "Write as many characters as you want." Enter whatever question you want. And I find that when I'm doing a query in one of those tools, that I will structure my query differently from how I would enter it into Google. In Google, I'm going for lowest common denominator terms, and I'll just be like, "Unicorn with pink wings," or something. Then I would just enter that so that I would get that thing. Whereas in ChatGPT, I might even just speak it into it and I say, "Where can I find a unicorn backpack that has pink wings, and orange stripes and et cetera, et cetera?" And so it'll be much, much longer. Do you think that these queries are responding to the more conversational tone that people are having with search engines? Do you think that's even a trend? Lidia Infante: Well, then we see a bit of a swap to a more conversational tone in search. When voice search happened and we were all thinking that voice search was going to be... What was it, 17% of those searches? Crystal Carter: No, I never thought that. Joshua George: I never use it. I've never searched with my voice ever. Lidia Infante: I only use my Google Assistant to put jams on when I'm cooking. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Lidia Infante: I have seen conversational tone come in and out of search in different ways. So when I started in PPC, my very dark past, I was carrying PPC strategies for several countries, and these countries have adopted digitalization and the internet and become proficient in buying online at different stages in different ways. And you could see that the less digitalized a country was, the more likely I was getting this conversationally written queries. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Lidia Infante: Then we swapped onto a generic, very broad, very top of the final query as they matured. And then we swapped to long tail questions from the get go, instead of doing generic, mid-tail, long tail. The fact that it's coming back, and I felt like it came back a little bit when we were all talking about voice search and people were trying it, it changed our relationship with searching a little bit. I wonder if we are having a similar change in our parasocial relationship with search engines. Crystal Carter: I think certainly with... Rand Fishkin recently published an article about how people use ChatGPT, and they were talking about a lot of the words that people are using and people are saying please. Joshua George: I say please all the time. I even say hello. Crystal Carter: I use ChatGPT for that. Joshua George: It's a waste of characters as well. Crystal Carter: I use ChatGPT to save me from Google Sheets. I literally am like, "Google Sheets was mean to me. They told me my code didn't work. And they're like, "Here it is." I'm like, "Thanks, Chat." So yeah. And Bard, Bard also will get upset. If you're not nice to Bard, Bard will be like, "I'm sorry, I'm an AI generated tool and I will not answer any more questions." And I'm like, "Bard, what?" I'm sorry, not Bard, Bing. Bing does that, or whatever. And they're just like, "You can cope with a question," and they're like, "No, I can't, I'm an AI." Stop being so fragile. Lidia Infante: Pass the baby. Crystal Carter: So yeah. So people are saying please, people are saying the thing. And also, I think that there's a certain amount with some of the generative conversational search things, there's less judgment. I think I remember I got some insurance documents, and they sent me the terms of the insurance documents. And I was like, "I don't know what this means." And I put that into Chat and I was like, "ChatGPT, what does this mean?" And they were like, "Oh, it means this, and this and this." And they use this term, and I was like, "I don't know what that term means. What does that term mean?" And they were like, "Oh, it's like this." So you can just be honest about what you don't know, or you can just be honest about what you actually need in a different way than if you were to, I don't know, ask someone. And they were like, "Well actually, how come you didn't know that?" Or that thing. So I wonder if that doesn't change as well, people's relationships to that. And maybe it'll change people's relationships to brands as well. Lidia Infante: Well, that's why I got into marketing at all to begin with, because I was studying psychology, 'cause I'm curious about people, but then if you ask people to test and self-report, you're going to lie. They're going to lie to look good, they're going to lie to be liked, or they're going to lie to agree. And then I had this little side marketing job doing PVC, as well as studying psychology. At the time, you could see all of the queries. I could literally see what my parents in their postcode were searching for. Crystal Carter: Oh my god. Lidia Infante: I was searching for, because they were really excited that their daughter had a job. So yeah, the privacy of your own home, of typing out whatever you want without judgment is huge. Rebecca Tomasis: And I think it could potentially change how people are relating to brands, because I think a lot of people are adopting chatbots on their brands as well, which could give you lots more details on the kinds of content that people actually need but maybe are afraid to ask directly for, and that thing. So yeah, I don't know. We'll see how these things pay out. Joshua George: Yeah. Yeah, and going to be interesting. It's like when you go into a website, you have a search bar, you can search for whatever you want. Might not even exist, but no one's looking at it and you can get away with saying things wrong, asking stupid questions and no one can judge you. Yes, that was- Lidia Infante: Everything you type is on someone's analytics. Joshua George: I know now, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, I got to say. Joshua George: When I was younger, I did not know that. And yeah, I think using AI for chatbot stuff is literally the same trend as the search box. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's very interesting. Cool. Lidia Infante: When we have to search for something stupid. My husband and I split. Now you look stupid to the algorithm, of course. Or something embarrassing, or something that we definitely should not be asking any search engine. We take it in turns, because we don't want the algorithm to judge us. Crystal Carter: I think also it's one of those things like site search. Site search is always such a goldmine of things that people are looking for that maybe you don't have, or things that people are not understanding. And you're like, "We totally have that on the website," but people can't find it and that thing. So I think that it'd be interesting to see how those things work as people adopt more native AI-powered chat conversations and things like that. Okay, so now we're going to talk about another section called Going, Going Google, which is looking at a few Google trends. So this one is one that I've seen recently. I was very pleased with myself 'cause I spotted it on the SERP and I was like, "Oh, I found this." And Barry reminded me that it is not new, that Brody Clark had actually found it two hours earlier or something, so unlucky there. But this is mentioned in... So I was looking at Santa Monica Pier, and I found this entry. And this was not the first entry, it was further down, for Pacific Park, which is the amusement park on Santa Monica Pier. And you'll see it says, "Mentioned in AAC animals, mentioned in travel awaits, mentioned in other things as well." I don't know if y'all have seen this or how you feel about this. Rebecca Tomasis: For me, it's a little bit... Because like this, I don't... As an SEO, I don't necessarily control... This now is like taking the SERP beyond what I can influence and optimize it. Now, I got to take... Anyway, we're having those conversations. But now, I really need to talk to digital PR. Now, I really need to talk to the affiliates team. Now, I really need to... It's That whole world of ORM, and it's... My number one thought was, how do I manipulate it? Joshua George: Straight away, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: How do I get in there? Lidia Infante: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Because it's a question of who else is ranking for your brand, or who else is ranking for that mention in that brand? Lidia Infante: It seems like an authority thing. 'Cause if you're looking for Santa Monica Pier, you're maybe looking for things to do. And things to do in Santa Monica Pier might be a common follow-up search- Things to do in Santa Monica Pier might be a common follow-up search- Crystal Carter: Right. Lidia Infante: That people are making. It changes the perceived intent of the serve. Typically, when you're doing a what to do type of search, you're looking for lists of people, your brands you trust. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: Here, they're showing you the thing to do, validated by the brands you might trust. Crystal Carter: Right. Rebecca Tomasis: This is what I see, the queries that I'm looking at. The mentioned in, you see the brands. And then you click and it opens up, and then it's like, Wix was mentioned in dah dah dah. And generally obviously the connection is like, these are the brands we understand to be closely related with this kind of topic, right? So in that sense, we can manipulate it. Joshua George: I think this is good though. Crystal Carter: Yeah? Joshua George: Think SEO is coming from a big change. At the moment, I think we're quite lazy with what we do. To rank page a bit of content, bit of backlink. Rebecca Tomasis: We know this works. Joshua George: This is more of a holistic approach, right? You can't just do this, you can't just do link building. You need to be acting on social media, do some PR and that gets better results to the clients at the end of the day. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Joshua George: The ones who don't want to adapt are the ones that are going to lose out. Rebecca Tomasis: Okay. A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think it kind of keeps brands, it's going to keep brands honest about how they're approaching their brand relationships and things like that. The other thing, I think the thing that's worrisome, so I see where you're like, oh, this is great. So as a user, I think this is great. Because as a user, I'm definitely looking at multiple websites if I'm going to be doing a thing. So if I want to go to Santa Monica Pier, yeah. I'm like, oh great, I can hear more details about this. So I think that that's Google answering that user journey. They know that you're going to search around for stuff. As a brand, I share your, Ah, what about this? Because what if somebody says something that... What if, I don't know, the people could say something else. So there's potentially some worrisome things there. Joshua George: Yeah. You got to bury it. Crystal Carter: No, no, we don't want to bury it. No, but I think you have to... But I think it does mean that SEOs need to think more about how they're balancing their brand relationships overall. So as you're saying, talking to PR, talking to acquisition or talking to affiliates, talking to different teams to help bring that up. Lidia Infante: It's all brand, brand, brand. Especially when you're on the product end of things. You and I are in a very similar space, if not competitors. And people are looking for the concept. When they're looking for informational, they're looking for best keyword, whatever when they're looking to buy. But if you're looking for best keyword, whatever, you're not going to rank for it. And you really need to be speaking to all of the people who are creating those lists to be included. Otherwise, you're not going to be there. And being included if you're not actively talking to them is all about being top of mind for the journalist that's writing it. So a lot of the SEO work that's coming, it's going to be very brand related. Watching out for your brand serves, watching out for EAT now. EAT, yeah. Another “E”. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see how this relates to where does that rank? Are you ranking in that position? If you're AZ animals, are you ranking number...? If Pac Park is number seven, are you now number eight? How's it going to affect the click-through rate on that? So I don't know. I'm interested, I'm curious. I'm watching the space. The next one that I want to talk about is perspectives. Perspectives has a similar sort of thing. Perspectives, I have mixed feelings about this because I generally see this when it's a news item, so it'll be like a news thing that's happening. Coco Gauff recently won the US Open. Triumphantly. She was amazing, any other tennis fans. She was fantastic. And when you look at Coco Gauff, again, not at the top, but after the news you see perspectives. And it's like people putting in their 2 cents about what happened at the US Open, for instance. So we have, thanks to Coco Goff from Roxanne Jones, we have Roger Federer wishing her well. And then we have just generally related, I think it's the other person who won the US Open as well. So I think that this is a similar thing. Have you all seen perspectives pop up with things or do you find it helpful as a user? Do you think it will be helpful to users? Lidia Infante: I don't find it helpful as a user, but I think it's pointing you at what I've been saying since I sat down here. It's about people. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: People, people. The human perspective is what we are seeking right now. I feel validated. I don't use it. Rebecca Tomasis: I agree, but I've been thinking about it like, there are levels of human perspective that's valuable and not. This is fairly valuable, but you could... Something, I don't know. To go back to the Reddit thread, if you Google how to start a blog and that Reddit thread on how to start a blog is not helpful. So again, it's like quality content, or really answering the question. Does that make sense? This is where I struggle with it a little bit. Like the quality of the results for it Joshua George: Sounds like, I've seen it. I never use it. I don't see the value in this at all. It pulls in... Rebecca Tomasis: Maybe the CNN one. Joshua George: Then you can just go directly onto CNN and read that article. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, that's true. Joshua George: I don't get it. It's pulling information from Twitter. Twitter. What is it? Is it like a combination of all social media platforms? Is it pulling... I think it's messy. I don't know how it uses... Rebecca Tomasis: I think it's telling us you need to be on everything as much as possible. Joshua George: Coming back to brand, just being different platforms and stepping away from SEO and doing other stuff. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's definitely pulling in omnichannel elements there. It'll be interesting to see if this one sticks, because Google sometimes drops different features. So it'll be interesting to see if this one sticks. I've seen mixed value from it. A lot of times it seems to repeat some of the news items. And we already have Twitter carousels. We already have news carousels. So it's interesting. And I think also I would expect it to show up for things where there's kind of a debate. So for instance, I'm from Devon and in Devon... Or I'm not from Devon, I'm from California. I live in Devon. And in Devon we have the cream tea and the correct way to put …. Rebecca Tomasis: Jam on it. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Rebecca Tomasis: Cream's first. Crystal Carter: It's cream first. Rebecca Tomasis: So my parents are from Devon, but I like it the Cornwall way.. Crystal Carter: It's controversial. This is my whole point. So if you look up how to do a cream tea, they just put an answer, which is incorrect. And really they should be having... Rebecca Tomasis: The discussion. Crystal Carter: The discussion of this back and forth about where we do a cream tea, although we all know it's first. Because you obviously put the butter on your toast first before you put the jam on. So why would you put the cream .. Rebecca Tomasis: But the cream is the best part. It needs to be on the top. Crystal Carter: Okay, we'll agree to disagree. Lidia Infante: I wonder if perspective is also coming from a place where Google sees that they're losing some share of search to TikTok and to Instagram. Personally, whenever I need to care for my plants, which are alive by some miracle of, I don't know. I look it up on TikTok, because I don't want to read how to report it. I want to see it. Because I will mess it up if it's just written instructions. So for that, for DIY, for recipes, I'd rather search on TikTok. But if I go on Google and I get TikTok results, then I keep searching on Google while consuming on TikTok. Crystal Carter: I think they're definitely trying to mix it up. I think they're trying a lot of things to see what sticks. And I think TikTok is a challenger for them at the moment. Bing is obviously a challenger for them and from a sort of development point of view. So I think they're trying out lots of different things to see how that works. And I think perspectives is one. Joshua George: Don't you feel like they're losing their focus on what they're made to do? Search. Coming back to users, if you want to learn to make a lasagna dish or whatever, you want to see someone doing that. If you Google how to make lasagna, you'll get a blog post, like, turn the oven on. That's not a great user experience. Lidia Infante: Well the blog post will be.. my grandmother used to make lasagna every day. Joshua George: I'd still rather watch the video on TikTok. Same example, five best restaurants in Brighton. You'll get a TikTok, it'll show the restaurant, show you the meal. You just watch the whole thing in a minute and you know exactly what's going on. Lidia Infante: When you go to a restaurant- Joshua George: It's way better. Lidia Infante: You look it up on Instagram to see what you're going to order. I don't know, am I only one who does this? Joshua George: No, I do. Crystal Carter: I think though, folks succeed when they have a mix of intents and things like that. So one of the ones, I'm not a Daily Mail reader, particularly. Lidia Infante: Promise? Crystal Carter: I'm not. However, one of the things that they do, one of the things that they do really well when they were the first folks to do this, and then I've seen more people do it since, but they do a TLDR three bullet points of the article. As soon as you get on the article, they're like, lasagna sales are up. Everybody loves the marinara. And Lydia says it's great. They'll hit you with the three main points from the article. And then you can get into the deep dive of it and you know there's going to be a million pictures and you know there's going to be... They rank really, really well for lots of stuff because they're able to hit that, I've got five minutes, I need that top information. Lidia Infante: Yeah, time is value. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. So I've got five minutes, I can get some value out of this and I can also bookmark it for when I do have time to deep dive into it. I know there's going to be pictures, if I just want to look at pictures. There's going to be a link to a video if I want to watch a video, that sort of stuff as well. So I think that when you're able to hit multiple points in an efficient way, I think that that's what they're trying to do. I think that that's what good blogs, good content folks are doing as well. So I don't know. Lidia Infante: That's something that I've done with AI, with the assist of AI to have it read my blog and be like, okay, give me the five key takeaways in bullet point form. You can ask it to go on a specific markup. And then plug it directly onto a headless CMS and then you A/B test it. Is this working better for my user or is it not? Right? And if it is, I do it on scale, and then review for the thesis that have the most traffic. If it's not good or better, I remove it. Crystal Carter: Right? These are things you can test, you can see, you can see how they're working for folks to get the best value. Lidia Infante: See the challenge is just putting the user at the center. Rebecca Tomasis: So I think a secondary challenge right now though is even though we know we're in a stage where Google is testing a lot of things, it's also a question of we all want to be the first to understand it and be able to optimize for it. And know what to do. But if next week, it's disappeared again. And it was like, okay, so we were tracking where we are mentioned, we were tracking what kind of things were coming up here, we were tracking what social media is coming up on these perspectives. And it's really a question of how do we go for this? But at the same time- Lidia Infante: And should you? Rebecca Tomasis: We can't go for this because.... Lidia Infante: What's the return as well? Joshua George: Like Threads, right? Instagram release Threads literally just copied Twitter, should I invest time in Threads now, is it going to blow up in five years time? Crystal Carter: You just don't know what's going to be here and what's going to …. Crystal Carter: Right. Or it's like, web stories, web stories. They were like, yeah, web stories. And to make a web story was a total pain, and then it's just not really a thing. So I don't know, you don't always know what's going to hit. But I guess that's the thing that's exciting about being an SEO. Lidia Infante: You need to chill and focus on strategy. Because if you're chasing everything, you're going to lose your mind. Crystal Carter: I agree. Okay. The last one I wanted to talk about is, so on Google, if you click the little three dots, you can get more about this search result. I find this fascinating and I think this sort of sits in the same sort of area as the two things we've seen before, which is essentially where, so if you click on a webpage, it'll like, about this source. And it will quote you Wikipedia. So here it says DeviantArt, and says DeviantArt is this. And it was created by this, and it has headquarters in Los Angeles, et cetera. And that's from Wikipedia. And then they'll have a section that's in their own words and it'll say, DeviantArt is this, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes it will have links to other things as well. If you don't have a Wikipedia page, then they'll just say, we couldn't find any third party sources, but this is what it says on the website. And it will just quote some stuff from the website. Now this is currently in beta, but I think this is an interesting evolution, and I think it's an interesting perspective to get an idea of what Google thinks of your brand. Lidia Infante: So excited. I love this feature so much. Crystal Carter: Okay, so what do you love about it? Lidia Infante: I love that through this feature, I got to get budget for several projects. Joshua George: Nice. Lidia Infante: By showing this to leadership. This feature is absolutely awesome. It shows you what page Google has chosen within your site, as what you say about yourself. So I've been trying to get a knowledge panel for the longest time. Now I have one. But someone that had one for a long time was Lazarina Stoy, who's an amazing human SEO. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. Lidia Infante: Yes. So what I do is I try to reverse engineer her stuff. So I go Google Lazarina Stoy about this source on her personal website, and I noticed that her, in their own words, was coming from, not her homepage, but a page that she made that says, who is Lazarina Stoy? And then it made me look at my own thing and look up in their own words, where's Google pulling my, who am I? It was using the homepage, it was using a specific paragraph that I didn't really want them to use that one. So what I did is I kind of restructured my homepage and I rewrote that specific paragraph. And it worked. And now Google understands me better and I have a knowledge pile. And then I did the same thing for my company, for Sanity. I went on, and we've called ourselves many things. When you're trying to position your brand, you will go through phases. We've been a structured content platform, we've been content is data. We've been the unified content platform. We've been a composable content cloud. Finally, we are embracing that we are a headless CMS, but we've been spoken about throughout the web as headless CMS. Crystal Carter: It's not uncommon for longstanding brands though. Lidia Infante: Yeah. And for us it's super common. So throughout the site we've called ourselves many things. It's very inconsistent. I go on about the source and I know that they're using a short introduction to Sanity as the page where they're pulling what we're saying about ourselves. So I went in there and Google was highlighting structured content platform. And I'm like, no, that was like three positionings ago. So I went in there, changed it to headless CMS, and I've seen us grow in rankings for headless CMS, headless, and CMS related queries by positioning myself as clearly a headless CMS. I'm saying it, others are saying it, therefore I am. I rank, therefore I am. And then we don't have a Wikipedia page. We have one in Norwegian. Which obviously is not getting a lot of traffic. And I'm working on getting us a Wikipedia page in English so that we can get trusted sources on the section in there. But I also dived into the trusted sources in there, in the docs. Because they link you to what are our third party trusted sources. And it's not just Wikipedia, it's also Crunchbase and some others. But they are not actually using it. The only thing that's pulling up on the third party is Wikipedia. I have a Crunchbase profile that's in my same as schema. So it's not hard to find. And Google's not pulling that. So yeah, this is my story with this feature. I love it. I love it. Joshua George: I love it as well. Because if you look at this, it's telling you why it ranked. Because it featured here, here. And again, it's another example of Google saying backlinks are super important. Although don't build it because they're not going to help you. And even like EAT, it's predominantly based on link based signals. People think it's just adding an author on your page. It's really not. You just say where you've been featured and again, it's a backlink. Yeah, I think with all that whole AI content coming out, backlink's going to get more and more impactful in algo. They're really the number one ranking factor, in my opinion anyway, besides content user metrics. So yeah, I love this. Because you can manipulate backlinks, you could build them at scale. And you mentioned you featured on Crunchbase, wherever these websites, like Forbes, you can pay to get featured there. And I think that's going to be the big difference. Who has the higher quality links because they're seen as more credible brand, they have more authority in the space. And they'll have bigger about the source mentions that no one else can have. Wikipedia you can pay to create a Wikipedia page as well. So yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting times. Rebecca Tomasis: I think it relates also to how you build your content, how you cluster your content, what you write about, how you connect it to your domain. The schema that you build to reinforce this is what my brand is an authority in. And I think it's also Google making all of those connections for the user. I think it's super, super important. It's just when you want to be an authority in a lot of things, it's more tricky. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it can be interesting. I think it's also interesting that it also shows up for particular articles. So for instance, if an article has been ranking for a while, it'll say this page was first indexed at this time. And this is what we know about this page and this is what we know about this source as well. So it can be really great for helping to validate the sort of quality of both your brand rep positioning and your entity positioning, but also a particular piece of content and things. I love it. I love that you're using it as proof. That's one of my favorite things. People are like, oh, we're doing this. It's like, yeah, but look what Google says. Look what it says on this earth, because it says something different. So, yeah. Crystal Carter: ... look what it says on the SERP, because it says something different. Yeah, that's fantastic. I think I found it a really fascinating feature. I think the first time I saw it was on Better Homes & Gardens, and then I was like, "I love this. We need more of this." Yeah, I think we all agree that it's something that goes along with Google's general sort of E-E-A-T, evolution, and all of that in the SERP, which I think is even more important in the age of AI. Have you all responded much to the experience thing? Have you added more experience as well to your strategies, as well as the expertise, authority and trust]? Joshua George: Yeah. We just try to make our clients the authors of everything we publish on the site, and just leverage their name at whatever. Hair transplant clinic in Turkey, so that the doctor writes it. We write it, but put it under the doctor, and we try and get it in all the content the best that we can. But other than that, there's not much you can really do. I've got 10 years of experience in every update, 11, 12, 13. Lidia Infante: I think the E in experience is not exactly going in that direction. The way that I see it, when you talk to a subject matter expert, and they're excited about it and they get passionate, and you're probably going to have these experiences here at brightonSEO. If you approach anyone, they speak about their subject of expertise in a very specific way- Crystal Carter: Right. Lidia Infante: ... with excitement, with love and with anecdotes. They're so excited to share their silly little anecdotes with you. I have shifted to not only talking about best practice, but the specific anecdotes that my subject matter experts have. That's something that I cannot really get anywhere else, and it's really hard to insert afterwards. It feels a little bit unnatural. What I've been doing is I interview my subject matter experts, and I've briefed my ghostwriter to not eliminate anecdotes, to actually highlight them, and use storytelling of their personal experience. Yeah, I've incorporated it. I love it. I think it makes for better content, more human content. Rebecca Tomasis: I think for us, also, it's a positive on several fronts, because for us, the experience, this use of a product, we are a product-led company. It's making that double connection of like, "This is a user that has used our product for this intent," and then also then to take them down the funnel. Yeah, it's really... we have to think of product more. Yes. Crystal Carter: I think you're also starting to see things like the bubble that's for examples on Google. People will say... I don't know, "Cat, umbrellas." They'll be like, "Oh, what examples of cat umbrellas." People want to see the pictures of the cat. I literally just invented a product. I don't know if the cats need umbrellas, but there we go. Anyway. Okay. Now predictive text. Okay, so what do we think we have here? If you type in SEO, the first thing you get is SEO is dead. Rebecca Tomasis: I love this one. Look at the second one. Crystal Carter: Well- Lidia Infante: Don't look at the second one. Crystal Carter: Look at the second one. Don't look ahead. Rebecca Tomasis: I'm so sorry. I'm very new to this. Crystal Carter: Don't look ahead, agree or disagree? Joshua George: No. Rebecca Tomasis: Disagree. Joshua George: Disagree. Crystal Carter: Okay, so this is something. The interesting thing I found out about this was that the total number of entries for SEO is dead was 105 million. Joshua George: Wow. Crystal Carter: That's how many research results there are for SEO is dead. A lot of people who are checking the pulse on SEO all the time, and I think we can all agree that SEO is not dead. Okay, so next one, SEO is ruining the internet. Are we ruining the internet? Lidia Infante: Yes. Joshua George: I agree. Lidia Infante: Literally. Crystal Carter: What? Joshua George: I do agree this one. Crystal Carter: What? Why do you agree? Lidia Infante: I would qualify it. I would- Crystal Carter: Are you saying it depends? Is that what you're saying about this? Lidia Infante: Yeah. Joshua George: It depends. Lidia Infante: I think the flood of shit content... I didn't want to say shit. Sorry. Crystal Carter: You've now said it three times Lidia Infante: I was doing so well. I think the flood of bad content to the internet, it's definitely our fault. The fact that myths that we're old about, "You need this many characters to run. You need this many words," have separated us from what the user actually wants. We have low-key ruined the internet. Now when I look for, "I want to buy a coffee maker," and how do I know that this person is not making money to sell me the specific coffee maker? I just want a reliable opinion- Rebecca Tomasis: But I need a coffee maker. Who cares who makes money off the fact that I need a coffee maker? Lidia Infante: Yes, but you want to- Rebecca Tomasis: ... if the coffee maker works for me. I don't know for me... and maybe it's an age thing, so I put... but for me, what I find more value, if I'm looking for a coffee maker, even though I know maybe somebody is being paid to recommend that coffee maker, you're giving me a list, you're giving me a choice, and I can do my own research. Somebody on the internet recommending how many reviews of those you would need to read. Somebody likes this one, and somebody likes that one- Joshua George: Yeah, right. Rebecca Tomasis: ... and somebody likes this one. There are a million coffee makers, give me 10, or give me 10 in this price budget, or give me 10 unique coffee makers, and 10 classy. You know what I mean? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: This is a case of dummy's better than perfect, and I am like, "My coffee maker needs to be perfect." Rebecca Tomasis: No, but wait, not coffee makers. We live in a world of so much choice and again, so much information on the internet- Lidia Infante: Overwhelming. Rebecca Tomasis: ... for me, I actually appreciate that... I don't know that it's so straightforward, "Here are 10 coffee makers, go and choose one." Joshua George: I agree. SEO is definitely ruining the internet. Crystal Carter: No. Joshua George: But it's Google's fault. If you ask Google, "What is the best coffee machine?" You have to read a, "Coffee machines were created by this guy," and then you don't care about that. But if you just say, "This is the best machine," you're never going to rank, you'll get no traffic. Lidia Infante: Right. Joshua George: You have to put in all this waffle to build your relevancy up. Lidia Infante: Right. Joshua George: They should have... instead of basing the algorithm on links and content, it should be more brand signals early on, and that would then leverage the better brands, and better results at the top, and you don't have to … Rebecca Tomasis: The expertise, the E-E-A-T. Yeah. Joshua George: E-E-A-T. Again, that's influenced by links though. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think it has to do... we have to work with what we've got. I think Gus was at dinner, and he was wearing a shirt that said, "Bots are users too." That's the thing is we have to talk to the bots, and the bots need certain things. You have to put in those things to do that. You have to balance what the bots need with what the humans need. It's just, we're doing our best, is what I think. Lidia Infante: I think we've also used... we've become gatekeepers of the quality of websites, on a technical level, and SEOs have done a lot of advocacy for faster websites and more accessible websites. Even though we output bad content sometimes, we are making a more sensible web ecosystem, which by the way also helps the planet. Crystal Carter: Exactly. This is good. You'll be pleased to know that there are only 550... 595,000 people that think that SEO is ruining the internet. Rebecca Tomasis: But maybe it doesn't matter because SEO is dead. Crystal Carter: Okay, so next up is SEO... oh, SEO is a long-term strategy. Would you agree or disagree? Joshua George: Both. Rebecca Tomasis: Never ending. Joshua George: I'm in the middle. It can be short-term strategy as well. Crystal Carter: I think- Lidia Infante: It's a waterfall. The waterfall, when it starts running, it pours, then it keeps pouring. Joshua George: I say it's long-term as in it compounds, right? With more links we have more content- Lidia Infante: Right. Yeah, exactly. Joshua George: ... that's more long term, but some clients... I've had clients come on board for one month just gone, but they've got loads of results in that one month. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joshua George: We had a client, one of the biggest clients in the UK called Humax Direct. They sell Freeview boxes. Crystal Carter: Okay. Joshua George: They had things from Independent, Telegraph, every mass... Argus, all these massive companies. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Joshua George: They had no H1 Tech, no Title Tech, nothing. I just came and like, "Yeah, put that there." Boom, top of page one, organic revenue through the roof. Crystal Carter: Right. Joshua George: They're like, "Yeah, I think we're happy now." Short-term strategy, you're winning. See us next year. Crystal Carter: I agree. It's definitely been the case where you get a client and they're like, "Yeah," and you're like, "There are easy wins here. You can definitely- Joshua George: I love this. I love it. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: They're so fun. They love you afterwards. They're like, "Yeah, definitely works for us." Joshua George: "So clever." Crystal Carter: Good. I think we say it depends. Is that an, it depends? Lidia Infante: No, it's both. It's both. Joshua George: It's both. It's both. Lidia Infante: It compounds, but it can have short-term wins impact. Joshua George: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. We have 42 million people that agree, or that are running content that says that SEO is a long-term strategy. Rebecca Tomasis: That would be the SEO. Crystal Carter: Last one, which you'll be very pleased to know, has the most search results of... coming in at 394 million search results. SEO is important. Agree, disagree. I can guess. Joshua George: If you like money, yes. Rebecca Tomasis: I like my job. Lidia Infante: Basically, yeah. What do you think, is SEO important? Yeah. Crystal Carter: Agree. We agree. Everybody agrees. Rebecca Tomasis: If we raise our standards, then we raise the standard of the internet, right? Maybe that's our shared responsibility with Google, to- Crystal Carter: We make the world a better place. That's how, "We are the world." Rebecca Tomasis: Somebody said, "You don't do brain surgery." It's not the end of the world. Lidia Infante: Yes. Rebecca Tomasis: Oh, great. That's fine. Crystal Carter: I heard somebody who said- Lidia Infante: "This is my email in an emergency." What emergency? Crystal Carter: I heard somebody who was like, "It's PR, not ER." I was like, "You know what? That's honestly... it'll be okay. It's fine. We can optimize that page later," and stuff. But I certainly think that it can be a challenge sometimes pointing out... advocating for SEO in a space where sometimes... I don't know, PPC is seen as a big win, or maybe the team doesn't quite understand SEO, or maybe they got burned by... that's... if you- Joshua George: Yeah, I hear that all the time. Lidia Infante: That is so common. There's been such bad actors, doing bad jobs, that have put people off SEO. We have a brand problem as an industry. People still think content creators, or the content teams still are worried that you're going to make them write very long things that are not good for the user, or... and I heard this in 2023. Do I need to include any misspellings of the keyword? Crystal Carter: No. Lidia Infante: Do not. Rebecca Tomasis: Wow. Joshua George: I hear those same questions, that I do all the sales calls at the agency now, and it's like, "I've been burnt in the past. I've worked with this guy, he told me this," and half of my job on the sales calls is just convincing the person that by the way, you search for a keyword, we rank, you booked a call with us. But it does work by the way. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: Yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Joshua George: You've got here. It does work. Yeah, I don't know. There's a lot of people that aren't even doing SEO properly as well. We actually work with a client in Brighton. We met them yesterday before I was speaking, and they've been working for a big agency in London... I'm not going to name, for four or five months, and they built no backlinks whatsoever- Rebecca Tomasis: Right. Joshua George: ... and they haven't even implemented all the findings from the audit they'd done. Rebecca Tomasis: Right. Joshua George: It's just how do people get away with that? Then when that client goes to a good agency... not saying we are, there's other good agencies out there as well. You're already at a disadvantage. You have to then convince the person that- Lidia Infante: Yeah. Joshua George: ... you are good at what you do and you are different. Crystal Carter: I think trust is so important with clients, and with working with projects and things, because if you don't have... I've seen working agency side... I remember we walked in, and we did an audit of a site and I was like, "This is wrong, and that's wrong, and this is wrong, and that's wrong." We were pitching, we were prospecting for this client, and the guy who ran their website, who had been doing their SEO and dev stuff, where they'd be like, "Oh yeah, the devs doing the SEO." He just sat there with his arms folded the whole time, and was not bothered. Then after we finished our audit, he kept the client. Joshua George: Yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: We didn't get the client, but they trusted him implicitly. Broken things, fixed things, whatever, they trusted him immensely. I think that if you don't have the trust of the client, then it's very difficult to convey that SEO is important, that SEO matters to get the budget sign off, and things like that. You have to be transparent, open. Joshua George: Is it hard sell though? You're saying, "Hey, pay me two grand a month, for seven months. No guarantee, but you might rank number one." It's difficult. We actually only introduced recently offering PPC alongside SEO, a blended search approach. Crystal Carter: Right. Joshua George: You get the instant results in the ads, and you get more long-term strategy with the SEO as well. It works really well, and so much easier to sell. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think also that PPC layering can be really useful with testing things, and with also shoring up different parts of the SEO, if there's algo shenanigans and you're like, "But we need this content up here." Rebecca Tomasis: But the best is when they're like, "Well, we're going to drop this spend, and let's see if organic picks it over." Then you don't even need to think about it, and you're like, "It will." Then it does. Wow. It's like the best... no offense. Lidia Infante: Then you can move that budget to 100 words that you're not- Rebecca Tomasis: If you think about it, it's not necessarily about cutting that budget unpaid, right? It's like let's move it to something else, where it'll have more ROI- Lidia Infante: Or experiment with different PPC types of content, to see if they're going to actually deliver customers. Crystal Carter: Right. Lidia Infante: If they do, you'll go and make it for organic, ta da. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. Exactly, so you can create content on video for instance, instead of... let's say you were promoting blogs on PPC, if you cut that PPC spend, you could spend that producing videos, then you can add that to the et cetera, all of it, and just make it all work, and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. Lidia Infante: It's 3D chess. Crystal Carter: Exactly. This is the thing. It's a lot of strands. There should be one here that says SEO is complicated, and you should pay people to help you with it, and things. Yes, finishing up with that, this has been SERPS UP Live. If you like SERPS UP, we talk about this kind of thing with all fantastic, wonderful people. Y'all have all contributed to our many things that we've done, so thank you very much for joining us in this beautiful, incredible room. Thank you so much to Lidia for being here and sharing her incredible insights. Thank you so much to Joshua for being here, sharing her incredible insights. Thank you so much to Rebecca for being here. Thank you all. Enjoy your lunch, and have a great, BrighonSEO. Mordy Oberstein: We hope you enjoyed Crystal's session with Rebecca, with Lidia, and with Joshua. We'll link to all of their social media profiles in the show notes. There's no SEO news today, because this is a different little version of the SERPS UP Podcast. Little teaser, we are going to do more live conference recordings of the SERPS UP Podcast in the future, so look out for that. That's a warning. Look out for that. Crystal Carter: Find us at a conference near you doing some fantastic SERPS UP information. We hope to get some fantastic guests. We may very well do at our next one as well, so if you see us live, come and check it out. Say hello- Mordy Oberstein: Say hello. Crystal Carter: ... and yeah, get yourself into the real life podcast experience. Mordy Oberstein: With that, thank you for joining the SERFS UP Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episodes, we dive into keyword cannibalization. Is it real? It is, but there's more to it. We'll dive in, look forward wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes, or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace and love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Rebecca Tomasis Joshua George Lidia Infante Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter BrightonSEO Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Google Perspectives Feature Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Rebecca Tomasis Joshua George Lidia Infante Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter BrightonSEO Google Search testing “Mentioned in” search snippet Google Perspectives Feature Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha Mahala for joining the SUP podcast. We're projecting out some group new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the incredible, the fabulous, the absolutely unparalleled, unequivocal, un... I don't have any more adjectives. The head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, Mordy Oberstein, and hello people of the internet. Thank you for that. Fantastic. Amazing, incredible, stupendous, fantastic- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah. I guess that- Crystal Carter: I did fantastic twice. Mordy Oberstein: No, I always do that by the way. How uncouth of me to not have another un to have added to that. Also, uncouth is a very underrated word. Crystal Carter: Oh. I think it's underused. Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Don't underestimate it. You can under evaluate its importance in the English language. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's undefeated. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: It's not undeserving of whatever amount. Okay. The SURP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can also be a part of the future of website building with the all new Wix Studio. Explore how your agency can level up with the new customization abilities added to Wix Studio over at wix.com/studio. This as we take up the future of SEO in 2024. Not 2025, we're stopping in 2024 and that's it. In this very special episode of the SURP's Up podcast live from BrightonSEO in the UK. The future is nigh as we blast backwards to the past in what is surely some sort of sci-fi time warp contradiction. That's why we're going backwards to go forwards. And if only I would tell you what I actually mean by that, because even I don't know at this point. What I mean is, we're going back to September 14th to BrightonSEO in the UK where Crystal sat down with some well smart SEO folks, including our own Rebecca Tomasis, as well as Lidia Infante and Joshua George to discuss the future of SEO in a special live recording from the conference itself. So this episode was taped in front of a live audience. But alas, there was no laugh track. As Crystal and crew dived into how AI factors into the content creation process and then the SEO process, the impact of when Google does and doesn't get content right and the future overlap between SEO and brand. So step into the wormhole, open up the door to the DeLorean and step into a traveling phone booth. Whatever your time machine preference is, as this special Brian SEO UK edition of the SURP's Up podcast takes you into the great unknown that is the very near future of SEO. That was a mouthful. What I'm trying to say is, Crystal went to BrightonSEO in the UK, sat down with the really smart people and recorded a live session of the SURP's Up podcast, and I wasn't even there. Crystal Carter: You were there in spirit, because we were using a lot of the fun things that we do across the podcast. A lot of the segments which we all came up with together. Mordy Oberstein: So my spirit was hovering over. Crystal Carter: I also put your on the deck for the podcast. I also put your Twitter handle, not mine, to make sure that if anybody had anything to say about it, they could tweet you and not me. So that's very important. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you, I do appreciate that. So we're going to cut to that. But before we cut to that, Crystal, why don't you tell us a little bit about what y'all covered at BrightonSEO? Crystal Carter: Yes. So we did a version of Going Going Googled, talking about SGE. We also talked about some predictive text. We also talked about people also asked. We talked about a few other things as well. So I hope you enjoy this collection of... I think it was really interesting. I'll tell you what, there were some great, great surprising answers that we got from our fantastic panel of the way that people are using some of these new technologies, and the trends that people are seeing there as well. So it was a really great panel. I'd expect a few magical moments across the podcast recording. Mordy Oberstein: So without further ado, here's Crystal and crew over at BrightonSEO in the UK. Crystal Carter: Hi everyone. It's short notice and it was quite a hike. So thank you all for joining us today. We are going to be doing the SERP's Up live podcast. I have some fantastic, wonderful, incredible guests who are joining us. We're going to be here for the whole time, so please, I hope you enjoy this. I am going to be calling to the stage today a wonderful collection of fantastic human beings. First up is Mr. Joshua George, who is the founder of Click's Slice, which is a fantastic SEO agency based in London. He has over a decade of experience doing SEO as a consultant, and he ranks number one for SEO at London which is fantastic. And he also drove here in his McLaren. If you're parking near a McLaren, don't mess up his paint job. Okay, Joshua George, coming up to the stage. Thank you. Thank you. And next up, we have Lidia Infante, who is the SEO extraordinaire over at Sanity, which is the headless CNS. And they are doing incredible things, and she is also a contributor for the Wix SEO Learning Hub. And is also an international SEO extraordinaire, and a speaker and fantastic. And she is a fellow Cardi B fan. Thank you Lidia Infante coming to this stage. Next up is from my team at Wix. This is Rebecca Tomasis, she's an SEO expert who is currently managing the Wix blog. If you've entered into Google something that says like, "Oh, blog, what is blogging?" You will find Rebecca's handiwork there. Because the featured snippets that she collects are incredible. Some people do Pokemon, she collects featured snippets. She's incredible, she's fantastic, she's wonderful, she's Rebecca Tomasis. And I should introduce myself. Obviously I am Crystal Carter, a lot of y'all know me. Hi everybody, hello friends. And I am the co-host of the SERP's Up SEO podcast, which I co-host with Mordy Oberstein who is not here today. However, throughout this podcast, if you have anything to say about the podcast, please do at him on Twitter. His Twitter handle is at Mordy Oberstein. If you're in the back, you can see his thing. So it's at Mordy Oberstein on Twitter. So if you have anything to say about that, please do at Mordy. We publish our podcast every Wednesday. So we published one yesterday, and we will be publishing one next week, and this will be out later on. So thank you all for joining us. Okay, so we're going to get into a few of the features that we normally do on the SERP's Up SEO podcast. We do fun different things. And the first thing we're going to talk about, and these guys have not seen these slides, so we're all just winging it. But yeah. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about generative AI. So how many people have heard about AI today at the thing? For those of you listening on the podcast, everyone's already heard about it. It's only 11 o'clock in the morning that we've all already heard about generative AI. And the reason why is because we all know that Bing put out all of this stuff this year, and everybody went mad after ChatGPT blowing up last autumn. Bing introduced New Bing, and really, as they said, the CEO from Bing's search team said, we made Google dance. And after firing their shots, Google finally released their search generative experience, and they finally started putting in links which people are really excited about. And that's all well and fantastic. But one of the sections that we do in our podcast is we ask, is this new? Is this actually new? How are we thinking that people are using this in new ways? So my first question is, is AI in search actually new? How new are you finding that the search generative experience and how new are you finding people experiencing generative search in this space? Lidia Infante: Technically it is newish, but not really. Essentially, machine learning has been used to train the Google algorithm since the dawn of time. And what I think has really triggered this big AI movement is actually making it available. Because we used to have AI driven SEO tools. For years there was Frase and Jasper, which used to be Jarvis, but probably Marvel sued them or something. Rebecca Tomasis: They did. Lidia Infante: So yeah, it's not really new. But it is available to everybody, so you don't have to be bought in and make an investment before starting to test it out. Also, the generative large language models are very much improved. That's the stuff that's new. Also, our panic about SEO dying, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Thank you. Crystal Carter: It's all something new. And how are you using AI in your new workflows? Joshua, if you're able to share on that? Joshua George: Yeah. So for us, we still have human content. I'm a massive fan of that. I sell it a lot on our discovery calls as well, and clients value that. So I don't think we'll ever get rid of completely using human writers. But we do use it for our blog briefs, it just speeds up a lot more time. And that's currently how we use it at the moment. We haven't rolled it out properly in the whole agency yet. I'm still on the fence of it, because clients pay us a good amount of money to get them results so I'm going to be testing stuff on the site that... I have got an AI site that I'm playing around with testing strategies and see what's working, and that way I have my own data to make my own decisions on instead of seeing what someone says on Twitter, and just basing the whole thing on that basically. Crystal Carter: And people are saying a lot on Twitter. There's a lot on Twitter, a lot of things floating around and a lot of this is a brand new thing, and change everything that you are doing again. Rebecca Tomasis: But I find it takes so much testing to understand, is this going to make my work so efficient that sometimes you're like, "Well, I'm spending so much time testing this. Maybe in this time, I could've..." You have to be able to see I think the long-term benefit of the efficiency or scale, it will be able to bring you. Because it is new, and I think, like you said, the accessibility is new. So it's like, "I need to really take the time to test this and understand the impact." Crystal Carter: I think that the scalability point and how you're rolling out is really important. 'Cause I think that and the accessibility point is really important because yeah, Jasper's been around for ages. I know that Mike King, his team has been using AI for years and things like that. But when it's going mainstream, that means there's more competitors that are using it, which means if you want to be competitive, you have to think about how that works. And that's definitely changing the landscape of how people are interacting on search, and how people are creating content and things like that. I certainly see that. And where do you all feel like having seen the last six months of ChatGPT really going big, and New Bing going big, and generative search coming to Google and Bard and all of that? Where do you think in six months' time from the next BrightonSEO, where do you think we'll be then? Lidia Infante: I think we are going to be a lot less scared and a lot more empowered to actually use AI not as a replacement of us and our work, but as an enhancer of us and our work. I use AI all the time in my workflows now, and I absolutely love it. It's accelerated my output and productivity massively. It's much easier for me to edit stuff to fit tone guidelines, and to make it just detect where did I spell the thing that I'm not supposed to spell that way in the way that's for the company? And you also mentioned, Rebecca, that it takes some investment in time to get it done. So what I try to do is I try to create templatable prompts that I can just reuse, reuse and reuse endlessly. You were mentioning that you use them for content briefs. I use it somewhat for content briefs as well, but I use it more as an assistant of like, "Hello, go into the world of the web and tell me what are questions being asked about this?" Or I go, "Imagine that you are a product owner trying to find a new CMS. What are the questions that you're going to have to answer to your stakeholders?" Now you can feed it sources of truth so it stops making stuff up. Yeah. I almost am very proud that I said making stuff up instead of making (beep) up. I'm doing a really good job on those today. Lidia Infante: All right. So you feed it sources of truth, and you give it your own information of what you want it to base on. If you do really good prompting, you can recycle it forever. And I also really like using it for repurposing and content distribution. So I feed it some of my tweets. This is my tone of voice, this is how I speak in my tone of voice. Make me five tweets to promote this article. And that is a superpower. You go on a scheduler, and you have your content strategy distribution- Rebecca Tomasis: You can think consistency at scale also. And I think for me, I think sometimes I do need a blog post that's super unique and creative, and sometimes I'm like, "Please just follow this structure." And that's something that I can create within that first draft or something with AI, and there is the structure. And then okay, let's now put in the expertise and some of the creativity. But the meat or the bones is like, "Don't change this." Crystal Carter: Right. Right, right. And I think that people who are organized, like you were talking about your content briefs. If you're organized and you already have your content briefs, and you know how to structure a content brief and you know how to which content distribution points you want to hit, then it allows you to... You're already organized, it allows you to really, really work with that. I feel like you want to jump in here. Joshua George: Yeah, I was saying the same reason we're using ChatGPT, it all comes down to prompt. You put rubbish in, you're going to get rubbish out. So once you finalize and really narrow down what prompts actually work, it's pretty much just copy and paste. You just change out the niche. So yeah, we can produce blog briefs super, super quick now at scale. And I don't know how many briefs I'll do in a month at the moment. Loads. Don't tell me you didn't. Hundreds are what we're doing for our clients at the moment, and it's so much quicker. It makes it easier for our content team as well. Because when they're writing the content, they really know the anchor text to use and they know what page to link to. And there's loads of like, "We're using ChatGPT and the custom parameters, prompt engineering." I literally just made a whole call from ChatGPT two weeks ago. Nine hours of video content. I'll be playing around with it so much. And yeah, it's game changing. So I'm personally excited for the future. I can't wait for AI to roll out. I know a lot of people are scared of AI. Like, "Oh, it's going to take my job, is a content writer going to die?" Nah, that's rubbish. There's been so many changes in the SEO industry, and our job as SEO is just that. Rebecca Tomasis: And I think also because that whole conversation, the AI content rank. And I know from my experience it still takes so much human optimization, and strategy, and testing, and going back into the article to get it to rank. That's the process anyway. And in the short term or even the midterm, I don't see any tool that's necessarily able to replicate that. Even if we can get to the point where it creates a perfect piece of content for intent and all of that, it still needs tweaking, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Rebecca Tomasis: Next week, somebody's above you. What do I need to now do right? Crystal Carter: Right. And I think that with the velocity, with great velocity comes great responsibility. Rebecca Tomasis: Yes. And a lot of optimizations. Crystal Carter: Right. Rebecca Tomasis: Wow, I have all this content, and now it needs to rank. Crystal Carter: And I think also sometimes it's like if you're moving really quickly, it's also really easy to make a mistake at a large scale. So if you make one mistake across all over the place, 50, 60 blogs or something, it's like, "Okay, I have to go and unpick all those 50, 60 blogs or whatever." Rebecca Tomasis: You used the wrong angle. Crystal Carter: Right, on every single one. So yeah, that's something to think about as well. And I think also you talked about all of the optimizations you have to make as somebody who is skilled with your skills. You still have to make sure that that works. And if there is a lot of people, if there are a lot of people who are putting out just straight from the machine onto... Quality is still going to rise to the top, and quality comes from skill, and that skill is something you cultivate. Lidia Infante: I have something to say. I think what this has really done is it's changed what is table stakes. So being able to produce content at scale used to be a competitive advantage. But it's not anymore. So what is a competitive advantage right now is surfacing the human within your content, the experience of the person that's writing the specific anecdotes. Their wisdom, rather Than just copycat content. 'Cause now everybody can do copycat content. Grab what's ranking on the search and regurgitate it is something that is table stakes for literally your mom. Your dad- Rebecca Tomasis: ….without AI, right? We will regurgitate. Like, "Okay, this is what X ranks to be number one, and I need to write exactly the same thing." Lidia Infante: But we've had the resources to do- Rebecca Tomasis: To be number one, I need to write exactly the same thing. Lidia Infante: But we've had the resources to do it, and we needed the resources to do it. Now it's no longer needed. Right now, it's table stakes. So now to rise above the noise of what I imagine is going to be an increase of trash content running the web made by ChatGPT, it's going to be differentiation. And for me, differentiation is going to be human experience, and authority and personality. Rebecca Tomasis: So what I'm seeing now though with competitors is taking an article... And I actually talked to our editor, because I wanted her opinion on the content. Because at first glance, the expert tips are there, the sources are there, there's nice data, it's really well optimized and nicely structured. And then you go into the content and it's like, "Well, this was AI." I sent it to our editor and she's like, "This content is a train wreck." So I think this is also interesting to see people generating with... It's very obvious when you generate with AI, and then you're trying to force the expert quotes and everything in. Lidia Infante: Yeah. Crystal Carter: In Clueless they say, "Oh, she's a full on Monet." It's good from far away, but when you get up it's a hot mess. Lidia Infante: Gotcha, good. Crystal Carter: So it's something you need to think about, and making sure that you're maintaining that tone and maintaining that quality as you go along. We can absolutely talk about AI all day, as I'm sure many people are today. But we are going to get into our next section, which is fun with People Also Ask. People also ask sometimes referred to as a universal SERP feature. It is seen on almost every single search that you do on Google. And there are some fun questions that show up on People Also Ask, and we're going to go through a couple of them. So the first question that people also ask is where can we find mermaids? That's a question that people also ask. Rebecca Tomasis: There were actual answers? Crystal Carter: No, don't look at the answers. Y'all are supposed to look at the... They're looking at the answers. Okay, so do you have any ideas before we could find mermaids? Rebecca, you can't say because you looked. Rebecca Tomasis: I already know. Lidia Infante: I can find mermaids in the documentary that you shared with me on Netflix. Crystal Carter: That's true, there is a mermaid thing- Rebecca Tomasis: It's what? People wear the tails, right? Lidia Infante: A fantastic documentary. MerPeople I think it is. Crystal Carter: MerPeople, it's fantastic, it's wonderful. Lidia Infante: So she recommended it to me. I wasn't going to watch it, but now I'm very happy with it. Crystal Carter: It's amazing. If you have nothing to watch on Netflix, watch MerPeople, it's fantastic. Joshua George: Do we have the age group of people who also- Crystal Carter: No, they don't get out of ages. Joshua George: What? Crystal Carter: I literally entered mermaids into Google, and they were like, people also ask. And Google has tons of these. If you enter Google mom, they're like, "Who is Google's mom?" And it's like, "No, that's not the question to ask." Y'all, that's not it. But yeah, where do you think you find mermaids? Joshua George: Well, we have that joke we say in the SEO industry. The best place to hide a dead body is on page two, 'cause nobody looks there, it's perfect. The mermaids are going to be on page two. Crystal Carter: Okay. So Atlas Obscura is actually answering this question legitimately. They're saying that you can find mermaids in Japan. They're also saying that you can find mermaids in Florida, and that you can find mermaids in Vermont. So I think that's fascinating that there is a place- Lidia Infante: Is there sea in Vermont? Crystal Carter: There is not. I think Vermont is landlocked. But apparently there's mermaids there, so that's interesting. Joshua George: Probably. Crystal Carter: Our next question from People Also Ask is vibranium the strongest metal on earth? And this is a serious question that people are asking. And the thing I find you're- Rebecca Tomasis: Vibranium, is it from a Marvel- Lidia Infante: Yes. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Exactly, exactly. Rebecca Tomasis: Is it Thor's hammer? Crystal Carter: Yeah, no. No, that's not vibranium. Lidia Infante: What they have on Wakanda. Crystal Carter: Captain America's shield is vibranium. Joshua George: I'm sorry too, I don't want any Marvel. Crystal Carter: You don't want any Marvel? Joshua George: I don't watch Marvel. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. So Google here is being very interesting, because Google is not just telling them no, that's a dumb question. Google is saying identified in 1781, Tungsten is the strongest pure metal on earth. And this is from- Lidia Infante: In the real world. Crystal Carter: In the real world. Rebecca Tomasis: So it's basically just saying you are an idiot, this- Crystal Carter: Kind of. Joshua George: Wouldn't it be better if Google just said, "Hey, are you okay?" Rebecca Tomasis: It's a website that might say, "Are you better?" Crystal Carter: So yeah. So this is from a blog called what are earth's mightiest fictional metals? So again, they're trying to help people, to slowly guide them towards reality. Rebecca Tomasis: But are they very expensive? How can they be expensive if they are fictional? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's in the movie. Okay, so anyway. Rebecca Tomasis: I don't know. Crystal Carter: Okay, so our next one. So our next people also ask is, what are the five types of unicorns? Rebecca Tomasis: No. Crystal Carter: This is a very important question that people are asking. Lidia Infante: It's a very important question Crystal Carter: Why is this important? Lidia Infante: So my first website, I made it when I was six years old, on FrontPage. Obviously as a six-year-old, I was very interested in unicorns. Crystal Carter: Of course. Lidia Infante: So it was basically a bundle of images of unicorns that I had been downloading from Google Search, which was my hobby when I was six. Go on Google Search and look at unicorns. Crystal Carter: Of course. Rebecca Tomasis: So obviously a lot of people's hobbies. Lidia Infante: So since then, every time I learn a new technology to make content, I try it out with a unicorn website. I have six websites in- Joshua George: Yeah, you should know this inside out then. Lidia Infante: So if they're saying five, because there's many different classifications- Crystal Carter: Okay, let's get to that. Lidia Infante: If they're saying there's five, it's 'cause they're using the elements type of classification. Crystal Carter: Of course. Lidia Infante: This is going to be like water, sand, ice, fire, electric unicorns. But you can classify them by color, or by whether or not they will give you magic. Crystal Carter: Okay, all right. Okay, so that's a thorough... You should really be ranking for this to be honest. Joshua George: She probably is. We don't even know. Crystal Carter: She's probably a low-key unicorn queen. Okay, so this is from mombooks.com, and they're saying that the seven types in the world today, that is what they're saying in the world today. There are mountain jewels, water moons, woodland flowers, desert flames, ice wanderers, storm classic, shadow knights. I know you all didn't think you were coming to talk about unicorns, but we're here, we're enjoying it, et cetera, et cetera. But these are the kinds of things that people are seeing on People Also Ask. Lidia Infante: The only thing…. Crystal Carter: The thing I find fascinating about this is that Google is not only placating these kinds of questions, and they say it's a mythical creature, y'all. This is a mythical creature, the unicorns are mythical. But they also give you more questions. So they're also saying why is it called a unicorn? And they're saying, where can I find a unicorn? Location, where can I find a unicorn? Rebecca Tomasis: Again, in Vermont. Crystal Carter: Again in Vermont. Apparently, Vermont- Lidia Infante: Oh my God. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... it's a super magical place where we should all be looking for unicorns and mermaids. So my question here is this. With regards to People Also Ask, are y'all making content for some of these questions that are terrible questions? Are y'all engaging with these? Joshua George: Hell yeah. Crystal Carter: You are? Joshua George: Absolutely, to build relevancy. So when you carry out a search for anything, those people also ask questions. It's questions that relate to the topic of what you just searched for. So Google already deems those topics relevant to that search term. So if you build out content around that, link it back to the page you're trying to rank, you increase your page's relevancy. Lidia Infante: Even if it's a dumb question? Joshua George: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Joshua George: Yeah, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: I didn't know about the- Joshua George: I wouldn't say unicorns, other stuff. Rebecca Tomasis: There are a lot of repetitive things also, right? Joshua George: Yeah, it's on there. Rebecca Tomasis: Why should I start a business? That's a very bad example, but I'm not going to necessarily directly answer every question. But I think in terms of intent and what people are looking for, and I think they're super insightful. And they got a lot longer, some queries now, it's like... Lidia Infante: Yeah. Joshua George: When you click, you get more as well. They expand- Rebecca Tomasis: And then you're down a warren hole of... Crystal Carter: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lidia Infante: I only use PAAs to look at what the content journey is going to be. What is my audience interested in? But where I'm currently at, I'm trying to sell expensive software to enterprises. So if the question is dumb, it's probably not for my audience. Crystal Carter: Okay. But it's a question of sometimes there'll be people... Maybe it's a question of competition. Maybe most people are going to be like, "That's a silly question, I'm not going to answer that." And so maybe if you get in there and address it, maybe not directly. Maybe not put it as the header, but low-key address it. Maybe you're more likely to show instead of mom books.com on something about unicorns. Though the other thing I find also really interesting is that on the right here I have name, origin. Why is it called a unicorn location? Where can I find a unicorn? And then there were other questions as well that come up there. So we're starting to see more of these query-based questions that are popping up on the SERP. I recently was on Google, and got to the bottom of the page. And I saw instead of related searches, it had the query, and then it had a knowledge panel looking thing about... You've seen this as well, about the question, and then another question and then another question. Do you think we're going to see more of this going forward? Yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: No, because I think it also directly links, which we started to see a lot of last week, is especially on some of our big strategic keywords was Reddit threads ranking. Ranking high, ranking five, four, out of nowhere. And I think it's all related, because a lot of these questions are the very insightful questions people ask on Reddit. So I think there is obviously a huge connection between, again, what people are really looking for, and what they're really looking for is the experience. Somebody who's actually, I don't know, seen a unicorn or- Lidia Infante: The human. The human instead of the SEO, right? Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. I think they're really trying to tap into that. And that complaint of it. If this is a machine delivering me an answer, it's not useful and... Yeah. Crystal Carter: That's really interesting. I think also, do you think that with SGE for instance, and with ChatGPT, and Bard, and New Bing and all of that stuff. When you go to New Bing for instance, they're like, "Write as many characters as you want." Enter whatever question you want. And I find that when I'm doing a query in one of those tools, that I will structure my query differently from how I would enter it into Google. In Google, I'm going for lowest common denominator terms, and I'll just be like, "Unicorn with pink wings," or something. Then I would just enter that so that I would get that thing. Whereas in ChatGPT, I might even just speak it into it and I say, "Where can I find a unicorn backpack that has pink wings, and orange stripes and et cetera, et cetera?" And so it'll be much, much longer. Do you think that these queries are responding to the more conversational tone that people are having with search engines? Do you think that's even a trend? Lidia Infante: Well, then we see a bit of a swap to a more conversational tone in search. When voice search happened and we were all thinking that voice search was going to be... What was it, 17% of those searches? Crystal Carter: No, I never thought that. Joshua George: I never use it. I've never searched with my voice ever. Lidia Infante: I only use my Google Assistant to put jams on when I'm cooking. Crystal Carter: Okay, okay. Lidia Infante: I have seen conversational tone come in and out of search in different ways. So when I started in PPC, my very dark past, I was carrying PPC strategies for several countries, and these countries have adopted digitalization and the internet and become proficient in buying online at different stages in different ways. And you could see that the less digitalized a country was, the more likely I was getting this conversationally written queries. Crystal Carter: Interesting. Lidia Infante: Then we swapped onto a generic, very broad, very top of the final query as they matured. And then we swapped to long tail questions from the get go, instead of doing generic, mid-tail, long tail. The fact that it's coming back, and I felt like it came back a little bit when we were all talking about voice search and people were trying it, it changed our relationship with searching a little bit. I wonder if we are having a similar change in our parasocial relationship with search engines. Crystal Carter: I think certainly with... Rand Fishkin recently published an article about how people use ChatGPT, and they were talking about a lot of the words that people are using and people are saying please. Joshua George: I say please all the time. I even say hello. Crystal Carter: I use ChatGPT for that. Joshua George: It's a waste of characters as well. Crystal Carter: I use ChatGPT to save me from Google Sheets. I literally am like, "Google Sheets was mean to me. They told me my code didn't work. And they're like, "Here it is." I'm like, "Thanks, Chat." So yeah. And Bard, Bard also will get upset. If you're not nice to Bard, Bard will be like, "I'm sorry, I'm an AI generated tool and I will not answer any more questions." And I'm like, "Bard, what?" I'm sorry, not Bard, Bing. Bing does that, or whatever. And they're just like, "You can cope with a question," and they're like, "No, I can't, I'm an AI." Stop being so fragile. Lidia Infante: Pass the baby. Crystal Carter: So yeah. So people are saying please, people are saying the thing. And also, I think that there's a certain amount with some of the generative conversational search things, there's less judgment. I think I remember I got some insurance documents, and they sent me the terms of the insurance documents. And I was like, "I don't know what this means." And I put that into Chat and I was like, "ChatGPT, what does this mean?" And they were like, "Oh, it means this, and this and this." And they use this term, and I was like, "I don't know what that term means. What does that term mean?" And they were like, "Oh, it's like this." So you can just be honest about what you don't know, or you can just be honest about what you actually need in a different way than if you were to, I don't know, ask someone. And they were like, "Well actually, how come you didn't know that?" Or that thing. So I wonder if that doesn't change as well, people's relationships to that. And maybe it'll change people's relationships to brands as well. Lidia Infante: Well, that's why I got into marketing at all to begin with, because I was studying psychology, 'cause I'm curious about people, but then if you ask people to test and self-report, you're going to lie. They're going to lie to look good, they're going to lie to be liked, or they're going to lie to agree. And then I had this little side marketing job doing PVC, as well as studying psychology. At the time, you could see all of the queries. I could literally see what my parents in their postcode were searching for. Crystal Carter: Oh my god. Lidia Infante: I was searching for, because they were really excited that their daughter had a job. So yeah, the privacy of your own home, of typing out whatever you want without judgment is huge. Rebecca Tomasis: And I think it could potentially change how people are relating to brands, because I think a lot of people are adopting chatbots on their brands as well, which could give you lots more details on the kinds of content that people actually need but maybe are afraid to ask directly for, and that thing. So yeah, I don't know. We'll see how these things pay out. Joshua George: Yeah. Yeah, and going to be interesting. It's like when you go into a website, you have a search bar, you can search for whatever you want. Might not even exist, but no one's looking at it and you can get away with saying things wrong, asking stupid questions and no one can judge you. Yes, that was- Lidia Infante: Everything you type is on someone's analytics. Joshua George: I know now, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, I got to say. Joshua George: When I was younger, I did not know that. And yeah, I think using AI for chatbot stuff is literally the same trend as the search box. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's very interesting. Cool. Lidia Infante: When we have to search for something stupid. My husband and I split. Now you look stupid to the algorithm, of course. Or something embarrassing, or something that we definitely should not be asking any search engine. We take it in turns, because we don't want the algorithm to judge us. Crystal Carter: I think also it's one of those things like site search. Site search is always such a goldmine of things that people are looking for that maybe you don't have, or things that people are not understanding. And you're like, "We totally have that on the website," but people can't find it and that thing. So I think that it'd be interesting to see how those things work as people adopt more native AI-powered chat conversations and things like that. Okay, so now we're going to talk about another section called Going, Going Google, which is looking at a few Google trends. So this one is one that I've seen recently. I was very pleased with myself 'cause I spotted it on the SERP and I was like, "Oh, I found this." And Barry reminded me that it is not new, that Brody Clark had actually found it two hours earlier or something, so unlucky there. But this is mentioned in... So I was looking at Santa Monica Pier, and I found this entry. And this was not the first entry, it was further down, for Pacific Park, which is the amusement park on Santa Monica Pier. And you'll see it says, "Mentioned in AAC animals, mentioned in travel awaits, mentioned in other things as well." I don't know if y'all have seen this or how you feel about this. Rebecca Tomasis: For me, it's a little bit... Because like this, I don't... As an SEO, I don't necessarily control... This now is like taking the SERP beyond what I can influence and optimize it. Now, I got to take... Anyway, we're having those conversations. But now, I really need to talk to digital PR. Now, I really need to talk to the affiliates team. Now, I really need to... It's That whole world of ORM, and it's... My number one thought was, how do I manipulate it? Joshua George: Straight away, yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: How do I get in there? Lidia Infante: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Because it's a question of who else is ranking for your brand, or who else is ranking for that mention in that brand? Lidia Infante: It seems like an authority thing. 'Cause if you're looking for Santa Monica Pier, you're maybe looking for things to do. And things to do in Santa Monica Pier might be a common follow-up search- Things to do in Santa Monica Pier might be a common follow-up search- Crystal Carter: Right. Lidia Infante: That people are making. It changes the perceived intent of the serve. Typically, when you're doing a what to do type of search, you're looking for lists of people, your brands you trust. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: Here, they're showing you the thing to do, validated by the brands you might trust. Crystal Carter: Right. Rebecca Tomasis: This is what I see, the queries that I'm looking at. The mentioned in, you see the brands. And then you click and it opens up, and then it's like, Wix was mentioned in dah dah dah. And generally obviously the connection is like, these are the brands we understand to be closely related with this kind of topic, right? So in that sense, we can manipulate it. Joshua George: I think this is good though. Crystal Carter: Yeah? Joshua George: Think SEO is coming from a big change. At the moment, I think we're quite lazy with what we do. To rank page a bit of content, bit of backlink. Rebecca Tomasis: We know this works. Joshua George: This is more of a holistic approach, right? You can't just do this, you can't just do link building. You need to be acting on social media, do some PR and that gets better results to the clients at the end of the day. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Joshua George: The ones who don't want to adapt are the ones that are going to lose out. Rebecca Tomasis: Okay. A hundred percent. Crystal Carter: I think it kind of keeps brands, it's going to keep brands honest about how they're approaching their brand relationships and things like that. The other thing, I think the thing that's worrisome, so I see where you're like, oh, this is great. So as a user, I think this is great. Because as a user, I'm definitely looking at multiple websites if I'm going to be doing a thing. So if I want to go to Santa Monica Pier, yeah. I'm like, oh great, I can hear more details about this. So I think that that's Google answering that user journey. They know that you're going to search around for stuff. As a brand, I share your, Ah, what about this? Because what if somebody says something that... What if, I don't know, the people could say something else. So there's potentially some worrisome things there. Joshua George: Yeah. You got to bury it. Crystal Carter: No, no, we don't want to bury it. No, but I think you have to... But I think it does mean that SEOs need to think more about how they're balancing their brand relationships overall. So as you're saying, talking to PR, talking to acquisition or talking to affiliates, talking to different teams to help bring that up. Lidia Infante: It's all brand, brand, brand. Especially when you're on the product end of things. You and I are in a very similar space, if not competitors. And people are looking for the concept. When they're looking for informational, they're looking for best keyword, whatever when they're looking to buy. But if you're looking for best keyword, whatever, you're not going to rank for it. And you really need to be speaking to all of the people who are creating those lists to be included. Otherwise, you're not going to be there. And being included if you're not actively talking to them is all about being top of mind for the journalist that's writing it. So a lot of the SEO work that's coming, it's going to be very brand related. Watching out for your brand serves, watching out for EAT now. EAT, yeah. Another “E”. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see how this relates to where does that rank? Are you ranking in that position? If you're AZ animals, are you ranking number...? If Pac Park is number seven, are you now number eight? How's it going to affect the click-through rate on that? So I don't know. I'm interested, I'm curious. I'm watching the space. The next one that I want to talk about is perspectives. Perspectives has a similar sort of thing. Perspectives, I have mixed feelings about this because I generally see this when it's a news item, so it'll be like a news thing that's happening. Coco Gauff recently won the US Open. Triumphantly. She was amazing, any other tennis fans. She was fantastic. And when you look at Coco Gauff, again, not at the top, but after the news you see perspectives. And it's like people putting in their 2 cents about what happened at the US Open, for instance. So we have, thanks to Coco Goff from Roxanne Jones, we have Roger Federer wishing her well. And then we have just generally related, I think it's the other person who won the US Open as well. So I think that this is a similar thing. Have you all seen perspectives pop up with things or do you find it helpful as a user? Do you think it will be helpful to users? Lidia Infante: I don't find it helpful as a user, but I think it's pointing you at what I've been saying since I sat down here. It's about people. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: People, people. The human perspective is what we are seeking right now. I feel validated. I don't use it. Rebecca Tomasis: I agree, but I've been thinking about it like, there are levels of human perspective that's valuable and not. This is fairly valuable, but you could... Something, I don't know. To go back to the Reddit thread, if you Google how to start a blog and that Reddit thread on how to start a blog is not helpful. So again, it's like quality content, or really answering the question. Does that make sense? This is where I struggle with it a little bit. Like the quality of the results for it Joshua George: Sounds like, I've seen it. I never use it. I don't see the value in this at all. It pulls in... Rebecca Tomasis: Maybe the CNN one. Joshua George: Then you can just go directly onto CNN and read that article. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, that's true. Joshua George: I don't get it. It's pulling information from Twitter. Twitter. What is it? Is it like a combination of all social media platforms? Is it pulling... I think it's messy. I don't know how it uses... Rebecca Tomasis: I think it's telling us you need to be on everything as much as possible. Joshua George: Coming back to brand, just being different platforms and stepping away from SEO and doing other stuff. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's definitely pulling in omnichannel elements there. It'll be interesting to see if this one sticks, because Google sometimes drops different features. So it'll be interesting to see if this one sticks. I've seen mixed value from it. A lot of times it seems to repeat some of the news items. And we already have Twitter carousels. We already have news carousels. So it's interesting. And I think also I would expect it to show up for things where there's kind of a debate. So for instance, I'm from Devon and in Devon... Or I'm not from Devon, I'm from California. I live in Devon. And in Devon we have the cream tea and the correct way to put …. Rebecca Tomasis: Jam on it. Crystal Carter: Exactly. Rebecca Tomasis: Cream's first. Crystal Carter: It's cream first. Rebecca Tomasis: So my parents are from Devon, but I like it the Cornwall way.. Crystal Carter: It's controversial. This is my whole point. So if you look up how to do a cream tea, they just put an answer, which is incorrect. And really they should be having... Rebecca Tomasis: The discussion. Crystal Carter: The discussion of this back and forth about where we do a cream tea, although we all know it's first. Because you obviously put the butter on your toast first before you put the jam on. So why would you put the cream .. Rebecca Tomasis: But the cream is the best part. It needs to be on the top. Crystal Carter: Okay, we'll agree to disagree. Lidia Infante: I wonder if perspective is also coming from a place where Google sees that they're losing some share of search to TikTok and to Instagram. Personally, whenever I need to care for my plants, which are alive by some miracle of, I don't know. I look it up on TikTok, because I don't want to read how to report it. I want to see it. Because I will mess it up if it's just written instructions. So for that, for DIY, for recipes, I'd rather search on TikTok. But if I go on Google and I get TikTok results, then I keep searching on Google while consuming on TikTok. Crystal Carter: I think they're definitely trying to mix it up. I think they're trying a lot of things to see what sticks. And I think TikTok is a challenger for them at the moment. Bing is obviously a challenger for them and from a sort of development point of view. So I think they're trying out lots of different things to see how that works. And I think perspectives is one. Joshua George: Don't you feel like they're losing their focus on what they're made to do? Search. Coming back to users, if you want to learn to make a lasagna dish or whatever, you want to see someone doing that. If you Google how to make lasagna, you'll get a blog post, like, turn the oven on. That's not a great user experience. Lidia Infante: Well the blog post will be.. my grandmother used to make lasagna every day. Joshua George: I'd still rather watch the video on TikTok. Same example, five best restaurants in Brighton. You'll get a TikTok, it'll show the restaurant, show you the meal. You just watch the whole thing in a minute and you know exactly what's going on. Lidia Infante: When you go to a restaurant- Joshua George: It's way better. Lidia Infante: You look it up on Instagram to see what you're going to order. I don't know, am I only one who does this? Joshua George: No, I do. Crystal Carter: I think though, folks succeed when they have a mix of intents and things like that. So one of the ones, I'm not a Daily Mail reader, particularly. Lidia Infante: Promise? Crystal Carter: I'm not. However, one of the things that they do, one of the things that they do really well when they were the first folks to do this, and then I've seen more people do it since, but they do a TLDR three bullet points of the article. As soon as you get on the article, they're like, lasagna sales are up. Everybody loves the marinara. And Lydia says it's great. They'll hit you with the three main points from the article. And then you can get into the deep dive of it and you know there's going to be a million pictures and you know there's going to be... They rank really, really well for lots of stuff because they're able to hit that, I've got five minutes, I need that top information. Lidia Infante: Yeah, time is value. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. So I've got five minutes, I can get some value out of this and I can also bookmark it for when I do have time to deep dive into it. I know there's going to be pictures, if I just want to look at pictures. There's going to be a link to a video if I want to watch a video, that sort of stuff as well. So I think that when you're able to hit multiple points in an efficient way, I think that that's what they're trying to do. I think that that's what good blogs, good content folks are doing as well. So I don't know. Lidia Infante: That's something that I've done with AI, with the assist of AI to have it read my blog and be like, okay, give me the five key takeaways in bullet point form. You can ask it to go on a specific markup. And then plug it directly onto a headless CMS and then you A/B test it. Is this working better for my user or is it not? Right? And if it is, I do it on scale, and then review for the thesis that have the most traffic. If it's not good or better, I remove it. Crystal Carter: Right? These are things you can test, you can see, you can see how they're working for folks to get the best value. Lidia Infante: See the challenge is just putting the user at the center. Rebecca Tomasis: So I think a secondary challenge right now though is even though we know we're in a stage where Google is testing a lot of things, it's also a question of we all want to be the first to understand it and be able to optimize for it. And know what to do. But if next week, it's disappeared again. And it was like, okay, so we were tracking where we are mentioned, we were tracking what kind of things were coming up here, we were tracking what social media is coming up on these perspectives. And it's really a question of how do we go for this? But at the same time- Lidia Infante: And should you? Rebecca Tomasis: We can't go for this because.... Lidia Infante: What's the return as well? Joshua George: Like Threads, right? Instagram release Threads literally just copied Twitter, should I invest time in Threads now, is it going to blow up in five years time? Crystal Carter: You just don't know what's going to be here and what's going to …. Crystal Carter: Right. Or it's like, web stories, web stories. They were like, yeah, web stories. And to make a web story was a total pain, and then it's just not really a thing. So I don't know, you don't always know what's going to hit. But I guess that's the thing that's exciting about being an SEO. Lidia Infante: You need to chill and focus on strategy. Because if you're chasing everything, you're going to lose your mind. Crystal Carter: I agree. Okay. The last one I wanted to talk about is, so on Google, if you click the little three dots, you can get more about this search result. I find this fascinating and I think this sort of sits in the same sort of area as the two things we've seen before, which is essentially where, so if you click on a webpage, it'll like, about this source. And it will quote you Wikipedia. So here it says DeviantArt, and says DeviantArt is this. And it was created by this, and it has headquarters in Los Angeles, et cetera. And that's from Wikipedia. And then they'll have a section that's in their own words and it'll say, DeviantArt is this, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes it will have links to other things as well. If you don't have a Wikipedia page, then they'll just say, we couldn't find any third party sources, but this is what it says on the website. And it will just quote some stuff from the website. Now this is currently in beta, but I think this is an interesting evolution, and I think it's an interesting perspective to get an idea of what Google thinks of your brand. Lidia Infante: So excited. I love this feature so much. Crystal Carter: Okay, so what do you love about it? Lidia Infante: I love that through this feature, I got to get budget for several projects. Joshua George: Nice. Lidia Infante: By showing this to leadership. This feature is absolutely awesome. It shows you what page Google has chosen within your site, as what you say about yourself. So I've been trying to get a knowledge panel for the longest time. Now I have one. But someone that had one for a long time was Lazarina Stoy, who's an amazing human SEO. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. Lidia Infante: Yes. So what I do is I try to reverse engineer her stuff. So I go Google Lazarina Stoy about this source on her personal website, and I noticed that her, in their own words, was coming from, not her homepage, but a page that she made that says, who is Lazarina Stoy? And then it made me look at my own thing and look up in their own words, where's Google pulling my, who am I? It was using the homepage, it was using a specific paragraph that I didn't really want them to use that one. So what I did is I kind of restructured my homepage and I rewrote that specific paragraph. And it worked. And now Google understands me better and I have a knowledge pile. And then I did the same thing for my company, for Sanity. I went on, and we've called ourselves many things. When you're trying to position your brand, you will go through phases. We've been a structured content platform, we've been content is data. We've been the unified content platform. We've been a composable content cloud. Finally, we are embracing that we are a headless CMS, but we've been spoken about throughout the web as headless CMS. Crystal Carter: It's not uncommon for longstanding brands though. Lidia Infante: Yeah. And for us it's super common. So throughout the site we've called ourselves many things. It's very inconsistent. I go on about the source and I know that they're using a short introduction to Sanity as the page where they're pulling what we're saying about ourselves. So I went in there and Google was highlighting structured content platform. And I'm like, no, that was like three positionings ago. So I went in there, changed it to headless CMS, and I've seen us grow in rankings for headless CMS, headless, and CMS related queries by positioning myself as clearly a headless CMS. I'm saying it, others are saying it, therefore I am. I rank, therefore I am. And then we don't have a Wikipedia page. We have one in Norwegian. Which obviously is not getting a lot of traffic. And I'm working on getting us a Wikipedia page in English so that we can get trusted sources on the section in there. But I also dived into the trusted sources in there, in the docs. Because they link you to what are our third party trusted sources. And it's not just Wikipedia, it's also Crunchbase and some others. But they are not actually using it. The only thing that's pulling up on the third party is Wikipedia. I have a Crunchbase profile that's in my same as schema. So it's not hard to find. And Google's not pulling that. So yeah, this is my story with this feature. I love it. I love it. Joshua George: I love it as well. Because if you look at this, it's telling you why it ranked. Because it featured here, here. And again, it's another example of Google saying backlinks are super important. Although don't build it because they're not going to help you. And even like EAT, it's predominantly based on link based signals. People think it's just adding an author on your page. It's really not. You just say where you've been featured and again, it's a backlink. Yeah, I think with all that whole AI content coming out, backlink's going to get more and more impactful in algo. They're really the number one ranking factor, in my opinion anyway, besides content user metrics. So yeah, I love this. Because you can manipulate backlinks, you could build them at scale. And you mentioned you featured on Crunchbase, wherever these websites, like Forbes, you can pay to get featured there. And I think that's going to be the big difference. Who has the higher quality links because they're seen as more credible brand, they have more authority in the space. And they'll have bigger about the source mentions that no one else can have. Wikipedia you can pay to create a Wikipedia page as well. So yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting times. Rebecca Tomasis: I think it relates also to how you build your content, how you cluster your content, what you write about, how you connect it to your domain. The schema that you build to reinforce this is what my brand is an authority in. And I think it's also Google making all of those connections for the user. I think it's super, super important. It's just when you want to be an authority in a lot of things, it's more tricky. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it can be interesting. I think it's also interesting that it also shows up for particular articles. So for instance, if an article has been ranking for a while, it'll say this page was first indexed at this time. And this is what we know about this page and this is what we know about this source as well. So it can be really great for helping to validate the sort of quality of both your brand rep positioning and your entity positioning, but also a particular piece of content and things. I love it. I love that you're using it as proof. That's one of my favorite things. People are like, oh, we're doing this. It's like, yeah, but look what Google says. Look what it says on this earth, because it says something different. So, yeah. Crystal Carter: ... look what it says on the SERP, because it says something different. Yeah, that's fantastic. I think I found it a really fascinating feature. I think the first time I saw it was on Better Homes & Gardens, and then I was like, "I love this. We need more of this." Yeah, I think we all agree that it's something that goes along with Google's general sort of E-E-A-T, evolution, and all of that in the SERP, which I think is even more important in the age of AI. Have you all responded much to the experience thing? Have you added more experience as well to your strategies, as well as the expertise, authority and trust]? Joshua George: Yeah. We just try to make our clients the authors of everything we publish on the site, and just leverage their name at whatever. Hair transplant clinic in Turkey, so that the doctor writes it. We write it, but put it under the doctor, and we try and get it in all the content the best that we can. But other than that, there's not much you can really do. I've got 10 years of experience in every update, 11, 12, 13. Lidia Infante: I think the E in experience is not exactly going in that direction. The way that I see it, when you talk to a subject matter expert, and they're excited about it and they get passionate, and you're probably going to have these experiences here at brightonSEO. If you approach anyone, they speak about their subject of expertise in a very specific way- Crystal Carter: Right. Lidia Infante: ... with excitement, with love and with anecdotes. They're so excited to share their silly little anecdotes with you. I have shifted to not only talking about best practice, but the specific anecdotes that my subject matter experts have. That's something that I cannot really get anywhere else, and it's really hard to insert afterwards. It feels a little bit unnatural. What I've been doing is I interview my subject matter experts, and I've briefed my ghostwriter to not eliminate anecdotes, to actually highlight them, and use storytelling of their personal experience. Yeah, I've incorporated it. I love it. I think it makes for better content, more human content. Rebecca Tomasis: I think for us, also, it's a positive on several fronts, because for us, the experience, this use of a product, we are a product-led company. It's making that double connection of like, "This is a user that has used our product for this intent," and then also then to take them down the funnel. Yeah, it's really... we have to think of product more. Yes. Crystal Carter: I think you're also starting to see things like the bubble that's for examples on Google. People will say... I don't know, "Cat, umbrellas." They'll be like, "Oh, what examples of cat umbrellas." People want to see the pictures of the cat. I literally just invented a product. I don't know if the cats need umbrellas, but there we go. Anyway. Okay. Now predictive text. Okay, so what do we think we have here? If you type in SEO, the first thing you get is SEO is dead. Rebecca Tomasis: I love this one. Look at the second one. Crystal Carter: Well- Lidia Infante: Don't look at the second one. Crystal Carter: Look at the second one. Don't look ahead. Rebecca Tomasis: I'm so sorry. I'm very new to this. Crystal Carter: Don't look ahead, agree or disagree? Joshua George: No. Rebecca Tomasis: Disagree. Joshua George: Disagree. Crystal Carter: Okay, so this is something. The interesting thing I found out about this was that the total number of entries for SEO is dead was 105 million. Joshua George: Wow. Crystal Carter: That's how many research results there are for SEO is dead. A lot of people who are checking the pulse on SEO all the time, and I think we can all agree that SEO is not dead. Okay, so next one, SEO is ruining the internet. Are we ruining the internet? Lidia Infante: Yes. Joshua George: I agree. Lidia Infante: Literally. Crystal Carter: What? Joshua George: I do agree this one. Crystal Carter: What? Why do you agree? Lidia Infante: I would qualify it. I would- Crystal Carter: Are you saying it depends? Is that what you're saying about this? Lidia Infante: Yeah. Joshua George: It depends. Lidia Infante: I think the flood of shit content... I didn't want to say shit. Sorry. Crystal Carter: You've now said it three times Lidia Infante: I was doing so well. I think the flood of bad content to the internet, it's definitely our fault. The fact that myths that we're old about, "You need this many characters to run. You need this many words," have separated us from what the user actually wants. We have low-key ruined the internet. Now when I look for, "I want to buy a coffee maker," and how do I know that this person is not making money to sell me the specific coffee maker? I just want a reliable opinion- Rebecca Tomasis: But I need a coffee maker. Who cares who makes money off the fact that I need a coffee maker? Lidia Infante: Yes, but you want to- Rebecca Tomasis: ... if the coffee maker works for me. I don't know for me... and maybe it's an age thing, so I put... but for me, what I find more value, if I'm looking for a coffee maker, even though I know maybe somebody is being paid to recommend that coffee maker, you're giving me a list, you're giving me a choice, and I can do my own research. Somebody on the internet recommending how many reviews of those you would need to read. Somebody likes this one, and somebody likes that one- Joshua George: Yeah, right. Rebecca Tomasis: ... and somebody likes this one. There are a million coffee makers, give me 10, or give me 10 in this price budget, or give me 10 unique coffee makers, and 10 classy. You know what I mean? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: This is a case of dummy's better than perfect, and I am like, "My coffee maker needs to be perfect." Rebecca Tomasis: No, but wait, not coffee makers. We live in a world of so much choice and again, so much information on the internet- Lidia Infante: Overwhelming. Rebecca Tomasis: ... for me, I actually appreciate that... I don't know that it's so straightforward, "Here are 10 coffee makers, go and choose one." Joshua George: I agree. SEO is definitely ruining the internet. Crystal Carter: No. Joshua George: But it's Google's fault. If you ask Google, "What is the best coffee machine?" You have to read a, "Coffee machines were created by this guy," and then you don't care about that. But if you just say, "This is the best machine," you're never going to rank, you'll get no traffic. Lidia Infante: Right. Joshua George: You have to put in all this waffle to build your relevancy up. Lidia Infante: Right. Joshua George: They should have... instead of basing the algorithm on links and content, it should be more brand signals early on, and that would then leverage the better brands, and better results at the top, and you don't have to … Rebecca Tomasis: The expertise, the E-E-A-T. Yeah. Joshua George: E-E-A-T. Again, that's influenced by links though. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think it has to do... we have to work with what we've got. I think Gus was at dinner, and he was wearing a shirt that said, "Bots are users too." That's the thing is we have to talk to the bots, and the bots need certain things. You have to put in those things to do that. You have to balance what the bots need with what the humans need. It's just, we're doing our best, is what I think. Lidia Infante: I think we've also used... we've become gatekeepers of the quality of websites, on a technical level, and SEOs have done a lot of advocacy for faster websites and more accessible websites. Even though we output bad content sometimes, we are making a more sensible web ecosystem, which by the way also helps the planet. Crystal Carter: Exactly. This is good. You'll be pleased to know that there are only 550... 595,000 people that think that SEO is ruining the internet. Rebecca Tomasis: But maybe it doesn't matter because SEO is dead. Crystal Carter: Okay, so next up is SEO... oh, SEO is a long-term strategy. Would you agree or disagree? Joshua George: Both. Rebecca Tomasis: Never ending. Joshua George: I'm in the middle. It can be short-term strategy as well. Crystal Carter: I think- Lidia Infante: It's a waterfall. The waterfall, when it starts running, it pours, then it keeps pouring. Joshua George: I say it's long-term as in it compounds, right? With more links we have more content- Lidia Infante: Right. Yeah, exactly. Joshua George: ... that's more long term, but some clients... I've had clients come on board for one month just gone, but they've got loads of results in that one month. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Joshua George: We had a client, one of the biggest clients in the UK called Humax Direct. They sell Freeview boxes. Crystal Carter: Okay. Joshua George: They had things from Independent, Telegraph, every mass... Argus, all these massive companies. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Joshua George: They had no H1 Tech, no Title Tech, nothing. I just came and like, "Yeah, put that there." Boom, top of page one, organic revenue through the roof. Crystal Carter: Right. Joshua George: They're like, "Yeah, I think we're happy now." Short-term strategy, you're winning. See us next year. Crystal Carter: I agree. It's definitely been the case where you get a client and they're like, "Yeah," and you're like, "There are easy wins here. You can definitely- Joshua George: I love this. I love it. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: They're so fun. They love you afterwards. They're like, "Yeah, definitely works for us." Joshua George: "So clever." Crystal Carter: Good. I think we say it depends. Is that an, it depends? Lidia Infante: No, it's both. It's both. Joshua George: It's both. It's both. Lidia Infante: It compounds, but it can have short-term wins impact. Joshua George: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. We have 42 million people that agree, or that are running content that says that SEO is a long-term strategy. Rebecca Tomasis: That would be the SEO. Crystal Carter: Last one, which you'll be very pleased to know, has the most search results of... coming in at 394 million search results. SEO is important. Agree, disagree. I can guess. Joshua George: If you like money, yes. Rebecca Tomasis: I like my job. Lidia Infante: Basically, yeah. What do you think, is SEO important? Yeah. Crystal Carter: Agree. We agree. Everybody agrees. Rebecca Tomasis: If we raise our standards, then we raise the standard of the internet, right? Maybe that's our shared responsibility with Google, to- Crystal Carter: We make the world a better place. That's how, "We are the world." Rebecca Tomasis: Somebody said, "You don't do brain surgery." It's not the end of the world. Lidia Infante: Yes. Rebecca Tomasis: Oh, great. That's fine. Crystal Carter: I heard somebody who said- Lidia Infante: "This is my email in an emergency." What emergency? Crystal Carter: I heard somebody who was like, "It's PR, not ER." I was like, "You know what? That's honestly... it'll be okay. It's fine. We can optimize that page later," and stuff. But I certainly think that it can be a challenge sometimes pointing out... advocating for SEO in a space where sometimes... I don't know, PPC is seen as a big win, or maybe the team doesn't quite understand SEO, or maybe they got burned by... that's... if you- Joshua George: Yeah, I hear that all the time. Lidia Infante: That is so common. There's been such bad actors, doing bad jobs, that have put people off SEO. We have a brand problem as an industry. People still think content creators, or the content teams still are worried that you're going to make them write very long things that are not good for the user, or... and I heard this in 2023. Do I need to include any misspellings of the keyword? Crystal Carter: No. Lidia Infante: Do not. Rebecca Tomasis: Wow. Joshua George: I hear those same questions, that I do all the sales calls at the agency now, and it's like, "I've been burnt in the past. I've worked with this guy, he told me this," and half of my job on the sales calls is just convincing the person that by the way, you search for a keyword, we rank, you booked a call with us. But it does work by the way. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lidia Infante: Yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Joshua George: You've got here. It does work. Yeah, I don't know. There's a lot of people that aren't even doing SEO properly as well. We actually work with a client in Brighton. We met them yesterday before I was speaking, and they've been working for a big agency in London... I'm not going to name, for four or five months, and they built no backlinks whatsoever- Rebecca Tomasis: Right. Joshua George: ... and they haven't even implemented all the findings from the audit they'd done. Rebecca Tomasis: Right. Joshua George: It's just how do people get away with that? Then when that client goes to a good agency... not saying we are, there's other good agencies out there as well. You're already at a disadvantage. You have to then convince the person that- Lidia Infante: Yeah. Joshua George: ... you are good at what you do and you are different. Crystal Carter: I think trust is so important with clients, and with working with projects and things, because if you don't have... I've seen working agency side... I remember we walked in, and we did an audit of a site and I was like, "This is wrong, and that's wrong, and this is wrong, and that's wrong." We were pitching, we were prospecting for this client, and the guy who ran their website, who had been doing their SEO and dev stuff, where they'd be like, "Oh yeah, the devs doing the SEO." He just sat there with his arms folded the whole time, and was not bothered. Then after we finished our audit, he kept the client. Joshua George: Yeah. Rebecca Tomasis: Yeah. Crystal Carter: We didn't get the client, but they trusted him implicitly. Broken things, fixed things, whatever, they trusted him immensely. I think that if you don't have the trust of the client, then it's very difficult to convey that SEO is important, that SEO matters to get the budget sign off, and things like that. You have to be transparent, open. Joshua George: Is it hard sell though? You're saying, "Hey, pay me two grand a month, for seven months. No guarantee, but you might rank number one." It's difficult. We actually only introduced recently offering PPC alongside SEO, a blended search approach. Crystal Carter: Right. Joshua George: You get the instant results in the ads, and you get more long-term strategy with the SEO as well. It works really well, and so much easier to sell. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think also that PPC layering can be really useful with testing things, and with also shoring up different parts of the SEO, if there's algo shenanigans and you're like, "But we need this content up here." Rebecca Tomasis: But the best is when they're like, "Well, we're going to drop this spend, and let's see if organic picks it over." Then you don't even need to think about it, and you're like, "It will." Then it does. Wow. It's like the best... no offense. Lidia Infante: Then you can move that budget to 100 words that you're not- Rebecca Tomasis: If you think about it, it's not necessarily about cutting that budget unpaid, right? It's like let's move it to something else, where it'll have more ROI- Lidia Infante: Or experiment with different PPC types of content, to see if they're going to actually deliver customers. Crystal Carter: Right. Lidia Infante: If they do, you'll go and make it for organic, ta da. Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. Exactly, so you can create content on video for instance, instead of... let's say you were promoting blogs on PPC, if you cut that PPC spend, you could spend that producing videos, then you can add that to the et cetera, all of it, and just make it all work, and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. Lidia Infante: It's 3D chess. Crystal Carter: Exactly. This is the thing. It's a lot of strands. There should be one here that says SEO is complicated, and you should pay people to help you with it, and things. Yes, finishing up with that, this has been SERPS UP Live. If you like SERPS UP, we talk about this kind of thing with all fantastic, wonderful people. Y'all have all contributed to our many things that we've done, so thank you very much for joining us in this beautiful, incredible room. Thank you so much to Lidia for being here and sharing her incredible insights. Thank you so much to Joshua for being here, sharing her incredible insights. Thank you so much to Rebecca for being here. Thank you all. Enjoy your lunch, and have a great, BrighonSEO. Mordy Oberstein: We hope you enjoyed Crystal's session with Rebecca, with Lidia, and with Joshua. We'll link to all of their social media profiles in the show notes. There's no SEO news today, because this is a different little version of the SERPS UP Podcast. Little teaser, we are going to do more live conference recordings of the SERPS UP Podcast in the future, so look out for that. That's a warning. Look out for that. Crystal Carter: Find us at a conference near you doing some fantastic SERPS UP information. We hope to get some fantastic guests. We may very well do at our next one as well, so if you see us live, come and check it out. Say hello- Mordy Oberstein: Say hello. Crystal Carter: ... and yeah, get yourself into the real life podcast experience. Mordy Oberstein: With that, thank you for joining the SERFS UP Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with the new episodes, we dive into keyword cannibalization. Is it real? It is, but there's more to it. We'll dive in, look forward wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes, or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace 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

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

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

There’s a lot of SEO tools out there and navigating which ones to invest in can be a challenge. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein set sail into the SEOtool universe, with must-follow tips on what to consider when choosing the best SEO tool for your needs. The SERP’s Up SEO Podcast welcomes Ahrefs’ own Patrick Stox to give his expert insights on SEO tools. Nati Elimelech, Wix’s Head of SEO, also joins to chat about a less-discussed but highly relevant topic–SEO implementation tools and the nuances in building them. Listen in as we help you put the right SEO tools in your toolbelt! Back How to pick the right SEO tool for you? There’s a lot of SEO tools out there and navigating which ones to invest in can be a challenge. Hosts Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein set sail into the SEOtool universe, with must-follow tips on what to consider when choosing the best SEO tool for your needs. The SERP’s Up SEO Podcast welcomes Ahrefs’ own Patrick Stox to give his expert insights on SEO tools. Nati Elimelech, Wix’s Head of SEO, also joins to chat about a less-discussed but highly relevant topic–SEO implementation tools and the nuances in building them. Listen in as we help you put the right SEO tools in your toolbelt! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 24 | February 8, 2023 | 49 MIN 00:00 / 48:43 This week’s guests Patrick Stox Patrick Stox is a Product Advisor, Technical SEO, & Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs. He was the lead author for the SEO chapter of the 2021 Web Almanac and a reviewer for the 2022 SEO chapter. He’s an organizer for several groups including the Raleigh SEO Meetup (the most successful SEO Meetup in the US), the Beer and SEO Meetup, the Raleigh SEO Conference, runs a Technical SEO Slack group, and is a moderator for /r/TechSEO on Reddit Nati Elimelech 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. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fantastic, the incredible, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hello, my good friends online. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast with me and Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: You sound like me. That nasalness. I'm still sick. I can't shake this cold. Crystal Carter: I sound nasal? Mordy Oberstein: Well, you did a nasal voice there. "Hello, internet people." Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We come from Mars. Crystal Carter: That's a great movie. I love that movie. Mordy Oberstein: Great, great movie. Coneheads, we're referring to Coneheads Saturday Night Live skit turned movie. Crystal Carter: I was talking about Mars Attacks. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I was talking about Coneheads. I was doing Coneheads, fine. But Mars Attacks is also a great movie. Crystal Carter: Also a great movie. Mordy Oberstein: Also a great movie. Crystal Carter: These are great movies. Tune into SERP's Up for all of the best movie recommendations. We're also in IMDB. Did you know that? Mordy Oberstein: We are because we're- Crystal Carter: We're in IMDB. Mordy Oberstein: Because that's part of SEO. Crystal Carter: Exactly. That's part of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Entity-based SEO. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. So do check us out there, as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Which reminds me. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, "Where we have the tools." Check out our site inspection tool, redirect manager and more and I say tools because in this episode we're talking all about SEO tools. Tools, tools everywhere and not a insight to spare. Crystal, I was warning you, for the audience. I used to work for multiple SEO tools. I have the inside scoop on the SEO tools. Crystal, you're going to have to hold me back. Hold me back! Crystal Carter: Hold you back. Mordy Oberstein: Hold me back! Crystal Carter: Like every Saturday night when you were growing up, I'm sure you were like "Hold me back!" Mordy Oberstein: Have I gone too far already? Probably, and I don't care because tool, tools everywhere and not an insight to spare. So many tools, so many things, so little bang for your buck. I am so jaded. But that's because choosing a good SEO tool is not easy. There are a lot of tools out there and they are not all exactly equal and/or beneficial, which is why we're here to discuss the finer points of what you should consider when looking to use and dare I say spend money on an SEO tool. Plus someone who knows a lot about SEO tools, Patrick Stox stops by to share what he thinks makes a great SEO tool. Plus someone else who knows a lot about SEO tools stops by to share his insight about SEO tools that actually implement as Wix's own head of SEO, Nati Elimelech joins us, and of course we have the Snappy News. We have who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness so whiz, clang, bang and other tool noises as episode 24 of the SERP's Up Podcast is under construction. Crystal Carter: I got my hard hat. We're going to dive right in. Mordy Oberstein: I got my tool belt, snap. Crystal Carter: I love a tool belt. I'd love to have a tool belt. Mordy Oberstein: I've never had one. Crystal Carter: You should totally get one. Also, I really like the measuring tapes. When you pull out the measuring tape and then you let it go, that's so satisfying. Mordy Oberstein: My kids like that, but I have to tell them, be careful, you can slice up your whole hand doing that. Crystal Carter: You can. I did that as a child, it was unpleasant, I would say. Mordy Oberstein: My kids don't listen, so they'll probably end up like you, in general, which is a great thing. But for the hand slicing, not so good. Crystal Carter: Not so great. Not so great. You can use the shovel to dig yourself out of that hole. That's a great tool. Mordy Oberstein: I have a spade in my tool belt. Crystal Carter: I'm kidding. Anyway, okay, so today we're going to talk about what you need to decide which SEO tools to use. And actually looking at this, I was thinking that a lot of this can be really useful for deciding for any sort of digital tool. And certainly in my time in consulting clients and consulting people on what to do on the web, I've very often been asked, what do you think of this tool we're considering? What do we think of this platform or this apparatus that we are considering adding to our MarTech stack? Mordy Oberstein: Good word. Crystal Carter: Apparatus is a good word, isn't it? One of the things that's really important is to have a deep understanding of what's going on. So you need to understand what you actually want to achieve, what the scope of the project is and how often you're going to need this tool and that sort of thing is really, really useful. So think about the thing you want to do and how you might find a tool to help you do that. So a good tool that I use is the SEO Pro Tools Chrome extension for instance. That's a tool that I use really regularly and that tool helps me to get a quick snapshot of what's going on on a webpage before I do a deep dive. And that's a great tool because it's really handy for me and really useful. But if I wanted to do something bigger, on a bigger scale, I might need a different tool. So think about that. The other thing that's really useful is thinking about what your capabilities are and what your requirements are as a team. So for instance, if you're a big business, you might want to think about a tool that includes an API capability that allows you to scale and integrate with other tools that you're using. If you have a team that's really fast-paced and that's out and about a lot, you might want to think about something that has a mobile app, you also want to think about integrations for instance. So if your team is heavily reliant on something like Google Workspace and you're using Google Data Studio a lot, or you're using Slack a lot, or you're using Google Sheets a lot or something like that, you might want to think about tools that are integrating with those tools that you're using regularly. Also, data portability and accessibility with a lowercase A there. So if you've got higher ups that need to see bits of data regularly, that's really useful. And also budget, with a big old B, the budget. So you're going to want to know what your budget is for what you're trying to do and where that goes. Then, once you've done all of that, you want to think about the actual tool itself. So understand what the capabilities are and what the limitations are. So a really good example is thinking about, it's something that everyone's used, a tool that almost everyone in web has used, is tools for Core Web Vitals, for instance. So if you think about page feed insights, the Lighthouse tools versus CrUX, for instance, those two tools have two different sets of criteria that they're measuring, and they're both useful to help you understand what you need to understand about your page speed and your insights and things like that. But they have different criteria. So it's very important to understand how the tool is assessing what you need it to assess or how it is helping you to get that information that you're trying to get. Crawling tools, for instance, will crawl in different ways and even within them, they'll have different defaults that you should consider, as well. So understanding the capabilities of the tool, understanding the limitations of the tool can make a really big difference to how you approach whether or not a tool is good for you and how it feeds into the capabilities and the requirements that you have as a team. Mordy Oberstein: That's really good. I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Thank you. I saw lots of nodding along, especially when it got to the budget part. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the budget is, sometimes you'll think, oh, that's too expensive or this one's not as good. It's cheaper, but it's not as good. It's not as good because it doesn't have this graph. It doesn't have the graph. But sometimes, you know what, forgo the graph and go with the cheaper model because the graph's not really that important, which leads me to all of this. SEO tools love shoving graphs into things. They love shoving the same graph into multiple places, but it looks different, so you're not sure it's the same thing, but maybe it's different, but it's really the same exact thing. So they might have 400 reports, but only 40 unique ones, but they make you feel like you got to buy this thing, it's got 400 reports, but it only has 40 unique ones. So maybe you don't really need to buy that tool. You could buy the cheaper one that doesn't have all the things because it's really the one that has all the things, has all the same things. So don't get caught up in the shiny graph. But you do sometimes need to think about the shiny graphs because you have to think about the reporting. So this tool might have four million things that it can do, but its reporting stinks and the person you report to is not going to understand anything that you sent them. Crystal Carter: And those graphs can be really overwhelming for people, particularly if you're talking to decision makers, business owners or the C-suite and things like that. If they're looking at 25 different graphs and they want one piece of information, that is too much information. And that turns people off and it can make people not trust the data that you're giving them because they can't interpret it themselves. Mordy Oberstein: What you might need to do is go with the tool that's a little bit simpler, with a little bit better reporting. And if you really need the extra capabilities of the other tool, then all right, maybe you want to spring for a second tool, but understand where your money comes from. And that's usually from a client or an internal person. So be wary. Crystal Carter: And I think this goes back to the integration part of it. So for instance, there's a lot of tools that have Slack integrations or Data Studio integrations and things like that. So if you have something that's fairly simple, you can easily export it into certain things. So I know there was a nanny app, Little Warden for instance, that has a Slack integration and they will ping you in your Slack channel when there's an issue on your site. That's really useful. That's really, really useful. It's not like that particular, I think there are whizzier apps, it's a great app, tool, but I think there are apps that do more, but that particular one does that. And that can be really useful information. And if you're deciding between that one or another one, but the app in question maybe is less fancy or has fewer graphs but has an element that makes it more actionable for you, then that's going to be really, really useful. And I think that's something to consider. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of accessibility of the data, here's something that no one talks about and that no one considers. Are you ready? How easy is it to migrate the data out of that platform should you choose to cancel that platform? Because having worked at one of these platforms, they are not all equal. Some of the platforms may get incredibly complicated to take the data out and import it into a new tool and they do it on purpose because they don't want you to have to leave. Yes, they are spiteful, some of these SEO tools. So you need to be careful and ask, if I ever decide, heaven forbid, to cancel my subscription with your amazing tool, am I screwed? Crystal Carter: And also even on a day-to-day basis, if you need to make the information liquid, if you need to export it, if you have limited exportability capabilities, then that will limit the value of the tool. So Screaming Frog is something that is a tool that almost every SEO uses, or particularly for technical SEO. And on that tool you download it and it's on your local device, it's not a cloud tool, but you can export the data to Google Sheets really, really easily. So somebody can say, oh, can you crawl this? And I can say, yes, crawl it, export it. So within a couple of minutes I can export it to someone, which can make it really, really easy. There are some tools where it's a lot more difficult to export the information about a site and that means that that puts a lot of barriers to making the tool accessible to the wider part of your team. So yeah, if you can't get your data, let's say that the tool says that they can give you historical data for going back, I don't know, five years or something like that on our website, but they won't give it to you. Mordy Oberstein: Big problem, big, big, problem. Because one day you will need it and you will not be able to get it and it will not be there. And they'll be like, whoa, well whatever, you're canceling anyway. We don't care. Crystal Carter: These things are very tricky. So I think that, yeah that's something that you should consider and sometimes you can find workarounds, sometimes you can export on a regular basis or something like that. But if that's the case, then you've got to make allowances for that. And also I think that you have the time to learn the tool because that's the other thing. There are so many tools and there's so many tools- Mordy Oberstein: If there's a demo. My recommendation is take it. Because I've seen this a million times, you think you understand the tool, you're an SEO expert, you're wonderful, you're amazing. But the people who develop the tool are an expert on their tool. And sometimes these tools could be a little bit layered and you don't know what exactly is in there. So go for the demo. Crystal Carter: And there's so many, there's tools that I use all the time and then somebody's like, oh, there's that part of it. I'm like, what are you talking about? I didn't even know that that was, what? Mordy Oberstein: Literally, when I was at Semrush, I'd do once a week. I'm like, here, let me show you something about the tool you probably didn't even know existed. Crystal Carter: And they add things all the time. I mean at Wix we add SEO capabilities all the time. Just this month, and we're recording this at the beginning of the year. And then we're a few weeks into 2023 and we've had three or four different updates to just the Google Search Console site inspection tool. Mordy Oberstein: I went into a meeting late, my bad, I got caught up in another meeting. You all know how that happens. Forgiveness please. And I missed an update. So even I didn't know what was going on in one of the tools, so I saw it in another meeting someone was using, I'm like, wait, when did we add that? Crystal Carter: Right? Precisely. So if that's happening just on one platform imagine of all the tools that you're using across the different things. So we have an updates section, SEO updates part of our website that helps you understand. Sitebulb is renowned for their release notes. They add a lot of color to their release notes. So they're a good one to keep up with. But if you have a tool that you use regularly, that is something that your marketing team, your SEO team relies on, it's worth keeping track of when their updates are rolled out. We did a whole webinar on our 2022 releases at the end of 2022, which is on YouTube, which is great. And I know a lot of other teams do similar things as well. So take some time, grab a cup of coffee and tuck in so that you know more about your tools. Mordy Oberstein: Now you'll be asking, why do I care? Here's why you care because you're going to buy a tool now. You're locked in, let's say for a year, two years, whatever it is, or even monthly, whatever it is. Let's say you're locked in, you get a better deal that way. If the tool is not constantly developing, then that's what you're getting and that's it. If the tool you see has a log where there's adding new reports, adding new things all the time, then you're paying the same amount but you're getting more. Crystal Carter: Having an active and engaged tool team is really, really important. There's a couple of ways to tell that, again, the release notes, like you're saying where they're constantly updating, but also how responsive they are to user requests. So for instance, on a lot of tool download things like on Product Hunt or on Google Chrome, Chrome extensions things, and even in our Wix app market, we have places where people can leave reviews and the people who've built the app can respond to the reviews. Google App Market does this as well. And if you're seeing that the team, even if they're work in progress, even if they're early days or even if they're still leaning forward, if you can see that they're actively responding to user requests, user comments, and things, that's a good sign of a good team. A lot of teams will also be very active online. So Slack for instance, when they first launched, they were really active on Twitter and people were going, I wish I'd had this and I think it should have that and that sort of thing. That's really useful. The team from Candor, the team from AlsoAsked the team- Mordy Oberstein: Offered by Candor. Crystal Carter: Offered by Candor, they recently were "what sort of updates should we be making to AlsoAsked let us know, please tell us what you think". At Wix for instance, we're constantly asking people what things do you need? And we have a request thing. And when the requests are filled, we say, we've filled this, this has been updated. Chrome does this as well. The Chrome team will say this was an issue and they'll say, we solved this. This has been resolved. You can now see this. And that's really useful. So having a team that's actively engaged with keeping the tool performing well and performing for you helps you make it, means that it's more value for money. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Now my last point, which I agree with all of that and if you see there's nothing dynamic about the tool and how they were communicating, that's a signal. It's like an empty Google business profile. Do you really trust that? Crystal Carter: Bring your Toyota Camry over there and just, yeah it'll be fine. It'll be great. Maybe they'll be open, maybe they won't, but it'll be fine. Mordy Oberstein: Probably not. So my last hot take today is if this tool doesn't let you use it for free in some way, shape, or form, do not use it. Crystal Carter: Do not use it. Mordy Oberstein: Do not use it. Let me rephrase this because that's a little bit of a hot take. Do not pay them money. Crystal Carter: Do not. Okay. So what are we- Mordy Oberstein: We're talking, usually a tool will either let you see it through a demo or they'll let you, let's say try a couple of keywords. Like AlsoAsked, so you got I think three free searches a day so you understand what this thing is. The main SEO tools offer a freemium model. Or like Summers has the freebie model. Ahrefs lets you have free access to their site audit tool. Crystal Carter: Mazda has something as well where you can see a lot of stuff before you have to get to- Mordy Oberstein: Or the Explorer. You can run a bunch of searches. So most of the tools, they won't let you do everything, which makes good sense because then you're going to pay for it. But they'll let you look at what's underneath the hood, just a bits. You get a sense of what this thing is. Because if you don't know what this thing is, you should not be giving them your money. And it is impossible to understand what this thing is from a blog post. Crystal Carter: But the blog post looks so good, Mordy, the blog post tells me that it'll solve all my problems. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, repetitive analysis like you've never seen before and you'll never see again once you buy it. Crystal Carter: Like look, I saw the battle cards and there's like tick, tick, tick for all of the things that I need. And it says that it'll work. Mordy Oberstein: All the things that they want you to see they've ticked all the things that they don't want you to see are not even on the list. I am so salty about this. Crystal Carter: Why would they not show me all of the things? Mordy Oberstein: Because these are the same people who are trying to sell you links. Crystal Carter: No they're not. I think that there's- Mordy Oberstein: I've gotten too far. I told you to hold me back. Crystal Carter: I didn't. I'm sorry. I instigated that. I'm an enabler. What have I done? I think that most all of the tools that I absolutely love and adore and I love Screaming Frog. I adore the SEO probe Chrome extension. There's tons of other tools that I use all the time that I really, really love and adore. And they all let you have a certain level of- Mordy Oberstein: A week's trial, three day trial, whatever it is. Crystal Carter: And what I do find is that sometimes in my experience that if the team wants you to have a demo of the, let's say they don't have a neat freemium mode. For instance, AHrefs recently launched a freemium version of AHrefs, which is actually really cool and you can see a lot from it. Marie Hans, when it first launched, she did a nice deep dive into what you can get on the free AHrefs and it's really solid. And I would say that before that it was a little bit more behind the scenes. And I would say that if you were really interested in a tool that you can sometimes just ask them. So you can sometimes ask the team, you can say, hey, if it just says, oh, get in touch for a demo, you can sometimes ask them, can I have a one-month something or other? And they'll give you a voucher or something somehow like that. Mordy Oberstein: I've done that multiple times. Crystal Carter: That'll let you log in and then they'll check in and see how you got in. So as well as that, and I would say do check in. And I have definitely been someone who has, there was a tool that I'm not going to name, but sometimes I've definitely done the thing where I've done the one-month trial and set an alarm to make sure that I finished. Because sometimes when you're doing stuff for clients, you need this one thing. This one time I think it was something that was like, yeah it was like an influencer or something. Mordy Oberstein: That's fine, because if you needed that down the line again, now you know that that would be a great solution for you. Crystal Carter: And I think also as a consultant, if you're consulting clients or if you're working across an agency or if you're doing a sort of technical overview of different tools, sometimes being able to have had a look around and assess it for yourself and be able to do write up on whether or not the benefits or the drawbacks of a particular tool can be really, really useful and can also help you to understand other parts of the tools that you use more as well. So it's always good to keep up with the different capabilities of tech. There's a diagram from MarTech Alliance that talks about some of the different MarTech tools that are available. And it grows every year because there's so much. And I think that in the last few months we're starting to see an explosion of AI tools at the moment, for instance. So I'm sure it will grow even more in the coming days. So being able to understand how you pick a tool and how you spend your time with those tools whether or not they give you the demo. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: It's really important. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, speaking of artificial intelligence, we have some real intelligence for you. I'm just kidding. We have human intelligence as AHrefs own Patrick Stox is here to tell us what makes an SEO tool a great SEO tool. Patrick Stox: Tools are just there to save you time and kind of make your life easier. Imagine how much time it would take to find broken links on a website. If you had to go through every single page on the site and click every single link. On larger websites, you could have multiple people staffed that would just do this every hour of every day for weeks at a time and you may not get through everything. Whereas you can run that same site through a crawler and probably in a matter of minutes or hours, you're going to have the answer to what links are broken and so much more information. Or if you're creating content, you can write the things that you think people are searching for or you can look at the data from these tools and actually see what they're searching for. Having the data like that is kind of like having a superpower, you cut right to it, you know exactly what your audience wants, you know exactly what you need to write, and everything is kind of prioritized for you. So all you have to do now is start writing rather than trying to guess and see if this is actually going to resonate up with my audience. Is this something they're actually looking for? It's all just laid out for you. With the tools you're also going to get bigger data. We used to do a whole lot of manual processes. We do a bunch of different searches, a bunch of data gathering. It was a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of work just spent getting a fraction of the data that modern SEO tools provide. The tools are really just making this data more accessible to people. The people that can't really build their own tools or don't have time to go through all those processes to get all that data. The modern tools are really just like, here's the answer, here's all the data, do with it what you will. Here's the answer to any of the questions that you have. And they're really just trying to have whatever data that they think people are going to need, ways to get that data out, ways for you to slice and dice that data in the tool and really just have all the features that you're probably going to need to really be successful. Mordy Oberstein: Patrick, I know you're listening. I just want to say you said that so well. Crystal Carter: So well. Mordy Oberstein: And one of the ways that you do want to create a metric for yourself is does the tool make it easy to do what I want to do? It's a great basic foundational way of base lining that. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Why are you spending time on tools that don't do what you need them to do? Sometimes tools are like, we can do this and we can do that and we can do that and we can do this and we can do that. And it's like, mate, I need it to do one thing. Mordy Oberstein: Make my life easier. Crystal Carter: So get the tool that does the one thing rather than the tool that does 45 different things. Mordy Oberstein: That's the beauty of automation. Now, you know who also likes automation, a good friend of ours. So I'm going to give a little introduction first. He does love automation, by the way, Crystal, he's so into it. It's his thing. There are so many SEO tools that focus on analyzing and monitoring things like rain tracking or crawling. There's a ton of tools that do that. There are, I guess less tools, fewer tools that do implementation itself. I know Edge SEO is becoming more of a thing, so that is becoming more of a mainstream kind of SEO tool universe. So I thought it'd be really cool to pick the brain of somebody who's a well smart individual who oversees a massive team of other well smart individuals to talk about what makes a good SEO tool, but from an implementation point of view. So join us as we talk to Wix's own head of SEO, lover of all SEO automation, nati Elimelech, as we move across the Wix first. Speaker 4: 3, 2, 1 ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast, Nati. How are you? Nati Elimelech: I'm good, thank you, Mordy. Thank you, Crystal. How are you two? Mordy Oberstein: We're good. Crystal Carter: Fantastic. And I'm more happy now that you're here Nati. Nati Elimelech: I do not buy that, but thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, you don't believe that about Crystal or myself? Nati Elimelech: So I would believe that about Crystal. But judging by your Twitter profile, I wouldn't believe you if you said it. Mordy Oberstein: My Twitter profile does not represent who I actually am. Crystal Carter: To all the listeners who follow along with the ongoing Nati and Mordy like SEO hip hop peeve like- Mordy Oberstein: We're like brothers who never wish we were brothers. Crystal Carter: The dance I can report from internal, the dance is like legit. They're the bands never stop. So it's authentic. I'm just letting people know. Mordy Oberstein: I think Nati put it the best. You're both on Twitter, which you are in real life. It's the same thing. Crystal Carter: Really. To be fair to both of you, you're both brilliant as well. So this is also true. Nati Elimelech: Ah, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So today we're talking about SEO tools and we're talking about SEO tools to actually implement versus track and monitor and so forth. Because there's so many tools that do that. But there are so few tools that actually let you implement something and Nati he runs an entire team of people who create tools that let you implement stuff. So we figured what a great thing. What a great time to bring you on the podcast. I've been meaning to bring you on for a long time, but I finally found the perfect topic I think. Nati Elimelech: Yeah, yeah. I think we finally found it. Mordy Oberstein: Found it like nailed it. Nice. The question is to you, what goes into building tools the right way? Or when you are building these tools that implement, what goes into the process? What goes into your mindset? What goes into it all? Nati Elimelech: So that's a good question. So when we're talking about tools or features in an SEO product, we're talking about the enablement. We want to give users the ability to change whatever they want or change the configuration when it comes to SEO, right? That sounds simple, but as usual reality is a bit more complex than that. Almost everyone with a website or with a business behind it cares about SEO or at least recognizes the importance of SEO as a traffic channel. But we're talking about a very, very wide range of different levels of knowledge or proficiency. Some of these users are novices. They know SEO is important, they kind of know how to spell it, they've heard some stuff about it, but that's where it stops. On the other hand, there are seasoned professionals. They know exactly what they want to be able to do and they have very clear expectations about the features they expect a platform to have. So that means that when you create an SEO tool, because SEO is important to a lot of types of users, there are many considerations you have to take in order to make a good tool. In general, I think the first consideration is what do people expect you to have as a platform? It's not necessarily what Nati wants, or our great product managers want or our UX or engineers or our tech SEOs. It's what about what the user wants. Now the simplest example is being able to edit your title tags or meta descriptions. This is a basic action that's applicable to all types of users, but more professional users expect you to have a more robust and advanced set of features. So the first consideration is what do people expect you to have as a platform? The simplest example is being able to edit your title tags or meta descriptions or any other SEO tag. This is a basic feature that applicable to all types of users. Both beginners want to edit their title tags and obviously professionals when they want to optimize certain pages. But the more professional users expect you to have a much more robust set of features. For example, editing robots.txt, those professionals, they will also probably know what to do with it. But most of all they're aware of the dangers of misusing robots.txt and the implications of making such a mistake. Like blocking certain pages from crawling or God forbid, an entire site. The beginners are definitely not aware of that and they could potentially cause self-harm. So after you've considered everything that users expected to have, and those are different levels of features that will require different levels of proficiency, this leads us to the next consideration. How do we make sure users who aren't proficient or don't know much about SEO practices aren't shooting themselves in the foot. After all, we want them to succeed. Crystal Carter: We want them to be on both good feet. We want them to start off on a good foot. Nati Elimelech: Super important. Crystal Carter: Super important. Nati Elimelech: There's an average of 1.8 feet per person in the world. So I think the numbers speak for themselves. Mordy Oberstein: About a bicycle. They started off rolling on wheels. Crystal Carter: We don't want them to get a flat tire? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Nati Elimelech: I don't actually know how to ride a bicycle. I have to- Mordy Oberstein: Do you really not? I'll teach you next time I see you. Nati Elimelech: No, it's more because I don't want to know. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, in that case I'll definitely teach you next time I see you. Nati Elimelech: So tackling this is a bit more complex. You need to have built-in safeguards. How do you safeguard the user whenever there's a risk of users making mistakes that could lead to an undesired outcome. You want to try and protect them as much as you can, but you also don't want to take away that ability to customize the setting. Meaning that if it puts your beginner in harm's way potentially, but your advanced user, your professional SEO knows what to do it with it, you can't just take it away. So there are a few ways to tackle that. I like to call this the self and protect methodology without the negative connotations of being police. Crystal Carter: We don't have that just so everyone's aware. If you're using Wix, you don't get Nati with the hat going, Nina, Nina, what are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: If you wanted to- Crystal Carter: You can't. Nati Elimelech: But if you want to vote for this feature- Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you really break down the unique consideration of implementation because wait until you're in a tool like Semrush or DeepCrawl, there's nothing you're really going to do that's going to screw up your website if you misuse the tool. Crystal Carter: It's more of an analysis tool. Mordy Oberstein: If you missing our tools, you could theoretically really screw up the website. Nati Elimelech: Definitely the worst you could do is misinterpret a report, but that's not going to do anything to your website. Crystal Carter: But I think that probably one of the best examples that I can think of. You mentioned robots.txt and in Wix you can edit your robots.txt. But before you do that, it says, do you want to do this? Do you know what you're doing? And you also have an option to restore to default, which is something that just like, let's say you do make a pig's ear of it, let's say you do mess it up, you can just restore to default to the thing that is correct and you can try again. You can liquefy to another day rather than losing all of that code again. Another one is with the structured data presets, we have structured data presets for lots of different types of pages, but the syntax on all of that is correct, like fully correct. And it will help you with rich results. If you want to optimize it in a different way, if you want to add new properties or types or whatever to your skin and markup, go for it. Cool. If you make a pig's ear of it, you can restore it to default, the default is always there and you can always go back. So that means that, yeah it's like you said, you're giving people the option to grow, but also supporting them in that journey as well. Nati Elimelech: Yeah. So you touched on two different ways to safeguard users. Basically when you spoke about the robots.txt, what we do is introduce friction. That's first. Basically friction can take many forms, but what you do is you have a feature but you maybe make it less accessible or you kind of really need to dig to find it or you have to make a couple more clicks or read something. And that's definitely one thing we're doing with robots.txt. But there are other things we do and you need to do when you are safeguarding users when it comes to a platform. Let's take another example, we are very data driven, so we looked at the data and we discovered that after changing the slug for an existing page, only 4% of the users added redirect. Basically you change a URL, only 4% of all the URLs that were changed had redirect in place. Crystal Carter: Why didn't you do the redirect Nati? Like whatever, who cares? It's not a big deal. Mordy Oberstein: First world problems. Nati Elimelech: So that's crazy though. Obviously there are cases which it doesn't matter if it's a fresh page and you just messed around with it. But if you have a page that Google knows and maybe tracks and you have signals and you don't redirect, then you lose all of it. So what we did was we introduced auto redirect on slug change. Now in most places when you change your slug, we'll give you the ability to redirect. It's on by default and you can even opt out. Another example of protecting the user but not taking away the ability to choose what to do. You may have a good reasoning for not wanting to perform a leader. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And that's up to you. You might be like, you know what I'm throwing caution to the wind, I don't even care. But- Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting because a lot of the things that we're doing or you in particular are doing and you and your team are doing, it helps on one, protecting the user, but at the same time you're also automating things for advanced users, which is really interesting to see how that plays itself out in terms of implementation. Nati Elimelech: I think that's a very, very important aspect of how people experience a product, how it fits into their workflows. How many clicks do they have to perform to do a certain action, how repetitive detection is. So yeah, we definitely take that into account whenever we can, but it's not just about saving them time. Crystal, you brought up structured data markup and that you can restore defaults. So what if you use structured data markup or use a schema that isn't valid, that isn't validation, or you are missing a comma or a parenthesis? Crystal Carter: You're using the wrong quotation marks, which is my favorite ever. Nati Elimelech: Exactly. So then it won't even validate, it won't let you save it, for example. So there are many, many, many ways. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's amazing by the way. Crystal Carter: That is one of my favorite features because there's a lot of things that will give you an open field where you can add in whatever schema you want, but it doesn't tell you whether it's valid or not. And then you have to go to an external tool and validate it. Whereas within the Wix SEO, your panel, you could add in your schema and it will tell you like, nah, you missed something try it again, do it again. And we also have it in Velo as well. So if you got schema using the Wix SEO API, then it also tells you, no, not yet. Try it again one more time until- Mordy Oberstein: You're this close. Crystal Carter: You get it right. Mordy Oberstein: We used to make it so- Crystal Carter: So close and you're like, where- Mordy Oberstein: You're like this close, you're almost there. Keep going. Try one more time. Crystal Carter: Spot the difference. You're like, where did I miss? Please send me help with- Nati Elimelech: Yeah, so we have many more examples of how we save our users. When you manually add the redirect and we can see, we could calculate, it will cause a redirect loop then we'll warn you. So there are many, many, many things you could do about that for advance users and for beginners. I think those, even though there are many directed at beginners, they serve everyone, which is great. You make it safer for the beginners and you make it more convenient and efficient for your professionals. But we also touched on having good default settings. A lot of users, a lot of people won't even touch your SEO settings. They don't know enough, especially early stages to decide what's right or not. So we do what I call kind of SEO activism, which we do look at everything and decide what the proper default is. For a product you have the default, structured data markup with images and everything you need and we'll update it as needed. And if you haven't touched it, then it will be updated as long as we do that. But we also do stuff like no index blog tag pages by default because we know that for most users with tiny blogs, that's not usually a high quality page. So we also take into account, no, not only how would users use our tools and how we can safeguard or make it more efficient for them, but what do we need to do when they don't use our tools? We automatically generate stuff. So even if they don't know what to do or intend to do, stuff kind of works without them having to know that. So that's a big aspect I think of safeguarding the user as well. It's not just about the actions they take, but about the actions that they don't take. Crystal Carter: And I think also that onboarding is something that's really important with regards to using tools generally. And I've been in a lot of discussions with the SEO team about how we think about the onboarding process for when people get involved with the Wix SEO tools. So it says, you know should probably have a keyword in the old homepage. And it's like, no, I think just, nope, you should probably have your business name on your homepage as well. And I think that that onboarding process is something that sets people up for success. I know that the team thinks a lot about that and reviews it regularly. And I think also, I don't know if you can touch on a little bit about the testing. You talked about some of the stats that you use, but I know that there's a lot of testing and refinement. I don't know if you can talk quickly about that before we wrap up. Nati Elimelech: So yeah, we do a lot of testing and refinement. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Is it helpful? Nati Elimelech: It is helpful. Mordy Oberstein: That is great. Nati Elimelech: Okay, so one other thing we haven't touched on, you did touch on it, but you spoke about onboarding, but I think, and UX writers will agree, and our product managers will agree in product education is super, super, super important. You need to educate on why it was important. You need to educate on how to use specific features. And most important, I think all tools, especially reporting tools, need to read that one, do not overpromise. And tools tend to do that. If you do this and that, then you'll rank higher. And users believe that and they take that to heart and that's not always the case. So we always try not to oversell or overpromise and make sure users understand that SEO is a process and not just a set of checklists to complete. And that there isn't usually one specific action or a set of actions that will lead you to the promised land. Tools without educations are just tools. Now if I give you a drill Mordy you'll probably know how to use it without having to use a manual. Mordy Oberstein: Not a clue. Nati Elimelech: Yeah. I gave you way too much credit here. If I give you a fork Mordy- Mordy Oberstein: These hands are so smooth. They're so soft. Nati Elimelech: Yeah. So if I give Crystal a drill, she'll definitely know how to use it. But if I give her a massive power tool that can take down walls, she'll need to go through the manual, I guess, and through a wall, apparently. So education is super important. The more advanced feature you have, the more potential impact they may have. Education becomes even more important. So it's about, if we sum up, because we don't have time, and Mordy's making face, nevermind that Mordy's regular face. But if you want to wake up first, give users the feature they want, then protect them from what they don't know or the ways they can misuse your features and all the time teach them how to use those features, teach them why those features are important and teach them when to not use those features. I think that those are the main pillars of making a good SEO product. There are many, many nuances, but we try to take everything into consideration here. Mordy Oberstein: Nati keep pounding the table on that. Just literally keep pounding the table because it's going to make our post-production of this podcast way easier now. Thanks Nati. Nati Elimelech: You're welcome. Mordy Oberstein: It's an honor to have you here, the head of SEO at Wix developing so many products. It is amazing the work that you and your team have done, and particularly over the last, I would say, three or so years. If you're looking to follow Nati, follow him on Twitter at netanel, N-E-T-A-N-E-L and we'll link to his profile in the show notes. Again, Nati, thank you so much for coming on, man. Nati Elimelech: Thank you, Crystal. You're welcome Mordy. Crystal Carter: You're so welcome Nati. Always a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Bye bye. Crystal Carter: Bye. Nati Elimelech: B-bye. Speaker 4: 3-2-1 Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: He has a way, you know that Billy Joel song, "She's Got a Way"? Nati has a way. Crystal Carter: He has a way. When I first joined Nati, Nati was like, check this out. And showed me the scorecard that he uses to helping reduce siloing across SEO performance across the massive Wix team. And it's literally, it's a thing of beauty and it's incredibly considered and incredibly effective for helping to drive SEO innovation. So as well as leading an incredibly efficient team. So the team at Wix are like, I love it when we add a new feature to the tool because everyone is so hyped about it. They're like, we added a search feature on the Google Search Console dash. Mordy Oberstein: Slash the emoji spot. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And people are like yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Motorless Slack channel- Crystal Carter: You can search the URL. Mordy Oberstein: Always surprised me. I didn't know we had that emoji, Crystal Carter: Right? They're just like, oh my God, you can search URLs now. Everyone is so hyped. And I'm literally so hyped and go on Twitter and I'm so hyped. And literally it's true. We really hyped about making the tools better for everybody. Mordy Oberstein: I want to share the Slack, all the different emojis on Twitter one time. Crystal Carter: All of them literally, so there's like fire signs and mic drops and literally everybody goes crazy because we- Mordy Oberstein: Goes bonkers, it's bonkers. Emojis are bonkers. Crystal Carter: I know. But everybody's really about it. And I think that that's brilliant and I think that that's what you need. When we were talking about teams that are engaged with their tool, that's what makes the difference is the people behind the tool want to make the tool really, really good. And Nati's not only fantastic at running his team or leading his team, not running, leading his team, but also is very, very good at nurturing talent and helping the team and the people in his team to do cool stuff, which I think is really, really great. Mordy Oberstein: It's absolutely amazing. What's also amazing is what's going on in the news this week. Well, let's dive into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Sick of news about AI writers and search. No. Great because both of this week's stories are about AA writers and search because like the Depeche Mode, I just can't get enough. Number one, Sundar Pichai confirms Google is working on AI's search feature users can engage directly with per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Or as a movie phone guy would say, this time it's for real, as there has been much speculation about Google's plans. However, this time officially, CEO Google Sundar Pichai said quote "in the coming weeks and months, we'll make these language models available starting with Lambda so that people can engage directly with them. This will help us continue to get feedback tests and safely improve them. These models are particularly amazing for composing, constructing and summarizing. They will become even more useful for people as they provide up to date or factual information. Lambda, by the way, is a chat interface technology that will let you have a conversation with AI in order to find the info that you otherwise probably would've gotten through search." I'm curious that he mentioned that you can compose content with the AI writer. That's interesting to me. I think that probably would be best qualified by somebody over at Google, because anyone can take that and run with that, which I don't advise to do. Also, from Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, Microsoft Bing's chat, GPT interface spotted in the wild. Or again, as movie phone guy would say, this time it's for real, as we've heard Bing is going to do this. But now we see that they're doing this test show a chat interface on being with a prompt ask me anything. Which sounds like a recipe for disaster. Ask me anything. That has never gone wrong on a date before, ask me anything. However, it is really interesting to see that Bing is testing this. It would obviously be a safe assumption to say this is coming to being searched in the relatively near future. And then I'll do it for this version of this snappy news. All right, so before we leave you, as we always do, we have to share with you who you should potentially be following out there on the social media to get more SEO awesomeness. And for this week we have Chris Johnson who's at defaced on Twitter, that's at D-E-F-A-C-E-D on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Chris Johnson. In my first ever podcast, I interviewed Chris Johnson when I was doing a podcast for Optics way back in the day. And he is fantastic. He builds his own tools all the time. On his website Defaced he has a whole collection of things that he's built. He gets involved with SEO but also considers himself to be something of a technologist and is incredibly creative and inventive with the kinds of tools that he makes. And I think that that's one of the things that's great about the SEO space is that you can see a need for a tool and make one. And he's somebody who does this a lot. So when there was lots of stuff going on with Core Web Vitals, I was interviewing him about a Chrome extension that he made for Core Web Vitals things. And also about his tool that he made for being able to visualize cumulative layout shift with a gift, which was really great. And he continues to build it and always does. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. Sue Ross. Crystal Carter: That's awesome. Mordy Oberstein: So make sure to follow him over on Twitter again at defaced. So I'm all tooled out. I'm exhausted. I have so much of that, like pent-up energy. Crystal Carter: I think you really nailed it though with the- Mordy Oberstein: My hammer out. Bang. Nailed it. Crystal Carter: Nailed it. Mordy Oberstein: Nailed it. Well, thank you for joining us on the Serfs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, do not let PPC kill your landing pages. Oh my goodness. That is such a hot take right there in the title itself. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all 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 on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Patrick Stox Nati Elimelech Chris Johnson Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub AHREFS Wix SEO Tools AlsoAsked News: Sundar Pichai confirms Google is working on AI search feature users can “engage directly with” Microsoft Bing’s ChatGPT interface spotted in the wild Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Patrick Stox Nati Elimelech Chris Johnson Resources : SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub AHREFS Wix SEO Tools AlsoAsked News: Sundar Pichai confirms Google is working on AI search feature users can “engage directly with” Microsoft Bing’s ChatGPT interface spotted in the wild Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, head of SEO branding here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fantastic, the incredible, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix. Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hello, my good friends online. Welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast with me and Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: You sound like me. That nasalness. I'm still sick. I can't shake this cold. Crystal Carter: I sound nasal? Mordy Oberstein: Well, you did a nasal voice there. "Hello, internet people." Crystal Carter: Hello, internet people. Hi. Mordy Oberstein: We come from Mars. Crystal Carter: That's a great movie. I love that movie. Mordy Oberstein: Great, great movie. Coneheads, we're referring to Coneheads Saturday Night Live skit turned movie. Crystal Carter: I was talking about Mars Attacks. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I was talking about Coneheads. I was doing Coneheads, fine. But Mars Attacks is also a great movie. Crystal Carter: Also a great movie. Mordy Oberstein: Also a great movie. Crystal Carter: These are great movies. Tune into SERP's Up for all of the best movie recommendations. We're also in IMDB. Did you know that? Mordy Oberstein: We are because we're- Crystal Carter: We're in IMDB. Mordy Oberstein: Because that's part of SEO. Crystal Carter: Exactly. That's part of SEO. Mordy Oberstein: Entity-based SEO. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. So do check us out there, as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. Which reminds me. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, "Where we have the tools." Check out our site inspection tool, redirect manager and more and I say tools because in this episode we're talking all about SEO tools. Tools, tools everywhere and not a insight to spare. Crystal, I was warning you, for the audience. I used to work for multiple SEO tools. I have the inside scoop on the SEO tools. Crystal, you're going to have to hold me back. Hold me back! Crystal Carter: Hold you back. Mordy Oberstein: Hold me back! Crystal Carter: Like every Saturday night when you were growing up, I'm sure you were like "Hold me back!" Mordy Oberstein: Have I gone too far already? Probably, and I don't care because tool, tools everywhere and not an insight to spare. So many tools, so many things, so little bang for your buck. I am so jaded. But that's because choosing a good SEO tool is not easy. There are a lot of tools out there and they are not all exactly equal and/or beneficial, which is why we're here to discuss the finer points of what you should consider when looking to use and dare I say spend money on an SEO tool. Plus someone who knows a lot about SEO tools, Patrick Stox stops by to share what he thinks makes a great SEO tool. Plus someone else who knows a lot about SEO tools stops by to share his insight about SEO tools that actually implement as Wix's own head of SEO, Nati Elimelech joins us, and of course we have the Snappy News. We have who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness so whiz, clang, bang and other tool noises as episode 24 of the SERP's Up Podcast is under construction. Crystal Carter: I got my hard hat. We're going to dive right in. Mordy Oberstein: I got my tool belt, snap. Crystal Carter: I love a tool belt. I'd love to have a tool belt. Mordy Oberstein: I've never had one. Crystal Carter: You should totally get one. Also, I really like the measuring tapes. When you pull out the measuring tape and then you let it go, that's so satisfying. Mordy Oberstein: My kids like that, but I have to tell them, be careful, you can slice up your whole hand doing that. Crystal Carter: You can. I did that as a child, it was unpleasant, I would say. Mordy Oberstein: My kids don't listen, so they'll probably end up like you, in general, which is a great thing. But for the hand slicing, not so good. Crystal Carter: Not so great. Not so great. You can use the shovel to dig yourself out of that hole. That's a great tool. Mordy Oberstein: I have a spade in my tool belt. Crystal Carter: I'm kidding. Anyway, okay, so today we're going to talk about what you need to decide which SEO tools to use. And actually looking at this, I was thinking that a lot of this can be really useful for deciding for any sort of digital tool. And certainly in my time in consulting clients and consulting people on what to do on the web, I've very often been asked, what do you think of this tool we're considering? What do we think of this platform or this apparatus that we are considering adding to our MarTech stack? Mordy Oberstein: Good word. Crystal Carter: Apparatus is a good word, isn't it? One of the things that's really important is to have a deep understanding of what's going on. So you need to understand what you actually want to achieve, what the scope of the project is and how often you're going to need this tool and that sort of thing is really, really useful. So think about the thing you want to do and how you might find a tool to help you do that. So a good tool that I use is the SEO Pro Tools Chrome extension for instance. That's a tool that I use really regularly and that tool helps me to get a quick snapshot of what's going on on a webpage before I do a deep dive. And that's a great tool because it's really handy for me and really useful. But if I wanted to do something bigger, on a bigger scale, I might need a different tool. So think about that. The other thing that's really useful is thinking about what your capabilities are and what your requirements are as a team. So for instance, if you're a big business, you might want to think about a tool that includes an API capability that allows you to scale and integrate with other tools that you're using. If you have a team that's really fast-paced and that's out and about a lot, you might want to think about something that has a mobile app, you also want to think about integrations for instance. So if your team is heavily reliant on something like Google Workspace and you're using Google Data Studio a lot, or you're using Slack a lot, or you're using Google Sheets a lot or something like that, you might want to think about tools that are integrating with those tools that you're using regularly. Also, data portability and accessibility with a lowercase A there. So if you've got higher ups that need to see bits of data regularly, that's really useful. And also budget, with a big old B, the budget. So you're going to want to know what your budget is for what you're trying to do and where that goes. Then, once you've done all of that, you want to think about the actual tool itself. So understand what the capabilities are and what the limitations are. So a really good example is thinking about, it's something that everyone's used, a tool that almost everyone in web has used, is tools for Core Web Vitals, for instance. So if you think about page feed insights, the Lighthouse tools versus CrUX, for instance, those two tools have two different sets of criteria that they're measuring, and they're both useful to help you understand what you need to understand about your page speed and your insights and things like that. But they have different criteria. So it's very important to understand how the tool is assessing what you need it to assess or how it is helping you to get that information that you're trying to get. Crawling tools, for instance, will crawl in different ways and even within them, they'll have different defaults that you should consider, as well. So understanding the capabilities of the tool, understanding the limitations of the tool can make a really big difference to how you approach whether or not a tool is good for you and how it feeds into the capabilities and the requirements that you have as a team. Mordy Oberstein: That's really good. I'm with you. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Thank you. I saw lots of nodding along, especially when it got to the budget part. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the budget is, sometimes you'll think, oh, that's too expensive or this one's not as good. It's cheaper, but it's not as good. It's not as good because it doesn't have this graph. It doesn't have the graph. But sometimes, you know what, forgo the graph and go with the cheaper model because the graph's not really that important, which leads me to all of this. SEO tools love shoving graphs into things. They love shoving the same graph into multiple places, but it looks different, so you're not sure it's the same thing, but maybe it's different, but it's really the same exact thing. So they might have 400 reports, but only 40 unique ones, but they make you feel like you got to buy this thing, it's got 400 reports, but it only has 40 unique ones. So maybe you don't really need to buy that tool. You could buy the cheaper one that doesn't have all the things because it's really the one that has all the things, has all the same things. So don't get caught up in the shiny graph. But you do sometimes need to think about the shiny graphs because you have to think about the reporting. So this tool might have four million things that it can do, but its reporting stinks and the person you report to is not going to understand anything that you sent them. Crystal Carter: And those graphs can be really overwhelming for people, particularly if you're talking to decision makers, business owners or the C-suite and things like that. If they're looking at 25 different graphs and they want one piece of information, that is too much information. And that turns people off and it can make people not trust the data that you're giving them because they can't interpret it themselves. Mordy Oberstein: What you might need to do is go with the tool that's a little bit simpler, with a little bit better reporting. And if you really need the extra capabilities of the other tool, then all right, maybe you want to spring for a second tool, but understand where your money comes from. And that's usually from a client or an internal person. So be wary. Crystal Carter: And I think this goes back to the integration part of it. So for instance, there's a lot of tools that have Slack integrations or Data Studio integrations and things like that. So if you have something that's fairly simple, you can easily export it into certain things. So I know there was a nanny app, Little Warden for instance, that has a Slack integration and they will ping you in your Slack channel when there's an issue on your site. That's really useful. That's really, really useful. It's not like that particular, I think there are whizzier apps, it's a great app, tool, but I think there are apps that do more, but that particular one does that. And that can be really useful information. And if you're deciding between that one or another one, but the app in question maybe is less fancy or has fewer graphs but has an element that makes it more actionable for you, then that's going to be really, really useful. And I think that's something to consider. Mordy Oberstein: Now, speaking of accessibility of the data, here's something that no one talks about and that no one considers. Are you ready? How easy is it to migrate the data out of that platform should you choose to cancel that platform? Because having worked at one of these platforms, they are not all equal. Some of the platforms may get incredibly complicated to take the data out and import it into a new tool and they do it on purpose because they don't want you to have to leave. Yes, they are spiteful, some of these SEO tools. So you need to be careful and ask, if I ever decide, heaven forbid, to cancel my subscription with your amazing tool, am I screwed? Crystal Carter: And also even on a day-to-day basis, if you need to make the information liquid, if you need to export it, if you have limited exportability capabilities, then that will limit the value of the tool. So Screaming Frog is something that is a tool that almost every SEO uses, or particularly for technical SEO. And on that tool you download it and it's on your local device, it's not a cloud tool, but you can export the data to Google Sheets really, really easily. So somebody can say, oh, can you crawl this? And I can say, yes, crawl it, export it. So within a couple of minutes I can export it to someone, which can make it really, really easy. There are some tools where it's a lot more difficult to export the information about a site and that means that that puts a lot of barriers to making the tool accessible to the wider part of your team. So yeah, if you can't get your data, let's say that the tool says that they can give you historical data for going back, I don't know, five years or something like that on our website, but they won't give it to you. Mordy Oberstein: Big problem, big, big, problem. Because one day you will need it and you will not be able to get it and it will not be there. And they'll be like, whoa, well whatever, you're canceling anyway. We don't care. Crystal Carter: These things are very tricky. So I think that, yeah that's something that you should consider and sometimes you can find workarounds, sometimes you can export on a regular basis or something like that. But if that's the case, then you've got to make allowances for that. And also I think that you have the time to learn the tool because that's the other thing. There are so many tools and there's so many tools- Mordy Oberstein: If there's a demo. My recommendation is take it. Because I've seen this a million times, you think you understand the tool, you're an SEO expert, you're wonderful, you're amazing. But the people who develop the tool are an expert on their tool. And sometimes these tools could be a little bit layered and you don't know what exactly is in there. So go for the demo. Crystal Carter: And there's so many, there's tools that I use all the time and then somebody's like, oh, there's that part of it. I'm like, what are you talking about? I didn't even know that that was, what? Mordy Oberstein: Literally, when I was at Semrush, I'd do once a week. I'm like, here, let me show you something about the tool you probably didn't even know existed. Crystal Carter: And they add things all the time. I mean at Wix we add SEO capabilities all the time. Just this month, and we're recording this at the beginning of the year. And then we're a few weeks into 2023 and we've had three or four different updates to just the Google Search Console site inspection tool. Mordy Oberstein: I went into a meeting late, my bad, I got caught up in another meeting. You all know how that happens. Forgiveness please. And I missed an update. So even I didn't know what was going on in one of the tools, so I saw it in another meeting someone was using, I'm like, wait, when did we add that? Crystal Carter: Right? Precisely. So if that's happening just on one platform imagine of all the tools that you're using across the different things. So we have an updates section, SEO updates part of our website that helps you understand. Sitebulb is renowned for their release notes. They add a lot of color to their release notes. So they're a good one to keep up with. But if you have a tool that you use regularly, that is something that your marketing team, your SEO team relies on, it's worth keeping track of when their updates are rolled out. We did a whole webinar on our 2022 releases at the end of 2022, which is on YouTube, which is great. And I know a lot of other teams do similar things as well. So take some time, grab a cup of coffee and tuck in so that you know more about your tools. Mordy Oberstein: Now you'll be asking, why do I care? Here's why you care because you're going to buy a tool now. You're locked in, let's say for a year, two years, whatever it is, or even monthly, whatever it is. Let's say you're locked in, you get a better deal that way. If the tool is not constantly developing, then that's what you're getting and that's it. If the tool you see has a log where there's adding new reports, adding new things all the time, then you're paying the same amount but you're getting more. Crystal Carter: Having an active and engaged tool team is really, really important. There's a couple of ways to tell that, again, the release notes, like you're saying where they're constantly updating, but also how responsive they are to user requests. So for instance, on a lot of tool download things like on Product Hunt or on Google Chrome, Chrome extensions things, and even in our Wix app market, we have places where people can leave reviews and the people who've built the app can respond to the reviews. Google App Market does this as well. And if you're seeing that the team, even if they're work in progress, even if they're early days or even if they're still leaning forward, if you can see that they're actively responding to user requests, user comments, and things, that's a good sign of a good team. A lot of teams will also be very active online. So Slack for instance, when they first launched, they were really active on Twitter and people were going, I wish I'd had this and I think it should have that and that sort of thing. That's really useful. The team from Candor, the team from AlsoAsked the team- Mordy Oberstein: Offered by Candor. Crystal Carter: Offered by Candor, they recently were "what sort of updates should we be making to AlsoAsked let us know, please tell us what you think". At Wix for instance, we're constantly asking people what things do you need? And we have a request thing. And when the requests are filled, we say, we've filled this, this has been updated. Chrome does this as well. The Chrome team will say this was an issue and they'll say, we solved this. This has been resolved. You can now see this. And that's really useful. So having a team that's actively engaged with keeping the tool performing well and performing for you helps you make it, means that it's more value for money. Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: Now my last point, which I agree with all of that and if you see there's nothing dynamic about the tool and how they were communicating, that's a signal. It's like an empty Google business profile. Do you really trust that? Crystal Carter: Bring your Toyota Camry over there and just, yeah it'll be fine. It'll be great. Maybe they'll be open, maybe they won't, but it'll be fine. Mordy Oberstein: Probably not. So my last hot take today is if this tool doesn't let you use it for free in some way, shape, or form, do not use it. Crystal Carter: Do not use it. Mordy Oberstein: Do not use it. Let me rephrase this because that's a little bit of a hot take. Do not pay them money. Crystal Carter: Do not. Okay. So what are we- Mordy Oberstein: We're talking, usually a tool will either let you see it through a demo or they'll let you, let's say try a couple of keywords. Like AlsoAsked, so you got I think three free searches a day so you understand what this thing is. The main SEO tools offer a freemium model. Or like Summers has the freebie model. Ahrefs lets you have free access to their site audit tool. Crystal Carter: Mazda has something as well where you can see a lot of stuff before you have to get to- Mordy Oberstein: Or the Explorer. You can run a bunch of searches. So most of the tools, they won't let you do everything, which makes good sense because then you're going to pay for it. But they'll let you look at what's underneath the hood, just a bits. You get a sense of what this thing is. Because if you don't know what this thing is, you should not be giving them your money. And it is impossible to understand what this thing is from a blog post. Crystal Carter: But the blog post looks so good, Mordy, the blog post tells me that it'll solve all my problems. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, repetitive analysis like you've never seen before and you'll never see again once you buy it. Crystal Carter: Like look, I saw the battle cards and there's like tick, tick, tick for all of the things that I need. And it says that it'll work. Mordy Oberstein: All the things that they want you to see they've ticked all the things that they don't want you to see are not even on the list. I am so salty about this. Crystal Carter: Why would they not show me all of the things? Mordy Oberstein: Because these are the same people who are trying to sell you links. Crystal Carter: No they're not. I think that there's- Mordy Oberstein: I've gotten too far. I told you to hold me back. Crystal Carter: I didn't. I'm sorry. I instigated that. I'm an enabler. What have I done? I think that most all of the tools that I absolutely love and adore and I love Screaming Frog. I adore the SEO probe Chrome extension. There's tons of other tools that I use all the time that I really, really love and adore. And they all let you have a certain level of- Mordy Oberstein: A week's trial, three day trial, whatever it is. Crystal Carter: And what I do find is that sometimes in my experience that if the team wants you to have a demo of the, let's say they don't have a neat freemium mode. For instance, AHrefs recently launched a freemium version of AHrefs, which is actually really cool and you can see a lot from it. Marie Hans, when it first launched, she did a nice deep dive into what you can get on the free AHrefs and it's really solid. And I would say that before that it was a little bit more behind the scenes. And I would say that if you were really interested in a tool that you can sometimes just ask them. So you can sometimes ask the team, you can say, hey, if it just says, oh, get in touch for a demo, you can sometimes ask them, can I have a one-month something or other? And they'll give you a voucher or something somehow like that. Mordy Oberstein: I've done that multiple times. Crystal Carter: That'll let you log in and then they'll check in and see how you got in. So as well as that, and I would say do check in. And I have definitely been someone who has, there was a tool that I'm not going to name, but sometimes I've definitely done the thing where I've done the one-month trial and set an alarm to make sure that I finished. Because sometimes when you're doing stuff for clients, you need this one thing. This one time I think it was something that was like, yeah it was like an influencer or something. Mordy Oberstein: That's fine, because if you needed that down the line again, now you know that that would be a great solution for you. Crystal Carter: And I think also as a consultant, if you're consulting clients or if you're working across an agency or if you're doing a sort of technical overview of different tools, sometimes being able to have had a look around and assess it for yourself and be able to do write up on whether or not the benefits or the drawbacks of a particular tool can be really, really useful and can also help you to understand other parts of the tools that you use more as well. So it's always good to keep up with the different capabilities of tech. There's a diagram from MarTech Alliance that talks about some of the different MarTech tools that are available. And it grows every year because there's so much. And I think that in the last few months we're starting to see an explosion of AI tools at the moment, for instance. So I'm sure it will grow even more in the coming days. So being able to understand how you pick a tool and how you spend your time with those tools whether or not they give you the demo. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Crystal Carter: It's really important. Mordy Oberstein: By the way, speaking of artificial intelligence, we have some real intelligence for you. I'm just kidding. We have human intelligence as AHrefs own Patrick Stox is here to tell us what makes an SEO tool a great SEO tool. Patrick Stox: Tools are just there to save you time and kind of make your life easier. Imagine how much time it would take to find broken links on a website. If you had to go through every single page on the site and click every single link. On larger websites, you could have multiple people staffed that would just do this every hour of every day for weeks at a time and you may not get through everything. Whereas you can run that same site through a crawler and probably in a matter of minutes or hours, you're going to have the answer to what links are broken and so much more information. Or if you're creating content, you can write the things that you think people are searching for or you can look at the data from these tools and actually see what they're searching for. Having the data like that is kind of like having a superpower, you cut right to it, you know exactly what your audience wants, you know exactly what you need to write, and everything is kind of prioritized for you. So all you have to do now is start writing rather than trying to guess and see if this is actually going to resonate up with my audience. Is this something they're actually looking for? It's all just laid out for you. With the tools you're also going to get bigger data. We used to do a whole lot of manual processes. We do a bunch of different searches, a bunch of data gathering. It was a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of work just spent getting a fraction of the data that modern SEO tools provide. The tools are really just making this data more accessible to people. The people that can't really build their own tools or don't have time to go through all those processes to get all that data. The modern tools are really just like, here's the answer, here's all the data, do with it what you will. Here's the answer to any of the questions that you have. And they're really just trying to have whatever data that they think people are going to need, ways to get that data out, ways for you to slice and dice that data in the tool and really just have all the features that you're probably going to need to really be successful. Mordy Oberstein: Patrick, I know you're listening. I just want to say you said that so well. Crystal Carter: So well. Mordy Oberstein: And one of the ways that you do want to create a metric for yourself is does the tool make it easy to do what I want to do? It's a great basic foundational way of base lining that. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Why are you spending time on tools that don't do what you need them to do? Sometimes tools are like, we can do this and we can do that and we can do that and we can do this and we can do that. And it's like, mate, I need it to do one thing. Mordy Oberstein: Make my life easier. Crystal Carter: So get the tool that does the one thing rather than the tool that does 45 different things. Mordy Oberstein: That's the beauty of automation. Now, you know who also likes automation, a good friend of ours. So I'm going to give a little introduction first. He does love automation, by the way, Crystal, he's so into it. It's his thing. There are so many SEO tools that focus on analyzing and monitoring things like rain tracking or crawling. There's a ton of tools that do that. There are, I guess less tools, fewer tools that do implementation itself. I know Edge SEO is becoming more of a thing, so that is becoming more of a mainstream kind of SEO tool universe. So I thought it'd be really cool to pick the brain of somebody who's a well smart individual who oversees a massive team of other well smart individuals to talk about what makes a good SEO tool, but from an implementation point of view. So join us as we talk to Wix's own head of SEO, lover of all SEO automation, nati Elimelech, as we move across the Wix first. Speaker 4: 3, 2, 1 ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: So welcome to the SERP's Up Podcast, Nati. How are you? Nati Elimelech: I'm good, thank you, Mordy. Thank you, Crystal. How are you two? Mordy Oberstein: We're good. Crystal Carter: Fantastic. And I'm more happy now that you're here Nati. Nati Elimelech: I do not buy that, but thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, you don't believe that about Crystal or myself? Nati Elimelech: So I would believe that about Crystal. But judging by your Twitter profile, I wouldn't believe you if you said it. Mordy Oberstein: My Twitter profile does not represent who I actually am. Crystal Carter: To all the listeners who follow along with the ongoing Nati and Mordy like SEO hip hop peeve like- Mordy Oberstein: We're like brothers who never wish we were brothers. Crystal Carter: The dance I can report from internal, the dance is like legit. They're the bands never stop. So it's authentic. I'm just letting people know. Mordy Oberstein: I think Nati put it the best. You're both on Twitter, which you are in real life. It's the same thing. Crystal Carter: Really. To be fair to both of you, you're both brilliant as well. So this is also true. Nati Elimelech: Ah, thank you. Mordy Oberstein: So today we're talking about SEO tools and we're talking about SEO tools to actually implement versus track and monitor and so forth. Because there's so many tools that do that. But there are so few tools that actually let you implement something and Nati he runs an entire team of people who create tools that let you implement stuff. So we figured what a great thing. What a great time to bring you on the podcast. I've been meaning to bring you on for a long time, but I finally found the perfect topic I think. Nati Elimelech: Yeah, yeah. I think we finally found it. Mordy Oberstein: Found it like nailed it. Nice. The question is to you, what goes into building tools the right way? Or when you are building these tools that implement, what goes into the process? What goes into your mindset? What goes into it all? Nati Elimelech: So that's a good question. So when we're talking about tools or features in an SEO product, we're talking about the enablement. We want to give users the ability to change whatever they want or change the configuration when it comes to SEO, right? That sounds simple, but as usual reality is a bit more complex than that. Almost everyone with a website or with a business behind it cares about SEO or at least recognizes the importance of SEO as a traffic channel. But we're talking about a very, very wide range of different levels of knowledge or proficiency. Some of these users are novices. They know SEO is important, they kind of know how to spell it, they've heard some stuff about it, but that's where it stops. On the other hand, there are seasoned professionals. They know exactly what they want to be able to do and they have very clear expectations about the features they expect a platform to have. So that means that when you create an SEO tool, because SEO is important to a lot of types of users, there are many considerations you have to take in order to make a good tool. In general, I think the first consideration is what do people expect you to have as a platform? It's not necessarily what Nati wants, or our great product managers want or our UX or engineers or our tech SEOs. It's what about what the user wants. Now the simplest example is being able to edit your title tags or meta descriptions. This is a basic action that's applicable to all types of users, but more professional users expect you to have a more robust and advanced set of features. So the first consideration is what do people expect you to have as a platform? The simplest example is being able to edit your title tags or meta descriptions or any other SEO tag. This is a basic feature that applicable to all types of users. Both beginners want to edit their title tags and obviously professionals when they want to optimize certain pages. But the more professional users expect you to have a much more robust set of features. For example, editing robots.txt, those professionals, they will also probably know what to do with it. But most of all they're aware of the dangers of misusing robots.txt and the implications of making such a mistake. Like blocking certain pages from crawling or God forbid, an entire site. The beginners are definitely not aware of that and they could potentially cause self-harm. So after you've considered everything that users expected to have, and those are different levels of features that will require different levels of proficiency, this leads us to the next consideration. How do we make sure users who aren't proficient or don't know much about SEO practices aren't shooting themselves in the foot. After all, we want them to succeed. Crystal Carter: We want them to be on both good feet. We want them to start off on a good foot. Nati Elimelech: Super important. Crystal Carter: Super important. Nati Elimelech: There's an average of 1.8 feet per person in the world. So I think the numbers speak for themselves. Mordy Oberstein: About a bicycle. They started off rolling on wheels. Crystal Carter: We don't want them to get a flat tire? Mordy Oberstein: Right. Nati Elimelech: I don't actually know how to ride a bicycle. I have to- Mordy Oberstein: Do you really not? I'll teach you next time I see you. Nati Elimelech: No, it's more because I don't want to know. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, in that case I'll definitely teach you next time I see you. Nati Elimelech: So tackling this is a bit more complex. You need to have built-in safeguards. How do you safeguard the user whenever there's a risk of users making mistakes that could lead to an undesired outcome. You want to try and protect them as much as you can, but you also don't want to take away that ability to customize the setting. Meaning that if it puts your beginner in harm's way potentially, but your advanced user, your professional SEO knows what to do it with it, you can't just take it away. So there are a few ways to tackle that. I like to call this the self and protect methodology without the negative connotations of being police. Crystal Carter: We don't have that just so everyone's aware. If you're using Wix, you don't get Nati with the hat going, Nina, Nina, what are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: If you wanted to- Crystal Carter: You can't. Nati Elimelech: But if you want to vote for this feature- Mordy Oberstein: By the way, you really break down the unique consideration of implementation because wait until you're in a tool like Semrush or DeepCrawl, there's nothing you're really going to do that's going to screw up your website if you misuse the tool. Crystal Carter: It's more of an analysis tool. Mordy Oberstein: If you missing our tools, you could theoretically really screw up the website. Nati Elimelech: Definitely the worst you could do is misinterpret a report, but that's not going to do anything to your website. Crystal Carter: But I think that probably one of the best examples that I can think of. You mentioned robots.txt and in Wix you can edit your robots.txt. But before you do that, it says, do you want to do this? Do you know what you're doing? And you also have an option to restore to default, which is something that just like, let's say you do make a pig's ear of it, let's say you do mess it up, you can just restore to default to the thing that is correct and you can try again. You can liquefy to another day rather than losing all of that code again. Another one is with the structured data presets, we have structured data presets for lots of different types of pages, but the syntax on all of that is correct, like fully correct. And it will help you with rich results. If you want to optimize it in a different way, if you want to add new properties or types or whatever to your skin and markup, go for it. Cool. If you make a pig's ear of it, you can restore it to default, the default is always there and you can always go back. So that means that, yeah it's like you said, you're giving people the option to grow, but also supporting them in that journey as well. Nati Elimelech: Yeah. So you touched on two different ways to safeguard users. Basically when you spoke about the robots.txt, what we do is introduce friction. That's first. Basically friction can take many forms, but what you do is you have a feature but you maybe make it less accessible or you kind of really need to dig to find it or you have to make a couple more clicks or read something. And that's definitely one thing we're doing with robots.txt. But there are other things we do and you need to do when you are safeguarding users when it comes to a platform. Let's take another example, we are very data driven, so we looked at the data and we discovered that after changing the slug for an existing page, only 4% of the users added redirect. Basically you change a URL, only 4% of all the URLs that were changed had redirect in place. Crystal Carter: Why didn't you do the redirect Nati? Like whatever, who cares? It's not a big deal. Mordy Oberstein: First world problems. Nati Elimelech: So that's crazy though. Obviously there are cases which it doesn't matter if it's a fresh page and you just messed around with it. But if you have a page that Google knows and maybe tracks and you have signals and you don't redirect, then you lose all of it. So what we did was we introduced auto redirect on slug change. Now in most places when you change your slug, we'll give you the ability to redirect. It's on by default and you can even opt out. Another example of protecting the user but not taking away the ability to choose what to do. You may have a good reasoning for not wanting to perform a leader. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. And that's up to you. You might be like, you know what I'm throwing caution to the wind, I don't even care. But- Mordy Oberstein: It's interesting because a lot of the things that we're doing or you in particular are doing and you and your team are doing, it helps on one, protecting the user, but at the same time you're also automating things for advanced users, which is really interesting to see how that plays itself out in terms of implementation. Nati Elimelech: I think that's a very, very important aspect of how people experience a product, how it fits into their workflows. How many clicks do they have to perform to do a certain action, how repetitive detection is. So yeah, we definitely take that into account whenever we can, but it's not just about saving them time. Crystal, you brought up structured data markup and that you can restore defaults. So what if you use structured data markup or use a schema that isn't valid, that isn't validation, or you are missing a comma or a parenthesis? Crystal Carter: You're using the wrong quotation marks, which is my favorite ever. Nati Elimelech: Exactly. So then it won't even validate, it won't let you save it, for example. So there are many, many, many ways. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that's amazing by the way. Crystal Carter: That is one of my favorite features because there's a lot of things that will give you an open field where you can add in whatever schema you want, but it doesn't tell you whether it's valid or not. And then you have to go to an external tool and validate it. Whereas within the Wix SEO, your panel, you could add in your schema and it will tell you like, nah, you missed something try it again, do it again. And we also have it in Velo as well. So if you got schema using the Wix SEO API, then it also tells you, no, not yet. Try it again one more time until- Mordy Oberstein: You're this close. Crystal Carter: You get it right. Mordy Oberstein: We used to make it so- Crystal Carter: So close and you're like, where- Mordy Oberstein: You're like this close, you're almost there. Keep going. Try one more time. Crystal Carter: Spot the difference. You're like, where did I miss? Please send me help with- Nati Elimelech: Yeah, so we have many more examples of how we save our users. When you manually add the redirect and we can see, we could calculate, it will cause a redirect loop then we'll warn you. So there are many, many, many things you could do about that for advance users and for beginners. I think those, even though there are many directed at beginners, they serve everyone, which is great. You make it safer for the beginners and you make it more convenient and efficient for your professionals. But we also touched on having good default settings. A lot of users, a lot of people won't even touch your SEO settings. They don't know enough, especially early stages to decide what's right or not. So we do what I call kind of SEO activism, which we do look at everything and decide what the proper default is. For a product you have the default, structured data markup with images and everything you need and we'll update it as needed. And if you haven't touched it, then it will be updated as long as we do that. But we also do stuff like no index blog tag pages by default because we know that for most users with tiny blogs, that's not usually a high quality page. So we also take into account, no, not only how would users use our tools and how we can safeguard or make it more efficient for them, but what do we need to do when they don't use our tools? We automatically generate stuff. So even if they don't know what to do or intend to do, stuff kind of works without them having to know that. So that's a big aspect I think of safeguarding the user as well. It's not just about the actions they take, but about the actions that they don't take. Crystal Carter: And I think also that onboarding is something that's really important with regards to using tools generally. And I've been in a lot of discussions with the SEO team about how we think about the onboarding process for when people get involved with the Wix SEO tools. So it says, you know should probably have a keyword in the old homepage. And it's like, no, I think just, nope, you should probably have your business name on your homepage as well. And I think that that onboarding process is something that sets people up for success. I know that the team thinks a lot about that and reviews it regularly. And I think also, I don't know if you can touch on a little bit about the testing. You talked about some of the stats that you use, but I know that there's a lot of testing and refinement. I don't know if you can talk quickly about that before we wrap up. Nati Elimelech: So yeah, we do a lot of testing and refinement. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Is it helpful? Nati Elimelech: It is helpful. Mordy Oberstein: That is great. Nati Elimelech: Okay, so one other thing we haven't touched on, you did touch on it, but you spoke about onboarding, but I think, and UX writers will agree, and our product managers will agree in product education is super, super, super important. You need to educate on why it was important. You need to educate on how to use specific features. And most important, I think all tools, especially reporting tools, need to read that one, do not overpromise. And tools tend to do that. If you do this and that, then you'll rank higher. And users believe that and they take that to heart and that's not always the case. So we always try not to oversell or overpromise and make sure users understand that SEO is a process and not just a set of checklists to complete. And that there isn't usually one specific action or a set of actions that will lead you to the promised land. Tools without educations are just tools. Now if I give you a drill Mordy you'll probably know how to use it without having to use a manual. Mordy Oberstein: Not a clue. Nati Elimelech: Yeah. I gave you way too much credit here. If I give you a fork Mordy- Mordy Oberstein: These hands are so smooth. They're so soft. Nati Elimelech: Yeah. So if I give Crystal a drill, she'll definitely know how to use it. But if I give her a massive power tool that can take down walls, she'll need to go through the manual, I guess, and through a wall, apparently. So education is super important. The more advanced feature you have, the more potential impact they may have. Education becomes even more important. So it's about, if we sum up, because we don't have time, and Mordy's making face, nevermind that Mordy's regular face. But if you want to wake up first, give users the feature they want, then protect them from what they don't know or the ways they can misuse your features and all the time teach them how to use those features, teach them why those features are important and teach them when to not use those features. I think that those are the main pillars of making a good SEO product. There are many, many nuances, but we try to take everything into consideration here. Mordy Oberstein: Nati keep pounding the table on that. Just literally keep pounding the table because it's going to make our post-production of this podcast way easier now. Thanks Nati. Nati Elimelech: You're welcome. Mordy Oberstein: It's an honor to have you here, the head of SEO at Wix developing so many products. It is amazing the work that you and your team have done, and particularly over the last, I would say, three or so years. If you're looking to follow Nati, follow him on Twitter at netanel, N-E-T-A-N-E-L and we'll link to his profile in the show notes. Again, Nati, thank you so much for coming on, man. Nati Elimelech: Thank you, Crystal. You're welcome Mordy. Crystal Carter: You're so welcome Nati. Always a pleasure. Mordy Oberstein: Bye bye. Crystal Carter: Bye. Nati Elimelech: B-bye. Speaker 4: 3-2-1 Ignition. Lift off. Mordy Oberstein: He has a way, you know that Billy Joel song, "She's Got a Way"? Nati has a way. Crystal Carter: He has a way. When I first joined Nati, Nati was like, check this out. And showed me the scorecard that he uses to helping reduce siloing across SEO performance across the massive Wix team. And it's literally, it's a thing of beauty and it's incredibly considered and incredibly effective for helping to drive SEO innovation. So as well as leading an incredibly efficient team. So the team at Wix are like, I love it when we add a new feature to the tool because everyone is so hyped about it. They're like, we added a search feature on the Google Search Console dash. Mordy Oberstein: Slash the emoji spot. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And people are like yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Motorless Slack channel- Crystal Carter: You can search the URL. Mordy Oberstein: Always surprised me. I didn't know we had that emoji, Crystal Carter: Right? They're just like, oh my God, you can search URLs now. Everyone is so hyped. And I'm literally so hyped and go on Twitter and I'm so hyped. And literally it's true. We really hyped about making the tools better for everybody. Mordy Oberstein: I want to share the Slack, all the different emojis on Twitter one time. Crystal Carter: All of them literally, so there's like fire signs and mic drops and literally everybody goes crazy because we- Mordy Oberstein: Goes bonkers, it's bonkers. Emojis are bonkers. Crystal Carter: I know. But everybody's really about it. And I think that that's brilliant and I think that that's what you need. When we were talking about teams that are engaged with their tool, that's what makes the difference is the people behind the tool want to make the tool really, really good. And Nati's not only fantastic at running his team or leading his team, not running, leading his team, but also is very, very good at nurturing talent and helping the team and the people in his team to do cool stuff, which I think is really, really great. Mordy Oberstein: It's absolutely amazing. What's also amazing is what's going on in the news this week. Well, let's dive into the Snappy News. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Sick of news about AI writers and search. No. Great because both of this week's stories are about AA writers and search because like the Depeche Mode, I just can't get enough. Number one, Sundar Pichai confirms Google is working on AI's search feature users can engage directly with per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land. Or as a movie phone guy would say, this time it's for real, as there has been much speculation about Google's plans. However, this time officially, CEO Google Sundar Pichai said quote "in the coming weeks and months, we'll make these language models available starting with Lambda so that people can engage directly with them. This will help us continue to get feedback tests and safely improve them. These models are particularly amazing for composing, constructing and summarizing. They will become even more useful for people as they provide up to date or factual information. Lambda, by the way, is a chat interface technology that will let you have a conversation with AI in order to find the info that you otherwise probably would've gotten through search." I'm curious that he mentioned that you can compose content with the AI writer. That's interesting to me. I think that probably would be best qualified by somebody over at Google, because anyone can take that and run with that, which I don't advise to do. Also, from Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, Microsoft Bing's chat, GPT interface spotted in the wild. Or again, as movie phone guy would say, this time it's for real, as we've heard Bing is going to do this. But now we see that they're doing this test show a chat interface on being with a prompt ask me anything. Which sounds like a recipe for disaster. Ask me anything. That has never gone wrong on a date before, ask me anything. However, it is really interesting to see that Bing is testing this. It would obviously be a safe assumption to say this is coming to being searched in the relatively near future. And then I'll do it for this version of this snappy news. All right, so before we leave you, as we always do, we have to share with you who you should potentially be following out there on the social media to get more SEO awesomeness. And for this week we have Chris Johnson who's at defaced on Twitter, that's at D-E-F-A-C-E-D on Twitter. Crystal Carter: Chris Johnson. In my first ever podcast, I interviewed Chris Johnson when I was doing a podcast for Optics way back in the day. And he is fantastic. He builds his own tools all the time. On his website Defaced he has a whole collection of things that he's built. He gets involved with SEO but also considers himself to be something of a technologist and is incredibly creative and inventive with the kinds of tools that he makes. And I think that that's one of the things that's great about the SEO space is that you can see a need for a tool and make one. And he's somebody who does this a lot. So when there was lots of stuff going on with Core Web Vitals, I was interviewing him about a Chrome extension that he made for Core Web Vitals things. And also about his tool that he made for being able to visualize cumulative layout shift with a gift, which was really great. And he continues to build it and always does. Mordy Oberstein: That's amazing. Sue Ross. Crystal Carter: That's awesome. Mordy Oberstein: So make sure to follow him over on Twitter again at defaced. So I'm all tooled out. I'm exhausted. I have so much of that, like pent-up energy. Crystal Carter: I think you really nailed it though with the- Mordy Oberstein: My hammer out. Bang. Nailed it. Crystal Carter: Nailed it. Mordy Oberstein: Nailed it. Well, thank you for joining us on the Serfs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into, do not let PPC kill your landing pages. Oh my goodness. That is such a hot take right there in the title itself. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all 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 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

