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SEO agency migrates to Wix for major improvement in CWV “Wix is the fastest loading CMS I've ever seen. I can't even fathom going back to WordPress. Why would you put yourself through that agony when there’s a platform that's better and cheaper, and does everything you could want it to and more?” 0% Loss in traffic during site migration 100% Good URLs after moving to Wix 264K Organic traffic over 12 months When Barry Adams moved his website from WordPress to Wix, he steeled himself for the loss in website traffic that typically occurs in a site migration. It’s safe to say he wasn’t prepared for his website’s rankings to improve overnight. The business Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Polemic Digital is an award-winning SEO agency for news publishers. It was founded in 2014 by Barry Adams, an influential search marketer who has been a pioneer in the SEO space since he first began practicing in 1998. Today, Polemic Digital is the agency of choice for the world’s top media brands, having previously worked with the likes of The New York Times, Fox News, and The Guardian. In 2018, Polemic Digital’s work for News UK was recognised as the Best SEO Campaign at the DANI Awards. Barry Adams, Founder of Polemic Digital The SEO challenge Barry was getting frustrated with Polemic Digital’s website: constant maintenance, sluggish load times, and a cumbersome UI were all taking up far too much of his time and energy. “I finally decided I was fed up with WordPress—the plugin bloat, the new interface with the Gutenberg Press, the WYSIWYG editor—everything just got painful,” he recalls. “And I'm a technology guy, so I don't mind playing around under the hood, fiddling with knobs and buttons and tweaking here and there.” Barry also noticed that his website images would come out subpar. “I tried to minimize it as much as possible, but then you need plugins to do things like smash images and strip out your CSS, and all of that was just excruciating.” The solution Barry had seen other businesses move to Wix and found himself admiring how bespoke the builds looked. What finally clinched the decision for him was the lightning-fast speed that Wix promised. With that, Barry decided to take his “blinkers off” and move to a platform that would help his SEO, rather than hinder it. To take care of the move, Barry enlisted the help of Optix Solutions , a digital marketing agency based in the UK. In a very smooth process, they rebuilt his website on Wix and migrated all his pages over. Barry took this opportunity to clean up his website content, removing old blog posts and editing the categories in his SEO services. Soon it was time to flip the switch on his new Wix website. “That’s always the most daunting part of any site migration,” Barry admits. “I’ve done a lot of them in my time, and whenever you change URLs, Google has to basically rely on your website. Even with 301 redirects, you tend to lose traffic along the way.” The results Despite the fact that Barry cleared out his website content and changed URLs, his new Wix website experienced zero loss in traffic. In fact, his rankings actually improved because his website got significantly faster. The only metric in Google Search Console which indicated that Barry’s website had migrated, was that his Core Web Vitals went from orange and red to entirely green, literally from one day to the next. Polemic Digital’s Google Search Console displaying an improvement in good URLs after moving to Wix “It was an absolute eye opener,” Barry says. “I’ve never had a site migration where the only indicator was that the site got better. There's always a cost, there's always a moment of pain. Except with Wix, there wasn’t any. My theory is that I probably lost a little bit of link value, but the insane improvement in Core Web Vitals perfectly balanced it out.” Barry is also hugely impressed with the suite of advanced SEO tools that Wix provides. In particular, he loves the level of flexibility they offer SEOs, as they have the option to rely on best-in-class defaults or customize every detail. “Wix has everything you could ever need in terms of SEO functionality,” Barry says. “It can hold your hand along the way, or you can tweak every single setting yourself. If you want auto-generated titles great, a few clicks and off you go. If you want to manually craft titles on a page level, you can do that too. For a more advanced user, there's nothing holding you back from taking complete control over your sites’ SEO.” Learn more about Wix’s advanced SEO features and explore our SEO Learning Hub for the latest insights from industry experts. 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

Why do some people think SEO is snake oil and whose fault is it that they do? Should you even care about SEO’s good name (Spoiler alert: Yes)? How can you help improve SEO’s reputation? Wix’s Mordy Obertein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss how the SEO community can overcome the sometimes shady reputation associated with the SEO industry and change the narrative. Founder of Zyppy SEO, Cyrus Shepard, joins the show to help evaluate if maybe part of SEO’s bad reputation is legitimate (or maybe not so much). Michael Lewittes, founder of Ranktify, chimes in on how SEO tools have accidentally helped drive the narrative that has tarnished the SEO industry's reputation and how emerging SEO tools are a remedy. Pull out your vinyls because, on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast, we’re setting the record straight. What’s done is done, but the future has not been written. Join us as it’s time to Terminate the lingering reputation from the early days of SEO this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Does SEO's reputation linger? Why do some people think SEO is snake oil and whose fault is it that they do? Should you even care about SEO’s good name (Spoiler alert: Yes)? How can you help improve SEO’s reputation? Wix’s Mordy Obertein and Crystal Carter are back to discuss how the SEO community can overcome the sometimes shady reputation associated with the SEO industry and change the narrative. Founder of Zyppy SEO, Cyrus Shepard, joins the show to help evaluate if maybe part of SEO’s bad reputation is legitimate (or maybe not so much). Michael Lewittes, founder of Ranktify, chimes in on how SEO tools have accidentally helped drive the narrative that has tarnished the SEO industry's reputation and how emerging SEO tools are a remedy. Pull out your vinyls because, on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast, we’re setting the record straight. What’s done is done, but the future has not been written. Join us as it’s time to Terminate the lingering reputation from the early days of SEO this week on the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 70 | January 17, 2024 | 58 MIN 00:00 / 58:11 This week’s guests Cyrus Shepard Cyrus’ SEO research and insights have made him one of the most trusted voices in search today. Having started in SEO in 2009, he formerly led SEO and Audience Development at Moz and currently serves as Co-Founder of the US-based SEO consultancy Zyppy. Michael Lewittes Michael Lewittes is the Founder and CEO of Ranktify, a software solution that puts the power of authoritative content creation and search engine optimization right into the hands of users. A media industry veteran, who has held leadership positions at Hearst, News Corp., and NBC, Michael regularly advises retail companies and media corporations on SEO best practices and growth strategies. Last year, Michael served as a Facilitator at Google’s third Search Central Unconference, and he also edited both the media and SEO chapters of the Web Almanac. 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 to project some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein head of the SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she with a sterling reputation. Nothing could sully of her. Nothing stands in the way of her and her wonderful reputation from here throughout the entire SEO industry. She actually does, legit. She's the head of communications here at Wix. It's Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. I'm also knocking on wood. I don't know if people can hear that, but knock, knock, knock, because- Mordy Oberstein: People love you. People love you. Crystal Carter: I know you. I love you too. We do our best. We try. We try. You have a fantastic reputation as well. We do our best. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. Crystal Carter: We do our best, we try to do the good things. Mordy Oberstein: I try. Crystal Carter: And try to just move on from the other things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I just realized my motto, he tries. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix. Where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight each, and every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can also manage your reputation online with the integration we built with Trustpilot. Look for it in all the other great integrations and apps we offer inside of the Wix app market as today, in case you haven't realized we're covering reputation. But in this case, SEO's reputation or SEO's troubled reputation, does it still linger? Why every SEO needs to understand the history of SEO's reputation, as it can impact your bottom line. Does SEO still get a bad rep? And if so, is that fair? No. Fair. How the SEOs on planet Earth can heal our world for you and for me and for the entire digital space. The great Cyrus Shepherd of Zyppy SEO will stop by to take a look at how SEO's bad rep might or might not be our own fault, scandalous. Plus, we'll chat with Michael Lewittes about how the SEO tools have only added fuel to the negative fire that is SEO's reputation. Let's fill out a fire brimstone right there. So gather yourselves ye content goblins, because episode number 70 of the SERP's Up Podcast is going full jet on you with don't give a damn about your reputation because you're living in the past. It's a new generation. By the way. That was the theme song for 'Freaks and Geeks'. It was a great show. It only had one season and it was the most unbelievable show. I'm not even sure why it didn't get a second season. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I feel that way about 'Ugly Betty'. 'Ugly Betty' didn't have enough seasons for me. I absolutely love 'Ugly Betty'. It's America Ferrera, peak America Ferrera, and also Vanessa L. Williams being amazing. Mordy Oberstein: I feel that way about 'Friday Night Lights', which had five seasons, but I could have gone for 50. Crystal Carter: But sometimes they just get a little silly at the end. But then you're already committed, so you just keep watching anyway. Mordy Oberstein: No, it doesn't matter. It's all good. You got me. I'm in. Crystal Carter: Great, right. We're all good. We're all good. Mordy Oberstein: So let's talk about SEO and reputations. I think it's worthwhile to get a little, for those of you who don't know, let me get you caught up a little bit. So back in the day, a lot of, I'll call them SEOs, did a lot of practices in the past. And it looked as SEO as kind of a way to manipulate search engines, and it looked as if SEOs were a low quality service providers trying to manipulate you with all sort of these spammy practices to get you growth that may or may not have been long-lasting, generally not long-lasting. And it's developed with a point where the average person, and this is the way reputation, and it's a good lesson in brand marketing in general, the way reputation unlike Reagan economics does actually trickle down. That was too political for this podcast, but we're going to leave it in anyway. Reputation does actually trickle down. And the things SEOs were doing way back when did trickle down to a wider audience where the average site owner was like, "Well, maybe SEO is kind of eh. Do I really want to touch that?" A lot of it had to do with the focus on backlinks and the shady practices and those, I guess digitally unethical practice around link building. And I think that got further propagated by the tools inadvertently being so focused on link building. So just driving this whole link building thing. And people caught on to that, well, this isn't really the way we want to build a website, or we want to grow our website, or we want the kind of practices that we want to engage with to build a website. Why are you SEOs recommending this? This seems shyster-ish. And I'll end on this. Then you have major figures showing off these aggressive tactics and these less authoritative tactics showing, "Hey, here's how they work and they're great, and SEO should be done this way." And people do see this kind of thing and they're like, "Whoa, that doesn't look good. That's not ethical, that's not great." And then on top of that, just to further solidify SEO's bad reputation, you have major publications most recently, the Verge, which we'll get into, I am assuming a little bit. Saying that the things that SEOs have done over the years have ruined the way, which I think is a little bit hyperbolic. Or even not to take a shot here, but you even have the CEO of Shopify saying, "SEO is snake oil", and this is where we're at. Crystal Carter: There's a couple of things there. So I think that this trick does this and this trick does that, and that trick does this. Back in the day, pre Panda Penguin updates and things, pre that sort of stuff, I think those things did kind of work. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Keyword stuffing, whoever gets stuffed the most keywords wins. Crystal Carter: They kind of did work. And I think that it comes back to the real idea of a reputation. If you think about the reputation of let's say Dolly Parton, because everybody loves Dolly Parton. So let's say about Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton's reputation doesn't just come because of one thing she's done. It comes because of years of her doing good stuff and doing admirable stuff and being a pretty solid human. And everybody has flaws and everybody has ups and downs and things, but overall, the average, the taken as a whole, it's consistently pretty good. And I think that when you think about your reputation of your website, when you think about the reputation of an industry, people are trying to get quick wins, really quick wins without thinking about the long-term benefit sometimes or the long-term impact sometimes. And it might be that, let's say you were running a race and you were like, "Yeah, if I just push this person over, I'll get ahead." It's like, "Yeah, but then everyone will see that you're a terrible person." Mordy Oberstein: Right, yeah, that's exactly what it is. Crystal Carter: You want long-term goals. So you work and you practice and you build up your skills so that you can have that long-term goal. And I think that one of the things that's tricky is that a lot of people were relying on those super quick wins that don't actually contribute to the overall value of the whole. Because a quick win is, there are sometimes quick wins that are totally perfectly fine, but I think a lot of people were relying on those and partially because they were getting results. It's just like if you do a crash diet or something, you might see results straight away, but then in the long-term, you probably won't. So I think that a lot were relying on those things and not thinking about the long-term thing. And I think that part of the reputation has shifted, and I think there's been a lot of emphasis from Google on shifting towards better, more long-term SEO practices, because Google is 20 plus years old now, in the early days of Google people maybe didn't even know how this was all going to play out. So you do whatever works. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, look, I think back in the day, it was back in the day, and the whole web was really in its infancy. And I think that's why I think we want to do this episode, because if you are an SEO, you do need to be aware, especially if you're newer to the SEO conversation, you don't remember the good old days. It's something you need to keep in mind when you're talking to your clients. And even if you are not an SEO and you're listening to this podcast and you're trying to learn about SEO or you're interested in SEO and you see, you come across things that make it sound like SEO is not really a viable tactic. It's scammy. It's spammy. It's snake oil. Why you should ignore that and focus on the actual truth, which is SEO is a great way to grow your website, you just need to understand what is real SEO and what is a bunch of shysters putting stuff up on social media saying, "Look what I did." And to your point, I think one of the things that I'm not a big fan of going on, and if you do this, I am not trying to call you out. I apologize if I hurt your feelings. But if you go out there on social media and you start, "Here's a graph," with absolutely no context whatsoever, "Look at my success." And then you start talking about the aggressive tactics that you used in order to achieve this 'growth', I think it's a bad look overall. I think it's a bad look for SEO, I think it'd possibly a bad look for you. And I don't think it's really reflective of, it might have worked on this site in this situation, but I don't think it's reflective of what actually works on the web, especially long-term. And if you are somebody who's not an SEO and you do see these things, do not think this is what most SEOs are doing and what most SEOs talk about. Because what most SEOs talk about, and the core of the SEO community talks about is how to make websites better for people, how to make websites and content better for search engines, how to grow a website slowly and steadily and substantially. And I think that's why it's not fair, but if you're listening to this podcast and you're looking at all these things that are not great, that's not what SEO is really about. SEO really has, it's not fair because it has pivoted, many years ago, to being far more substantial and we need to weed this out from the narrative. Crystal Carter: I think it's a question of, there are a million types of cars available. There are a million types of suits available. There are a million types of anything available. There's lots of different types of SEOs. There are lots of different good SEOs. There are SEOs who are maybe improving or whatever. And the person that you're working with will have different tactics. However, if they've got demonstrable results and if they've got a solid reputation, and if you can look at their work and see that they're able to see long-term sustainable growth for their clients over time, then that's good. We have an article on the hub that talks about how to choose an SEO agency. One of the good ways is to, what's your oldest client? If they have a client that's been with them for years and years and years, that's a really good sign. If all of their clients turn over every three months or something, that's a terrible sign. And I think that who you are working with makes a really big difference in the end, even if you're taking SEO advice, we also have a podcast on taking SEO advice, look at the kinds of projects that they're working on and the kinds of gains that they're talking about. A solid SEO will be like, "Look at the growth that we saw over 18 months." That's a good amount of time. And then you can see some quick wins on tech SEO things, like if somebody was a really dire situation and then you fix something that was broken, then you can see some quick wins in that. But particularly with content and with some other things, it takes a little bit of time and it should take time. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure there are quick wins. We did a whole webinar with SEJ about quick wins, and there are things that you can do that are not very complicated that really do matter. They might not be quick in the sense that you might not see immediate results. Sometimes with a tech fix, I have no index the entire site, and now it's index. Quick win. But that doesn't mean those are aberrations for the most part. And if you are an SEO, and you are showing, "Hey, look at this quick thing, the quick traffic that I got," contextualize that. There are many things that should not be contextualized, but there are some things that should be, and in this case, if you're saying it's a super quick win, if you're on the social media showing this stuff, say, "This is kind of an aberration. This is not the norm." So the people who are looking at what you're showing don't be like, A, "That's what I expect." Or B, "Well, there's another SEO scammer again." Which brings me to my next point. We as the SEO community have a responsibility. I think Cyrus we'll probably talk a little bit more about this tangentially, but we have a responsibility to fix this reputation, I feel like, as a community to fix this bad reputation that we've had. Because you still have folks like The Verge writing pieces, like, 'The SEOs have ruined the world.' No, we haven't. Crystal Carter: We're not in charge of the web. Mordy Oberstein: It's completely unfair and unjustified. If anything, we do a lot to make the internet a better place, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Well, regularly, I mean, the team from Google have said that they rely on us to say, "Oh, this isn't working in search. This isn't good on search." And I've seen people in our community say, "This isn't a great result for this." And sometimes it's for sensitive stuff, sometimes it's for general search quality, sometimes it's for other things like that, but it's something that people regularly do. And if you're somebody and you see something that's amiss on Google, then you can, you can speak to them and say, "I found this and this isn't good." And that's something that people regularly do. I think in terms of that Verge article that talks about the people that ruin the internet, which is giving us a lot of credit. A lot more credit than we have. I think that- Mordy Oberstein: How powerful am I again? Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And I think that they're talking about some of the content that people are making, and they had a similar article that was somebody who was saying, "Oh, I have to make all this content to sell my key chains on my website." And I'm like, "Well, that sounds like you have low quality products that you're trying to sell with low quality content, so maybe you should sell something else." And I think that that's not necessarily the fault of SEO, but what I would say is in terms of what we see on the SERP, SEOs are very often working in a reactive space. So very often Google will change something on the SERP, and then we need to respond in order to adjust the content to fit to that desire that Google's indicating. So for instance, if you have structure data stuff, you would respond. And so if Google changes the SERP so that the thing that's at the top of the SERP relies on structured data, then you have to go through and add structured data to your content in order to even be in the field of play. Sometimes, for instance, say you recently introduced an examples filter on the SERP. You might think, well, "Oh, hey, I have a page that has examples on it. I'm going to change that now. So the Google knows that this is a page that has examples on it." So very often we're reactive. So I think that in that response, in terms of ruining the internet, a lot of times we're responding to what we're seeing on the internet that people want to see videos, that people want to see examples, that people want. Mordy Oberstein: That's the incentive cycle. And it should be at this point, right? Google's moving towards very strongly, especially in how they're talking about satisfying users in a really substantial quality way, and we need to help facilitate that with the website that we're working with. It should all work in harmony. And I think that's why SEOs, we are stewards of the web to a very large extent. Which is why I think, and I don't want to come off holier than thou or on a soapbox or anything, but we do have a responsibility that we're talking about what we're doing with our clients, what we're doing with content, what we're doing with websites, to speak in a way that's mature and that speak in a way that shows we actually do care about the internet. We don't just care about getting as much traffic as we possibly can, and no matter how we do it doesn't matter. It's not a good look. To put it practically, long-term for us getting clients, the more we do that, the more it's going to propagate the lingering reputation that SEO is snake oil. Which inevitably, every SEO comes across a client that thinks that way. And it's also a crying shame that people who are looking into SEO as a way for them to grow their own websites on their own, look at them like, "Wait a second, maybe I shouldn't be investigating it." I think that's a crying shame too. Crystal Carter: So here's the thing. I've encountered this when pitching to clients, where somebody, he was a dev and he built his own website and he was great, but I'll tell you right now, it was a mess. It was full of issues, and they were making money and they were doing fine or whatever, but there was full of issues, there were a bunch of issues within. And he was like, "Oh, I can read the Google Webmaster Tools guidelines. I don't need you to do that for me," and stuff. I'm like, "Yeah, but I could clean my house really well, but I might have a housekeeper who does it better. One doesn't necessarily preclude the other." I don't have a housekeeper, I'd love one, but I don't. But anyway, he was very skeptical of the entire operation. And I think that the other thing that people get really skeptical of is the price tag. And she talks about this in The Verge articles, "Oh, they make all this money," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'll tell you right now, one of the reasons why SEOs charge what they charge is because, again, PPC people do this as well. So PPC folks will charge depending upon how much the spend is. If somebody's spending a million pounds or a million dollars on ads, you're not going to charge them $500 a month, because the stakes are higher than that. So if they're spending a million dollars a month on ads, you're going to charge them something that's appropriate for the money that they're going to make on that. Because if they can spend that much on ads, they're going to expect a return of something appropriate. So you're going to charge them that. Similarly, one of the things that happens very often with SEOs is we can see all the analytics, so we can see the conversions that you are getting from the work that we're doing. So the fee will be appropriate based on what that is. And if you've got somebody, and I've done smaller projects for smaller folks, and loads of SEOs, all the good SEOs that I know do charity work and do work with special projects and work on things that they care about and things like that. And people aren't just out here like these, what is it? Pirates, mega maniacal pirates, she called us. So people aren't here for all of that stuff. People do plenty of charity things. But if you're seeing that somebody can make, I don't know, $3 million in a month or something over the work that you're doing, you're going to charge appropriately. And that's just reasonable. That's just reasonable. Mordy Oberstein: Got to eat. Crystal Carter: You got to eat. And also, it's not fair for you to not be paid appropriately for the value of your work, supply demand and the value. That's the value of your work. And the thing that's tricky about SEO, and here's the other thing, is that in terms of reputation is that there's a lot of, we talked about this previously as well, there's a lot of myths. They talk about Google as being a black box. There's a lot of misinformation around as well, but there's a lot of good information as well. And so I think that you also want to look at the things that people are referencing. If people are sending you to the Google documentation, then they probably know what they're talking about, because they actually read the Google documentation, which is freely available. That's important to think about as well. I think that we can forgive clients for being a little bit skeptical, but I think we also as SEOs have to spend that time illustrating the value and demonstrating the integrity of our work. Mordy Oberstein: Look, that overall mistrust. A little bit of mistrust is, it should probably be a little bit healthy, a little bit pressure sometimes can be healthy. But it's kind of created this niche market where you have, I've been approached many times about this, "I have an agency working on my website, could you make sure that what they're doing is actually good?" And that is bonkers. I don't take that kind of work. That is not what I'm into. I think I've done it once for a friend just to... Crystal Carter: A sense check. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's just a bad look. It propagates bad relationships. It propagates a bad reputation. It's an incredibly valuable niche market that I'm sure some SEOs are benefiting from. I'm not getting on anybody for taking the money and doing it. Fine. There's a need, go ahead. But it's not a healthy thing for the industry, and it really shows you where it's at by the way, that you have a niche industry of check my agency for me. Crystal Carter: And I think that a lot of times that has to do with trust. So I've had it before where we had a client come to us because they couldn't understand the reports and they couldn't understand what the people were doing for them. And I think that that comes back to client communication. You need to be able to explain what you do to the people that you're working for. If you're doing SEO for someone, you need to be able to explain what you're doing or at least the value. And you also need to be able to demonstrate the value. Because a lot of times, particularly if someone's on retainer, they might not see what you do every month, and it might not necessarily be evident to them. Obviously. If you make a bunch of blogs or something, then they can go, "Oh, okay, I can see that the blogs are on the website and there's some traffic to the blogs, and I can see that that's happening." But if you're doing alt texts on images and you're resizing the images to make them smaller, the images are going to look the same. They might not even notice it. If you're working on a back corner of the website, they might not see that either. So it's very important that you're able to illustrate what you're doing and you're able to explain what you're doing in order to keep trust so they don't go to somebody else and say, "What is all of this? I don't understand this report." Mordy Oberstein: By the way, if you do something that sounds fishy, the cases I've been approached has been about, "This doesn't sound right. They said this, but I don't know." The clients are not stupid. They know this doesn't make any sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that hiding behind jargon can be something that, I think we talked about jargon as well, but hiding the high jargon, not being available to help clients when you need them. Not being able to speak in business terms can build distrust. Because if you start talking about, oh, canonical backlink indexing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's canonical. Crystal Carter: If you start talking about all that stuff, they're going to assume that you're not giving them good value for money. And when things hit the fan, because not everything's going to be plain sailing on our website traffic. There's a lot of volatility on the SERP. I mean, we have update after update, over update on top of an update in the last couple of months, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we talked about with Greg Gifford back at Brighton SEO for our podcast there. Crystal Carter: And I think that it's going to be something that you need to, we talked about it with Greg, you need to be able to explain that stuff to them, and you need to be able to tell them how you're going to write it out. I always say that in terms of marketing, there's no mistake in being wrong. You can't predict the future. Sometimes stuff happens. But the problem that you have is if you don't have any more ideas, if you don't know how to get out of it, if you don't know what to do next, if you can't figure out what caused the mistake in the first place, that's when people get worried. And so you need to be able to be clear and articulate about what you're doing, why it went right, why it went wrong, all of that sort of stuff. And that, I think reduces some of the reputational issues. Mordy Oberstein: So let's then be clear and articulate, as controversial as it might sound about how much of SEO's lingering bad reputation is actually our fault. This gets a little scandalous. Anyway, here's Cyrus Shepherd to handle that. Cyrus Shepard: Hello, this is Cyrus Shepherd answering the question, how much of SEO's bad reputation is or is not legitimate? So I used to have a vice principal in high school, and he dealt with all the disciplinary actions, and he said that even though he only dealt with the same one or 2% of students time and time again, he did that all day long, all week long, all year long. And it tainted his perception of the entire student body. It made it seem like the entire student body was constantly getting in trouble, when in fact, 98% of students weren't doing that. And I think that's kind of the problem that the SEO industry has. If only 5% of SEOs are soiling Google's web results, if that's what the public sees, it makes it seem like all of SEO is comprised of bad people or illegitimate tactics. This is especially poignant this week when we saw a tweet go viral about stealing rankings using a very low effort technique. That tweet had 6.3 million views at the time of this recording, because people want to make money online. There's nothing wrong with that. It's the whole business side of search engine optimization. But when people make money online with no care for the end user or the consequences, it does give us a bad reputation. So I don't know how much of SEO's bad reputation is legitimate or not, but I do know there are a number of kind, hardworking, caring people who like doing good work, who like supporting artists, who like supporting creators, who like magical experiences on the internet. And that's who I would rather focus on and ignore the people making the internet a worse place. Let's celebrate the creators. That's all. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Cyrus. Make sure you follow and look for Cyrus, who by the way, is the founder of Zyppy SEO. Say that one more time. A founder of Zyppy SEO. Is a great name, by the way, over at Cyrus Shepherd on X Twitter at C-Y-R-U-S-S-H-E-P-A-R-D link in the show notes. It's exactly right. I used to work for a property manager company way back when, and we were managed 3000 apartment units. But you heard from the same people over and over again, it always make it feel like we're the worst company. Everyone hates us. We're not good at providing housing for people. Crystal Carter: Always calling up about that one radiator. Mordy Oberstein: I know the radiator, it's a pressure from the boiler. It's not a lot you can do about it. It's like 5% of the universe you just keep hearing from over and over and over again. And I feel it's very much the same way with SEO. Most SEOs are amazing people. The Glenn Gaves, the Cyrus' of the world, the Lily Rays of the world, the Alidas of the world, the Barry Schwartzs, I guess are legit, not just great SEOs, but really wonderful people in general. But you do have this five, 10% of the universe, I think they're all on Reddit, but... Crystal Carter: They're going to come for you, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Who just propagate this old school, manipulate the search engine reputation, and it does, for whatever reason, kind driving this lingering reputation about SEO that to a certain extent as that Verge article illustrated, we just can't shake. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think that there are so many good folks, and there are so many good folks who are just quietly going about their business. You talked about a lot of high profile SEOs like Lily, et cetera, and they're great. They're wonderful, they're fantastic. And thank you so much Alida and Glen and Lily and Roddy and everybody for sharing all of the things you share. Mordy Oberstein: And Barry. Crystal Carter: And Barry for sharing all of the wonderful things that you share. However, I know tons, tons of in-house, SEOs, agency, SEOs, who just ride out every day just getting those results, getting those results- Getting those results and just quietly minding their business, but being really good at it. And I think that those folks are the folks who saved a bunch of businesses during COVID. Those are folks who help small businesses grow, who help people to avoid mistakes, who help people to discover new product lines that they didn't even realize that they could possibly do, because it's online. Mordy Oberstein: Look at ourselves, pat on the back, look at Nati Elimelech, Einat, Shira Amit I mean, all the people who are working on our SEO product tools at Wix are bringing SEO to literally millions of people who might not have known how to go about SEO or how to think about their pages from a search engine perspective. And now they are. So SEOs do amazing things, and that Cyrus is right. We should focus on that. Crystal Carter: If you're a good SEO, give yourself a round of applause. Mordy Oberstein: And a pat on the back and a gold star. But also, let's talk a little bit more about how the tools have played into the bad reputation for a minute as we shift gears from being positive very, very quickly. Crystal Carter: Very quickly, let's get back to the... Mordy Oberstein: Hey, it's my style. As we alluded to before, SEO tools for not any fault of their own have played a little bit of a role in the wider perception of SEO, in the ways that maybe SEO tools haven't really evolved from back in the days, the ways that maybe they should have. Which can maybe lead to overemphasis on some less than updated SEO practices that kind of maybe further sully our good name. The fact that SEOs may not have met the call for a tool revolution, although some tools really have, I'll call out Suganthan Mohanadasan with keyword insights, doing some amazing things and so forth. But one person who we were talking to at Brighton SEO, who is taking it very seriously, is the founder of Rank, which by the way is on a Wix site. Michael Lewittes, who is now going to join us to talk about the role of SEO tools in the future and how that can play a role in the further development of SEO's good name as we take a very special edition of Tool Time. So welcome to the show, Michael Lewittes, how are you? Michael Lewittes: It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Crystal Carter: We are so pleased to have you. It was an absolute pleasure to finally Meet you at Brighton SEO, and it is such a pleasure to have you here today. Michael Lewittes: Well, it was great to see you and Mordy too. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Did you know, by the way, so I've known Michael for a while, but I've never met in person. And he sends me a DM, "I don't want to freak you out, but I'm six foot eight. I know you can't tell by the Zoom calls." Michael Lewittes: Just so that when you meet me, you don't get like, "Oh, wow, he looks a lot smaller." And then you see that I'm actually six foot eight, I'm not six foot. Mordy Oberstein: I think five foot eight would be pushing it. Michael Lewittes: That's about right. Crystal Carter: I was literally rattling through my brain. I was like, "I don't remember you being that tall. Do I remember that?" I'm just trying to remember the things. Mordy Oberstein: Do you imagine if he was, and you didn't remember him being that? I'm like, "No. I always thought he was like five foot eight." Crystal Carter: I don't remember. Oh gosh. These are the things that rattle through your head and you're like, "Do I just be polite? Do I just keep going?" Yeah. These are the things. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so we were talking before about SEO's bad reputation and how the SEO tools, for lack of intention though, have I think in some ways helped propagate this or perpetuate rather this idea of SEO being a little bit on the spammy, scammy side because the tools really haven't fundamentally evolved like the industry has. See the exclusion, like I mentioned before, Keyword Insights, there are some tools that have, so I don't want to say no. But you founded it, Ranktify, and I think we've even had a few conversations about this. One of the intentions behind it has been about moving the needle, moving the bar, so that SEO tools align to what SEO is now. So by the way, feel free to pitch Ranktify and let's talk about that. Michael Lewittes: Well, all that said, 1-800. No. So the other thing is, and I'm not going to knock keyword research, it is important, but if you have a furniture store or if you're a news organization and you're writing about President Biden and these tools tell you, "Oh, wow, the competition's too tough." It's, you're never going to say, "Mrs. Biden's husband vetoed a bill yesterday." You could, but no one's going to search for that. And I was a journalist for 20 years and then became obsessed with SEO. And so the written word is very important to me. And also you have to see over the years, Google has definitely moved away from the easy tricks to really analyzing the content itself. Ed is really not just a concept for the quality graders, it's really for the users and the people who are generating the content. And so everything really has to exude this expertise, authoritative and trustworthiness. And so at a certain point, I had run another company, a content company, I had sold it, had some time. And one day it hit me, SEOs don't really care too much about creating content. And I get that, and reporters or people who are creating content don't want to spend their time SEO-fying content. So I started to think, well, it's really one and the same thing actually these days. It's about making content that's helpful. So forget about all the link building, forget about all the keywords, just concentrate on making the most robust authoritative piece on any particular topic. And that's why I created Ranktify at 1-800. I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: And that helpful thing, they tried to steer us in that direction and things. But I think helpful comes down to who wants to read this and why do they want to read it? And that's really what you should be considering when you're thinking about which content you're making really. Michael Lewittes: I have to say, a real pivotal moment, I'll name drop John Mueller here, but when I was running my other company and we were fact-checking celebrity gossip. And so the algorithm is an algorithm, it doesn't know people necessarily or their reputation or how well-connected they are in Hollywood. And I remember during one of those office hours, I said to him something like, "But our content really is much more authoritative than the people we're debunking." They're claiming George Clooney's getting divorced. And George Clooney is telling me he's not getting divorced. And yet we knew nothing about SEO practices at the time, so we were writing sort of maybe 40 words saying, "National Inquirer says this, we say this, and George Clooney tells us X." But the algorithm isn't going to pick up on just George Clooney tells us this. And one thing that John said during that office hours, he said, "Listen, you may be an expert on this topic, and you may have great sources, but you have to prove to your users why the story isn't true." And really that set us off when I was running that company on making everything transparent. So it wasn't anymore a source tells us, we were able to back up like George Clooney tells us this. And not only that, he was pictured yesterday in New York with his wife linked to that. So it's really important when you're creating content, forget about all that link building stuff. Forget about the keywords. Think about how you can prove to the user that you know more, that you are an expert on this particular topic, and take them through the steps so that they can, in a sense, given everything you told them, they create it themselves and go, "Wow, that's right. That's why it's better than X, Y, and Z." Mordy Oberstein: So first a question and then a statement. Question, was it true that Tom Cruise was engaged to a panda bear and was that denied by the panda bear? Michael Lewittes: He was not engaged. I have a great Tom Cruise story for another time, but not engaged. Lovely man. Lovely man. Also six footed. Crystal Carter: I was just going to ask you that. Mordy Oberstein: It was hard to judge that from the jumping on the couch. It looked like he was much shorter, but I was wrong. A statement, I totally agree with what you're saying. And I think that one of the things that I think does that or that helps you qualify whether or not a piece is actually helpful to the user is that whether or not you've really parsed that topic well enough. So a lot of times what you might consider to be a great piece of content, but a lot of that context doesn't exist, and that one point that you're making might be great. But as a piece overall, you haven't really parsed out the topic, what came first, what came next, what might happen in the future, and all the different zigzags that... In this case, let's talk about a news story that the news story kind of went about in order to be where it's at now. If that's not covered, then it might be great, but it's not helpful. Michael Lewittes: That's right. And one of the things is you have to just really be incredibly exhaustive. And another thing that sort of, John said, he was talking more about the layout of our website, but I think it pertains to content as well. It's, have a third party look at it sometimes, just a fresh pair of eyes, and are they going to walk away saying, "Okay, now I fully get all of this"? Crystal Carter: You mentioned keyword research and things, and I think that really keyword research should be used as a sense check. Not necessarily the end all be all of the thing. But if you're seeing that there's more search volume for this than there is for that, then you can say, "Okay, well people seem more interested in this somewhat than they are in that." That doesn't mean that you don't necessarily write for it on the topic. Michael Lewittes: That's right. You shouldn't be scared away from a topic because of the keywords. If this is what you do, or this is what you want to write about, go in full force. It's like pretty much everything in life. Like, "Oh, I know I'm never going to succeed at it, so I'm not even going to try." It's like... Crystal Carter: Well, that's ridiculous. Michael Lewittes: No, but you hear this, little kids- Mordy Oberstein: I never would've got married if that was the case. Crystal Carter: Well, I'll tell you right now, I'm not a good tennis player, but I really enjoy tennis, and if I keep it up for long enough, I'll be better than I was before. So that's fine. That'll be good enough for me. Michael Lewittes: That's right. That's right. And so taking that, so let's say there's a local community tennis tournament, you might win it. Crystal Carter: And that'll be a big day for me. Michael Lewittes: And it's not about Wimbledon. I always tell people, you don't need to beat the internet, you just need to beat your competitors. You don't- Mordy Oberstein: To go full circle on this, the tools as they're currently constructed, I say the tool very broadly, aren't conducive for that. Or they're conducive for, okay, let me look at the keyword. Oh no, it's hard. It's easy. It's got this search volume. As opposed to, here's a topic I know I need to write about, help me better understand what I should and should not be including in this topic, and how could I best go about being successful with this topic. That they're not geared and that's where I feel a lot of the tools, to no fault of their own, to a certain extent, are perpetuating this old school SEO outlook, which again, just sullies SEO's reputation to a certain extent. Michael Lewittes: And that's why I created this, because I wanted stuff that was robust for me as a reader and as a writer. I wanted to sort of create something where you can create your content, you think it's great. And then it may be, by the way. And you put into the tool, and we'll tell you really what the blind spots are, the things that you're missing that to make it more expertise, more trustworthy, more robust, more helpful. And I think the problem is a lot of these tools were created by SEOs who were not writers. And I think that's the big difference. I've written or edited, I thought it was 75,000, but when I started doing the math again with my kids, it's probably closer to 90,000 articles, in my career. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, Barry, is that you? Michael Lewittes: Yeah. No, it's crazy. So I did a column for the Daily News that ran seven days a week. We were there in the office five, and that was something like 10 articles a day. And then the content company that I ran for a decade, we were doing about 30 articles. When you start doing that, and then what I did for the New York Post and for Cosmo, and it just sort of, as you added it all up, it's like, "Oh my goodness, that's a tremendous amount." That's why I don't read anymore. I've done it enough. So I can tell you right away when I'm reading something like, "Oh, that's big," for instance, not the biggest deal, but take entertainment story like, "Oh, no, look what Taylor did now," first paragraph, and then the second paragraph gets into it. It's like, no, no, who, what, where, when and how, first paragraph, very simple. Mordy Oberstein: Taylor Swift ruins football her entire season by taking focus off of football and onto Taylor Swift. Hot, spicy take right there. Crystal Carter: But her jets, she's trying to bury- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that was a great SEO thing, you saw that? She had a whole thing where she was in trouble, I don't follow Taylor Swift. Crystal Carter: If you did follow her, you would need a private jet to do so. Michael Lewittes: Why do you have 13 written on your hand? But okay, continue. Mordy Oberstein: I don't understand the reference, by the way. Crystal Carter: That was a deep cut. Mordy Oberstein: Because I like Dan Marino? Michael Lewittes: By the way, another embarrassing story. Shortcut, friendly with her people, they invite me to a show. I get front row seats. My niece can't come. I'm there alone. Crystal Carter: At Taylor Swift? Michael Lewittes: A room of 13 year olds and a grown man. Mordy Oberstein: That's awkward. Crystal Carter: This is why I didn't go see Dua Lipa. I love Dua Lipa, but I did not go and see her because I was just like, "It'll just be children and I don't want to go and spend my time at a creche." Michael Lewittes: But I knew if I didn't show up clearly they would see that the tickets weren't picked up, they would see I wasn't in the front row. Run into a friend who's there with his daughter, and he says, "Oh, who are you here with?" And I'm like, "Alone." Mordy Oberstein: I like to go to Bob Dylan concerts because I miss my grandparents. Michael Lewittes: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, back to SEO. Michael Lewittes: SEO. Crystal Carter: SEO. Mordy Oberstein: So I've used Ranktify, it's a great tool, and I think that's one of the things that it does do, you put it really perfectly, it fills those gaps that you didn't even know existed. But there are tools that kind of do that, but they're very top level as opposed to actually offering you the specific details and the specific nuance that other people are covering or whatever it is. That you can have a better idea of, "Okay, this is where the topic is directionally, I need to start thinking about it this way." Crystal Carter: So I'm going to just jump in here and say, every time I see Michael, he goes, "Well, but wait, there's one more thing." Because when he showed me Ranktify, there were so many different sections to this, and I'd be interested to hear you just give the top levels of those quickly. Because I think that this is interesting for anybody who's creating content to think about the levels of content creation. You'll do your research, you get your ideas, and then there's other levels that you can do to add more to it. And whether that might be when you're creating the content, but it also might be when you're going back doing when your content refreshes, when you're looking at a content audit, that sort of thing. Yeah, it's a great tool. Michael Lewittes: Thank you. So there are a lot of functionality. And by the way, there's one more thing since I last saw you, and there may be by the end of this podcast. So we take you through a lot of things. Some of it is SEO, some of it is just good writing, but good writing dovetails into good SEO. So the first thing we do is we check your spelling and grammar, because a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes people will question the trustworthiness, may not be an issue for Google. Then we basically say, "Hey," again, I don't focus on keywords, but if you're missing the keyword in the H1 in the first paragraph, that's a problem. Crystal Carter: Yeah. It just makes your job harder. Michael Lewittes: Right. Again, going back to that example, if I were to even make it worse, like, "Oh, guess what celebrity did this," and you get to it, two or three paragraphs, by the way, I have seen that where they've buried it, honestly, three or four paragraphs below. Crystal Carter: That just makes people angry. Michael Lewittes: So we check the spelling, the grammar, the keywords, make sure that you have them where they need to be. We do check your anchor text so that it doesn't seem spammy, like click here. What we do is we actually tell you, you need to give context to what you're linking to, because think of it from the user side. I want to click on a link and know what I'm going to get on the other side. And I'll tell you, and I'm sure Google is picking up on this, there are a lot of places that do not even semantically similar stuff. They do tangential stuff. They'll say, "So-and-so showed up dressed like this," and then it's suddenly a gallery of people who wore blue, it's unrelated. So what we do is we try to help you and make sure that your anchor text is related. We'll tell you actually if it's unrelated, and then suggest how to make it better. From there, we check whether your content is unique or duplicate, where it's been, even if it's semantically similar, it doesn't have to be direct quotes. Who else has done this. And everything we do, by the way, is linkable, clickable, verifiable. So when we say it, we have these little blue bubbles underneath, where it came from. You click on it'll take you to that area and it will highlight it. And then I say, the biggest thing is we find all the missing facts and data that you haven't included in your piece, which to me are table stakes. I was talking to, I won't say the name of the publisher, but they were complaining. This goes more than a year ago. It's such a great example. They were saying, "Oh, our stuff is better than the New York Times, but because they're the Times they rank higher." I'm like, "Okay, what story do you think you should rank hiring with?" So it was when President Biden got his second COVID shot. So we throw it into the tool, we go through the spelling, the grammar problems, the anchor text, which was all over the place. And we get to the facts and I'm like, "Well, I see that New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, a bunch of other named reputable places are saying that Biden had COVID four weeks ago." And they were like, "Oh, but everyone knows that." I'm like, "Actually, maybe they do, maybe they don't. I forgot." And when you start seeing certain data points over and over again, that's table stakes. That's the kind of thing that Google will notice. Ooh, you dropped the ball. You have to mention certain things. So we find everything to give it in context and to help it become more robust. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. It's super cool. Check it out, ranktify.com Michael Lewittes: At 1-800. Mordy Oberstein: Michael, where can people find you? Michael Lewittes: Local saloon. No. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm saying, before nine o'clock, where could they find you? Michael Lewittes: Or seven o'clock. LinkedIn. There's a Ranktify and Michael Lewittes account, Twitter, the Facebook, all of it. We're across all social media. Mordy Oberstein: But we'll link all or at least one of your social profiles in the show notes. Michael Lewittes: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Well, thanks coming by and I'll talk to you out there in the ether. Michael Lewittes: Thanks so much. Good to see you, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Michael Lewittes: And you too, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: That's okay, I get it. Michael Lewittes: I started that way. Mordy Oberstein: Break it down, full circle. Take care, man. All right, so thanks again, Michael for stopping by. Definitely check out the Ranktify tool, a little plug for it at ranktify.com, and we'll link to it in the show notes. Very cool. Anyway, you know what's also really cool, Barry is very cool. When you think Barry Schwartz, I think, wow, that's cool. He's so cool. Crystal Carter: Obviously, obviously. The king of cool. Mordy Oberstein: Some people try really hard to be cool, but they end up not being cool. Barry doesn't try at all, but that makes them cool. Crystal Carter: Basically. Mordy Oberstein: So this of course means the part we wax poetic about Barry clearly means it's time for some snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news, two articles for you this week, both from Barry Schwartz from the newly beautifully designed Search Engine Roundtable. First up, Google, no such thing as perfect formula for ranking. This is not something very complicated, but it's based on a statement that Google's Danny Sullivan said, and I applaud Barry for covering these sort of things because it does help us be in the right mindset to how we should think about SEO. And what. Danny said was, "Hey, there's no perfect formula to follow that must be used to rank highly in Google search. It really all does depend on what the piece of content is, what the pages is, what the website is, what the users are looking for, what the intent is, what users need, what users want. There's no set checklist follow boom, boom, boom, boom, that guarantees ranking at all. It really does all depend on what you're trying to do, what users are looking for, what everything is all about. And it's a little bit more holistic than just a checklist in general, anyway." Which brings us to our second article, again from Barry on seroundtable.com. Google, author bylines don't help you rank better. Google doesn't check credentials. Now, this is based on an article from The Verge that was talking about SEO a little bit, and they made some interesting claims. It was an interesting article, I found it a little bit off center. I'm not getting into that here, but part of what they said was that Google looks at author bios and that's a ranking factor that helps you rank better. And Google's Danny Sullivan said, "No, not exactly." To quote Danny, "Author bylines aren't something you do for Google, and they don't help you rank better." He goes on to say, "This is something you do for your readers and publications. Doing them may exhibit the type of other characteristics our ranking systems find align with useful content." So I think this comes out as part of the whole or a consequence of the whole EEAT conversation, experience, expertise of authoritative and trustworthiness. Sometimes that conversation comes off like a couple of checklist items you need to do to show EEAT. We talked about this Lee Ray on the podcast previously, that is not the case. So one of these checklist items is be, oh, have an author byline, check. Got it. Now I have EEAT. When, again, EEAT is very holistic. It's a concept. It's really about the user experience and the content quality itself. Now, if I want to read into what Danny's saying a little bit where he says "Publications, doing them, meaning adding the author bylines may exhibit the type of other characteristics our ranking systems find align with useful content." I don't want to put words in his mouth, and I'm speculating a little bit here when I say this, I wonder what Google does is something like this. Yes, it's not looking at the author byline one to one, you have one, you rank better. But Google is assessing quality of a page in a little bit more conceptual, holistic way. And in assessing this quality picture, quality content, quality user experience, holistically if it's factoring in, what's there on the page, what speaks to the quality of the page and perhaps the user byline. I keep saying the user byline, the author byline. Perhaps the author byline, if Google does look and say, "Okay, holistically speaking, if we're going to assess quality, this does maybe say that there's a little bit greater sense of focus on quality and transparency on this page, and it may factor into the overall quality valuation, quality experience of that particular page." So it's not direct, it's not even indirect, it'd be like secondary, secondary, secondary, but in a very holistic way having the author byline in there might be part of the overall very holistic quality evaluation, quality experience, quality picture that Google's looking for. Either way it doesn't really matter. It's really good for users to have it there, so have it there anyway, which is what Danny is saying. There is also the argument, I'll bring it up very briefly, that having the author byline can create a semantic connection between the author and the topic being covered. I'll put that into English. So let's say for example, Barry Schwartz writes an article about SEO, not for Search Engine, seroundtable.com, but for a website that he doesn't usually write for. And Google might be able to say, "Oh, there's a connection here. We know who Barry Schwartz is, Barry Schwartz is Mr. SEO. He talks about SEO all the time. In fact, that's all Barry ever talks about, is SEO. He's writing an article on whatever website. This helps us better understand or contextualize that this article is about SEO. Or let's just maybe have greater trust in the fact that this article is going to be talking about SEO, because we know Barry, we know he talks about SEO, we know he talks about SEO in a really quality way. So here's Barry again writing an article on whatever website, we can make that connection and whatever that means for ranking is whatever it means." I don't think it means much. Maybe in some cases, I don't know. But leaving the ranking equation aside for a second, I do think, obviously that Google's able to make those semantic connections, is able to connect the dots. Oh, we know who this author is, especially when they're a well-known author. We know what they generally write about. We have a pretty good understanding of what this person, who this person is and what they tend to write about, and we now see them writing here. We're able to make that connection and whatever that means for rankings, probably not too much, in most cases, they're able to do so. That's the entity based argument for having author bylines on the pages. Again, the real main thing is that it does just make sense for your users. It builds trust and so far may keep them on the page longer, which can factor into things, especially you're following the DOJ trial and all that stuff. And again, it might align to the overall, be encompass in the overall quality picture of the page itself, which I think is maybe what Danny is alluding to. Anyway, that's it for this week's snappy SEO news Coming full circle, by the way, when I say wax poetic, I immediately think of wax paper and turning it into origami. That's my association to waxing poetic. Crystal Carter: Interesting. I think- Mordy Oberstein: Isn't that a weird association? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I don't know. I think of Walt Whitman. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That makes, that's a normal association. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "Oh, captain, my captain," and then 'Dead Poet's Society', and then- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it makes total sense. My warped mind thinks, oh, wax poetically, let me turn wax paper into poetry. Crystal Carter: Okay. All right. That's cool. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. That's weird. Anyway. Crystal Carter: Thanks for sharing. Mordy Oberstein: Sure. You know who's not weird? Crystal Carter: That was your best pivot ever. Mic drop. That was your best pivot. Mordy Oberstein: You know who's not weird? Montse Cano, she's fabulous. She's always sharing great information about SEO on Twitter, SEO information you can rely on, not snake oil SEO information, but good, reputable SEO information. She's just also a shining light, a wonderfully nice, friendly, accessible person, which also further solidifies SEO's reputation as not being snake oil. So make sure you follow her on Twitter X at M-O-N-T-S-E-C-A-N-O, and we'll link to her profile in the show notes. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. You absolutely can follow her, because she's wonderful. She's super smart and she's super kind- Mordy Oberstein: So nice. Crystal Carter: And she's really active in the community, so she does podcasts, she does speaking, she does writing. She just loads of great stuff, Mordy Oberstein: And she's active on social. It's like a good person to follow, because they're actually active on social. So give her a follow. That's what we're saying. I'm glad that we can help SEO with this reputation problems. Crystal Carter: Yeah. We all got to do our part, really. We all got to do our part to just try to make sure that people know that we're doing good stuff out there. Mordy Oberstein: I'm now immediately going to share a hockey stick graph on social media. Crystal Carter: Just with no context, and the hockey stick went from like zero to seven. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, that's a great idea. Just show the chart and literally tweet nothing but the chart. You, one time, they dared me to do something like that when AI was first coming out as a whole big thing. Like, "Oh, Mordy, just tweet AI with nothing," and I did. And I got tons of engagement. Crystal Carter: You literally wrote AI, ChatGPT, Bard. Mordy Oberstein: It worked. So thanks for that. I got a couple of nice comments and replies. It was wonderful. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you. And 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 user behavior and SEO. What's changed? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub wix.com/seo/learn Look to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us 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 Cyrus Shepard Michael Lewittes Montse Cano Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Zyppy SEO Ranktify What does good E-E-A-T even mean? News: Google: No Such Thing As Perfect Formula For Ranking Google: Author Bylines Don't Help You Rank Better; Google Doesn't Check Credentials Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Cyrus Shepard Michael Lewittes Montse Cano Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Zyppy SEO Ranktify What does good E-E-A-T even mean? News: Google: No Such Thing As Perfect Formula For Ranking Google: Author Bylines Don't Help You Rank Better; Google Doesn't Check Credentials 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 to project some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein head of the SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she with a sterling reputation. Nothing could sully of her. Nothing stands in the way of her and her wonderful reputation from here throughout the entire SEO industry. She actually does, legit. She's the head of communications here at Wix. It's Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. I'm also knocking on wood. I don't know if people can hear that, but knock, knock, knock, because- Mordy Oberstein: People love you. People love you. Crystal Carter: I know you. I love you too. We do our best. We try. We try. You have a fantastic reputation as well. We do our best. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Okay. Crystal Carter: We do our best, we try to do the good things. Mordy Oberstein: I try. Crystal Carter: And try to just move on from the other things. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I just realized my motto, he tries. The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix. Where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight each, and every month over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. But where you can also manage your reputation online with the integration we built with Trustpilot. Look for it in all the other great integrations and apps we offer inside of the Wix app market as today, in case you haven't realized we're covering reputation. But in this case, SEO's reputation or SEO's troubled reputation, does it still linger? Why every SEO needs to understand the history of SEO's reputation, as it can impact your bottom line. Does SEO still get a bad rep? And if so, is that fair? No. Fair. How the SEOs on planet Earth can heal our world for you and for me and for the entire digital space. The great Cyrus Shepherd of Zyppy SEO will stop by to take a look at how SEO's bad rep might or might not be our own fault, scandalous. Plus, we'll chat with Michael Lewittes about how the SEO tools have only added fuel to the negative fire that is SEO's reputation. Let's fill out a fire brimstone right there. So gather yourselves ye content goblins, because episode number 70 of the SERP's Up Podcast is going full jet on you with don't give a damn about your reputation because you're living in the past. It's a new generation. By the way. That was the theme song for 'Freaks and Geeks'. It was a great show. It only had one season and it was the most unbelievable show. I'm not even sure why it didn't get a second season. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I feel that way about 'Ugly Betty'. 'Ugly Betty' didn't have enough seasons for me. I absolutely love 'Ugly Betty'. It's America Ferrera, peak America Ferrera, and also Vanessa L. Williams being amazing. Mordy Oberstein: I feel that way about 'Friday Night Lights', which had five seasons, but I could have gone for 50. Crystal Carter: But sometimes they just get a little silly at the end. But then you're already committed, so you just keep watching anyway. Mordy Oberstein: No, it doesn't matter. It's all good. You got me. I'm in. Crystal Carter: Great, right. We're all good. We're all good. Mordy Oberstein: So let's talk about SEO and reputations. I think it's worthwhile to get a little, for those of you who don't know, let me get you caught up a little bit. So back in the day, a lot of, I'll call them SEOs, did a lot of practices in the past. And it looked as SEO as kind of a way to manipulate search engines, and it looked as if SEOs were a low quality service providers trying to manipulate you with all sort of these spammy practices to get you growth that may or may not have been long-lasting, generally not long-lasting. And it's developed with a point where the average person, and this is the way reputation, and it's a good lesson in brand marketing in general, the way reputation unlike Reagan economics does actually trickle down. That was too political for this podcast, but we're going to leave it in anyway. Reputation does actually trickle down. And the things SEOs were doing way back when did trickle down to a wider audience where the average site owner was like, "Well, maybe SEO is kind of eh. Do I really want to touch that?" A lot of it had to do with the focus on backlinks and the shady practices and those, I guess digitally unethical practice around link building. And I think that got further propagated by the tools inadvertently being so focused on link building. So just driving this whole link building thing. And people caught on to that, well, this isn't really the way we want to build a website, or we want to grow our website, or we want the kind of practices that we want to engage with to build a website. Why are you SEOs recommending this? This seems shyster-ish. And I'll end on this. Then you have major figures showing off these aggressive tactics and these less authoritative tactics showing, "Hey, here's how they work and they're great, and SEO should be done this way." And people do see this kind of thing and they're like, "Whoa, that doesn't look good. That's not ethical, that's not great." And then on top of that, just to further solidify SEO's bad reputation, you have major publications most recently, the Verge, which we'll get into, I am assuming a little bit. Saying that the things that SEOs have done over the years have ruined the way, which I think is a little bit hyperbolic. Or even not to take a shot here, but you even have the CEO of Shopify saying, "SEO is snake oil", and this is where we're at. Crystal Carter: There's a couple of things there. So I think that this trick does this and this trick does that, and that trick does this. Back in the day, pre Panda Penguin updates and things, pre that sort of stuff, I think those things did kind of work. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Keyword stuffing, whoever gets stuffed the most keywords wins. Crystal Carter: They kind of did work. And I think that it comes back to the real idea of a reputation. If you think about the reputation of let's say Dolly Parton, because everybody loves Dolly Parton. So let's say about Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton's reputation doesn't just come because of one thing she's done. It comes because of years of her doing good stuff and doing admirable stuff and being a pretty solid human. And everybody has flaws and everybody has ups and downs and things, but overall, the average, the taken as a whole, it's consistently pretty good. And I think that when you think about your reputation of your website, when you think about the reputation of an industry, people are trying to get quick wins, really quick wins without thinking about the long-term benefit sometimes or the long-term impact sometimes. And it might be that, let's say you were running a race and you were like, "Yeah, if I just push this person over, I'll get ahead." It's like, "Yeah, but then everyone will see that you're a terrible person." Mordy Oberstein: Right, yeah, that's exactly what it is. Crystal Carter: You want long-term goals. So you work and you practice and you build up your skills so that you can have that long-term goal. And I think that one of the things that's tricky is that a lot of people were relying on those super quick wins that don't actually contribute to the overall value of the whole. Because a quick win is, there are sometimes quick wins that are totally perfectly fine, but I think a lot of people were relying on those and partially because they were getting results. It's just like if you do a crash diet or something, you might see results straight away, but then in the long-term, you probably won't. So I think that a lot were relying on those things and not thinking about the long-term thing. And I think that part of the reputation has shifted, and I think there's been a lot of emphasis from Google on shifting towards better, more long-term SEO practices, because Google is 20 plus years old now, in the early days of Google people maybe didn't even know how this was all going to play out. So you do whatever works. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, no, look, I think back in the day, it was back in the day, and the whole web was really in its infancy. And I think that's why I think we want to do this episode, because if you are an SEO, you do need to be aware, especially if you're newer to the SEO conversation, you don't remember the good old days. It's something you need to keep in mind when you're talking to your clients. And even if you are not an SEO and you're listening to this podcast and you're trying to learn about SEO or you're interested in SEO and you see, you come across things that make it sound like SEO is not really a viable tactic. It's scammy. It's spammy. It's snake oil. Why you should ignore that and focus on the actual truth, which is SEO is a great way to grow your website, you just need to understand what is real SEO and what is a bunch of shysters putting stuff up on social media saying, "Look what I did." And to your point, I think one of the things that I'm not a big fan of going on, and if you do this, I am not trying to call you out. I apologize if I hurt your feelings. But if you go out there on social media and you start, "Here's a graph," with absolutely no context whatsoever, "Look at my success." And then you start talking about the aggressive tactics that you used in order to achieve this 'growth', I think it's a bad look overall. I think it's a bad look for SEO, I think it'd possibly a bad look for you. And I don't think it's really reflective of, it might have worked on this site in this situation, but I don't think it's reflective of what actually works on the web, especially long-term. And if you are somebody who's not an SEO and you do see these things, do not think this is what most SEOs are doing and what most SEOs talk about. Because what most SEOs talk about, and the core of the SEO community talks about is how to make websites better for people, how to make websites and content better for search engines, how to grow a website slowly and steadily and substantially. And I think that's why it's not fair, but if you're listening to this podcast and you're looking at all these things that are not great, that's not what SEO is really about. SEO really has, it's not fair because it has pivoted, many years ago, to being far more substantial and we need to weed this out from the narrative. Crystal Carter: I think it's a question of, there are a million types of cars available. There are a million types of suits available. There are a million types of anything available. There's lots of different types of SEOs. There are lots of different good SEOs. There are SEOs who are maybe improving or whatever. And the person that you're working with will have different tactics. However, if they've got demonstrable results and if they've got a solid reputation, and if you can look at their work and see that they're able to see long-term sustainable growth for their clients over time, then that's good. We have an article on the hub that talks about how to choose an SEO agency. One of the good ways is to, what's your oldest client? If they have a client that's been with them for years and years and years, that's a really good sign. If all of their clients turn over every three months or something, that's a terrible sign. And I think that who you are working with makes a really big difference in the end, even if you're taking SEO advice, we also have a podcast on taking SEO advice, look at the kinds of projects that they're working on and the kinds of gains that they're talking about. A solid SEO will be like, "Look at the growth that we saw over 18 months." That's a good amount of time. And then you can see some quick wins on tech SEO things, like if somebody was a really dire situation and then you fix something that was broken, then you can see some quick wins in that. But particularly with content and with some other things, it takes a little bit of time and it should take time. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, for sure there are quick wins. We did a whole webinar with SEJ about quick wins, and there are things that you can do that are not very complicated that really do matter. They might not be quick in the sense that you might not see immediate results. Sometimes with a tech fix, I have no index the entire site, and now it's index. Quick win. But that doesn't mean those are aberrations for the most part. And if you are an SEO, and you are showing, "Hey, look at this quick thing, the quick traffic that I got," contextualize that. There are many things that should not be contextualized, but there are some things that should be, and in this case, if you're saying it's a super quick win, if you're on the social media showing this stuff, say, "This is kind of an aberration. This is not the norm." So the people who are looking at what you're showing don't be like, A, "That's what I expect." Or B, "Well, there's another SEO scammer again." Which brings me to my next point. We as the SEO community have a responsibility. I think Cyrus we'll probably talk a little bit more about this tangentially, but we have a responsibility to fix this reputation, I feel like, as a community to fix this bad reputation that we've had. Because you still have folks like The Verge writing pieces, like, 'The SEOs have ruined the world.' No, we haven't. Crystal Carter: We're not in charge of the web. Mordy Oberstein: It's completely unfair and unjustified. If anything, we do a lot to make the internet a better place, I feel like. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Well, regularly, I mean, the team from Google have said that they rely on us to say, "Oh, this isn't working in search. This isn't good on search." And I've seen people in our community say, "This isn't a great result for this." And sometimes it's for sensitive stuff, sometimes it's for general search quality, sometimes it's for other things like that, but it's something that people regularly do. And if you're somebody and you see something that's amiss on Google, then you can, you can speak to them and say, "I found this and this isn't good." And that's something that people regularly do. I think in terms of that Verge article that talks about the people that ruin the internet, which is giving us a lot of credit. A lot more credit than we have. I think that- Mordy Oberstein: How powerful am I again? Crystal Carter: Right, exactly. And I think that they're talking about some of the content that people are making, and they had a similar article that was somebody who was saying, "Oh, I have to make all this content to sell my key chains on my website." And I'm like, "Well, that sounds like you have low quality products that you're trying to sell with low quality content, so maybe you should sell something else." And I think that that's not necessarily the fault of SEO, but what I would say is in terms of what we see on the SERP, SEOs are very often working in a reactive space. So very often Google will change something on the SERP, and then we need to respond in order to adjust the content to fit to that desire that Google's indicating. So for instance, if you have structure data stuff, you would respond. And so if Google changes the SERP so that the thing that's at the top of the SERP relies on structured data, then you have to go through and add structured data to your content in order to even be in the field of play. Sometimes, for instance, say you recently introduced an examples filter on the SERP. You might think, well, "Oh, hey, I have a page that has examples on it. I'm going to change that now. So the Google knows that this is a page that has examples on it." So very often we're reactive. So I think that in that response, in terms of ruining the internet, a lot of times we're responding to what we're seeing on the internet that people want to see videos, that people want to see examples, that people want. Mordy Oberstein: That's the incentive cycle. And it should be at this point, right? Google's moving towards very strongly, especially in how they're talking about satisfying users in a really substantial quality way, and we need to help facilitate that with the website that we're working with. It should all work in harmony. And I think that's why SEOs, we are stewards of the web to a very large extent. Which is why I think, and I don't want to come off holier than thou or on a soapbox or anything, but we do have a responsibility that we're talking about what we're doing with our clients, what we're doing with content, what we're doing with websites, to speak in a way that's mature and that speak in a way that shows we actually do care about the internet. We don't just care about getting as much traffic as we possibly can, and no matter how we do it doesn't matter. It's not a good look. To put it practically, long-term for us getting clients, the more we do that, the more it's going to propagate the lingering reputation that SEO is snake oil. Which inevitably, every SEO comes across a client that thinks that way. And it's also a crying shame that people who are looking into SEO as a way for them to grow their own websites on their own, look at them like, "Wait a second, maybe I shouldn't be investigating it." I think that's a crying shame too. Crystal Carter: So here's the thing. I've encountered this when pitching to clients, where somebody, he was a dev and he built his own website and he was great, but I'll tell you right now, it was a mess. It was full of issues, and they were making money and they were doing fine or whatever, but there was full of issues, there were a bunch of issues within. And he was like, "Oh, I can read the Google Webmaster Tools guidelines. I don't need you to do that for me," and stuff. I'm like, "Yeah, but I could clean my house really well, but I might have a housekeeper who does it better. One doesn't necessarily preclude the other." I don't have a housekeeper, I'd love one, but I don't. But anyway, he was very skeptical of the entire operation. And I think that the other thing that people get really skeptical of is the price tag. And she talks about this in The Verge articles, "Oh, they make all this money," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'll tell you right now, one of the reasons why SEOs charge what they charge is because, again, PPC people do this as well. So PPC folks will charge depending upon how much the spend is. If somebody's spending a million pounds or a million dollars on ads, you're not going to charge them $500 a month, because the stakes are higher than that. So if they're spending a million dollars a month on ads, you're going to charge them something that's appropriate for the money that they're going to make on that. Because if they can spend that much on ads, they're going to expect a return of something appropriate. So you're going to charge them that. Similarly, one of the things that happens very often with SEOs is we can see all the analytics, so we can see the conversions that you are getting from the work that we're doing. So the fee will be appropriate based on what that is. And if you've got somebody, and I've done smaller projects for smaller folks, and loads of SEOs, all the good SEOs that I know do charity work and do work with special projects and work on things that they care about and things like that. And people aren't just out here like these, what is it? Pirates, mega maniacal pirates, she called us. So people aren't here for all of that stuff. People do plenty of charity things. But if you're seeing that somebody can make, I don't know, $3 million in a month or something over the work that you're doing, you're going to charge appropriately. And that's just reasonable. That's just reasonable. Mordy Oberstein: Got to eat. Crystal Carter: You got to eat. And also, it's not fair for you to not be paid appropriately for the value of your work, supply demand and the value. That's the value of your work. And the thing that's tricky about SEO, and here's the other thing, is that in terms of reputation is that there's a lot of, we talked about this previously as well, there's a lot of myths. They talk about Google as being a black box. There's a lot of misinformation around as well, but there's a lot of good information as well. And so I think that you also want to look at the things that people are referencing. If people are sending you to the Google documentation, then they probably know what they're talking about, because they actually read the Google documentation, which is freely available. That's important to think about as well. I think that we can forgive clients for being a little bit skeptical, but I think we also as SEOs have to spend that time illustrating the value and demonstrating the integrity of our work. Mordy Oberstein: Look, that overall mistrust. A little bit of mistrust is, it should probably be a little bit healthy, a little bit pressure sometimes can be healthy. But it's kind of created this niche market where you have, I've been approached many times about this, "I have an agency working on my website, could you make sure that what they're doing is actually good?" And that is bonkers. I don't take that kind of work. That is not what I'm into. I think I've done it once for a friend just to... Crystal Carter: A sense check. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's just a bad look. It propagates bad relationships. It propagates a bad reputation. It's an incredibly valuable niche market that I'm sure some SEOs are benefiting from. I'm not getting on anybody for taking the money and doing it. Fine. There's a need, go ahead. But it's not a healthy thing for the industry, and it really shows you where it's at by the way, that you have a niche industry of check my agency for me. Crystal Carter: And I think that a lot of times that has to do with trust. So I've had it before where we had a client come to us because they couldn't understand the reports and they couldn't understand what the people were doing for them. And I think that that comes back to client communication. You need to be able to explain what you do to the people that you're working for. If you're doing SEO for someone, you need to be able to explain what you're doing or at least the value. And you also need to be able to demonstrate the value. Because a lot of times, particularly if someone's on retainer, they might not see what you do every month, and it might not necessarily be evident to them. Obviously. If you make a bunch of blogs or something, then they can go, "Oh, okay, I can see that the blogs are on the website and there's some traffic to the blogs, and I can see that that's happening." But if you're doing alt texts on images and you're resizing the images to make them smaller, the images are going to look the same. They might not even notice it. If you're working on a back corner of the website, they might not see that either. So it's very important that you're able to illustrate what you're doing and you're able to explain what you're doing in order to keep trust so they don't go to somebody else and say, "What is all of this? I don't understand this report." Mordy Oberstein: By the way, if you do something that sounds fishy, the cases I've been approached has been about, "This doesn't sound right. They said this, but I don't know." The clients are not stupid. They know this doesn't make any sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I think that hiding behind jargon can be something that, I think we talked about jargon as well, but hiding the high jargon, not being available to help clients when you need them. Not being able to speak in business terms can build distrust. Because if you start talking about, oh, canonical backlink indexing. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's canonical. Crystal Carter: If you start talking about all that stuff, they're going to assume that you're not giving them good value for money. And when things hit the fan, because not everything's going to be plain sailing on our website traffic. There's a lot of volatility on the SERP. I mean, we have update after update, over update on top of an update in the last couple of months, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, we talked about with Greg Gifford back at Brighton SEO for our podcast there. Crystal Carter: And I think that it's going to be something that you need to, we talked about it with Greg, you need to be able to explain that stuff to them, and you need to be able to tell them how you're going to write it out. I always say that in terms of marketing, there's no mistake in being wrong. You can't predict the future. Sometimes stuff happens. But the problem that you have is if you don't have any more ideas, if you don't know how to get out of it, if you don't know what to do next, if you can't figure out what caused the mistake in the first place, that's when people get worried. And so you need to be able to be clear and articulate about what you're doing, why it went right, why it went wrong, all of that sort of stuff. And that, I think reduces some of the reputational issues. Mordy Oberstein: So let's then be clear and articulate, as controversial as it might sound about how much of SEO's lingering bad reputation is actually our fault. This gets a little scandalous. Anyway, here's Cyrus Shepherd to handle that. Cyrus Shepard: Hello, this is Cyrus Shepherd answering the question, how much of SEO's bad reputation is or is not legitimate? So I used to have a vice principal in high school, and he dealt with all the disciplinary actions, and he said that even though he only dealt with the same one or 2% of students time and time again, he did that all day long, all week long, all year long. And it tainted his perception of the entire student body. It made it seem like the entire student body was constantly getting in trouble, when in fact, 98% of students weren't doing that. And I think that's kind of the problem that the SEO industry has. If only 5% of SEOs are soiling Google's web results, if that's what the public sees, it makes it seem like all of SEO is comprised of bad people or illegitimate tactics. This is especially poignant this week when we saw a tweet go viral about stealing rankings using a very low effort technique. That tweet had 6.3 million views at the time of this recording, because people want to make money online. There's nothing wrong with that. It's the whole business side of search engine optimization. But when people make money online with no care for the end user or the consequences, it does give us a bad reputation. So I don't know how much of SEO's bad reputation is legitimate or not, but I do know there are a number of kind, hardworking, caring people who like doing good work, who like supporting artists, who like supporting creators, who like magical experiences on the internet. And that's who I would rather focus on and ignore the people making the internet a worse place. Let's celebrate the creators. That's all. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Cyrus. Make sure you follow and look for Cyrus, who by the way, is the founder of Zyppy SEO. Say that one more time. A founder of Zyppy SEO. Is a great name, by the way, over at Cyrus Shepherd on X Twitter at C-Y-R-U-S-S-H-E-P-A-R-D link in the show notes. It's exactly right. I used to work for a property manager company way back when, and we were managed 3000 apartment units. But you heard from the same people over and over again, it always make it feel like we're the worst company. Everyone hates us. We're not good at providing housing for people. Crystal Carter: Always calling up about that one radiator. Mordy Oberstein: I know the radiator, it's a pressure from the boiler. It's not a lot you can do about it. It's like 5% of the universe you just keep hearing from over and over and over again. And I feel it's very much the same way with SEO. Most SEOs are amazing people. The Glenn Gaves, the Cyrus' of the world, the Lily Rays of the world, the Alidas of the world, the Barry Schwartzs, I guess are legit, not just great SEOs, but really wonderful people in general. But you do have this five, 10% of the universe, I think they're all on Reddit, but... Crystal Carter: They're going to come for you, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Who just propagate this old school, manipulate the search engine reputation, and it does, for whatever reason, kind driving this lingering reputation about SEO that to a certain extent as that Verge article illustrated, we just can't shake. Crystal Carter: Yeah, and I think that there are so many good folks, and there are so many good folks who are just quietly going about their business. You talked about a lot of high profile SEOs like Lily, et cetera, and they're great. They're wonderful, they're fantastic. And thank you so much Alida and Glen and Lily and Roddy and everybody for sharing all of the things you share. Mordy Oberstein: And Barry. Crystal Carter: And Barry for sharing all of the wonderful things that you share. However, I know tons, tons of in-house, SEOs, agency, SEOs, who just ride out every day just getting those results, getting those results- Getting those results and just quietly minding their business, but being really good at it. And I think that those folks are the folks who saved a bunch of businesses during COVID. Those are folks who help small businesses grow, who help people to avoid mistakes, who help people to discover new product lines that they didn't even realize that they could possibly do, because it's online. Mordy Oberstein: Look at ourselves, pat on the back, look at Nati Elimelech, Einat, Shira Amit I mean, all the people who are working on our SEO product tools at Wix are bringing SEO to literally millions of people who might not have known how to go about SEO or how to think about their pages from a search engine perspective. And now they are. So SEOs do amazing things, and that Cyrus is right. We should focus on that. Crystal Carter: If you're a good SEO, give yourself a round of applause. Mordy Oberstein: And a pat on the back and a gold star. But also, let's talk a little bit more about how the tools have played into the bad reputation for a minute as we shift gears from being positive very, very quickly. Crystal Carter: Very quickly, let's get back to the... Mordy Oberstein: Hey, it's my style. As we alluded to before, SEO tools for not any fault of their own have played a little bit of a role in the wider perception of SEO, in the ways that maybe SEO tools haven't really evolved from back in the days, the ways that maybe they should have. Which can maybe lead to overemphasis on some less than updated SEO practices that kind of maybe further sully our good name. The fact that SEOs may not have met the call for a tool revolution, although some tools really have, I'll call out Suganthan Mohanadasan with keyword insights, doing some amazing things and so forth. But one person who we were talking to at Brighton SEO, who is taking it very seriously, is the founder of Rank, which by the way is on a Wix site. Michael Lewittes, who is now going to join us to talk about the role of SEO tools in the future and how that can play a role in the further development of SEO's good name as we take a very special edition of Tool Time. So welcome to the show, Michael Lewittes, how are you? Michael Lewittes: It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Crystal Carter: We are so pleased to have you. It was an absolute pleasure to finally Meet you at Brighton SEO, and it is such a pleasure to have you here today. Michael Lewittes: Well, it was great to see you and Mordy too. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Did you know, by the way, so I've known Michael for a while, but I've never met in person. And he sends me a DM, "I don't want to freak you out, but I'm six foot eight. I know you can't tell by the Zoom calls." Michael Lewittes: Just so that when you meet me, you don't get like, "Oh, wow, he looks a lot smaller." And then you see that I'm actually six foot eight, I'm not six foot. Mordy Oberstein: I think five foot eight would be pushing it. Michael Lewittes: That's about right. Crystal Carter: I was literally rattling through my brain. I was like, "I don't remember you being that tall. Do I remember that?" I'm just trying to remember the things. Mordy Oberstein: Do you imagine if he was, and you didn't remember him being that? I'm like, "No. I always thought he was like five foot eight." Crystal Carter: I don't remember. Oh gosh. These are the things that rattle through your head and you're like, "Do I just be polite? Do I just keep going?" Yeah. These are the things. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so we were talking before about SEO's bad reputation and how the SEO tools, for lack of intention though, have I think in some ways helped propagate this or perpetuate rather this idea of SEO being a little bit on the spammy, scammy side because the tools really haven't fundamentally evolved like the industry has. See the exclusion, like I mentioned before, Keyword Insights, there are some tools that have, so I don't want to say no. But you founded it, Ranktify, and I think we've even had a few conversations about this. One of the intentions behind it has been about moving the needle, moving the bar, so that SEO tools align to what SEO is now. So by the way, feel free to pitch Ranktify and let's talk about that. Michael Lewittes: Well, all that said, 1-800. No. So the other thing is, and I'm not going to knock keyword research, it is important, but if you have a furniture store or if you're a news organization and you're writing about President Biden and these tools tell you, "Oh, wow, the competition's too tough." It's, you're never going to say, "Mrs. Biden's husband vetoed a bill yesterday." You could, but no one's going to search for that. And I was a journalist for 20 years and then became obsessed with SEO. And so the written word is very important to me. And also you have to see over the years, Google has definitely moved away from the easy tricks to really analyzing the content itself. Ed is really not just a concept for the quality graders, it's really for the users and the people who are generating the content. And so everything really has to exude this expertise, authoritative and trustworthiness. And so at a certain point, I had run another company, a content company, I had sold it, had some time. And one day it hit me, SEOs don't really care too much about creating content. And I get that, and reporters or people who are creating content don't want to spend their time SEO-fying content. So I started to think, well, it's really one and the same thing actually these days. It's about making content that's helpful. So forget about all the link building, forget about all the keywords, just concentrate on making the most robust authoritative piece on any particular topic. And that's why I created Ranktify at 1-800. I'm just kidding. Crystal Carter: And that helpful thing, they tried to steer us in that direction and things. But I think helpful comes down to who wants to read this and why do they want to read it? And that's really what you should be considering when you're thinking about which content you're making really. Michael Lewittes: I have to say, a real pivotal moment, I'll name drop John Mueller here, but when I was running my other company and we were fact-checking celebrity gossip. And so the algorithm is an algorithm, it doesn't know people necessarily or their reputation or how well-connected they are in Hollywood. And I remember during one of those office hours, I said to him something like, "But our content really is much more authoritative than the people we're debunking." They're claiming George Clooney's getting divorced. And George Clooney is telling me he's not getting divorced. And yet we knew nothing about SEO practices at the time, so we were writing sort of maybe 40 words saying, "National Inquirer says this, we say this, and George Clooney tells us X." But the algorithm isn't going to pick up on just George Clooney tells us this. And one thing that John said during that office hours, he said, "Listen, you may be an expert on this topic, and you may have great sources, but you have to prove to your users why the story isn't true." And really that set us off when I was running that company on making everything transparent. So it wasn't anymore a source tells us, we were able to back up like George Clooney tells us this. And not only that, he was pictured yesterday in New York with his wife linked to that. So it's really important when you're creating content, forget about all that link building stuff. Forget about the keywords. Think about how you can prove to the user that you know more, that you are an expert on this particular topic, and take them through the steps so that they can, in a sense, given everything you told them, they create it themselves and go, "Wow, that's right. That's why it's better than X, Y, and Z." Mordy Oberstein: So first a question and then a statement. Question, was it true that Tom Cruise was engaged to a panda bear and was that denied by the panda bear? Michael Lewittes: He was not engaged. I have a great Tom Cruise story for another time, but not engaged. Lovely man. Lovely man. Also six footed. Crystal Carter: I was just going to ask you that. Mordy Oberstein: It was hard to judge that from the jumping on the couch. It looked like he was much shorter, but I was wrong. A statement, I totally agree with what you're saying. And I think that one of the things that I think does that or that helps you qualify whether or not a piece is actually helpful to the user is that whether or not you've really parsed that topic well enough. So a lot of times what you might consider to be a great piece of content, but a lot of that context doesn't exist, and that one point that you're making might be great. But as a piece overall, you haven't really parsed out the topic, what came first, what came next, what might happen in the future, and all the different zigzags that... In this case, let's talk about a news story that the news story kind of went about in order to be where it's at now. If that's not covered, then it might be great, but it's not helpful. Michael Lewittes: That's right. And one of the things is you have to just really be incredibly exhaustive. And another thing that sort of, John said, he was talking more about the layout of our website, but I think it pertains to content as well. It's, have a third party look at it sometimes, just a fresh pair of eyes, and are they going to walk away saying, "Okay, now I fully get all of this"? Crystal Carter: You mentioned keyword research and things, and I think that really keyword research should be used as a sense check. Not necessarily the end all be all of the thing. But if you're seeing that there's more search volume for this than there is for that, then you can say, "Okay, well people seem more interested in this somewhat than they are in that." That doesn't mean that you don't necessarily write for it on the topic. Michael Lewittes: That's right. You shouldn't be scared away from a topic because of the keywords. If this is what you do, or this is what you want to write about, go in full force. It's like pretty much everything in life. Like, "Oh, I know I'm never going to succeed at it, so I'm not even going to try." It's like... Crystal Carter: Well, that's ridiculous. Michael Lewittes: No, but you hear this, little kids- Mordy Oberstein: I never would've got married if that was the case. Crystal Carter: Well, I'll tell you right now, I'm not a good tennis player, but I really enjoy tennis, and if I keep it up for long enough, I'll be better than I was before. So that's fine. That'll be good enough for me. Michael Lewittes: That's right. That's right. And so taking that, so let's say there's a local community tennis tournament, you might win it. Crystal Carter: And that'll be a big day for me. Michael Lewittes: And it's not about Wimbledon. I always tell people, you don't need to beat the internet, you just need to beat your competitors. You don't- Mordy Oberstein: To go full circle on this, the tools as they're currently constructed, I say the tool very broadly, aren't conducive for that. Or they're conducive for, okay, let me look at the keyword. Oh no, it's hard. It's easy. It's got this search volume. As opposed to, here's a topic I know I need to write about, help me better understand what I should and should not be including in this topic, and how could I best go about being successful with this topic. That they're not geared and that's where I feel a lot of the tools, to no fault of their own, to a certain extent, are perpetuating this old school SEO outlook, which again, just sullies SEO's reputation to a certain extent. Michael Lewittes: And that's why I created this, because I wanted stuff that was robust for me as a reader and as a writer. I wanted to sort of create something where you can create your content, you think it's great. And then it may be, by the way. And you put into the tool, and we'll tell you really what the blind spots are, the things that you're missing that to make it more expertise, more trustworthy, more robust, more helpful. And I think the problem is a lot of these tools were created by SEOs who were not writers. And I think that's the big difference. I've written or edited, I thought it was 75,000, but when I started doing the math again with my kids, it's probably closer to 90,000 articles, in my career. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, Barry, is that you? Michael Lewittes: Yeah. No, it's crazy. So I did a column for the Daily News that ran seven days a week. We were there in the office five, and that was something like 10 articles a day. And then the content company that I ran for a decade, we were doing about 30 articles. When you start doing that, and then what I did for the New York Post and for Cosmo, and it just sort of, as you added it all up, it's like, "Oh my goodness, that's a tremendous amount." That's why I don't read anymore. I've done it enough. So I can tell you right away when I'm reading something like, "Oh, that's big," for instance, not the biggest deal, but take entertainment story like, "Oh, no, look what Taylor did now," first paragraph, and then the second paragraph gets into it. It's like, no, no, who, what, where, when and how, first paragraph, very simple. Mordy Oberstein: Taylor Swift ruins football her entire season by taking focus off of football and onto Taylor Swift. Hot, spicy take right there. Crystal Carter: But her jets, she's trying to bury- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, that was a great SEO thing, you saw that? She had a whole thing where she was in trouble, I don't follow Taylor Swift. Crystal Carter: If you did follow her, you would need a private jet to do so. Michael Lewittes: Why do you have 13 written on your hand? But okay, continue. Mordy Oberstein: I don't understand the reference, by the way. Crystal Carter: That was a deep cut. Mordy Oberstein: Because I like Dan Marino? Michael Lewittes: By the way, another embarrassing story. Shortcut, friendly with her people, they invite me to a show. I get front row seats. My niece can't come. I'm there alone. Crystal Carter: At Taylor Swift? Michael Lewittes: A room of 13 year olds and a grown man. Mordy Oberstein: That's awkward. Crystal Carter: This is why I didn't go see Dua Lipa. I love Dua Lipa, but I did not go and see her because I was just like, "It'll just be children and I don't want to go and spend my time at a creche." Michael Lewittes: But I knew if I didn't show up clearly they would see that the tickets weren't picked up, they would see I wasn't in the front row. Run into a friend who's there with his daughter, and he says, "Oh, who are you here with?" And I'm like, "Alone." Mordy Oberstein: I like to go to Bob Dylan concerts because I miss my grandparents. Michael Lewittes: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, back to SEO. Michael Lewittes: SEO. Crystal Carter: SEO. Mordy Oberstein: So I've used Ranktify, it's a great tool, and I think that's one of the things that it does do, you put it really perfectly, it fills those gaps that you didn't even know existed. But there are tools that kind of do that, but they're very top level as opposed to actually offering you the specific details and the specific nuance that other people are covering or whatever it is. That you can have a better idea of, "Okay, this is where the topic is directionally, I need to start thinking about it this way." Crystal Carter: So I'm going to just jump in here and say, every time I see Michael, he goes, "Well, but wait, there's one more thing." Because when he showed me Ranktify, there were so many different sections to this, and I'd be interested to hear you just give the top levels of those quickly. Because I think that this is interesting for anybody who's creating content to think about the levels of content creation. You'll do your research, you get your ideas, and then there's other levels that you can do to add more to it. And whether that might be when you're creating the content, but it also might be when you're going back doing when your content refreshes, when you're looking at a content audit, that sort of thing. Yeah, it's a great tool. Michael Lewittes: Thank you. So there are a lot of functionality. And by the way, there's one more thing since I last saw you, and there may be by the end of this podcast. So we take you through a lot of things. Some of it is SEO, some of it is just good writing, but good writing dovetails into good SEO. So the first thing we do is we check your spelling and grammar, because a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes people will question the trustworthiness, may not be an issue for Google. Then we basically say, "Hey," again, I don't focus on keywords, but if you're missing the keyword in the H1 in the first paragraph, that's a problem. Crystal Carter: Yeah. It just makes your job harder. Michael Lewittes: Right. Again, going back to that example, if I were to even make it worse, like, "Oh, guess what celebrity did this," and you get to it, two or three paragraphs, by the way, I have seen that where they've buried it, honestly, three or four paragraphs below. Crystal Carter: That just makes people angry. Michael Lewittes: So we check the spelling, the grammar, the keywords, make sure that you have them where they need to be. We do check your anchor text so that it doesn't seem spammy, like click here. What we do is we actually tell you, you need to give context to what you're linking to, because think of it from the user side. I want to click on a link and know what I'm going to get on the other side. And I'll tell you, and I'm sure Google is picking up on this, there are a lot of places that do not even semantically similar stuff. They do tangential stuff. They'll say, "So-and-so showed up dressed like this," and then it's suddenly a gallery of people who wore blue, it's unrelated. So what we do is we try to help you and make sure that your anchor text is related. We'll tell you actually if it's unrelated, and then suggest how to make it better. From there, we check whether your content is unique or duplicate, where it's been, even if it's semantically similar, it doesn't have to be direct quotes. Who else has done this. And everything we do, by the way, is linkable, clickable, verifiable. So when we say it, we have these little blue bubbles underneath, where it came from. You click on it'll take you to that area and it will highlight it. And then I say, the biggest thing is we find all the missing facts and data that you haven't included in your piece, which to me are table stakes. I was talking to, I won't say the name of the publisher, but they were complaining. This goes more than a year ago. It's such a great example. They were saying, "Oh, our stuff is better than the New York Times, but because they're the Times they rank higher." I'm like, "Okay, what story do you think you should rank hiring with?" So it was when President Biden got his second COVID shot. So we throw it into the tool, we go through the spelling, the grammar problems, the anchor text, which was all over the place. And we get to the facts and I'm like, "Well, I see that New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, a bunch of other named reputable places are saying that Biden had COVID four weeks ago." And they were like, "Oh, but everyone knows that." I'm like, "Actually, maybe they do, maybe they don't. I forgot." And when you start seeing certain data points over and over again, that's table stakes. That's the kind of thing that Google will notice. Ooh, you dropped the ball. You have to mention certain things. So we find everything to give it in context and to help it become more robust. Mordy Oberstein: It's amazing. It's super cool. Check it out, ranktify.com Michael Lewittes: At 1-800. Mordy Oberstein: Michael, where can people find you? Michael Lewittes: Local saloon. No. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm saying, before nine o'clock, where could they find you? Michael Lewittes: Or seven o'clock. LinkedIn. There's a Ranktify and Michael Lewittes account, Twitter, the Facebook, all of it. We're across all social media. Mordy Oberstein: But we'll link all or at least one of your social profiles in the show notes. Michael Lewittes: Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Well, thanks coming by and I'll talk to you out there in the ether. Michael Lewittes: Thanks so much. Good to see you, Crystal. Crystal Carter: Thank you. Michael Lewittes: And you too, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: That's okay, I get it. Michael Lewittes: I started that way. Mordy Oberstein: Break it down, full circle. Take care, man. All right, so thanks again, Michael for stopping by. Definitely check out the Ranktify tool, a little plug for it at ranktify.com, and we'll link to it in the show notes. Very cool. Anyway, you know what's also really cool, Barry is very cool. When you think Barry Schwartz, I think, wow, that's cool. He's so cool. Crystal Carter: Obviously, obviously. The king of cool. Mordy Oberstein: Some people try really hard to be cool, but they end up not being cool. Barry doesn't try at all, but that makes them cool. Crystal Carter: Basically. Mordy Oberstein: So this of course means the part we wax poetic about Barry clearly means it's time for some snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news, two articles for you this week, both from Barry Schwartz from the newly beautifully designed Search Engine Roundtable. First up, Google, no such thing as perfect formula for ranking. This is not something very complicated, but it's based on a statement that Google's Danny Sullivan said, and I applaud Barry for covering these sort of things because it does help us be in the right mindset to how we should think about SEO. And what. Danny said was, "Hey, there's no perfect formula to follow that must be used to rank highly in Google search. It really all does depend on what the piece of content is, what the pages is, what the website is, what the users are looking for, what the intent is, what users need, what users want. There's no set checklist follow boom, boom, boom, boom, that guarantees ranking at all. It really does all depend on what you're trying to do, what users are looking for, what everything is all about. And it's a little bit more holistic than just a checklist in general, anyway." Which brings us to our second article, again from Barry on seroundtable.com. Google, author bylines don't help you rank better. Google doesn't check credentials. Now, this is based on an article from The Verge that was talking about SEO a little bit, and they made some interesting claims. It was an interesting article, I found it a little bit off center. I'm not getting into that here, but part of what they said was that Google looks at author bios and that's a ranking factor that helps you rank better. And Google's Danny Sullivan said, "No, not exactly." To quote Danny, "Author bylines aren't something you do for Google, and they don't help you rank better." He goes on to say, "This is something you do for your readers and publications. Doing them may exhibit the type of other characteristics our ranking systems find align with useful content." So I think this comes out as part of the whole or a consequence of the whole EEAT conversation, experience, expertise of authoritative and trustworthiness. Sometimes that conversation comes off like a couple of checklist items you need to do to show EEAT. We talked about this Lee Ray on the podcast previously, that is not the case. So one of these checklist items is be, oh, have an author byline, check. Got it. Now I have EEAT. When, again, EEAT is very holistic. It's a concept. It's really about the user experience and the content quality itself. Now, if I want to read into what Danny's saying a little bit where he says "Publications, doing them, meaning adding the author bylines may exhibit the type of other characteristics our ranking systems find align with useful content." I don't want to put words in his mouth, and I'm speculating a little bit here when I say this, I wonder what Google does is something like this. Yes, it's not looking at the author byline one to one, you have one, you rank better. But Google is assessing quality of a page in a little bit more conceptual, holistic way. And in assessing this quality picture, quality content, quality user experience, holistically if it's factoring in, what's there on the page, what speaks to the quality of the page and perhaps the user byline. I keep saying the user byline, the author byline. Perhaps the author byline, if Google does look and say, "Okay, holistically speaking, if we're going to assess quality, this does maybe say that there's a little bit greater sense of focus on quality and transparency on this page, and it may factor into the overall quality valuation, quality experience of that particular page." So it's not direct, it's not even indirect, it'd be like secondary, secondary, secondary, but in a very holistic way having the author byline in there might be part of the overall very holistic quality evaluation, quality experience, quality picture that Google's looking for. Either way it doesn't really matter. It's really good for users to have it there, so have it there anyway, which is what Danny is saying. There is also the argument, I'll bring it up very briefly, that having the author byline can create a semantic connection between the author and the topic being covered. I'll put that into English. So let's say for example, Barry Schwartz writes an article about SEO, not for Search Engine, seroundtable.com, but for a website that he doesn't usually write for. And Google might be able to say, "Oh, there's a connection here. We know who Barry Schwartz is, Barry Schwartz is Mr. SEO. He talks about SEO all the time. In fact, that's all Barry ever talks about, is SEO. He's writing an article on whatever website. This helps us better understand or contextualize that this article is about SEO. Or let's just maybe have greater trust in the fact that this article is going to be talking about SEO, because we know Barry, we know he talks about SEO, we know he talks about SEO in a really quality way. So here's Barry again writing an article on whatever website, we can make that connection and whatever that means for ranking is whatever it means." I don't think it means much. Maybe in some cases, I don't know. But leaving the ranking equation aside for a second, I do think, obviously that Google's able to make those semantic connections, is able to connect the dots. Oh, we know who this author is, especially when they're a well-known author. We know what they generally write about. We have a pretty good understanding of what this person, who this person is and what they tend to write about, and we now see them writing here. We're able to make that connection and whatever that means for rankings, probably not too much, in most cases, they're able to do so. That's the entity based argument for having author bylines on the pages. Again, the real main thing is that it does just make sense for your users. It builds trust and so far may keep them on the page longer, which can factor into things, especially you're following the DOJ trial and all that stuff. And again, it might align to the overall, be encompass in the overall quality picture of the page itself, which I think is maybe what Danny is alluding to. Anyway, that's it for this week's snappy SEO news Coming full circle, by the way, when I say wax poetic, I immediately think of wax paper and turning it into origami. That's my association to waxing poetic. Crystal Carter: Interesting. I think- Mordy Oberstein: Isn't that a weird association? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I don't know. I think of Walt Whitman. Mordy Oberstein: Right. That makes, that's a normal association. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: I'm like, "Oh, captain, my captain," and then 'Dead Poet's Society', and then- Mordy Oberstein: Yes, it makes total sense. My warped mind thinks, oh, wax poetically, let me turn wax paper into poetry. Crystal Carter: Okay. All right. That's cool. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. That's weird. Anyway. Crystal Carter: Thanks for sharing. Mordy Oberstein: Sure. You know who's not weird? Crystal Carter: That was your best pivot ever. Mic drop. That was your best pivot. Mordy Oberstein: You know who's not weird? Montse Cano, she's fabulous. She's always sharing great information about SEO on Twitter, SEO information you can rely on, not snake oil SEO information, but good, reputable SEO information. She's just also a shining light, a wonderfully nice, friendly, accessible person, which also further solidifies SEO's reputation as not being snake oil. So make sure you follow her on Twitter X at M-O-N-T-S-E-C-A-N-O, and we'll link to her profile in the show notes. Crystal Carter: She's fantastic. You absolutely can follow her, because she's wonderful. She's super smart and she's super kind- Mordy Oberstein: So nice. Crystal Carter: And she's really active in the community, so she does podcasts, she does speaking, she does writing. She just loads of great stuff, Mordy Oberstein: And she's active on social. It's like a good person to follow, because they're actually active on social. So give her a follow. That's what we're saying. I'm glad that we can help SEO with this reputation problems. Crystal Carter: Yeah. We all got to do our part, really. We all got to do our part to just try to make sure that people know that we're doing good stuff out there. Mordy Oberstein: I'm now immediately going to share a hockey stick graph on social media. Crystal Carter: Just with no context, and the hockey stick went from like zero to seven. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, that's a great idea. Just show the chart and literally tweet nothing but the chart. You, one time, they dared me to do something like that when AI was first coming out as a whole big thing. Like, "Oh, Mordy, just tweet AI with nothing," and I did. And I got tons of engagement. Crystal Carter: You literally wrote AI, ChatGPT, Bard. Mordy Oberstein: It worked. So thanks for that. I got a couple of nice comments and replies. It was wonderful. Crystal Carter: Cool. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Thank you. And 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 user behavior and SEO. What's changed? Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning Hub wix.com/seo/learn Look to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI and the LLM factor into the SEO equation now? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by a panel of guests to give their unique takes on what is coming for SEO in 2025. From the importance of breaking silos and collaborating across departments for better SEO strategies to local SEO tips to insights on structuring AI-generated content to top content strategies for 2025 this is one episode you don’t want to miss! Join episode 117 of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast to gear up and avoid the bunny slopes as we ski down SEO in 2025. Back Looking ahead to SEO in 2025 Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI and the LLM factor into the SEO equation now? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by a panel of guests to give their unique takes on what is coming for SEO in 2025. From the importance of breaking silos and collaborating across departments for better SEO strategies to local SEO tips to insights on structuring AI-generated content to top content strategies for 2025 this is one episode you don’t want to miss! Join episode 117 of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast to gear up and avoid the bunny slopes as we ski down SEO in 2025. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 117 | January 14, 2025 | 32 MIN 00:00 / 32:12 This week’s guests Ray Saddiq Ray is the Global Head of Marketing at Rise at Seven. He is an organic growth specialist. With extensive experience across in-house and agency environments, Ray specialises in both Social and SEO strategies to deliver impactful results. His background spans marketing, organic social media, and organic search, making him a go-to thought leader for crafting strategies that connect brands with their audiences from the FYP to the search results. Celeste Gonzalez Celeste Gonzalez leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Mike King An artist and a technologist all rolled into one, Mike is the Founder and CEO of digital marketing agency, iPullRank. Mike consults with companies all over the world, including brands ranging from SAP, American Express, HSBC, SanDisk, General Mills, and FTD, to a laundry list of promising eCommerce, publisher, and financial services organizations. Paul Andre De Vera You’ll find Paul Andre de Vera speaking on podcasts/webinars, looking for the next great place to devour a delicious rib-eye steak, and occasionally sipping a glass of whiskey. All while coaching, serving clients, and producing the SEO Video Show. Debbie Chew Debbie Chew is an SEO Manager at Dialpad with over 8 years of experience in digital marketing. She specializes in content and link building, and is passionate about sharing her learnings with other marketers. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who has covered all the facets of 2024 and knows how to look ahead to 2025, our one and only head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am an expert on 2024. I have been here the whole time. I did every single day of 2024. Can confirm. Mordy Oberstein: I checked out on a few days, I'll be honest with you. There was a few days I missed. Crystal Carter: I was here the whole time. I saw all of it. I saw all of it. First eyewitness account, this is primary source. Mordy Oberstein: It was too much for my eyes. I had to like ... Crystal Carter: It was a lot. There was a lot. Every year I feel like we get to the end of the year and people were like, "Wow." Mordy Oberstein: No, no. This year was real wow. We'll get to it in a second. From an SEO point of view. I'm not talking about anything else. Purely from an SEO point of view. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there's a lot to cover. There's been a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of ins and outs. Mordy Oberstein: Ins and outs, a lot of what-have-yous. Big Lebowski. Yeah, indeed. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Look for it in your inboxes each and every month, where you can see and plan out your entire site with our new visual site map that not only helps you better see, and dare I say, visualize your client's entire site, but leverages AI to help you build custom wire frames. Links in the show notes. Do check it out, as today's all about having vision, as we look forward to 2025 and what it has in store for SEO. Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI in the grand old LLM factor into the SEO equation now? We'll hear from not one, not two, not three, not four, not five ... I could go on, not six, but many SEOs, such as Mike King, the latest soloist, Ray Saddiq, Paul Andre de Vera, Victor Pan, and many more as they weigh in on what's in store for you in 2025. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So while the snow's still soft on 2025, ratchet down those ankle straps and strap your feet in as we ollie and nollie our boards down the mountain that is SEO in 2025. Crystal Carter: You dropping skateboard references on the podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Snowboard. I had to look them up. I have no clue. Crystal Carter: You snowboarding? Okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's snowboarding. Crystal Carter: I'm aware that you can ollie on a skateboard. I guess you can ollie on a snowboard because your feet don't have to come off. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter: An ollie, I can never remember what that is. I know skateboarders, they talk in- Mordy Oberstein: It's the opposite of an ollie, no? Crystal Carter: Possibly. It's like if you're going switch or doing tail taps and half cab disaster, there's lots of skateboard terminology that people say. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding. We're all about that stuff. I know nothing about it, which is funny- Crystal Carter: Everything's above board. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Crystal Carter: Just play one on TV. Mordy Oberstein: I just play one on our SEO podcast. I literally Googled all that. I don't know what it even means. Crystal Carter: You know what the first time I went snowboarding, we actually Googled top 10 tips for snowboarding, printed it out- Mordy Oberstein: And you broke your leg? Crystal Carter: No, not the first time. No. We printed it out and then printed out the MapQuest and drove up a mountain in a Hyundai, and yeah, it was good times. Good times. That's the- Mordy Oberstein: You know what's funny? Probably that first result of the top 10 tips, probably very similar to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, eighth, ninth 10th offering the top 10 tips. Crystal Carter: Those are the good old days. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was 2024 for you. So as we gently and non-controversially move into recapping 2024 just a bit, because SEO enters in a really weird place. I don't think it's ever been weirder. Isn't that weird? To quote Austin Powers, because it is weird. Crystal Carter: May you live in interesting times. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to recap some of the larger issues, stories, developments in SEO in 2024, such as now that the helpful content update is no more, it's baked into the core algorithm and sites that were hit by it back in September don't seemingly, at this point in time of the recording of this podcast, have been able to actually recover in a significant way. Seeing like 20% recoveries was the max. So that was a big deal. Reddit's here, Reddit's there, Reddit's everywhere, and there's not a drop of organic results to spare. Crystal Carter: I didn't know you had bars, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I could snowboard and rhyme on the same podcast. Podcast is imagination land. So there's that. There were creator summits at Google Health where sites were told, "Nope, not going to happen for you." Crystal Carter: Good luck out there. Mordy Oberstein: Break a leg. I don't know. Yeah? That happened. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I guess they were just kind of told it depends. I don't know. Yeah, there was a lot going on. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting plan for a creator. So let's bring them all in and tell them we don't know. Sucks for you, I guess. Crystal Carter: I think it's just really tricky for people because Google shifts around, but this has been so much shifting. I've been saying to people, Google's in beta mode right now. And we've been in, as SEOs, there are people who've been doing SEO since 1999, and a lot of stuff hadn't changed that much over the course of that time, but in the last three, four years. Mordy Oberstein: In the last three days. Crystal Carter: Right, right, exactly. At time of recording, the head of Google recently said there's going to be monumental change coming in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: That was a great ... We covered that on its new. If you missed that, you should watch that because there are some salty points that I will not say in this podcast about that interview. Just ask Congress. Okay. Stop, cannot go further. I will get too salty too quickly. But yeah, and on the flip side of that, some of these sites have terrible ad experiences and Google traffic isn't guaranteed, which is another issue. Maybe we're too siloed and SEO should kind of get out of the bubble. Brand is now in focus in the SEO space Like never before. Everyone's talking about branding, and branding, and branding, but not exactly about how to do the branding, which is a different problem. But we're talking about branding. AIOs? I don't know how they got so far down on the list. That should have been more on the top of the list. This list. It's not a sequential order of SEO insanity, it's just a random list. So AI overviews kind of been hit or miss. Drink urine, eat glue, that was part of the equation in 2024. Crystal Carter: Right. Seemed to have improved over the course of it, I will say. I will say that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. They have improved. More links, more links, Crystal Carter: More links, more value, less just repeating the exact same featured snippet underneath of it. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: Little bit of that. So we'll see. We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Right. What's the CTR? All that one actually knows, so that's good. Also, manual actions on some pretty big websites for parasite SEO. Third-party content hosted on the website. It has nothing to do with whatever your website does. Penalized by Google. Moral of the story, write it yourself. Okay, that was again salty, because Google's like ... "Well, if you're writing it yourself, that seems to be fine," which was Greg Finn's point on Its New multiple times. So I'm just dealing Greg Salty Thunder on that one. But Forbes, a lot. Entrepreneur, all these big sites who were hosting third-party content on their website were dinged. Manual action dinged by Google on those folders. So that was a shot across the bow to publishers. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Forbes had quite the year this year. Everybody's been talking about Forbes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Because it seems like they lost a lot of traffic. Oh, you meant it like, "Oh, it was complicated." Got it. Not like, "Wow, that was a great year." Crystal Carter: They've had quite a year. A lot going on. Everybody's talking about Forbes. People have a lot to say about Forbes. People have a lot of opinions about what's going on there, including Google, apparently. Mordy Oberstein: Apparently. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But everybody acts like they're saints also, so whatever. Anywho. Wow, this is starting off great. There's a ton that I probably missed. The net result of all of this is there's mass confusion, uncertainty, and change within the SEO space, and I'm not being hyperbolic. Crystal Carter: Not at all. Not at all. And I think that we're even starting to see this in how people are approaching talking to clients as well. So people are having to diversify their SEO offering, people are having to do things a little bit more different, a little bit more nuanced, a little ... And I haven't seen 360 marketing everywhere. I've seen 360 marketing quoted as a strategy more times than I've ever seen before. Everybody is going to 360, and I think that that's good. I think that's good, and I've spoken on this years ago that it's something that's high value. And Mordy, you've been talking about brand for years. Mordy Oberstein: For years. Years. Crystal Carter: Years. Years. And we don't want to be like the harbingers of, "I told you so," but also- Mordy Oberstein: No. I told you also. Crystal Carter: But we did tell you so. Just saying. Just saying. Just putting it out there. And so hopefully people are able to get involved and see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: So with that, we got a bunch of folks together and we asked them, okay, with all this craziness going on in the SEO space, what are your top tips for 2025? And they're like, "Punt." No, I'm just kidding. They had actual ... Punt is a football reference, whatever. It just means kick it down the field and see what happens. They have some actual really good advice for you. So let's get right to it. We're going to start off with Ray Saddiq, who is the global head of marketing at Rice at seven, who talks about working with other teams. Here's what Ray had to say. Ray Saddiq: So I think that search has changed massively, and it's time for you as an SEO to start working with the other teams in your department. So if you are in-house, go ahead and we'll start speaking to your social team, because social search is a thing at the moment, so it's time that you go and start speaking to them. But also speak to your PR team as well, because it's crazy how many links can be built. I've noticed over here on the US side, especially how many people aren't working directly with their PR team to build links into the right places on their website. So have a look at that, check that out. Look into digital PR as well if you haven't already. It's a huge thing. I know there's still a few people I spoke to today who aren't really looking into it at the moment, so now's the time. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Ray. That's a great point. Someone asked me, I don't remember who it was ... Humble brag, I get asked for so many of these round up tips for the end of the year, and one of my ... Somebody- Ray Saddiq: Everybody asks me so many things. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Look at me. Ray Saddiq: Totally asking me questions. Mordy Oberstein: Sound like such a creep. No, but I just have a bad memory. So I don't remember where it was, but I wrote ... I think it was for Aleyda's SEO FOMO thing. Sit with comms. My biggest tip for you is sit with comms, which is kind of what Ray is saying. So great minds think alike. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think that SEOs are growing up. We need to mature into the full marketers that we are, because we always have been a core part of the marketing team and we just need to mature into that. And I think that that's exactly what he's talking about from a PR point of view. One of the other things that's happened this year is that LLMs have also become destinations for search. So I've got an article that goes all into that, but one of the things that I talk about is that links are part of that. All of the things we've done for SEO contribute to that, including getting links in high value publications, which PR is the only way to do that. You're not going to get a link from time. You're not going to get a link in the Atlantic without doing some solid PR. So absolutely great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's really solid. Speaking of which, and talking with other teams, Debbie Chew, who's the SEO manager over our Stripe, goes into that with a little bit more detail. So here's Debbie. Debbie Chew: One SEO tip for SEO 2025 would be to break out of your silos. So in SEO, we kind of live in a bubble sometimes. Maybe if we're lucky, we might be working with paid, but there are a bunch of other teams that really understand our customer and that we can tap into. So let's look at our sales team, our customer service team, what data can they share with us about our customers, and what data can the SEO team share back with them and use that within kind your SEO strategy and then have them use that as well. So make sure to break out of your silos and pull all that data together and create a great success for your business. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Debbie. Really appreciate that. That's really the point. I feel like the internet is in the age of resonance. There's so much digital noise, there's so much digital chatter that you really have to resonate with that audience, and the only way to really do that, and that part of your job as an SEO is to resonate, not just to get clicks and not just to get traffic, but to actually resonate, which is ... I don't know why I have to say that. And the only way to do that is to really, I think, is to understand the brand positioning of the company that you're working with or the client that you're working with, which means you need to talk to these other teams that break out of your silo, like Debbie just said. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And she also mentioned at the data point, the only way you're going to effectively connect with these folks is with some authenticity, and you can only get authenticity by knowing what you're talking about, and the only way what you're talking about is with data. So you need to get data from the teams that are working with them. And it might be that the data unlocks always, always data unlocks stuff that you didn't quite see. You're like, "Oh, turns out we're really big in Wisconsin." And you're like, "Oh, okay, maybe we should do some stuff in Wisconsin. I didn't realize that that was a thing. Or maybe you feel like you're big in Wisconsin and you can use the data to back that up so that you can get money to do something in Wisconsin, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or then they say, "Oh no, we're not really big in Wisconsin. We're actually big in Cleveland, so we have to do stuff in Cleveland." They're like, "Oh, Cleveland." Okay. Speaking of breaking out of silos and working with other teams, maybe it's time to break out of search just a little bit, not put all of your eggs in one basket. So here's Celeste Gonzalez, director of RooLabs, over at Rickety Roo, on that point. Celeste Gonzalez: My one SEO tip for 2025 would be, towards local businesses, don't put all your eggs in one SEO basket. Diversify your channels. Be where your audience is. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Celeste. I could not agree more, not just for local businesses, but in general. I think one of the ideas that's coming out of SEO from 2024 is that search for many websites is a vehicle. And it's not the only vehicle, it's simply one vehicle to build up that brand presence, to build up the visibility that you want to have to build up, the engagement or the performance, whatever it is, it's one vehicle. And especially if you're not one of these giant websites like, I don't know, Wix ... Like Wix, it's going to be much harder for you to get onto that SERP and to use search as a vehicle the way that you might have done in the past. I think it's one of the main themes out of 2024. So definitely diversifying that portfolio a bit makes a lot of sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think it doesn't just apply to local businesses. I think it's absolutely important for local businesses, because you are going to be connecting with your customers in so many different ways. And Facebook is a channel that really, really works for local businesses, for instance. There's always a local schools group, people are using the marketplace to find things on Facebook. So I use Facebook more for local things than almost anything else, and I think that that's for instance, really useful. And making sure that your website connects with that, making sure that you've got listings, making sure you've got your Google business profile, absolutely helps your local business to perform online. So if you are working in the local space, if you are a local business owner or you're supporting a local business owner as a consultant, adding more channels to what you do will absolutely help you in 2024, 2025, 2026, going forward. Mordy Oberstein: That's just channel nine. Nothing ever good was ever on channel nine. Right? Crystal Carter: I don't know what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Channel nine. That was UPN when I was a kid. Crystal Carter: Oh, I used to watch tons of UPN. Mordy Oberstein: There was reruns of Family Matters, I'll be honest. Crystal Carter: Tons. Mordy Oberstein: They had the most- Crystal Carter: I watched tons of UPN back in the day. Moesha was on UPN. Mordy Oberstein: The WB also. Also who bought ... Crystal Carter: They also had loads of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: 7th Heaven, Jessica Buell was on that. All right, whatever. Anywho, one of the other big themes out of 2024 is obviously around content generation. We're talking about content generation, one of the things we're talking about is AI. So here's Mike King, founder of iPoll Rank, on how to generate content with AI. Mike King: Use retrieval augmented generation for creating content with generative AI. And when you do it, generate the content in components. Don't just say, "Give me a giant blog post." Give me the intro to the blog post, give me the main body area, give me the TLDR. Break it down into components in alignment with the design of the website and you're going to get much more usable content a lot faster. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Mike. And that's very similar, by the way, to what Mike talked about on our webinar with him and Ross Hudgens. If you give AI a walled garden to operate in, and boundaries to operate in, you usually get way, way better results. Crystal Carter: And in his webinar that we did with him and Ross Hudgens, which we reference a lot because it's got really, really good value in it, they point out that they've both been using AI for years. So they know what they're talking about. They didn't just jump on the bandwagon. They've been driving the bandwagon for years. And I think that it really, really does help if you break it down, if you give it good inputs, if you give it good prompts, if you're breaking it down that way. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Now, to break down content itself a little bit for you in 2025 and what might work that you might not be focused on, here's Paul Andre de Vera, host of the SEO show on some fresh content ideas. Paul Andre De Vera: My one tip for SEO 2025 is live streaming. What's the freshest content out there? What's fresher than fresh? Live streaming? Live video. Last year I was talking about video's great. Get videos ranking on page one of Google button. If you look at right now, every time I schedule a live on my YouTube, they're ranking on page one almost instantly. So check it out. Live streaming is my number one tip for 2025. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Dre. That is really interesting to see that he's doing the live streams on LinkedIn and they're popping up on the SERP right away. That's interesting. Crystal Carter: That is really interesting. The live LinkedIn is a fascinating development. They've really been investing in video in the last little while since everybody's taken to LinkedIn as a refuge after all of the other social media platforms fell apart. So they've been putting a lot of video in there, and the live does seem to get a little bit of traction, so we'll see how that develops in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, absolutely. So we don't only have those tips for you. We collected a whole bunch of tips from a whole bunch of different SEOs that'll be part of a roundup post, but I wanted to pull some of those into the podcast as well. So Victor Pan, who is the SEO over a HubSpot, had a really interesting tip. He wrote, "Don't waste a crisis. When site traffic is down," because we're talking about, "Oh, it's a volatile world out there. Site traffic might be down," it's easy to patch these with the short-term solutions. For example, 2025 coming, or here, depending on how many content plus year keywords your site ranks for, you'll have a predictable traffic decline on pages ranking for 2024 keywords. The short term solution would be to scrape and update page content and titles manually. Gross. Don't waste this crisis, or forget the lesson from yesteryear. Quantify the loss from last year, document an editorial process to proactively avoid future traffic declines while elevating content quality. Record the win and wear it proudly with your colleagues. When you lose traffic, don't lose the lesson. Crystal Carter: Yo teachable moments. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Teachable moments. This is absolutely key. I think also sometimes people are like, "Oh, the traffic is down. Sometimes that means you got their attention." And if you're the person who's like, "I told you so. I told you we shouldn't have done this thing that we did anyway," then that's a great time to also give the teachable moment to the rest of your team and remind them why you are the SEO that you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And just like, yeah, remember? Oh, now you're coming to me now. Oh, okay." So just have your answers ready to go. And yeah, as he says, don't let the teachable moment go past. Actually learn from it. Totally, totally great advice. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great quote. So switching over to eCom a little bit, Chris Long VP of marketing at Go Fish Digital wrote, "Retailers, Google is becoming your new category page. In effort to compete with Amazon they're turning the search results into a de facto category page experience. Fast and navigation pricing comparisons and more, all directly available in the search results. This means that you need to spend even more time on your products as opposed to your category pages," which is really interesting. By the way, I think it's really interesting that Google's going so heavy on the homepage or the traditional SERP page with all of the products and not trying to push you into Google shopping more heavily so as to compete brand-wise with Amazon. I think it's a short-term win for Google. I'm not sure it's a long-term win for Google, but that's a different point aside. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they are coming for Amazon hard. And I think also, I think for SEOs, this is going to be changing around the funnel. I think Chris is right. This is your product page, so you need to make sure that anything that's pulling through from your feed, going into Google, is optimized for that experience. And also making sure that your bottom of the funnel is locked tight and frictionless. And I think that people need to think about that going forward and optimize for all search interactions. So yeah, Chris has great, great insights on that. Mordy Oberstein: Chris always has great insights, has a great- Crystal Carter: He's good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Chris is really good. Okay. Naomi Francis Parker, who's the SEO manager over at Charlotte Tilbury Beauty said, "Pay attention to your brand identity. Make sure it's clear across all places of search. This includes social media, GPTs, and digital search engines like Google and Bing. If 2024 taught us anything it's that the way users are searching is changing at a much faster pace than anyone, platforms included, could have anticipated. Couple that with the constantly changing SERP and it's clear that ranking as a concept is becoming outdated. Entity SEO has always been around because it's how search engines understand brands, people, et cetera. But it's already more important now than ever before. It's no longer just about how you appear in Google. It's about how you appear online at all." Yes, could not agree more. The way you appear, are mentioned, discuss related to as a brand across the entire digital landscape is how GPTs and how AI LLMs of the world are going to pick you up and understand you. Crystal Carter: Right. They need to understand your whole digital presence. And that's always been the case. And I think that as she's saying entities, you need to understand your entity. She's mentioning the LLM. I'm going to shout out my article that talks about that on the SEO hub, and it gets into that. One of the things that's important about LLMs is they're all trained on Wikipedia. 66 million pages of copyright-free, human-vetted information that's all coming from the knowledge graph, and pulling through all of those different entities and all those different elements. If your entity doesn't make sense online, then it's unlikely that your entity is going to make sense on an LLM. So you need to make sure that your entity, which pulls from lots of different data points, including what's on your website, but lots of other places, makes sense. And that's SEO these days. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's plenty of places where you can control if you don't have a Wiki Wikipedia page, you can crunch base if you're a business or a persona online. There's all LinkedIn. There's tons of places where- Crystal Carter: Your local business profile. Mordy Oberstein: Personality and persona are picked up. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Lots of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Lots of places. Crystal Carter: Handle that. Handle it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Last but not least, Aleyda Solis, SEO consultant, founder of Orainti, and of course, SEO FOMO, and learning SEO.io. Crystal Carter: And contributor/instructor for the WIC Studio SEO learning course, where you can learn SEO from Aleyda Solis. Mordy's waving because I'm waving my finger now. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, everyone. We're both waving fingers. Crystal Carter: Waving fingers because- Mordy Oberstein: Waving our finger at you. How silly it would be if you didn't take up that free SEO course from Aleyda. Crystal Carter: You totally should. Mordy Oberstein: Checkout the SEO Learning Hub, Studio SEO Learning Hub. Crystal Carter: Yes, do that. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Aleyda said, "It's clear that Google wants to feature real authoritative brands at the top of the SERPs, which is also clearly helpful to increase CTR and optimize conversions. Grow your brand authority by understanding your company brand positioning, and take into account in your SEO strategy. Target your brand to key queries, specify your brand details, structure data, optimize your knowledge panel details, etc." So great minds think alike. I literally did a video on why brands, like if your sales team or marketing team, don't focus on the messaging. Focus on the positioning, because that tells you, A, who you are as a brand, and it helps you also understand who the client and the consumer is. It's like the perfect intersection. Focus on understanding positioning, which is I guess my tip of the year if we're talking about all this brand stuff. SEOs are talking and chirping a lot about it, and it's hard. It's long term, it's a different kind of mentality. I will give you my one tip to fall back on it all. It all hinges on creating meaningful brand identity for yourself. And when I say meaningful, I've said this before, it means there are two levels, or multiple levels, of emotions that the human experience revolves around. What are surface level emotions and what are more deep, more integral things that you must have. I always say fun. In the vein of Barry Shores, I don't have to have fun. I don't have to have fun today. I don't have to have fun tomorrow. I can have fun on the weekend, or if I'm Barry, I will never have fun at all. If your brand identity is focused on, "Let's have fun," that's a very fleeting experience. If your brand identities focus on more meaningful experiences that are integral to the human experience, like connection, overcoming struggle, things that are must haves for the human experience, that's much more meaningful, that's much more powerful, and it'll keep you much more centered. Focus on those more existential parts of your brand identity and less on the fleeting parts of your brand identity. And the rest of the brand will follow that. So if you're in SEO, you're looking at where do I start with brand? Start there. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's my tip for 2025. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I got it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Hey Crystal, what's your tip for 2025? Smooth transition. Crystal Carter: Sorry. Sorry. You were dropping the knowledge and I was just pondering it. Mordy Oberstein: You were caught in my aura. Crystal Carter: I was just pondering that. I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's really interesting." I forgot I was on a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. Thank you? Crystal Carter: So my tip, and I've been saying this all over the place. I've said it in two different Brighton SEOs, have done a couple of podcasts, and I've written this article. Basically, you need to be treating LLMs as a channel, and we need to be treating them as a channel for traffic. We need to be tracking them. I have a deck that shares a regex that Jess Schultz shared where you can track the traffic from LLMs. You can see how many clicks you're getting. And guess what. You're getting clicks from LLMs. And while they are not currently overtaking Google in terms of search, we are looking at billions, billions of traffic that's going to LLMs every day. And people are looking to it for solutions because sometimes it has less friction than standard search, and we need to make sure that we can manage that. And I think that we have been approaching this as if it's completely different, or it's not relevant, or whatever, but it's not completely different. All of these search enabled LLMs, of which there are many, are relying on results from search engines. Legacy results and previous results, previous crawls, things like that. And we can manage that, and I think that that's something that should be a new skill for SEOs. I think it's exciting. Gartner said that search could drop by as much as 25% or something in the next few years. But I think that we are SEOs, we can do anything. We ruin the internet. This ain't nothing. Are you kidding me? So I think that this is a brave new world, and I think that it's super exciting. So I'm excited to see how this goes forward. Mordy Oberstein: Your confidence is inspiring. Crystal Carter: I hope so. I hope so. I love a new thing. It's one of the reasons why I love working in marketing and SEO, because there's always a new thing to learn and try. You know in the Matrix where it says, "Can you fly a helicopter?" and he goes, "Yes, I can." That's how I feel sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: I know kung fu. Crystal Carter: Right? That's how I feel sometimes. And I feel like that's where we are right now. And I think that if you're in a place where you're like, "I want to do things the way I did before, I feel you. I see you, I understand you, but it's new. We got to do new stuff. Mordy Oberstein: That brings to this week's follow of the week. This week's follow of the week are all the people we already mentioned. Is that lazy? I'm sorry. No, but there's so many people. There's Ray Saddiq, Debbie Chew, Celeste Gonzalez, Mike King, Paul Andre De Vera, Victor Pan, Chris Long, Aleyda Solis. My friend is Parker, Crystal, myself, a lot of people to follow. Crystal Carter: I think also you should follow George Wynn, our head of editorial- Mordy Oberstein: Oh yes. Crystal Carter: At the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, because George was the one who brought all these folks together. So George was able to interview some folks at Brighton SEO. He also put together a fantastic article with all of these tips, which you should absolutely check out. And yeah, he's got some great advice and he helps make sure that we sound like we know what we're talking about on the SEO Learning Hub. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, so George is the follow of the week? Crystal Carter: Yeah, follow George. Mordy Oberstein: Is that even lazier than saying, "Follow all the people in the episode"? Crystal Carter: If you follow George, you will also find all of these other folks because he put them in the article. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Follow George, wherever he may go. Crystal Carter: I will follow him. Mordy Oberstein: It's just scary right now. I don't know. Crystal Carter: I don't know. My kid's never seen Sister Act. I feel like I need to sort that out. Mordy Oberstein: My kids never saw that either. That's an old-school movie. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's a great movie. It's just not one I see- Crystal Carter: I like Sister Act 2 better though. Mordy Oberstein: I don't remember it as well. Crystal Carter: Sister Act 2 I was obsessed with because I had Lauryn Hill. I watched a movie a million times and had the soundtrack. Obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: I just don't remember it as well. I remember the first one really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no. Obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, whatever. Whoopee. And on that high note, 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 email marketing and how it relates to search marketing in 2025. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content, webinars, and our free SEO course over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ray Saddiq Debbie Chew Celeste Gonzalez Paul Andre De Vera Mike King Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ray Saddiq Debbie Chew Celeste Gonzalez Paul Andre De Vera Mike King Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Rankix Wix App Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, Mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We're putting out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who has covered all the facets of 2024 and knows how to look ahead to 2025, our one and only head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I am an expert on 2024. I have been here the whole time. I did every single day of 2024. Can confirm. Mordy Oberstein: I checked out on a few days, I'll be honest with you. There was a few days I missed. Crystal Carter: I was here the whole time. I saw all of it. I saw all of it. First eyewitness account, this is primary source. Mordy Oberstein: It was too much for my eyes. I had to like ... Crystal Carter: It was a lot. There was a lot. Every year I feel like we get to the end of the year and people were like, "Wow." Mordy Oberstein: No, no. This year was real wow. We'll get to it in a second. From an SEO point of view. I'm not talking about anything else. Purely from an SEO point of view. Crystal Carter: Yeah, there's a lot to cover. There's been a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of ins and outs. Mordy Oberstein: Ins and outs, a lot of what-have-yous. Big Lebowski. Yeah, indeed. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. Look for it in your inboxes each and every month, where you can see and plan out your entire site with our new visual site map that not only helps you better see, and dare I say, visualize your client's entire site, but leverages AI to help you build custom wire frames. Links in the show notes. Do check it out, as today's all about having vision, as we look forward to 2025 and what it has in store for SEO. Is it time to break free of the SERP silo? What content will work in 2025? And how does AI in the grand old LLM factor into the SEO equation now? We'll hear from not one, not two, not three, not four, not five ... I could go on, not six, but many SEOs, such as Mike King, the latest soloist, Ray Saddiq, Paul Andre de Vera, Victor Pan, and many more as they weigh in on what's in store for you in 2025. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So while the snow's still soft on 2025, ratchet down those ankle straps and strap your feet in as we ollie and nollie our boards down the mountain that is SEO in 2025. Crystal Carter: You dropping skateboard references on the podcast? Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Snowboard. I had to look them up. I have no clue. Crystal Carter: You snowboarding? Okay. Mordy Oberstein: It's snowboarding. Crystal Carter: I'm aware that you can ollie on a skateboard. I guess you can ollie on a snowboard because your feet don't have to come off. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. Crystal Carter: An ollie, I can never remember what that is. I know skateboarders, they talk in- Mordy Oberstein: It's the opposite of an ollie, no? Crystal Carter: Possibly. It's like if you're going switch or doing tail taps and half cab disaster, there's lots of skateboard terminology that people say. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding. We're all about that stuff. I know nothing about it, which is funny- Crystal Carter: Everything's above board. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, yeah, whatever. Crystal Carter: Just play one on TV. Mordy Oberstein: I just play one on our SEO podcast. I literally Googled all that. I don't know what it even means. Crystal Carter: You know what the first time I went snowboarding, we actually Googled top 10 tips for snowboarding, printed it out- Mordy Oberstein: And you broke your leg? Crystal Carter: No, not the first time. No. We printed it out and then printed out the MapQuest and drove up a mountain in a Hyundai, and yeah, it was good times. Good times. That's the- Mordy Oberstein: You know what's funny? Probably that first result of the top 10 tips, probably very similar to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, eighth, ninth 10th offering the top 10 tips. Crystal Carter: Those are the good old days. Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was 2024 for you. So as we gently and non-controversially move into recapping 2024 just a bit, because SEO enters in a really weird place. I don't think it's ever been weirder. Isn't that weird? To quote Austin Powers, because it is weird. Crystal Carter: May you live in interesting times. Mordy Oberstein: I just want to recap some of the larger issues, stories, developments in SEO in 2024, such as now that the helpful content update is no more, it's baked into the core algorithm and sites that were hit by it back in September don't seemingly, at this point in time of the recording of this podcast, have been able to actually recover in a significant way. Seeing like 20% recoveries was the max. So that was a big deal. Reddit's here, Reddit's there, Reddit's everywhere, and there's not a drop of organic results to spare. Crystal Carter: I didn't know you had bars, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: I could snowboard and rhyme on the same podcast. Podcast is imagination land. So there's that. There were creator summits at Google Health where sites were told, "Nope, not going to happen for you." Crystal Carter: Good luck out there. Mordy Oberstein: Break a leg. I don't know. Yeah? That happened. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I guess they were just kind of told it depends. I don't know. Yeah, there was a lot going on. Mordy Oberstein: Interesting plan for a creator. So let's bring them all in and tell them we don't know. Sucks for you, I guess. Crystal Carter: I think it's just really tricky for people because Google shifts around, but this has been so much shifting. I've been saying to people, Google's in beta mode right now. And we've been in, as SEOs, there are people who've been doing SEO since 1999, and a lot of stuff hadn't changed that much over the course of that time, but in the last three, four years. Mordy Oberstein: In the last three days. Crystal Carter: Right, right, exactly. At time of recording, the head of Google recently said there's going to be monumental change coming in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: That was a great ... We covered that on its new. If you missed that, you should watch that because there are some salty points that I will not say in this podcast about that interview. Just ask Congress. Okay. Stop, cannot go further. I will get too salty too quickly. But yeah, and on the flip side of that, some of these sites have terrible ad experiences and Google traffic isn't guaranteed, which is another issue. Maybe we're too siloed and SEO should kind of get out of the bubble. Brand is now in focus in the SEO space Like never before. Everyone's talking about branding, and branding, and branding, but not exactly about how to do the branding, which is a different problem. But we're talking about branding. AIOs? I don't know how they got so far down on the list. That should have been more on the top of the list. This list. It's not a sequential order of SEO insanity, it's just a random list. So AI overviews kind of been hit or miss. Drink urine, eat glue, that was part of the equation in 2024. Crystal Carter: Right. Seemed to have improved over the course of it, I will say. I will say that. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. They have improved. More links, more links, Crystal Carter: More links, more value, less just repeating the exact same featured snippet underneath of it. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: Little bit of that. So we'll see. We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Right. What's the CTR? All that one actually knows, so that's good. Also, manual actions on some pretty big websites for parasite SEO. Third-party content hosted on the website. It has nothing to do with whatever your website does. Penalized by Google. Moral of the story, write it yourself. Okay, that was again salty, because Google's like ... "Well, if you're writing it yourself, that seems to be fine," which was Greg Finn's point on Its New multiple times. So I'm just dealing Greg Salty Thunder on that one. But Forbes, a lot. Entrepreneur, all these big sites who were hosting third-party content on their website were dinged. Manual action dinged by Google on those folders. So that was a shot across the bow to publishers. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Forbes had quite the year this year. Everybody's been talking about Forbes. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Because it seems like they lost a lot of traffic. Oh, you meant it like, "Oh, it was complicated." Got it. Not like, "Wow, that was a great year." Crystal Carter: They've had quite a year. A lot going on. Everybody's talking about Forbes. People have a lot to say about Forbes. People have a lot of opinions about what's going on there, including Google, apparently. Mordy Oberstein: Apparently. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: But everybody acts like they're saints also, so whatever. Anywho. Wow, this is starting off great. There's a ton that I probably missed. The net result of all of this is there's mass confusion, uncertainty, and change within the SEO space, and I'm not being hyperbolic. Crystal Carter: Not at all. Not at all. And I think that we're even starting to see this in how people are approaching talking to clients as well. So people are having to diversify their SEO offering, people are having to do things a little bit more different, a little bit more nuanced, a little ... And I haven't seen 360 marketing everywhere. I've seen 360 marketing quoted as a strategy more times than I've ever seen before. Everybody is going to 360, and I think that that's good. I think that's good, and I've spoken on this years ago that it's something that's high value. And Mordy, you've been talking about brand for years. Mordy Oberstein: For years. Years. Crystal Carter: Years. Years. And we don't want to be like the harbingers of, "I told you so," but also- Mordy Oberstein: No. I told you also. Crystal Carter: But we did tell you so. Just saying. Just saying. Just putting it out there. And so hopefully people are able to get involved and see what's going on there. Mordy Oberstein: So with that, we got a bunch of folks together and we asked them, okay, with all this craziness going on in the SEO space, what are your top tips for 2025? And they're like, "Punt." No, I'm just kidding. They had actual ... Punt is a football reference, whatever. It just means kick it down the field and see what happens. They have some actual really good advice for you. So let's get right to it. We're going to start off with Ray Saddiq, who is the global head of marketing at Rice at seven, who talks about working with other teams. Here's what Ray had to say. Ray Saddiq: So I think that search has changed massively, and it's time for you as an SEO to start working with the other teams in your department. So if you are in-house, go ahead and we'll start speaking to your social team, because social search is a thing at the moment, so it's time that you go and start speaking to them. But also speak to your PR team as well, because it's crazy how many links can be built. I've noticed over here on the US side, especially how many people aren't working directly with their PR team to build links into the right places on their website. So have a look at that, check that out. Look into digital PR as well if you haven't already. It's a huge thing. I know there's still a few people I spoke to today who aren't really looking into it at the moment, so now's the time. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Ray. That's a great point. Someone asked me, I don't remember who it was ... Humble brag, I get asked for so many of these round up tips for the end of the year, and one of my ... Somebody- Ray Saddiq: Everybody asks me so many things. Mordy Oberstein: I know. Look at me. Ray Saddiq: Totally asking me questions. Mordy Oberstein: Sound like such a creep. No, but I just have a bad memory. So I don't remember where it was, but I wrote ... I think it was for Aleyda's SEO FOMO thing. Sit with comms. My biggest tip for you is sit with comms, which is kind of what Ray is saying. So great minds think alike. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think that SEOs are growing up. We need to mature into the full marketers that we are, because we always have been a core part of the marketing team and we just need to mature into that. And I think that that's exactly what he's talking about from a PR point of view. One of the other things that's happened this year is that LLMs have also become destinations for search. So I've got an article that goes all into that, but one of the things that I talk about is that links are part of that. All of the things we've done for SEO contribute to that, including getting links in high value publications, which PR is the only way to do that. You're not going to get a link from time. You're not going to get a link in the Atlantic without doing some solid PR. So absolutely great advice. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's really solid. Speaking of which, and talking with other teams, Debbie Chew, who's the SEO manager over our Stripe, goes into that with a little bit more detail. So here's Debbie. Debbie Chew: One SEO tip for SEO 2025 would be to break out of your silos. So in SEO, we kind of live in a bubble sometimes. Maybe if we're lucky, we might be working with paid, but there are a bunch of other teams that really understand our customer and that we can tap into. So let's look at our sales team, our customer service team, what data can they share with us about our customers, and what data can the SEO team share back with them and use that within kind your SEO strategy and then have them use that as well. So make sure to break out of your silos and pull all that data together and create a great success for your business. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Debbie. Really appreciate that. That's really the point. I feel like the internet is in the age of resonance. There's so much digital noise, there's so much digital chatter that you really have to resonate with that audience, and the only way to really do that, and that part of your job as an SEO is to resonate, not just to get clicks and not just to get traffic, but to actually resonate, which is ... I don't know why I have to say that. And the only way to do that is to really, I think, is to understand the brand positioning of the company that you're working with or the client that you're working with, which means you need to talk to these other teams that break out of your silo, like Debbie just said. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And she also mentioned at the data point, the only way you're going to effectively connect with these folks is with some authenticity, and you can only get authenticity by knowing what you're talking about, and the only way what you're talking about is with data. So you need to get data from the teams that are working with them. And it might be that the data unlocks always, always data unlocks stuff that you didn't quite see. You're like, "Oh, turns out we're really big in Wisconsin." And you're like, "Oh, okay, maybe we should do some stuff in Wisconsin. I didn't realize that that was a thing. Or maybe you feel like you're big in Wisconsin and you can use the data to back that up so that you can get money to do something in Wisconsin, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Or then they say, "Oh no, we're not really big in Wisconsin. We're actually big in Cleveland, so we have to do stuff in Cleveland." They're like, "Oh, Cleveland." Okay. Speaking of breaking out of silos and working with other teams, maybe it's time to break out of search just a little bit, not put all of your eggs in one basket. So here's Celeste Gonzalez, director of RooLabs, over at Rickety Roo, on that point. Celeste Gonzalez: My one SEO tip for 2025 would be, towards local businesses, don't put all your eggs in one SEO basket. Diversify your channels. Be where your audience is. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Celeste. I could not agree more, not just for local businesses, but in general. I think one of the ideas that's coming out of SEO from 2024 is that search for many websites is a vehicle. And it's not the only vehicle, it's simply one vehicle to build up that brand presence, to build up the visibility that you want to have to build up, the engagement or the performance, whatever it is, it's one vehicle. And especially if you're not one of these giant websites like, I don't know, Wix ... Like Wix, it's going to be much harder for you to get onto that SERP and to use search as a vehicle the way that you might have done in the past. I think it's one of the main themes out of 2024. So definitely diversifying that portfolio a bit makes a lot of sense. Crystal Carter: Yeah, totally. And I think it doesn't just apply to local businesses. I think it's absolutely important for local businesses, because you are going to be connecting with your customers in so many different ways. And Facebook is a channel that really, really works for local businesses, for instance. There's always a local schools group, people are using the marketplace to find things on Facebook. So I use Facebook more for local things than almost anything else, and I think that that's for instance, really useful. And making sure that your website connects with that, making sure that you've got listings, making sure you've got your Google business profile, absolutely helps your local business to perform online. So if you are working in the local space, if you are a local business owner or you're supporting a local business owner as a consultant, adding more channels to what you do will absolutely help you in 2024, 2025, 2026, going forward. Mordy Oberstein: That's just channel nine. Nothing ever good was ever on channel nine. Right? Crystal Carter: I don't know what you're talking about. Mordy Oberstein: Channel nine. That was UPN when I was a kid. Crystal Carter: Oh, I used to watch tons of UPN. Mordy Oberstein: There was reruns of Family Matters, I'll be honest. Crystal Carter: Tons. Mordy Oberstein: They had the most- Crystal Carter: I watched tons of UPN back in the day. Moesha was on UPN. Mordy Oberstein: The WB also. Also who bought ... Crystal Carter: They also had loads of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: 7th Heaven, Jessica Buell was on that. All right, whatever. Anywho, one of the other big themes out of 2024 is obviously around content generation. We're talking about content generation, one of the things we're talking about is AI. So here's Mike King, founder of iPoll Rank, on how to generate content with AI. Mike King: Use retrieval augmented generation for creating content with generative AI. And when you do it, generate the content in components. Don't just say, "Give me a giant blog post." Give me the intro to the blog post, give me the main body area, give me the TLDR. Break it down into components in alignment with the design of the website and you're going to get much more usable content a lot faster. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, Mike. And that's very similar, by the way, to what Mike talked about on our webinar with him and Ross Hudgens. If you give AI a walled garden to operate in, and boundaries to operate in, you usually get way, way better results. Crystal Carter: And in his webinar that we did with him and Ross Hudgens, which we reference a lot because it's got really, really good value in it, they point out that they've both been using AI for years. So they know what they're talking about. They didn't just jump on the bandwagon. They've been driving the bandwagon for years. And I think that it really, really does help if you break it down, if you give it good inputs, if you give it good prompts, if you're breaking it down that way. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Now, to break down content itself a little bit for you in 2025 and what might work that you might not be focused on, here's Paul Andre de Vera, host of the SEO show on some fresh content ideas. Paul Andre De Vera: My one tip for SEO 2025 is live streaming. What's the freshest content out there? What's fresher than fresh? Live streaming? Live video. Last year I was talking about video's great. Get videos ranking on page one of Google button. If you look at right now, every time I schedule a live on my YouTube, they're ranking on page one almost instantly. So check it out. Live streaming is my number one tip for 2025. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Dre. That is really interesting to see that he's doing the live streams on LinkedIn and they're popping up on the SERP right away. That's interesting. Crystal Carter: That is really interesting. The live LinkedIn is a fascinating development. They've really been investing in video in the last little while since everybody's taken to LinkedIn as a refuge after all of the other social media platforms fell apart. So they've been putting a lot of video in there, and the live does seem to get a little bit of traction, so we'll see how that develops in the next little while. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, absolutely. So we don't only have those tips for you. We collected a whole bunch of tips from a whole bunch of different SEOs that'll be part of a roundup post, but I wanted to pull some of those into the podcast as well. So Victor Pan, who is the SEO over a HubSpot, had a really interesting tip. He wrote, "Don't waste a crisis. When site traffic is down," because we're talking about, "Oh, it's a volatile world out there. Site traffic might be down," it's easy to patch these with the short-term solutions. For example, 2025 coming, or here, depending on how many content plus year keywords your site ranks for, you'll have a predictable traffic decline on pages ranking for 2024 keywords. The short term solution would be to scrape and update page content and titles manually. Gross. Don't waste this crisis, or forget the lesson from yesteryear. Quantify the loss from last year, document an editorial process to proactively avoid future traffic declines while elevating content quality. Record the win and wear it proudly with your colleagues. When you lose traffic, don't lose the lesson. Crystal Carter: Yo teachable moments. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: Teachable moments. This is absolutely key. I think also sometimes people are like, "Oh, the traffic is down. Sometimes that means you got their attention." And if you're the person who's like, "I told you so. I told you we shouldn't have done this thing that we did anyway," then that's a great time to also give the teachable moment to the rest of your team and remind them why you are the SEO that you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And just like, yeah, remember? Oh, now you're coming to me now. Oh, okay." So just have your answers ready to go. And yeah, as he says, don't let the teachable moment go past. Actually learn from it. Totally, totally great advice. Mordy Oberstein: It's a great quote. So switching over to eCom a little bit, Chris Long VP of marketing at Go Fish Digital wrote, "Retailers, Google is becoming your new category page. In effort to compete with Amazon they're turning the search results into a de facto category page experience. Fast and navigation pricing comparisons and more, all directly available in the search results. This means that you need to spend even more time on your products as opposed to your category pages," which is really interesting. By the way, I think it's really interesting that Google's going so heavy on the homepage or the traditional SERP page with all of the products and not trying to push you into Google shopping more heavily so as to compete brand-wise with Amazon. I think it's a short-term win for Google. I'm not sure it's a long-term win for Google, but that's a different point aside. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they are coming for Amazon hard. And I think also, I think for SEOs, this is going to be changing around the funnel. I think Chris is right. This is your product page, so you need to make sure that anything that's pulling through from your feed, going into Google, is optimized for that experience. And also making sure that your bottom of the funnel is locked tight and frictionless. And I think that people need to think about that going forward and optimize for all search interactions. So yeah, Chris has great, great insights on that. Mordy Oberstein: Chris always has great insights, has a great- Crystal Carter: He's good. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Chris is really good. Okay. Naomi Francis Parker, who's the SEO manager over at Charlotte Tilbury Beauty said, "Pay attention to your brand identity. Make sure it's clear across all places of search. This includes social media, GPTs, and digital search engines like Google and Bing. If 2024 taught us anything it's that the way users are searching is changing at a much faster pace than anyone, platforms included, could have anticipated. Couple that with the constantly changing SERP and it's clear that ranking as a concept is becoming outdated. Entity SEO has always been around because it's how search engines understand brands, people, et cetera. But it's already more important now than ever before. It's no longer just about how you appear in Google. It's about how you appear online at all." Yes, could not agree more. The way you appear, are mentioned, discuss related to as a brand across the entire digital landscape is how GPTs and how AI LLMs of the world are going to pick you up and understand you. Crystal Carter: Right. They need to understand your whole digital presence. And that's always been the case. And I think that as she's saying entities, you need to understand your entity. She's mentioning the LLM. I'm going to shout out my article that talks about that on the SEO hub, and it gets into that. One of the things that's important about LLMs is they're all trained on Wikipedia. 66 million pages of copyright-free, human-vetted information that's all coming from the knowledge graph, and pulling through all of those different entities and all those different elements. If your entity doesn't make sense online, then it's unlikely that your entity is going to make sense on an LLM. So you need to make sure that your entity, which pulls from lots of different data points, including what's on your website, but lots of other places, makes sense. And that's SEO these days. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And there's plenty of places where you can control if you don't have a Wiki Wikipedia page, you can crunch base if you're a business or a persona online. There's all LinkedIn. There's tons of places where- Crystal Carter: Your local business profile. Mordy Oberstein: Personality and persona are picked up. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Lots of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Lots of places. Crystal Carter: Handle that. Handle it. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Last but not least, Aleyda Solis, SEO consultant, founder of Orainti, and of course, SEO FOMO, and learning SEO.io. Crystal Carter: And contributor/instructor for the WIC Studio SEO learning course, where you can learn SEO from Aleyda Solis. Mordy's waving because I'm waving my finger now. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, everyone. We're both waving fingers. Crystal Carter: Waving fingers because- Mordy Oberstein: Waving our finger at you. How silly it would be if you didn't take up that free SEO course from Aleyda. Crystal Carter: You totally should. Mordy Oberstein: Checkout the SEO Learning Hub, Studio SEO Learning Hub. Crystal Carter: Yes, do that. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Aleyda said, "It's clear that Google wants to feature real authoritative brands at the top of the SERPs, which is also clearly helpful to increase CTR and optimize conversions. Grow your brand authority by understanding your company brand positioning, and take into account in your SEO strategy. Target your brand to key queries, specify your brand details, structure data, optimize your knowledge panel details, etc." So great minds think alike. I literally did a video on why brands, like if your sales team or marketing team, don't focus on the messaging. Focus on the positioning, because that tells you, A, who you are as a brand, and it helps you also understand who the client and the consumer is. It's like the perfect intersection. Focus on understanding positioning, which is I guess my tip of the year if we're talking about all this brand stuff. SEOs are talking and chirping a lot about it, and it's hard. It's long term, it's a different kind of mentality. I will give you my one tip to fall back on it all. It all hinges on creating meaningful brand identity for yourself. And when I say meaningful, I've said this before, it means there are two levels, or multiple levels, of emotions that the human experience revolves around. What are surface level emotions and what are more deep, more integral things that you must have. I always say fun. In the vein of Barry Shores, I don't have to have fun. I don't have to have fun today. I don't have to have fun tomorrow. I can have fun on the weekend, or if I'm Barry, I will never have fun at all. If your brand identity is focused on, "Let's have fun," that's a very fleeting experience. If your brand identities focus on more meaningful experiences that are integral to the human experience, like connection, overcoming struggle, things that are must haves for the human experience, that's much more meaningful, that's much more powerful, and it'll keep you much more centered. Focus on those more existential parts of your brand identity and less on the fleeting parts of your brand identity. And the rest of the brand will follow that. So if you're in SEO, you're looking at where do I start with brand? Start there. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's my tip for 2025. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay. I got it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Hey Crystal, what's your tip for 2025? Smooth transition. Crystal Carter: Sorry. Sorry. You were dropping the knowledge and I was just pondering it. Mordy Oberstein: You were caught in my aura. Crystal Carter: I was just pondering that. I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's really interesting." I forgot I was on a podcast. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. Thank you? Crystal Carter: So my tip, and I've been saying this all over the place. I've said it in two different Brighton SEOs, have done a couple of podcasts, and I've written this article. Basically, you need to be treating LLMs as a channel, and we need to be treating them as a channel for traffic. We need to be tracking them. I have a deck that shares a regex that Jess Schultz shared where you can track the traffic from LLMs. You can see how many clicks you're getting. And guess what. You're getting clicks from LLMs. And while they are not currently overtaking Google in terms of search, we are looking at billions, billions of traffic that's going to LLMs every day. And people are looking to it for solutions because sometimes it has less friction than standard search, and we need to make sure that we can manage that. And I think that we have been approaching this as if it's completely different, or it's not relevant, or whatever, but it's not completely different. All of these search enabled LLMs, of which there are many, are relying on results from search engines. Legacy results and previous results, previous crawls, things like that. And we can manage that, and I think that that's something that should be a new skill for SEOs. I think it's exciting. Gartner said that search could drop by as much as 25% or something in the next few years. But I think that we are SEOs, we can do anything. We ruin the internet. This ain't nothing. Are you kidding me? So I think that this is a brave new world, and I think that it's super exciting. So I'm excited to see how this goes forward. Mordy Oberstein: Your confidence is inspiring. Crystal Carter: I hope so. I hope so. I love a new thing. It's one of the reasons why I love working in marketing and SEO, because there's always a new thing to learn and try. You know in the Matrix where it says, "Can you fly a helicopter?" and he goes, "Yes, I can." That's how I feel sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: I know kung fu. Crystal Carter: Right? That's how I feel sometimes. And I feel like that's where we are right now. And I think that if you're in a place where you're like, "I want to do things the way I did before, I feel you. I see you, I understand you, but it's new. We got to do new stuff. Mordy Oberstein: That brings to this week's follow of the week. This week's follow of the week are all the people we already mentioned. Is that lazy? I'm sorry. No, but there's so many people. There's Ray Saddiq, Debbie Chew, Celeste Gonzalez, Mike King, Paul Andre De Vera, Victor Pan, Chris Long, Aleyda Solis. My friend is Parker, Crystal, myself, a lot of people to follow. Crystal Carter: I think also you should follow George Wynn, our head of editorial- Mordy Oberstein: Oh yes. Crystal Carter: At the Wix Studio Learning Hub, SEO Learning Hub, because George was the one who brought all these folks together. So George was able to interview some folks at Brighton SEO. He also put together a fantastic article with all of these tips, which you should absolutely check out. And yeah, he's got some great advice and he helps make sure that we sound like we know what we're talking about on the SEO Learning Hub. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, so George is the follow of the week? Crystal Carter: Yeah, follow George. Mordy Oberstein: Is that even lazier than saying, "Follow all the people in the episode"? Crystal Carter: If you follow George, you will also find all of these other folks because he put them in the article. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Follow George, wherever he may go. Crystal Carter: I will follow him. Mordy Oberstein: It's just scary right now. I don't know. Crystal Carter: I don't know. My kid's never seen Sister Act. I feel like I need to sort that out. Mordy Oberstein: My kids never saw that either. That's an old-school movie. Crystal Carter: I like it. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, it's a great movie. It's just not one I see- Crystal Carter: I like Sister Act 2 better though. Mordy Oberstein: I don't remember it as well. Crystal Carter: Sister Act 2 I was obsessed with because I had Lauryn Hill. I watched a movie a million times and had the soundtrack. Obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: I just don't remember it as well. I remember the first one really well. Crystal Carter: Yeah, no. Obsessed. Absolutely obsessed. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, whatever. Whoopee. And on that high note, 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 email marketing and how it relates to search marketing in 2025. Look for it wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content, webinars, and our free SEO course over on the Wix Studio Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

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. Joshua George Founder of ClickSlice 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. Articles & Resources 8 Oct 2024 Technical SEO for eCommerce: A step-by-step guide to getting your online store crawled and indexed 1 Feb 2024 On-page SEO for eCommerce: Increase your online store’s organic traffic and sales 15 Jun 2023 How to find and fix keyword cannibalization for your eCommerce website Resources Joshua George SEO agency project proposal template Create proposals for potential clients efficiently with this adaptable template. Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

Looking to grow and build upon what you've already accomplished in your SEO career? Feeling like your SEO career is stagnant? Looking for a new edge? Hungry to try something new and different? Wix's Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter share their experience when looking to revitalize your SEO career and journey. Annie-Mai Hodge and Crystal Waddell join the show so you can get started with fresh strategies for career growth. Find out what can lead to new and unexpected career opportunities in SEO and digital marketing on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Back Revitalize & Refresh Your SEO Career! Looking to grow and build upon what you've already accomplished in your SEO career? Feeling like your SEO career is stagnant? Looking for a new edge? Hungry to try something new and different? Wix's Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter share their experience when looking to revitalize your SEO career and journey. Annie-Mai Hodge and Crystal Waddell join the show so you can get started with fresh strategies for career growth. Find out what can lead to new and unexpected career opportunities in SEO and digital marketing on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast. Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 108 | October 30,2024 | 34 MIN 00:00 / 34:59 This week’s guests Annie-Mai Hodge Annie-Mai Hodige is the founder of Girl Power Marketing, a community for women, girls and allies to create their own path, supercharge their career and build confidence. Crystal Waddell Crystal Waddell is the host of the Simple and Smart SEO Show Podcast, where she empowers business owners with actionable, easy-to-understand strategies for optimizing their online presence. With a passion for simplifying SEO, Crystal helps entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of digital marketing, offering valuable insights drawn from her extensive experience working with local businesses and handmade brands. When she's not podcasting, Crystal provides SEO strategy and support through her business, CW Media, Inc., helping clients build strong digital foundations to grow their brands. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha, Mahalo, Welcome to SERPs Up!. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix. I'm joined by the amazing, the incredible, the fascinating, I don't think I've ever called you fascinating before, but you are fascinating, the head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello Internet people. I hope everybody's feeling good. Mordy Oberstein: And fascinating. Crystal Carter: And fascinating. I'm fascinated by how everyone's feeling. Mordy Oberstein: It's like Spock, "Fascinating." Crystal Carter: Anytime we can mention Star Trek, I'm here for it. Mordy Oberstein: Same. Crystal Carter: All day, every day. Mordy Oberstein: All day, every day we're trekking. We're trekking through SEO. As the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also refresh and revitalize your content with our content management system and content marketing tools for you in Wix Studio, as today we're talking about how to refresh and revitalize your SEO career. Looking to grow and build upon what you've already accomplished? Should you go further down the SEO wormhole, broaden that to new areas of digital marketing, or dive into new and emerging tech. We'll explore the possibilities as Crystal Waddell shares her processes for keeping things fresh. Plus Annie-Mai Hodge of Girl Power Marketing talks how you can breathe new life into your social media efforts. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So pop a Mentos, Tic-Tac, Altoid, or pull an old Ace Ventura and spray some Binaca as episode number 107 of the SERPs Up podcast freshens up the SEO air. That's an old pull. Ace Ventura is super old now. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it is. Mordy Oberstein: Like I've completely ... But for me, it still feels like it came out yesterday. Crystal Carter: Right. I can see that. Mordy Oberstein: Laces out, Dan. Laces out. Crystal Carter: “I likee!” Doesn't he say that? Mordy Oberstein: Right, right, right. He's like, "If I'm not back in five minutes, wait a little longer." "Do not go in there." There's so many lines, and I haven't seen the movie in 25 years. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't watched it in a little while. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's had a lasting impression on my life. Crystal Carter: You know what? That tracks. Mordy Oberstein: It's all on-brand. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But there we go. I think that that's somebody who he had refreshed his career and became a bit of a painter. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. He really did refresh his career. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of. Crystal Carter: Speaking of, one of the reasons why it's worth thinking about, and one of the reasons why we brought it up is that I think that SEO has so much to offer in terms of career trajectory and career viability because there are so many different facets of all of the different elements. So if I think about some of the SEOs that I know and their career journey, I'm thinking of Dana DiTomaso who now runs Kick Point, and she is an analytic person, but she started off doing SEO as her core discipline, but she steadily moved over to analytics, and that's something that's become really, really, really, really valuable to her. There's other people who start up in SEO and then they go into podcasting, for instance, There's some people that started off in SEO and then they move into project management. There's some people that start off in SEO and they move into growth. There's some people who start off in technical SEO and end up doing more content or who start off with more content and end up doing more technical. Dale Bertrand, who's somebody who was involved with our webinars recently, we've got a great webinar with him that I reference a lot talking about AI content, and he started off as a developer and moved into SEO similarly, and I think Joe Hall and also Areej AbuAli also did this as well. So I think that there's a lot of scope, and one of the things that drives, in my experience, that drives the growth and change of your SEO career as far as I can tell, is emerging technologies and also emerging opportunities and probably also your clients. So if you're looking at your career, you're looking at things you can do, when you see new emerging technologies, that's an opportunity for you to become the go-to person for that, whether that's when you're in an agency or whether that's within the agency team, for instance, or whether that's you have a client offering or something. So when we think about GA4, for instance, when GA4 came in- Mordy Oberstein: I was just say that. I was just going to say GA4. Crystal Carter: Right? Lots of people didn't know how to use GA4. If you are the kind of person- Mordy Oberstein: People still don't know. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: People still don't know how to use GA4. Crystal Carter: Right. If you're the kind of person who's happy to just get stuck in with it, then you can help guide people through the mire that is this emerging tech with AI. We've seen a lot of people who have really risen to the challenge of that. Aleyda Solis started sharing lots of stuff about AI. Mordy Oberstein: Maria Haynes totally dived from SEO into AI. Crystal Carter: And another person is Brittany Mueller. Brittany Mueller started off at Moz, and I remember watching the Whiteboard Friday when she was like, "I'm interested in machine learning. I'm interested in AI. I'm still learning this at the moment, and here's what I know." And I remember watching that Whiteboard Friday way back in the day, and now she's fully invested in all of that sort of AI machine learning, all of those sorts of elements. So new tech will drive you personally. I was sort of doing general SEO and I got way into technical SEO as I had a client who needed something that was tech driven. I literally today just finished coding up some stuff for somebody because that was something that we needed for a project. And sometimes I like to think of it in The Matrix, they have that scene where he says, "Oh, can you drive a helicopter?" And he goes, "I can now." And I think that those skills, every time you add a new skill to your skill set that helps you grow and helps make you more bankable as either a consultant or as a member of your agency team, or as an in-house person, or whatever you're doing, but think about the skills that will differentiate you from other folks and allow you to cut through the fray. If you're looking at a lot of skills that are well established, don't get me wrong, it's really, really important to know how to do keyword research and to know how to do well-established things that will sort out your foundations. But if you're going into new territory, then there's going to be less competition, which makes you more indispensable, and it also gives you the ability to learn how to teach yourself, which means that you can literally do anything. Mordy Oberstein: I know Kung Fu. Crystal Carter: See, that's the movie that's burned into my brain. Mordy Oberstein: That's also not a very new movie, by the way. Crystal Carter: No, it's not. Yeah. I remember watching the DVD with the director's cut and director's information on it- Mordy Oberstein: my kids are not asking me about this, "What's this Matrix thing?" As if it's like this old movie that came out like an old Clint Eastwood movie, which is that, for me, is old. I'm just making myself feel old. I'm totally with you on this. I feel like SEO is almost like a gateway drug in a lot of ways. My best advice is follow where things speak to you naturally and go down that rabbit hole. So for me, I came from the content side of things, and when you're coming from SEO, from the content side of things, you naturally overlap with marketing stuff, wider marketing stuff, because that content is usually not just an SEO play, it's usually a broader play or other plays that come with that piece of content, whether it's via repurposing it, whether it comes promoting it in a social media. It very easily becomes a facilitator to getting into a wider marketing strategy. And because of my various roles, that kind of developed very naturally for me, whereas now I kind of went down the brand marketing world because as my career developed, it kind of followed and it spoke to me. It's something that I really enjoy, and now I feel like have a unique perspective on it because you don't have a lot of people doing brand who also came from the performance side of marketing. So that's an interesting little intersect. So it speaks to me, it's differentiated, it's unique, it builds on my previous skillsets, it builds on my personality, yada, yada, yada. And it's not something a lot of people are doing. And there's a lot of different pathways like that that come out from SEO more like, I don't know, have your ear to the ground kind of thing and just be open to it as it comes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that particularly if you're thinking of how can I pivot to make myself more marketable, like you were saying, not a lot of people are doing that. That's a really important thing to think about. Think about skills gaps. So if you're in a team at an agency or if you're in an in-house team, or if you're in a team on a project, then think about where is the gap and how can I close that gap with my skills with the things that I have? And that is something that can propel you forward. I think Helen Pollitt shares a skills gap matrix. There's other tools as well that you can do to assess your skills and your skills gaps. It's probably also something you could do with a ChatGPT sort of thing to help you what are some skills that a digital marketer should have, et cetera, et cetera. And then you could go through and you can say, "Oh no, I have this." "I have this." "I have this." "Oh, I don't have that." And that's worth looking at as well. And I think that in terms of you were saying the follow the things that interest you. Absolutely, absolutely. Particularly because you're going to need to be a little bit self-taught, or you're at least going to need to guide your own learning journey. Even if you go and do a course, you're going to need to find that course and you're going to need to complete the course yourself. So if it's something that you're not interested in, if it's not something that you can go down a wormhole quite happily, fall down a rabbit hole or whatever quite happily, then it's not going to work for you. So you really, really have to find something that speaks to you and that connects with the core of who you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And what's cool is that you can either go broader or you can go more specifically. SEO is really kind of like, it's one of those things that's in the intersection of so many things that you can really decide where you want to go with it. I'll just say, because I've had this, don't be afraid to pivot. I think there's a fear like, "Oh, this is what I've always done." This is kind of my personal brand. Personal brands can change. Your career paths can change. It's all okay. It is scary, I get it. But if you feel like there's something that really speaks to you, don't let that fear hold you back. Crystal Carter: No, no, absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. And I think that don't worry if you don't see other people doing it. That's fine too. Mordy Oberstein: Be ahead of the curve. That's what you want anyway. You want to look at, okay, what's happening out there in the ecosystem? What's happening out there across the way? What's happening out there with other disciplines? What's happening out there with SEO? And try to get ahead of all that. Crystal Carter: And also, don't be afraid to challenge existing norms. I started speaking about ... In 2022, I spoke at MozCon about visual search. One of the reasons why I wanted to speak about that was because Google was talking about it at Google.io loads, all over the place, but I wasn't seeing very much writing about it. And the writing that I was seeing didn't seem to align with what Google's documentation was saying about what you needed to do to optimize for visual search. And so I started speaking about this and I got loads of people, I still get people asking me about this now because there weren't a lot of people talking about that. And then more people started talking about it afterwards. Even though if you're in a situation where you don't hear people talking about something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't talk about it. Like you said, don't be afraid to stick your head out above the parapet. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. I think back, I don't know, back in the older days of SEO, like growth marketing was first becoming a thing. And now I look at a guy like Kevin Indig. In the beginning it was weird. Like, "Oh, what's growth marketing? What's growth marketing and SEO?" But now growth marketing and SEO, yeah, I really see the overlap. But that people who are now big in growth marketing, at least within the SEO space, when they first started talking about it was very new and it was very, I don't want to say weird, but it was out of the box terminology, but now it's not. Crystal Carter: No. And I think that the web is such an ever-evolving beast that it absolutely speaks to people that want to have a dynamic career. And I think the other thing is that just because you shift around in your discipline, just because you sort of focus on more growth marketing or maybe you're focusing more on analytics, it doesn't change the core of what you do, for instance. So I like to solve problems. I like to solve puzzles. I generally try to be fairly solutions led, and that's whether I'm doing technical SEO, whether I'm doing on-page SEO, whether I'm doing schema, Whatever I'm doing, that's what I apply it to. That's the angle I'm coming at it from. And I think that you will be present in whatever you do, and you don't forget any of those skills if you pivot. And in fact, a lot of times it'll come with you as well and will very often come in handy. So I think if you are thinking that you're feeling bored or you're thinking that you're feeling a little bit stuck, look around at some potential things and have a go and try something new that is distinct and that might position you more competitively in the market. Mordy Oberstein: Dip that toe into the pond. And if you're looking about how do I go about doing this? And what's the process for changing your approach? Well, here's Crystal Waddell on her process for changing her approach to SEO and marketing and keeping things fresh. Crystal Waddell: Hey guys, Crystal Waddell here from the Simple and Smart SEO Show podcast. Thank you Crystal and Mordy for letting me weigh in on this conversation. I feel like I have a unique perspective because I like to consider my SEO practice a business-first approach, where I'm more concerned about business outcomes than I am the optimization practices themselves. Also, being willing to pivot and change is necessary because things are moving so quickly. The faster you can inject that shift into your business and into your workflows, the easier it is to just keep things moving forward. I would say the big things that help me change my approach to SEO and marketing are data-driven adjustments. Mordy was actually the one that pointed out to me that the Google Search Console Insights come out every month at the same time. I was like, "Oh, that makes sense." So after that, I started doing an SEO day where I would specifically reflect on the Google Search Console data. I teach a small group and we compare what is going on in each of our search consoles. So it's really neat to be in a small group that has a bunch of different eyes on the same type of data. The other thing I like to do, I like to interview people for the Simple and Smart SEO Show, but I started my podcast just so that I could learn how to do SEO better. My podcast has really given me the opportunity to talk to experts like the wonderful Crystal Carter. So it's been awesome to talk to people who've been doing SEO longer than I have, and that can also shed light on what advice that even though it's really loud, may not be the best advice to listen to. I've taken it very seriously to find a few people that I trust within the industry to test some of my theories in my small group. I will create gamified elements to see if these are SEO tasks that the average Joe can take on and be successful. That's my litmus test, because if I do something that's too complicated for the average business owner to implement, then I have to find a different way. I have to find a better way. Really trying to make SEO fun and engaging is the challenge for me. The other thing I've realized about SEO is it really is so dependent on the client. If you've got a local lawn service, that's going to be completely different than a content creator that makes their money selling online memberships. So you really have to think about all of the opportunities that are available with marketing and with optimization strategies and create a plan that makes the most sense. The last thing that I've really found that I do well is leveraging different platforms. Searchers jump from platform to platform. And so as a brand, I think it's so important that when a person is searching for you on a platform like Pinterest, and then they jump over to Instagram or TikTok, they find the same you wherever they go. Those strategies help my customers be agile in their marketing while still maintaining this sense of cohesiveness, right? At the end of the day, what's most important are your business's core values. What you stand for, what you do, how you do it, and how your customer feels about it. Be the same you wherever people can find you. Thanks again guys. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Crystal. Make sure you check out the Simple and Smart SEO Podcast. She's has, forgot what I was going to say, she has an amazing radio voice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's great. She's great. She's really fantastic. She's also super nice. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure you follow Crystal, other Crystal, Crystal Waddell, and this Crystal, on social media. Has so many gems out there. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And she shared some great insights. One of the things she was talking about was platforms. Oh my days. I think SEO sometimes, if you're somebody who's thinking about your SEO career and you're feeling stuck in a rut, guess what? Your search optimization skills can be applied to other platforms, not just Google, also YouTube, also Pinterest, Instagram, whatever, what have you, like TikTok, TikTok SEO is a huge thing as well. So that's a great one as well. The other one she was talking about, the other thing she was saying was about how she started our podcast to learn from folks. That's really great as well. So learning from people, following people who are in a space that maybe you want to go into that maybe you're not an expert on just yet, but you're interested in, that's a great way to see if a new area of your career might be viable. And if a new topic or subject might be a viable skill set for you, that's really great as well. And I think also her general approach of actively learning. She was talking about testing and being in a group as well. That's a really, really great thing. So I think that if you are feeling stuck and you feel like you need to rejuvenate your career or you need to rejuvenate your skill set, then thinking about how you can learn and what's new skills you can learn is so, so valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Even if you don't want to start a podcast, it's a whole rigmarole of time and investment and resources and whatever. Find a group. Find a group of people you can talk to. You wanted to talk about your career, what you're thinking. I'll tell you personally, shout out to Andrew Optimisey, Nick Leroy, Kevin Indig. These are people. When I have ideas like what I want to do, I talk to them and I get feedback. And you can start to get not just feedback, but sometimes you'll start feeling more confident. Like, "You know what? Maybe I should do this now." But having that group, having that tight-knit group of people you can talk to and brainstorm with is a huge part of being able to effectively move your career or revitalize your career or pivot to something a little bit different. Find those people, they're out there, them probably already. Crystal Carter: Yeah, think trust network, group chat so that you can say, "Does this make sense? Is this okay? Is this a good idea?" And also they'll recommend you for things as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Crystal Carter: For things that you don't even think that you should be doing. They'll be like, "I saw this job and it's perfect for you." "I saw this opportunity and it's perfect for you." And you're like, "Really?" And they go, "Yeah, yeah, absolutely." Mordy Oberstein: Referral. This is the way. Crystal Carter: This is the way. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of things that need to be refreshed outside of careers or bad breath, the only thing that really, actually, you know what the truth is, the only thing that needs to be refreshed more than bad breath right now is social media, which is basically worse than halitosis right now. As this shifting sands of social fall out from under you, don't fret as we'll hear how to freshen up your social presence from Girl Power Marketing's own Annie-Mai Hodge as we move into the great beyond. So in case you haven't noticed, social is not the same as it once was. Social is different. Social has gotten very different. And I think the way we need to approach social might need a little bit of a refresh, and it might be time to get some new perspective. At least for me, I'm speaking to myself new perspective on how to think about and approach social media. So that's why we're here. We're going to hear from Annie-Mai Hodge on her approach to refreshing her social media presence. Annie-Mai Hodge: So there's three main ways that I refresh my social media activities and content to give them a bit more life. And the first one is a content graveyard. And I'll be honest, I never heard about this until last year when I was really struggling with content ideation, and I wish I could remember who told me, but if you are somehow listening to this, thank you. And basically what it is that any ideas that don't make it to the light of day, you pop into your content graveyard because if you don't, you will naturally forget about them. And just because they shouldn't see the light of day now doesn't mean that they won't work in three months or six months time, or perhaps even next week. But I go one step further and I also add content that flopped and I'm using flopped with quote-marks there or didn't perform as well as I'd hoped so that I can rework it at a later day or perhaps when it's a bit more topical in a few months time. And I also add content that performed really, really well. And I'll add some notes about why I think it worked particularly well and how I can potentially rework it in a few months time to really maximize getting the most out of that content. Because just because it's worked once really well doesn't mean that you can't keep getting good use out of it and reaching new people that haven't seen that content before. And that is one of the best and main ways that I refresh my content. But also, there's two other simple things that you can do. You can simply ask the audience, because sometimes I think it's really easy to guess what they want and we can get caught up in actually what we want to post or what we think is best, but that's not necessarily the right way to do it, and it's not necessarily the most accurate way to do it. It can be a little bit biased, but if you don't particularly have an engaged audience yet, I'd really recommend using a tool called Also Asked, which gathers people also asked data so you can see the questions that are being asked by people on Google. And I made that sound really complicated, but you won't regret it. Also Asked, I absolutely butchered that explanation, but it's an excellent tool. You get free searches per day and it will just be a great tool to have in your arsenal. And the final thing that I do is I have a really hard long look at the content that I've done over the last month to see what's working and what isn't. And it kind of goes back to the content graveyard there too, because if there's something that hasn't worked well at all, I'll pop it in there, and if something has worked, then I will analyze why it's worked as I do with the content that goes in my content graveyard, and I'll see how I can do that again with the content that I want to post the next month. But ultimately, I think as long as you are analyzing your content and using the data that's coming from social media and your audience, that is the best way to inform updating your social media content strategy. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Annie-Mai. Make sure you give Annie-Mai a big follow on social media. We'll link to our profiles in the show notes. By the way, content graveyard. I use that. I actually learned that from the Wix content writers because they use that when they write anything, basically. If you go, insider tip, should I share this? Hey, why not? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. When we work in a piece of content with a marketing team, the writing team rather at the bottom of the dock, there's always a graveyard of all the different ideas that they had, and that's where I learned that from, and I use it all the time. It's a great idea to keep your old ideas around because you want to save them for later. Graveyard is kind of a bad name for it, by the way. You don't want to actually kill them. You just want to have them there to see the progression of things and maybe to save them for a different time. Crystal Carter: Maybe it's the dugout. Mordy Oberstein: The dugout. Yeah. It's on the bench. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's on the bench. And you can bring them back in maybe or maybe not. Mordy Oberstein: Or no, or if they stink, you leave them on the bench and that's fine. There's always those players. Crystal Carter: But sometimes you're like, "Oh, this is your time to shine, man. It's you. It's you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You know what recently got revitalized and refreshed. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Seoroundtable.com. And I miss the old version. I'll tell that old version was nostalgia sometimes. Not all refreshes are for the best, by the way. Well, well-designed and good, but from a nostalgia point of view, I miss the old seoroundtable.com's design. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. Okay. I can see that. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not trying to bash the berry. I'm just trying to say I like the old one also. Crystal Carter: I'll tell you, the one that I'm hanging on to is SEM Rush. Mordy Oberstein: SEM Rush. I always called it SemRush. Crystal Carter: I always called it SEM Rush, because SEM is a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: SemRush is not. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm all about saving syllables. I'm like Kevin from the office, why speak more words when less words do? Why have more syllables than fewer will do? Okay, time now snappy news, go. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. A little bit of an SEO dramatic saga for you. First from Barry Schwartz on October 23rd, Google hit Fortune Recommends with a search penalty over site reputation abuse. So Fortune Recommends is a subfolder of fortune.com, and it actually says on that page, "Fortune Recommends is editorially independent. We may earn affiliate revenue." We may, we will. We do. "Earn affiliate from links in this content." It's your, I don't know, typical internet schlock, the 10 best CD rates for October, 2024, which are probably the 10 best CD rates for October, 2023 with a new title for 2024. Maybe not, maybe I'm just being a little bit spicy, but probably the same thing, whatever. Anyway, I digress. I digress. So Glenn Gabe notice that there was a huge drop in his subfolder's visibility, which seems to align with something that we, I think report on this very podcast before about Forbes' own affiliate content getting what seemed like an actual manual action a few weeks ago. Is this the same thing? This looks like it got hit on October, around October 11th per Glenn Gabe. What makes this more dramatic is on social media, Glenn Gabe the next day, I believe, started seeing all other sorts of sites, and he wrote up a post for his own website, G-Squared Interactive, which we'll link to in the show notes here, A Nightmare on Affiliate Street. Love that, by the way. How Google is picking off sites one by one that are violating its site reputation abuse spam policy. So Glenn saw this for all sorts of sites. For example, AP News, which is so odd to me, they have this has a subfolder for personal finance called AP Byline, where again, you have the same kind of things, like literally, I'm looking at an article, Why Are Groceries So Expensive? Are Medical Expenses Tax-Deductible? Shocked At The Pump: 11 Ways To Save Money On Gas, with number one being buy less gas. I'm making that up. That's not actually true. I mean, it is actually true. You would save money on gas players are spending less money on gas, but you need gas. Anyway, Glenn went through a whole list of sites like this and the sub folders that are getting picked off by Google, and he actually asked Google, "Hey, is this the algorithmic version of the site reputation abuse update?" And Google said, "No, it's not." It's not them testing the site reputation abuse algorithm. Google then also, Danny then also told Glenn, "Our systems aim to understand of a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site. This helps us surface the most useful information from a range of sites." So what it seems like, and this, I talked with Glenn back channel about this, and I completely agree, seems to be like they're targeting subfolders or subdomains that they can clearly see, Google can clearly see, are not actually aligned with what the website actually does. I have a very spicy take on Google's previous statements about this on It's New, I don't know which episode. Hold on, hold on. I'll find it. If you right now, actually, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. We can edit this part out or we can keep it in here. It is from the, wait for it, it is from three weeks ago. That doesn't help you very much. I'll link to it in the show notes. I'll link to the episode in the show notes where I have very spicy take on my thoughts on this and Google's previous statements about this. What it basically looks like is that if you're blatantly creating a subfolder or a subdomain, that has nothing to do with your website, but it's all about affiliate content. It looks like Google seems to have gotten more aggressive about identifying that and demoting that content and their rankings. I have been on a soapbox. I'll end on this point, because I'm not being so snappy. I have been on a soapbox about this point. I literally spoke about this at SMX West in 2019, 2020. I don't remember something like that. Stay in your lane. From an SEO point of view, now more than ever, you can see what Google's doing. Staying in your lane from a brand point of view. If you're doing these kind of things, if you're, again, I always go back, we had a whole episode about this. You're Rolling Stone and you're talking about best fridges of 2024 and not best folk albums of 1964, you have a brand problem, and I understand why sites are doing this for the revenue. I'm not critiquing necessarily. I understand at least why they're doing it. I do think it's not good for the internet. So that's my personal take, which is stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. And this week, that's this week's snappy news, right in your lane. That's what we do here. You know what? And I think Barry should write like that. Write the news story. Barry, you're too wordy. Take out all of the gap words. Just, "John Mueller say, ranking this." Just go full on, go for it, Barry. As condensed as possible. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I don't want any filler words anymore. Crystal Carter: Who needs them? Who needs them? Mordy Oberstein: No one needs them. I understand. I understand good. All this, no words needed. I'm going off the rails on this. Oh, boy. Okay. If you're talking about revitalizing your career and you want to find someone on social media who has revitalized their career in multiple ways in shapes and forms, we recommend that you follow Petra Kis-Herczegh out there on social media, on X and on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah. She has written a recent article about this very topic, and she thinks very critically about all of this and has gone on a journey. I think she started as a dev herself and then moved into technical SEO, and I think she's been moving into other parts of her career as well, so it's worth thinking about this. It's worth thinking about this, and she's a great follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure you follow her out there on social media. Crystal Carter: Are you feeling revitalized now? Mordy Oberstein: You stole my mojo. You stole my thought. I was going to say that. We should leave this whole thing in. Crystal Carter: Are you feeling refreshed? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Super refreshed and revitalized. It's like Head and Shoulders for my soul. Crystal Carter: You can be a brand new you. Mordy Oberstein: Do you remember those, what was it called? I'm sure it's still a product. It's like the Head and Shoulders, but it's way more medicinal. It started with a D. Oh, man. Crystal Carter: I don't remember. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, Denorex, I think it was called. Something like that. They would have commercials where they would compare the person using the Head and Shoulders and their product. This product tingles. Head and Shoulders doesn't. As if the tingling effect showed you that it was getting the dandruff, but it always made me feel like my head, I used to use it because my grandfather had it, and when I would go to my grandfather's house, that's the shampoo. I'm getting way too into the rabbit hole of this, but it did make my head feel revitalized. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's the connection. I don't know if it helped with dandruff or not, but it tingled. It made my head feel revitalized. Crystal Carter: And electric. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, this episode made me feel like that. Crystal Carter: Well, if you need to- Mordy Oberstein: TMI? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think I need to go talk to somebody about this. Anyway, thanks for joining us on the SERPs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into merging your on and offline marketing activities. Yes, there's an offline world. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content 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 Crystal Waddell Annie-Mai Hodge Petra Kis-Herczegh Glenn Gabe Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Girl Power Marketing Crystal Waddell Consulting & Podcast News: It's New on Forbes Penalty Did Google Hit Fortune Recommends With A Search Penalty Over Site Reputation Abuse? A Nightmare on Affiliate Street – How Google is picking off sites one by one that are violating its ‘Site reputation abuse’ spam policy Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Crystal Waddell Annie-Mai Hodge Petra Kis-Herczegh Glenn Gabe Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Girl Power Marketing Crystal Waddell Consulting & Podcast News: It's New on Forbes Penalty Did Google Hit Fortune Recommends With A Search Penalty Over Site Reputation Abuse? A Nightmare on Affiliate Street – How Google is picking off sites one by one that are violating its ‘Site reputation abuse’ spam policy Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It is the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERPs Up. Aloha, Mahalo, Welcome to SERPs Up!. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix. I'm joined by the amazing, the incredible, the fascinating, I don't think I've ever called you fascinating before, but you are fascinating, the head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello Internet people. I hope everybody's feeling good. Mordy Oberstein: And fascinating. Crystal Carter: And fascinating. I'm fascinated by how everyone's feeling. Mordy Oberstein: It's like Spock, "Fascinating." Crystal Carter: Anytime we can mention Star Trek, I'm here for it. Mordy Oberstein: Same. Crystal Carter: All day, every day. Mordy Oberstein: All day, every day we're trekking. We're trekking through SEO. As the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can always subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also refresh and revitalize your content with our content management system and content marketing tools for you in Wix Studio, as today we're talking about how to refresh and revitalize your SEO career. Looking to grow and build upon what you've already accomplished? Should you go further down the SEO wormhole, broaden that to new areas of digital marketing, or dive into new and emerging tech. We'll explore the possibilities as Crystal Waddell shares her processes for keeping things fresh. Plus Annie-Mai Hodge of Girl Power Marketing talks how you can breathe new life into your social media efforts. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So pop a Mentos, Tic-Tac, Altoid, or pull an old Ace Ventura and spray some Binaca as episode number 107 of the SERPs Up podcast freshens up the SEO air. That's an old pull. Ace Ventura is super old now. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it is. Mordy Oberstein: Like I've completely ... But for me, it still feels like it came out yesterday. Crystal Carter: Right. I can see that. Mordy Oberstein: Laces out, Dan. Laces out. Crystal Carter: “I likee!” Doesn't he say that? Mordy Oberstein: Right, right, right. He's like, "If I'm not back in five minutes, wait a little longer." "Do not go in there." There's so many lines, and I haven't seen the movie in 25 years. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't watched it in a little while. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's had a lasting impression on my life. Crystal Carter: You know what? That tracks. Mordy Oberstein: It's all on-brand. Crystal Carter: Yeah. But there we go. I think that that's somebody who he had refreshed his career and became a bit of a painter. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. He really did refresh his career. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of. Crystal Carter: Speaking of, one of the reasons why it's worth thinking about, and one of the reasons why we brought it up is that I think that SEO has so much to offer in terms of career trajectory and career viability because there are so many different facets of all of the different elements. So if I think about some of the SEOs that I know and their career journey, I'm thinking of Dana DiTomaso who now runs Kick Point, and she is an analytic person, but she started off doing SEO as her core discipline, but she steadily moved over to analytics, and that's something that's become really, really, really, really valuable to her. There's other people who start up in SEO and then they go into podcasting, for instance, There's some people that started off in SEO and then they move into project management. There's some people that start off in SEO and they move into growth. There's some people who start off in technical SEO and end up doing more content or who start off with more content and end up doing more technical. Dale Bertrand, who's somebody who was involved with our webinars recently, we've got a great webinar with him that I reference a lot talking about AI content, and he started off as a developer and moved into SEO similarly, and I think Joe Hall and also Areej AbuAli also did this as well. So I think that there's a lot of scope, and one of the things that drives, in my experience, that drives the growth and change of your SEO career as far as I can tell, is emerging technologies and also emerging opportunities and probably also your clients. So if you're looking at your career, you're looking at things you can do, when you see new emerging technologies, that's an opportunity for you to become the go-to person for that, whether that's when you're in an agency or whether that's within the agency team, for instance, or whether that's you have a client offering or something. So when we think about GA4, for instance, when GA4 came in- Mordy Oberstein: I was just say that. I was just going to say GA4. Crystal Carter: Right? Lots of people didn't know how to use GA4. If you are the kind of person- Mordy Oberstein: People still don't know. Crystal Carter: I know. Mordy Oberstein: People still don't know how to use GA4. Crystal Carter: Right. If you're the kind of person who's happy to just get stuck in with it, then you can help guide people through the mire that is this emerging tech with AI. We've seen a lot of people who have really risen to the challenge of that. Aleyda Solis started sharing lots of stuff about AI. Mordy Oberstein: Maria Haynes totally dived from SEO into AI. Crystal Carter: And another person is Brittany Mueller. Brittany Mueller started off at Moz, and I remember watching the Whiteboard Friday when she was like, "I'm interested in machine learning. I'm interested in AI. I'm still learning this at the moment, and here's what I know." And I remember watching that Whiteboard Friday way back in the day, and now she's fully invested in all of that sort of AI machine learning, all of those sorts of elements. So new tech will drive you personally. I was sort of doing general SEO and I got way into technical SEO as I had a client who needed something that was tech driven. I literally today just finished coding up some stuff for somebody because that was something that we needed for a project. And sometimes I like to think of it in The Matrix, they have that scene where he says, "Oh, can you drive a helicopter?" And he goes, "I can now." And I think that those skills, every time you add a new skill to your skill set that helps you grow and helps make you more bankable as either a consultant or as a member of your agency team, or as an in-house person, or whatever you're doing, but think about the skills that will differentiate you from other folks and allow you to cut through the fray. If you're looking at a lot of skills that are well established, don't get me wrong, it's really, really important to know how to do keyword research and to know how to do well-established things that will sort out your foundations. But if you're going into new territory, then there's going to be less competition, which makes you more indispensable, and it also gives you the ability to learn how to teach yourself, which means that you can literally do anything. Mordy Oberstein: I know Kung Fu. Crystal Carter: See, that's the movie that's burned into my brain. Mordy Oberstein: That's also not a very new movie, by the way. Crystal Carter: No, it's not. Yeah. I remember watching the DVD with the director's cut and director's information on it- Mordy Oberstein: my kids are not asking me about this, "What's this Matrix thing?" As if it's like this old movie that came out like an old Clint Eastwood movie, which is that, for me, is old. I'm just making myself feel old. I'm totally with you on this. I feel like SEO is almost like a gateway drug in a lot of ways. My best advice is follow where things speak to you naturally and go down that rabbit hole. So for me, I came from the content side of things, and when you're coming from SEO, from the content side of things, you naturally overlap with marketing stuff, wider marketing stuff, because that content is usually not just an SEO play, it's usually a broader play or other plays that come with that piece of content, whether it's via repurposing it, whether it comes promoting it in a social media. It very easily becomes a facilitator to getting into a wider marketing strategy. And because of my various roles, that kind of developed very naturally for me, whereas now I kind of went down the brand marketing world because as my career developed, it kind of followed and it spoke to me. It's something that I really enjoy, and now I feel like have a unique perspective on it because you don't have a lot of people doing brand who also came from the performance side of marketing. So that's an interesting little intersect. So it speaks to me, it's differentiated, it's unique, it builds on my previous skillsets, it builds on my personality, yada, yada, yada. And it's not something a lot of people are doing. And there's a lot of different pathways like that that come out from SEO more like, I don't know, have your ear to the ground kind of thing and just be open to it as it comes. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that particularly if you're thinking of how can I pivot to make myself more marketable, like you were saying, not a lot of people are doing that. That's a really important thing to think about. Think about skills gaps. So if you're in a team at an agency or if you're in an in-house team, or if you're in a team on a project, then think about where is the gap and how can I close that gap with my skills with the things that I have? And that is something that can propel you forward. I think Helen Pollitt shares a skills gap matrix. There's other tools as well that you can do to assess your skills and your skills gaps. It's probably also something you could do with a ChatGPT sort of thing to help you what are some skills that a digital marketer should have, et cetera, et cetera. And then you could go through and you can say, "Oh no, I have this." "I have this." "I have this." "Oh, I don't have that." And that's worth looking at as well. And I think that in terms of you were saying the follow the things that interest you. Absolutely, absolutely. Particularly because you're going to need to be a little bit self-taught, or you're at least going to need to guide your own learning journey. Even if you go and do a course, you're going to need to find that course and you're going to need to complete the course yourself. So if it's something that you're not interested in, if it's not something that you can go down a wormhole quite happily, fall down a rabbit hole or whatever quite happily, then it's not going to work for you. So you really, really have to find something that speaks to you and that connects with the core of who you are. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And what's cool is that you can either go broader or you can go more specifically. SEO is really kind of like, it's one of those things that's in the intersection of so many things that you can really decide where you want to go with it. I'll just say, because I've had this, don't be afraid to pivot. I think there's a fear like, "Oh, this is what I've always done." This is kind of my personal brand. Personal brands can change. Your career paths can change. It's all okay. It is scary, I get it. But if you feel like there's something that really speaks to you, don't let that fear hold you back. Crystal Carter: No, no, absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. And I think that don't worry if you don't see other people doing it. That's fine too. Mordy Oberstein: Be ahead of the curve. That's what you want anyway. You want to look at, okay, what's happening out there in the ecosystem? What's happening out there across the way? What's happening out there with other disciplines? What's happening out there with SEO? And try to get ahead of all that. Crystal Carter: And also, don't be afraid to challenge existing norms. I started speaking about ... In 2022, I spoke at MozCon about visual search. One of the reasons why I wanted to speak about that was because Google was talking about it at Google.io loads, all over the place, but I wasn't seeing very much writing about it. And the writing that I was seeing didn't seem to align with what Google's documentation was saying about what you needed to do to optimize for visual search. And so I started speaking about this and I got loads of people, I still get people asking me about this now because there weren't a lot of people talking about that. And then more people started talking about it afterwards. Even though if you're in a situation where you don't hear people talking about something, it doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't talk about it. Like you said, don't be afraid to stick your head out above the parapet. Mordy Oberstein: For sure. I think back, I don't know, back in the older days of SEO, like growth marketing was first becoming a thing. And now I look at a guy like Kevin Indig. In the beginning it was weird. Like, "Oh, what's growth marketing? What's growth marketing and SEO?" But now growth marketing and SEO, yeah, I really see the overlap. But that people who are now big in growth marketing, at least within the SEO space, when they first started talking about it was very new and it was very, I don't want to say weird, but it was out of the box terminology, but now it's not. Crystal Carter: No. And I think that the web is such an ever-evolving beast that it absolutely speaks to people that want to have a dynamic career. And I think the other thing is that just because you shift around in your discipline, just because you sort of focus on more growth marketing or maybe you're focusing more on analytics, it doesn't change the core of what you do, for instance. So I like to solve problems. I like to solve puzzles. I generally try to be fairly solutions led, and that's whether I'm doing technical SEO, whether I'm doing on-page SEO, whether I'm doing schema, Whatever I'm doing, that's what I apply it to. That's the angle I'm coming at it from. And I think that you will be present in whatever you do, and you don't forget any of those skills if you pivot. And in fact, a lot of times it'll come with you as well and will very often come in handy. So I think if you are thinking that you're feeling bored or you're thinking that you're feeling a little bit stuck, look around at some potential things and have a go and try something new that is distinct and that might position you more competitively in the market. Mordy Oberstein: Dip that toe into the pond. And if you're looking about how do I go about doing this? And what's the process for changing your approach? Well, here's Crystal Waddell on her process for changing her approach to SEO and marketing and keeping things fresh. Crystal Waddell: Hey guys, Crystal Waddell here from the Simple and Smart SEO Show podcast. Thank you Crystal and Mordy for letting me weigh in on this conversation. I feel like I have a unique perspective because I like to consider my SEO practice a business-first approach, where I'm more concerned about business outcomes than I am the optimization practices themselves. Also, being willing to pivot and change is necessary because things are moving so quickly. The faster you can inject that shift into your business and into your workflows, the easier it is to just keep things moving forward. I would say the big things that help me change my approach to SEO and marketing are data-driven adjustments. Mordy was actually the one that pointed out to me that the Google Search Console Insights come out every month at the same time. I was like, "Oh, that makes sense." So after that, I started doing an SEO day where I would specifically reflect on the Google Search Console data. I teach a small group and we compare what is going on in each of our search consoles. So it's really neat to be in a small group that has a bunch of different eyes on the same type of data. The other thing I like to do, I like to interview people for the Simple and Smart SEO Show, but I started my podcast just so that I could learn how to do SEO better. My podcast has really given me the opportunity to talk to experts like the wonderful Crystal Carter. So it's been awesome to talk to people who've been doing SEO longer than I have, and that can also shed light on what advice that even though it's really loud, may not be the best advice to listen to. I've taken it very seriously to find a few people that I trust within the industry to test some of my theories in my small group. I will create gamified elements to see if these are SEO tasks that the average Joe can take on and be successful. That's my litmus test, because if I do something that's too complicated for the average business owner to implement, then I have to find a different way. I have to find a better way. Really trying to make SEO fun and engaging is the challenge for me. The other thing I've realized about SEO is it really is so dependent on the client. If you've got a local lawn service, that's going to be completely different than a content creator that makes their money selling online memberships. So you really have to think about all of the opportunities that are available with marketing and with optimization strategies and create a plan that makes the most sense. The last thing that I've really found that I do well is leveraging different platforms. Searchers jump from platform to platform. And so as a brand, I think it's so important that when a person is searching for you on a platform like Pinterest, and then they jump over to Instagram or TikTok, they find the same you wherever they go. Those strategies help my customers be agile in their marketing while still maintaining this sense of cohesiveness, right? At the end of the day, what's most important are your business's core values. What you stand for, what you do, how you do it, and how your customer feels about it. Be the same you wherever people can find you. Thanks again guys. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Crystal. Make sure you check out the Simple and Smart SEO Podcast. She's has, forgot what I was going to say, she has an amazing radio voice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, she's great. She's great. She's really fantastic. She's also super nice. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure you follow Crystal, other Crystal, Crystal Waddell, and this Crystal, on social media. Has so many gems out there. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And she shared some great insights. One of the things she was talking about was platforms. Oh my days. I think SEO sometimes, if you're somebody who's thinking about your SEO career and you're feeling stuck in a rut, guess what? Your search optimization skills can be applied to other platforms, not just Google, also YouTube, also Pinterest, Instagram, whatever, what have you, like TikTok, TikTok SEO is a huge thing as well. So that's a great one as well. The other one she was talking about, the other thing she was saying was about how she started our podcast to learn from folks. That's really great as well. So learning from people, following people who are in a space that maybe you want to go into that maybe you're not an expert on just yet, but you're interested in, that's a great way to see if a new area of your career might be viable. And if a new topic or subject might be a viable skill set for you, that's really great as well. And I think also her general approach of actively learning. She was talking about testing and being in a group as well. That's a really, really great thing. So I think that if you are feeling stuck and you feel like you need to rejuvenate your career or you need to rejuvenate your skill set, then thinking about how you can learn and what's new skills you can learn is so, so valuable. Mordy Oberstein: Even if you don't want to start a podcast, it's a whole rigmarole of time and investment and resources and whatever. Find a group. Find a group of people you can talk to. You wanted to talk about your career, what you're thinking. I'll tell you personally, shout out to Andrew Optimisey, Nick Leroy, Kevin Indig. These are people. When I have ideas like what I want to do, I talk to them and I get feedback. And you can start to get not just feedback, but sometimes you'll start feeling more confident. Like, "You know what? Maybe I should do this now." But having that group, having that tight-knit group of people you can talk to and brainstorm with is a huge part of being able to effectively move your career or revitalize your career or pivot to something a little bit different. Find those people, they're out there, them probably already. Crystal Carter: Yeah, think trust network, group chat so that you can say, "Does this make sense? Is this okay? Is this a good idea?" And also they'll recommend you for things as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Crystal Carter: For things that you don't even think that you should be doing. They'll be like, "I saw this job and it's perfect for you." "I saw this opportunity and it's perfect for you." And you're like, "Really?" And they go, "Yeah, yeah, absolutely." Mordy Oberstein: Referral. This is the way. Crystal Carter: This is the way. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of things that need to be refreshed outside of careers or bad breath, the only thing that really, actually, you know what the truth is, the only thing that needs to be refreshed more than bad breath right now is social media, which is basically worse than halitosis right now. As this shifting sands of social fall out from under you, don't fret as we'll hear how to freshen up your social presence from Girl Power Marketing's own Annie-Mai Hodge as we move into the great beyond. So in case you haven't noticed, social is not the same as it once was. Social is different. Social has gotten very different. And I think the way we need to approach social might need a little bit of a refresh, and it might be time to get some new perspective. At least for me, I'm speaking to myself new perspective on how to think about and approach social media. So that's why we're here. We're going to hear from Annie-Mai Hodge on her approach to refreshing her social media presence. Annie-Mai Hodge: So there's three main ways that I refresh my social media activities and content to give them a bit more life. And the first one is a content graveyard. And I'll be honest, I never heard about this until last year when I was really struggling with content ideation, and I wish I could remember who told me, but if you are somehow listening to this, thank you. And basically what it is that any ideas that don't make it to the light of day, you pop into your content graveyard because if you don't, you will naturally forget about them. And just because they shouldn't see the light of day now doesn't mean that they won't work in three months or six months time, or perhaps even next week. But I go one step further and I also add content that flopped and I'm using flopped with quote-marks there or didn't perform as well as I'd hoped so that I can rework it at a later day or perhaps when it's a bit more topical in a few months time. And I also add content that performed really, really well. And I'll add some notes about why I think it worked particularly well and how I can potentially rework it in a few months time to really maximize getting the most out of that content. Because just because it's worked once really well doesn't mean that you can't keep getting good use out of it and reaching new people that haven't seen that content before. And that is one of the best and main ways that I refresh my content. But also, there's two other simple things that you can do. You can simply ask the audience, because sometimes I think it's really easy to guess what they want and we can get caught up in actually what we want to post or what we think is best, but that's not necessarily the right way to do it, and it's not necessarily the most accurate way to do it. It can be a little bit biased, but if you don't particularly have an engaged audience yet, I'd really recommend using a tool called Also Asked, which gathers people also asked data so you can see the questions that are being asked by people on Google. And I made that sound really complicated, but you won't regret it. Also Asked, I absolutely butchered that explanation, but it's an excellent tool. You get free searches per day and it will just be a great tool to have in your arsenal. And the final thing that I do is I have a really hard long look at the content that I've done over the last month to see what's working and what isn't. And it kind of goes back to the content graveyard there too, because if there's something that hasn't worked well at all, I'll pop it in there, and if something has worked, then I will analyze why it's worked as I do with the content that goes in my content graveyard, and I'll see how I can do that again with the content that I want to post the next month. But ultimately, I think as long as you are analyzing your content and using the data that's coming from social media and your audience, that is the best way to inform updating your social media content strategy. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much, Annie-Mai. Make sure you give Annie-Mai a big follow on social media. We'll link to our profiles in the show notes. By the way, content graveyard. I use that. I actually learned that from the Wix content writers because they use that when they write anything, basically. If you go, insider tip, should I share this? Hey, why not? Crystal Carter: I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. When we work in a piece of content with a marketing team, the writing team rather at the bottom of the dock, there's always a graveyard of all the different ideas that they had, and that's where I learned that from, and I use it all the time. It's a great idea to keep your old ideas around because you want to save them for later. Graveyard is kind of a bad name for it, by the way. You don't want to actually kill them. You just want to have them there to see the progression of things and maybe to save them for a different time. Crystal Carter: Maybe it's the dugout. Mordy Oberstein: The dugout. Yeah. It's on the bench. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's on the bench. And you can bring them back in maybe or maybe not. Mordy Oberstein: Or no, or if they stink, you leave them on the bench and that's fine. There's always those players. Crystal Carter: But sometimes you're like, "Oh, this is your time to shine, man. It's you. It's you. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. You know what recently got revitalized and refreshed. Crystal Carter: What's that? Mordy Oberstein: Seoroundtable.com. And I miss the old version. I'll tell that old version was nostalgia sometimes. Not all refreshes are for the best, by the way. Well, well-designed and good, but from a nostalgia point of view, I miss the old seoroundtable.com's design. Crystal Carter: Right. Okay. Okay. I can see that. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not trying to bash the berry. I'm just trying to say I like the old one also. Crystal Carter: I'll tell you, the one that I'm hanging on to is SEM Rush. Mordy Oberstein: SEM Rush. I always called it SemRush. Crystal Carter: I always called it SEM Rush, because SEM is a thing. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: SemRush is not. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm all about saving syllables. I'm like Kevin from the office, why speak more words when less words do? Why have more syllables than fewer will do? Okay, time now snappy news, go. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. A little bit of an SEO dramatic saga for you. First from Barry Schwartz on October 23rd, Google hit Fortune Recommends with a search penalty over site reputation abuse. So Fortune Recommends is a subfolder of fortune.com, and it actually says on that page, "Fortune Recommends is editorially independent. We may earn affiliate revenue." We may, we will. We do. "Earn affiliate from links in this content." It's your, I don't know, typical internet schlock, the 10 best CD rates for October, 2024, which are probably the 10 best CD rates for October, 2023 with a new title for 2024. Maybe not, maybe I'm just being a little bit spicy, but probably the same thing, whatever. Anyway, I digress. I digress. So Glenn Gabe notice that there was a huge drop in his subfolder's visibility, which seems to align with something that we, I think report on this very podcast before about Forbes' own affiliate content getting what seemed like an actual manual action a few weeks ago. Is this the same thing? This looks like it got hit on October, around October 11th per Glenn Gabe. What makes this more dramatic is on social media, Glenn Gabe the next day, I believe, started seeing all other sorts of sites, and he wrote up a post for his own website, G-Squared Interactive, which we'll link to in the show notes here, A Nightmare on Affiliate Street. Love that, by the way. How Google is picking off sites one by one that are violating its site reputation abuse spam policy. So Glenn saw this for all sorts of sites. For example, AP News, which is so odd to me, they have this has a subfolder for personal finance called AP Byline, where again, you have the same kind of things, like literally, I'm looking at an article, Why Are Groceries So Expensive? Are Medical Expenses Tax-Deductible? Shocked At The Pump: 11 Ways To Save Money On Gas, with number one being buy less gas. I'm making that up. That's not actually true. I mean, it is actually true. You would save money on gas players are spending less money on gas, but you need gas. Anyway, Glenn went through a whole list of sites like this and the sub folders that are getting picked off by Google, and he actually asked Google, "Hey, is this the algorithmic version of the site reputation abuse update?" And Google said, "No, it's not." It's not them testing the site reputation abuse algorithm. Google then also, Danny then also told Glenn, "Our systems aim to understand of a section of a site is independent or starkly different from the main content of the site. This helps us surface the most useful information from a range of sites." So what it seems like, and this, I talked with Glenn back channel about this, and I completely agree, seems to be like they're targeting subfolders or subdomains that they can clearly see, Google can clearly see, are not actually aligned with what the website actually does. I have a very spicy take on Google's previous statements about this on It's New, I don't know which episode. Hold on, hold on. I'll find it. If you right now, actually, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. We can edit this part out or we can keep it in here. It is from the, wait for it, it is from three weeks ago. That doesn't help you very much. I'll link to it in the show notes. I'll link to the episode in the show notes where I have very spicy take on my thoughts on this and Google's previous statements about this. What it basically looks like is that if you're blatantly creating a subfolder or a subdomain, that has nothing to do with your website, but it's all about affiliate content. It looks like Google seems to have gotten more aggressive about identifying that and demoting that content and their rankings. I have been on a soapbox. I'll end on this point, because I'm not being so snappy. I have been on a soapbox about this point. I literally spoke about this at SMX West in 2019, 2020. I don't remember something like that. Stay in your lane. From an SEO point of view, now more than ever, you can see what Google's doing. Staying in your lane from a brand point of view. If you're doing these kind of things, if you're, again, I always go back, we had a whole episode about this. You're Rolling Stone and you're talking about best fridges of 2024 and not best folk albums of 1964, you have a brand problem, and I understand why sites are doing this for the revenue. I'm not critiquing necessarily. I understand at least why they're doing it. I do think it's not good for the internet. So that's my personal take, which is stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. And this week, that's this week's snappy news, right in your lane. That's what we do here. You know what? And I think Barry should write like that. Write the news story. Barry, you're too wordy. Take out all of the gap words. Just, "John Mueller say, ranking this." Just go full on, go for it, Barry. As condensed as possible. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: I don't want any filler words anymore. Crystal Carter: Who needs them? Who needs them? Mordy Oberstein: No one needs them. I understand. I understand good. All this, no words needed. I'm going off the rails on this. Oh, boy. Okay. If you're talking about revitalizing your career and you want to find someone on social media who has revitalized their career in multiple ways in shapes and forms, we recommend that you follow Petra Kis-Herczegh out there on social media, on X and on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: Yeah. She has written a recent article about this very topic, and she thinks very critically about all of this and has gone on a journey. I think she started as a dev herself and then moved into technical SEO, and I think she's been moving into other parts of her career as well, so it's worth thinking about this. It's worth thinking about this, and she's a great follow for that. Mordy Oberstein: Make sure you follow her out there on social media. Crystal Carter: Are you feeling revitalized now? Mordy Oberstein: You stole my mojo. You stole my thought. I was going to say that. We should leave this whole thing in. Crystal Carter: Are you feeling refreshed? Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Super refreshed and revitalized. It's like Head and Shoulders for my soul. Crystal Carter: You can be a brand new you. Mordy Oberstein: Do you remember those, what was it called? I'm sure it's still a product. It's like the Head and Shoulders, but it's way more medicinal. It started with a D. Oh, man. Crystal Carter: I don't remember. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, Denorex, I think it was called. Something like that. They would have commercials where they would compare the person using the Head and Shoulders and their product. This product tingles. Head and Shoulders doesn't. As if the tingling effect showed you that it was getting the dandruff, but it always made me feel like my head, I used to use it because my grandfather had it, and when I would go to my grandfather's house, that's the shampoo. I'm getting way too into the rabbit hole of this, but it did make my head feel revitalized. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: That's the connection. I don't know if it helped with dandruff or not, but it tingled. It made my head feel revitalized. Crystal Carter: And electric. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, this episode made me feel like that. Crystal Carter: Well, if you need to- Mordy Oberstein: TMI? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I think I need to go talk to somebody about this. Anyway, thanks for joining us on the SERPs Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into merging your on and offline marketing activities. Yes, there's an offline world. Look forward wherever you consume your podcast, or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content 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. 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Jack has over a decade's worth of experience in SEO. He's CEO of Crescendo Consulting, which specializes in marketing early and mid-stage startups in highly regulated industries (think Fintech and CBD startups). He's a fan of pineapples on pizza and Star Wars Episode I. Jack Treseler CEO at Crescendo Consulting Jack has over a decade's worth of experience in SEO. He's CEO of Crescendo Consulting , which specializes in marketing early and mid-stage startups in highly regulated industries (think Fintech and CBD startups). He's a fan of pineapples on pizza and Star Wars Episode I. Articles & Resources 22 Jun 2023 ChatGPT: Everything SEOs need to know 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

Why are emerging content trends important for SEO? What specific content trends should you pay the most attention to? How are content trends perceived in the eyes of Google? This week, Wix’s Mordy Obertein and Crystal Carter examine the role of emerging content trends in SEO. Joining the show is the founder of Black Truck Media, Jason Dodge, and the founder of Organic Growth Marketing, Nigel Stevens to share their thoughts on the evolving content landscape and what it means for ranking on the SERP. Hop in the ol’ Delorean as we’re going back to the future this week to identify emerging content trends and their SEO impact with this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Why SEOs should watch content trends carefully Why are emerging content trends important for SEO? What specific content trends should you pay the most attention to? How are content trends perceived in the eyes of Google? This week, Wix’s Mordy Obertein and Crystal Carter examine the role of emerging content trends in SEO. Joining the show is the founder of Black Truck Media, Jason Dodge, and the founder of Organic Growth Marketing, Nigel Stevens to share their thoughts on the evolving content landscape and what it means for ranking on the SERP. Hop in the ol’ Delorean as we’re going back to the future this week to identify emerging content trends and their SEO impact with this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 69 | January 10, 2024 | 49 MIN 00:00 / 49:17 This week’s guests Jason Dodge Jason Dodge is the Founder and CEO at search marketing firm, BlackTruck Media + Marketing. Combining nearly 20 years of industry experience with the efforts of holistic, human-centered thinking and technical search marketing tactics, Jason works alongside his team to assist brands with improving their online visibility through both organic search and paid media. His background and experience span both B2B and D2C verticals - from travel & hospitality, to global manufacturing, automotive aftermarket, and large healthcare systems. With a continued passion for the ever-evolving world of search, Jason is a regular contributor to industry publications, and works diligently to help educate others in the marketing and communications industry on the value that SEO brings to their brand. Nigel Stevens Nigel is the Founder and CEO of Organic Growth Marketing, a boutique growth agency. They work with fast-growth SaaS companies like Hotjar, ProfitWell, and Ramp to drive non-paid revenue growth with Content and SEO. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us in the SERP's Up Podcast. Some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who loves content, no one enjoys content more than Crystal. She loves content in trends. She loves analyzing its emergingness-ness, and it's about all things content. She's the one, she's the only, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix, or as I like to call her, Captain Content. Crystal Carter: I'm a technical SEO. Let's just clarify that now. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just trying to make you feel uncomfortable. Crystal Carter: Let's clarify that right now people of the internet, I'm a technical SEO. I like talking to the bots. I like structured data. I appreciate content, I appreciate good content. But yeah, I'm not the content marketer. So just to correct that content. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, sorry, my mistake. I was not aware of that at all. Other than times we're like, hey, we've got to write a post about something. They're like, all right, Mordy, you just write it because you'll spit out 30 pages in three minutes. Crystal Carter: So I was in a group chat with [inaudible 00:01:18], who is a content marketer. She writes content, she teaches people how to do content, and she was like, every time we're on a WhatsApp chat, all I can see is Crystal is typing, Crystal is typing, and I'll write three lines and it'll take me 20 minutes. It takes me a long time to decide on the words. I can say all kinds of stuff, listen to me saying things, but writing it takes a little longer for me. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/newsletter, but where you can also spin up content even quicker with reusable templates across all the sites you manage with Wix Studio, look forward at wix.com/studio. It's a great way to scale the latest trends in content, assuming you don't hate those trends, because today we're talking about the emerging content trends of the web and why SEOs might need to pay a little bit more attention to why it would be certainly beneficial if you did, and why you should certainly pay close attention to them. Why emerging content trends are important for SEO. What are some emerging content trends to note and why SEO should be paying lots and lots and lots of attention to them. Joining us in the digital flesh with the founder of BlackTruck Media and the founder of OGM, Nigel Stevens and Jason Dodge, not respectively. I got the order backwards there. Plus we'll have a look at how Google itself understands some of the emerging content trends out there. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news, who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social. So join us as we help you emerge from the ashes and emerge from the darkness as episode number 68 of the SERP's Up Podcast helps SEOs with the content trends emerging from the shadows. A little ominous there, yeah. Crystal Carter: Ominous. Mordy Oberstein: Ominous. Nigel Stevens: And a great radio voice! Jason Dodge: It was really good. Nigel Stevens: Stronger. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but I can't say ominous, right. Ominous. Jason Dodge: Sounds great though. Sounds dark. It's dark. Mordy Oberstein: I would edit it out but now we've leaned into it so now we can't edit it out. By the way, welcome Jason and welcome Nigel. How are you guys? Nigel Stevens: Hello. Jason Dodge: Hello, good. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Same. Crystal Carter: Very pleased to have you on the show. Jason Dodge: I don't know how to respond to that after the ominous. Crystal Carter: You have to respond in a Batman voice. Mordy Oberstein: You can respond by pitching who you are and what you do for our audience. Marketers got to market.. Jason Dodge: Yes, I can do that. I can do that. And I'm going to jump in over top of Nigel, but we'll get it in the right order this time. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. Jason Dodge: I'm Jason Dodge. I'm the founder and CEO of BlackTruck Media and Marketing, search marketing company based in the beautiful area of Grand Rapids, Michigan for my Upper Midwestern listeners. Nigel Stevens: I am Nigel Stevens. I run a company called Organic Growth Marketing, founder and CEO. And we are not based in one place, but highly distributed around the world, work with a lot of fast-growing SaaS companies. Mordy Oberstein: Like good content, highly distributed. Nigel Stevens: Ayo. Crystal Carter: And sassy. That's what we like. These are important things. Jason Dodge: Look at you, look at you. Crystal Carter: All the time. Mordy Oberstein: So to catch the audience up just a little bit, I believe that content is one of the most volatile and ever-changing things on the planet. It's constantly changing and the implications of it change our world. And the example I always give, and I'll give it again because it's a great example. I've probably done it on this podcast before, is I think of the night, is the 1960 or '61, whatever, it had to be '60, right? Presidential debate between Richard Nixon and JFK. It was the first one on TV. And for the audio audience, the people listening on the radio, they thought Richard Nixon won. And then when they surveyed people who watched it on TV, they thought that JFK won. And the reason for that is is that JFK looks like JFK and Richard Nixon looks like Richard Nixon. But it changed, that content shift changed everything because now presidential campaigns became about optics. There's a lot more about optics because now you could see everything, literally, you could see everything. So when content changes, it literally changes the world. And Google has said, very recently actually, Danny Sullivan was talking, I think on Twitter, Danny Sullivan is Google's search liaison saying that, "We Google look at emerging content trends and try to align our algorithm to capitalize on them, to meet them because we know that's what users want. So don't hunt the algorithm, hunt what people actually want because that's what we're looking at." But I find, and this is where I would like to get both your guys' thoughts, and of course Crystal, there's not always so much chatter about content trends and emerging content trends and the value of content trends for SEO within the SEO sphere, and why not? And maybe that should change. Jason Dodge: Can we just go on the record and like, Danny Sullivan coming out and, I think it's great, but I'm seeing a lot, I think any chatter that I've seen, certainly out of the last, I don't know, how many algorithm updates have we had in the last three months? Mordy Oberstein: 4,000. Jason Dodge: Thank you. 4,000 every month now, and then pretty soon we're just not going to know about them. I think, just to kind of back it up, you're either an algorithm chaser or you're not. I am, self-admitted, not an algorithm chaser, have not been for 20 years of my career in the SEO space. But what I really find interesting when you talk about optics and you talk about perhaps somebody like Danny Sullivan talking about what Google is interested in and what they're doing, and then there's others in the industry that you can read tweets or X's or whatever we're calling that these days, that all of a sudden the focus is on the user and how we need to create content for the user, when in reality, my opinion has always been, shouldn't we be creating content for the user? I guess some of this stuff, it's like, do we really need an algorithm update to do that and to slap everybody in the face that like, you should be writing for the human being and the individual, and I get it, we're SEOs, we're here to work to improve the rank and file of websites, but I just find it really interesting, here we are as the "mature industry" and we're talking about writing content for users and the people who are actually going to consume it. I find it really fascinating, mildly frustrating, but fascinating that we have a big tech company like Google that says, just write it for the people. Crystal Carter: So my question is, do you think that they're responding to a content trend from that? Like presumably they felt the need to say this, like sometimes I said to my kid, "Hey, put your shoes on," and he goes, "I am." And I'm like, "I can see you. You're not putting your shoes on. That's why I told you you should put your shoes on." Now, do we think that this, I can, Mordy you're laughing 'cause I know you feel my pain here. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best analogy for what's going on. Crystal Carter: Right? So I wonder if you as a good SEO, like Nigel as a good SEO, I wonder maybe they're not talking to you, they know you've already put your shoes on or whatever, but they also know that there's a bunch of people or a bunch of other folks who are doing something else. And I wonder if they're not also highlighting a trend that they are seeing as well. Do you think that's the case? Jason Dodge: Yeah, I mean, Nigel, go for it. I certainly have some thoughts, but by all means jump in. Nigel Stevens: I mean, I feel like it's a rhetorical question. Of course, they're responding to people that are trying to game the algorithm. And I think a lot of the root cause here, when you really think about it, 'cause I think everyone, people tend to agree with these concepts in theory, like create content for the user, not just provide, but a lot of people's saying that also don't act that way. And I think a lot of it just comes back to incentives. At the end of the day, if you're doing SEO, you're either doing it for your own site, in which case all you care about is the bottom line, or you're doing it for someone else and you were therefore dependent on their idea of what success is. And I think the incentive structure of the SEO industry is behind the actual place we are in it. Meaning that if companies say, okay, we need traffic, and you are getting gold against traffic, you are under a lot of pressure to do the things that you think will bring traffic even if you think they don't make sense. And I think even good SEO people have valid conversations with in-house content people whose heart's in the right place and they're like, "God, do we really have to add this in?" And the SEO person's like, "Look, we can not add it, but if we add it, we think there's an X percent higher chance that we're going to rank for this, therefore do it." So I actually would frame it as, it's not necessarily binary black and white where there's good SEO and bad SEO and kids putting on their shoes or not putting on their shoes, however you want to put it. There's also people that are like, look, my incentives are to drive traffic and if I do these things, then I will drive traffic. And that means adding, what is this, how to do this, X best practice of this, how do I take every single possible section from all the top competitors, add them to this, I think that there's a higher chance I'm going to rank. At the end of the day, those incentives are in place because Google has, in a lot of ways, rewarded that. So to go back to your question Crystal, yes, I think Google is now trying to undo some of the incentives that they have put in place for all these years that have put the web to where they are. It's easy to say, oh, SEO people doing this or that, like SEO people are just following where the money goes and that's where it's taking them, that's my perspective. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and you still see that with links, right? Because back in the day it was links and that still lingers to this day. It's very hard to break that. It's an amazing thing because the incentive cycle has changed and it's been changing, I would say since around 2018 when Google released the Medic Update, which was the second update in this whole new series of core updates. The first one was the March, 2018 core update, but the Medic one, which was the August 2018 core update was the one that really sparked this. Where you saw Google doing something qualitatively different in the search results, or at least trying to, and slowly but surely they've been making headway for the last five years with this. But it's taken SEOs a long time to realize that incentive cycle is changing because the incentive cycle is only as good as what Google can show on the SERP. If Google can only use, say, page rank to determine quality, then it's only going to be able to show X level of quality threshold on the SERP so I don't have to go very far. If Google can use machine learning to better understand whatever, whatever, now that threshold increases, but it doesn't happen overnight. It's a slow burn. So what ends up happening, I think, is the needle moves, but if you're chasing the algorithm, you're always behind it 'cause you're not going to see it until it's too late. Jason, thoughts? Jason Dodge: No, Nigel, I think, summed it up really well. Mordy, you kind of helped pull that together. I think Google reacting the way that they do, right? 'Cause I mean that is what an algorithm change is, it's a reaction that the results or the web has been a disappointing place for a number of years. Search has been disappointing. But users, it's really been ingrained in us to trust it. We trust the results. It's an answer engine. I go there seeking solutions to my problems, answers to my questions. We see that with growing trends in featured snippets. We see the growing trends in PaaS and things of that nature. That's because it's the evolution of how people are using the tool, using the search engine. Who's being rewarded and incentivized, we could argue that left and right, but typically it is the more helpful content. But to Nigel's point, if you see that a competitor's answering certain questions a certain way and then as an SEO, why wouldn't I make that recommendation and why wouldn't I put that in my strategy? But definitely I think there are course corrections absolutely based on the way in which, not so much even the results that are coming up, but going deeper and saying how people are interacting with those results. And oftentimes I think we just need to take a step back and really be cognizant of that and understand maybe the intent and also where is that person in their journey. And I'm thinking that over the last few years, Google with machine learning, with AI is starting to understand the intent and where those searchers might be at in their journey too, therefore adjusting. Crystal Carter: I think also they're guiding the journey. So like Google's tool as a tool is much, much more sophisticated than it was during the Medic Update than it was during the ones before it. They're guiding the journey. They're going, oh, would you like to see the shoes in different colors? And you're like, yeah, you know what? Actually, I would. I didn't even know that was an option, but okay. Or people are asking this question, I was like, are they now? That's some juicy gossip. I'd love to read the answer to that question. So I think you're both touching upon how the medium of Google itself kind of dictates the content trends. Nigel, would you say that that's something that you've seen? Nigel Stevens: Yeah, I mean, what you're basically saying is that it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where Google has trained people how to use Google and then therefore that impacts the results and that impacts the way people use it, and it's like a self-fulfilling cycle. Another thing I would add to this, and this is kind of, I can't know this for sure, it's more of a hypothesis, but I've heard other smarter people than me say it and I think it makes sense is that, I mean Google is also, as much as they innovate, they've also kind of been shown to be resting on their laurels a little bit, whereas, ChatGPT came out. That whole concept, as far as I know, was kind of invented at Google. They kind of didn't do much with it other than backend improvements to search, and then they scrambled to put something out. And the whispers I've heard are that Google is viewing this as the first true existential threat that they have ever really seen. So I would wager for sure that a big part of all of this is they're leaning more into that user data and what do people find helpful, not find helpful, all that. But all of that is like, they had some of that data before and they weren't acting on it as much, and now they're like, oh, we actually need to get ahead of this before we wake up and we're in third place. Mordy Oberstein: So there's two great points in that. One is all the talk of SG, and we actually spoke about this at our session at brightonSEO in San Diego that, I think in our session and in the EDGE of the Web session that SG is a little bit of a red herring, right? Google saw that Bing had this fancy shiny thing, was part of the whole AI wave. Let's go get the fancy shiny thing. And I think that took their focus off what's good for the actual user. And I've always been surprised that there has been no talk or very little talk about MUM, because I think MUM is something that's fascinating that can actually do a lot of things to help Google parse out queries and parse out content to better understand content. Because better understanding, in this particular perspective, means being able to break things down to a smaller parse to show more specific search results for more and better more specifically understand queries. But they haven't really talked a lot about that. And that's to your point, because they've gotten distracted. The other part of your answer I thought is fascinating is that Google does look at user behavior data. And Google recently came out as part of the whole DOJ trials that Google's looking at user behavior and SEO's like, ah, see, they're all looking at clicks. And my take and Crystal confirmed this, what Danny Sullivan said at brightonSEO was like, yeah, that's how RankBrain works. Their machine learning systems take a look at user behavior, process it and make general shifts and moves about what people want or are consuming, and then reflect that in the search results. Which brings me to my question to you both. Google has said, we're looking at what people are doing and what they want. The classic example I used for this is back in the day, you could have a recipe rank, and the recipe was just a recipe, there's no picture. Good luck ranking a recipe without a picture today. Because Google realized, hey, if you're looking for a recipe, user behavior seems to indicate you're going to stick around if there's a picture of the food. So recipe queries must have pictures among the results. So we know they're looking at what people are doing in content trends and all these things, but as SEOs, we somehow, and I'm not saying this in a critical way, I'm saying this, let's diagnose the problem so we could fix it. If Google's saying that they're looking at content and content trends and how people are engaging with content, why are we not talking enough about this? Jason Dodge: We're scared? I mean, you know... Mordy Oberstein: I'm not scared. Jason Dodge: And are you saying we as SEOs or Google, right? Mordy Oberstein: The we, we, got it. That didn't come out right. Jason Dodge: No, that didn't, that didn't. That goes back to putting your shoes on kids. Think about it this way, the disruption with AI and SGE and things of that nature, okay, so one thing for certain is that we know that Google isn't going to turn off their moneymaking machine, right? At BlackTruck, we also run paid ads as well. So we kind of see both sides as integrated as possible to be able to share data amongst teams to be able to see what's what. And we've seen it over the last, I would say, four weeks with the latest algorithm changes to seeing sites that took a nose dive, but then all of a sudden their ads become much more valuable when we blend search console data and PPC data together. It's really kind of crazy to see this correlation happening. So Q4 is going to be great for them. But I think if you look at trends in social as well, and the type of content that is being consumed in social and the moves that Meta has made in Facebook and the incentives to keep, you know, it's kind of almost like a cat and mouse. The incentive's to keep people on Meta, especially if you're an advertiser, is where you'll learn that the most, you'll get the most engagement out of it is if I keep people there. That's a playbook in my opinion, that's a chapter out of a playbook of Google. If I keep people here, they're more engaged with my site, I can give them answers. They don't need to come to your site. It's a visibility in the SERPs. Then you start to see, Mordy, to your point, oh, interesting, we know that recipes that have a photo because it's what I'm going to make because as an individual, photos are a universal language. They transcend any language out there. I see it, that looks tasty, I want to make it. It's the same reason that you see Google Business profiles, 35 or 40% more click activity for GBP's that have photos because people want to see what they're getting into. It doesn't matter if it's a home services company or it's a restaurant, right? It's human behavior. So yeah, hell yeah, absolutely. I mean, if a user's going to engage with that, we need to have more of that. Mordy Oberstein: Right, but then we don't, we talk about user behavior, Nigel, we talk about and they're like, oh, Google's looking at clicks. We look at it very linearly without looking at, well, no, Google's looking at user behavior and like, for example, E for experience in EAT, Nigel, do they pull that out of their hat? Like a magical thing they pulled out? They saw, there's a greater propensity for people to be searching for, looking for and engaging with content that has actual personal experience. So Nigel, why isn't the conversation focused on content trends and what's emerging in the content world and why do you feel like we stick in this little SEO sphere without cracking the larger picture? Why is that happening? Nigel Stevens: Part of the answer is probably just inertia and human psychology. People don't like to change, and people's understanding of SEO, a lot of people unfortunately, is not about thinking deeply about this like, okay, Google is looking at the intent and trying to serve it. A lot of people equate search intent to what I see in the SERPs right now. I don't know, maybe this is a controversial statement, but I don't think that's necessarily true because going back to Crystal's point about the self-fulfilling cycle of Google, one thing I see in B2B SaaS is everyone knows the playbook. It's like, create this long piece of content on everything and then everyone does it, and then everyone assumes that therefore, because that's all the content that's available, that is what people want. Therefore, that is search intent. Therefore, that is what good SEO looks like and not considering the possibility that, what if this is all a result of the incentives, back to that word, and people acting on it, and we're not thinking about, okay, if we wanted to provide something that is not like all these things but would better fulfill what Google is actually trying to move towards, what would that look like? But that's a difficult conversation. So again, going back to the business model aspect of this, if you're doing SEO, what's easier to try to sell out to someone, look, I know that all these other people are ranking doing this and this and this. We think that that's not beneficial for these reasons and we want to do this. That's a lot harder of a conversation to sell than, hey look, we saw your competitors did this. Let's do that. Because anyone who's worked with companies knows that's the number one way to get anything sold is like, well, competitor X did this, don't you want to do it? And the answer is almost always yes. Jason Dodge: I think you're spot on with that. I think 100%, and maybe that's where Nigel, you and I can come at it from an agency ownership/leadership perspective, right? When you're creating buy-in to get things done, it doesn't matter the size of the business, the size of the client, if you will, the size of the brand you work with, a hundred percent, one of the best ways to do it is look at what your competitor's doing. Absolutely, because you want to crush that, right? The other one is talking more holistically about SEO and talking more holistically about things like SERP visibility is, A, much more difficult to report on, and B, it's just harder to explain, it takes a lot more education. Crystal Carter: I think what's interesting, and there's a couple of points that you've both touched on, about the competitive nature, but also about different channels as well, different trends across different channels. I think one of the things that's important to think about in terms of content perspective from Google's point of view is that they are looking at the whole of the web, not just websites. You mentioned Facebook for instance, Google's also looking at their competitor, right? So their competitors include Facebook, include TikTok, include Twitter, other, Amazon for instance. Those are their competitors, and I think they're also steered by those content trends. So I think while it can be tricky to be a first mover within an internal, as a marketing person, you're making your pitch and you're like, hey, we're going to do something that's never been done before on this new content trend. I think sometimes it pays, and I think that probably the SEOs that do this the most are the SEOs who are looking across multiple channels where they can see there's a trend over here, there's a trend over there that's happening because Google can see that lots of people are engaging with TikTok. I spoke about it at MozCon and how Google increased the amount of videos that are on the SERP, they're like 45% year-on-year over the last year, partially in response to TikTok. And I think that we also need to be thinking about the trends that we see in other channels, not just in SEO in order to respond to what users are doing and where users are. Mordy Oberstein: So I literally put out a tweet, I don't know, September 28th. We're living in an emerging environment from AI to content trends, and I think it's going to pit SEOs against brand marketers. Brand marketers are looking to get ahead of the curve, whereas SEOs often don't want to get away from works now. As someone who does a lot of both, I feel this, I feel the conflict. And to highlight why I think it's so important that SEOs start thinking about content trends, I think we'll get into how you do that and what is emerging, is let alone the success of the site and the minutia of traffic and clicks or whatever, but if you're working with other stakeholders or other kinds of marketers who are looking at wider trends, are seeing what's happening now, I've never seen this on the web before. So many things are changing and it feels like something's about to break in a good way. We're going to shift. A major shift is currently happening, and if the other marketers that you're working with who are on your team or as part of your organization or part of the site stakeholder structure, are looking at things like, we need to jump on something to get ahead of the curve, and you're still thinking about SEO in a very, let's keep up with the algorithm kind of thing. You're going to be having a disconnect between the way you're approaching marketing and the way the other marketers are approaching marketing. And that's a bad thing and you don't want to be in that spot. So with that, Nigel, if I'm trying to get ahead of content, trying to look at merging content trends, how do I do that? Where do I look? What am I trying to find? How do I keep my finger on the pulse kind of thing? Nigel Stevens: Yeah, so to answer that question and address, I agree with everything that both of you just said. One thing I would point out is we keep talking about marketers and marketing disciplines. One thing that I think marketers, including myself have an amazing ability to do is go to work, view the world that way, and then close your work computer and do stuff, interact with the web in a totally different way and not connect those trends. Even thinking about it as channels is a very marketer first way to think about it, which you're not wrong, it's a hundred percent. But one epiphany I had was thinking about the way I interact with the web, whatever, watching YouTube videos and YouTube shorts and little things, and then I flip open my work computer and I'm looking at some of the work that's being done in the broader industry. I'm like, I'm not necessarily saying that SaaS companies need to be making six second dance videos, but the gap between what I'm doing in my personal life and what everyone else is doing in their lives and what we're doing in work, again, it's not that it has to be nothing there, but I think they're world's apart. And that sort of goes back to the point of running a playbook for this industry versus thinking about, okay, what do human beings who interact with the web now, that have no attention span, that have podcasts, YouTube videos, a million different things to do, and one of the things that I'm telling my team and we're talking about is we have to shift away from thinking about getting traffic to capturing attention because again, this again goes back to the incentives thing, at the beginning of my career I was, okay, you rank for this stuff, you get the traffic, that's good. Somebody figures out how to turn it into money. And I think over time the amount of traffic went up as far as when you combine Google, all the platforms, people are looking at a bazillion things. So someone looking at something doesn't really matter anymore. And that's why I think a lot of it is incentives and it's also just looking at your personal life and saying, what are things that capture my attention? What are things that I think are interesting? And they don't have to be applied directly based on the vertical or industry you're working in, but what are principles that I can learn from that? One simple example is, it seems like a lot of these platforms are using types of opt-in where even on LinkedIn, what appears to work as slideshows, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in. Short videos, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in. But then big ass article, there's a big gap between those two things, which doesn't mean you can't create really good content rich articles, but how do you make them more navigable versus just this gigantic block of text? Jason Dodge: The actual content experience is really something, Nigel, that you touched on. The opt-in is an interesting one too. And I think the opt-in is one of those, not to sidetrack us, I think that's one of those, somebody had mentioned before, it's a reaction to the idea that third party cookies are going to go away. So first party data is going to be gold, which it's always been gold anyways, so what's the best way to do it? Opt-in to my stuff. So now again, the focus is on that, but I couldn't agree with you more. I think the idea that the content has to be experiential, it has to be a positive content experience, long form content is great, but like TLDR, if I don't want to read it, the recipe is a great example. There's enough internet memes out there for it. I don't need to read about the trauma that you had baking cookies with grandma. Let's just get to the recipe. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to actually read recipes of trauma. The first part is all about the trauma. Jason Dodge: That domain's probably available. I'm going to go get that domain right now. Crystal Carter: And I think, just to pick up on what Nigel was saying about some of the, pay attention to the things that actually capture you, I think that we as web users, we are inundated with so much content and we can see trends. We can see that there are dance trends online and things like that. So I mean, Duolingo is a classic example. Duolingo has a very silly mascot that dances all over TikTok and does all sorts of silly things on TikTok, and they get great exposure for that. I'm talking about it right now. And they're a language app and their Duolingo mascot guy who runs around TikTok doesn't necessarily talk about languages all that often, but their brand is front and center really, really regularly. Another good example that I've heard from is Amanda Natividad. She shared how her exterminator has a newsletter and it's really, really useful. And she actually shared a screenshot from the newsletter, and I was like, that's really useful advice. I followed that advice. It was great advice. Now, the thing that's interesting about that is that I remember that, I don't even know his name necessarily, but if I was in her area, I would go and look that person up. So I think it's really important to pay attention to the things that you pay attention to, what's made you stop and where are the trends that you're seeing when you're going around online? Jason Dodge: I think, yeah, spot on. And if you think about it too, a couple different items to build on that, if you don't have relationships with PR folks, I think as an SEO right now or moving into 2024, I think you've missed the boat. If you have attended any search marketing conference in the last 10 years, the best people who have been on the stage to talk about link building are PR people. They're PR professionals. That's their background. Their background is the pitch and how do I get that brand? How do I get the brand? They're not even talking about the site, they're not talking about links, it's how do I get the brand out there as much as possible? That's all PR, right? And so having a, I know a lot of our team have communications background and PR background. It's less about the dollars and cents and it's more about how do we communicate with people and where they're at in the channel and in the journey, et cetera. I mean, I think to your point of why aren't we doing it is just we've always done what we've always done, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But it's fun to watch. One of the things that I like to do is watch what people are doing and how it's changing when they're doing their content. But one thing I know as an example is Search Engine Land. They started to push their newsletter subscription in a different way. They have a couple of lines from the article, then they have a short little paragraph pushing their newsletter highlighted in light blue, and there's no CTA. To sign up for the news, it's an in link. I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. It's far less intrusive. It's very subtle. It looks like it's part of the article. And you know what? I kind of like that better. I gauge how I'm feeling when I'm looking at what people are trying out and experimenting with their content. And if it resonates with me, I'm like, okay, that's interesting, pause. And it resonated with me that they're not pushing the CTA the same way. I'm like, you know what? That's really interesting. And then I look for other corroborations. Google started running ads in between the organic results. I wonder if that's very similar. They're seeing that top of the SERP ads or bottom of the page ads. Everyone knows that those are, everyone knows that their ads, no matter how subtle the ad label is, I don't want to be sold to forget it. But if it's much more subtle, so in the middle of an organic result, then suddenly I feel it's less intrusive. You're less trying to pitch me and I'm more happy to click on that. So I wonder if Google is seeing and doing the same thing as Search Engine Land is doing. And at that point, I realized I'm feeling a certain way. I'm seeing two things that might be related, might not be, just a theory, that's something to investigate and research and then talk to other people about like, do you think the age of the CTA is dead? Put out a tweet, put out a LinkedIn post and see what the comments say about that. Crystal Carter: I think there's a lot of ways to respond to emerging content. And I think that, yeah, we should be talking about it more. So here's a controversial theory. Do you think the SEOs don't talk to other SEOs about emerging content trends? Because we like to keep our cards close to our chest because it's a question of know when to hold them, know when to fold them. It's tough out here in these SERPs. Nigel Stevens: The reason, I think that's a good theory about a lot of things, the reason I'm going to say, I don't buy it is that I'm not seeing very much evidence of that out in the universe of anything that's breaking the pattern. And to kind of riff on what you were both talking about, like Crystal, you mentioned, I think about the exterminator thing, it made me stop what I was doing. Something I've been thinking a lot about is what are the first principles? We're out here talking about algorithms, what Google is doing, what are the first principles here? It's like, what is marketing? It's connect with someone, get their attention and get them to do something. And I feel like this is kind of corny to say, but if you think about those first principles, then you don't get locked into all of these best practices. How does Google render JavaScript? All this, which they're like, are the important questions that you have to answer, but the core first principle that's never going to change is how do you get someone's attention and get them to do something? And as the internet, the barrier to entry is getting lower for producing certain types of stuff. The premium is going to go on. How do you actually capture attention and show credibility and show someone that this was not just an automatically generated page that's trying to trick you into doing something? Mordy Oberstein: And as time runs out on us, find out by following both Nigel and Jason. Where can people find you folks? Nigel Stevens: On LinkedIn? I'm not a very good internet marketer. I'm not on the X and the Twitters. Jason Dodge: Oh, man, you can follow me. Yeah, certainly, I'm with Nigel. LinkedIn is a good place. I'm still active on Twitter/X, @dodgejd, pretty much everywhere. And obviously blacktruckmedia.com. Mordy Oberstein: Awesome, we'll link to your show notes. Fellas, it was so nice talking to you. It's such a needed topic. And if you're listening to this, take what we're saying to heart. Open your mind, open your minds. Content is like LSD. Open your minds to wider experiences. Is that good? Jason Dodge: I think that's great. Nigel Stevens: What a better note to end on. Crystal Carter: Does content make the walls move? Jason Dodge: Yeah, that's great. Please include that in the show notes. It's wonderful. Nigel Stevens: Nigel, how was the podcast? Well, it ended with LSD, but I'll tell you later. Mordy Oberstein: As all great things do. Jason Dodge: I think that you're spot on. And Nigel, you hit the nail on the head. And Crystal, you made a good suggestion too. Just start to pay attention to what's going on around you. Don't be so myopic and stuck and actually look at these landing pages in your own personal experiences. I think 100%, because there are reasons that Google is making these changes. So pay attention. Mordy Oberstein: And good luck to us all. Jason Dodge: Good luck. Mordy Oberstein: And good luck to you guys. Thanks again for coming on. Nigel Stevens: Thank you. Jason Dodge: Thank you as well. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, well, with all this talk about emerging content trends, we're curious. I'm curious at least, how does Google understand some of the emerging topics or emerging trends related to content? And to do that, we have a fun little segment. We look at Google's People Also Ask box where we have those four questions that you can open up a tab and see an answer and that it loads more questions every time you click on one of them. Anyway, with the PAA box, we search for some terms related to emerging content trends, which can only mean one thing, it's time for Fun with People Also Ask. So I did a little query, and it's nothing too complicated. I searched for content trends 2024. Now, keep in mind, we're recording this on November 14th, 2023. And what I got back was four questions. One was, what are the biggest content trends in 2023? What is the future of content? Okay, that kind of makes sense. What are the B2B marketing trends for 2024? And what are the five marketing trends and predictions for 2023? Now, first question I had was, 2023, is that Google getting it wrong? I asked for 2024 or is Google saying, I don't think you know what you're really asking for. It's still 2023 right now. Why are you asking about 2024? Crystal Carter: Very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: So what's interesting is that I'm looking at the SERP and there's tons of content there that's showing for 2024. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and we're still a good month and a half out, which just goes to show you our earlier point about what SEOs sometimes do. Crystal Carter: So it's not to say that they don't have anything to pull from, but they're definitely like, yeah, let's talk about 2023. And it's like, guys, we're not... Mordy Oberstein: Wait, maybe Google, it's a little shot at what sometimes SEOs do. Google's like, oh, you asked for 2024 but to tell you that 2024 is really the same as 2023, you just changed the year and the title tag. It was like, here's a bunch of results for 2023. We know what you're doing. Crystal Carter: No, this is new content. It's completely different. Mordy Oberstein: But the title tag is new, it says 2024. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Also, you pointed this out, was that there was the switch to the B2B marketing trends, which I thought was in. If I'm asking for content trends... Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But then Google switches to marketing trends. Crystal Carter: Right. So they're switching to B2B marketing there, and they're also switching to marketing trends, predictions. Now, marketing trends might not be entirely to do with content specifically, and certainly marketing trends and predictions might not be to do with content particularly as well. They could be like billboards are going to make a big comeback. I mean, look, just what happened with the Barbie movie. And actually I think it's interesting the way people are using billboards. But yeah, I think it's very interesting that they've pivoted to that. Sometimes when you look up something around on a PAA, sometimes they will hedge. We found this when we were looking at migration, for instance. They were like, oh, you're talking about data migration? You're talking about human migration? You're talking about like, which kind of migration are you talking about? What migration, which kind of thing are you talking about? So I think if you're trying to rank for a PAA, for instance, it's important to know that when it's a less specific search, you're more likely to have half of the PAA's. Mordy Oberstein: There's always that outlier intent or the multiple intent built into the PAA box. I once did a study about this in, I don't know, 2018, where I went through manually, went through hundreds of PAA boxes, and subjectively decided, very scientific, although after a while you get good at it, how many different intents there are. And they're pretty clear, you could see it here, Google switches from the content to the marketing trends thing, it's pretty self-evident. And there was a good number percentage of boxes that have this. It's a regular pattern. I don't remember the exact number because the platform that I wrote that content for, deleted it. So that information has been lost from the web. Crystal Carter: It was time well spent, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, really? As someone used it in the Rest MX deck back in the day, and I was in the room like, oh, that's my study. That's my study. So I was pretty proud about that, but now it's gone from the internet. Unless you found the URL and use the Wayback Machine. Crystal Carter: You're not better though. It's fine. It's not a big deal. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm very happy about it. Why would I not be happy about this? But anyway, it's a normal thing. We digress, there's a normal thing for Google to throw a little punt and like, oh, maybe you mean this. Maybe that's your intent. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's interesting. So similarly, and we know that AI content writing is a content trend for 2023, and for 2024, I'm sure as well. And so I entered in AI content writing as the key term and the People Also Ask for that was, can I use AI for content writing? What is the best content AI writer? That's fun, PAA's don't always make grammatical sense. Is there an AI that writes content for free? Is AI content writing worth it? And I think that that, again, when you read all of those, you see the sort of flow of worry and concern and interest around a particular topic. Is it free? Is it worth it? Should I invest my time in this? Is this something I should do? How people are thinking about a particular topic. Mordy Oberstein: I could dive into this or have the perfect pivot. Speaking of headlines that sometimes also don't always make sense, here's this week's version of The Snappy News. Crystal Carter: Or Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Or Barry. I'm sorry. It was such a good pivot, wasn't it? Come on. That was great. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, three for the price of two this week. First up, from Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, 94% of Google SGE links are different from organic results, study finds. So Danny does a whole summary of a study done by Authoritas who did a study called Research Study: The Impact of Google Search Generative Experience on Organic Rankings. We'll link to both in the show notes. If you want a summary, check out Danny's Search Engine Land piece. If you want to dive into all the nitty-gritty details, check out the actual story from Authoritas. But essentially what they did was, among many and many other things, was look at the number of links within Google's SGE and to see if they matched the organic results themselves. What they found was that on average there are 10 links within Google's SGE, but only four domains, meaning those 10 links only come from four websites. They also found that around 94% of the URLs within the SGE do not match the organic results. Now, what I'm curious to see is the number of links that match within the summary itself versus the three or four whatever organic result cards Google shows in the top right-hand corner of the SGE box. What do I mean? Some of the links are additive. Google is citing along as it's generating its summary within the SGE box. So you ask Google, I don't know, who is the best baseball player ever? And it tells you, well Babe Ruth played for the Yankees and blah, blah, and it offers a citation to the New York Yankees. It's a link to the New York Yankees, let's say. It wouldn't make sense that that link would be found within the organic result itself, but basically Google's doing is annotating the subtopics that reflect the wider topic that's reflected in the query. So those links as you go along in the SGE text itself kind of makes sense that they don't match. What would be interesting to see is that if the organic cards within the top right hand quarter of the SGE box, which do align to the overall query, which do basically serve as organic results, if those match the organic results or not. Now the fact that they wouldn't match might not be a problem, 'cause Google's saying, hey, just like a feature snippet, we're not going to show the URL within the feature snippet and then again, within the organic results. They might just be showing the URLs within the SGE as part of those organic cards, and then again not, in the actual organic results again. So it might not necessarily be a problem if they don't match, you know what I mean? Anyway, check out the full study within the show notes. We'll link to learn there. Second article from he who is Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, the newly designed Search Engine Roundtable, oh, Wharton professor, Ethan Mollick, on the decay of internet search. It's very dramatic, Barry. So basically a professor from Wharton, associate professor from the Wharton School of Business was searching for, it looks like queries about upcoming shows. I don't know, when is Stranger Things, season five coming out? That kind of query. Instead, the organic results kind of stink here. It's interesting, there's been a lot of sentiments. One of the things I really, I wouldn't say enjoy talking about, I find fascinating. That's how I would, I find it fascinating. The whole idea of the decay of the organic results because from my point of view, as someone who's looked very, very carefully at what Google has been doing with the algorithm updates for the better part of 10 years, I only see the results getting better. Obviously there are peaks and valleys. Google makes an update, sometimes they get everything right, exactly. And you have controversy within the SEO community about how good the results are. I'm talking since 2018, the advent of the modern day core updates, Google's only gotten better. However, sentiment has gotten worse. I don't want to get into why exactly that is, here, I've talked a lot about this in the past. I think we've probably covered on the podcast at some point. If we haven't, we will. It's one of my talking points. It's interesting here in this case, 'cause it happens to be, I search for these queries a lot. Like, I don't know, when is the final season of The Crown coming out? It came out already and a lot of the results here are less than spectacular. But, first off, I do find that for the most part, even though the results are not particularly spectacular and they're a little bit clickbaity, they kind of serve their purpose. It's not meant to be Faulkner. On the other hand, I do get where the professor, the group professor is coming from because they are a little bit, nah, not stellar in quality. I think though the main issue is that what these websites are doing is that they're paying attention to what say, the statements that Netflix is making or researching various sources, kind of putting it all together for you so you know what the storyline might be, when the show might be coming out? Where is it in production? How far along is it in that? And the reason why the result may not be great is because there's just not a lot of great content out there. So what else is Google going to rank? Netflix isn't putting out a full article of where the show is in production, when they expect it to come out, what some of the rumored storylines are. They're not doing that. So you have these other websites who are not the source themselves, or not these super authorities like Netflix itself or Hulu or Disney Plus, I can go on with all the other streaming websites that are out there. My God, how many streaming websites are there? There is no content like that. So what else is Google going to rank? So is it, the content stinks and Google should be ranking something else? Or is it that somebody else should be writing better content so that Google can rank it? The chicken and the egg. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. We love you Barry. You are our best friend. We love you more than words could ever say. Crystal Carter: Honestly, like yeah, you're that dude. Mordy Oberstein: I feel you in the heart. Crystal Carter: Big love, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Big love Barry. Which brings to another big love that we have, which is telling you about people that you could be following on social media for more SEO content and marketing awesomes, and this week we have Kelsey Jones, who's @wonderwall7, W-O-N-D-E-R-W-A-L-L seven, if you're not typing that in really quickly as I'm spelling it, we'll link to it in the show notes. But Kelsey is a fabulous content marketing person and she's one of these content marketing people that really overlaps in SEO, kind of like Ross Hudgens out there, who's another follow we had a couple of weeks ago. So definitely give her a follow and a shoutout over on X/Twitter, again, I don't know what we call it anymore, but she actually recently hosted SEOChat and that was also fabulous. So give her a big follow. Crystal Carter: Give her a big follow because today is going to be the day that you're going to find out about some of the cool stuff that Kelsey Jones is doing. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, what an oasis. An oasis of social media awesomeness. Crystal Carter: Precisely. So yeah, do check her out. But yeah, I think it's great to be thinking about, particularly if you are an SEO SEO, I think it's really good to be speaking to and checking out folks who are looking at the activity from a different perspective and who are all trying to get this... Mordy Oberstein: A wider content world. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And who are all trying to get great results for users and customers and clients and to broaden your mind. Mordy Oberstein: From the wider content world. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: No? Crystal Carter: The whole internet. Mordy has been very demonstrative of late. So ever since his dance routine at BrightonSEO, Mordy's given me full jazz hands right now. Mordy Oberstein: We'll dance for good content. Unfortunately, I never have to dance because there's no good content. Anyway, with that snarky remark, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, look for wherever you consume your podcast or the SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all of the great content and webinars we have over at 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 Nigel Stevens Jason Dodge Kelsey Jones Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Black Truck Media OGM Marketing Unsolved SEO Mysteries News: 94% of Google SGE links are different from organic search results, study finds Research Study - The Impact of Google's Search Generative Experience on organic rankings Wharton Professor, Ethan Mollick, On The Decay Of Internet Search Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Nigel Stevens Jason Dodge Kelsey Jones Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Black Truck Media OGM Marketing Unsolved SEO Mysteries News: 94% of Google SGE links are different from organic search results, study finds Research Study - The Impact of Google's Search Generative Experience on organic rankings Wharton Professor, Ethan Mollick, On The Decay Of Internet Search Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining us in the SERP's Up Podcast. Some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who loves content, no one enjoys content more than Crystal. She loves content in trends. She loves analyzing its emergingness-ness, and it's about all things content. She's the one, she's the only, Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at Wix, or as I like to call her, Captain Content. Crystal Carter: I'm a technical SEO. Let's just clarify that now. Mordy Oberstein: I'm just trying to make you feel uncomfortable. Crystal Carter: Let's clarify that right now people of the internet, I'm a technical SEO. I like talking to the bots. I like structured data. I appreciate content, I appreciate good content. But yeah, I'm not the content marketer. So just to correct that content. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, sorry, my mistake. I was not aware of that at all. Other than times we're like, hey, we've got to write a post about something. They're like, all right, Mordy, you just write it because you'll spit out 30 pages in three minutes. Crystal Carter: So I was in a group chat with [inaudible 00:01:18], who is a content marketer. She writes content, she teaches people how to do content, and she was like, every time we're on a WhatsApp chat, all I can see is Crystal is typing, Crystal is typing, and I'll write three lines and it'll take me 20 minutes. It takes me a long time to decide on the words. I can say all kinds of stuff, listen to me saying things, but writing it takes a little longer for me. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/newsletter, but where you can also spin up content even quicker with reusable templates across all the sites you manage with Wix Studio, look forward at wix.com/studio. It's a great way to scale the latest trends in content, assuming you don't hate those trends, because today we're talking about the emerging content trends of the web and why SEOs might need to pay a little bit more attention to why it would be certainly beneficial if you did, and why you should certainly pay close attention to them. Why emerging content trends are important for SEO. What are some emerging content trends to note and why SEO should be paying lots and lots and lots of attention to them. Joining us in the digital flesh with the founder of BlackTruck Media and the founder of OGM, Nigel Stevens and Jason Dodge, not respectively. I got the order backwards there. Plus we'll have a look at how Google itself understands some of the emerging content trends out there. And of course, we have your snappiest of SEO news, who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness on social. So join us as we help you emerge from the ashes and emerge from the darkness as episode number 68 of the SERP's Up Podcast helps SEOs with the content trends emerging from the shadows. A little ominous there, yeah. Crystal Carter: Ominous. Mordy Oberstein: Ominous. Nigel Stevens: And a great radio voice! Jason Dodge: It was really good. Nigel Stevens: Stronger. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but I can't say ominous, right. Ominous. Jason Dodge: Sounds great though. Sounds dark. It's dark. Mordy Oberstein: I would edit it out but now we've leaned into it so now we can't edit it out. By the way, welcome Jason and welcome Nigel. How are you guys? Nigel Stevens: Hello. Jason Dodge: Hello, good. Thank you for having me. Mordy Oberstein: Same. Crystal Carter: Very pleased to have you on the show. Jason Dodge: I don't know how to respond to that after the ominous. Crystal Carter: You have to respond in a Batman voice. Mordy Oberstein: You can respond by pitching who you are and what you do for our audience. Marketers got to market.. Jason Dodge: Yes, I can do that. I can do that. And I'm going to jump in over top of Nigel, but we'll get it in the right order this time. Mordy Oberstein: Sorry. Jason Dodge: I'm Jason Dodge. I'm the founder and CEO of BlackTruck Media and Marketing, search marketing company based in the beautiful area of Grand Rapids, Michigan for my Upper Midwestern listeners. Nigel Stevens: I am Nigel Stevens. I run a company called Organic Growth Marketing, founder and CEO. And we are not based in one place, but highly distributed around the world, work with a lot of fast-growing SaaS companies. Mordy Oberstein: Like good content, highly distributed. Nigel Stevens: Ayo. Crystal Carter: And sassy. That's what we like. These are important things. Jason Dodge: Look at you, look at you. Crystal Carter: All the time. Mordy Oberstein: So to catch the audience up just a little bit, I believe that content is one of the most volatile and ever-changing things on the planet. It's constantly changing and the implications of it change our world. And the example I always give, and I'll give it again because it's a great example. I've probably done it on this podcast before, is I think of the night, is the 1960 or '61, whatever, it had to be '60, right? Presidential debate between Richard Nixon and JFK. It was the first one on TV. And for the audio audience, the people listening on the radio, they thought Richard Nixon won. And then when they surveyed people who watched it on TV, they thought that JFK won. And the reason for that is is that JFK looks like JFK and Richard Nixon looks like Richard Nixon. But it changed, that content shift changed everything because now presidential campaigns became about optics. There's a lot more about optics because now you could see everything, literally, you could see everything. So when content changes, it literally changes the world. And Google has said, very recently actually, Danny Sullivan was talking, I think on Twitter, Danny Sullivan is Google's search liaison saying that, "We Google look at emerging content trends and try to align our algorithm to capitalize on them, to meet them because we know that's what users want. So don't hunt the algorithm, hunt what people actually want because that's what we're looking at." But I find, and this is where I would like to get both your guys' thoughts, and of course Crystal, there's not always so much chatter about content trends and emerging content trends and the value of content trends for SEO within the SEO sphere, and why not? And maybe that should change. Jason Dodge: Can we just go on the record and like, Danny Sullivan coming out and, I think it's great, but I'm seeing a lot, I think any chatter that I've seen, certainly out of the last, I don't know, how many algorithm updates have we had in the last three months? Mordy Oberstein: 4,000. Jason Dodge: Thank you. 4,000 every month now, and then pretty soon we're just not going to know about them. I think, just to kind of back it up, you're either an algorithm chaser or you're not. I am, self-admitted, not an algorithm chaser, have not been for 20 years of my career in the SEO space. But what I really find interesting when you talk about optics and you talk about perhaps somebody like Danny Sullivan talking about what Google is interested in and what they're doing, and then there's others in the industry that you can read tweets or X's or whatever we're calling that these days, that all of a sudden the focus is on the user and how we need to create content for the user, when in reality, my opinion has always been, shouldn't we be creating content for the user? I guess some of this stuff, it's like, do we really need an algorithm update to do that and to slap everybody in the face that like, you should be writing for the human being and the individual, and I get it, we're SEOs, we're here to work to improve the rank and file of websites, but I just find it really interesting, here we are as the "mature industry" and we're talking about writing content for users and the people who are actually going to consume it. I find it really fascinating, mildly frustrating, but fascinating that we have a big tech company like Google that says, just write it for the people. Crystal Carter: So my question is, do you think that they're responding to a content trend from that? Like presumably they felt the need to say this, like sometimes I said to my kid, "Hey, put your shoes on," and he goes, "I am." And I'm like, "I can see you. You're not putting your shoes on. That's why I told you you should put your shoes on." Now, do we think that this, I can, Mordy you're laughing 'cause I know you feel my pain here. Mordy Oberstein: That's the best analogy for what's going on. Crystal Carter: Right? So I wonder if you as a good SEO, like Nigel as a good SEO, I wonder maybe they're not talking to you, they know you've already put your shoes on or whatever, but they also know that there's a bunch of people or a bunch of other folks who are doing something else. And I wonder if they're not also highlighting a trend that they are seeing as well. Do you think that's the case? Jason Dodge: Yeah, I mean, Nigel, go for it. I certainly have some thoughts, but by all means jump in. Nigel Stevens: I mean, I feel like it's a rhetorical question. Of course, they're responding to people that are trying to game the algorithm. And I think a lot of the root cause here, when you really think about it, 'cause I think everyone, people tend to agree with these concepts in theory, like create content for the user, not just provide, but a lot of people's saying that also don't act that way. And I think a lot of it just comes back to incentives. At the end of the day, if you're doing SEO, you're either doing it for your own site, in which case all you care about is the bottom line, or you're doing it for someone else and you were therefore dependent on their idea of what success is. And I think the incentive structure of the SEO industry is behind the actual place we are in it. Meaning that if companies say, okay, we need traffic, and you are getting gold against traffic, you are under a lot of pressure to do the things that you think will bring traffic even if you think they don't make sense. And I think even good SEO people have valid conversations with in-house content people whose heart's in the right place and they're like, "God, do we really have to add this in?" And the SEO person's like, "Look, we can not add it, but if we add it, we think there's an X percent higher chance that we're going to rank for this, therefore do it." So I actually would frame it as, it's not necessarily binary black and white where there's good SEO and bad SEO and kids putting on their shoes or not putting on their shoes, however you want to put it. There's also people that are like, look, my incentives are to drive traffic and if I do these things, then I will drive traffic. And that means adding, what is this, how to do this, X best practice of this, how do I take every single possible section from all the top competitors, add them to this, I think that there's a higher chance I'm going to rank. At the end of the day, those incentives are in place because Google has, in a lot of ways, rewarded that. So to go back to your question Crystal, yes, I think Google is now trying to undo some of the incentives that they have put in place for all these years that have put the web to where they are. It's easy to say, oh, SEO people doing this or that, like SEO people are just following where the money goes and that's where it's taking them, that's my perspective. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and you still see that with links, right? Because back in the day it was links and that still lingers to this day. It's very hard to break that. It's an amazing thing because the incentive cycle has changed and it's been changing, I would say since around 2018 when Google released the Medic Update, which was the second update in this whole new series of core updates. The first one was the March, 2018 core update, but the Medic one, which was the August 2018 core update was the one that really sparked this. Where you saw Google doing something qualitatively different in the search results, or at least trying to, and slowly but surely they've been making headway for the last five years with this. But it's taken SEOs a long time to realize that incentive cycle is changing because the incentive cycle is only as good as what Google can show on the SERP. If Google can only use, say, page rank to determine quality, then it's only going to be able to show X level of quality threshold on the SERP so I don't have to go very far. If Google can use machine learning to better understand whatever, whatever, now that threshold increases, but it doesn't happen overnight. It's a slow burn. So what ends up happening, I think, is the needle moves, but if you're chasing the algorithm, you're always behind it 'cause you're not going to see it until it's too late. Jason, thoughts? Jason Dodge: No, Nigel, I think, summed it up really well. Mordy, you kind of helped pull that together. I think Google reacting the way that they do, right? 'Cause I mean that is what an algorithm change is, it's a reaction that the results or the web has been a disappointing place for a number of years. Search has been disappointing. But users, it's really been ingrained in us to trust it. We trust the results. It's an answer engine. I go there seeking solutions to my problems, answers to my questions. We see that with growing trends in featured snippets. We see the growing trends in PaaS and things of that nature. That's because it's the evolution of how people are using the tool, using the search engine. Who's being rewarded and incentivized, we could argue that left and right, but typically it is the more helpful content. But to Nigel's point, if you see that a competitor's answering certain questions a certain way and then as an SEO, why wouldn't I make that recommendation and why wouldn't I put that in my strategy? But definitely I think there are course corrections absolutely based on the way in which, not so much even the results that are coming up, but going deeper and saying how people are interacting with those results. And oftentimes I think we just need to take a step back and really be cognizant of that and understand maybe the intent and also where is that person in their journey. And I'm thinking that over the last few years, Google with machine learning, with AI is starting to understand the intent and where those searchers might be at in their journey too, therefore adjusting. Crystal Carter: I think also they're guiding the journey. So like Google's tool as a tool is much, much more sophisticated than it was during the Medic Update than it was during the ones before it. They're guiding the journey. They're going, oh, would you like to see the shoes in different colors? And you're like, yeah, you know what? Actually, I would. I didn't even know that was an option, but okay. Or people are asking this question, I was like, are they now? That's some juicy gossip. I'd love to read the answer to that question. So I think you're both touching upon how the medium of Google itself kind of dictates the content trends. Nigel, would you say that that's something that you've seen? Nigel Stevens: Yeah, I mean, what you're basically saying is that it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy where Google has trained people how to use Google and then therefore that impacts the results and that impacts the way people use it, and it's like a self-fulfilling cycle. Another thing I would add to this, and this is kind of, I can't know this for sure, it's more of a hypothesis, but I've heard other smarter people than me say it and I think it makes sense is that, I mean Google is also, as much as they innovate, they've also kind of been shown to be resting on their laurels a little bit, whereas, ChatGPT came out. That whole concept, as far as I know, was kind of invented at Google. They kind of didn't do much with it other than backend improvements to search, and then they scrambled to put something out. And the whispers I've heard are that Google is viewing this as the first true existential threat that they have ever really seen. So I would wager for sure that a big part of all of this is they're leaning more into that user data and what do people find helpful, not find helpful, all that. But all of that is like, they had some of that data before and they weren't acting on it as much, and now they're like, oh, we actually need to get ahead of this before we wake up and we're in third place. Mordy Oberstein: So there's two great points in that. One is all the talk of SG, and we actually spoke about this at our session at brightonSEO in San Diego that, I think in our session and in the EDGE of the Web session that SG is a little bit of a red herring, right? Google saw that Bing had this fancy shiny thing, was part of the whole AI wave. Let's go get the fancy shiny thing. And I think that took their focus off what's good for the actual user. And I've always been surprised that there has been no talk or very little talk about MUM, because I think MUM is something that's fascinating that can actually do a lot of things to help Google parse out queries and parse out content to better understand content. Because better understanding, in this particular perspective, means being able to break things down to a smaller parse to show more specific search results for more and better more specifically understand queries. But they haven't really talked a lot about that. And that's to your point, because they've gotten distracted. The other part of your answer I thought is fascinating is that Google does look at user behavior data. And Google recently came out as part of the whole DOJ trials that Google's looking at user behavior and SEO's like, ah, see, they're all looking at clicks. And my take and Crystal confirmed this, what Danny Sullivan said at brightonSEO was like, yeah, that's how RankBrain works. Their machine learning systems take a look at user behavior, process it and make general shifts and moves about what people want or are consuming, and then reflect that in the search results. Which brings me to my question to you both. Google has said, we're looking at what people are doing and what they want. The classic example I used for this is back in the day, you could have a recipe rank, and the recipe was just a recipe, there's no picture. Good luck ranking a recipe without a picture today. Because Google realized, hey, if you're looking for a recipe, user behavior seems to indicate you're going to stick around if there's a picture of the food. So recipe queries must have pictures among the results. So we know they're looking at what people are doing in content trends and all these things, but as SEOs, we somehow, and I'm not saying this in a critical way, I'm saying this, let's diagnose the problem so we could fix it. If Google's saying that they're looking at content and content trends and how people are engaging with content, why are we not talking enough about this? Jason Dodge: We're scared? I mean, you know... Mordy Oberstein: I'm not scared. Jason Dodge: And are you saying we as SEOs or Google, right? Mordy Oberstein: The we, we, got it. That didn't come out right. Jason Dodge: No, that didn't, that didn't. That goes back to putting your shoes on kids. Think about it this way, the disruption with AI and SGE and things of that nature, okay, so one thing for certain is that we know that Google isn't going to turn off their moneymaking machine, right? At BlackTruck, we also run paid ads as well. So we kind of see both sides as integrated as possible to be able to share data amongst teams to be able to see what's what. And we've seen it over the last, I would say, four weeks with the latest algorithm changes to seeing sites that took a nose dive, but then all of a sudden their ads become much more valuable when we blend search console data and PPC data together. It's really kind of crazy to see this correlation happening. So Q4 is going to be great for them. But I think if you look at trends in social as well, and the type of content that is being consumed in social and the moves that Meta has made in Facebook and the incentives to keep, you know, it's kind of almost like a cat and mouse. The incentive's to keep people on Meta, especially if you're an advertiser, is where you'll learn that the most, you'll get the most engagement out of it is if I keep people there. That's a playbook in my opinion, that's a chapter out of a playbook of Google. If I keep people here, they're more engaged with my site, I can give them answers. They don't need to come to your site. It's a visibility in the SERPs. Then you start to see, Mordy, to your point, oh, interesting, we know that recipes that have a photo because it's what I'm going to make because as an individual, photos are a universal language. They transcend any language out there. I see it, that looks tasty, I want to make it. It's the same reason that you see Google Business profiles, 35 or 40% more click activity for GBP's that have photos because people want to see what they're getting into. It doesn't matter if it's a home services company or it's a restaurant, right? It's human behavior. So yeah, hell yeah, absolutely. I mean, if a user's going to engage with that, we need to have more of that. Mordy Oberstein: Right, but then we don't, we talk about user behavior, Nigel, we talk about and they're like, oh, Google's looking at clicks. We look at it very linearly without looking at, well, no, Google's looking at user behavior and like, for example, E for experience in EAT, Nigel, do they pull that out of their hat? Like a magical thing they pulled out? They saw, there's a greater propensity for people to be searching for, looking for and engaging with content that has actual personal experience. So Nigel, why isn't the conversation focused on content trends and what's emerging in the content world and why do you feel like we stick in this little SEO sphere without cracking the larger picture? Why is that happening? Nigel Stevens: Part of the answer is probably just inertia and human psychology. People don't like to change, and people's understanding of SEO, a lot of people unfortunately, is not about thinking deeply about this like, okay, Google is looking at the intent and trying to serve it. A lot of people equate search intent to what I see in the SERPs right now. I don't know, maybe this is a controversial statement, but I don't think that's necessarily true because going back to Crystal's point about the self-fulfilling cycle of Google, one thing I see in B2B SaaS is everyone knows the playbook. It's like, create this long piece of content on everything and then everyone does it, and then everyone assumes that therefore, because that's all the content that's available, that is what people want. Therefore, that is search intent. Therefore, that is what good SEO looks like and not considering the possibility that, what if this is all a result of the incentives, back to that word, and people acting on it, and we're not thinking about, okay, if we wanted to provide something that is not like all these things but would better fulfill what Google is actually trying to move towards, what would that look like? But that's a difficult conversation. So again, going back to the business model aspect of this, if you're doing SEO, what's easier to try to sell out to someone, look, I know that all these other people are ranking doing this and this and this. We think that that's not beneficial for these reasons and we want to do this. That's a lot harder of a conversation to sell than, hey look, we saw your competitors did this. Let's do that. Because anyone who's worked with companies knows that's the number one way to get anything sold is like, well, competitor X did this, don't you want to do it? And the answer is almost always yes. Jason Dodge: I think you're spot on with that. I think 100%, and maybe that's where Nigel, you and I can come at it from an agency ownership/leadership perspective, right? When you're creating buy-in to get things done, it doesn't matter the size of the business, the size of the client, if you will, the size of the brand you work with, a hundred percent, one of the best ways to do it is look at what your competitor's doing. Absolutely, because you want to crush that, right? The other one is talking more holistically about SEO and talking more holistically about things like SERP visibility is, A, much more difficult to report on, and B, it's just harder to explain, it takes a lot more education. Crystal Carter: I think what's interesting, and there's a couple of points that you've both touched on, about the competitive nature, but also about different channels as well, different trends across different channels. I think one of the things that's important to think about in terms of content perspective from Google's point of view is that they are looking at the whole of the web, not just websites. You mentioned Facebook for instance, Google's also looking at their competitor, right? So their competitors include Facebook, include TikTok, include Twitter, other, Amazon for instance. Those are their competitors, and I think they're also steered by those content trends. So I think while it can be tricky to be a first mover within an internal, as a marketing person, you're making your pitch and you're like, hey, we're going to do something that's never been done before on this new content trend. I think sometimes it pays, and I think that probably the SEOs that do this the most are the SEOs who are looking across multiple channels where they can see there's a trend over here, there's a trend over there that's happening because Google can see that lots of people are engaging with TikTok. I spoke about it at MozCon and how Google increased the amount of videos that are on the SERP, they're like 45% year-on-year over the last year, partially in response to TikTok. And I think that we also need to be thinking about the trends that we see in other channels, not just in SEO in order to respond to what users are doing and where users are. Mordy Oberstein: So I literally put out a tweet, I don't know, September 28th. We're living in an emerging environment from AI to content trends, and I think it's going to pit SEOs against brand marketers. Brand marketers are looking to get ahead of the curve, whereas SEOs often don't want to get away from works now. As someone who does a lot of both, I feel this, I feel the conflict. And to highlight why I think it's so important that SEOs start thinking about content trends, I think we'll get into how you do that and what is emerging, is let alone the success of the site and the minutia of traffic and clicks or whatever, but if you're working with other stakeholders or other kinds of marketers who are looking at wider trends, are seeing what's happening now, I've never seen this on the web before. So many things are changing and it feels like something's about to break in a good way. We're going to shift. A major shift is currently happening, and if the other marketers that you're working with who are on your team or as part of your organization or part of the site stakeholder structure, are looking at things like, we need to jump on something to get ahead of the curve, and you're still thinking about SEO in a very, let's keep up with the algorithm kind of thing. You're going to be having a disconnect between the way you're approaching marketing and the way the other marketers are approaching marketing. And that's a bad thing and you don't want to be in that spot. So with that, Nigel, if I'm trying to get ahead of content, trying to look at merging content trends, how do I do that? Where do I look? What am I trying to find? How do I keep my finger on the pulse kind of thing? Nigel Stevens: Yeah, so to answer that question and address, I agree with everything that both of you just said. One thing I would point out is we keep talking about marketers and marketing disciplines. One thing that I think marketers, including myself have an amazing ability to do is go to work, view the world that way, and then close your work computer and do stuff, interact with the web in a totally different way and not connect those trends. Even thinking about it as channels is a very marketer first way to think about it, which you're not wrong, it's a hundred percent. But one epiphany I had was thinking about the way I interact with the web, whatever, watching YouTube videos and YouTube shorts and little things, and then I flip open my work computer and I'm looking at some of the work that's being done in the broader industry. I'm like, I'm not necessarily saying that SaaS companies need to be making six second dance videos, but the gap between what I'm doing in my personal life and what everyone else is doing in their lives and what we're doing in work, again, it's not that it has to be nothing there, but I think they're world's apart. And that sort of goes back to the point of running a playbook for this industry versus thinking about, okay, what do human beings who interact with the web now, that have no attention span, that have podcasts, YouTube videos, a million different things to do, and one of the things that I'm telling my team and we're talking about is we have to shift away from thinking about getting traffic to capturing attention because again, this again goes back to the incentives thing, at the beginning of my career I was, okay, you rank for this stuff, you get the traffic, that's good. Somebody figures out how to turn it into money. And I think over time the amount of traffic went up as far as when you combine Google, all the platforms, people are looking at a bazillion things. So someone looking at something doesn't really matter anymore. And that's why I think a lot of it is incentives and it's also just looking at your personal life and saying, what are things that capture my attention? What are things that I think are interesting? And they don't have to be applied directly based on the vertical or industry you're working in, but what are principles that I can learn from that? One simple example is, it seems like a lot of these platforms are using types of opt-in where even on LinkedIn, what appears to work as slideshows, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in. Short videos, opt-in, opt-in, opt-in. But then big ass article, there's a big gap between those two things, which doesn't mean you can't create really good content rich articles, but how do you make them more navigable versus just this gigantic block of text? Jason Dodge: The actual content experience is really something, Nigel, that you touched on. The opt-in is an interesting one too. And I think the opt-in is one of those, not to sidetrack us, I think that's one of those, somebody had mentioned before, it's a reaction to the idea that third party cookies are going to go away. So first party data is going to be gold, which it's always been gold anyways, so what's the best way to do it? Opt-in to my stuff. So now again, the focus is on that, but I couldn't agree with you more. I think the idea that the content has to be experiential, it has to be a positive content experience, long form content is great, but like TLDR, if I don't want to read it, the recipe is a great example. There's enough internet memes out there for it. I don't need to read about the trauma that you had baking cookies with grandma. Let's just get to the recipe. Mordy Oberstein: I would love to actually read recipes of trauma. The first part is all about the trauma. Jason Dodge: That domain's probably available. I'm going to go get that domain right now. Crystal Carter: And I think, just to pick up on what Nigel was saying about some of the, pay attention to the things that actually capture you, I think that we as web users, we are inundated with so much content and we can see trends. We can see that there are dance trends online and things like that. So I mean, Duolingo is a classic example. Duolingo has a very silly mascot that dances all over TikTok and does all sorts of silly things on TikTok, and they get great exposure for that. I'm talking about it right now. And they're a language app and their Duolingo mascot guy who runs around TikTok doesn't necessarily talk about languages all that often, but their brand is front and center really, really regularly. Another good example that I've heard from is Amanda Natividad. She shared how her exterminator has a newsletter and it's really, really useful. And she actually shared a screenshot from the newsletter, and I was like, that's really useful advice. I followed that advice. It was great advice. Now, the thing that's interesting about that is that I remember that, I don't even know his name necessarily, but if I was in her area, I would go and look that person up. So I think it's really important to pay attention to the things that you pay attention to, what's made you stop and where are the trends that you're seeing when you're going around online? Jason Dodge: I think, yeah, spot on. And if you think about it too, a couple different items to build on that, if you don't have relationships with PR folks, I think as an SEO right now or moving into 2024, I think you've missed the boat. If you have attended any search marketing conference in the last 10 years, the best people who have been on the stage to talk about link building are PR people. They're PR professionals. That's their background. Their background is the pitch and how do I get that brand? How do I get the brand? They're not even talking about the site, they're not talking about links, it's how do I get the brand out there as much as possible? That's all PR, right? And so having a, I know a lot of our team have communications background and PR background. It's less about the dollars and cents and it's more about how do we communicate with people and where they're at in the channel and in the journey, et cetera. I mean, I think to your point of why aren't we doing it is just we've always done what we've always done, right? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. But it's fun to watch. One of the things that I like to do is watch what people are doing and how it's changing when they're doing their content. But one thing I know as an example is Search Engine Land. They started to push their newsletter subscription in a different way. They have a couple of lines from the article, then they have a short little paragraph pushing their newsletter highlighted in light blue, and there's no CTA. To sign up for the news, it's an in link. I'm like, oh, that's really interesting. It's far less intrusive. It's very subtle. It looks like it's part of the article. And you know what? I kind of like that better. I gauge how I'm feeling when I'm looking at what people are trying out and experimenting with their content. And if it resonates with me, I'm like, okay, that's interesting, pause. And it resonated with me that they're not pushing the CTA the same way. I'm like, you know what? That's really interesting. And then I look for other corroborations. Google started running ads in between the organic results. I wonder if that's very similar. They're seeing that top of the SERP ads or bottom of the page ads. Everyone knows that those are, everyone knows that their ads, no matter how subtle the ad label is, I don't want to be sold to forget it. But if it's much more subtle, so in the middle of an organic result, then suddenly I feel it's less intrusive. You're less trying to pitch me and I'm more happy to click on that. So I wonder if Google is seeing and doing the same thing as Search Engine Land is doing. And at that point, I realized I'm feeling a certain way. I'm seeing two things that might be related, might not be, just a theory, that's something to investigate and research and then talk to other people about like, do you think the age of the CTA is dead? Put out a tweet, put out a LinkedIn post and see what the comments say about that. Crystal Carter: I think there's a lot of ways to respond to emerging content. And I think that, yeah, we should be talking about it more. So here's a controversial theory. Do you think the SEOs don't talk to other SEOs about emerging content trends? Because we like to keep our cards close to our chest because it's a question of know when to hold them, know when to fold them. It's tough out here in these SERPs. Nigel Stevens: The reason, I think that's a good theory about a lot of things, the reason I'm going to say, I don't buy it is that I'm not seeing very much evidence of that out in the universe of anything that's breaking the pattern. And to kind of riff on what you were both talking about, like Crystal, you mentioned, I think about the exterminator thing, it made me stop what I was doing. Something I've been thinking a lot about is what are the first principles? We're out here talking about algorithms, what Google is doing, what are the first principles here? It's like, what is marketing? It's connect with someone, get their attention and get them to do something. And I feel like this is kind of corny to say, but if you think about those first principles, then you don't get locked into all of these best practices. How does Google render JavaScript? All this, which they're like, are the important questions that you have to answer, but the core first principle that's never going to change is how do you get someone's attention and get them to do something? And as the internet, the barrier to entry is getting lower for producing certain types of stuff. The premium is going to go on. How do you actually capture attention and show credibility and show someone that this was not just an automatically generated page that's trying to trick you into doing something? Mordy Oberstein: And as time runs out on us, find out by following both Nigel and Jason. Where can people find you folks? Nigel Stevens: On LinkedIn? I'm not a very good internet marketer. I'm not on the X and the Twitters. Jason Dodge: Oh, man, you can follow me. Yeah, certainly, I'm with Nigel. LinkedIn is a good place. I'm still active on Twitter/X, @dodgejd, pretty much everywhere. And obviously blacktruckmedia.com. Mordy Oberstein: Awesome, we'll link to your show notes. Fellas, it was so nice talking to you. It's such a needed topic. And if you're listening to this, take what we're saying to heart. Open your mind, open your minds. Content is like LSD. Open your minds to wider experiences. Is that good? Jason Dodge: I think that's great. Nigel Stevens: What a better note to end on. Crystal Carter: Does content make the walls move? Jason Dodge: Yeah, that's great. Please include that in the show notes. It's wonderful. Nigel Stevens: Nigel, how was the podcast? Well, it ended with LSD, but I'll tell you later. Mordy Oberstein: As all great things do. Jason Dodge: I think that you're spot on. And Nigel, you hit the nail on the head. And Crystal, you made a good suggestion too. Just start to pay attention to what's going on around you. Don't be so myopic and stuck and actually look at these landing pages in your own personal experiences. I think 100%, because there are reasons that Google is making these changes. So pay attention. Mordy Oberstein: And good luck to us all. Jason Dodge: Good luck. Mordy Oberstein: And good luck to you guys. Thanks again for coming on. Nigel Stevens: Thank you. Jason Dodge: Thank you as well. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, well, with all this talk about emerging content trends, we're curious. I'm curious at least, how does Google understand some of the emerging topics or emerging trends related to content? And to do that, we have a fun little segment. We look at Google's People Also Ask box where we have those four questions that you can open up a tab and see an answer and that it loads more questions every time you click on one of them. Anyway, with the PAA box, we search for some terms related to emerging content trends, which can only mean one thing, it's time for Fun with People Also Ask. So I did a little query, and it's nothing too complicated. I searched for content trends 2024. Now, keep in mind, we're recording this on November 14th, 2023. And what I got back was four questions. One was, what are the biggest content trends in 2023? What is the future of content? Okay, that kind of makes sense. What are the B2B marketing trends for 2024? And what are the five marketing trends and predictions for 2023? Now, first question I had was, 2023, is that Google getting it wrong? I asked for 2024 or is Google saying, I don't think you know what you're really asking for. It's still 2023 right now. Why are you asking about 2024? Crystal Carter: Very interesting. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: So what's interesting is that I'm looking at the SERP and there's tons of content there that's showing for 2024. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, and we're still a good month and a half out, which just goes to show you our earlier point about what SEOs sometimes do. Crystal Carter: So it's not to say that they don't have anything to pull from, but they're definitely like, yeah, let's talk about 2023. And it's like, guys, we're not... Mordy Oberstein: Wait, maybe Google, it's a little shot at what sometimes SEOs do. Google's like, oh, you asked for 2024 but to tell you that 2024 is really the same as 2023, you just changed the year and the title tag. It was like, here's a bunch of results for 2023. We know what you're doing. Crystal Carter: No, this is new content. It's completely different. Mordy Oberstein: But the title tag is new, it says 2024. Crystal Carter: Right, right. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Also, you pointed this out, was that there was the switch to the B2B marketing trends, which I thought was in. If I'm asking for content trends... Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But then Google switches to marketing trends. Crystal Carter: Right. So they're switching to B2B marketing there, and they're also switching to marketing trends, predictions. Now, marketing trends might not be entirely to do with content specifically, and certainly marketing trends and predictions might not be to do with content particularly as well. They could be like billboards are going to make a big comeback. I mean, look, just what happened with the Barbie movie. And actually I think it's interesting the way people are using billboards. But yeah, I think it's very interesting that they've pivoted to that. Sometimes when you look up something around on a PAA, sometimes they will hedge. We found this when we were looking at migration, for instance. They were like, oh, you're talking about data migration? You're talking about human migration? You're talking about like, which kind of migration are you talking about? What migration, which kind of thing are you talking about? So I think if you're trying to rank for a PAA, for instance, it's important to know that when it's a less specific search, you're more likely to have half of the PAA's. Mordy Oberstein: There's always that outlier intent or the multiple intent built into the PAA box. I once did a study about this in, I don't know, 2018, where I went through manually, went through hundreds of PAA boxes, and subjectively decided, very scientific, although after a while you get good at it, how many different intents there are. And they're pretty clear, you could see it here, Google switches from the content to the marketing trends thing, it's pretty self-evident. And there was a good number percentage of boxes that have this. It's a regular pattern. I don't remember the exact number because the platform that I wrote that content for, deleted it. So that information has been lost from the web. Crystal Carter: It was time well spent, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, really? As someone used it in the Rest MX deck back in the day, and I was in the room like, oh, that's my study. That's my study. So I was pretty proud about that, but now it's gone from the internet. Unless you found the URL and use the Wayback Machine. Crystal Carter: You're not better though. It's fine. It's not a big deal. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm very happy about it. Why would I not be happy about this? But anyway, it's a normal thing. We digress, there's a normal thing for Google to throw a little punt and like, oh, maybe you mean this. Maybe that's your intent. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think it's interesting. So similarly, and we know that AI content writing is a content trend for 2023, and for 2024, I'm sure as well. And so I entered in AI content writing as the key term and the People Also Ask for that was, can I use AI for content writing? What is the best content AI writer? That's fun, PAA's don't always make grammatical sense. Is there an AI that writes content for free? Is AI content writing worth it? And I think that that, again, when you read all of those, you see the sort of flow of worry and concern and interest around a particular topic. Is it free? Is it worth it? Should I invest my time in this? Is this something I should do? How people are thinking about a particular topic. Mordy Oberstein: I could dive into this or have the perfect pivot. Speaking of headlines that sometimes also don't always make sense, here's this week's version of The Snappy News. Crystal Carter: Or Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Or Barry. I'm sorry. It was such a good pivot, wasn't it? Come on. That was great. Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News, three for the price of two this week. First up, from Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, 94% of Google SGE links are different from organic results, study finds. So Danny does a whole summary of a study done by Authoritas who did a study called Research Study: The Impact of Google Search Generative Experience on Organic Rankings. We'll link to both in the show notes. If you want a summary, check out Danny's Search Engine Land piece. If you want to dive into all the nitty-gritty details, check out the actual story from Authoritas. But essentially what they did was, among many and many other things, was look at the number of links within Google's SGE and to see if they matched the organic results themselves. What they found was that on average there are 10 links within Google's SGE, but only four domains, meaning those 10 links only come from four websites. They also found that around 94% of the URLs within the SGE do not match the organic results. Now, what I'm curious to see is the number of links that match within the summary itself versus the three or four whatever organic result cards Google shows in the top right-hand corner of the SGE box. What do I mean? Some of the links are additive. Google is citing along as it's generating its summary within the SGE box. So you ask Google, I don't know, who is the best baseball player ever? And it tells you, well Babe Ruth played for the Yankees and blah, blah, and it offers a citation to the New York Yankees. It's a link to the New York Yankees, let's say. It wouldn't make sense that that link would be found within the organic result itself, but basically Google's doing is annotating the subtopics that reflect the wider topic that's reflected in the query. So those links as you go along in the SGE text itself kind of makes sense that they don't match. What would be interesting to see is that if the organic cards within the top right hand quarter of the SGE box, which do align to the overall query, which do basically serve as organic results, if those match the organic results or not. Now the fact that they wouldn't match might not be a problem, 'cause Google's saying, hey, just like a feature snippet, we're not going to show the URL within the feature snippet and then again, within the organic results. They might just be showing the URLs within the SGE as part of those organic cards, and then again not, in the actual organic results again. So it might not necessarily be a problem if they don't match, you know what I mean? Anyway, check out the full study within the show notes. We'll link to learn there. Second article from he who is Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, the newly designed Search Engine Roundtable, oh, Wharton professor, Ethan Mollick, on the decay of internet search. It's very dramatic, Barry. So basically a professor from Wharton, associate professor from the Wharton School of Business was searching for, it looks like queries about upcoming shows. I don't know, when is Stranger Things, season five coming out? That kind of query. Instead, the organic results kind of stink here. It's interesting, there's been a lot of sentiments. One of the things I really, I wouldn't say enjoy talking about, I find fascinating. That's how I would, I find it fascinating. The whole idea of the decay of the organic results because from my point of view, as someone who's looked very, very carefully at what Google has been doing with the algorithm updates for the better part of 10 years, I only see the results getting better. Obviously there are peaks and valleys. Google makes an update, sometimes they get everything right, exactly. And you have controversy within the SEO community about how good the results are. I'm talking since 2018, the advent of the modern day core updates, Google's only gotten better. However, sentiment has gotten worse. I don't want to get into why exactly that is, here, I've talked a lot about this in the past. I think we've probably covered on the podcast at some point. If we haven't, we will. It's one of my talking points. It's interesting here in this case, 'cause it happens to be, I search for these queries a lot. Like, I don't know, when is the final season of The Crown coming out? It came out already and a lot of the results here are less than spectacular. But, first off, I do find that for the most part, even though the results are not particularly spectacular and they're a little bit clickbaity, they kind of serve their purpose. It's not meant to be Faulkner. On the other hand, I do get where the professor, the group professor is coming from because they are a little bit, nah, not stellar in quality. I think though the main issue is that what these websites are doing is that they're paying attention to what say, the statements that Netflix is making or researching various sources, kind of putting it all together for you so you know what the storyline might be, when the show might be coming out? Where is it in production? How far along is it in that? And the reason why the result may not be great is because there's just not a lot of great content out there. So what else is Google going to rank? Netflix isn't putting out a full article of where the show is in production, when they expect it to come out, what some of the rumored storylines are. They're not doing that. So you have these other websites who are not the source themselves, or not these super authorities like Netflix itself or Hulu or Disney Plus, I can go on with all the other streaming websites that are out there. My God, how many streaming websites are there? There is no content like that. So what else is Google going to rank? So is it, the content stinks and Google should be ranking something else? Or is it that somebody else should be writing better content so that Google can rank it? The chicken and the egg. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. We love you Barry. You are our best friend. We love you more than words could ever say. Crystal Carter: Honestly, like yeah, you're that dude. Mordy Oberstein: I feel you in the heart. Crystal Carter: Big love, Barry. Mordy Oberstein: Big love Barry. Which brings to another big love that we have, which is telling you about people that you could be following on social media for more SEO content and marketing awesomes, and this week we have Kelsey Jones, who's @wonderwall7, W-O-N-D-E-R-W-A-L-L seven, if you're not typing that in really quickly as I'm spelling it, we'll link to it in the show notes. But Kelsey is a fabulous content marketing person and she's one of these content marketing people that really overlaps in SEO, kind of like Ross Hudgens out there, who's another follow we had a couple of weeks ago. So definitely give her a follow and a shoutout over on X/Twitter, again, I don't know what we call it anymore, but she actually recently hosted SEOChat and that was also fabulous. So give her a big follow. Crystal Carter: Give her a big follow because today is going to be the day that you're going to find out about some of the cool stuff that Kelsey Jones is doing. Mordy Oberstein: Wow, what an oasis. An oasis of social media awesomeness. Crystal Carter: Precisely. So yeah, do check her out. But yeah, I think it's great to be thinking about, particularly if you are an SEO SEO, I think it's really good to be speaking to and checking out folks who are looking at the activity from a different perspective and who are all trying to get this... Mordy Oberstein: A wider content world. Crystal Carter: Exactly. And who are all trying to get great results for users and customers and clients and to broaden your mind. Mordy Oberstein: From the wider content world. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: No? Crystal Carter: The whole internet. Mordy has been very demonstrative of late. So ever since his dance routine at BrightonSEO, Mordy's given me full jazz hands right now. Mordy Oberstein: We'll dance for good content. Unfortunately, I never have to dance because there's no good content. Anyway, with that snarky remark, thanks for joining us on the SERP's Up Podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, look for wherever you consume your podcast or the SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all of the great content and webinars we have over at 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

Agency saves time, money and SEO headaches “Building websites with Wix is like having a team of developers on your side. They’re always innovating for us and we can just run with it. ” 50% Increase in the speed of website builds 50% Reduction in costs compared to bespoke builds 50% Of all web projects in the last 12 months delivered on Wix When Optix Solutions made the strategic decision to start outsourcing their development work, the agency began to worry that they had traded in one type of bottleneck for another. What they needed was a web creation platform that could give them the flexibility to say yes to client requests, without the logistical headache of always having to factor in someone else's timelines and costs. And most importantly for their in-house SEO team, it had to be a platform that could give them complete control over clients’ SEO. The business Based in Exeter, England, Optix Solutions is a full-service agency with a special focus on digital marketing and web creation. Founded back in 1999 by two university pals, it has grown into a high-powered operation led by 17 staff who deliver everything from paid media strategy to creative TV campaigns. With a client list that ranges from much-loved local businesses to large government bodies like the UK National Health Service, it’s fair to say the projects that Optix Solutions take on never fall into the category of one-size-fits-all. As digital marketing makes up the biggest slice of their business, SEO is one of their key offerings. The SEO challenge After every client meeting, Optix Solutions’ Creative Lead, Samuel Skinner, always asked himself two questions: How quickly can we do this? and How much is it going to cost us? Without developers on demand, he now had another pressing consideration to add to the mix: Who’s going to do this for us? Samuel Skinner, Creative Lead at Optix Solutions Deceptively simple on the face of it, these issues all posed blockers for the agency. As Samuel notes, customers often came in with big plans and very little idea of the time, cost and logistics that it would take to bring them to fruition. “I've always had a problem explaining to a customer why something they can describe to me in very simple words is actually going to be painful or very expensive for them,” he shares. “They’ll say, ‘All I want to do is take this picture out, put this graphic in, and move that text there.’ But of course, a developer’s got to sit down and write the code, test the code, and deploy the code.” When it came to factoring in SEO, Samuel found he was spending far too much time briefing developers and spelling out each website’s specific requirements. If he didn’t do this, he found that things could get skipped over, which led to bottlenecks for the SEO team further down the line. For example, it was essential that they were able to access the website’s metadata, make edits, add tags to pages, and do URL redirects. And while third-party plugins were an option, they were a messy route the agency would rather not go down. The solution Samuel had been a personal advocate of Wix for some time, having first picked it up in his college days to build his online portfolio. It would now prove to be a game-changer for his agency—enabling them to move faster and reduce costs, without having to rely on developers. The upshot? Samuel’s team is saying yes to more clients than ever before. “Wix gives us a flexibility that’s incredibly powerful,” Samuel enthuses. “I can deliver a better customer experience because I'm not having to say no all the time—the old barriers are gone. Not only can we deliver at a fraction of the price and move really fast, we can also be quite experimental with it. We know that we can phase projects without unexpected costs creeping in. It’s opened up a lot of ideas and opportunities for us.” As well as being ideal for one-off campaigns like landing pages, the agency finds Wix especially useful for mid-sized clients with sites anywhere between 40 and 50 pages—the bonus being that Wix offers them the ability to keep scaling. “You know those clients who want professional sites that look superb, but are a bit squeamish when it comes to putting tons of money behind it? That’s where we can come in and say hey, you know what, we have a great solution.” Another major win is that Samuel’s team can now build websites with SEO in mind, rather than an afterthought. From the get-go, all the SEO capabilities they need are at their fingertips. “ Things like the URL Redirect Manager and the built-in SEO tools for areas like the blog, especially OG images and Twitter cards, are really excellent features,” Sam lists. “Having worked with a lot of bespoke site builds, factoring these things into the specification and then testing thoroughly would always eat time. Wix’s features work straight out-of-the-box, so I can execute with speed—and without fiddley plugins.” Optix Solutions’ newfound agility doesn’t end there. Samuel’s team can now enjoy far more flexibility in the placement of their in-house resources. “Wix is like an extra service that slots into our business and we can all jump on it,” he says. “The best part is that getting staff trained up is super efficient because I can direct them to all of Wix’s video guides and how-tos.” No bottlenecks in sight. The results “We can comfortably deliver an entire site within a couple of months (less if we needed to). In a typical project with specialist developers, we would run at least twice this. So our timelines have been cut in half .” “ Budget wise we’re able to deliver solutions well below the £10k mark and keep it viable for our business. This isn’t a figure we can reach with other platforms or options, so Wix is our sole offering for clients that need to work within these kinds of budgets.” Discover how advanced SEO features on Wix give you the ability to work smarter and faster for your clients and explore our SEO Learning Hub for the latest insights from industry experts. 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

Be indispensable to your clients. Find out how SEO’s and marketers can provide indispensable value to your clients. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter welcome Ignite Visibility’s VP of SEO, Jen Cornwell to talk about the indispensable impact SEO’s and marketers alike bring to their clients. Understand the depth of value SEO agencies can provide to clients, transcending the general SEO perception. Plus, we evaluate what the Google leaks expose about the future of SEO. We have the essentials on being essential on this, the 98th epsiode, of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Being indispensable to your SEO clients Be indispensable to your clients. Find out how SEO’s and marketers can provide indispensable value to your clients. Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter welcome Ignite Visibility’s VP of SEO, Jen Cornwell to talk about the indispensable impact SEO’s and marketers alike bring to their clients. Understand the depth of value SEO agencies can provide to clients, transcending the general SEO perception. Plus, we evaluate what the Google leaks expose about the future of SEO. We have the essentials on being essential on this, the 98th epsiode, of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 98 | July 31, 2024 | 49 MIN 00:00 / 48:46 This week’s guests Jen Cornwell As Ignite Visibility's VP of SEO, Jen Cornwell keeps her team to the forefront of search innovation. With over a decade of experience, she spearheads cutting-edge SEO tactics and pioneering AI integration in search campaigns for clients and the agency. Jen's expertise spans various site types and verticals, ensuring her user-first approach—fueled by a passion for understanding people and connecting them with the right solutions—delivers exceptional results for clients. 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 already overseeing the head of SEO brand at Wix. And I'm joined by the fabulously amazing, the incredible, the always differentiated and always essential head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I try to keep it... You can stand up from the crowd. There was years ago that I used to worry when I was a kid, when I was like high school or whatever. "Oh, people are staring at me." And I was like, you know what? What's it Bonnie Raitt says, "Let's give them something to talk about." It was like, yeah, I'm going to wear a stupid ridiculous shirt or ridiculous whatever. Because if you're looking, feast your eyes. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Something like that makes you sound like a total idiot. It took me a long time to realize that was Bonnie Raitt, even though I love 80s music. Crystal Carter: Bonnie Raitt singing about something. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I didn't realize that was her other stuff- Crystal Carter: No, that's 90s. Mordy Oberstein: ... was other stuff. No, it's a 90s, right. It's a 90s song. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah, yeah. Bonnie Raitt's great. But it's 90s. It's 90s, because it was on a Julia Roberts movie. Mordy Oberstein: Pretty Woman, no? No. Crystal Carter: No. It wasn't Pretty Women. Mordy Oberstein: No. I don't know. Crystal Carter: It was one of her other rom-coms. I'm sure. I'm going to have to Google it now. Please, talk amongst yourselves. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Julia Roberts movies. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you cannot only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also show your clients how much they really need you with inbuilt reporting found in Wix Studio. And in addition to all of the analytics available to you in Wix Analytics. As today, we continue our Wix Studio series as we talk how SEOs and marketers can show how indispensable they are to their clients. Why in today's environment, you need to show your value across the board, not just in one marketing discipline. Do you hear that SEO folks? Proving your value as an SEO or marketing agency versus a consultancy, is there a difference? And yes, we'll get into AI and how to deal with clients who feel they don't need you because they have an LLM that tells them to drink urine to prevent kidney stones. Ignite Visibility's, own VP of SEO, Jennifer Cornwell will be here in just a few minutes as she helps us show you why you're indispensable to your clients, why you are your client's very own air supply, and why they be so lost without you. Plus, we take a hard look at how the Google leaks are starting to broaden SEO. Again, you hear that SEO, folks? Plus we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So stick with us as we show you how to become like a band-Aid, too painful for your clients to pull off on this, the 98th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. By the way, not an actual strategy you should use. Bad strategy. Don't be too painful. I was just taking poetic license. Yes, I am a poet. You wouldn't know a first glance, but I am quite the poet. I'm a wordsmith. Crystal Carter: Okay. One of my favorite Mordy Oberstein things is when you drop a $5 word. Every now and then, Mordy's like, "Oh, I have the vocabulary just in case you're wondering." Mordy Oberstein: For my birthday one year... Again, I terrible with time. You put out tweets of things I've said I didn't realize I said. And one of them was, "If talk is cheap, I'm fine to talk a lot," or something like that. Crystal Carter: Something like that. This is true. This is true. This is true. They weren't hard to find them, you got a lot of tweets. You are prolific, as it were. By the way, just for people who were wondering or who were in suspense. This Something to Talk About song was from a Julia Roberts movie called Something to Talk About. Mordy Oberstein: We just completely... Just ignorance built upon ignorance, built upon ignorance. Crystal Carter: That's such an SEO thing to do though. Mordy Oberstein: Near me. Something to talk about near me. Crystal Carter: Right. What's the song? It's Something to Talk About. What's the movie? Something to Talk About. What are we going to talk about? Mordy Oberstein: Before we bring our guest on, I will tell you the truth, as opposed to when I lie to you. Which is such a weird idiom, by the way. Like, "Oh, tell you the truth." Because before I was lying. Crystal Carter: Yeah, what was going on before? I thought we were in a circle of trust. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Honestly, like before you weren't being? Anyway, but it's an idiom. Anywho. There are times where I, as a marketer and as someone who's self-deprecating, feel like, come on, what do I know about marketing and SEO? It's like, what I'm saying is so obvious. Do I actually provide any unique value? But I do then meet folks who maybe don't have a marketing background that are maybe just marketing enthusiasts who are talking to me about marketing, or maybe they're just new to market... They are marketers or SEOs, and they're just new to the industry and they're still learning. And I do then realize that I do have actual experience and a unique outlook on marketing, and a unique outlook on SEO that I've built up through the years. That no, I of course didn't have when I first started, or was even in SEO marketing altogether, but that I have built up over the many years that I have been in marketing. And that does actually provide something that's unique and invaluable to the people that I work with. I think. I hope. Right? And with that, please welcome to the show Ignite Visibility's VP of SEO, Jennifer Cornwell. How are you? Jen Cornwell: Hi. I'm good, thanks. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Mordy Oberstein: You're indispensable to this podcast now. Jen Cornwell: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. That's a big title. Big title for a one-time guest. Mordy Oberstein: No, that means you can't leave. It's like Hotel California. Yeah, you're stuck. That's it. Crystal Carter: And I think it's really interesting you said seasoned. Because I think that one of the things that makes people indispensable is the special sauce that you bring as an SEO, really. I think that's something, Would you say that you and your team have cultivated a little bit of a special sauce that you bring to new clients or new projects? Jen Cornwell: Yeah. I think that the reason clients really like working with us a lot of the time is we are... A lot of businesses, I think they're going to say, "We're the startup mentality." But I do actually feel like we work that way, and we work that way with our clients because we worked that way for such a long time. We just hit our 11-year anniversary in this last year. I've been there for six, and the team has grown. I was like, 65 people when we got hired, and now we're 220 or something. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my goodness. Wow. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, grown a lot as a company. But I think even though we've done that, it's still coming to the table for our clients, for these relationships that we've built ultimately. We talk about the seasoning, that's important. But there's also this, your clients have gotten in this rhythm of talking to you all the time, and you are their marketing person now. And the reasons why, as an SEO, yes, you need to talk about SEO, but there's all this opportunity to talk about these other things they aren't thinking about. We try to keep our team really well-rounded and well-versed in a lot of what's going on. They're not paid media experts, but have enough of an understanding to be able to talk to it. And that kind of thing, it's part of it, the indispensableness. Mordy Oberstein: When we're deciding what should we discuss for the podcast, and we were saying how there's just so much more going on in marketing in general, there's just not one facet of marketing. And to be indispensable in today's environment means being a little bit more, I don't know, broad about what you cover and how you cover. Or what you're thinking about or what you're discussing with clients. How has that factored into what you feel makes y'all indispensable to your clients? Jen Cornwell: Part of it is making a better SEO, I think understanding all their marketing channels, because so much of what we do funnels down to us. Even not digital space, stuff we don't do as an agency. I've had a client where we saw an impression decrease for their brand and they're like, "Oh yeah, we stopped running our commercial." And so knowing that and being able to go into conversations with clients when they see something similar and be able to at least ask those questions, I think what's really important. But yeah, I think that's really where it comes from. It's baking it into the experience of the special sauce of situational things we've been in to open up those doors to ask the right questions at the right time. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great example. I've had clients where they've run print advertising or they've run television advertising. And if you're talking to them regularly, then you can bring that all together with the SEO, you can really unlock the real value of some of that. And if you are in an agency situation, all the better. Because you'll have people, you can be like, right, if you're running a television ad on, I don't know, ESPN or something. We can bring in our social team to target people who follow ESPN, we can link everything together. And even if it's on a project basis, even if it's just, you're doing this campaign on ESPN this week, and we'll bring in somebody to help with that, with the social shares or whatever this week or whatever, that sort of thing. But I think that having those conversations, keeping those conversations and really reading the data. Like you were saying, how we saw the impressions, what's going on? Really, really valuable. Jen Cornwell: The client piece that you mentioned is really important, because we talk about that a lot with our clients. I have prospects who come to me and they're like, "What makes a good client?" And I'm like, "When you talk to us." We want you to actually see this as a partnership where we want to help you. And yeah, sometimes they don't even tell you about new pages they add. Or, "Oh yeah, we did change the entire URL structure of the site segment." And you find out in your reporting that everything is way different than the last time you looked at it. But yeah, the clients who tell us about the little stuff, the small things going on, that's where we can actually come in and ask the right questions and be helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Do you notice a change with your clients? We're going to talk later in the podcast about how SEO might be broadening, and the Google leaks and how now there's a whole idea of branding factoring into SEO, and yada, yada, yada. But do you find, I don't know, over the years that the clients themselves have changed? Are they less focused just an SEO or just PPC? Are they starting to broaden a bit? Jen Cornwell: A little bit, I think. We still get a handful of clients who read one SEO blog. They come in and they say, "I do SEO." And they did SEO in 2012. And you're like, "Okay, so you kind of know what it is, but also it's been 10 years." That happens a lot still. But we do have clients who are, they understand that SEO... Their understanding of it is keyword stuffing. They're like, "Oh, yeah, well, I don't want my content to look all weird. I want my content to read weird." And so having to hurdle that. But even that's new, because that's like they understand that there's keywords that need to be implemented in a certain way. And they know it needs to happen for SEO, but they just want to figure out what the middle ground is for user experience. I think that we're having more of those conversations and less of, "How many keywords are on this page, and why aren't there more of them?" conversations. I guess a little bit. There's also some... It depends. It really just depends on the most common SEO answer of all. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the graph. It depends. It depends in orange. Jen Cornwell: Yes. Yeah. No, it depends on the marketer that's coming in and what their background is. But it's gotten better. I think the understanding of SEO has gotten better. Crystal Carter: And I think a lot of people are starting to say that... And I don't know if you're seeing this trend, is that they're starting to see clients come to them less for implementation support and more for strategic support. Are you seeing that trend as well? Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Yeah. Especially more recently, I think it's a little bit of economic and bandwidth availability resources within their own team in the conversations that we're having. But definitely they're like, "Oh, okay, this is stuff a developer can do," and you can just pass it over to somebody who's in-house who has some SEO experience so we're not doing as much explaining as we have to do. But yeah, it's definitely more on the strategic side. And I think that's where they know enough to know that SEO is different than it was 10 years ago, where they know there needs to be more strategy involved and less "keyword stuffing", as an example. Mordy Oberstein: Or they could have the AI to implement all of it, right? Jen Cornwell: Right. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's a smooth transition into the other elephant in the room that I wanted to discuss, which is, how does AI affect you being indispensable? Both in reality, and I think more importantly... Because I think in reality not much has changed, but that's just me. But the perception of that reality with clients. Are they coming in, "Well, I could just LLM this thing."? Jen Cornwell: As soon as ChatGPT was announced and a thing, we had a client who said, "Okay, send me pricing for how to write more content for less money, with AI." And I was like, "Oh, my God." So we go through all that, and it turns out, actually, especially at the time when it was first rolling out, there was no cost savings. The hard costs of a writer were actually implemented in time and trying to get the LLM to get what we needed on the other side, that was not going to work out for that client. But yeah, we had a lot of those conversations. The way we've positioned it with our clients now is, we use AI in our processes for analysis, we use it for blind spots. It's like, as SEOs you get very situational sometimes with your own references. So having something that can double check some other things for you just in case you forget. Stuff that it's more appropriate use. But yeah, we still have clients. I had a client last wee, this week I was on the phone with. And they're like, "Yeah, we're going to hook Jasper up so we can put a bunch of content up on the site." And so I screen shared this screenshot of this client we had that just did AI content. You can see every single algorithm update where it just fell off September, January, then again in March, just stair steps down. I've used that a lot actually as reference point. Crystal Carter: That's one of the things that I think is so valuable about an agency relationship is that as somebody who's working in an agency, and as you said, you have eyes... You've grown from a team of 60 to team of over 100. Across your team you will be having conversations about different trends that you're seeing from clients, and things like that. When a client comes to you and they say, "I want to do this," it won't be your first time doing this. You can say to the wider team, "If you have any examples, have you seen anything?" And they'll go, "Yeah, actually, I do. Watch this drop." And I think that visibility is something that a lot of in-house teams really struggle with a little bit, because you might just have your blinders on and you might not see what's happening in different verticals. Mordy's done so much algorithm research and stuff, and sometimes the algorithms, if you think about the reviews algorithm, the product reviews update. That was initially working in a certain space. And now, I'm pontificating here, but I think that some of the stuff that we saw with that is kind of what we're seeing with the helpful content update rolled out wider. And I think that the knowledge that you get from working across different clients that have been affected by different algorithms, different approaches, different techniques can be super, super valuable. And it's something that you can't get if somebody's working on one client at a time, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Is that something you feel differentiates you as an agency versus a consultancy? Where you have so much experience and so many different verticals and so many different areas of marketing. If you're going to get consultants it's like, all right, they have your SEO handled, but the second you have a PPC problem come up, or a content issue come up, or whatever it has come up, now you have to go find somebody else. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, we've never been vertical specific, we've always done the variety. We probably lean more toward lead gen, maybe a little bit B2B versus e-comm. But I think what happens, we have clients who come on and they're like, "Oh, do you have experience in our industry?" And that matters for writers and that kind of thing, getting the context of their business together. But I think there's a lot of things that are applicable across verticals. The way Google indexes content for a storage facility site is not any different than the skincare brand that we work on. And the things it's looking for are not intrinsically different, but it is two different audiences. And that's where I think you start to get into the indispensable marketing mindset of, I'm not just an SEO, I'm thinking about user journey, I'm thinking about conversion points. I'm thinking about the user journey for a storage site versus a skin care brand, that's two different things that can be important in your strategy. But yeah, the variety I think is really critical, really helps. Crystal Carter: And when I was working agency side, I really liked this. I was working with clients similarly, skincare, storage, people that different, some of the clients that I was working with. And I thought that was really interesting. Because particularly on the local side, for instance, there will be features that are available within local SEO, for instance, that are applicable to certain verticals that are not applicable to other verticals. And if you're working on product stuff, then there will be different things that you'll use for that, like Google Merchant Center and stuff. But what you find when you're working across all of them is you get more of a sense of how these things work. Because very often maybe they'll have lots of product schema on... Maybe they'll have one vertical that's got lots of schema, and so then you learn how to do schema. So then when they add schema to a different vertical, then you're completely ready for that because you've already done it on this other one. Whereas, everybody who's just been working on the other vertical and has never seen rich results for that particular vertical might be very surprised. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. No, I think SEO is so situational anyway, that having that diverse experience... Or being able to have it, I guess, within our team and not being necessarily... I joke that I want to retire to in-house, that's my retirement plan day. I'm going to leave agency life and I'm going to go to in-house and have a nice little in-house job. But not to disregard the in-house people, I'm sure that is hard in its own way. But I do think, yeah, when you're in-house you're dialed in on maybe one site or a few sites, or one specific vertical. And it's great, maybe it makes you a specialist there, but doesn't exactly open up the experience. And I think the time too, over five years, over six years. What I was doing five or six years ago is very different than now, and the experience over that time. Yeah, your in-house person who's been there for three years maybe hasn't stepped out of the SEO bubble or SEO world in a different way, just because they're only looking at certain things and trying to solve the one problem. This is what I hear about in-house, trying to solve the one problem that you've been trying to push across the line for two years, or whatever it is. And it's always adding site maps to the robots.txt file, and it's going to take seven months to implement. Yeah, I think it's easy to get lost in some of that and maybe lose sight of some of the other stuff that you would get to see agency side. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think that... Because you mentioned this a few times already, the marketing mindset and the marketing mindset. Do you think that maybe that's one of the reasons why maybe SEOs don't necessarily have that marketing mindset that seems to be indispensable to clients? Jen Cornwell: It's probably a little bit of experience, for sure. I think it's really, I refer to it a lot as our SEO vacuum. I go and I can propose all kinds of things to clients like, "Oh yeah, I work on these keywords and these pages," but it doesn't really matter if their audience doesn't care about it or if they don't care about it as a business either. And ultimately, being able to prioritize your recommendations, I think that comes from marketing mindset as well. I'm not just passing over an audit checklist of "here's all the stuff that's wrong and here's some recommendations to fix it". But I'm not necessarily going to tell you what's going to impact your business the most or what you should prioritize first based on your resources. And so I think navigating... That's one example, but being able to navigate their entire marketing plan in the same way. My favorite example, I had a pediatric dentist client, he's got five or six locations in San Diego. And I've worked at a lot of dentists, they love marketing. Mordy Oberstein: They got to figure out how to get you in that chair and pull out your teeth. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, yeah. No, he loved it. And I used to go into the meetings and I would suggest things that I knew I was never going to touch. I would build the landing page. I'll write some content, we'll make the landing page, but there's 5 million other steps to this idea. And those conversations were always really fun for me because I got to talk about stuff other than keywords. But also made us really valuable to him because he's like, "Oh, here's another brain, basically, that can be in this room with me and has the marketing perspective to be able to talk about what we could potentially do." Yeah, I think navigating those situations, the small conversation that turns into a big idea just because you came in with a little bit of extra experience goes a long way. Crystal Carter: That's great. It sounds like a great partnership. The kind of partnership you were talking about before, where everything is back and forth. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Was like the name of the dentist, like, Bright Smiles? Jen Cornwell: No. Actually, they have a really strong brand. They were one of the biggest pediatric dentists in San Diego. And one of my favorite idea that I suggested them that they did was try to set a world record at a baseball game. They were trying to get as many people to floss at once, or something. Crystal Carter: Were they into that? Jen Cornwell: Oh, my God, yeah. They thought that was awesome. Crystal Carter: I love it. Jen Cornwell: ... ever. Well, and it was something that John Lincoln, our CEO, suggested for a night. He's like, "Maybe we could try to get in the world record book." And so I came into this meeting and I was like, "What if they …?” Mordy Oberstein: Could you imagine? They did it? Jen Cornwell: They did it, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: At a baseball game? Jen Cornwell: I don't think they set the record, but they did do it at Padres. At Petco Stadium. Mordy Oberstein: They were all flossing. That sounds, first off, brilliant, but also disgusting. Jen Cornwell: I know. But it was like, they do kids games, so it was like the kids were there and it was like a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: That just makes it grosser. The kids, I don't know. Oh, my gosh. I'm not a germophobe, but I'm freaking out on the other side of the screen. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. No, it was questionable. But people participated and they did it and got some exposure. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Jen Cornwell: I wrote the blog. That's a... Mordy Oberstein: That is a great idea, by the way. That would make me feel like you're indispensable. Crystal Carter: Right. Unique, showing up with unique ideas. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. I'm going to go Google this now. Got to find people flossing at Petco Park. Jen Cornwell: I give enough details. I give enough details. I think those are more fun conversations to have anyway, honestly. So it's a little bit of my own personal amusement of... And we don't get those opportunities with a lot of our clients. And clients really just look at us as, "You are the SEO partner, so your suggestions about CRO for this form, we don't actually care that much. Just get us the keywords and get us the content." And that works in some relationships. But really strong partnerships you get to have those fun conversations. Crystal Carter: And I think that's also important to being a good partner for your clients is understanding who's like, "I just want this one thing." And you're like, "Cool, here you go." And the people who are like, "Yeah, let's get in. Let's brainstorm." There's going to be some people who really want to be all about it. And I used to have some clients who were just like, "Did you do the internet?" And I'd be like, "Yeah, I did it." They'd be like, "Great." And they don't want anything to do... They don't want to be involved. You're just working with... They're happy, they trust you to handle whatever you need to do. Jen Cornwell: Sometimes that's indispensable too. You're right- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Jen Cornwell: ... it's relative. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I feel like I have to go floss my teeth now. So, if people want to brainstorm with you or brainstorm with Ignite, how could they find you and your company? Jen Cornwell: I'm on LinkedIn. Ignite is also on LinkedIn. And then, I'm also on Twitter. I think it's JenCornwell_. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, don't worry, I'll find it. I'll link to it in the profile. In the profile, in the show notes. Jen Cornwell: Sweet. But yeah, those are two good places. I'm sometimes on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Twitter these days is not indispensable. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. And LinkedIn, I don't know, it's a weird mix over there sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: There's nothing great. I'll be honest with you, we can go on a whole different tangent about there's nothing great on social media anymore. I don't TikTok, but Crystal TikToks now. Crystal Carter: Yeah, sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You were at Moscon. I did tons of Moscon TikToks. Jen Cornwell: Oh, did you? I've not done any work TikToks. Crystal Carter: You could call it working. No, I'm kidding. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe another podcast. I did make a TikTok where I built a house out of Taco Bell. And got a lot of views and Taco Bell saw it and sent me a whole box full of swag. Crystal Carter: Yo, these are the kind of ideas we need, Jen. Jen Cornwell: My claim to fame. Mordy Oberstein: Floss and the taco. This is- Crystal Carter: Tacos. You need to find a taco client. Jen Cornwell: Oh yeah, I know. Mordy Oberstein: Like Taco Bell. Jen Cornwell: Taco Bell, maybe. Yeah. Del Taco will take. I had El Pollo Loco. Crystal Carter: I used to go to Alberto's in San Diego. Jen Cornwell: Oh yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: It has taquitos. Jen Cornwell: Rigoberto's, hit all the Berto's. Crystal Carter: Oh, there's the Filiberto's is also very good. They have a gigantic burrito that's amazing. But also I'm thinking, let's brainstorm right now taquitos, they're very much like Lincoln Logs. Jen Cornwell: Oh, Lincoln Logs. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Could build a whole to taquito fort. Jen Cornwell: Taquito. And you got to come up with a fun name. Mine was from Taco Bell Townhouse was because I saw a charcuterie chalet. This was during COVID, people were making little houses out of charcuterie. So yeah, did one out of french fries. Crystal Carter: Why didn't we make the podcast about- Jen Cornwell: We could have started with that. Crystal Carter: About literal food pyramids. Just saying. Mordy Oberstein: You make Lincoln Log, you can make out of asparagus. Crystal Carter: This is true. Jen Cornwell: We had somebody do hot dogs. Mordy Oberstein: Hot dogs. Jen Cornwell: This was all over a work competition. Mordy Oberstein: Work shopping this year. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, the gingerbread house kits. So it was just make anything out of food. And so, yeah, people showed up with some interesting pickles. Crystal Carter: I feel like the easiest thing is going to be carrot sticks because they're already made into things, whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Yeah, that's cheap. Crystal Carter: Tater Tots though, I feel like you could brick those. Pickles are good. They're kind of juicy. Tater Tots, you could use hummus or something sticky as the mortar to keep it put together. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It could be like a stone cottage thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Or like a slightly melted cheese, which will then congeal and then go... You see what I'm saying? Do you see? Mordy Oberstein: I think we've gone completely off the rails. Jen Cornwell: Best bet. Mordy Oberstein: ... so much for coming on the show, and we'll see you out there on TikTok building asparagus, Tater Tot houses. Jen Cornwell: Thank you. Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Anywho, you may have heard this whole thing a little while back that there was a Google leak. Google's algorithm leaked. There was a nut that needed to be tightened, and it was dripping water. There was a Google leak, which everyone I'm assuming heard something about that. And one of the offshoots of that is a lot of SEOs are now talking about, "Oh, we need to be thinking about wider digital presence and brand marketing because of things in the leaks." Such as, oh, Google might be, emphasis on might be, looking at user behavior metrics or Chrome data. Or might be looking at mentions across the web, yada, yada, yada. Again, Amazon might be, we don't know how they're actually doing it, even with the leaks. So SEO is talking about a lot of these wider marketing topics all of a sudden. Which brings up the question that we alluded to earlier, is SEO starting to broaden? Join us now as we explore this fascinating and intriguing question with a deep thought with Crystal and Mordy. I guess another way to phrase this question, is SEO starting to die? Is that too spicy? Crystal Carter: I think SEO is trying to use different tools, and also to utilize the tools that we have in different ways. I recently shared a post on LinkedIn, because I recently rewrote, remixed an article on long tail keywords. And historically speaking, the ways that SEOs have talked about long tail keywords is that we have long tail keywords and they've got good search volume accumulatively, and they allow you to connect with different parts of search, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff. All the things that great SEOs do, right? This is perfectly good SEO practice. But, and this is what I think SEOs need to do. We need to look at what we've got, the resources that we've got in a different way. The long tail keywords are not just about the search volume, the long tail keywords, an example that I use, was vegan pizza and pizza delivery in Brooklyn after midnight. This article's on the Wix SEO learning hub. And the thing that long tail keyword gives you is a full campaign. That gives you a full marketing campaign. Vegan tells you that you should be talking to vegan influencers or vegan magazines or vegan YouTube channels, or whatever. Pizza delivery tells you people want pizza, people want it delivered. They tell you that you need to have a Google business profile. They tell you that you need to have the location, your name, address, phone number on your website, et cetera, et cetera. And the after midnight tells you that it's late night. So if you have ads, you only want to show them late at night. You're not going to show people who are looking for pizza delivery at two o'clock in the afternoon those ads, you want to show them at 12 o'clock at night so that they can see those ads and get that pizza straight away. You also might want to take out... You know the quiet storm that goes on the radio at midnight or something, or the late night show on the radio. If you sell pizza after midnight and there's a late night radio show in your area. Guess what, the ad spot for that's probably not going to be that expensive because most people are not looking to buy stuff in middle of the night. However, if somebody's listening to the radio at 12:30 and you're like, "Hey, you want a tasty slice," they might call you. Mordy Oberstein: ... how you phrase that on a late night radio show. Crystal Carter: I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Remembering my youth of what's on the radio at 12 o'clock at night. Crystal Carter: It's a good thing. After midnight in Brooklyn, obviously geolocates you. You might want to sponsor the local basketball team, the local fantasy football team, whatever it may be. But that long tail keyword is data, it's search data. There's somebody who recently shared, they're looking at how search is growing, and the way that they're talking about SEO is slightly different. He was talking about how we can drive search demand. He was talking about how search demand gives you an insight into consumer demand. And that's different from going like, oh, these keywords, oh, blah, blah, blah. We just need to use the tools we have in a new way. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think anything's actually changed, everything that you're saying are things we should have been doing anyway. I think the only thing that's actually changed... And it will change the industry, by the way, because perception is everything. Is that SEOs are now starting to think about this because they're realizing that the wider, I'll call it holistic or whatever kind of marketing, brand marketing. Could, should, probably does, definitely does in some way, shape, or form, impact performance marketing. And they're like, "Oh, snap. Now we have to think about this." But you should be thinking about this the whole time. Growing your digital presence, I like to call it grow your digital light, has a tremendous impact on your SEO efforts and what you're able to do and not able to do. Whether it's SEO super directly, like we're saying now with the leaks are indirectly. So nothing is actually true, but the mindset has changed. And I think that... I can't find it, I was searching for this. And I post too much on social media, this is my problem. And I was in a Slack group and I put it on a LinkedIn. I have no clue. Look, I can't find it. It's one of the things you're going hear more about, or a segment of SEO, is brand SEO. I don't mean getting your branded keywords, I mean looking at brand as a way to summon your SEO effort. And then, lo and behold, a month later the leaks come out and now all of a sudden we're talking... But none of this is new. None of it's new. Crystal Carter: Yeah. One of the reasons why you didn't find that tweet, Mordy, is because you've been saying that for years. Because, Mordy, if you were trying to find that tweet, that's like trying to find- Mordy Oberstein: A lot of people have. The Kevin Indigs of the world come to mind, Lily Ray comes to mind. Crystal Carter: Have you ever found something out, or learned a new word or something like that, and then all of a sudden you see it everywhere? And it's always been there, but you didn't know necessarily what that word was, or didn't necessarily know what that idea was, or something like that. And you find that it's like, "Oh, this has unlocked a whole new perspective for me." And I think that's kind of what some people are coming to. But yeah, it has always been there. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's like Taylor Swift for me. She started dating Travis Kelce, Taylor who? Oh, there's this whole Swift-y thing. I had no clue. But now that I’ve heard of football, now I know. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: My world has changed. Crystal Carter: And if you learn a new tool, it can really open things up. Or also, I think when we think about the skills that we had and the resources that we had, sometimes it's a case of taking stuff that you already know and looking at it differently. There's some people like avocados. Let's talk about avocados. Mordy Oberstein: Love avocados. Crystal Carter: You like avocados. Avocados are delicious. I love avocados. You can literally just... I could literally eat it with a spoon. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: Perfectly happy. Mordy Oberstein: Don't even use a spoon, just take your fingers. Crystal Carter: Just- Mordy Oberstein: Just dive in. Crystal Carter: Just get involved. You don't have to do anything to an avocado. Vegans looked at that and they were like, "I'm going to make that chocolate mousse." And people were like, "What?" And vegans were like, "I'm going to make a chocolate mousse." It's the same avocado everybody's been looking at, but they were like, "I'm going to make a chocolate mousse." Completely different vibe. Yeah, it's a completely different vibe. It's a completely different thing. It's the same avocado that you always liked, completely different vibe. Mordy Oberstein: I think the only problem or issue I take is that it's possibly happening in SEO for the wrong reasons. We're like, we're taking the avocado, we're making it into chocolate mousse because I want to shake chocolate mousse and I want to throw it at people on the street. That's fun for me. Crystal Carter: I did a webinar the other day and the audience was super engaged, but I was talking about internal linking. And I was like, "You should have internal links. Make sure you use line links. Line links, they're high priority in the crawl, and they're really useful and they're really helpful, and they add context and they have words before them and words after them," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And somebody was like, "Oh, but if I do use the links, will Google penalize me? And what about this one?" And I was like, "Yo, put the links on your page because they're helpful. They're helpful, they're useful." I cannot stand it if I'm reading an article that's like, "Oh my God, avocado mousse is so delicious. It's the best thing I've ever tried. And gosh, I tried this brand of avocado mousse and it just really blew my mind." And I'm like, "Link me, bro." I'm like, "Where's the link?" And there's no link, I'm mad. I'm big mad. I'm mad, I want to go somewhere else. So link me. Link me to the recipe, link me to the picture, link me to... Pixlr didn't happen. I want to see the stuff. Why? Because it's helpful. That's helpful. It's helpful to Google, it's helpful to users. So the things that we need to do in terms of brand should be helpful. You want to pull your brand forward, you want to use your data wisely. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, momentum and cadence and presence, all that good stuff. Oh, no, more it's going to happen is what happens now on LinkedIn. I connect with somebody, "Hi, how are you?" Oh, here it comes. "Would you like to buy links?" But in a year from now it's going to be, would you like to buy mentions? Because what guest? He was like, "Oh, the leaks talk about mentions, and now we need to be concerned about mentions. I have a good idea, I'll sell mentions." Who needs to get the lie to sell mentions? And you should be worrying about mentions. You don't mentions do? I'm reading an article, they say, "You know what's a really great thing? Avocados. Avocados from whatever company, from Bob's Avocados," and there's no link. But you know what I might do if I want an avocado? I might type in Bob's Avocado into Google. And do you think for a second Google's not looking at the fact that lots of people looking for avocados and Bob at the same time? Did a link do that? No, a mentioned did that. Did a mention do that only after the leaks happened? No, a mention did that many, many years before the leaks came out. But now SEOs are going to try selling mentions. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that really, generally speaking, and I've heard this from good SEOs. People say, "How do you weather the algorithm updates and things like that?" Nine times out of 10, it's just keeping your nose clean. But nine times out of 10, it's like keeping your nose clean doing solid SEO, doing stuff that helps your users, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that it seems really... Okay, so I learned to snowboard, right? Mordy Oberstein: Wait, you know how to snowboard? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm a mediocre snowboarder, but I've been on a few mountains in my time. And I don't fall over. Last time I was in Switzerland, I didn't fall over. I did all right. And I was riding Switch. So people who know that, your girl has to moves. Anyway, when I was learning to snowboard, my instructor told me, he was like, "You just look where you want to go." And I was like, "No, because it's got to be this and you have to do that, and you have to go over here, and got to..." And I was doing the most, I was doing too much. But literally, I will tell you, if you want to snowboard, and I tell this to people now. Literally, look where you want to go. It's literally that simple. It's that simple. You're on the board, your feet are planted, you turn your head and your body will go where it needs to go. And that's all it is. So we like, oh, what if I do this, and what if I do that? And da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And don't get me wrong, there are absolutely technical things you need to consider. You need to make sure your website's crawlable. You need to have lots of things that are in there. You need to coordinate your digital PR, et cetera, so that it makes sense for your brand. You need to have a coherent strategy. But essentially, if your goal is to add value for your users, for your audience, then you will be fine. And if your goal is to add value consistently for them, then that will support your brand, as long as you know what your brand is. That's not rocket science. We try to make it so it's super complicated, but it's not. It's not. Mordy Oberstein: It's just tuning out that noise, that's the hard part. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: You know who tunes out a lot of noise, keeps his nose clean, and always provides value? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: It's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: That's the cleanest nose I've ever seen. Really, it's sparkling. Crystal Carter: I mean, sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Which means, as we pay homage to Barry, that it's time for this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a whole bunch of stuff for you, it's all a AI related. Or actually, AI adjacent. Let's start with Search Engine Roundtables, Barry Schwartz. Well, I don't know why I said Search Engine Roundtables, Barry Schwartz. There only is Barry Schwartz as Search Engine Roundtable, which is an existential feeling. There only is Barry Schwartz. Anyway, Reddit blocked Bing search and others, but not Google. So, Reddit has blocked basically all other search engine, I'm pretty sure, from crawling them via the robot.txt file. I don't know if that applies to Perplexity actually. I thought somewhere I saw Perplexity was fine. Anyway, I'm definitely Bing. Bing is definitely out. Reddit is no longer allowing other search engines to crawl them. That's interesting, right? I never know. What do you say about that? It's an interesting look. What's basically happening is that Reddit is basically saying, "Hey, if you want our content, be like Google and pay for it." I personally don't like Reddit, so I don't know why anybody would pay for it. But, okay. It's really interesting. It's a new paradigm on the web, I guess. I don't know if this deal will work out well for Reddit. I'm highly suspect that making this kind of deal is in their long-term benefit. It's weird, by the way. I'll just say it's weird because, yeah, Bing's not the biggest search engine, it's only got whatever percent of market share. Let's say it's got 5% of market share. I don't remember the exact numbers, nor do I particularly care. 5% of that market share is saying, yeah, I have 5% market share of the entire world. That's a lot of people. I guess Reddit doesn't care about your grandmother going to Reddit anymore. I guess the lesson to take from that. That's a little snarky for this podcast. Anyway, just weird. Let's head over to Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, where Google will soon test search shopping ads in AI overviews. So Google has talked about having an ad experience in the AI overviews for a while. Now they're saying you're going to see the tests coming up soon. The quote was, "And as you've probably noticed at GML, Google Marketing Live, we announced that soon we'll actually start testing search and shopping ads in AI overviews for users in the US," yada, yada, yada. So they're going to be testing them soon. Interesting. Let's see how that goes. Obviously, the ability to earn ad revenue is what will indicate if the AI overviews are going to work or not from a business point of view. All this is just interesting to me. Anyway. Now back to Search Engine Roundtable, Google Gemini adds related content and verification links. So the LLM formerly known as Bard, now known as Gemini, now contains links again. This is a weird week. I'm finding the news weird this week. Bard, now known as Gemini, used to show links to the content that the summary was based on. Much the way an AI overview does. But then stopped doing that. Well, now links are back inside of Gemini. Which is interesting, because now covering again from Search Engine Roundtable, SearchGPT, OpenAI search tool is out. It's announced. Like ChatGPT, you can now use SearchGPT to get answers to your questions. But here, with SearchGPT, you'll get citations that the content is based on. So it's basically Gemini. So it's basically the same thing. It's now you can search using OpenAI's platform much the way you would use Gemini. Again, get the summary and now get citations and links to content and so forth within the ecosystem. Will this disrupt the search engine market? Probably not. Because it's basically the same thing as Gemini, and kind of the same thing as the AI overview. So carry on as usual, I guess. I don't know. It's a weird week. It's a weird week. By the way, that article is brought to you by Barry Schwartz. Because, again, who else is writing at SE Roundtable? Actually, not true. Not true. I take that back. Sometimes Glenn Gabe actually writes an article over at SE Roundtable. You can always tell by the headline. Anyway, that's this week's weird and snappy news. It is hard to keep the noise out with the news sometimes. There's a lot of noise in the news. Crystal Carter: I'll be completely honest, I used to get a lot of my news from Twitter, and that is not a use a useful- Mordy Oberstein: Not a good place. Crystal Carter: ... source to get news from anymore. Barry's a great source. And I think a lot of times... There's certain people that I follow to keep on top of things like that as well. Lily Ray's a great person to follow for that, she's really on top of the news, and particularly for stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Glenn. Crystal Carter: Glenn is great as well, and Mike is great as well. Mike King is also a good one who jumps in. And Mike covers a lot of topics as well. So a lot of search, but also a few other topics as well, which is cool. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. That's why I like, by the way, I mentioned Glenn Gabe before, because he covers all tech news. I saw yesterday he posted about... This is insane. By the time this comes out, this will be old news. It's basically a social media thing where you can create an AI persona and then have all the AIs talking to each other. Crystal Carter: I heard the story about a comedian. Opinions on him aside, it was an interesting story. Dave Chappelle apparently had a Twitter account that was not his Twitter account, but this person was posting stuff. Kat Williams, and again, another controversial comedian or whatever. But he also had- Mordy Oberstein: All comedians are kind of controversial, it's what they do. Crystal Carter: He also had a... These two Twitter accounts were arguing with each other. The two of them actually met, these two comedians actually met, and they were like, "I'm sorry." Or, no. And Dave Chappelle apparently said to this other comedian, "I'm so sorry, that's not actually me that's been arguing with you." And Kat Williams was like, "I don't have a Twitter account either." And basically- Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was my comment back to Glenn when he posted about this. I'm like, yeah, AI, but people aren't so great either. So, there you go. You know who is a great person with the perfect pivot possible? Our follow of the week, Sam Rush's own head of influencer marketing, Nicole Ponce. Nicole is amazing. I work with Nicole. I still work with Nicole. Absolutely one of the greatest people you'll ever meet. Super incredible, super smart, super nice, helpful, everything. Give her a follow across all social media platforms. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely do. Not only is she super awesome, super smart, she also has all of the latest info and all the cool stuff that Sam Rush gets up to. They've got some cool events going on, they've got some interesting projects going on, and she's very much a part of that. She's really supportive of the SEO community as well. She supported stuff that Aletis put on. They've also supported things, different events. And they supported Search 'n Stuff, which is another great event as well. And I've worked with Nicole as well, and cannot speak highly enough of her. Big hearts to Nicole. Mordy Oberstein: We're all making heart signs. Crystal Carter: We're making those little hearts. Mordy Oberstein: ... the two of us here. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's just us. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What an interesting selection of people today. We talked about Barry, Cole… Crystal Carter: ... all the other folks we were just mentioning as well. Mordy Oberstein: We've talked a lot of people on today's show, mentions of people. Mentions, you know what? No one even asked to buy them. We should sell them. We should sell mentions on the podcast. I found a new niche for us. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, cool. Can we start a fun agency? Just, Mention. Mordy Oberstein: Mentions. Crystal Carter: Got to have a good name. Mordy Oberstein: With dollar signs. The brand, you be like dollar signs everywhere. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Good idea. This is the thing, by the way, that we're joking. Obviously. And before we continue and go down this rabbit hole forever, because I will, because I'm salty about this topic. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the wonderful world of podcasting, on a podcast with podcasters who do marketing and marketing podcasts. So many fourth walls. So many fourth walls. Look for it 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 of the great content and webinars and whatnot over on the Wix SEO learning at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Please 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 Jen Cornwell Nicole Ponce Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Ignite Visibility Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Jen Cornwell Nicole Ponce Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center It's New: Daily SEO News Series Ignite Visibility 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 already overseeing the head of SEO brand at Wix. And I'm joined by the fabulously amazing, the incredible, the always differentiated and always essential head of SEO communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: I try to keep it... You can stand up from the crowd. There was years ago that I used to worry when I was a kid, when I was like high school or whatever. "Oh, people are staring at me." And I was like, you know what? What's it Bonnie Raitt says, "Let's give them something to talk about." It was like, yeah, I'm going to wear a stupid ridiculous shirt or ridiculous whatever. Because if you're looking, feast your eyes. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Something like that makes you sound like a total idiot. It took me a long time to realize that was Bonnie Raitt, even though I love 80s music. Crystal Carter: Bonnie Raitt singing about something. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. I didn't realize that was her other stuff- Crystal Carter: No, that's 90s. Mordy Oberstein: ... was other stuff. No, it's a 90s, right. It's a 90s song. Crystal Carter: Oh, yeah, yeah. Bonnie Raitt's great. But it's 90s. It's 90s, because it was on a Julia Roberts movie. Mordy Oberstein: Pretty Woman, no? No. Crystal Carter: No. It wasn't Pretty Women. Mordy Oberstein: No. I don't know. Crystal Carter: It was one of her other rom-coms. I'm sure. I'm going to have to Google it now. Please, talk amongst yourselves. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Julia Roberts movies. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you cannot only subscribe to our SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also show your clients how much they really need you with inbuilt reporting found in Wix Studio. And in addition to all of the analytics available to you in Wix Analytics. As today, we continue our Wix Studio series as we talk how SEOs and marketers can show how indispensable they are to their clients. Why in today's environment, you need to show your value across the board, not just in one marketing discipline. Do you hear that SEO folks? Proving your value as an SEO or marketing agency versus a consultancy, is there a difference? And yes, we'll get into AI and how to deal with clients who feel they don't need you because they have an LLM that tells them to drink urine to prevent kidney stones. Ignite Visibility's, own VP of SEO, Jennifer Cornwell will be here in just a few minutes as she helps us show you why you're indispensable to your clients, why you are your client's very own air supply, and why they be so lost without you. Plus, we take a hard look at how the Google leaks are starting to broaden SEO. Again, you hear that SEO, folks? Plus we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So stick with us as we show you how to become like a band-Aid, too painful for your clients to pull off on this, the 98th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. By the way, not an actual strategy you should use. Bad strategy. Don't be too painful. I was just taking poetic license. Yes, I am a poet. You wouldn't know a first glance, but I am quite the poet. I'm a wordsmith. Crystal Carter: Okay. One of my favorite Mordy Oberstein things is when you drop a $5 word. Every now and then, Mordy's like, "Oh, I have the vocabulary just in case you're wondering." Mordy Oberstein: For my birthday one year... Again, I terrible with time. You put out tweets of things I've said I didn't realize I said. And one of them was, "If talk is cheap, I'm fine to talk a lot," or something like that. Crystal Carter: Something like that. This is true. This is true. This is true. They weren't hard to find them, you got a lot of tweets. You are prolific, as it were. By the way, just for people who were wondering or who were in suspense. This Something to Talk About song was from a Julia Roberts movie called Something to Talk About. Mordy Oberstein: We just completely... Just ignorance built upon ignorance, built upon ignorance. Crystal Carter: That's such an SEO thing to do though. Mordy Oberstein: Near me. Something to talk about near me. Crystal Carter: Right. What's the song? It's Something to Talk About. What's the movie? Something to Talk About. What are we going to talk about? Mordy Oberstein: Before we bring our guest on, I will tell you the truth, as opposed to when I lie to you. Which is such a weird idiom, by the way. Like, "Oh, tell you the truth." Because before I was lying. Crystal Carter: Yeah, what was going on before? I thought we were in a circle of trust. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Honestly, like before you weren't being? Anyway, but it's an idiom. Anywho. There are times where I, as a marketer and as someone who's self-deprecating, feel like, come on, what do I know about marketing and SEO? It's like, what I'm saying is so obvious. Do I actually provide any unique value? But I do then meet folks who maybe don't have a marketing background that are maybe just marketing enthusiasts who are talking to me about marketing, or maybe they're just new to market... They are marketers or SEOs, and they're just new to the industry and they're still learning. And I do then realize that I do have actual experience and a unique outlook on marketing, and a unique outlook on SEO that I've built up through the years. That no, I of course didn't have when I first started, or was even in SEO marketing altogether, but that I have built up over the many years that I have been in marketing. And that does actually provide something that's unique and invaluable to the people that I work with. I think. I hope. Right? And with that, please welcome to the show Ignite Visibility's VP of SEO, Jennifer Cornwell. How are you? Jen Cornwell: Hi. I'm good, thanks. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Mordy Oberstein: You're indispensable to this podcast now. Jen Cornwell: Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. That's a big title. Big title for a one-time guest. Mordy Oberstein: No, that means you can't leave. It's like Hotel California. Yeah, you're stuck. That's it. Crystal Carter: And I think it's really interesting you said seasoned. Because I think that one of the things that makes people indispensable is the special sauce that you bring as an SEO, really. I think that's something, Would you say that you and your team have cultivated a little bit of a special sauce that you bring to new clients or new projects? Jen Cornwell: Yeah. I think that the reason clients really like working with us a lot of the time is we are... A lot of businesses, I think they're going to say, "We're the startup mentality." But I do actually feel like we work that way, and we work that way with our clients because we worked that way for such a long time. We just hit our 11-year anniversary in this last year. I've been there for six, and the team has grown. I was like, 65 people when we got hired, and now we're 220 or something. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my goodness. Wow. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, grown a lot as a company. But I think even though we've done that, it's still coming to the table for our clients, for these relationships that we've built ultimately. We talk about the seasoning, that's important. But there's also this, your clients have gotten in this rhythm of talking to you all the time, and you are their marketing person now. And the reasons why, as an SEO, yes, you need to talk about SEO, but there's all this opportunity to talk about these other things they aren't thinking about. We try to keep our team really well-rounded and well-versed in a lot of what's going on. They're not paid media experts, but have enough of an understanding to be able to talk to it. And that kind of thing, it's part of it, the indispensableness. Mordy Oberstein: When we're deciding what should we discuss for the podcast, and we were saying how there's just so much more going on in marketing in general, there's just not one facet of marketing. And to be indispensable in today's environment means being a little bit more, I don't know, broad about what you cover and how you cover. Or what you're thinking about or what you're discussing with clients. How has that factored into what you feel makes y'all indispensable to your clients? Jen Cornwell: Part of it is making a better SEO, I think understanding all their marketing channels, because so much of what we do funnels down to us. Even not digital space, stuff we don't do as an agency. I've had a client where we saw an impression decrease for their brand and they're like, "Oh yeah, we stopped running our commercial." And so knowing that and being able to go into conversations with clients when they see something similar and be able to at least ask those questions, I think what's really important. But yeah, I think that's really where it comes from. It's baking it into the experience of the special sauce of situational things we've been in to open up those doors to ask the right questions at the right time. Crystal Carter: I think that's a great example. I've had clients where they've run print advertising or they've run television advertising. And if you're talking to them regularly, then you can bring that all together with the SEO, you can really unlock the real value of some of that. And if you are in an agency situation, all the better. Because you'll have people, you can be like, right, if you're running a television ad on, I don't know, ESPN or something. We can bring in our social team to target people who follow ESPN, we can link everything together. And even if it's on a project basis, even if it's just, you're doing this campaign on ESPN this week, and we'll bring in somebody to help with that, with the social shares or whatever this week or whatever, that sort of thing. But I think that having those conversations, keeping those conversations and really reading the data. Like you were saying, how we saw the impressions, what's going on? Really, really valuable. Jen Cornwell: The client piece that you mentioned is really important, because we talk about that a lot with our clients. I have prospects who come to me and they're like, "What makes a good client?" And I'm like, "When you talk to us." We want you to actually see this as a partnership where we want to help you. And yeah, sometimes they don't even tell you about new pages they add. Or, "Oh yeah, we did change the entire URL structure of the site segment." And you find out in your reporting that everything is way different than the last time you looked at it. But yeah, the clients who tell us about the little stuff, the small things going on, that's where we can actually come in and ask the right questions and be helpful. Mordy Oberstein: Do you notice a change with your clients? We're going to talk later in the podcast about how SEO might be broadening, and the Google leaks and how now there's a whole idea of branding factoring into SEO, and yada, yada, yada. But do you find, I don't know, over the years that the clients themselves have changed? Are they less focused just an SEO or just PPC? Are they starting to broaden a bit? Jen Cornwell: A little bit, I think. We still get a handful of clients who read one SEO blog. They come in and they say, "I do SEO." And they did SEO in 2012. And you're like, "Okay, so you kind of know what it is, but also it's been 10 years." That happens a lot still. But we do have clients who are, they understand that SEO... Their understanding of it is keyword stuffing. They're like, "Oh, yeah, well, I don't want my content to look all weird. I want my content to read weird." And so having to hurdle that. But even that's new, because that's like they understand that there's keywords that need to be implemented in a certain way. And they know it needs to happen for SEO, but they just want to figure out what the middle ground is for user experience. I think that we're having more of those conversations and less of, "How many keywords are on this page, and why aren't there more of them?" conversations. I guess a little bit. There's also some... It depends. It really just depends on the most common SEO answer of all. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, the graph. It depends. It depends in orange. Jen Cornwell: Yes. Yeah. No, it depends on the marketer that's coming in and what their background is. But it's gotten better. I think the understanding of SEO has gotten better. Crystal Carter: And I think a lot of people are starting to say that... And I don't know if you're seeing this trend, is that they're starting to see clients come to them less for implementation support and more for strategic support. Are you seeing that trend as well? Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Yeah. Especially more recently, I think it's a little bit of economic and bandwidth availability resources within their own team in the conversations that we're having. But definitely they're like, "Oh, okay, this is stuff a developer can do," and you can just pass it over to somebody who's in-house who has some SEO experience so we're not doing as much explaining as we have to do. But yeah, it's definitely more on the strategic side. And I think that's where they know enough to know that SEO is different than it was 10 years ago, where they know there needs to be more strategy involved and less "keyword stuffing", as an example. Mordy Oberstein: Or they could have the AI to implement all of it, right? Jen Cornwell: Right. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: It's a smooth transition into the other elephant in the room that I wanted to discuss, which is, how does AI affect you being indispensable? Both in reality, and I think more importantly... Because I think in reality not much has changed, but that's just me. But the perception of that reality with clients. Are they coming in, "Well, I could just LLM this thing."? Jen Cornwell: As soon as ChatGPT was announced and a thing, we had a client who said, "Okay, send me pricing for how to write more content for less money, with AI." And I was like, "Oh, my God." So we go through all that, and it turns out, actually, especially at the time when it was first rolling out, there was no cost savings. The hard costs of a writer were actually implemented in time and trying to get the LLM to get what we needed on the other side, that was not going to work out for that client. But yeah, we had a lot of those conversations. The way we've positioned it with our clients now is, we use AI in our processes for analysis, we use it for blind spots. It's like, as SEOs you get very situational sometimes with your own references. So having something that can double check some other things for you just in case you forget. Stuff that it's more appropriate use. But yeah, we still have clients. I had a client last wee, this week I was on the phone with. And they're like, "Yeah, we're going to hook Jasper up so we can put a bunch of content up on the site." And so I screen shared this screenshot of this client we had that just did AI content. You can see every single algorithm update where it just fell off September, January, then again in March, just stair steps down. I've used that a lot actually as reference point. Crystal Carter: That's one of the things that I think is so valuable about an agency relationship is that as somebody who's working in an agency, and as you said, you have eyes... You've grown from a team of 60 to team of over 100. Across your team you will be having conversations about different trends that you're seeing from clients, and things like that. When a client comes to you and they say, "I want to do this," it won't be your first time doing this. You can say to the wider team, "If you have any examples, have you seen anything?" And they'll go, "Yeah, actually, I do. Watch this drop." And I think that visibility is something that a lot of in-house teams really struggle with a little bit, because you might just have your blinders on and you might not see what's happening in different verticals. Mordy's done so much algorithm research and stuff, and sometimes the algorithms, if you think about the reviews algorithm, the product reviews update. That was initially working in a certain space. And now, I'm pontificating here, but I think that some of the stuff that we saw with that is kind of what we're seeing with the helpful content update rolled out wider. And I think that the knowledge that you get from working across different clients that have been affected by different algorithms, different approaches, different techniques can be super, super valuable. And it's something that you can't get if somebody's working on one client at a time, for instance. Mordy Oberstein: Is that something you feel differentiates you as an agency versus a consultancy? Where you have so much experience and so many different verticals and so many different areas of marketing. If you're going to get consultants it's like, all right, they have your SEO handled, but the second you have a PPC problem come up, or a content issue come up, or whatever it has come up, now you have to go find somebody else. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, we've never been vertical specific, we've always done the variety. We probably lean more toward lead gen, maybe a little bit B2B versus e-comm. But I think what happens, we have clients who come on and they're like, "Oh, do you have experience in our industry?" And that matters for writers and that kind of thing, getting the context of their business together. But I think there's a lot of things that are applicable across verticals. The way Google indexes content for a storage facility site is not any different than the skincare brand that we work on. And the things it's looking for are not intrinsically different, but it is two different audiences. And that's where I think you start to get into the indispensable marketing mindset of, I'm not just an SEO, I'm thinking about user journey, I'm thinking about conversion points. I'm thinking about the user journey for a storage site versus a skin care brand, that's two different things that can be important in your strategy. But yeah, the variety I think is really critical, really helps. Crystal Carter: And when I was working agency side, I really liked this. I was working with clients similarly, skincare, storage, people that different, some of the clients that I was working with. And I thought that was really interesting. Because particularly on the local side, for instance, there will be features that are available within local SEO, for instance, that are applicable to certain verticals that are not applicable to other verticals. And if you're working on product stuff, then there will be different things that you'll use for that, like Google Merchant Center and stuff. But what you find when you're working across all of them is you get more of a sense of how these things work. Because very often maybe they'll have lots of product schema on... Maybe they'll have one vertical that's got lots of schema, and so then you learn how to do schema. So then when they add schema to a different vertical, then you're completely ready for that because you've already done it on this other one. Whereas, everybody who's just been working on the other vertical and has never seen rich results for that particular vertical might be very surprised. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. No, I think SEO is so situational anyway, that having that diverse experience... Or being able to have it, I guess, within our team and not being necessarily... I joke that I want to retire to in-house, that's my retirement plan day. I'm going to leave agency life and I'm going to go to in-house and have a nice little in-house job. But not to disregard the in-house people, I'm sure that is hard in its own way. But I do think, yeah, when you're in-house you're dialed in on maybe one site or a few sites, or one specific vertical. And it's great, maybe it makes you a specialist there, but doesn't exactly open up the experience. And I think the time too, over five years, over six years. What I was doing five or six years ago is very different than now, and the experience over that time. Yeah, your in-house person who's been there for three years maybe hasn't stepped out of the SEO bubble or SEO world in a different way, just because they're only looking at certain things and trying to solve the one problem. This is what I hear about in-house, trying to solve the one problem that you've been trying to push across the line for two years, or whatever it is. And it's always adding site maps to the robots.txt file, and it's going to take seven months to implement. Yeah, I think it's easy to get lost in some of that and maybe lose sight of some of the other stuff that you would get to see agency side. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think that... Because you mentioned this a few times already, the marketing mindset and the marketing mindset. Do you think that maybe that's one of the reasons why maybe SEOs don't necessarily have that marketing mindset that seems to be indispensable to clients? Jen Cornwell: It's probably a little bit of experience, for sure. I think it's really, I refer to it a lot as our SEO vacuum. I go and I can propose all kinds of things to clients like, "Oh yeah, I work on these keywords and these pages," but it doesn't really matter if their audience doesn't care about it or if they don't care about it as a business either. And ultimately, being able to prioritize your recommendations, I think that comes from marketing mindset as well. I'm not just passing over an audit checklist of "here's all the stuff that's wrong and here's some recommendations to fix it". But I'm not necessarily going to tell you what's going to impact your business the most or what you should prioritize first based on your resources. And so I think navigating... That's one example, but being able to navigate their entire marketing plan in the same way. My favorite example, I had a pediatric dentist client, he's got five or six locations in San Diego. And I've worked at a lot of dentists, they love marketing. Mordy Oberstein: They got to figure out how to get you in that chair and pull out your teeth. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, yeah. No, he loved it. And I used to go into the meetings and I would suggest things that I knew I was never going to touch. I would build the landing page. I'll write some content, we'll make the landing page, but there's 5 million other steps to this idea. And those conversations were always really fun for me because I got to talk about stuff other than keywords. But also made us really valuable to him because he's like, "Oh, here's another brain, basically, that can be in this room with me and has the marketing perspective to be able to talk about what we could potentially do." Yeah, I think navigating those situations, the small conversation that turns into a big idea just because you came in with a little bit of extra experience goes a long way. Crystal Carter: That's great. It sounds like a great partnership. The kind of partnership you were talking about before, where everything is back and forth. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Was like the name of the dentist, like, Bright Smiles? Jen Cornwell: No. Actually, they have a really strong brand. They were one of the biggest pediatric dentists in San Diego. And one of my favorite idea that I suggested them that they did was try to set a world record at a baseball game. They were trying to get as many people to floss at once, or something. Crystal Carter: Were they into that? Jen Cornwell: Oh, my God, yeah. They thought that was awesome. Crystal Carter: I love it. Jen Cornwell: ... ever. Well, and it was something that John Lincoln, our CEO, suggested for a night. He's like, "Maybe we could try to get in the world record book." And so I came into this meeting and I was like, "What if they …?” Mordy Oberstein: Could you imagine? They did it? Jen Cornwell: They did it, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: At a baseball game? Jen Cornwell: I don't think they set the record, but they did do it at Padres. At Petco Stadium. Mordy Oberstein: They were all flossing. That sounds, first off, brilliant, but also disgusting. Jen Cornwell: I know. But it was like, they do kids games, so it was like the kids were there and it was like a whole thing. Mordy Oberstein: That just makes it grosser. The kids, I don't know. Oh, my gosh. I'm not a germophobe, but I'm freaking out on the other side of the screen. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. No, it was questionable. But people participated and they did it and got some exposure. Mordy Oberstein: That's awesome. Jen Cornwell: I wrote the blog. That's a... Mordy Oberstein: That is a great idea, by the way. That would make me feel like you're indispensable. Crystal Carter: Right. Unique, showing up with unique ideas. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Totally. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. I'm going to go Google this now. Got to find people flossing at Petco Park. Jen Cornwell: I give enough details. I give enough details. I think those are more fun conversations to have anyway, honestly. So it's a little bit of my own personal amusement of... And we don't get those opportunities with a lot of our clients. And clients really just look at us as, "You are the SEO partner, so your suggestions about CRO for this form, we don't actually care that much. Just get us the keywords and get us the content." And that works in some relationships. But really strong partnerships you get to have those fun conversations. Crystal Carter: And I think that's also important to being a good partner for your clients is understanding who's like, "I just want this one thing." And you're like, "Cool, here you go." And the people who are like, "Yeah, let's get in. Let's brainstorm." There's going to be some people who really want to be all about it. And I used to have some clients who were just like, "Did you do the internet?" And I'd be like, "Yeah, I did it." They'd be like, "Great." And they don't want anything to do... They don't want to be involved. You're just working with... They're happy, they trust you to handle whatever you need to do. Jen Cornwell: Sometimes that's indispensable too. You're right- Crystal Carter: Exactly. Jen Cornwell: ... it's relative. Mordy Oberstein: Well, I feel like I have to go floss my teeth now. So, if people want to brainstorm with you or brainstorm with Ignite, how could they find you and your company? Jen Cornwell: I'm on LinkedIn. Ignite is also on LinkedIn. And then, I'm also on Twitter. I think it's JenCornwell_. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, don't worry, I'll find it. I'll link to it in the profile. In the profile, in the show notes. Jen Cornwell: Sweet. But yeah, those are two good places. I'm sometimes on Twitter. Mordy Oberstein: Twitter these days is not indispensable. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. And LinkedIn, I don't know, it's a weird mix over there sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: There's nothing great. I'll be honest with you, we can go on a whole different tangent about there's nothing great on social media anymore. I don't TikTok, but Crystal TikToks now. Crystal Carter: Yeah, sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Yeah. You were at Moscon. I did tons of Moscon TikToks. Jen Cornwell: Oh, did you? I've not done any work TikToks. Crystal Carter: You could call it working. No, I'm kidding. Jen Cornwell: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe another podcast. I did make a TikTok where I built a house out of Taco Bell. And got a lot of views and Taco Bell saw it and sent me a whole box full of swag. Crystal Carter: Yo, these are the kind of ideas we need, Jen. Jen Cornwell: My claim to fame. Mordy Oberstein: Floss and the taco. This is- Crystal Carter: Tacos. You need to find a taco client. Jen Cornwell: Oh yeah, I know. Mordy Oberstein: Like Taco Bell. Jen Cornwell: Taco Bell, maybe. Yeah. Del Taco will take. I had El Pollo Loco. Crystal Carter: I used to go to Alberto's in San Diego. Jen Cornwell: Oh yeah, yeah. Crystal Carter: It has taquitos. Jen Cornwell: Rigoberto's, hit all the Berto's. Crystal Carter: Oh, there's the Filiberto's is also very good. They have a gigantic burrito that's amazing. But also I'm thinking, let's brainstorm right now taquitos, they're very much like Lincoln Logs. Jen Cornwell: Oh, Lincoln Logs. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Crystal Carter: Could build a whole to taquito fort. Jen Cornwell: Taquito. And you got to come up with a fun name. Mine was from Taco Bell Townhouse was because I saw a charcuterie chalet. This was during COVID, people were making little houses out of charcuterie. So yeah, did one out of french fries. Crystal Carter: Why didn't we make the podcast about- Jen Cornwell: We could have started with that. Crystal Carter: About literal food pyramids. Just saying. Mordy Oberstein: You make Lincoln Log, you can make out of asparagus. Crystal Carter: This is true. Jen Cornwell: We had somebody do hot dogs. Mordy Oberstein: Hot dogs. Jen Cornwell: This was all over a work competition. Mordy Oberstein: Work shopping this year. Jen Cornwell: Yeah, the gingerbread house kits. So it was just make anything out of food. And so, yeah, people showed up with some interesting pickles. Crystal Carter: I feel like the easiest thing is going to be carrot sticks because they're already made into things, whatever. Mordy Oberstein: Right. Yeah, that's cheap. Crystal Carter: Tater Tots though, I feel like you could brick those. Pickles are good. They're kind of juicy. Tater Tots, you could use hummus or something sticky as the mortar to keep it put together. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It could be like a stone cottage thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Or like a slightly melted cheese, which will then congeal and then go... You see what I'm saying? Do you see? Mordy Oberstein: I think we've gone completely off the rails. Jen Cornwell: Best bet. Mordy Oberstein: ... so much for coming on the show, and we'll see you out there on TikTok building asparagus, Tater Tot houses. Jen Cornwell: Thank you. Bye. Mordy Oberstein: Anywho, you may have heard this whole thing a little while back that there was a Google leak. Google's algorithm leaked. There was a nut that needed to be tightened, and it was dripping water. There was a Google leak, which everyone I'm assuming heard something about that. And one of the offshoots of that is a lot of SEOs are now talking about, "Oh, we need to be thinking about wider digital presence and brand marketing because of things in the leaks." Such as, oh, Google might be, emphasis on might be, looking at user behavior metrics or Chrome data. Or might be looking at mentions across the web, yada, yada, yada. Again, Amazon might be, we don't know how they're actually doing it, even with the leaks. So SEO is talking about a lot of these wider marketing topics all of a sudden. Which brings up the question that we alluded to earlier, is SEO starting to broaden? Join us now as we explore this fascinating and intriguing question with a deep thought with Crystal and Mordy. I guess another way to phrase this question, is SEO starting to die? Is that too spicy? Crystal Carter: I think SEO is trying to use different tools, and also to utilize the tools that we have in different ways. I recently shared a post on LinkedIn, because I recently rewrote, remixed an article on long tail keywords. And historically speaking, the ways that SEOs have talked about long tail keywords is that we have long tail keywords and they've got good search volume accumulatively, and they allow you to connect with different parts of search, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff. All the things that great SEOs do, right? This is perfectly good SEO practice. But, and this is what I think SEOs need to do. We need to look at what we've got, the resources that we've got in a different way. The long tail keywords are not just about the search volume, the long tail keywords, an example that I use, was vegan pizza and pizza delivery in Brooklyn after midnight. This article's on the Wix SEO learning hub. And the thing that long tail keyword gives you is a full campaign. That gives you a full marketing campaign. Vegan tells you that you should be talking to vegan influencers or vegan magazines or vegan YouTube channels, or whatever. Pizza delivery tells you people want pizza, people want it delivered. They tell you that you need to have a Google business profile. They tell you that you need to have the location, your name, address, phone number on your website, et cetera, et cetera. And the after midnight tells you that it's late night. So if you have ads, you only want to show them late at night. You're not going to show people who are looking for pizza delivery at two o'clock in the afternoon those ads, you want to show them at 12 o'clock at night so that they can see those ads and get that pizza straight away. You also might want to take out... You know the quiet storm that goes on the radio at midnight or something, or the late night show on the radio. If you sell pizza after midnight and there's a late night radio show in your area. Guess what, the ad spot for that's probably not going to be that expensive because most people are not looking to buy stuff in middle of the night. However, if somebody's listening to the radio at 12:30 and you're like, "Hey, you want a tasty slice," they might call you. Mordy Oberstein: ... how you phrase that on a late night radio show. Crystal Carter: I mean- Mordy Oberstein: Remembering my youth of what's on the radio at 12 o'clock at night. Crystal Carter: It's a good thing. After midnight in Brooklyn, obviously geolocates you. You might want to sponsor the local basketball team, the local fantasy football team, whatever it may be. But that long tail keyword is data, it's search data. There's somebody who recently shared, they're looking at how search is growing, and the way that they're talking about SEO is slightly different. He was talking about how we can drive search demand. He was talking about how search demand gives you an insight into consumer demand. And that's different from going like, oh, these keywords, oh, blah, blah, blah. We just need to use the tools we have in a new way. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think anything's actually changed, everything that you're saying are things we should have been doing anyway. I think the only thing that's actually changed... And it will change the industry, by the way, because perception is everything. Is that SEOs are now starting to think about this because they're realizing that the wider, I'll call it holistic or whatever kind of marketing, brand marketing. Could, should, probably does, definitely does in some way, shape, or form, impact performance marketing. And they're like, "Oh, snap. Now we have to think about this." But you should be thinking about this the whole time. Growing your digital presence, I like to call it grow your digital light, has a tremendous impact on your SEO efforts and what you're able to do and not able to do. Whether it's SEO super directly, like we're saying now with the leaks are indirectly. So nothing is actually true, but the mindset has changed. And I think that... I can't find it, I was searching for this. And I post too much on social media, this is my problem. And I was in a Slack group and I put it on a LinkedIn. I have no clue. Look, I can't find it. It's one of the things you're going hear more about, or a segment of SEO, is brand SEO. I don't mean getting your branded keywords, I mean looking at brand as a way to summon your SEO effort. And then, lo and behold, a month later the leaks come out and now all of a sudden we're talking... But none of this is new. None of it's new. Crystal Carter: Yeah. One of the reasons why you didn't find that tweet, Mordy, is because you've been saying that for years. Because, Mordy, if you were trying to find that tweet, that's like trying to find- Mordy Oberstein: A lot of people have. The Kevin Indigs of the world come to mind, Lily Ray comes to mind. Crystal Carter: Have you ever found something out, or learned a new word or something like that, and then all of a sudden you see it everywhere? And it's always been there, but you didn't know necessarily what that word was, or didn't necessarily know what that idea was, or something like that. And you find that it's like, "Oh, this has unlocked a whole new perspective for me." And I think that's kind of what some people are coming to. But yeah, it has always been there. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it's like Taylor Swift for me. She started dating Travis Kelce, Taylor who? Oh, there's this whole Swift-y thing. I had no clue. But now that I’ve heard of football, now I know. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: My world has changed. Crystal Carter: And if you learn a new tool, it can really open things up. Or also, I think when we think about the skills that we had and the resources that we had, sometimes it's a case of taking stuff that you already know and looking at it differently. There's some people like avocados. Let's talk about avocados. Mordy Oberstein: Love avocados. Crystal Carter: You like avocados. Avocados are delicious. I love avocados. You can literally just... I could literally eat it with a spoon. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. Crystal Carter: Perfectly happy. Mordy Oberstein: Don't even use a spoon, just take your fingers. Crystal Carter: Just- Mordy Oberstein: Just dive in. Crystal Carter: Just get involved. You don't have to do anything to an avocado. Vegans looked at that and they were like, "I'm going to make that chocolate mousse." And people were like, "What?" And vegans were like, "I'm going to make a chocolate mousse." It's the same avocado everybody's been looking at, but they were like, "I'm going to make a chocolate mousse." Completely different vibe. Yeah, it's a completely different vibe. It's a completely different thing. It's the same avocado that you always liked, completely different vibe. Mordy Oberstein: I think the only problem or issue I take is that it's possibly happening in SEO for the wrong reasons. We're like, we're taking the avocado, we're making it into chocolate mousse because I want to shake chocolate mousse and I want to throw it at people on the street. That's fun for me. Crystal Carter: I did a webinar the other day and the audience was super engaged, but I was talking about internal linking. And I was like, "You should have internal links. Make sure you use line links. Line links, they're high priority in the crawl, and they're really useful and they're really helpful, and they add context and they have words before them and words after them," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And somebody was like, "Oh, but if I do use the links, will Google penalize me? And what about this one?" And I was like, "Yo, put the links on your page because they're helpful. They're helpful, they're useful." I cannot stand it if I'm reading an article that's like, "Oh my God, avocado mousse is so delicious. It's the best thing I've ever tried. And gosh, I tried this brand of avocado mousse and it just really blew my mind." And I'm like, "Link me, bro." I'm like, "Where's the link?" And there's no link, I'm mad. I'm big mad. I'm mad, I want to go somewhere else. So link me. Link me to the recipe, link me to the picture, link me to... Pixlr didn't happen. I want to see the stuff. Why? Because it's helpful. That's helpful. It's helpful to Google, it's helpful to users. So the things that we need to do in terms of brand should be helpful. You want to pull your brand forward, you want to use your data wisely. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, momentum and cadence and presence, all that good stuff. Oh, no, more it's going to happen is what happens now on LinkedIn. I connect with somebody, "Hi, how are you?" Oh, here it comes. "Would you like to buy links?" But in a year from now it's going to be, would you like to buy mentions? Because what guest? He was like, "Oh, the leaks talk about mentions, and now we need to be concerned about mentions. I have a good idea, I'll sell mentions." Who needs to get the lie to sell mentions? And you should be worrying about mentions. You don't mentions do? I'm reading an article, they say, "You know what's a really great thing? Avocados. Avocados from whatever company, from Bob's Avocados," and there's no link. But you know what I might do if I want an avocado? I might type in Bob's Avocado into Google. And do you think for a second Google's not looking at the fact that lots of people looking for avocados and Bob at the same time? Did a link do that? No, a mentioned did that. Did a mention do that only after the leaks happened? No, a mention did that many, many years before the leaks came out. But now SEOs are going to try selling mentions. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think that really, generally speaking, and I've heard this from good SEOs. People say, "How do you weather the algorithm updates and things like that?" Nine times out of 10, it's just keeping your nose clean. But nine times out of 10, it's like keeping your nose clean doing solid SEO, doing stuff that helps your users, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that it seems really... Okay, so I learned to snowboard, right? Mordy Oberstein: Wait, you know how to snowboard? Crystal Carter: Yeah. I'm a mediocre snowboarder, but I've been on a few mountains in my time. And I don't fall over. Last time I was in Switzerland, I didn't fall over. I did all right. And I was riding Switch. So people who know that, your girl has to moves. Anyway, when I was learning to snowboard, my instructor told me, he was like, "You just look where you want to go." And I was like, "No, because it's got to be this and you have to do that, and you have to go over here, and got to..." And I was doing the most, I was doing too much. But literally, I will tell you, if you want to snowboard, and I tell this to people now. Literally, look where you want to go. It's literally that simple. It's that simple. You're on the board, your feet are planted, you turn your head and your body will go where it needs to go. And that's all it is. So we like, oh, what if I do this, and what if I do that? And da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And don't get me wrong, there are absolutely technical things you need to consider. You need to make sure your website's crawlable. You need to have lots of things that are in there. You need to coordinate your digital PR, et cetera, so that it makes sense for your brand. You need to have a coherent strategy. But essentially, if your goal is to add value for your users, for your audience, then you will be fine. And if your goal is to add value consistently for them, then that will support your brand, as long as you know what your brand is. That's not rocket science. We try to make it so it's super complicated, but it's not. It's not. Mordy Oberstein: It's just tuning out that noise, that's the hard part. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: You know who tunes out a lot of noise, keeps his nose clean, and always provides value? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: It's Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: That's the cleanest nose I've ever seen. Really, it's sparkling. Crystal Carter: I mean, sometimes. Mordy Oberstein: Which means, as we pay homage to Barry, that it's time for this week's snappy news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. Got a whole bunch of stuff for you, it's all a AI related. Or actually, AI adjacent. Let's start with Search Engine Roundtables, Barry Schwartz. Well, I don't know why I said Search Engine Roundtables, Barry Schwartz. There only is Barry Schwartz as Search Engine Roundtable, which is an existential feeling. There only is Barry Schwartz. Anyway, Reddit blocked Bing search and others, but not Google. So, Reddit has blocked basically all other search engine, I'm pretty sure, from crawling them via the robot.txt file. I don't know if that applies to Perplexity actually. I thought somewhere I saw Perplexity was fine. Anyway, I'm definitely Bing. Bing is definitely out. Reddit is no longer allowing other search engines to crawl them. That's interesting, right? I never know. What do you say about that? It's an interesting look. What's basically happening is that Reddit is basically saying, "Hey, if you want our content, be like Google and pay for it." I personally don't like Reddit, so I don't know why anybody would pay for it. But, okay. It's really interesting. It's a new paradigm on the web, I guess. I don't know if this deal will work out well for Reddit. I'm highly suspect that making this kind of deal is in their long-term benefit. It's weird, by the way. I'll just say it's weird because, yeah, Bing's not the biggest search engine, it's only got whatever percent of market share. Let's say it's got 5% of market share. I don't remember the exact numbers, nor do I particularly care. 5% of that market share is saying, yeah, I have 5% market share of the entire world. That's a lot of people. I guess Reddit doesn't care about your grandmother going to Reddit anymore. I guess the lesson to take from that. That's a little snarky for this podcast. Anyway, just weird. Let's head over to Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land, where Google will soon test search shopping ads in AI overviews. So Google has talked about having an ad experience in the AI overviews for a while. Now they're saying you're going to see the tests coming up soon. The quote was, "And as you've probably noticed at GML, Google Marketing Live, we announced that soon we'll actually start testing search and shopping ads in AI overviews for users in the US," yada, yada, yada. So they're going to be testing them soon. Interesting. Let's see how that goes. Obviously, the ability to earn ad revenue is what will indicate if the AI overviews are going to work or not from a business point of view. All this is just interesting to me. Anyway. Now back to Search Engine Roundtable, Google Gemini adds related content and verification links. So the LLM formerly known as Bard, now known as Gemini, now contains links again. This is a weird week. I'm finding the news weird this week. Bard, now known as Gemini, used to show links to the content that the summary was based on. Much the way an AI overview does. But then stopped doing that. Well, now links are back inside of Gemini. Which is interesting, because now covering again from Search Engine Roundtable, SearchGPT, OpenAI search tool is out. It's announced. Like ChatGPT, you can now use SearchGPT to get answers to your questions. But here, with SearchGPT, you'll get citations that the content is based on. So it's basically Gemini. So it's basically the same thing. It's now you can search using OpenAI's platform much the way you would use Gemini. Again, get the summary and now get citations and links to content and so forth within the ecosystem. Will this disrupt the search engine market? Probably not. Because it's basically the same thing as Gemini, and kind of the same thing as the AI overview. So carry on as usual, I guess. I don't know. It's a weird week. It's a weird week. By the way, that article is brought to you by Barry Schwartz. Because, again, who else is writing at SE Roundtable? Actually, not true. Not true. I take that back. Sometimes Glenn Gabe actually writes an article over at SE Roundtable. You can always tell by the headline. Anyway, that's this week's weird and snappy news. It is hard to keep the noise out with the news sometimes. There's a lot of noise in the news. Crystal Carter: I'll be completely honest, I used to get a lot of my news from Twitter, and that is not a use a useful- Mordy Oberstein: Not a good place. Crystal Carter: ... source to get news from anymore. Barry's a great source. And I think a lot of times... There's certain people that I follow to keep on top of things like that as well. Lily Ray's a great person to follow for that, she's really on top of the news, and particularly for stuff. Mordy Oberstein: Glenn. Crystal Carter: Glenn is great as well, and Mike is great as well. Mike King is also a good one who jumps in. And Mike covers a lot of topics as well. So a lot of search, but also a few other topics as well, which is cool. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. That's why I like, by the way, I mentioned Glenn Gabe before, because he covers all tech news. I saw yesterday he posted about... This is insane. By the time this comes out, this will be old news. It's basically a social media thing where you can create an AI persona and then have all the AIs talking to each other. Crystal Carter: I heard the story about a comedian. Opinions on him aside, it was an interesting story. Dave Chappelle apparently had a Twitter account that was not his Twitter account, but this person was posting stuff. Kat Williams, and again, another controversial comedian or whatever. But he also had- Mordy Oberstein: All comedians are kind of controversial, it's what they do. Crystal Carter: He also had a... These two Twitter accounts were arguing with each other. The two of them actually met, these two comedians actually met, and they were like, "I'm sorry." Or, no. And Dave Chappelle apparently said to this other comedian, "I'm so sorry, that's not actually me that's been arguing with you." And Kat Williams was like, "I don't have a Twitter account either." And basically- Mordy Oberstein: Well, that was my comment back to Glenn when he posted about this. I'm like, yeah, AI, but people aren't so great either. So, there you go. You know who is a great person with the perfect pivot possible? Our follow of the week, Sam Rush's own head of influencer marketing, Nicole Ponce. Nicole is amazing. I work with Nicole. I still work with Nicole. Absolutely one of the greatest people you'll ever meet. Super incredible, super smart, super nice, helpful, everything. Give her a follow across all social media platforms. Crystal Carter: Yeah, absolutely do. Not only is she super awesome, super smart, she also has all of the latest info and all the cool stuff that Sam Rush gets up to. They've got some cool events going on, they've got some interesting projects going on, and she's very much a part of that. She's really supportive of the SEO community as well. She supported stuff that Aletis put on. They've also supported things, different events. And they supported Search 'n Stuff, which is another great event as well. And I've worked with Nicole as well, and cannot speak highly enough of her. Big hearts to Nicole. Mordy Oberstein: We're all making heart signs. Crystal Carter: We're making those little hearts. Mordy Oberstein: ... the two of us here. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's just us. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What an interesting selection of people today. We talked about Barry, Cole… Crystal Carter: ... all the other folks we were just mentioning as well. Mordy Oberstein: We've talked a lot of people on today's show, mentions of people. Mentions, you know what? No one even asked to buy them. We should sell them. We should sell mentions on the podcast. I found a new niche for us. Crystal Carter: Okay. Okay, cool. Can we start a fun agency? Just, Mention. Mordy Oberstein: Mentions. Crystal Carter: Got to have a good name. Mordy Oberstein: With dollar signs. The brand, you be like dollar signs everywhere. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Mordy Oberstein: Good idea. This is the thing, by the way, that we're joking. Obviously. And before we continue and go down this rabbit hole forever, because I will, because I'm salty about this topic. Thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry, we're back next week with a new episode as we dive into the wonderful world of podcasting, on a podcast with podcasters who do marketing and marketing podcasts. So many fourth walls. So many fourth walls. Look for it 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 of the great content and webinars and whatnot over on the Wix SEO learning at, you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Please don't forget to give us a review on iTunes, or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO. Related episodes Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO

What is 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