We’re celebrating SERP’s Up 100th episode with a special live edition! We’re covering ground this week as we take up: Is SEO still the same powerhouse it once was? Moz’s Chima Mmege gives us her take. What new local ranking factors should you know about? Darren Shaw and Joy Hawkins fill us in. Will AI get you across the finish line? Eli Schwartz and Kevin Indig share how AI will evolve and what it means for marketers. To wrap up the celebration, Barry Schwartz presents a special edition of The Snappy SEO News! It all makes for one “lively” episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back 100th Episode Special We’re celebrating SERP’s Up 100th episode with a special live edition! We’re covering ground this week as we take up: Is SEO still the same powerhouse it once was? Moz’s Chima Mmege gives us her take. What new local ranking factors should you know about? Darren Shaw and Joy Hawkins fill us in. Will AI get you across the finish line? Eli Schwartz and Kevin Indig share how AI will evolve and what it means for marketers. To wrap up the celebration, Barry Schwartz presents a special edition of The Snappy SEO News! It all makes for one “lively” episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 100 | September 4, 2024 | 63 MIN 00:00 / 1:03:16 This week’s guests Darren Shaw Darren Shaw is the founder of Whitespark and has been teaching business owners, marketers, and agencies how to rank at the top of Google’s local map-pack for over 14 years through his extensive research, writing, and speaking on all things Local SEO. Joy Hawkins Joy is the owner of the Local Search Forum, LocalU, and Sterling Sky. She has been working in the industry since 2006, has written for publications such as Search Engine Land, and enjoys speaking regularly at marketing conferences such as Mozcon, LocalU, Pubcon, SearchLove, and State of Search. You can find her on Twitter or volunteering as a Product Expert in the Google business profile community. Joy is a mother of 3 beautiful children and a devout Christian. When she’s not working, she spends most of her time playing board games, pickleball, and beating Dave at Mario Kart. Barry Schwartz Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick, a New York Web service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. RustyBrick sells custom web software including advanced e-commerce, custom content management systems, social networking sites, CRM applications, custom web-based business software, iPhone applications and much more. Eli Schwartz Eli Schwartz is the bestselling author of Product-Led SEO: The Why Behind Building Your Organic Growth Strategy. A growth advisor and consultant, his ability to demystify and craft organic marketing strategies has generated billions in value for some of the internet's top sites. Chima Mmeje Chima Mmeje is a content marketer for Moz, aiming to position the company as a leading source of truth in the SEO industry. She's also the founder of The Freelance Coalition for Developing Countries, a UK nonprofit providing free resources and training for BIPOC marketers globally. Kevin Indig Kevin Indig is a strategic Growth Advisor, creator of the Growth Memo newsletter and host of the Tech Bound podcast. He ran SEO organizations for companies like Shopify, G2 and Atlassian, consulted for big brands like Ramp, Eventbrite, or Finder and is an active angel investor. Kevin believes is on a quest to accelerate technology that can solve impactful problems. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to Serp's Up. Aloha Mahalo. Welcome to the Serp's Up podcast. We're serving up some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by insert adjectives here. Our head of SEO communications. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: What's shaking all you hip cats out there on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: Yo, and I love those sunglasses. By the way, in case you don't listen to podcasts normally, usually I do a whole intro like the fabulous, the amazing, the incredible, the unparalleled head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. I just want to say insert adjectives here. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's run out of adjectives. And also maybe, I don't know. I do my best, but maybe I'm not as sparkly as before. Mordy Oberstein: Oh no, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Do you want me to run the intro again? Crystal Carter: No, it's totally fine. It's all you. Mordy Oberstein: Are you sure? Crystal Carter: It's fine, it's fine. The pandering for compliments, Crystal Carter. No, no, I'm kidding. Mordy Oberstein: From now on. That could be like your ex name, handle thing. Crystal Carter: But yeah, 100 episodes is a long time to try to keep up that many adjectives. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot, it's a lot. It's a lot of episodes. We talked a lot. Crystal Carter: We talk a lot, and it's not even all the things we talk about. That's the thing. Mordy Oberstein: No, truth. She was behind the Hot Takes episode. The things we don't publish. Well, welcome everybody to a live special edition of the Serp's Up podcast. We're celebrating 100 episodes, and to do that, we're doing it live. We're doing it live, which is a deep cut because I'm old. So you basically get to hear me flub the intro 1,000 and see what actually happens, and how many times it takes me to get it. Usually two or three. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we do our best. But to be fair, you've got that radio sound, which is second to none, really. Mordy Oberstein: I'm living my dream. I've always wanted to be a sports announcer or radio host dude. Here I am. Crystal Carter: Yeah, here you are. And yeah, the intro normally goes pretty smooth. Give yourself more credit than that. Mordy Oberstein: No, it does. It does. Well, let's see. Crystal Carter: The king of- Mordy Oberstein: We'll find out. Yeah, I don't have those plans, so we'll see how those go. Sometimes they don't go well, let's see. Well, so anyway, we have some amazing guests today. Chima Mmeje is here. Darren Shaw, Joy Hawkins, Eli Schwartz, Kevin Indig, and a very special rendition of the Snappy News with none other than Broadway Barry himself, who will be here later. But before that, thank you for joining us and welcome. Here's how it's going to work. Okay, if you listen to the show each week, we have segments. Nothing changes. We still have segments, except this time there's a different guest or set of guests for every segment. During the last five minutes of each segment, we're going to take questions from you. So please, plop your questions into the chat. And to help us curate the questions... Yeah, plop is a good adjective for putting questions in there. Just plop them in. Crystal Carter: Just plop. Mordy Oberstein: Think about all the things that go plop. And to help us curate the questions is going to our head of SEO editorial George Nguyen. Mr. SEO Hub will be curating your questions, so throw the questions in. And by the way, let's give George a big welcome. Hi, George. George Nguyen: Hi. This is- Mordy Oberstein: That's George. George Nguyen: ... the extent of my involvement. Mordy Oberstein: The podcast lives on the hub, and you're the hub, so it's appropriate to have you here, I feel like. George Nguyen: It is perfect. But more important than me, I want to make sure that everybody listening understands that the more specific you are with your questions, the more likely they'll be answered. And be careful because sometimes when I'm reading your questions, it doesn't match up to what's being said. And so if you leave out that context, your question will not be answered. So ask good questions, and I will do my best. Crystal Carter: So we want you to plop strategically. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. George Nguyen: I know what that is. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure your plopping is optimized. Crystal Carter: Fully optimized. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, fully optimized plopping. Crystal Carter: High fiber. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and George does have an amazing donut-shaped Cushion. Jack, you're absolutely correct. George Nguyen: Thank you, Jack. Crystal Carter: That's true, he does. Also, can we just appreciate the locks? George doesn't normally have all the locks on show. Crystal Carter: He's going, oh, oh my goodness. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. This is getting too risque for our podcast, George. George Nguyen: Thank you for the show. Crystal Carter: This is the wrong kind of webcast. George Nguyen: Oh, it is, yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. George, thanks so much, and we'll see you in the comments. Okay. Now, since we're actually doing this live, we're also doing the production live. I feel like saying we're doing this live is kind of obvious. We're here, we're live. It's not Weekend At Bernie's, we're alive. And to help with the production, they who always do our production Edge Media Studios or Site Strategics, those fellows are also here because we're breaking the fourth wall. The production that happens on the show isn't magic, it's Erin and Jacob. Mostly Jacob, I would imagine. Jacob Mann: Pretty much. Yeah. No, no, but I can't do that with my hair. Erin Sparks: Excuse me. I thought we booked this room for Edge of the Web. I'm sorry, did I get my calendar confused here? Mordy Oberstein: That is appropriate, because I go on your podcast and pitch this podcast, so kudos to you. Erin Sparks: Exactly. I had to do it, had to do it. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to say thank you. You guys do a great job with the podcast every week, and it's very much appreciated. Erin Sparks: More than welcome, guys. And been proud to be able to do 100 episodes. Let's go for another 100. Crystal Carter: Yay, thank you so much for all of your help. Mordy Oberstein: Sounds good. Erin Sparks: You're more than welcome. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let's get right into it. Well. Oh wait, wait, I didn't do the traditional Wix line, the Serp's Up podcast. See, there's a flub. First flub of the day, first flub of the day. Crystal Carter: Who's counting? Mordy Oberstein: I'm counting, that's one. The Serp's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, but where you can also be on the lookout for a new SEO course that's coming with folks like Aleyda Solis, Andrew Optimisey, Debbie Chu and so forth. But it's also where you can push your SEO and marketing further with native tech and apps built together with Google, Bing, Amazon, Mailchimp, Meta, Tickety Toc and more. Look for integrations inside of the Wix Studio, SEO and marketing dashboards and in the Wix Studio app center. As today, we're going all over the SEO universe. We're getting 100% fresh squeezed SEO insights. Nay, I say knowledge schemes as we look into, is SEO still the same powerhouse it once was? Are there new local ranking factors you may not know about? The answer obviously is yes. Could you imagine? We did a segment, and all it was was no, there's nothing new. And will AI get you across the finish line? Plus, the Walter Cronkite of SEO and source of many SEO memes, Mr. Happy Camper himself, Barry Schwartz, will be joining us for what is sure to be a Carnival-esque version of the Snappy News. Because on this episode of the Serp's Up podcast, we're keeping it 100. It takes me a while to figure out that last line. What should it be? It's like I spend most of my week figuring it out. Crystal Carter: Hey man, you just got to make it land. Just stick the landing, like whoosh. Mordy Oberstein: It's 100. Bam, sound effect. All right, let's get right into it. SEO has changed a lot over the past, I don't know, three seconds. There's been a lot of talk about how effective SEO is, whether or not it's still entirely its own discipline, it's overlapping the marketing in all sorts of new ways. Let's explore the efficacy and boundaries of SEO with a deep thought with Crystal, Mordy, and special guest Chima Mmeje from Moz. Welcome to the show, Chima. Crystal Carter: Hi. Chima Mmeje: Hi, Mordy, hello. Mordy Oberstein: Box number two, Chima. Box number two. I forgot, we're doing it live. There's a sound effect that we have to do. Chima Mmeje: I know. Okay, should I speak about the sound effects? Do I wait for the sound effects to finish? Crystal Carter: It was very loud, wow. Mordy Oberstein: No, I should have brought you on after the sound effects. See how good I am at this? I've only been podcasting for 1,000 episodes. Chima Mmeje: This is a big budget production you guys have got in here. I have to come in here, they haven't- Mordy Oberstein: No, what are you talking about? You have the Mars pod now. I saw you brought that back in studio. Chima Mmeje: No, but- Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Chima Mmeje: But this is fancy. This is really fancy. Crystal Carter: Well, this is why we have such a fancy guest. Thank you so much for joining us. Chima Mmeje: Of course, of course, of course. I am glad to be here, and congrats on 100 episodes. That is insane. I think we did 20 episodes of MozPod and I was like, "Oh God, do I want to do this again?" You guys have done 100, giving up at 20, you've done 100. I need to step up my game. I need to step up my game. Crystal Carter: We've recorded a few more as well. Mordy Oberstein: I do a lot of talking, a lot of talking. Crystal Carter: Okay, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So let's get right into this. Well, Google just finished rolling out the August 2024 core update, which we're going to talk about more later with Barry probably. And a lot of that had to do, a lot of the conversation that the narrative had to do with fixing the September 2023 helpful content update. And there's all these questions about is Google doing the right by small websites? Which leads me to this question, Chima. Is the SERP broken? Chima Mmeje: Look at my reaction. I feel like I've been saying this for years, and I've made several round posts on LinkedIn about it. In fact, I remember last year speaking at Brighton SEO a whole round about Google for 20 minutes. And I forgotten his name, but there was someone from Google that was literally going up right after me to do a presentation. It was awkward. This is how much I am frustrated with everything that Google has been doing with the sales. The helpful content update, I'm saying this here live, is a farce. That whole thing is like one big PR. There's nothing helpful about that update. Absolutely nothing. Nothing. And this is me right now working on a content update on a website with over a million pages and spending hours on the SERPs every single day. There is nothing helpful about that update. I'm on a forum where there are lots of SEOs and people who own small businesses, and many of them have had to shut down, many of them have suffered tremendously from this or... These are people that have been working hard to implement best SEO practices and are suffering, and there is literally no explanation why their websites are suffering. It feels like we are like coins or something just like, I don't know. And they're just like puppeteers just playing with us. It's very frustrating. And the SERP is broken. The SERP has been broken for a long time. I don't know, we've just been blinded by all of this whole rubbish period that Google is self-serving and Google is helpful. No, they're not helpful. They are self-serving. They're a business that exists to make profit. So nothing helpful about the updates. Yes, the SERP is 1,000% broken. If you even compare between the US SERPs and the UK SERPs, the distinction is insane. The US SERPs is cluttered. There's ads here, ads there, this here. They're trying to push something on you. It doesn't make sense. And then you look at the UK SERPs, cluttered, but it's not as bad as the US SERPs. And I'm like, "How does anybody even use the SERPs? How does anybody even use Google in the US?" It is insane. I will stop here, because I could do this forever. Crystal Carter: So you've got a lot of people chiming in the comments here. Wendy Mero saying the SERP's been broken for a long time, amen. And Simon Cox saying that he thinks you're skirting around the issue. Oh, did I say- Mordy Oberstein: Trust in Simon trying to stir things up. Mordy Oberstein: I hear you Simon. Crystal Carter: Yep, yep, yep. Chima Mmeje: No, Simon. I'm saying, Simon. Tell me, what is the issue? Look, you know what? I work at Moz now, so I have to be very diplomatic. If I was still working for myself, I would have probably been using a lot more colorful words than what I'm using right now. But I'm trying to be very, very diplomatic. But you can see how frustrated I am with the SERPs. I don't think they're going to release any update that is going to fix any of these issues. There are people who- Mordy Oberstein: There's no update. And I agree with it, there's no update. There's no one thing. Chima Mmeje: There's someone in there. Mordy Oberstein: Going back to plopping. Plopping Reddit all over the SERP was because they saw the content trends that... Okay, people are looking for firsthand knowledge, experiential content. And they looked around the web and they said, "We don't have any, so we're just going to throw Reddit there." Chima Mmeje: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It was a default solution, and it wasn't a long-term thing. Chima Mmeje: It was lazy. It's lazy to have Reddit on the SERPs. As content folks, as a rule of thumb, we don't link to Wikipedia, because Wikipedia does not have authors. Anybody can go on Wikipedia and write some information. It's literally the same thing with Reddit. Nobody uses their real names. Anybody can go in Reddit and put answers to questions, and then you see these answers populating in people also ask, populating in features and populating everywhere on the SERPs as correct information. It is dangerous at worst, and I don't even know what the best is. There's no best. Mordy Oberstein: There's no good solution. Crystal Carter: So I wouldn't say calling it Devil's advocate. But for argument's sake, do you think that one of the reasons why we've seen so much upheaval and so much so volatility in the SERPs, which I certainly agree with in the last year. Do you think part of it is lots and lots of variables, like lots of new features coming in? So the alignment with Reddit, the AI overviews, the SGE, more machine learning, do you think it is just too many things being thrown in at the same time and it messing up lots of SERPs as a result, or do you think it's something else? Chima Mmeje: Crystal, this is not playing devil's advocate. You are supposed be telling me why Google is better, or making a case for them not being a (beep) up child. You are basically just proving my points, releasing too many features that they did not test properly. Features that were rushed. SG did not even last up to year, and now they brought Google Overview. I still don't understand why we have AI Overview and future snippets on the same SERP. I feel like it's counteractive. Pick one, make a choice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that to me is the problem. I feel like a lot of the things are knee-jerk reactions. Again, your knee-jerk reaction to want first-person content. Throw the Reddit thing there. Knee-jerk reaction, we need to keep up with Copilot, and OpenAI and blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's roll out with what basically is a featured snippet, but it takes longer to load. It's just interesting. But okay, so at the same time then, you have all this volatility, you have things that you can't... What's in your locus of controls in SEO? None of this. Chima Mmeje: None. Mordy Oberstein: None of this is. Chima Mmeje: None. Mordy Oberstein: As an SEO, how are you supposed to do this? Listen, I'll say this. I've heard of things, that people are like, yeah, "I don't know what to do." I- Mordy Oberstein: ... I'll say this. I've heard things to people like, "Yeah, I don't know what to do. I can't produce the kind of results that I've always wanted to." Can you still be effective as an SEO in an environment like this? Chima Mmeje: I am going to be honest, we are suffering as in we've been suffering for a while because the steps are so volatile that even when you do a technical audit, you don't find the reason why your traffic is tanking and the visibility you used to get on the SERP is lost. There's no reason for it. And I feel like I'm being honest here, I feel like we're just trying new stuff. Oh, okay, first person content. Let's try to see who can get more first person content in there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. You don't have enough data to even tell you that this is the right decision that you're taking. It feels like we are trying our best with what we are seeing on the set because there's no clear guidance. And to be honest, a lot of us are playing a guessing game right now, and that is the best that we can do, if we're being honest. It's all a guessing game based on what we've seen one or two variables work. And this is not a long-term strategy if we're going to be realistic. It's not going to work in the long-term. I honestly, I don't know what the answer is, Mordy, because I'm thinking about it now. And the way we used to do SEO that used to drive results, that was like mathematics, if you did this, you did this, this would happen. It's not working anymore because you're fighting against Reddits. How do you compete against Reddits? Nobody has figured that out yet. Mordy Oberstein: No, and it's not even consistent. I think the one thing that I think bothers me the most is a lack of consistency. So, Google will say, "Write content for users, yada, yada, yada." And it'll work in sometimes, in some cases. And then you'll go to another query and the same old schlock, "Five best ways to whatever," is still ranking. And you're like, "Okay, so I did what you wanted. It worked here, but it didn't work there." And if you're somebody who's doing a strategy, it's hard to work at a strategic level when you don't have that consistency. And by the way, I'm not coming down like raining hellfire on Google for that. It's an algorithm. It's hard to get all of that right, but that doesn't take away from the complexity at the same time. Crystal Carter: I think it's a great conversation. I think though we have so many guests, we could talk about this literally all day long. And Chima, everybody in the comments, Gagan, Gotra, SerpSpotter Extraordinaire has said, "Thanks for saying it out loud, Chima." You've been an incredible guest. We've got our next group of folks coming on, so thank you so, so much. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Chima. Crystal Carter: Got to get you on for some more hot takes. Chima Mmeje: Thank you for giving me a space to rant. I really appreciate that. Enjoy the the rest of the show. Bye-bye. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Wow, that was the most honest take on that. I think I've heard in quite a long time now. So, not only, not only... If Chima's hot take was new, I got something else that's a little bit new for you as well, because not only do we have a daily new series on the SEO Hub with Barry Schwartz and Greg Finn, who Barry will be here shortly actually, called It's new. We have an entire segment of this podcast named after the folks like yours truly who take to social media asking Barry, "Is this new and slightly irrelevant thing on the SERP new?" So let's take a look at what might be unknown in the local ranking factor space as Sterling Sky's Joy Hawkins and Whitespark's Darren Shaw join us for a local ranking factor version of It's New. Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Hey. Hey. Crystal Carter: Good morning. Darren Shaw: Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: No, thanks for being here. Crystal Carter: Hi, guys. Always a pleasure. I feel like I see you all both because I follow you on TikTok and you're always the first ones on my TikTok being like local pack thing. I'm like, yeah, local pack. Do it. Darren Shaw: I'm glad that my content is making it into your feed. It's not making it into too many people's feed, but you must have engaged with it at some point. Crystal Carter: The best about thing about that- Mordy Oberstein: the struggle is real. Darren Shaw: Yeah, totally. Mordy Oberstein: The struggle is real. But I see your stuff everywhere. Darren Shaw: I'm trying to be everywhere. I'm trying to be everywhere. Hey, is Darren Shaw, Local SEO tips. You want to hear some tips? I got tips. Mordy Oberstein: But between you and Joy, I feel like the local SEO space is killing it with social media videos for SEO. Darren Shaw: Yeah, Joy's videos are great too. She's doubled down on videos the past little while as well. It's the way. It's going to... Eventually, we're all just be making videos. No more text content. Who wants to read these days? Joy Hawkins: I still read. Darren Shaw: I know, I'm joking. Mordy Oberstein: I just read headlines and I just draw conclusions from that. Who needs to know the rest of the content? We were talking before the show, what should we talk about for this segment? And then through our various emails, I came up like, wait a second, there's a bunch of new stuff in the local space, in the local ranking factor space. So like, hey Darren and Joy, what's new? Darren Shaw: What's new? Well, yeah, there are some new things, and this is really my fault because I'm a year behind with the local search ranking factor survey. So, I usually put it out every year, but the last one was in 2023. And actually I partly blame Joy for this because it was like the week after I released the 2023 version, she publishes this post showing how services impact rankings. I was like, "Oh, Joy. I just launched the local search ranking factors and we missed your awesome tip." And so I mostly just report the news, but we got to give credit to Joy for doing the research and discovering the actual ranking factors. I'm always like, "Oh, my God. Joy Hawkins blew my mind again because she discovered this awesome new thing." So, you know. Joy Hawkins: Same. Darren Shaw: It's effort here. Joy Hawkins: But Darren gets to tell it from inside his fridge. So, if you haven't seen his newest video, it's like you get footage from inside his fridge. Who doesn't like that? Mordy Oberstein: Sorry, guys. … totally talk over each other. Darren Shaw: Yeah, it's hard. I know it's four people. Do you want to hear some things that are new? Mordy Oberstein: I mean, yeah, the name of the segment is, It's New. Darren Shaw: Okay. Joy, why don't you tell us about how services currently impact rankings? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, so there's a little services section inside the Google business profile dashboard that's easy to miss, but you can add anything you want in there. You can make your own, you can add ones that Google has. We've done a lot of testing on it and they do impact ranking, but I should clarify, it's like a small impact. So, usually we see it for longer tail queries that maybe don't match a category or things that are not super competitive. But if you're a plumber and you just go add plumber as a service, you're probably not going to rank for plumber if you didn't rank before. So, it is a small ranking factor, but still one that is worth filling out. Darren Shaw: So, this is the question that a lot of people ask. We know that if you go into the services section of your Google business profile, Google will suggest predefined services. And they're like little pills, you just click them and you're like, "Yeah, I do that. Yep, I do that. I do that." You just click the ones, right? And so Joy's original research was focused on those predefined ones and it definitely identified that when you do put those on your profile, you now rank better for those terms, depending on how competitive they are, as Joy had mentioned. Now what about, there is a place where you can add your own custom services. Have you done any testing around that? Have you found that the custom ones that you put in there, haircuts for long haired dogs. So, you put some weird long thing in there and will you rank better with the custom services? Joy Hawkins: Yes. They both- Mordy Oberstein: Hold on a second. I'm just writing this down so I can figure out how to manipulate this later. Joy Hawkins: So, they both work. The one in custom services I think we talked about later. It was this year, and I think the other one was earlier. And I want to say, I'm trying to remember the keyword that Colin tested it on. It was something like super niche, like vampire facials or something weird. Darren Shaw: Oh, yeah. It was that. Joy Hawkins: I was like Googling, "What the hell is that?" Darren Shaw: It's weird, yeah. Joy Hawkins: Yeah, so really, really niche again. But he just wanted to know if there was any impact whatsoever. And there was, so again, good way to go after longer tail keywords that don't have crazy high search volume or aren't super competitive. Mordy Oberstein: Are you all worried about manipulation? I wasn't joking before. I'm writing it down so I can manipulate it because that's how you do local SEO, right? Darren Shaw: Well, I would say, I would not call it manipulation. It's basically optimization. Let's say you have a web page on your website and you wanted to rank for a specific term, but you never mentioned that term in your web page. Well, Google's going to have a hard time connecting the dots. So, this is the similar thing. With your Google business profile, you want to make sure that you're telling Google what you do. Tell Google what you do. It would be really helpful if Google can rank your business for the things that you do. And so that's basically what the services section provides. And it's not a huge ranking factor, but it's just another step in the local optimization process. You should fill out your services, you should add any service that you have. And the fact that custom services work is really valuable and have a tip for custom services because customer services often get pulled into the local results as justifications. It'll say, "This business provides vampire facials," right? Well, did you know there's a vampire emoji? So, if put the vampire emoji in the title, so it's like vampire emoji, vampire facials, then in the local results you'll see a whole panel of businesses that all provide that service, but yours has that little vampire emoji, which will draw people in and help and make them click it. They'll be like, "Oh, look at that one." It is just like a little eye-catching thing in the search results for more clicks, more conversions. And we all believe that if you get more clicks and more engagement, then that'll help you rank too. So, it's mostly a conversion tip, but it may have a side benefit of ranking boost as well. Crystal Carter: And I think also that's a really prime example of one of the things that I love about Local SEO and the Local SEO community is testing everything. So, testing whether or not that works, testing whether or not this works. Joy, your team are meticulous testers. Do you have any recommendations for when to test a new feature? When something comes out new, are you straight in there? How does it work? How can I break it? How can I make it fly? Is that your general approach or do you let it marinate and then test it? What do you think? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, we've evolved this process a lot. We have about a hundred ongoing tests at any given time, so there's a lot. And it's hard because I don't have time to publish them all. So, the ones that I think you should prioritize are ones that you think are going to make the most impact. If you have a theory on something and you think it's something that you can widely apply, in our case it's lots of different clients, different industries, then we prioritize it. So yeah, there's certain ones where I'm curious, but I'm like, "Okay, would we actually even do this?" We've done some tests on click-through-rate manipulation, which is something that I'm hoping to publish soon, and that's something that we'll never do. At this point anyways. I don't know, you'd have to really change my mind on why an SEO should do that and why it's not spammy, but it works really well, but it's not something that I'm going to spend hours and hours testing because it's not something we're going to do. Crystal Carter: Right. Whereas the emoji thing you might roll out, if you have a bunch of lawyers and you put in the little law scale thing or something, you can test that for lots of things, for instance, that might work. Darren Shaw: I was thinking of a different emoji for lawyers, but yeah, go ahead. That one's fine too. Mordy Oberstein: I wanted to swing around Darren, because you said you didn't release the 2024 local ranking factors study. Now maybe I'm reading into this or maybe just like, I don't know, you didn't want to do it, or you got busy or you're lazy. Whatever the reason is, there's so many reasons. Darren Shaw: All of the above. Mordy Oberstein: All of them. Perfect. By the way, if you do it, if you do put it out, could you please publish it in Mandarin. If you don't understand this joke, Darren posted something on LinkedIn, probably on TikTok also, in Mandarin, and I had Google Translate through the lens thing. It was an actual real post. It was just in Mandarin. Darren Shaw: Yeah. Yeah. I got to give a shout-out to my video editor, Nadia. She came up with the whole idea. She had seen someone do something similar. She's like, "Oh, I've got to do the SEO version of this." And so she just directed me, told me what I need to film and then put it together. And it was funny, it was a big hit. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it was great. Also, what's great is your ranking factor, but you didn't do it yet. Is that because, do you think that it's less concrete? What is working, what is not working or how to categorize it? Darren Shaw: Yeah, no, it was, you did touch on it. Lazy and busy. Busy slash lazy. So, that was really the only reason. Crystal Carter: Blazy. Blazy, is that the word? Darren Shaw: Yeah, maybe something like that. Blazy. So, I had a hard time just kind of squeezing it in. And then what ends up happening is that it's like, "Oh, well I wanted to do it in November, but then I didn't. And then I was like, "Okay, I'll do it in January, February," but then I didn't. And then he get so far into the year, you're like, "Well, by the time I survey people, finish the analysis, publish the whole thing, it's going to be October, and then it becomes the 2024 local search ranking factors for three months?" So I'm like, "Nope, I'm just going to skip it. I'm going to wait for Joy Hawkins to publish all her new tests before I do the 2025 version. So, my goal actually is to put the survey out to the local search experts in roughly October, collect the data, analyze the data in November, December, and publish freaking January 1st. And then I got a whole year of the 2025 local search ranking factors. So, this is my approach. I left it a little too late to bother with 2024. And so now 2025 is just going to be twice as good. Crystal Carter: That'll be great. Mordy Oberstein: I shouldn't read into it. I shouldn't read into it. Crystal Carter: And if you want to find out some new things about Local SEO before then, I would say that you should come to the Local SEO or Local U event that Sterling Sky are organizing with Wix in New York, but it's sold out. Joy Hawkins: I know. I was like, "Sorry?" Crystal Carter: Sorry, not sorry. Should have got there earlier. Joy Hawkins: We need to find a bigger space for next year, Crystal. We'll have to talk. Crystal Carter: I know. I was sad. We actually had people emailing us. They're like, "Is there any way?" I'm like, "I can't squeeze you in. There's a fire code," but yeah. Darren Shaw: Right? … video's after. Yeah. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. Joy Hawkins: Yeah, we'll be doing another one. Mordy Oberstein: I want to give you some questions though. Cool. Darren Shaw: I'm ready. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. This one is from... Oh, God. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. "So many GBPs are open 24 hours in Melbourne nowadays, and it's gotten way worse in the last couple of months. Thoughts on it and if Google will go after this bad practice?" If you're not familiar with this, there was a point in time where people realized, wait a second, if you say that you're open 24 hours, you rank better even though you might not be open 245 hours. Darren Shaw: This is Joy's question to answer, but I just want to tell a story before I pass the mic to Joy. She bamboozled me with this damn ranking factor. So, she invites me on this podcast, she's like, "There's a whole new ranking factor." And I'm like, I'm making all these guesses. What could it be? What could it be? And then she shows me this and I was like, "Dang it. This means that we have to totally change all of our software to make sure that we're tracking rankings at the right time." But yeah. Joy, what do you think about this question? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, it's a pain because as SEOs, you have to be so diligent about when your right trackers are running and if there's even a delay. I ran one the other day that- Joy Hawkins: ... are running and if there's even a delay. I ran one the other day that took a while. And I ran it at 7:00 AM, but by the time it ran, it completed after 9:00 AM. That's a big difference. What you see at 7:00 AM before businesses are open, huge difference on what you'll see after 9:00. And I think the average business owner doesn't realize how different it is because it didn't used to be different, but as of last year, it's now a huge factor. And I'm calling it a ranking factor, I don't care what other people say. It influences how you rank, therefore, I'm calling it a ranking factor. But basically, the hierarchy is this. If you're open, it's the highest hierarchy, so Google prefers to show businesses that are open. If there's no hour set on the listing, they're not sure, so they'll put those ones in the second tier. And if you're closed, it's in the worst tier, so they actually push you down. They want to show businesses that are open, so this is problematic for a lot of our clients who, let's say for example, aren't open on weekends. You might search for a dentist on a weekend but a lot of them aren't open, so what do you do? And it unfortunately comes out of this. A lot of people are going, "Well, I guess I'll just list myself as open." And personally, I think it's on every business owner to figure out how they want to answer this question, because I don't necessarily think it's lying if you say you're open, because you might actually have somebody answering the phone. And you could argue that if somebody answering the phone is there and available for customers, then your business is open. I think it's a vague term that you could kind of define differently, depending on who you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, like, "I'm open to new business." Joy Hawkins: Yeah. As long as you're actually responding, I think you can make a case that you're open. Crystal Carter: The thing is as a user, I hate this. I hate this so much because if I Google a business and it says that they're open and they are not, now if I see 24 hours, I just don't believe them. I just think, "I don't believe you." Mordy Oberstein: Your account is open 24 hours? Crystal Carter: Right. I just searched while we were here, lawyers in Los Angeles, and all the top say, "Open 24 hours." I guarantee you that- Mordy Oberstein: That's LA for you. Crystal Carter: Law firm is not open 24 hours. "I'm open at 3:00 AM." They're not. Joy Hawkins: But if you call them at 3:00 AM, a lot of them do have, I'm not saying all of them do, a lot of them do have after hours answering services. You will actually get a human being at 3:00 AM. That's what you should do if you're going to do this approach. Crystal Carter: I'm sure that law firm is a great law firm. Mordy Oberstein: I want to get one last question in if we can. "Would love to understand whether..." This is from Lee, "Whether to accept or reject seemingly random service additions suggested by Google. Should I trust them because they're coming from people searching? Or is this potentially misleading just like when Google Ads' broad match is too broad?" Darren Shaw: I think if Google is suggesting it, they've gotten this idea from somewhere. Where are these coming from? Sometimes they come from your website, they come from your presence on the internet, on other sites, social sites, local directories, those kinds of things. And so Google thinks you do these services. Sometimes they're way off base. Another thing they'll do is they'll look at other competitors in your category and say, "Well, all these businesses do these services, so you probably do them, too." One of the things you need to be aware of is that when Google suggests services for your profile, they're already live. Google doesn't suggest anything, they just push the changes to your profile and said, "We added these to your profile. Do you like them?" And so then you can say, "No, I definitely do not offer that specific service," and you can turn them off. And so having a system to monitor for these changes is really helpful. Wouldn't you know it? We have one at Wisepark, so we have a software system that will keep track of your Google business profile. It's only a dollar a month and it'll tell you anytime Google is adding any of this crap to your profile, and then you can just be like, "Nope, not today, Google," and you just reject it. And so having a system to pay attention to that is really valuable. But should you trust them? I think generally, but you should keep an eye on them. And you should keep an eye on anything that Google is suggesting on your profile because sometimes it's not Google, it was just some random dude on the internet said, "Ah, this business is closed." And they'll mark you as closed, they'll change your phone number, they'll change your primary category. They'll move your map pin into the middle of the ocean and Google accepts all of these changes. Google's like, "Well, Bob on the internet said that your business is closed, so guess Bob is right." And so they actually trust the people on the internet more than they trust the business owners. And so paying attention to this stuff is really important. Can you trust the edits that Google is doing? I would say not really. Make sure that you're keeping an eye on this. Joy, any comments? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, I'll just add, make sure your services makes sense, what the word provides in front of them, because that's how they show up on Google. And so we have a divorce lawyer that has sexual assault constantly getting added to his listing. So it's like, "Oh yeah, he really wants to show, 'Provides sexual assault,' on his listing." Google just keeps adding it. We remove it, they add it again, it's been going on for years. It's super fun. Darren Shaw: Or, "Provides traumatic brain injury," that's my favorite. "This law firm provides traumatic brain injuries." Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: And on that happy note, thanks so much for joining our podcast. That was a lot of fun. I hope we didn't leave anybody with a traumatic brain injury. Wow. Joy Hawkins: Thank you so much for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: Joy, Darren, thanks so much. Darren Shaw: It was a pleasure. Love chatting with you all. And yeah, see you next time. Mordy Oberstein: See you out there in the ether. Make sure you give joy and Darren a big follow on social media. Now, it wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't talk about traumatic brain injuries and lawyers. No, it wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't talk about AI. It wouldn't be an SEO podcast, it wouldn't be a marketing podcast, it wouldn't even exist. It'd be like the tree that fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it. Unless we talk about AI. While there's been a lot of pushback about AI for content generation in the digital marketing space, professional digital marketing space, that's a little of a hot take, let's explore what's possible in the future with AI. Two brilliant minds will join us. Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO, and the founder of Growth Memo will join us as we move into The Great Beyond. Crystal Carter: Kevin Indig. Mordy Oberstein: What'd I say? I didn't say Kevin's name? Kevin Indig. There he is, he made it. Kevin Indig: Call my name and I appear. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, it was the AI. I was thinking your name and suddenly you appeared. Kevin Indig: That's how it works, it's like Beetlejuice. Crystal Carter: Who needs AI when you have KI? There you go. Mordy Oberstein: Or Eli. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Oberstein: We can't hear you, Eli. Your AI is not working. Also, your mic. Eli Schwartz: It all rhymes, here we go. Crystal Carter: So it must be true. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we had you guys on the show, because we knew it was going to rhyme. Kevin Indig: Good planning. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Kevin Indig: How are we going to top that now? Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea, I'm still trying to... I'm stalling to try to figure that out. How about search, read your mind? I'll ask ChatGPT, it'll tell me the answer and to eat glue. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: Both are enjoyable. Anyway, let's get into the whole AI thing. This actually started, Kevin had a post on LinkedIn that was very pro the AI and it got me thinking. Let me ask it this way, where do we currently stand with the AI? What can it do, what can't it do? Because I have a follow-up question that I think is a little spicier. Kevin Indig: Yeah, sure. Do you want me to chime in? Mordy Oberstein: I mean, that's why you're here. Kevin Indig: Oh, okay. I thought I was here to look pretty, but all right, cool. I'll say some words. Eli Schwartz: That's my job. Kevin Indig: Okay, Eli, I'll outsource to you and then I'll try to talk. Where are we today with AI? I think it's a critical question because you have to differentiate between where we are today and where we might be in six to 12 months, which is very, very different. And so today, to provide a snapshot, we're at a stage where AI basically has the capability to create content, analyze some basic data. It still hallucinates here and there and it still makes mistakes. I'm talking about AI broadly as in we have Google Gemini, we have OpenAI, ChatGPT, we have maybe a couple of other models. There's Claude with Sonnet, et cetera. And of course, we have Google with AI overviews. And so I kind of put all of these in the same bucket for now. They make mistakes, but if you compare that to when this AI hype started in November, 2022, it's almost two years now and we've come a really long way. These models are getting exponentially better. And so that's what I'm saying, if we extrapolate to the next 12, maybe 24 months, I think we're in for quite the wild ride. And so the question is of course, what does it mean? And it means different things based on whether you look at it as a tool for yourself to make your work more efficient. And of course, what does it mean from an SEO perspective? How does it change search, not just Google, but also how people search? And I think these are all different questions that are exciting to dive into. Mordy Oberstein: So you're really hot on AI? You're a believer? Kevin Indig: I'm absolutely. I think it's not just a believer. I know what you mean, Mordy. I'm being pedantic here, but yes, I can totally see the benefits of AI also from a data perspective. There are studies that show that writers who use AI can be 40% faster and, quote-unquote, better. You have to define better means. There are studies that show that 17% now of users use ChatGPT to replace search. Pretty robust analysis. And there's more data showing that, for example, consultants are much more effective when they use AI as a thought partner or brainstorming partner. There is a lot of objective data that indicates efficiencies and benefits from AI. There's also a lot of hype that promises a little too much about what AI can do. And so I'm generally AI bullish, but I'm not in the camp of AI is going to replace us all the next two years. I'm much more falling in line of you should use AI for certain cases right now, but don't think you can outsource your whole job to AI. I hope that kind of puts it a little bit in perspective. Mordy Oberstein: No, that makes a lot of sense. This is my follow-up, because I'm setting the stage here a little bit. Because while your LinkedIn posts are generally pro AI, a lot of Eli's posts are a little more skeptical about the AI-ness. So Eli, what do you think about what Kevin just said? By the way, for those who are listening or watching this, I'm pitting them against each other. They're friends and they do a podcast together, so it's cool, I'm good with it. Eli Schwartz: Yes, this is amazing. What an intro to say that we're supposed to argue with each other. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, sorry. We're not going to argue anymore. Eli Schwartz: Kevin, I'll do my best. Mordy Oberstein: Good, please. Eli Schwartz: I'm pro AI, I think AI is great. I think that there's a lot of great things you can get out of AI. Again, like Kevin said, it can be your thought partner. You can ask it questions, you can use it to learn. I'm anti AI in the way people are using it. And I don't think people have necessarily changed their behaviors, because again, it's almost been two years. Before the introduction of ChatGPT, what a lot of, again, people with producing a lot of content did with the outsource it on Fiverr and Upwork and they bought very cheap content, and now they're getting very free content. Then that's coming from AI. That behavior hasn't really changed. The challenge is that now there are more people that think they can copy them. I talk to CMOs all the time who are like, "I just let go of my SEO team." A big company reached out to me recently. They wanted to gut check themselves after they already fired their SEO team, so can't really help there. But they're like, "AI can do everything SEO can do good." Good. Well, I'll see them in a year from now when they have whatever sort of penalty. And I think that's the challenge, is that AI is a very powerful tool. Any tool we have, a drill is a very powerful tool, but if you just hold it in the air and just let it go, it's going to make holes. But if you use it appropriately, it does the thing it's supposed to do, again, like every tool. And I think AI is one of the most powerful tools we've ever had on the internet and it can do a lot of great things, but it shouldn't run off on its own and do its own marketing. I just think I'm seeing a lot of different sites use AI in many weird ways, so they'll do, an e-commerce site will write all their product descriptions, forgetting the fact that product descriptions are meant to actually describe the product so someone adds it to the cart. So until we get to a point where AI is going shopping for you and then reading these product descriptions, then I think you need product descriptions that appeal to the customer. There was a company in the job space that was doing the same thing. They're just aggregating AI written job descriptions, and then you hear about AI tools that can apply for all your jobs. I even read a post on LinkedIn the other day about someone who was interviewing someone and they basically thought they were talking to ChatGPT in the interview, where the person was dubbing their own voice and they were getting ChatGPT answers. But at some point, someone has to do a job. So what we're going to do is going to get these AIs, they're going to talk to each other, but then they're going like, "You need that human." And this is one I haven't dealt with, I've only read about, but AI in dating. You figure out the perfect dating responses. You're on whatever sort of dating app and you figure out the right way to text, so ChatGPT tells you how to reel someone in with- Crystal Carter: ChatGPT. Eli Schwartz: Yes, but at some point someone has to go on a date and behave like a human. I think that's where we are with marketing in general, that there's all these AI that it's kind of moving the goalpost, but again, we're humans and we buy stuff. It has to come to a point where humans are talking to humans. Crystal Carter: I mean, the thing is, there are a lot of humans who don't behave like humans on dates, so let's just set that record straight to be begin. But I think that what y'all are alluding to is something that I've also seen from, I think PricewaterhouseCoopers put out a thing about the value of AI to the marketplace. They were saying that by 2030 it could add $6 trillion in productivity value, and for B2C stuff it could add something like $9 trillion. But what they also said is that where the gains will come from, right now they're saying most of the gains are coming from productivity. The stuff like Kevin was talking about with being able to write product descriptions more quickly, being able to write lots of posts more quickly and being able to finish your things more quickly, brainstorm, et cetera. In terms of the quality, the quality is still not there. It's getting there rapidly, but it's still not there. And we don't expect to see really, really, really good quality until later on, which I think comes back to the point that you were talking about, Eli, where people were like, "Yeah, we'll just bye everybody, replace it with a robot." The quality's not there, you still need people with brains to guide it. Productivity, yes, but also brains. Mordy Oberstein: That's always been the thing with it. It's super cool, but when you actually apply it, does it actually work the way that you want it to work? My question is on the quality front, can it do all the things qualitatively that we think it can do or eventually will do? And I'm a little bit skeptical of that. I think there's going to be certain things that just the human mind can do, things that are sort of, I use a fancy word, ineffable. You can't put your finger on it. It's way too ethereal, it's way too abstract. No AI is going to be able to do that, it's superhuman. I don't mean in a powerful way, it's like a superhuman way of looking at things. And AI is just AI, it's not going to be able to do that. Or- Mordy Oberstein: ... is AI, it's not going to be able to do that. Or I guess, Kevin, do you think it will be able to? All the things, it will be just like a human, but not as horrible. Crystal Carter: I mean... Kevin Indig: Go ahead, Crystal. Crystal Carter: I was going to say there are definitely some things that are easier to do with an AI than with a human, like to be- Mordy Oberstein: Sure, like watch my kids? All this kind of stuff. Crystal Carter: But if you have a dumb question, you're not embarrassed asking the AI your dumb question that you probably should know. Whereas if you go onto something else, or onto a chat room or something and ask your dumb question, people go, "Oh my God, how come you don't know that?" Blah, blah, blah. And then you're just mortified and things. Whereas if you ask your dumb question to ChatGPT, they'll just go, "There, there, here's the information," and help you with that sort of thing. And so I think that sometimes like Eli was saying that you can use ChatGPT for learning and stuff like that. There's definitely sometimes where maybe you want to sort of quietly have your thought before you go and interact with other humans. I think that happens too. Mordy Oberstein: No, for sure. But you're developing it on marketing strategy or whatever it is, and you're really trying to qualitatively understand, really feel out where the audience is. Kevin, will AI ever be able to do that? Kevin Indig: 100%. I'm 100% certain. It depends on the data that the AI has access to. But one of the beauties of large language models is you can bombard them with data, you can ground them with data. And anybody can do that today with a very basic laptop. Probably soon with their phone. That is not difficult and rocket science. And the beauty is ChatGPT can guide you into how to do this, if you don't know how to. But you can ground models and data, and then explore the data in natural semantic ways, with the chatbot. And that is a very specific use case you can already do today. And it would argue you can do it much, much better than when humans do it. When humans have to catalog the data, interpret the data, there's a lot of room for bias and a lot of room for misinterpretation. And the benefit of AI or AI that we're using for this use case, is that it's very objective. I would even argue that the degree of hallucination has come way, way down. It's actually not that bad anymore. Eli Schwartz: Definitely true. Kevin Indig: I'm sure people come up with the examples of like, "Oh yeah, AI doesn't recognize how many r’s are in strawberry." Eli Schwartz: The strawberry thing. Strawberry. Kevin Indig: Strawberry. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was going to bring up. Mordy Oberstein: I want to say something about the strawberry thing. I bet you 97% of human beings can't spell strawberry, right. I know I'm being a little bit high, but- Kevin Indig: I think that's a good point also to make, right? Like, what are the mistakes that humans make? I love that comparison, for example when …. Mordy Oberstein: How much time you have. Kevin Indig: Right, yeah, of course. But when it comes to self-driving cars, right? Sure, AI they have accidents, but compare that to the accidents that humans make, and all of a sudden it looks- Crystal Carter: Or on their phone while driving. Kevin Indig: Right, exactly. By the way, Ford is integrating ChatGPT in their models, starting next year. Anyway, I think I made the point. Crystal Carter: No, I think that's great. Those are great. Eli Schwartz: This is why Kevin and I had a podcast, because we think alike. I was just looking up Waymo. So Waymo has been around since 2005. Tesla has been selling, so-called fully self-driving for the last few years. But I don't think we'll ever be at a point that we're at fully self-driving or fully autonomous on many of these things. And driving is much easier than searching, because driving, many people are basically autonomously driving already. They're just kind of sitting there, just following the road, following the cars in front of them, hopefully not texting, hopefully not talking on the phone, hopefully not yelling at their kids or whatever it is that they're doing. But it's a very simple process, because we do it almost automatically. People do it half asleep, people do it drunk. Most of the time they're safe, but this is something that computers can do. Eli Schwartz: We're not recommending it, of course. Wix is not responsible. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Appreciate that. Don't drink and drive. Eli Schwartz: Definitely don't drink a drive. Kevin Indig: Diet or by a link. Eli Schwartz: Don't smoke and drive. Whatever it is that you shouldn't be doing. But these are things that computers can do with AI, because there's rules. But when it comes to searching, this is my thing when I think about digital marketing. I don't think we'll ever be in a world where AI can fully understand you. Which is why I don't think the assistants, the Google assistants and Alexas have totally taken off, is because they only give one response. They don't give the 10 responses you see on a desktop or a mobile. But because you need to choose. Sometimes you want to click position one, sometimes you need to click position 11. It depends on what your intent is. And there's a reason that there are multiple pages of Google, and it's not just one page or it's not just two results. And I really don't think we'll ever be at a point where AI knows everything about you. And I would, again, exactly like Kevin brought up, self-driving cars, it can almost get there. It will probably eventually get there, but of all of the innovations we're still not fully there, it still makes mistakes. And that I think is so much easier than reading minds and getting search right. Crystal Carter: And speaking of- Mordy Oberstein: By the way, that was your Don's question. Right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: With Apple and Google actively integrating AI into their core operating system, do you feel that more people will switch to AI within their home page interface for search, over traditional search engines for simpler queries or image search? Like ask and answered almost. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think we have to end on that bombshell because we don't have very much time and we need to get... Mordy Oberstein: No? Crystal Carter: ... Barry in as well. Mordy Oberstein: We have the news. We have the news. Eli, Kevin, thank you so much. Eli Schwartz: Thanks for having me. Kevin Indig: Thanks for having me. Crystal Carter: Thank you so, so, so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye guys. All right, so if you listen to the show each week, first off, big thanks to Eli and Kevin Indig. I know his name. Crystal Carter: To everyone. Everyone's so great. We can talk to everyone for the full hour. Mordy Oberstein: True. So if you listen to the podcast each week, we know we cover the SEO news towards the end of the show, we're getting towards the end of the show. And of course, most of the articles are from Barry, written by Barry, may the Schwartz be with you. So we thought it'd be nice for this 100th episode to get the facts straight from the horse's mouth in a very special edition of The Snappy News. The sounded is amazing. And we're live. Crystal Carter: Live from Channel 5. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: The Snappy News. Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy News. Welcome to the show. Barry Schwartz, sorry, I called you a horse. I meant you're a workhorse. Barry Schwartz: Oh, that's okay. I didn't even notice. People have called me a lot worse, especially in the past couple days. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, you've been taking a lot of heat. Wow. Barry Schwartz: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Taking a lot of heat for Danny, really, if we’re gonna be honest. Barry Schwartz: That's been interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we'll get into that. Actually, let's get into that. So the article of the day is from Search Engine Land, basically written by Barry that the August 2024 core update is over, done. It is complete. Was it 19 days? Google Said it would take a month. Nope. Less time than that. It's complete. Did I summarize the article well, Barry. Barry Schwartz: It's done. I don't know why I'm here. I should just leave. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But as part of that... Are you saying... Wait? I might kick you out. Barry Schwartz: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. As part of the update, folks have been coming online, going after Search Engine Land, which Danny Sullivan used to be a part of, and taking it out on Barry on Twitter. I don't know why. Barry Schwartz: All the internet problems are my fault. So, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But the best part of it was you're showing them the SEM Rush data on search engine. And the numbers are going down year over year over year. So the theory doesn't hold water. Barry Schwartz: Right. Their theory is that, basically we don't get hit by Google updates, because of Danny somehow. And yet we've been hit... I mean, I know Round Table has been hit by pre Panda stuff, by Panda, by core updates. Search engine Land has its share of issues as well. So yeah, just like every other writer out there, every single publication out there, we all have had our issues with Google. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Well, with this particular case, the issue with Google, folks who were trying to figure out, was will they see a reversal of their fortunes from the 2023 helpful content update, the September, 2023 helpful content update? It's a mouthful, to be honest with you. And my question for you, since you're here, did that happen? Barry Schwartz: It depends. Mordy Oberstein: Was the August update a reversal? It depends? Barry Schwartz: It depends. Depends on the site. So I think the number, I don't have the exact data, obviously I don't think anybody does. But I've seen examples of some very few sites see complete reversals. I mean, I don't know on a URL by URL basis, but their traffic was here September, here in the middle between September and now, and then after the August updates, back up to the same level. I don't know if it's on a URL basis where they're still running the same keywords. But vast majority of sites saw nothing or they're off than they were. There are a number of sites that saw maybe a 20% bump, a 30% bump, maybe a 5% bump. But very few sites saw a complete reversal, if you want to even call it that. Mordy Oberstein: Yikes, not good. Or maybe it is, I don't know, it depends on who you are. But the internet was abuzz. The SEOs were abuzz. It wasn't fair, the sites should be doing better, I guess they're not going to be happy. Barry Schwartz: Again, everybody thinks their sites are amazing. I know my site's horrible, so when I see Google updates, I expect it to go down. But most people think the content that they write and the websites they have are great and that they should do well. I remember I got hit by a Panda update once and John was like, "Well, maybe you don't know your site so well, maybe you should ask your readers what they think about your site." So I took a Google... Back then they had a Google Consumer surveys plugin. So I added it to the website, I'm like, after a couple months of collecting data, I'm like, "Here Google, here's the results." And the people who read my sites, who are mostly people who are hit by Google, like my site. So it's kind of biased obviously, but at the same time I've been through a lot. You can see from the hair. I've been through a lot of Google updates over the years, and it's sometimes sad to see the stories, but at the same time, if you keep at it and you are true to the content in your audience, generally you'll do well in the long run. Not every site. There's plenty of sites that have been hit, went out of business, and they couldn't come back. That's business in general. And things change, like seasonalities, and times change. If you're writing about the railroad business a hundred years ago and you keep writing about it today, there's not many people investing a lot of money in railroads these days. So I don't know, it's hard to read those stories, but not everybody deserves to go back to where they were. And then at the same time, Google's not perfect either, which is why they keep on releasing new updates. Crystal Carter: So, you mentioned previous updates like Panda. How similar do you think this particular helpful content update from September, how similar do you think that is to some of those big updates? Barry Schwartz: This is a weird one. So there was some updates, like the big Florida update in 2003, that demolished sites. Then we had the first Panda update. And that really went after SEOs creating low quality content really fast. Similar to the helpful of content update. And that really, really demolished sites as well. It was big, it was probably one of the biggest updates. But then we had the Penguin update, which every SEO after that was like, "Let's just throw a lot of links at our problems." So they built links, and then Google came out with this Penguin algorithm that attacked links that were being bought. And then I think that put a lot of SEO companies out of business who were buying links solely as their business. How similar was the September helpful content update? It's hard to say. I don't think it was probably as big as the Panda update, but with Panda updates, we have many Panda updates after that, it was easy to isolate. Healthful content update, it's hard for us to isolate what that is. Although when the Panda update first was released also, it was really hard for SEOs to understand what it was about either. But eventually we'll learn, we'll write content that Google likes, and then Google is like, "Don't write content we like, write content that our audience likes," and then we'll go through this next phase. There'll be another update in a year or two from now that will demolish whatever we figure out that works. So it's just this cat mouse game. Mordy Oberstein: It sounds so doom and gloom. Barry Schwartz: It's the world we live in. Doom and gloom. Mordy Oberstein: Mr. Sunshine himself. Barry, thank you so much for coming on. And don't forget to check out seoroundtable.com, it's the first site I go to every morning other than Gmail, but that's not a real website. And it's new, our daily news series, Monday through Thursday. Barry Schwartz: Yeah, thanks for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Friday, Barry flies solo. It's new, it's fun, yada yada yada. Talk to you later Barry. Barry Schwartz: Bye-bye. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's it. That was a lot. Crystal Carter: That's it? That's a lot? Mordy Oberstein: I'm not used to all the button pushing, that I have to do on a live podcast. A lot of button pushing. Crystal Carter: I didn't realize I needed to have you on a clock, Mordy. You were like, "And another thing," I was like, "Mordy, we got-" Mordy Oberstein: No, no. I have it on the clock to go an extra 10 minutes. I built an extra time because it's live and there was stuff going on. Crystal Carter: All of this talking chitty, chitty, chat, chat. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Crystal Carter: Honestly. Mordy Oberstein: Is that what you think in general when I talk, talk to much? Crystal Carter: No. No. We have to let people get back to their day. Mordy Oberstein: We have to keep talking long enough for Barry's stream to upload. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: So there, there's a real reason why I have to talk now. Crystal Carter: Well, it's so nice to have so many friendly faces join us today. It's so nice to have so many friendly faces join us in the chat as well. Not faces I guess, but chat folks. So shout out to Jack Chambers Ward, and Yordan Dimitrov, and Gagan Gotra, and the incredible Simon Cox. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, James Thompson. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Tom joined... Mordy Oberstein: Wendy Morrow. Crystal Carter: ... in the session. So shout out to everybody who joined us today, and everyone who tunes into our podcast every week. We will be back to our regularly scheduled podcasting. Mordy Oberstein: Next week we're back. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Episode 101. I'll do a- Crystal Carter: 101. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. We're back next week with, are going to SEO and digital marketing conferences a waste of time? Are they worth it? With special guests, SparkToro's, Amanda Tibidon, and BrightonSEO's Kelvin Newman, which makes logical sense why they would be talking about conferences. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub, or go to wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to know more about SEO, check out all the great content webinars we have, over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, at, you guessed it, that's flood number four, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify, please, please. And thanks so much for joining us live, and again, tune in next week. And until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Bye, y'all. Notes Hosts & Guests: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Chima Mmege Darren Shaw Joy Hawkins Kevin Indig Eli Schwartz Barry Schwartz Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Live podcast recording News: Google August 2024 core update rollout is now complete Notes Hosts & Guests: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Chima Mmege Darren Shaw Joy Hawkins Kevin Indig Eli Schwartz Barry Schwartz Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Live podcast recording News: Google August 2024 core update rollout is now complete Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to Serp's Up. Aloha Mahalo. Welcome to the Serp's Up podcast. We're serving up some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by insert adjectives here. Our head of SEO communications. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: What's shaking all you hip cats out there on the internet. Mordy Oberstein: Yo, and I love those sunglasses. By the way, in case you don't listen to podcasts normally, usually I do a whole intro like the fabulous, the amazing, the incredible, the unparalleled head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. I just want to say insert adjectives here. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he's run out of adjectives. And also maybe, I don't know. I do my best, but maybe I'm not as sparkly as before. Mordy Oberstein: Oh no, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Do you want me to run the intro again? Crystal Carter: No, it's totally fine. It's all you. Mordy Oberstein: Are you sure? Crystal Carter: It's fine, it's fine. The pandering for compliments, Crystal Carter. No, no, I'm kidding. Mordy Oberstein: From now on. That could be like your ex name, handle thing. Crystal Carter: But yeah, 100 episodes is a long time to try to keep up that many adjectives. Mordy Oberstein: It's a lot, it's a lot. It's a lot of episodes. We talked a lot. Crystal Carter: We talk a lot, and it's not even all the things we talk about. That's the thing. Mordy Oberstein: No, truth. She was behind the Hot Takes episode. The things we don't publish. Well, welcome everybody to a live special edition of the Serp's Up podcast. We're celebrating 100 episodes, and to do that, we're doing it live. We're doing it live, which is a deep cut because I'm old. So you basically get to hear me flub the intro 1,000 and see what actually happens, and how many times it takes me to get it. Usually two or three. Crystal Carter: Yeah, we do our best. But to be fair, you've got that radio sound, which is second to none, really. Mordy Oberstein: I'm living my dream. I've always wanted to be a sports announcer or radio host dude. Here I am. Crystal Carter: Yeah, here you are. And yeah, the intro normally goes pretty smooth. Give yourself more credit than that. Mordy Oberstein: No, it does. It does. Well, let's see. Crystal Carter: The king of- Mordy Oberstein: We'll find out. Yeah, I don't have those plans, so we'll see how those go. Sometimes they don't go well, let's see. Well, so anyway, we have some amazing guests today. Chima Mmeje is here. Darren Shaw, Joy Hawkins, Eli Schwartz, Kevin Indig, and a very special rendition of the Snappy News with none other than Broadway Barry himself, who will be here later. But before that, thank you for joining us and welcome. Here's how it's going to work. Okay, if you listen to the show each week, we have segments. Nothing changes. We still have segments, except this time there's a different guest or set of guests for every segment. During the last five minutes of each segment, we're going to take questions from you. So please, plop your questions into the chat. And to help us curate the questions... Yeah, plop is a good adjective for putting questions in there. Just plop them in. Crystal Carter: Just plop. Mordy Oberstein: Think about all the things that go plop. And to help us curate the questions is going to our head of SEO editorial George Nguyen. Mr. SEO Hub will be curating your questions, so throw the questions in. And by the way, let's give George a big welcome. Hi, George. George Nguyen: Hi. This is- Mordy Oberstein: That's George. George Nguyen: ... the extent of my involvement. Mordy Oberstein: The podcast lives on the hub, and you're the hub, so it's appropriate to have you here, I feel like. George Nguyen: It is perfect. But more important than me, I want to make sure that everybody listening understands that the more specific you are with your questions, the more likely they'll be answered. And be careful because sometimes when I'm reading your questions, it doesn't match up to what's being said. And so if you leave out that context, your question will not be answered. So ask good questions, and I will do my best. Crystal Carter: So we want you to plop strategically. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. George Nguyen: I know what that is. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure your plopping is optimized. Crystal Carter: Fully optimized. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, fully optimized plopping. Crystal Carter: High fiber. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and George does have an amazing donut-shaped Cushion. Jack, you're absolutely correct. George Nguyen: Thank you, Jack. Crystal Carter: That's true, he does. Also, can we just appreciate the locks? George doesn't normally have all the locks on show. Crystal Carter: He's going, oh, oh my goodness. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. This is getting too risque for our podcast, George. George Nguyen: Thank you for the show. Crystal Carter: This is the wrong kind of webcast. George Nguyen: Oh, it is, yeah. Crystal Carter: Okay, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. George, thanks so much, and we'll see you in the comments. Okay. Now, since we're actually doing this live, we're also doing the production live. I feel like saying we're doing this live is kind of obvious. We're here, we're live. It's not Weekend At Bernie's, we're alive. And to help with the production, they who always do our production Edge Media Studios or Site Strategics, those fellows are also here because we're breaking the fourth wall. The production that happens on the show isn't magic, it's Erin and Jacob. Mostly Jacob, I would imagine. Jacob Mann: Pretty much. Yeah. No, no, but I can't do that with my hair. Erin Sparks: Excuse me. I thought we booked this room for Edge of the Web. I'm sorry, did I get my calendar confused here? Mordy Oberstein: That is appropriate, because I go on your podcast and pitch this podcast, so kudos to you. Erin Sparks: Exactly. I had to do it, had to do it. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to say thank you. You guys do a great job with the podcast every week, and it's very much appreciated. Erin Sparks: More than welcome, guys. And been proud to be able to do 100 episodes. Let's go for another 100. Crystal Carter: Yay, thank you so much for all of your help. Mordy Oberstein: Sounds good. Erin Sparks: You're more than welcome. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so let's get right into it. Well. Oh wait, wait, I didn't do the traditional Wix line, the Serp's Up podcast. See, there's a flub. First flub of the day, first flub of the day. Crystal Carter: Who's counting? Mordy Oberstein: I'm counting, that's one. The Serp's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can only subscribe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight, but where you can also be on the lookout for a new SEO course that's coming with folks like Aleyda Solis, Andrew Optimisey, Debbie Chu and so forth. But it's also where you can push your SEO and marketing further with native tech and apps built together with Google, Bing, Amazon, Mailchimp, Meta, Tickety Toc and more. Look for integrations inside of the Wix Studio, SEO and marketing dashboards and in the Wix Studio app center. As today, we're going all over the SEO universe. We're getting 100% fresh squeezed SEO insights. Nay, I say knowledge schemes as we look into, is SEO still the same powerhouse it once was? Are there new local ranking factors you may not know about? The answer obviously is yes. Could you imagine? We did a segment, and all it was was no, there's nothing new. And will AI get you across the finish line? Plus, the Walter Cronkite of SEO and source of many SEO memes, Mr. Happy Camper himself, Barry Schwartz, will be joining us for what is sure to be a Carnival-esque version of the Snappy News. Because on this episode of the Serp's Up podcast, we're keeping it 100. It takes me a while to figure out that last line. What should it be? It's like I spend most of my week figuring it out. Crystal Carter: Hey man, you just got to make it land. Just stick the landing, like whoosh. Mordy Oberstein: It's 100. Bam, sound effect. All right, let's get right into it. SEO has changed a lot over the past, I don't know, three seconds. There's been a lot of talk about how effective SEO is, whether or not it's still entirely its own discipline, it's overlapping the marketing in all sorts of new ways. Let's explore the efficacy and boundaries of SEO with a deep thought with Crystal, Mordy, and special guest Chima Mmeje from Moz. Welcome to the show, Chima. Crystal Carter: Hi. Chima Mmeje: Hi, Mordy, hello. Mordy Oberstein: Box number two, Chima. Box number two. I forgot, we're doing it live. There's a sound effect that we have to do. Chima Mmeje: I know. Okay, should I speak about the sound effects? Do I wait for the sound effects to finish? Crystal Carter: It was very loud, wow. Mordy Oberstein: No, I should have brought you on after the sound effects. See how good I am at this? I've only been podcasting for 1,000 episodes. Chima Mmeje: This is a big budget production you guys have got in here. I have to come in here, they haven't- Mordy Oberstein: No, what are you talking about? You have the Mars pod now. I saw you brought that back in studio. Chima Mmeje: No, but- Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Chima Mmeje: But this is fancy. This is really fancy. Crystal Carter: Well, this is why we have such a fancy guest. Thank you so much for joining us. Chima Mmeje: Of course, of course, of course. I am glad to be here, and congrats on 100 episodes. That is insane. I think we did 20 episodes of MozPod and I was like, "Oh God, do I want to do this again?" You guys have done 100, giving up at 20, you've done 100. I need to step up my game. I need to step up my game. Crystal Carter: We've recorded a few more as well. Mordy Oberstein: I do a lot of talking, a lot of talking. Crystal Carter: Okay, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So let's get right into this. Well, Google just finished rolling out the August 2024 core update, which we're going to talk about more later with Barry probably. And a lot of that had to do, a lot of the conversation that the narrative had to do with fixing the September 2023 helpful content update. And there's all these questions about is Google doing the right by small websites? Which leads me to this question, Chima. Is the SERP broken? Chima Mmeje: Look at my reaction. I feel like I've been saying this for years, and I've made several round posts on LinkedIn about it. In fact, I remember last year speaking at Brighton SEO a whole round about Google for 20 minutes. And I forgotten his name, but there was someone from Google that was literally going up right after me to do a presentation. It was awkward. This is how much I am frustrated with everything that Google has been doing with the sales. The helpful content update, I'm saying this here live, is a farce. That whole thing is like one big PR. There's nothing helpful about that update. Absolutely nothing. Nothing. And this is me right now working on a content update on a website with over a million pages and spending hours on the SERPs every single day. There is nothing helpful about that update. I'm on a forum where there are lots of SEOs and people who own small businesses, and many of them have had to shut down, many of them have suffered tremendously from this or... These are people that have been working hard to implement best SEO practices and are suffering, and there is literally no explanation why their websites are suffering. It feels like we are like coins or something just like, I don't know. And they're just like puppeteers just playing with us. It's very frustrating. And the SERP is broken. The SERP has been broken for a long time. I don't know, we've just been blinded by all of this whole rubbish period that Google is self-serving and Google is helpful. No, they're not helpful. They are self-serving. They're a business that exists to make profit. So nothing helpful about the updates. Yes, the SERP is 1,000% broken. If you even compare between the US SERPs and the UK SERPs, the distinction is insane. The US SERPs is cluttered. There's ads here, ads there, this here. They're trying to push something on you. It doesn't make sense. And then you look at the UK SERPs, cluttered, but it's not as bad as the US SERPs. And I'm like, "How does anybody even use the SERPs? How does anybody even use Google in the US?" It is insane. I will stop here, because I could do this forever. Crystal Carter: So you've got a lot of people chiming in the comments here. Wendy Mero saying the SERP's been broken for a long time, amen. And Simon Cox saying that he thinks you're skirting around the issue. Oh, did I say- Mordy Oberstein: Trust in Simon trying to stir things up. Mordy Oberstein: I hear you Simon. Crystal Carter: Yep, yep, yep. Chima Mmeje: No, Simon. I'm saying, Simon. Tell me, what is the issue? Look, you know what? I work at Moz now, so I have to be very diplomatic. If I was still working for myself, I would have probably been using a lot more colorful words than what I'm using right now. But I'm trying to be very, very diplomatic. But you can see how frustrated I am with the SERPs. I don't think they're going to release any update that is going to fix any of these issues. There are people who- Mordy Oberstein: There's no update. And I agree with it, there's no update. There's no one thing. Chima Mmeje: There's someone in there. Mordy Oberstein: Going back to plopping. Plopping Reddit all over the SERP was because they saw the content trends that... Okay, people are looking for firsthand knowledge, experiential content. And they looked around the web and they said, "We don't have any, so we're just going to throw Reddit there." Chima Mmeje: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It was a default solution, and it wasn't a long-term thing. Chima Mmeje: It was lazy. It's lazy to have Reddit on the SERPs. As content folks, as a rule of thumb, we don't link to Wikipedia, because Wikipedia does not have authors. Anybody can go on Wikipedia and write some information. It's literally the same thing with Reddit. Nobody uses their real names. Anybody can go in Reddit and put answers to questions, and then you see these answers populating in people also ask, populating in features and populating everywhere on the SERPs as correct information. It is dangerous at worst, and I don't even know what the best is. There's no best. Mordy Oberstein: There's no good solution. Crystal Carter: So I wouldn't say calling it Devil's advocate. But for argument's sake, do you think that one of the reasons why we've seen so much upheaval and so much so volatility in the SERPs, which I certainly agree with in the last year. Do you think part of it is lots and lots of variables, like lots of new features coming in? So the alignment with Reddit, the AI overviews, the SGE, more machine learning, do you think it is just too many things being thrown in at the same time and it messing up lots of SERPs as a result, or do you think it's something else? Chima Mmeje: Crystal, this is not playing devil's advocate. You are supposed be telling me why Google is better, or making a case for them not being a (beep) up child. You are basically just proving my points, releasing too many features that they did not test properly. Features that were rushed. SG did not even last up to year, and now they brought Google Overview. I still don't understand why we have AI Overview and future snippets on the same SERP. I feel like it's counteractive. Pick one, make a choice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, that to me is the problem. I feel like a lot of the things are knee-jerk reactions. Again, your knee-jerk reaction to want first-person content. Throw the Reddit thing there. Knee-jerk reaction, we need to keep up with Copilot, and OpenAI and blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's roll out with what basically is a featured snippet, but it takes longer to load. It's just interesting. But okay, so at the same time then, you have all this volatility, you have things that you can't... What's in your locus of controls in SEO? None of this. Chima Mmeje: None. Mordy Oberstein: None of this is. Chima Mmeje: None. Mordy Oberstein: As an SEO, how are you supposed to do this? Listen, I'll say this. I've heard of things, that people are like, yeah, "I don't know what to do." I- Mordy Oberstein: ... I'll say this. I've heard things to people like, "Yeah, I don't know what to do. I can't produce the kind of results that I've always wanted to." Can you still be effective as an SEO in an environment like this? Chima Mmeje: I am going to be honest, we are suffering as in we've been suffering for a while because the steps are so volatile that even when you do a technical audit, you don't find the reason why your traffic is tanking and the visibility you used to get on the SERP is lost. There's no reason for it. And I feel like I'm being honest here, I feel like we're just trying new stuff. Oh, okay, first person content. Let's try to see who can get more first person content in there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. You don't have enough data to even tell you that this is the right decision that you're taking. It feels like we are trying our best with what we are seeing on the set because there's no clear guidance. And to be honest, a lot of us are playing a guessing game right now, and that is the best that we can do, if we're being honest. It's all a guessing game based on what we've seen one or two variables work. And this is not a long-term strategy if we're going to be realistic. It's not going to work in the long-term. I honestly, I don't know what the answer is, Mordy, because I'm thinking about it now. And the way we used to do SEO that used to drive results, that was like mathematics, if you did this, you did this, this would happen. It's not working anymore because you're fighting against Reddits. How do you compete against Reddits? Nobody has figured that out yet. Mordy Oberstein: No, and it's not even consistent. I think the one thing that I think bothers me the most is a lack of consistency. So, Google will say, "Write content for users, yada, yada, yada." And it'll work in sometimes, in some cases. And then you'll go to another query and the same old schlock, "Five best ways to whatever," is still ranking. And you're like, "Okay, so I did what you wanted. It worked here, but it didn't work there." And if you're somebody who's doing a strategy, it's hard to work at a strategic level when you don't have that consistency. And by the way, I'm not coming down like raining hellfire on Google for that. It's an algorithm. It's hard to get all of that right, but that doesn't take away from the complexity at the same time. Crystal Carter: I think it's a great conversation. I think though we have so many guests, we could talk about this literally all day long. And Chima, everybody in the comments, Gagan, Gotra, SerpSpotter Extraordinaire has said, "Thanks for saying it out loud, Chima." You've been an incredible guest. We've got our next group of folks coming on, so thank you so, so much. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Chima. Crystal Carter: Got to get you on for some more hot takes. Chima Mmeje: Thank you for giving me a space to rant. I really appreciate that. Enjoy the the rest of the show. Bye-bye. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. Wow, that was the most honest take on that. I think I've heard in quite a long time now. So, not only, not only... If Chima's hot take was new, I got something else that's a little bit new for you as well, because not only do we have a daily new series on the SEO Hub with Barry Schwartz and Greg Finn, who Barry will be here shortly actually, called It's new. We have an entire segment of this podcast named after the folks like yours truly who take to social media asking Barry, "Is this new and slightly irrelevant thing on the SERP new?" So let's take a look at what might be unknown in the local ranking factor space as Sterling Sky's Joy Hawkins and Whitespark's Darren Shaw join us for a local ranking factor version of It's New. Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Hey. Hey. Crystal Carter: Good morning. Darren Shaw: Thanks for having us. Mordy Oberstein: No, thanks for being here. Crystal Carter: Hi, guys. Always a pleasure. I feel like I see you all both because I follow you on TikTok and you're always the first ones on my TikTok being like local pack thing. I'm like, yeah, local pack. Do it. Darren Shaw: I'm glad that my content is making it into your feed. It's not making it into too many people's feed, but you must have engaged with it at some point. Crystal Carter: The best about thing about that- Mordy Oberstein: the struggle is real. Darren Shaw: Yeah, totally. Mordy Oberstein: The struggle is real. But I see your stuff everywhere. Darren Shaw: I'm trying to be everywhere. I'm trying to be everywhere. Hey, is Darren Shaw, Local SEO tips. You want to hear some tips? I got tips. Mordy Oberstein: But between you and Joy, I feel like the local SEO space is killing it with social media videos for SEO. Darren Shaw: Yeah, Joy's videos are great too. She's doubled down on videos the past little while as well. It's the way. It's going to... Eventually, we're all just be making videos. No more text content. Who wants to read these days? Joy Hawkins: I still read. Darren Shaw: I know, I'm joking. Mordy Oberstein: I just read headlines and I just draw conclusions from that. Who needs to know the rest of the content? We were talking before the show, what should we talk about for this segment? And then through our various emails, I came up like, wait a second, there's a bunch of new stuff in the local space, in the local ranking factor space. So like, hey Darren and Joy, what's new? Darren Shaw: What's new? Well, yeah, there are some new things, and this is really my fault because I'm a year behind with the local search ranking factor survey. So, I usually put it out every year, but the last one was in 2023. And actually I partly blame Joy for this because it was like the week after I released the 2023 version, she publishes this post showing how services impact rankings. I was like, "Oh, Joy. I just launched the local search ranking factors and we missed your awesome tip." And so I mostly just report the news, but we got to give credit to Joy for doing the research and discovering the actual ranking factors. I'm always like, "Oh, my God. Joy Hawkins blew my mind again because she discovered this awesome new thing." So, you know. Joy Hawkins: Same. Darren Shaw: It's effort here. Joy Hawkins: But Darren gets to tell it from inside his fridge. So, if you haven't seen his newest video, it's like you get footage from inside his fridge. Who doesn't like that? Mordy Oberstein: Sorry, guys. … totally talk over each other. Darren Shaw: Yeah, it's hard. I know it's four people. Do you want to hear some things that are new? Mordy Oberstein: I mean, yeah, the name of the segment is, It's New. Darren Shaw: Okay. Joy, why don't you tell us about how services currently impact rankings? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, so there's a little services section inside the Google business profile dashboard that's easy to miss, but you can add anything you want in there. You can make your own, you can add ones that Google has. We've done a lot of testing on it and they do impact ranking, but I should clarify, it's like a small impact. So, usually we see it for longer tail queries that maybe don't match a category or things that are not super competitive. But if you're a plumber and you just go add plumber as a service, you're probably not going to rank for plumber if you didn't rank before. So, it is a small ranking factor, but still one that is worth filling out. Darren Shaw: So, this is the question that a lot of people ask. We know that if you go into the services section of your Google business profile, Google will suggest predefined services. And they're like little pills, you just click them and you're like, "Yeah, I do that. Yep, I do that. I do that." You just click the ones, right? And so Joy's original research was focused on those predefined ones and it definitely identified that when you do put those on your profile, you now rank better for those terms, depending on how competitive they are, as Joy had mentioned. Now what about, there is a place where you can add your own custom services. Have you done any testing around that? Have you found that the custom ones that you put in there, haircuts for long haired dogs. So, you put some weird long thing in there and will you rank better with the custom services? Joy Hawkins: Yes. They both- Mordy Oberstein: Hold on a second. I'm just writing this down so I can figure out how to manipulate this later. Joy Hawkins: So, they both work. The one in custom services I think we talked about later. It was this year, and I think the other one was earlier. And I want to say, I'm trying to remember the keyword that Colin tested it on. It was something like super niche, like vampire facials or something weird. Darren Shaw: Oh, yeah. It was that. Joy Hawkins: I was like Googling, "What the hell is that?" Darren Shaw: It's weird, yeah. Joy Hawkins: Yeah, so really, really niche again. But he just wanted to know if there was any impact whatsoever. And there was, so again, good way to go after longer tail keywords that don't have crazy high search volume or aren't super competitive. Mordy Oberstein: Are you all worried about manipulation? I wasn't joking before. I'm writing it down so I can manipulate it because that's how you do local SEO, right? Darren Shaw: Well, I would say, I would not call it manipulation. It's basically optimization. Let's say you have a web page on your website and you wanted to rank for a specific term, but you never mentioned that term in your web page. Well, Google's going to have a hard time connecting the dots. So, this is the similar thing. With your Google business profile, you want to make sure that you're telling Google what you do. Tell Google what you do. It would be really helpful if Google can rank your business for the things that you do. And so that's basically what the services section provides. And it's not a huge ranking factor, but it's just another step in the local optimization process. You should fill out your services, you should add any service that you have. And the fact that custom services work is really valuable and have a tip for custom services because customer services often get pulled into the local results as justifications. It'll say, "This business provides vampire facials," right? Well, did you know there's a vampire emoji? So, if put the vampire emoji in the title, so it's like vampire emoji, vampire facials, then in the local results you'll see a whole panel of businesses that all provide that service, but yours has that little vampire emoji, which will draw people in and help and make them click it. They'll be like, "Oh, look at that one." It is just like a little eye-catching thing in the search results for more clicks, more conversions. And we all believe that if you get more clicks and more engagement, then that'll help you rank too. So, it's mostly a conversion tip, but it may have a side benefit of ranking boost as well. Crystal Carter: And I think also that's a really prime example of one of the things that I love about Local SEO and the Local SEO community is testing everything. So, testing whether or not that works, testing whether or not this works. Joy, your team are meticulous testers. Do you have any recommendations for when to test a new feature? When something comes out new, are you straight in there? How does it work? How can I break it? How can I make it fly? Is that your general approach or do you let it marinate and then test it? What do you think? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, we've evolved this process a lot. We have about a hundred ongoing tests at any given time, so there's a lot. And it's hard because I don't have time to publish them all. So, the ones that I think you should prioritize are ones that you think are going to make the most impact. If you have a theory on something and you think it's something that you can widely apply, in our case it's lots of different clients, different industries, then we prioritize it. So yeah, there's certain ones where I'm curious, but I'm like, "Okay, would we actually even do this?" We've done some tests on click-through-rate manipulation, which is something that I'm hoping to publish soon, and that's something that we'll never do. At this point anyways. I don't know, you'd have to really change my mind on why an SEO should do that and why it's not spammy, but it works really well, but it's not something that I'm going to spend hours and hours testing because it's not something we're going to do. Crystal Carter: Right. Whereas the emoji thing you might roll out, if you have a bunch of lawyers and you put in the little law scale thing or something, you can test that for lots of things, for instance, that might work. Darren Shaw: I was thinking of a different emoji for lawyers, but yeah, go ahead. That one's fine too. Mordy Oberstein: I wanted to swing around Darren, because you said you didn't release the 2024 local ranking factors study. Now maybe I'm reading into this or maybe just like, I don't know, you didn't want to do it, or you got busy or you're lazy. Whatever the reason is, there's so many reasons. Darren Shaw: All of the above. Mordy Oberstein: All of them. Perfect. By the way, if you do it, if you do put it out, could you please publish it in Mandarin. If you don't understand this joke, Darren posted something on LinkedIn, probably on TikTok also, in Mandarin, and I had Google Translate through the lens thing. It was an actual real post. It was just in Mandarin. Darren Shaw: Yeah. Yeah. I got to give a shout-out to my video editor, Nadia. She came up with the whole idea. She had seen someone do something similar. She's like, "Oh, I've got to do the SEO version of this." And so she just directed me, told me what I need to film and then put it together. And it was funny, it was a big hit. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it was great. Also, what's great is your ranking factor, but you didn't do it yet. Is that because, do you think that it's less concrete? What is working, what is not working or how to categorize it? Darren Shaw: Yeah, no, it was, you did touch on it. Lazy and busy. Busy slash lazy. So, that was really the only reason. Crystal Carter: Blazy. Blazy, is that the word? Darren Shaw: Yeah, maybe something like that. Blazy. So, I had a hard time just kind of squeezing it in. And then what ends up happening is that it's like, "Oh, well I wanted to do it in November, but then I didn't. And then I was like, "Okay, I'll do it in January, February," but then I didn't. And then he get so far into the year, you're like, "Well, by the time I survey people, finish the analysis, publish the whole thing, it's going to be October, and then it becomes the 2024 local search ranking factors for three months?" So I'm like, "Nope, I'm just going to skip it. I'm going to wait for Joy Hawkins to publish all her new tests before I do the 2025 version. So, my goal actually is to put the survey out to the local search experts in roughly October, collect the data, analyze the data in November, December, and publish freaking January 1st. And then I got a whole year of the 2025 local search ranking factors. So, this is my approach. I left it a little too late to bother with 2024. And so now 2025 is just going to be twice as good. Crystal Carter: That'll be great. Mordy Oberstein: I shouldn't read into it. I shouldn't read into it. Crystal Carter: And if you want to find out some new things about Local SEO before then, I would say that you should come to the Local SEO or Local U event that Sterling Sky are organizing with Wix in New York, but it's sold out. Joy Hawkins: I know. I was like, "Sorry?" Crystal Carter: Sorry, not sorry. Should have got there earlier. Joy Hawkins: We need to find a bigger space for next year, Crystal. We'll have to talk. Crystal Carter: I know. I was sad. We actually had people emailing us. They're like, "Is there any way?" I'm like, "I can't squeeze you in. There's a fire code," but yeah. Darren Shaw: Right? … video's after. Yeah. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure. Joy Hawkins: Yeah, we'll be doing another one. Mordy Oberstein: I want to give you some questions though. Cool. Darren Shaw: I'm ready. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. This one is from... Oh, God. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. "So many GBPs are open 24 hours in Melbourne nowadays, and it's gotten way worse in the last couple of months. Thoughts on it and if Google will go after this bad practice?" If you're not familiar with this, there was a point in time where people realized, wait a second, if you say that you're open 24 hours, you rank better even though you might not be open 245 hours. Darren Shaw: This is Joy's question to answer, but I just want to tell a story before I pass the mic to Joy. She bamboozled me with this damn ranking factor. So, she invites me on this podcast, she's like, "There's a whole new ranking factor." And I'm like, I'm making all these guesses. What could it be? What could it be? And then she shows me this and I was like, "Dang it. This means that we have to totally change all of our software to make sure that we're tracking rankings at the right time." But yeah. Joy, what do you think about this question? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, it's a pain because as SEOs, you have to be so diligent about when your right trackers are running and if there's even a delay. I ran one the other day that- Joy Hawkins: ... are running and if there's even a delay. I ran one the other day that took a while. And I ran it at 7:00 AM, but by the time it ran, it completed after 9:00 AM. That's a big difference. What you see at 7:00 AM before businesses are open, huge difference on what you'll see after 9:00. And I think the average business owner doesn't realize how different it is because it didn't used to be different, but as of last year, it's now a huge factor. And I'm calling it a ranking factor, I don't care what other people say. It influences how you rank, therefore, I'm calling it a ranking factor. But basically, the hierarchy is this. If you're open, it's the highest hierarchy, so Google prefers to show businesses that are open. If there's no hour set on the listing, they're not sure, so they'll put those ones in the second tier. And if you're closed, it's in the worst tier, so they actually push you down. They want to show businesses that are open, so this is problematic for a lot of our clients who, let's say for example, aren't open on weekends. You might search for a dentist on a weekend but a lot of them aren't open, so what do you do? And it unfortunately comes out of this. A lot of people are going, "Well, I guess I'll just list myself as open." And personally, I think it's on every business owner to figure out how they want to answer this question, because I don't necessarily think it's lying if you say you're open, because you might actually have somebody answering the phone. And you could argue that if somebody answering the phone is there and available for customers, then your business is open. I think it's a vague term that you could kind of define differently, depending on who you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, like, "I'm open to new business." Joy Hawkins: Yeah. As long as you're actually responding, I think you can make a case that you're open. Crystal Carter: The thing is as a user, I hate this. I hate this so much because if I Google a business and it says that they're open and they are not, now if I see 24 hours, I just don't believe them. I just think, "I don't believe you." Mordy Oberstein: Your account is open 24 hours? Crystal Carter: Right. I just searched while we were here, lawyers in Los Angeles, and all the top say, "Open 24 hours." I guarantee you that- Mordy Oberstein: That's LA for you. Crystal Carter: Law firm is not open 24 hours. "I'm open at 3:00 AM." They're not. Joy Hawkins: But if you call them at 3:00 AM, a lot of them do have, I'm not saying all of them do, a lot of them do have after hours answering services. You will actually get a human being at 3:00 AM. That's what you should do if you're going to do this approach. Crystal Carter: I'm sure that law firm is a great law firm. Mordy Oberstein: I want to get one last question in if we can. "Would love to understand whether..." This is from Lee, "Whether to accept or reject seemingly random service additions suggested by Google. Should I trust them because they're coming from people searching? Or is this potentially misleading just like when Google Ads' broad match is too broad?" Darren Shaw: I think if Google is suggesting it, they've gotten this idea from somewhere. Where are these coming from? Sometimes they come from your website, they come from your presence on the internet, on other sites, social sites, local directories, those kinds of things. And so Google thinks you do these services. Sometimes they're way off base. Another thing they'll do is they'll look at other competitors in your category and say, "Well, all these businesses do these services, so you probably do them, too." One of the things you need to be aware of is that when Google suggests services for your profile, they're already live. Google doesn't suggest anything, they just push the changes to your profile and said, "We added these to your profile. Do you like them?" And so then you can say, "No, I definitely do not offer that specific service," and you can turn them off. And so having a system to monitor for these changes is really helpful. Wouldn't you know it? We have one at Wisepark, so we have a software system that will keep track of your Google business profile. It's only a dollar a month and it'll tell you anytime Google is adding any of this crap to your profile, and then you can just be like, "Nope, not today, Google," and you just reject it. And so having a system to pay attention to that is really valuable. But should you trust them? I think generally, but you should keep an eye on them. And you should keep an eye on anything that Google is suggesting on your profile because sometimes it's not Google, it was just some random dude on the internet said, "Ah, this business is closed." And they'll mark you as closed, they'll change your phone number, they'll change your primary category. They'll move your map pin into the middle of the ocean and Google accepts all of these changes. Google's like, "Well, Bob on the internet said that your business is closed, so guess Bob is right." And so they actually trust the people on the internet more than they trust the business owners. And so paying attention to this stuff is really important. Can you trust the edits that Google is doing? I would say not really. Make sure that you're keeping an eye on this. Joy, any comments? Joy Hawkins: Yeah, I'll just add, make sure your services makes sense, what the word provides in front of them, because that's how they show up on Google. And so we have a divorce lawyer that has sexual assault constantly getting added to his listing. So it's like, "Oh yeah, he really wants to show, 'Provides sexual assault,' on his listing." Google just keeps adding it. We remove it, they add it again, it's been going on for years. It's super fun. Darren Shaw: Or, "Provides traumatic brain injury," that's my favorite. "This law firm provides traumatic brain injuries." Crystal Carter: Wow. Mordy Oberstein: And on that happy note, thanks so much for joining our podcast. That was a lot of fun. I hope we didn't leave anybody with a traumatic brain injury. Wow. Joy Hawkins: Thank you so much for joining us. Mordy Oberstein: Joy, Darren, thanks so much. Darren Shaw: It was a pleasure. Love chatting with you all. And yeah, see you next time. Mordy Oberstein: See you out there in the ether. Make sure you give joy and Darren a big follow on social media. Now, it wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't talk about traumatic brain injuries and lawyers. No, it wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't talk about AI. It wouldn't be an SEO podcast, it wouldn't be a marketing podcast, it wouldn't even exist. It'd be like the tree that fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it. Unless we talk about AI. While there's been a lot of pushback about AI for content generation in the digital marketing space, professional digital marketing space, that's a little of a hot take, let's explore what's possible in the future with AI. Two brilliant minds will join us. Eli Schwartz, the author of Product-Led SEO, and the founder of Growth Memo will join us as we move into The Great Beyond. Crystal Carter: Kevin Indig. Mordy Oberstein: What'd I say? I didn't say Kevin's name? Kevin Indig. There he is, he made it. Kevin Indig: Call my name and I appear. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, it was the AI. I was thinking your name and suddenly you appeared. Kevin Indig: That's how it works, it's like Beetlejuice. Crystal Carter: Who needs AI when you have KI? There you go. Mordy Oberstein: Or Eli. Crystal Carter: Hey. Mordy Oberstein: We can't hear you, Eli. Your AI is not working. Also, your mic. Eli Schwartz: It all rhymes, here we go. Crystal Carter: So it must be true. Mordy Oberstein: That's why we had you guys on the show, because we knew it was going to rhyme. Kevin Indig: Good planning. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Kevin Indig: How are we going to top that now? Mordy Oberstein: I have no idea, I'm still trying to... I'm stalling to try to figure that out. How about search, read your mind? I'll ask ChatGPT, it'll tell me the answer and to eat glue. Crystal Carter: Right? Mordy Oberstein: Both are enjoyable. Anyway, let's get into the whole AI thing. This actually started, Kevin had a post on LinkedIn that was very pro the AI and it got me thinking. Let me ask it this way, where do we currently stand with the AI? What can it do, what can't it do? Because I have a follow-up question that I think is a little spicier. Kevin Indig: Yeah, sure. Do you want me to chime in? Mordy Oberstein: I mean, that's why you're here. Kevin Indig: Oh, okay. I thought I was here to look pretty, but all right, cool. I'll say some words. Eli Schwartz: That's my job. Kevin Indig: Okay, Eli, I'll outsource to you and then I'll try to talk. Where are we today with AI? I think it's a critical question because you have to differentiate between where we are today and where we might be in six to 12 months, which is very, very different. And so today, to provide a snapshot, we're at a stage where AI basically has the capability to create content, analyze some basic data. It still hallucinates here and there and it still makes mistakes. I'm talking about AI broadly as in we have Google Gemini, we have OpenAI, ChatGPT, we have maybe a couple of other models. There's Claude with Sonnet, et cetera. And of course, we have Google with AI overviews. And so I kind of put all of these in the same bucket for now. They make mistakes, but if you compare that to when this AI hype started in November, 2022, it's almost two years now and we've come a really long way. These models are getting exponentially better. And so that's what I'm saying, if we extrapolate to the next 12, maybe 24 months, I think we're in for quite the wild ride. And so the question is of course, what does it mean? And it means different things based on whether you look at it as a tool for yourself to make your work more efficient. And of course, what does it mean from an SEO perspective? How does it change search, not just Google, but also how people search? And I think these are all different questions that are exciting to dive into. Mordy Oberstein: So you're really hot on AI? You're a believer? Kevin Indig: I'm absolutely. I think it's not just a believer. I know what you mean, Mordy. I'm being pedantic here, but yes, I can totally see the benefits of AI also from a data perspective. There are studies that show that writers who use AI can be 40% faster and, quote-unquote, better. You have to define better means. There are studies that show that 17% now of users use ChatGPT to replace search. Pretty robust analysis. And there's more data showing that, for example, consultants are much more effective when they use AI as a thought partner or brainstorming partner. There is a lot of objective data that indicates efficiencies and benefits from AI. There's also a lot of hype that promises a little too much about what AI can do. And so I'm generally AI bullish, but I'm not in the camp of AI is going to replace us all the next two years. I'm much more falling in line of you should use AI for certain cases right now, but don't think you can outsource your whole job to AI. I hope that kind of puts it a little bit in perspective. Mordy Oberstein: No, that makes a lot of sense. This is my follow-up, because I'm setting the stage here a little bit. Because while your LinkedIn posts are generally pro AI, a lot of Eli's posts are a little more skeptical about the AI-ness. So Eli, what do you think about what Kevin just said? By the way, for those who are listening or watching this, I'm pitting them against each other. They're friends and they do a podcast together, so it's cool, I'm good with it. Eli Schwartz: Yes, this is amazing. What an intro to say that we're supposed to argue with each other. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, sorry. We're not going to argue anymore. Eli Schwartz: Kevin, I'll do my best. Mordy Oberstein: Good, please. Eli Schwartz: I'm pro AI, I think AI is great. I think that there's a lot of great things you can get out of AI. Again, like Kevin said, it can be your thought partner. You can ask it questions, you can use it to learn. I'm anti AI in the way people are using it. And I don't think people have necessarily changed their behaviors, because again, it's almost been two years. Before the introduction of ChatGPT, what a lot of, again, people with producing a lot of content did with the outsource it on Fiverr and Upwork and they bought very cheap content, and now they're getting very free content. Then that's coming from AI. That behavior hasn't really changed. The challenge is that now there are more people that think they can copy them. I talk to CMOs all the time who are like, "I just let go of my SEO team." A big company reached out to me recently. They wanted to gut check themselves after they already fired their SEO team, so can't really help there. But they're like, "AI can do everything SEO can do good." Good. Well, I'll see them in a year from now when they have whatever sort of penalty. And I think that's the challenge, is that AI is a very powerful tool. Any tool we have, a drill is a very powerful tool, but if you just hold it in the air and just let it go, it's going to make holes. But if you use it appropriately, it does the thing it's supposed to do, again, like every tool. And I think AI is one of the most powerful tools we've ever had on the internet and it can do a lot of great things, but it shouldn't run off on its own and do its own marketing. I just think I'm seeing a lot of different sites use AI in many weird ways, so they'll do, an e-commerce site will write all their product descriptions, forgetting the fact that product descriptions are meant to actually describe the product so someone adds it to the cart. So until we get to a point where AI is going shopping for you and then reading these product descriptions, then I think you need product descriptions that appeal to the customer. There was a company in the job space that was doing the same thing. They're just aggregating AI written job descriptions, and then you hear about AI tools that can apply for all your jobs. I even read a post on LinkedIn the other day about someone who was interviewing someone and they basically thought they were talking to ChatGPT in the interview, where the person was dubbing their own voice and they were getting ChatGPT answers. But at some point, someone has to do a job. So what we're going to do is going to get these AIs, they're going to talk to each other, but then they're going like, "You need that human." And this is one I haven't dealt with, I've only read about, but AI in dating. You figure out the perfect dating responses. You're on whatever sort of dating app and you figure out the right way to text, so ChatGPT tells you how to reel someone in with- Crystal Carter: ChatGPT. Eli Schwartz: Yes, but at some point someone has to go on a date and behave like a human. I think that's where we are with marketing in general, that there's all these AI that it's kind of moving the goalpost, but again, we're humans and we buy stuff. It has to come to a point where humans are talking to humans. Crystal Carter: I mean, the thing is, there are a lot of humans who don't behave like humans on dates, so let's just set that record straight to be begin. But I think that what y'all are alluding to is something that I've also seen from, I think PricewaterhouseCoopers put out a thing about the value of AI to the marketplace. They were saying that by 2030 it could add $6 trillion in productivity value, and for B2C stuff it could add something like $9 trillion. But what they also said is that where the gains will come from, right now they're saying most of the gains are coming from productivity. The stuff like Kevin was talking about with being able to write product descriptions more quickly, being able to write lots of posts more quickly and being able to finish your things more quickly, brainstorm, et cetera. In terms of the quality, the quality is still not there. It's getting there rapidly, but it's still not there. And we don't expect to see really, really, really good quality until later on, which I think comes back to the point that you were talking about, Eli, where people were like, "Yeah, we'll just bye everybody, replace it with a robot." The quality's not there, you still need people with brains to guide it. Productivity, yes, but also brains. Mordy Oberstein: That's always been the thing with it. It's super cool, but when you actually apply it, does it actually work the way that you want it to work? My question is on the quality front, can it do all the things qualitatively that we think it can do or eventually will do? And I'm a little bit skeptical of that. I think there's going to be certain things that just the human mind can do, things that are sort of, I use a fancy word, ineffable. You can't put your finger on it. It's way too ethereal, it's way too abstract. No AI is going to be able to do that, it's superhuman. I don't mean in a powerful way, it's like a superhuman way of looking at things. And AI is just AI, it's not going to be able to do that. Or- Mordy Oberstein: ... is AI, it's not going to be able to do that. Or I guess, Kevin, do you think it will be able to? All the things, it will be just like a human, but not as horrible. Crystal Carter: I mean... Kevin Indig: Go ahead, Crystal. Crystal Carter: I was going to say there are definitely some things that are easier to do with an AI than with a human, like to be- Mordy Oberstein: Sure, like watch my kids? All this kind of stuff. Crystal Carter: But if you have a dumb question, you're not embarrassed asking the AI your dumb question that you probably should know. Whereas if you go onto something else, or onto a chat room or something and ask your dumb question, people go, "Oh my God, how come you don't know that?" Blah, blah, blah. And then you're just mortified and things. Whereas if you ask your dumb question to ChatGPT, they'll just go, "There, there, here's the information," and help you with that sort of thing. And so I think that sometimes like Eli was saying that you can use ChatGPT for learning and stuff like that. There's definitely sometimes where maybe you want to sort of quietly have your thought before you go and interact with other humans. I think that happens too. Mordy Oberstein: No, for sure. But you're developing it on marketing strategy or whatever it is, and you're really trying to qualitatively understand, really feel out where the audience is. Kevin, will AI ever be able to do that? Kevin Indig: 100%. I'm 100% certain. It depends on the data that the AI has access to. But one of the beauties of large language models is you can bombard them with data, you can ground them with data. And anybody can do that today with a very basic laptop. Probably soon with their phone. That is not difficult and rocket science. And the beauty is ChatGPT can guide you into how to do this, if you don't know how to. But you can ground models and data, and then explore the data in natural semantic ways, with the chatbot. And that is a very specific use case you can already do today. And it would argue you can do it much, much better than when humans do it. When humans have to catalog the data, interpret the data, there's a lot of room for bias and a lot of room for misinterpretation. And the benefit of AI or AI that we're using for this use case, is that it's very objective. I would even argue that the degree of hallucination has come way, way down. It's actually not that bad anymore. Eli Schwartz: Definitely true. Kevin Indig: I'm sure people come up with the examples of like, "Oh yeah, AI doesn't recognize how many r’s are in strawberry." Eli Schwartz: The strawberry thing. Strawberry. Kevin Indig: Strawberry. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was going to bring up. Mordy Oberstein: I want to say something about the strawberry thing. I bet you 97% of human beings can't spell strawberry, right. I know I'm being a little bit high, but- Kevin Indig: I think that's a good point also to make, right? Like, what are the mistakes that humans make? I love that comparison, for example when …. Mordy Oberstein: How much time you have. Kevin Indig: Right, yeah, of course. But when it comes to self-driving cars, right? Sure, AI they have accidents, but compare that to the accidents that humans make, and all of a sudden it looks- Crystal Carter: Or on their phone while driving. Kevin Indig: Right, exactly. By the way, Ford is integrating ChatGPT in their models, starting next year. Anyway, I think I made the point. Crystal Carter: No, I think that's great. Those are great. Eli Schwartz: This is why Kevin and I had a podcast, because we think alike. I was just looking up Waymo. So Waymo has been around since 2005. Tesla has been selling, so-called fully self-driving for the last few years. But I don't think we'll ever be at a point that we're at fully self-driving or fully autonomous on many of these things. And driving is much easier than searching, because driving, many people are basically autonomously driving already. They're just kind of sitting there, just following the road, following the cars in front of them, hopefully not texting, hopefully not talking on the phone, hopefully not yelling at their kids or whatever it is that they're doing. But it's a very simple process, because we do it almost automatically. People do it half asleep, people do it drunk. Most of the time they're safe, but this is something that computers can do. Eli Schwartz: We're not recommending it, of course. Wix is not responsible. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: No. Mordy Oberstein: Appreciate that. Don't drink and drive. Eli Schwartz: Definitely don't drink a drive. Kevin Indig: Diet or by a link. Eli Schwartz: Don't smoke and drive. Whatever it is that you shouldn't be doing. But these are things that computers can do with AI, because there's rules. But when it comes to searching, this is my thing when I think about digital marketing. I don't think we'll ever be in a world where AI can fully understand you. Which is why I don't think the assistants, the Google assistants and Alexas have totally taken off, is because they only give one response. They don't give the 10 responses you see on a desktop or a mobile. But because you need to choose. Sometimes you want to click position one, sometimes you need to click position 11. It depends on what your intent is. And there's a reason that there are multiple pages of Google, and it's not just one page or it's not just two results. And I really don't think we'll ever be at a point where AI knows everything about you. And I would, again, exactly like Kevin brought up, self-driving cars, it can almost get there. It will probably eventually get there, but of all of the innovations we're still not fully there, it still makes mistakes. And that I think is so much easier than reading minds and getting search right. Crystal Carter: And speaking of- Mordy Oberstein: By the way, that was your Don's question. Right? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: With Apple and Google actively integrating AI into their core operating system, do you feel that more people will switch to AI within their home page interface for search, over traditional search engines for simpler queries or image search? Like ask and answered almost. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think so. And I think we have to end on that bombshell because we don't have very much time and we need to get... Mordy Oberstein: No? Crystal Carter: ... Barry in as well. Mordy Oberstein: We have the news. We have the news. Eli, Kevin, thank you so much. Eli Schwartz: Thanks for having me. Kevin Indig: Thanks for having me. Crystal Carter: Thank you so, so, so much. Mordy Oberstein: Bye guys. All right, so if you listen to the show each week, first off, big thanks to Eli and Kevin Indig. I know his name. Crystal Carter: To everyone. Everyone's so great. We can talk to everyone for the full hour. Mordy Oberstein: True. So if you listen to the podcast each week, we know we cover the SEO news towards the end of the show, we're getting towards the end of the show. And of course, most of the articles are from Barry, written by Barry, may the Schwartz be with you. So we thought it'd be nice for this 100th episode to get the facts straight from the horse's mouth in a very special edition of The Snappy News. The sounded is amazing. And we're live. Crystal Carter: Live from Channel 5. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: The Snappy News. Snappy News. Mordy Oberstein: Snappy News. Welcome to the show. Barry Schwartz, sorry, I called you a horse. I meant you're a workhorse. Barry Schwartz: Oh, that's okay. I didn't even notice. People have called me a lot worse, especially in the past couple days. Mordy Oberstein: Oh yeah, you've been taking a lot of heat. Wow. Barry Schwartz: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Taking a lot of heat for Danny, really, if we’re gonna be honest. Barry Schwartz: That's been interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we'll get into that. Actually, let's get into that. So the article of the day is from Search Engine Land, basically written by Barry that the August 2024 core update is over, done. It is complete. Was it 19 days? Google Said it would take a month. Nope. Less time than that. It's complete. Did I summarize the article well, Barry. Barry Schwartz: It's done. I don't know why I'm here. I should just leave. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But as part of that... Are you saying... Wait? I might kick you out. Barry Schwartz: Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Bye. As part of the update, folks have been coming online, going after Search Engine Land, which Danny Sullivan used to be a part of, and taking it out on Barry on Twitter. I don't know why. Barry Schwartz: All the internet problems are my fault. So, yes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But the best part of it was you're showing them the SEM Rush data on search engine. And the numbers are going down year over year over year. So the theory doesn't hold water. Barry Schwartz: Right. Their theory is that, basically we don't get hit by Google updates, because of Danny somehow. And yet we've been hit... I mean, I know Round Table has been hit by pre Panda stuff, by Panda, by core updates. Search engine Land has its share of issues as well. So yeah, just like every other writer out there, every single publication out there, we all have had our issues with Google. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Well, with this particular case, the issue with Google, folks who were trying to figure out, was will they see a reversal of their fortunes from the 2023 helpful content update, the September, 2023 helpful content update? It's a mouthful, to be honest with you. And my question for you, since you're here, did that happen? Barry Schwartz: It depends. Mordy Oberstein: Was the August update a reversal? It depends? Barry Schwartz: It depends. Depends on the site. So I think the number, I don't have the exact data, obviously I don't think anybody does. But I've seen examples of some very few sites see complete reversals. I mean, I don't know on a URL by URL basis, but their traffic was here September, here in the middle between September and now, and then after the August updates, back up to the same level. I don't know if it's on a URL basis where they're still running the same keywords. But vast majority of sites saw nothing or they're off than they were. There are a number of sites that saw maybe a 20% bump, a 30% bump, maybe a 5% bump. But very few sites saw a complete reversal, if you want to even call it that. Mordy Oberstein: Yikes, not good. Or maybe it is, I don't know, it depends on who you are. But the internet was abuzz. The SEOs were abuzz. It wasn't fair, the sites should be doing better, I guess they're not going to be happy. Barry Schwartz: Again, everybody thinks their sites are amazing. I know my site's horrible, so when I see Google updates, I expect it to go down. But most people think the content that they write and the websites they have are great and that they should do well. I remember I got hit by a Panda update once and John was like, "Well, maybe you don't know your site so well, maybe you should ask your readers what they think about your site." So I took a Google... Back then they had a Google Consumer surveys plugin. So I added it to the website, I'm like, after a couple months of collecting data, I'm like, "Here Google, here's the results." And the people who read my sites, who are mostly people who are hit by Google, like my site. So it's kind of biased obviously, but at the same time I've been through a lot. You can see from the hair. I've been through a lot of Google updates over the years, and it's sometimes sad to see the stories, but at the same time, if you keep at it and you are true to the content in your audience, generally you'll do well in the long run. Not every site. There's plenty of sites that have been hit, went out of business, and they couldn't come back. That's business in general. And things change, like seasonalities, and times change. If you're writing about the railroad business a hundred years ago and you keep writing about it today, there's not many people investing a lot of money in railroads these days. So I don't know, it's hard to read those stories, but not everybody deserves to go back to where they were. And then at the same time, Google's not perfect either, which is why they keep on releasing new updates. Crystal Carter: So, you mentioned previous updates like Panda. How similar do you think this particular helpful content update from September, how similar do you think that is to some of those big updates? Barry Schwartz: This is a weird one. So there was some updates, like the big Florida update in 2003, that demolished sites. Then we had the first Panda update. And that really went after SEOs creating low quality content really fast. Similar to the helpful of content update. And that really, really demolished sites as well. It was big, it was probably one of the biggest updates. But then we had the Penguin update, which every SEO after that was like, "Let's just throw a lot of links at our problems." So they built links, and then Google came out with this Penguin algorithm that attacked links that were being bought. And then I think that put a lot of SEO companies out of business who were buying links solely as their business. How similar was the September helpful content update? It's hard to say. I don't think it was probably as big as the Panda update, but with Panda updates, we have many Panda updates after that, it was easy to isolate. Healthful content update, it's hard for us to isolate what that is. Although when the Panda update first was released also, it was really hard for SEOs to understand what it was about either. But eventually we'll learn, we'll write content that Google likes, and then Google is like, "Don't write content we like, write content that our audience likes," and then we'll go through this next phase. There'll be another update in a year or two from now that will demolish whatever we figure out that works. So it's just this cat mouse game. Mordy Oberstein: It sounds so doom and gloom. Barry Schwartz: It's the world we live in. Doom and gloom. Mordy Oberstein: Mr. Sunshine himself. Barry, thank you so much for coming on. And don't forget to check out seoroundtable.com, it's the first site I go to every morning other than Gmail, but that's not a real website. And it's new, our daily news series, Monday through Thursday. Barry Schwartz: Yeah, thanks for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Friday, Barry flies solo. It's new, it's fun, yada yada yada. Talk to you later Barry. Barry Schwartz: Bye-bye. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and that's it. That was a lot. Crystal Carter: That's it? That's a lot? Mordy Oberstein: I'm not used to all the button pushing, that I have to do on a live podcast. A lot of button pushing. Crystal Carter: I didn't realize I needed to have you on a clock, Mordy. You were like, "And another thing," I was like, "Mordy, we got-" Mordy Oberstein: No, no. I have it on the clock to go an extra 10 minutes. I built an extra time because it's live and there was stuff going on. Crystal Carter: All of this talking chitty, chitty, chat, chat. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Crystal Carter: Honestly. Mordy Oberstein: Is that what you think in general when I talk, talk to much? Crystal Carter: No. No. We have to let people get back to their day. Mordy Oberstein: We have to keep talking long enough for Barry's stream to upload. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: So there, there's a real reason why I have to talk now. Crystal Carter: Well, it's so nice to have so many friendly faces join us today. It's so nice to have so many friendly faces join us in the chat as well. Not faces I guess, but chat folks. So shout out to Jack Chambers Ward, and Yordan Dimitrov, and Gagan Gotra, and the incredible Simon Cox. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, James Thompson. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Tom joined... Mordy Oberstein: Wendy Morrow. Crystal Carter: ... in the session. So shout out to everybody who joined us today, and everyone who tunes into our podcast every week. We will be back to our regularly scheduled podcasting. Mordy Oberstein: Next week we're back. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Episode 101. I'll do a- Crystal Carter: 101. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. We're back next week with, are going to SEO and digital marketing conferences a waste of time? Are they worth it? With special guests, SparkToro's, Amanda Tibidon, and BrightonSEO's Kelvin Newman, which makes logical sense why they would be talking about conferences. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub, or go to wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to know more about SEO, check out all the great content webinars we have, over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, at, you guessed it, that's flood number four, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify, please, please. And thanks so much for joining us live, and again, tune in next week. And until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Bye, y'all. 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 Backlink tracking template Optimize your link-building strategy with a downloadable free backlink tracking template. Turn competitor pages into opportunities and generate quality links. 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 backlink tracking template to: Turn broken competitor pages into link-building opportunities Understand how to generate links from niche sites Create an outreach plan for earning quality backlinks Track hard-won links and ensure that they’re protected Ashwin Balakrishnan Head of Marketing, Optmyzr LinkedIn Facebook X Instagram 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. More about this topic Read this post, Backlinks 101: What they are and why they matter 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