Einat Hoobian-Seybold is the Head of Product SEO and Accessibility at Wix. She began her career in SEO, developing organic growth strategies for leading global brands, before discovering her passion for product development. Einat Hoobian-Seybold Head of Product SEO & Accessibility at Wix Einat Hoobian-Seybold is the Head of Product SEO and Accessibility at Wix. She began her career in SEO, developing organic growth strategies for leading global brands, before discovering her passion for product development. Today, Einat leads Wix’s SEO and accessibility product vision, creating impactful tools that make SEO and accessibility approachable and effective for more than 200 million users worldwide. Articles & Resources 2 Jun 2026 Your guide to SEO on Wix Harmony 26 Jan 2026 How to connect your Wix & Wix Studio websites to Bing 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

Blog-turned-business ranks for thousands of keywords “Thanks to Wix’s intuitive SEO tools, I’ve been able to focus my time on writing quality content that helps me drive organic traffic.” 30K Organic monthly traffic 7,863 Keywords ranked 64 Featured snippets Adriane Campos has dedicated her life’s work to researching sugar alternatives, all with the goal of empowering people to make informed decisions and ultimately lead healthier lives. After years of intensive knowledge gathering, she was finally ready to share her findings with the world. Only one question remained: How would the world find her website? The business A guide to the plethora of sweeteners sold across the United States, WhatSugar.com is a goldmine of information for anyone looking to consume less sugar in their diet. Pioneered by Adriane Campos, who describes herself as a chemical engineer, food technologist, mom and wife, the blog’s unique value is that it translates “science-speak" into digestible tips that can help home cooks make sense of the sweetener aisle. Adriane added to her chemical engineering expertise by earning a graduate degree in food technology in Curitiba, Brazil, before moving to Los Angeles to conduct research at Caltech under the mentoring of a Nobel Prize winner. However, it was when she took a hiatus to raise her family that the idea for WhatSugar.com was born. “I was often asked what I did in my previous life before becoming a mom to two kids,” she recalls. “Without fail, whenever I would tell people that I did years of research on sweeteners, I always got the very same question: “What’s the best sweetener?” And so, I launched the WhatSugar website to finally answer it.” To get those answers, Adriane went down what she calls “the sweetener rabbit hole”: “I gathered information from different sweetener websites. I deconstructed the front and back of sweetener packages—ingredients, nutrition facts, label claims. And I personally contacted countless manufacturers and sellers to find all the details about their products,” she lists. This meticulous research formed the basis for her blog-turned-business. She now offers three main digital products: a free resource which is the Sugar Alternative Shopping Guide, the entry-point product Sugar Swap Starter Kit, and her core offering which is Sugar Alternative School. She has also recently pivoted into selling physical sweeteners directly to customers. The SEO challenge While Adriane was clearly an authority on sweeteners, she was new to the world of SEO. What would the point of all her years of research be if her findings never reached the very people who were searching for it? There was no two ways about it: SEO had to become a key focus for her business. The solution Wix proved to be the perfect platform for an expert blogger like Adriane. With built-in tools to help her take care of SEO, the food technologist and author is free to focus on what she does best: creating quality content that resonates with her target audience. This has played an essential role in allowing her to build up authority for search engines, and in turn, this helps her site reel in impressive amounts of organic traffic. Adriane also followed the Wix SEO Setup Checklist, customizing her site’s meta tags, URL structure, canonical tags, structured data markup, and more. “ I never hired anyone to do the SEO part of my website, I just followed Wix guidelines: I named images with ranking keywords, filled out all the SEO Basics and entered the keywords in the Advanced SEO section,” she describes. Wix’s SEO tools work out-of-the-box, giving Adriane the ability to spend less time on SEO and more time on content optimization. “With the feedback from my WhatSugar readers, I’m constantly discovering things I don’t know,” she enthuses. “And that has been a huge help for me in refining my content and making my products crystal clear for newbies. I’ve now launched my core offer twice and I’m currently working on making it evergreen.” The results Adriane officially launched WhatSugar.com in 2019. Within weeks, impressions and site visits were soaring. With time, she was ranking for thousands of keywords and had dozens of featured snippets. As of Q1 2023, WhatSugar.com : Experienced a 400% increase in users Gained 5.49M impressions in the previous 90 days Ranked for 7.8K keywords Earned 64 featured snippets One particular win for Adriane is ranking for the keyword “erythritol” (a natural sugar substitute), which Semrush classifies as a difficult keyword to rank for. WhatSugar drives around 7K visitors every month from this one keyword. “I didn’t know much about SEO but Wix turned out to be exactly the launchpad I needed to help get my content seen.” Want to spend less time on SEO and more time crafting quality content? Check out Wix’s intuitive SEO tools and explore our SEO Learning Hub for more 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

Ready to unlock the secrets to negotiating your salary and getting paid what you deserve? Join Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter as they chat with Carolyn Lydon about how to navigate the salary negotiation maze in the SEO and digital marketing space. They dig into the art of asking for raises, identifying your market worth, and ensuring you’re not left counting pennies. Plus, Nick LeRoy drops by to share his wisdom on pitching your projects to clients with the finesse of a seasoned pro. Don't miss out as we help you secure that spondulix on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Hey SEOs, here's how to grab your bag (of $) Ready to unlock the secrets to negotiating your salary and getting paid what you deserve? Join Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter as they chat with Carolyn Lydon about how to navigate the salary negotiation maze in the SEO and digital marketing space. They dig into the art of asking for raises, identifying your market worth, and ensuring you’re not left counting pennies. Plus, Nick LeRoy drops by to share his wisdom on pitching your projects to clients with the finesse of a seasoned pro. Don't miss out as we help you secure that spondulix on this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 119 | January 29, 2025 | 53 MIN 00:00 / 53:14 This week’s guests Carolyn Lyden With a strategic mind and a passion for driving impactful digital growth, Carolyn Lyden brings over a decade of experience in SEO and content strategy. Carolyn’s expertise extends beyond SEO tactics; she is deeply committed to fostering pay equity and salary negotiation education, frequently speaking at industry events, webinars, and podcasts. Her insights have empowered many to advocate for fair compensation, contributing to her reputation as a thought leader in the digital marketing space. Nick LeRoy Nick LeRoy is a freelance SEO consultant, podcaster, and newsletter author in St. Paul, Minnesota. He specializes in SEO strategy, technical SEO, editorial strategy, and website migrations through his company Nick LeRoy Consulting Nick is the author of the #SEOForLunch newsletter and owner of the boutique job board SEOjobs.com Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP'S Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP'S Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is always on the money, our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everybody. I hope that you are securing all of the bags and collecting all of this spondoolie and all of the dough. Mordy Oberstein: What's that sound? I hear like a jangling in your pockets or something as you're... Oh, that's your money. That's your coin. That's your money. I like because the audience has no idea why we're doing this yet. They're like, all right, you guys are talking about money. Crystal Carter: Money. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of money, give us your money. The SERP'S Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also supplement your income by selling your custom apps and widgets inside of the Wix Studio app market. This, as we talk, how to negotiate your salary if you're in the SEO or digital marketing space that you can get top dollar. How to go about ensuring you get what you deserve. Never too late? Can you renegotiate? The end, the idiosyncrasies of salary negotiation in the SEO space. To help us make a withdrawal from the proverbial ATM, Carolyn Lyden will join us in just a bit. It's a two-for this week, by the way, as Nick Leroy hops on to talk about how you can pitch your projects to get the client to sign on the data line and into your bank account. Just in case you're not a salaried employee, or if you're in-house, by the way, we'll talk how to pitch your projects so you might get that raise. And of course, we have the snappies of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So bosses and managers beware. Episode 117 of the SERP'S Up podcast is here to help your employees line their pockets with a little bit of extra dough. Crystal Carter: I was going to say, I think spondoolie is my favorite euphemism for money. I just like spondoolie, just- Mordy Oberstein: That's underused. Crystal Carter: Skrilla. Skrilla is also very good. I like that one as well. Mordy Oberstein: Also underused. Wow. Crystal Carter: Right? Paper. Benjamins, benjies. Hundies, I like this as well. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so usually we do a little intro like why this topic's important and blah, blah, blah. I feel like we don't need any introductions why this topic's important. It's important so you can pay your bills, which is why Carolyn Lyden is here to help talk about making more money. Hey Carolyn, how are you? Carolyn Lyden: Hi. I'm doing well. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: I'm good. I need some tips. I hope my boss is listening. Carolyn Lyden: Me too. I hope everyone's boss is listening because it's not just the job of the person negotiating, I think. It's also the job of managers to be good managers and advocate for their employees. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: What utopia you living in? Carolyn Lyden: One that I am creating for us all. Mordy Oberstein: Here, employee, take more of my money. Carolyn Lyden: Well, happy employees stay. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Carolyn Lyden: And perform better. Crystal Carter: Well paid employees stay. Carolyn Lyden: Yes. Crystal Carter: That's something that I think is crazy because you have these situations where people are like, "Oh, I'd like a raise. I'd like a raise. I'd like a raise." And then they get headhunted or they get offered a new job and then suddenly the person's like, "Oh no, we can counteroffer." And you're like, "Where was the money last year when I asked you? How are you suddenly out of pocket now? What's that about?" Carolyn Lyden: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's bad vibes too. Carolyn Lyden: It is bad vibes to be like, "Cool. Was I not valuable before someone else wanted me?" Mordy Oberstein: I had that, by the way. I asked at a previous job whom I shall not mention, I asked for a raise and they said no. This is a long time ago. So if people are trying to look at my- Carolyn Lyden: I was going to say, people know where you've worked, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah yeah, you got to go back. And I'm like okay, I'm, I'm going to leave. I'm going to leave. And I found another job and they said they're going to pay me this. And then they finally gave me the money, which sucked. It was a lot of work. Carolyn Lyden: Magically popped up out of nowhere. Where did it come from? Who knows? Mordy Oberstein: There was a leprechaun and there was a rainbow and a pot of gold, and- Carolyn Lyden: Someone came across it and they were like, yay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Carolyn Lyden: I was going to say, this is designated to Mordy, this rainbow pot of gold. Crystal Carter: But this is a topic that you've covered as well for a little while, and you've been fairly outspoken on this. Why did you start talking about this? Why were you like this needs to be said? What made you want to have those conversations? Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, so actually a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I worked at a company called CallRail, and I started essentially their ERG group for women. So I started this women's circle where women could get together to just talk about all the different things that we wanted to talk about from like when people are like, "Oh, how do you do it all? How do you have a job and have kids?" And it's like, "I don't do it all. We're suffering here. Help." But one of the topics when I surveyed the people who joined the group that they really wanted to talk about was salary negotiations. So I just said okay, I'm going to dig in and do all the research and present what I find based on this. And so that's what I did for our first women's circle session when I was at CallRail, and a lot of people were really into it. They were like, "Oh, wow, I didn't know, not only all these statistics, but the fact that if I don't negotiate, I'm sort of starting my entire career behind and losing millions of dollars over my lifetime potentially by not asking for what I'm worth. And also doing the work on the back end, the research to make sure that I am asking correctly or what my market worth is." So hearing that feedback and then taking it to a wider group of women and men and people in the SEO industry, I was like okay, this is something that we're all unspoken about it. We're all just secretly not talking to each other, not our colleagues, not our managers. We're just pretending we know how the system works. I didn't know how the system works, so I was like all right, we need to be talking about this a lot more and putting the information out there for everyone. Crystal Carter: Do you think that people are embarrassed to talk about salaries and money? Do you think that that's why we don't talk about it? Carolyn Lyden: I mean isn't that one of the three things you're not supposed to talk about is money, politics and religion? Because yeah, it's- Mordy Oberstein: Wait, wait, I talk about all three of those things. You're not supposed to talk about those? Carolyn Lyden: I mean, I talk about them too. This is why people don't follow me on... People follow me on Twitter and then immediately unfollow. They're like, wait a second. I thought you talked about SEO. I'm like nope, that's not what you're here for. I love it when people follow me for SEO stuff. Like I can see they have SEO in their tag and I'm like, "You're going to immediately unfollow," which is fine. But yeah, I think it's a taboo topic, but also in America and in probably a bunch of other cultures, we associate our salaries with how much we are worth as individuals. And there's almost a deeper thing to be like I am worth less than you as a human if I make less than you. Or you also see it when you find out, rightfully so, that people at your job, if there is salary transparency, when you find out the one jerk who never works on the projects, who's like the person who's always like, "Hey, can you do this for me?" makes way more than you. And you're like what the heck? I'm working harder, I'm doing more, I'm providing more results than this other person, and I'm worth less than them? So I think there are a lot of interpersonal social issues around it, and I think some companies are doing a good job of laying out the transparency of this and being like, "These are the tiers we have. These are the levels. Here's what is expected at this, you know, tier two." Individual contributors, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or whatever. So there is that transparency to understand what it does take to move up and what's required of you so you're not in one of those positions, but I still think it's something that everybody needs to be advocating for, which is why at the beginning I said managers should be listening too. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think there's any idiosyncrasies about all this in the SEO space or in the digital marketing space? Does it play itself out differently? Is it universal? How does that work? Carolyn Lyden: I think this is an interesting question because it takes me back to 2020 when COVID first happened and everyone was like, "All right, we're trying to figure out our budgets here. Things are changing. I'm not sure if I'm going to have money for the next whatever." So if you're a vendor or someone in SEO or even in digital marketing, where do we pull back? I was a freelancer, I had my own business then, and it was interesting to see who accelerated money into SEO versus who pulled back and what their end results were. And I think it now plays in still too to the salary discussion now. So if your company or your clients can see the value that you're bringing to them, they can see, "Okay, this is where we do need to invest that money." But I think it's almost like a bigger communication issue about our industry to the wider market to display that value. I feel like I'm rambling on about it, but I've noticed that a lot of people don't... If you don't understand how SEO works, then it's hard to see the value in it to then understand why it's important to continue to invest in your employees or your projects and things like that too and improve that investment there. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if it's getting more difficult because you have all this chatter around the Google results not being great anymore, and Google kind of feels like a little bit of a sinking ship lately just from the optics of everything. And then you have the LLM search engines and like well, those get market share and blah, blah, blah. So it kind of feels like it might be a little bit harder to make that SEO value sell right now, which I wonder if that means maybe broaden your skill set or broaden SEO as a topic a little bit more into the wider digital presence they can offer you. I don't know. Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, I've been talking to a bunch of different people in my organization and outside about expanding their mindset because I think so many people are... We're in it so we know what SEO actually is, but so many people still think it's just putting the keywords on the page. It's 2024, and I still get people who are like, "Will you look at this document and SEO it for me?" And I'm like, "No, you should have talked to me before you even created the document." So I think that so many people still think that's what it is. And I feel like my whole career at many organizations, and this is involving your stakeholders, but zooming out and talking about this is a search ecosystem. We're not talking about Google. We're not talking about ChatGPT search. We're not talking specifically about Bing. We're not talking about anything with a search bar is a search engine sort of thing. We're zooming out and seeing how all of these things work together to optimize our presence in those places or optimize how we show up in those places too. So I think zooming out and having the ecosystem talk, which is kind of an ongoing conversation sort of helps out in that way because yes, I think too many people get zoomed in on... We all have had the people who are like, "Oh, I really love this one keyword, and we were number one and now we're number three, and oh my God, fix it." And you're like, "Okay, cool. When you search this next week, it's going to be different. So stop searching the same words over and over and then telling me when they drop once." So the same conversations we've been having for a long time, but really involving those weird things that are coming in now that we're all just still kind of learning about too. Like I know people that use ChatGPT exclusively. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Carolyn Lyden: And they just have search conversations with it. And it's more because it's a conversation, not just a blop, here's the result, and then researching. It's saying, "Okay, here's what I'm looking for." And then they pop up whatever answers, and then you say, "Okay, we're on the right track, but I need something that's more geared toward automotive industry," or something like that. And, "Okay, cool, that's really helpful, but I need things that are doing XYZ." So being able to have that conversation I think is really interesting. So how can we take those use cases and those models and put it in our bigger search ecosystem? Crystal Carter: But I think also that you've touched on a few things there about the variations in what SEOs do, right? Carolyn Lyden: Correct. Crystal Carter: So you might have somebody who's an SEO lead, and you'll see lots of jobs that are SEO lead, but what an SEO lead does at one place might be completely different to what an SEO lead does at another place. And one of the other things that's tricky as an SEO professional is that a lot of times you're fairly self-taught. Like you can get certifications. We have a great course for instance on the Wix SEO Learning Hub and we talk about technical SEO and keyword research and client management and client engagement. But a lot of the stuff, for instance, like ChatGPT search and new platforms as they emerge, new ways of training, new ways of training on different technology, the SEO for your particular tech stack, those sorts of things, you'll very often need to learn yourself and need to learn how to learn it for yourself. So though you have the SEO lead here and SEO lead there, they might not have the same skillset. How do you find that when you're thinking about salary negotiations and even... I think Nick Leroy's going to talk about pitching, but when you're thinking about salary negotiations, how do you quantify the value of your skillset? So let's say you spent all that time learning the TikTok algorithm, which oh my God, if you've done that, please tell me. But let's say you spent all the time, how do you say, "This is worth this much more on my salary. I now have this skill and it's worth this much more for this business." How do you connect those two things? Carolyn Lyden: I think it's understanding business, looking through the job description, which is sort of where the front end work in job hunting is, and seeing what they're looking for, what they actually need, and seeing how your specific skills apply. I also don't... Sorry, everyone, I don't know anything about TikTok. I signed up for it, and then I logged on and immediately was like I am deleting this app from my phone. So, sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Not to switch directions completely, but because something that's on my mind I wanted to ask you about, because I think it's like the thing that people always get, I think, stuck on is how far can I push it? Because if I push it too far and I'm negotiating, then maybe I'll get a no. Or maybe they'll think that this person's too aggressive, whatever it is, but you also don't want to be walked all over. How do you know and how far can you actually push the envelope when negotiating your salary? Carolyn Lyden: I think that ties in a little bit to what Crystal was saying too. So doing the research, listing out what your... I hate the word soft skills, but the interpersonal skills, the cross communication between departments, listing all that out, seeing the alignment between what you can do, what the job description is, and then doing the research to determine okay, other jobs that are equivalent to this that have these exact skill sets are offering XYZ right now. This is a tangent. I've been seeing so many jobs that are like Senior VP of SEO, it's like 80k. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me right now? Stop. This is not equivalent unless I guess, I don't know, you can live off of $0 while you're doing a hundred hours of work a week. So that is an example of where it's totally not equivalent, the salary is not equivalent to the job role that they're asking. So doing that research to see what else is out there. Actually, on Nikla Roy's site, I wrote an article about salary negotiation SEO, and this is actually a really good use of ChatGPT. So I did a couple of tests for jobs that had the salary band listed. I took the salary band off and I copied the title and the job description and the skills they required and all that into ChatGPT, and if it was remote or based somewhere, and I said, "What would you assume the salary band for this role is?" And it was pretty spot on to what they were offering. So I wouldn't only use ChatGPT for this, but you can also put in all your skills there and say, "All right, are these one-to-one? Am I going the right direction here or am I going to over-ask for this?" So I think seeing what else is out there using the tools that you have to your advantage to see where you can push a little bit. And honestly, start the conversation with salary expectations. So if you go in and you get the initial interview, you can just say, "Hey, I know this is a great company and you're known for paying really well. I just want to know what the salary band for this position is." So you can start off by knowing okay, they're going to offer me 30k less than I'm getting paid now, so I'm not going to finish this interview. I'm not going to waste my time. It's okay to start with that. Crystal Carter: Sometimes, I see though that the salary bands are huge. Like I've seen sometimes where the salary band is like 50,000 to 175,000 or something like that. And it's like those are two different tax brackets. Like what are we talking about here? So if you see that, I'm not even sure what that even means from that company. Carolyn Lyden: Yeah. So I think one, companies are trying to get around state laws that require them to... In the United States, I think Colorado is one state where you're required if you're going to post a job there to list the salary band. And so they're trying to get around that by being like oh... I saw one the other day that was like 31k to 299k. And I was like okay, this is a joke. It also means there are more people that are going to apply, so they have a larger pool to pull from. And it also means that... So for example, when I previously worked at Oracle, they had like individual contributor and manager level. So there were essentially step levels for things. And the government is similar, the federal government in America. If a role is anywhere from like a step three to a step seven, it could be all the way from 50k for the entry level of a step three all the way to the top level of a step seven, which is why they're sort of having these huge bands. So they're expecting that potentially you could come in at a lower or mid-level skill-wise. Maybe you only have five years of experience in the industry. They could get someone who will be at the top of this role in the next five years, but isn't right now, and they're expecting you to be able to grow into that. Or if they just want someone who's going to take it, hit the ground running, hire someone at the top of the level. That really screws the applicants over because you don't know. So I think it's, again, understanding where your skills fall, what they're asking for. If you look at a job description, and please do not wait until you have 100% of the qualifications to apply. Apply with 50%. There are people out there getting jobs in the current American government that have no experience. So YOLO, no imposter syndrome here, just apply. If you meet a certain set of the criteria, apply, but don't expect to get the top level of the salary band if you don't have all the experience, you haven't used all the technology they use, those sort of things. Mordy Oberstein: So you get in, you're whatever, level three, whatever employee, and I don't even know what that means. And now it's a year later and you feel like okay, fine, I feel like I just acquired 10% more of my skill set this year. How do you renegotiate that? Or can you renegotiate that now? Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, I think you totally can. I think first things first, look at your job description when you started the position and add everything that you now do that is additional into your job description or things that have changed. And then you can do the research to see okay, equivalent jobs that are doing this sort of thing, like I started as an SEO and I was just doing optimizations, but now I'm also doing reporting, now I'm also doing content strategy, now I'm also taking care of some of the technical stuff. You can do research and see what other jobs have these responsibilities, what are they getting paid? What are their titles? Crystal Carter: I had a situation where they hired a bunch of people who were the same job role as me, same pay as me or whatever, and then they had me train all of them and I was like, no. Carolyn Lyden: I had a friend, a very dear friend of mine recently that her company hired somebody. I think they're getting ready to... They were a startup and now they're growing beyond startup phase. And they hired somebody who's now a senior VP of whatever. And she got laid off and they were like, "Oh, before you go, will you tell us how you did everything?" And I was like, "Do not fucking tell them anything." They fired you. You don't have to train them on... Crystal Carter: No. Carolyn Lyden: How that works. I was like, throw up deuces and leave. Crystal Carter: Here's my invoice for my time, my freelance, which is double what you paid me before. Thank you. Carolyn Lyden: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Or here's how you do it, but it's all the wrong advice. Carolyn Lyden: I mean, you're more devious than I am. I would just be like, I don't work here anymore, so sayonara suckers. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of sayonara, before we start to sign off, here's a good pivot, where can people find you to learn more about whatever it is you post about on social media, which is not SEO? Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, I am on Twitter @CarolynLyden. I recently had to start protecting my tweets because random bros were rude. But feel free to follow, and I will approve you if you're not a meanie. And then, I don't know, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I don't do anything on LinkedIn, but... Mordy Oberstein: Did everybody really do anything on LinkedIn other than just post random stuff? Myself included. Crystal Carter: No, everyone's thrilled. People are thrilled on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: I'm thrilled that you're excited and congrats on your new apple pie that you bought. Carolyn Lyden: Oh yes, please. I'm a pumpkin pie person, not apple. Mordy Oberstein: I'm all pie. Carolyn Lyden: I how I feel about hot fruit. You know? Mordy Oberstein: All right. Crystal Carter: Okay. Pecan pie, though. Pecan pie. Mordy Oberstein: Pecan pie, key lime pie, custard pie, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, blueberry pie, pineapple pie. Carolyn Lyden: No, no, no, no, no. Those are hot fruits. Mordy Oberstein: What? Cherry pie? Carolyn Lyden: Cherry pie is hot fruit. Crystal Carter: What about pineapple on pizza? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, obviously with the … Carolyn Lyden: I'm not mad at it. I mean, I would eat it. Crystal Carter: It's hot fruit and tomato and garlic. Carolyn Lyden: Well, that's valid. Crystal Carter: Combination. Carolyn Lyden: Listen, when somebody offered me a piece of pizza once and it had pineapple on it, I wasn't going to say no. Like if Mordy was like, "I baked this apple pie with love in my heart," I wouldn't be like, "Fuck that." I would just eat his apple pie. But I would not make- Mordy Oberstein: Throw it out behind my back. Carolyn Lyden: But if someone was like, "Carolyn, make a pie or make a pizza," I wouldn't do hot fruit on them. I'm not a jerk. I would eat someone else's if they offered it to me. Mordy Oberstein: That's a hot take on the hot fruit thing in pie. Carolyn Lyden: I mean, listen, maybe I am a jerk. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Well, you clearly have no taste in pie. Carolyn Lyden: No, I don't. That's okay. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Thanks Carolyn Lyden: I mean, of all the desserts, I wouldn't choose pie, but yeah. You're welcome. Happy to talk about pie anytime. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, cheesecake though? Carolyn Lyden: I hope that everyone here gets their slice of the pie. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, before I say goodbye... Oh, that's good. That's good. But you don't put cherries on cheesecake? Carolyn Lyden: No. Crystal Carter: But those cold fruit. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but pie doesn't have to be hot. You wait for the pie of cool down. It's not hot anymore. Carolyn Lyden: But you have to make the fruit hot to make it a pie. Mordy Oberstein: But if you put it in the fridge, it's not hot anymore. It's cold cherries. Carolyn Lyden: But it's mushed. Mordy Oberstein: So the mushing is also a problem now. Carolyn Lyden: Yes. I have texture issues. This is why I say all the time that eating is annoying. I wish I did not. Crystal Carter: Are you team Huel? Are you somebody who's just about Huel? Carolyn Lyden: No, I don't do Huel, but if I could just consume nutrition via liquid, that would be awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we're off the rails. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Follow on social media. Put the money in your bank account, everybody. Carolyn Lyden: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Kaching. Mordy Oberstein: All right, so thanks so much again, Carolyn. Make sure you give her a big follow on social media. But now you might be wondering, "What about me? I don't have a salary. What money advice do you have for me? Help me line my pockets." Not to worry friends, we have a special guest to help make sure that your pitch to your clients turns into Benjamins. And if you're in-house, by the way, how to pitch a product to your boss, same kind of thing. Anyway, welcome to the show, Nick Leroy as we move across the funnel frontier. Hey Nick, how's it going? Nick Leroy: Hey, Mordy and Crystal. How are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: Good. You're fresh off an overtime win that you barely pulled out, but- Nick Leroy: Hey, we take all victories that we can get here. It's just like Google SERPs. We don't complain or ask questions, we just take the win. Mordy Oberstein: They asked Mike Tomlin, the coach of the Steelers, after one of the games, "How do you rate the offense?" He goes, "W." Nick Leroy: I like it. That's exactly how we're working on the Vikings front is it's not sexy, this is no Patriots offense like that. Patriots of old, I should say. Crystal Carter: For those of you who are tuning in from outside of the United States, they are talking about American football, which is not to be confused with football, which Americans refer to as soccer. And yes, go team. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, sorry about that. I'm rooting for you, Nick. Nick, before we get started, pitch. What do you got? SEO Jobs. SEO for lunch. Nick Leroy Consulting. Nick Leroy: Yeah, I'm working on a whole bunch of things. So real quick, my pitch. Hi, I'm Nick Leroy. I am a freelance SEO consultant. I have been doing this for about five years. Previous to that I had been agency-side. So if you're looking for a fractional director of SEO or just even some advisor work, check me out nickleroy.com or Nick Leroy Consulting is my company. If you want to stay up for some SEO updates, I have a weekly email, SEOforlunch.com. And last but not least, where we're going to chat probably more, is SEOjobs.com. We finally have an alternative to the evil Indeed and LinkedIn job posts. No more are we going to be typing in SEO and getting a JavaScript developer with one little data point that says "SEO a bonus". So check out SEOjobs.com as well. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Love all of it. So you're the right person to tap into. We're talking, "Hey, okay, client came, they asked me to draw something up, I have a pitch. How do you get them to sign the dotted line and open up the wallet?" Nick Leroy: So that's a fantastic question and I'm going to- Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I thought of it myself. Nick Leroy: Oh no you didn't. We know Crystal force-fed it to you. There's no way you came up with that good of a question. Crystal Carter: It was my idea. Nick Leroy: Exactly. It's all Crystal. So my only asterisk to this is I'm never going to use "it depends" officially, but it's going to be different for every single type of company. Me as an individual consultant, I only need a handful of clients at any point in time. Whereas if you're a mega agency, you're probably signing daily or weekly what I take on for an entire year. So my personal experience when it comes to selling is, and I am going to make salespeople just like shudder in saying this, is I'm almost the anti-sales guy. I'm trying to convince everybody why they shouldn't go with me. Because for me, I am in a unique position where because I can only take on so many clients, making sure that it's a really good fit, they have a really good appetite for buying into SEO is there as well as just the resources. So I'm interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing me. And what it is it's self-preservation. Again, I had mentioned earlier that I had done agency SEO for 10 years prior to going to my own. And I think all of us know what it's like to be handed a client and be like, "Great, they signed last week. Go do SEO." And you're like, "With what?" It's like you just don't see the vision. So I realize that's a very long answer to it, but for me, the biggest headline or H1 as some people would say, is literally interview your clients just as much as they are you because I find that it builds a lot of trust and it shows that what that relationship looks like on day one versus jumping into a conversation simply saying, "Give me, give me, give me." Crystal Carter: When I was working agency-side, we would kind of do this during the audit process. And audit is fairly straightforward, but what we'd find was in the conversations with them, if I was like, "Oh, can I get access to this? Oh, can you share this data with me? Oh, who's the best person to speak to in your team about that?" Like the kinds of information you might need from the team. During that process, really that's when you're seeing what it would be like to work with this person over the long term. And that also, you talked about resources, which is so important when you're talking about what you'll be able to get over the line when you're pitching, like when you're talking to them and they're like, "Oh, we don't have somebody who does that. I've been doing all of that for the whole time." And you're like okay. And then they're like, "Oh, we have another agency that works on that part for us." And it's like okay, that's interesting as well. So when you're trying to pitch what will be relevant for them, taking that time to get to know them well will make a big, big difference. And as you said when you said what resources, you will pitch a different solution for somebody who has in-house implementation teams. Like let's say they have a bunch of marketing executives that can just crack on and you can just give them a list and be like, "Update these pages, change these links, do that." And they're like, "Great, wonderful," and they can crack on. Whereas if it's one person who... If it's like owner-operator or something, you would give them a different thing. You might give them a list of consultants that can help them to do the implementation for instance. But absolutely. Getting to know them should be core to how you're pitching. And the trust part is great as well, because even if you're interviewing for a job, the person that asks the good questions back, that's the person where you're like oh, they were paying attention. Oh, they actually care because they asked good questions. Mordy Oberstein: That's the beauty of the negative marketing thing, right? Sorry. You're building trust like, "Hey, I'm not going to take your money. I'm not going to jump right into this. Let's make sure it's a good fit," actually and counterintuitively in a way builds that trust. So I like that. Nick Leroy: Oh, absolutely. And the thing that's crazy too is the amount of times I've told people like SEO is not going to be a fit for you. It's amazing. You can also make people champions for your brand. All of a sudden they're the ones that are commenting on your posts or sharing your name for other people. And it's simply because you could have taken the easy 1,000, 5,000, $10,000 a month for however long they're willing to let it go to ultimately fail, which doesn't make you look good or them. Or you can kind of win them over as an individual, a super fan if you will, up front, which yes, doesn't always pay the bills, but I have found that typically doing the right thing in that aspect pays dividends tenfold down the line. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. People will know you're a stand-up guy, and they'll also know that when you actually do recommend them, that you genuinely mean it. You're not just saying, "Yeah, yeah, you definitely need to have this brand new thing on your website and stuff. You definitely need to implement this," I don't know, chat box feature or something. "That will help you drive leads, and I'm going to charge you this much for it or something." They'll trust your recommendations and also trust that you're not wasting their time. Because as you said, time is money. For you, you also don't want to be wasting your time with people who maybe it's not the best fit for them, maybe they'll be unhappy because the results won't be what they expect because it's not a good fit for them. Like you said, SEO isn't always the best fit at every business stage. And so if they're unhappy then unhappy clients are stressful clients. Like they're calling you... Right? Nick Leroy: Well, and as cliche as it sounds, Crystal, it's like for me, again, speaking that... You know, I'm working with maybe four or five clients at most, and I'm looking to truly be a partner. And of those clients, I have two of them that have been with me for four years out of the five years I've been freelance now. And that last point you made about a not very stressful engagement. These are the people that I'm riding the roller coasters with, and they are bought in. And it's a lot easier to maintain and keep existing clients happy that are bought in and have resources than it is to turn over new clients that are just going to sit there for six months and then be like, "We don't get SEO. You know, it's snake oil. We're out." Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's really the whole problem with the whole getting them to sign the deal, put their name on the bottom line, whatever it is. That whole question is a faulty premise. I mean it's good for podcasting, it's good for radio, but it's a long process. It's a relationship. It's a whole build. It's a whole lead-up. It's a whole slow burn until you finally land the client. It doesn't happen in one shot with this "sign on the dotted line", which I think again is the problem with the premise of that question is it makes it seem like it's an instantaneous one-time thing, no problem. Nick Leroy: So Mordy and Crystal real quick, you'll appreciate this. And I don't actually mean this as a plug, even though it will inadvertently be. But we are in a situation, no surprise to you guys, where there are a lot of really good salespeople that can sell anything they want. And our industry has gotten a little bit muddied because of that. So what I have done is I actually created an advisor services where I have CEOs reaching out to me. And I'll just use, for example, I have one that recently reached out to me and said, "Nick, I just inherited this team, this company. I'm the brand new CEO. I'm paying $18,000 a month for SEO agency services, but I have no clue what the heck they're doing and I just genuinely don't engage well with them. And we have nobody internally now that can basically gauge whether we're getting the value or not." So my service is I'm coming in and being an advisor. And the first thing I did to build trust is I told the CEO to her face, I was like, "I would love to help you. $18,000 is a big investment, so you should have high expectations, but also realize while there's as much of a chance of me calling these individuals out for maybe not doing as great of work as they could, it may very well be your team is not executing on your part of the agreement." So I was like, "As long as you're okay in a situation for me to say your kid is ugly, you have to allow for that." And I've always kind of pitched it as almost like an insurance policy. I hate that it has to exist, but this is where we are in our industry, is people are able to sell dreams and then they try to execute with checkbox SEO, which does not work today like it did five years ago. So now I am trying to keep a fairly low retainer just to be able to come in and be the true advocate or brand champion for SEO, and unfortunately it just means holding other people accountable. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's definitely the case. And again, this goes back to when you're pitching and when you're thinking about how much it's going to cost and how much the lift is on your site, you need to know are they able to do the thing? So if it's an $18,000 retainer or something, if it's the case that every month, let's say... Because sometimes in SEO as an agency, you don't even have access to the CMS. You're making recommendations, you're looking at documentation, you're looking at all that sort of stuff, you're making recommendations, but sometimes they don't implement. And sometimes they need the dev to implement or sometimes you need the team to implement. So if you have the case where this person's like, "Oh, the SEO team is not doing any good," like you said, if they're also not implementing, then when you're pitching in terms of the bottom line for them and whether or not the ROI is there, you also need to understand whether or not they're willing to invest on their side as well. So, so, so important. And I've definitely seen that. And also sometimes the alignment is incorrect. So sometimes maybe the SEO is going for traffic or downloads or whatever, but maybe the CEO actually wants a different outcome. So sometimes it's just that no one's told the SEO that this is the important thing we need to be driving people towards. Maybe they're just doing their best, and maybe that needs to be moved along as well. So when you're thinking about the pitching and you're thinking about the ROI and how it's going to be valuable, it's definitely good making sure that they align as well. Nick Leroy: Yeah, and it's funny Crystal, because actually right now I have two advising clients, and it's each side of the spectrum. One is just making sure that the agency is doing great work and guiding them, getting the most for what they're being paid. And then the other side, they have an internal SEO team where some of the leadership just maybe don't have the right expectations. So I am being the guy that's just not afraid to speak the truth and tell them what they don't want to hear, but it's really championing that team because they're just going in circles so it just goes back to what you're saying. Mordy Oberstein: That's kind of what I feel it means to be a consultant, right? You're coming in and you're telling them what they need to know that they don't see. Nick Leroy: Exactly. No, and unfortunately it requires having the conversations that are uncomfortable. I mean, the amount of CMOs and CEOs that I've had to say, "Your expectations are completely irrational or for the budgets that you're doing," and it's like just help them contextualize. It's not about being a jerk. It's just you don't know what you don't know. And if someone in a CMO or a CEO role has so many hats that they're wearing, I don't even expect them to know everything about SEO. That's my job to help them understand. Mordy Oberstein: Let's say people don't know where to follow you and they want to know where to follow you. How could they know? Nick Leroy: Yeah, how could they know? They could do a Google search and check me out on Twitter, X, or I just joined Bluesky so- Mordy Oberstein: That's the new hot thing. Bluesky. Nick Leroy: Yeah, exactly. And I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, so definitely follow me there. Nick Leroy SEO on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: They should also join your awesome newsletter, SEO for Lunch. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Come on Nick. Nick Leroy: Yeah, look at that. See, look at that. I'll just have Crystal and Mordy promote me. They do a better job than I do. Mordy Oberstein: Look for Nick out there on social media. Check out SEOjobs.com and SEOforlunch.com and Nick Leroy Consulting. Sorry I'm confusing all your URLs together. Nick Leroy: Thank you guys. I love talking about careers and freelancing and making money and spending money. Who doesn't? So definitely looking forward to chatting with you guys more as well as anybody else in the industry. Mordy Oberstein: Cha-ching. Catch you next time, Nick. Once again, thank you so much, Nick. Make sure you give Nick a big subscribe on SEO for Lunch, check out SEO Jobs and Nick Leroy's own consulting. So much Nick, but check out all of it, please. Crystal Carter: There's some great stuff. He also has a great webinar over on the Wix Partners channel where he talks about lots of the things he was covering about qualifying leads and making sure that clients are ready for that and stuff. So he gets into that in a lot of detail, so highly recommend checking out that deep cut. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. You know who also talks a lot? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry. Barry talks a lot. He's been talking for 21 years. As we're recording this, we're coming right off the 21st anniversary of SEroundtable.com. Barry, that's a lot of talking. A lot of passionate talking from Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: So much, so much. I listened to a podcast with him and the team from Google and they were talking about how he started RustyBrick when he was 14 years old. Little Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: Did he have the goatee back then? Do you think he had the goatee? Crystal Carter: I don't know, but I feel like rust accumulates over time, so maybe he was just a regular brick then. Maybe that was before he became- Mordy Oberstein: He was like a regular brick. Crystal Carter: ... the RustyBrick. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but by the time 20 years from now, he'll become a crusty brick. You know, I once had a fake social account called Crusty Brick. Crystal Carter: That tracks. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I tried to get some engagement on it, but it didn't take, I don't know why. But it's Crusty Brick. Anyway. Crystal Carter: There we go. Bring it back. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Anyway, here's the real RustyBrick with some... Well, it's me covering him with some snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. I got a juicy one for you, but I'm going to make you wait for it. For the not so juicy one, from Search Engine Journal from Matt said the LinkedIn report reveals most in-demand marketing skills. LinkedIn released a whole report. I wouldn't say a whole report. It's not like it's a huge deep dive. It's basically a couple of paragraphs and an infographic, but one of the things they showed was that marketing-related job postings on LinkedIn increased by 76% year over year. Yeah. We're back baby. Okay, next up from Search Engine Roundtable, from the Barry Schwartz, Google Search quality rater guidelines gain 11 new pages. I have not read all 11 new pages, and I highly doubt I will. I will wait for people to summarize them so I can read them. Thank you, Lily Ray. On Thursday the 23rd of January, Google updated the Quality rater guidelines PDF document. Barry says the last time this was updated was back in March of 2024, so that's 10 months ago. Barry did the math. I didn't. So if that math is wrong, blame Barry. What's changed? Barry writes that Google changed the page level quality lowest and low sections, and that was to better line with Google's web policies. We've seen a lot of change in Google's web spam policies. We've seen a lot of changes in the web spam policies over the last year. I'm looking at you, Parasite SEO. Okay. They also expanded on guidance related to assessing minor interpretations and intents and minor changes throughout, Barry says, updated rating ranges, removed outdated examples, fixed typos. Huh? Fixed typos. That's strange. Okay, and last but not least, and here's the doozy. From the Dan D. Goodwin, man of integrity and character. HubSpot's SEO collapse, what went wrong and why? So basically, the SEO community has been abuzz with HubSpot, who was once the gold standard of content, getting crushed, absolutely crushed on the Google SERP. They've lost a ton. I wrote it in a LinkedIn post, they lost all of their search traffic. I meant that hyperbolically, if you read that post, like, "They didn't lose everything, Mordy." They went from 13.5 million organic hits or traffic hits from organic search to 8.6 million. It's a huge drop-off. That data is per Semrush, by the way. Everyone and everyone in SEO are losing their minds about this for various reasons. I don't want to dig into the mudslinging that's going on. I really don't like that. It actually does really bother me personally. I know people are also slinging mud. I wasn't referring to slinging mud at HubSpot. I was referring to other mud slinging, which I don't like. Why would you want to throw mud? It's icky. It's gooey. It's gross. Throw a snowball. Snowballs don't hurt and they're fun. Anywho, there's been a lot of mud slinging also or stone throwing at HubSpot. "This is what they get for doing this and what they get for doing that," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I also don't think that's super mature. You could look at what HubSpot did and learn lessons from it. I don't think people at HubSpot were like, "Yeah, let's ruin the internet with garbage content." I'm not even saying their content was garbage. What I do say, and it ties into my post that I wrote, I'll link to that in the show notes with the show out in the Wix Studio SEO Hub about brand being first and brand being primary, that if you don't have strong brand identity, you might end up kind of all over the place. You might end up not being focused or targeting the right audience, and it might impact the overall quality of your content. I know this is an SEO podcast and saying this is heresy, but if you lead with an SEO-first content strategy, it inevitably leads to a decaying quality, it inevitably leads to a decay in topical focus, and it inevitably... If I say inevitably one more time, I'm going to lose my tongue, inevitably causes you to lose your focus audience. What's happened because, and I think it's kind of the real cause, is that it's worked for so long, companies have to double down that SEO-first content strategy. So I don't blame anybody. I want to say this. I don't know what happened behind the scenes at HubSpot. I don't work for Hub Spot. I have no clue. We're all kind of just speculating. With that, and I'm not talking about HubSpot in this case necessarily, because again, I don't know what happened behind the scenes at Hub Spot. What I do know is this idea of a SEO content-first strategy is slowly decaying. It's something I recently talked about on an SCJ webinar also. You have to have a brand-first strategy and fit the SEO content into that because again, you can't escape this reality of the content quality decay, the content audience decay, the content topical focus decay. It's inevitably what happens. So I urge you to take a different kind of focus because maybe it seems like Google is really catching up here. Also, it would be really nice if Google were to just come out and say, "We're really catching up here," so we don't have to sit here and speculate on the SERP'S Up podcast in the snappy news. Barry's not actually crusty. He comes off as a little crusty, but he's actually not. Crystal Carter: No, he's all right. And he also has a limited amount of time that he likes to engage with folks at conferences. So he came to Brighton SEO San Diego for one day. He was there for one day. He flew in and flew out on the same day from New York to San Diego. Mordy Oberstein: And then he showed up by the next morning on no sleep for It's New. Like me and him recorded It's New, which you should also check out if you're listening to this. It's our daily SEO. Crystal Carter: Yes, do that, do that. Great tips. Mordy Oberstein: And he wasn't crusty about it at all. He was happy. Crystal Carter: No he was happy- Mordy Oberstein: Well, happy by Barry standards. Crystal Carter: He was happy because he was able to go back home. That's why he was happy. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, make sure you check out our It's New series with Barry and Greg Finn Mondays through Thursdays right here on the Wix Studio SEO Hub, and on the RustyBrick YouTube channel, which brings us to our follower of the week, which this week is Zoe Ashbridge, who has been a former guest on this very podcast. Crystal Carter: Yes, Zoe is fantastic. So he has a great TikTok account where she talks about- Mordy Oberstein: What? What's TikTok? Crystal Carter: TikTok. Mordy Oberstein: TikTok. Crystal Carter: Yes. It's a place where they make clocks. No, I'm kidding. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Crystal Carter: So she has a great TikTok account where she talks about freelancing and her freelance journey, and she talks about money. She talks about money and how you get paid from clients, how you navigate that whole situation. She's really, really frank and really, really clear about it. And cannot shout enough, if you're going on that journey, if you're getting into the freelance space, if you're setting up your own shop, then go and check out Zoe's TikTok account. So follow her on TikTok. That's our follow of the week. I think she might be our first TikTok follow of the week. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I got to make sure to put a TikTok profile in the show notes. I'm going to mess that up. All right. Crystal Carter: I know. Okay. It's fine. Let me see if I can- Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm making a note right now in the show notes, my show notes, not the actual official show notes. Those are not released yet to- Crystal Carter: Yeah, so she's @ZoeFreelanceSEO. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, show notes. Zoe. I got to go to TikTok. Ah, that's going to be difficult for me. Okay. I'll do it for you, Zoe. To be frank, it'll be hard for me. By the way, I never understood that. Is like frank this very direct person who is always like no facade with Frank? He's Frank. You get the real deal from Frank. Why don't you say like, "Yeah, to be Tom," no, but it's to be frank. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. It's also like, "Bear with me." Why do I have to be a bear? And I think the bear with me is spelled bear, B-E-A-R, like I think it is. Mordy Oberstein: Because maybe originally everyone was dressing up in bear suits, like "bear with me", and everyone's dancing in bear suits. Crystal Carter: Maybe. Mordy Oberstein: Everyone bear with me now. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's bear with me like B-E-A-R, and I don't wait for bears. If I see a bear, I'm running. I'm sorry. I'm not waiting. Mordy Oberstein: To be frank, I really need you to bear with me here. I don't want to be Frank, by the way. To be frank, I know some Franks, and the one in my mind that I'm envisioning, I do not want to be Frank. Sorry, Frank. Crystal Carter: The Frank I'm thinking of is Frank Sinatra. He was all right, I think. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know if I want to be Frank Sinatra. I mean, I want to have his fame and fortune. I don't know if I want to actually be him. Does that make sense? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He was a little rough around the edges, and his liver seemed to have issues. Crystal Carter: Okay. That's- Mordy Oberstein: On that happy note, thanks for listening to this SERP'S Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week as we dive into your inbox with a look at how email marketing impacts SEO in 2025. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and our SEO course at the Wix Studio 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 Carolyn Lyden Nick LeRoy Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course Nick LeRoy SEO Consulting SEO For Lunch Newsletter SEO for Jobs How to Successfully Negotiate Your SEO Salary: A Complete Guide k News: LinkedIn Report Reveals Most In-Demand Marketing Skills Google updates search quality raters guidelines with a focus on spam HubSpot’s SEO collapse: What went wrong and why? Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Carolyn Lyden Nick LeRoy Resources: Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter SEO Resource Center Wix Studio SEO Course Nick LeRoy SEO Consulting SEO For Lunch Newsletter SEO for Jobs How to Successfully Negotiate Your SEO Salary: A Complete Guide k News: LinkedIn Report Reveals Most In-Demand Marketing Skills Google updates search quality raters guidelines with a focus on spam HubSpot’s SEO collapse: What went wrong and why? Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP'S Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP'S Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is always on the money, our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello, everybody. I hope that you are securing all of the bags and collecting all of this spondoolie and all of the dough. Mordy Oberstein: What's that sound? I hear like a jangling in your pockets or something as you're... Oh, that's your money. That's your coin. That's your money. I like because the audience has no idea why we're doing this yet. They're like, all right, you guys are talking about money. Crystal Carter: Money. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of money, give us your money. The SERP'S Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also supplement your income by selling your custom apps and widgets inside of the Wix Studio app market. This, as we talk, how to negotiate your salary if you're in the SEO or digital marketing space that you can get top dollar. How to go about ensuring you get what you deserve. Never too late? Can you renegotiate? The end, the idiosyncrasies of salary negotiation in the SEO space. To help us make a withdrawal from the proverbial ATM, Carolyn Lyden will join us in just a bit. It's a two-for this week, by the way, as Nick Leroy hops on to talk about how you can pitch your projects to get the client to sign on the data line and into your bank account. Just in case you're not a salaried employee, or if you're in-house, by the way, we'll talk how to pitch your projects so you might get that raise. And of course, we have the snappies of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So bosses and managers beware. Episode 117 of the SERP'S Up podcast is here to help your employees line their pockets with a little bit of extra dough. Crystal Carter: I was going to say, I think spondoolie is my favorite euphemism for money. I just like spondoolie, just- Mordy Oberstein: That's underused. Crystal Carter: Skrilla. Skrilla is also very good. I like that one as well. Mordy Oberstein: Also underused. Wow. Crystal Carter: Right? Paper. Benjamins, benjies. Hundies, I like this as well. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so usually we do a little intro like why this topic's important and blah, blah, blah. I feel like we don't need any introductions why this topic's important. It's important so you can pay your bills, which is why Carolyn Lyden is here to help talk about making more money. Hey Carolyn, how are you? Carolyn Lyden: Hi. I'm doing well. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: I'm good. I need some tips. I hope my boss is listening. Carolyn Lyden: Me too. I hope everyone's boss is listening because it's not just the job of the person negotiating, I think. It's also the job of managers to be good managers and advocate for their employees. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. Mordy Oberstein: What utopia you living in? Carolyn Lyden: One that I am creating for us all. Mordy Oberstein: Here, employee, take more of my money. Carolyn Lyden: Well, happy employees stay. Mordy Oberstein: That's true. Carolyn Lyden: And perform better. Crystal Carter: Well paid employees stay. Carolyn Lyden: Yes. Crystal Carter: That's something that I think is crazy because you have these situations where people are like, "Oh, I'd like a raise. I'd like a raise. I'd like a raise." And then they get headhunted or they get offered a new job and then suddenly the person's like, "Oh no, we can counteroffer." And you're like, "Where was the money last year when I asked you? How are you suddenly out of pocket now? What's that about?" Carolyn Lyden: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: That's bad vibes too. Carolyn Lyden: It is bad vibes to be like, "Cool. Was I not valuable before someone else wanted me?" Mordy Oberstein: I had that, by the way. I asked at a previous job whom I shall not mention, I asked for a raise and they said no. This is a long time ago. So if people are trying to look at my- Carolyn Lyden: I was going to say, people know where you've worked, Mordy. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah yeah, you got to go back. And I'm like okay, I'm, I'm going to leave. I'm going to leave. And I found another job and they said they're going to pay me this. And then they finally gave me the money, which sucked. It was a lot of work. Carolyn Lyden: Magically popped up out of nowhere. Where did it come from? Who knows? Mordy Oberstein: There was a leprechaun and there was a rainbow and a pot of gold, and- Carolyn Lyden: Someone came across it and they were like, yay. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Carolyn Lyden: I was going to say, this is designated to Mordy, this rainbow pot of gold. Crystal Carter: But this is a topic that you've covered as well for a little while, and you've been fairly outspoken on this. Why did you start talking about this? Why were you like this needs to be said? What made you want to have those conversations? Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, so actually a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I worked at a company called CallRail, and I started essentially their ERG group for women. So I started this women's circle where women could get together to just talk about all the different things that we wanted to talk about from like when people are like, "Oh, how do you do it all? How do you have a job and have kids?" And it's like, "I don't do it all. We're suffering here. Help." But one of the topics when I surveyed the people who joined the group that they really wanted to talk about was salary negotiations. So I just said okay, I'm going to dig in and do all the research and present what I find based on this. And so that's what I did for our first women's circle session when I was at CallRail, and a lot of people were really into it. They were like, "Oh, wow, I didn't know, not only all these statistics, but the fact that if I don't negotiate, I'm sort of starting my entire career behind and losing millions of dollars over my lifetime potentially by not asking for what I'm worth. And also doing the work on the back end, the research to make sure that I am asking correctly or what my market worth is." So hearing that feedback and then taking it to a wider group of women and men and people in the SEO industry, I was like okay, this is something that we're all unspoken about it. We're all just secretly not talking to each other, not our colleagues, not our managers. We're just pretending we know how the system works. I didn't know how the system works, so I was like all right, we need to be talking about this a lot more and putting the information out there for everyone. Crystal Carter: Do you think that people are embarrassed to talk about salaries and money? Do you think that that's why we don't talk about it? Carolyn Lyden: I mean isn't that one of the three things you're not supposed to talk about is money, politics and religion? Because yeah, it's- Mordy Oberstein: Wait, wait, I talk about all three of those things. You're not supposed to talk about those? Carolyn Lyden: I mean, I talk about them too. This is why people don't follow me on... People follow me on Twitter and then immediately unfollow. They're like, wait a second. I thought you talked about SEO. I'm like nope, that's not what you're here for. I love it when people follow me for SEO stuff. Like I can see they have SEO in their tag and I'm like, "You're going to immediately unfollow," which is fine. But yeah, I think it's a taboo topic, but also in America and in probably a bunch of other cultures, we associate our salaries with how much we are worth as individuals. And there's almost a deeper thing to be like I am worth less than you as a human if I make less than you. Or you also see it when you find out, rightfully so, that people at your job, if there is salary transparency, when you find out the one jerk who never works on the projects, who's like the person who's always like, "Hey, can you do this for me?" makes way more than you. And you're like what the heck? I'm working harder, I'm doing more, I'm providing more results than this other person, and I'm worth less than them? So I think there are a lot of interpersonal social issues around it, and I think some companies are doing a good job of laying out the transparency of this and being like, "These are the tiers we have. These are the levels. Here's what is expected at this, you know, tier two." Individual contributors, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or whatever. So there is that transparency to understand what it does take to move up and what's required of you so you're not in one of those positions, but I still think it's something that everybody needs to be advocating for, which is why at the beginning I said managers should be listening too. Mordy Oberstein: Do you think there's any idiosyncrasies about all this in the SEO space or in the digital marketing space? Does it play itself out differently? Is it universal? How does that work? Carolyn Lyden: I think this is an interesting question because it takes me back to 2020 when COVID first happened and everyone was like, "All right, we're trying to figure out our budgets here. Things are changing. I'm not sure if I'm going to have money for the next whatever." So if you're a vendor or someone in SEO or even in digital marketing, where do we pull back? I was a freelancer, I had my own business then, and it was interesting to see who accelerated money into SEO versus who pulled back and what their end results were. And I think it now plays in still too to the salary discussion now. So if your company or your clients can see the value that you're bringing to them, they can see, "Okay, this is where we do need to invest that money." But I think it's almost like a bigger communication issue about our industry to the wider market to display that value. I feel like I'm rambling on about it, but I've noticed that a lot of people don't... If you don't understand how SEO works, then it's hard to see the value in it to then understand why it's important to continue to invest in your employees or your projects and things like that too and improve that investment there. Mordy Oberstein: I wonder if it's getting more difficult because you have all this chatter around the Google results not being great anymore, and Google kind of feels like a little bit of a sinking ship lately just from the optics of everything. And then you have the LLM search engines and like well, those get market share and blah, blah, blah. So it kind of feels like it might be a little bit harder to make that SEO value sell right now, which I wonder if that means maybe broaden your skill set or broaden SEO as a topic a little bit more into the wider digital presence they can offer you. I don't know. Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, I've been talking to a bunch of different people in my organization and outside about expanding their mindset because I think so many people are... We're in it so we know what SEO actually is, but so many people still think it's just putting the keywords on the page. It's 2024, and I still get people who are like, "Will you look at this document and SEO it for me?" And I'm like, "No, you should have talked to me before you even created the document." So I think that so many people still think that's what it is. And I feel like my whole career at many organizations, and this is involving your stakeholders, but zooming out and talking about this is a search ecosystem. We're not talking about Google. We're not talking about ChatGPT search. We're not talking specifically about Bing. We're not talking about anything with a search bar is a search engine sort of thing. We're zooming out and seeing how all of these things work together to optimize our presence in those places or optimize how we show up in those places too. So I think zooming out and having the ecosystem talk, which is kind of an ongoing conversation sort of helps out in that way because yes, I think too many people get zoomed in on... We all have had the people who are like, "Oh, I really love this one keyword, and we were number one and now we're number three, and oh my God, fix it." And you're like, "Okay, cool. When you search this next week, it's going to be different. So stop searching the same words over and over and then telling me when they drop once." So the same conversations we've been having for a long time, but really involving those weird things that are coming in now that we're all just still kind of learning about too. Like I know people that use ChatGPT exclusively. Mordy Oberstein: Really? Carolyn Lyden: And they just have search conversations with it. And it's more because it's a conversation, not just a blop, here's the result, and then researching. It's saying, "Okay, here's what I'm looking for." And then they pop up whatever answers, and then you say, "Okay, we're on the right track, but I need something that's more geared toward automotive industry," or something like that. And, "Okay, cool, that's really helpful, but I need things that are doing XYZ." So being able to have that conversation I think is really interesting. So how can we take those use cases and those models and put it in our bigger search ecosystem? Crystal Carter: But I think also that you've touched on a few things there about the variations in what SEOs do, right? Carolyn Lyden: Correct. Crystal Carter: So you might have somebody who's an SEO lead, and you'll see lots of jobs that are SEO lead, but what an SEO lead does at one place might be completely different to what an SEO lead does at another place. And one of the other things that's tricky as an SEO professional is that a lot of times you're fairly self-taught. Like you can get certifications. We have a great course for instance on the Wix SEO Learning Hub and we talk about technical SEO and keyword research and client management and client engagement. But a lot of the stuff, for instance, like ChatGPT search and new platforms as they emerge, new ways of training, new ways of training on different technology, the SEO for your particular tech stack, those sorts of things, you'll very often need to learn yourself and need to learn how to learn it for yourself. So though you have the SEO lead here and SEO lead there, they might not have the same skillset. How do you find that when you're thinking about salary negotiations and even... I think Nick Leroy's going to talk about pitching, but when you're thinking about salary negotiations, how do you quantify the value of your skillset? So let's say you spent all that time learning the TikTok algorithm, which oh my God, if you've done that, please tell me. But let's say you spent all the time, how do you say, "This is worth this much more on my salary. I now have this skill and it's worth this much more for this business." How do you connect those two things? Carolyn Lyden: I think it's understanding business, looking through the job description, which is sort of where the front end work in job hunting is, and seeing what they're looking for, what they actually need, and seeing how your specific skills apply. I also don't... Sorry, everyone, I don't know anything about TikTok. I signed up for it, and then I logged on and immediately was like I am deleting this app from my phone. So, sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Not to switch directions completely, but because something that's on my mind I wanted to ask you about, because I think it's like the thing that people always get, I think, stuck on is how far can I push it? Because if I push it too far and I'm negotiating, then maybe I'll get a no. Or maybe they'll think that this person's too aggressive, whatever it is, but you also don't want to be walked all over. How do you know and how far can you actually push the envelope when negotiating your salary? Carolyn Lyden: I think that ties in a little bit to what Crystal was saying too. So doing the research, listing out what your... I hate the word soft skills, but the interpersonal skills, the cross communication between departments, listing all that out, seeing the alignment between what you can do, what the job description is, and then doing the research to determine okay, other jobs that are equivalent to this that have these exact skill sets are offering XYZ right now. This is a tangent. I've been seeing so many jobs that are like Senior VP of SEO, it's like 80k. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me right now? Stop. This is not equivalent unless I guess, I don't know, you can live off of $0 while you're doing a hundred hours of work a week. So that is an example of where it's totally not equivalent, the salary is not equivalent to the job role that they're asking. So doing that research to see what else is out there. Actually, on Nikla Roy's site, I wrote an article about salary negotiation SEO, and this is actually a really good use of ChatGPT. So I did a couple of tests for jobs that had the salary band listed. I took the salary band off and I copied the title and the job description and the skills they required and all that into ChatGPT, and if it was remote or based somewhere, and I said, "What would you assume the salary band for this role is?" And it was pretty spot on to what they were offering. So I wouldn't only use ChatGPT for this, but you can also put in all your skills there and say, "All right, are these one-to-one? Am I going the right direction here or am I going to over-ask for this?" So I think seeing what else is out there using the tools that you have to your advantage to see where you can push a little bit. And honestly, start the conversation with salary expectations. So if you go in and you get the initial interview, you can just say, "Hey, I know this is a great company and you're known for paying really well. I just want to know what the salary band for this position is." So you can start off by knowing okay, they're going to offer me 30k less than I'm getting paid now, so I'm not going to finish this interview. I'm not going to waste my time. It's okay to start with that. Crystal Carter: Sometimes, I see though that the salary bands are huge. Like I've seen sometimes where the salary band is like 50,000 to 175,000 or something like that. And it's like those are two different tax brackets. Like what are we talking about here? So if you see that, I'm not even sure what that even means from that company. Carolyn Lyden: Yeah. So I think one, companies are trying to get around state laws that require them to... In the United States, I think Colorado is one state where you're required if you're going to post a job there to list the salary band. And so they're trying to get around that by being like oh... I saw one the other day that was like 31k to 299k. And I was like okay, this is a joke. It also means there are more people that are going to apply, so they have a larger pool to pull from. And it also means that... So for example, when I previously worked at Oracle, they had like individual contributor and manager level. So there were essentially step levels for things. And the government is similar, the federal government in America. If a role is anywhere from like a step three to a step seven, it could be all the way from 50k for the entry level of a step three all the way to the top level of a step seven, which is why they're sort of having these huge bands. So they're expecting that potentially you could come in at a lower or mid-level skill-wise. Maybe you only have five years of experience in the industry. They could get someone who will be at the top of this role in the next five years, but isn't right now, and they're expecting you to be able to grow into that. Or if they just want someone who's going to take it, hit the ground running, hire someone at the top of the level. That really screws the applicants over because you don't know. So I think it's, again, understanding where your skills fall, what they're asking for. If you look at a job description, and please do not wait until you have 100% of the qualifications to apply. Apply with 50%. There are people out there getting jobs in the current American government that have no experience. So YOLO, no imposter syndrome here, just apply. If you meet a certain set of the criteria, apply, but don't expect to get the top level of the salary band if you don't have all the experience, you haven't used all the technology they use, those sort of things. Mordy Oberstein: So you get in, you're whatever, level three, whatever employee, and I don't even know what that means. And now it's a year later and you feel like okay, fine, I feel like I just acquired 10% more of my skill set this year. How do you renegotiate that? Or can you renegotiate that now? Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, I think you totally can. I think first things first, look at your job description when you started the position and add everything that you now do that is additional into your job description or things that have changed. And then you can do the research to see okay, equivalent jobs that are doing this sort of thing, like I started as an SEO and I was just doing optimizations, but now I'm also doing reporting, now I'm also doing content strategy, now I'm also taking care of some of the technical stuff. You can do research and see what other jobs have these responsibilities, what are they getting paid? What are their titles? Crystal Carter: I had a situation where they hired a bunch of people who were the same job role as me, same pay as me or whatever, and then they had me train all of them and I was like, no. Carolyn Lyden: I had a friend, a very dear friend of mine recently that her company hired somebody. I think they're getting ready to... They were a startup and now they're growing beyond startup phase. And they hired somebody who's now a senior VP of whatever. And she got laid off and they were like, "Oh, before you go, will you tell us how you did everything?" And I was like, "Do not fucking tell them anything." They fired you. You don't have to train them on... Crystal Carter: No. Carolyn Lyden: How that works. I was like, throw up deuces and leave. Crystal Carter: Here's my invoice for my time, my freelance, which is double what you paid me before. Thank you. Carolyn Lyden: Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Or here's how you do it, but it's all the wrong advice. Carolyn Lyden: I mean, you're more devious than I am. I would just be like, I don't work here anymore, so sayonara suckers. Mordy Oberstein: Speaking of sayonara, before we start to sign off, here's a good pivot, where can people find you to learn more about whatever it is you post about on social media, which is not SEO? Carolyn Lyden: Yeah, I am on Twitter @CarolynLyden. I recently had to start protecting my tweets because random bros were rude. But feel free to follow, and I will approve you if you're not a meanie. And then, I don't know, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I don't do anything on LinkedIn, but... Mordy Oberstein: Did everybody really do anything on LinkedIn other than just post random stuff? Myself included. Crystal Carter: No, everyone's thrilled. People are thrilled on LinkedIn. Mordy Oberstein: I'm thrilled that you're excited and congrats on your new apple pie that you bought. Carolyn Lyden: Oh yes, please. I'm a pumpkin pie person, not apple. Mordy Oberstein: I'm all pie. Carolyn Lyden: I how I feel about hot fruit. You know? Mordy Oberstein: All right. Crystal Carter: Okay. Pecan pie, though. Pecan pie. Mordy Oberstein: Pecan pie, key lime pie, custard pie, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, blueberry pie, pineapple pie. Carolyn Lyden: No, no, no, no, no. Those are hot fruits. Mordy Oberstein: What? Cherry pie? Carolyn Lyden: Cherry pie is hot fruit. Crystal Carter: What about pineapple on pizza? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, obviously with the … Carolyn Lyden: I'm not mad at it. I mean, I would eat it. Crystal Carter: It's hot fruit and tomato and garlic. Carolyn Lyden: Well, that's valid. Crystal Carter: Combination. Carolyn Lyden: Listen, when somebody offered me a piece of pizza once and it had pineapple on it, I wasn't going to say no. Like if Mordy was like, "I baked this apple pie with love in my heart," I wouldn't be like, "Fuck that." I would just eat his apple pie. But I would not make- Mordy Oberstein: Throw it out behind my back. Carolyn Lyden: But if someone was like, "Carolyn, make a pie or make a pizza," I wouldn't do hot fruit on them. I'm not a jerk. I would eat someone else's if they offered it to me. Mordy Oberstein: That's a hot take on the hot fruit thing in pie. Carolyn Lyden: I mean, listen, maybe I am a jerk. I don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Well, you clearly have no taste in pie. Carolyn Lyden: No, I don't. That's okay. Mordy Oberstein: All right. Thanks Carolyn Lyden: I mean, of all the desserts, I wouldn't choose pie, but yeah. You're welcome. Happy to talk about pie anytime. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, cheesecake though? Carolyn Lyden: I hope that everyone here gets their slice of the pie. Mordy Oberstein: Wait, before I say goodbye... Oh, that's good. That's good. But you don't put cherries on cheesecake? Carolyn Lyden: No. Crystal Carter: But those cold fruit. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but pie doesn't have to be hot. You wait for the pie of cool down. It's not hot anymore. Carolyn Lyden: But you have to make the fruit hot to make it a pie. Mordy Oberstein: But if you put it in the fridge, it's not hot anymore. It's cold cherries. Carolyn Lyden: But it's mushed. Mordy Oberstein: So the mushing is also a problem now. Carolyn Lyden: Yes. I have texture issues. This is why I say all the time that eating is annoying. I wish I did not. Crystal Carter: Are you team Huel? Are you somebody who's just about Huel? Carolyn Lyden: No, I don't do Huel, but if I could just consume nutrition via liquid, that would be awesome. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, we're off the rails. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Follow on social media. Put the money in your bank account, everybody. Carolyn Lyden: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Kaching. Mordy Oberstein: All right, so thanks so much again, Carolyn. Make sure you give her a big follow on social media. But now you might be wondering, "What about me? I don't have a salary. What money advice do you have for me? Help me line my pockets." Not to worry friends, we have a special guest to help make sure that your pitch to your clients turns into Benjamins. And if you're in-house, by the way, how to pitch a product to your boss, same kind of thing. Anyway, welcome to the show, Nick Leroy as we move across the funnel frontier. Hey Nick, how's it going? Nick Leroy: Hey, Mordy and Crystal. How are you doing? Mordy Oberstein: Good. You're fresh off an overtime win that you barely pulled out, but- Nick Leroy: Hey, we take all victories that we can get here. It's just like Google SERPs. We don't complain or ask questions, we just take the win. Mordy Oberstein: They asked Mike Tomlin, the coach of the Steelers, after one of the games, "How do you rate the offense?" He goes, "W." Nick Leroy: I like it. That's exactly how we're working on the Vikings front is it's not sexy, this is no Patriots offense like that. Patriots of old, I should say. Crystal Carter: For those of you who are tuning in from outside of the United States, they are talking about American football, which is not to be confused with football, which Americans refer to as soccer. And yes, go team. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, sorry about that. I'm rooting for you, Nick. Nick, before we get started, pitch. What do you got? SEO Jobs. SEO for lunch. Nick Leroy Consulting. Nick Leroy: Yeah, I'm working on a whole bunch of things. So real quick, my pitch. Hi, I'm Nick Leroy. I am a freelance SEO consultant. I have been doing this for about five years. Previous to that I had been agency-side. So if you're looking for a fractional director of SEO or just even some advisor work, check me out nickleroy.com or Nick Leroy Consulting is my company. If you want to stay up for some SEO updates, I have a weekly email, SEOforlunch.com. And last but not least, where we're going to chat probably more, is SEOjobs.com. We finally have an alternative to the evil Indeed and LinkedIn job posts. No more are we going to be typing in SEO and getting a JavaScript developer with one little data point that says "SEO a bonus". So check out SEOjobs.com as well. Mordy Oberstein: Nice. Love all of it. So you're the right person to tap into. We're talking, "Hey, okay, client came, they asked me to draw something up, I have a pitch. How do you get them to sign the dotted line and open up the wallet?" Nick Leroy: So that's a fantastic question and I'm going to- Mordy Oberstein: Thank you. I thought of it myself. Nick Leroy: Oh no you didn't. We know Crystal force-fed it to you. There's no way you came up with that good of a question. Crystal Carter: It was my idea. Nick Leroy: Exactly. It's all Crystal. So my only asterisk to this is I'm never going to use "it depends" officially, but it's going to be different for every single type of company. Me as an individual consultant, I only need a handful of clients at any point in time. Whereas if you're a mega agency, you're probably signing daily or weekly what I take on for an entire year. So my personal experience when it comes to selling is, and I am going to make salespeople just like shudder in saying this, is I'm almost the anti-sales guy. I'm trying to convince everybody why they shouldn't go with me. Because for me, I am in a unique position where because I can only take on so many clients, making sure that it's a really good fit, they have a really good appetite for buying into SEO is there as well as just the resources. So I'm interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing me. And what it is it's self-preservation. Again, I had mentioned earlier that I had done agency SEO for 10 years prior to going to my own. And I think all of us know what it's like to be handed a client and be like, "Great, they signed last week. Go do SEO." And you're like, "With what?" It's like you just don't see the vision. So I realize that's a very long answer to it, but for me, the biggest headline or H1 as some people would say, is literally interview your clients just as much as they are you because I find that it builds a lot of trust and it shows that what that relationship looks like on day one versus jumping into a conversation simply saying, "Give me, give me, give me." Crystal Carter: When I was working agency-side, we would kind of do this during the audit process. And audit is fairly straightforward, but what we'd find was in the conversations with them, if I was like, "Oh, can I get access to this? Oh, can you share this data with me? Oh, who's the best person to speak to in your team about that?" Like the kinds of information you might need from the team. During that process, really that's when you're seeing what it would be like to work with this person over the long term. And that also, you talked about resources, which is so important when you're talking about what you'll be able to get over the line when you're pitching, like when you're talking to them and they're like, "Oh, we don't have somebody who does that. I've been doing all of that for the whole time." And you're like okay. And then they're like, "Oh, we have another agency that works on that part for us." And it's like okay, that's interesting as well. So when you're trying to pitch what will be relevant for them, taking that time to get to know them well will make a big, big difference. And as you said when you said what resources, you will pitch a different solution for somebody who has in-house implementation teams. Like let's say they have a bunch of marketing executives that can just crack on and you can just give them a list and be like, "Update these pages, change these links, do that." And they're like, "Great, wonderful," and they can crack on. Whereas if it's one person who... If it's like owner-operator or something, you would give them a different thing. You might give them a list of consultants that can help them to do the implementation for instance. But absolutely. Getting to know them should be core to how you're pitching. And the trust part is great as well, because even if you're interviewing for a job, the person that asks the good questions back, that's the person where you're like oh, they were paying attention. Oh, they actually care because they asked good questions. Mordy Oberstein: That's the beauty of the negative marketing thing, right? Sorry. You're building trust like, "Hey, I'm not going to take your money. I'm not going to jump right into this. Let's make sure it's a good fit," actually and counterintuitively in a way builds that trust. So I like that. Nick Leroy: Oh, absolutely. And the thing that's crazy too is the amount of times I've told people like SEO is not going to be a fit for you. It's amazing. You can also make people champions for your brand. All of a sudden they're the ones that are commenting on your posts or sharing your name for other people. And it's simply because you could have taken the easy 1,000, 5,000, $10,000 a month for however long they're willing to let it go to ultimately fail, which doesn't make you look good or them. Or you can kind of win them over as an individual, a super fan if you will, up front, which yes, doesn't always pay the bills, but I have found that typically doing the right thing in that aspect pays dividends tenfold down the line. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah. People will know you're a stand-up guy, and they'll also know that when you actually do recommend them, that you genuinely mean it. You're not just saying, "Yeah, yeah, you definitely need to have this brand new thing on your website and stuff. You definitely need to implement this," I don't know, chat box feature or something. "That will help you drive leads, and I'm going to charge you this much for it or something." They'll trust your recommendations and also trust that you're not wasting their time. Because as you said, time is money. For you, you also don't want to be wasting your time with people who maybe it's not the best fit for them, maybe they'll be unhappy because the results won't be what they expect because it's not a good fit for them. Like you said, SEO isn't always the best fit at every business stage. And so if they're unhappy then unhappy clients are stressful clients. Like they're calling you... Right? Nick Leroy: Well, and as cliche as it sounds, Crystal, it's like for me, again, speaking that... You know, I'm working with maybe four or five clients at most, and I'm looking to truly be a partner. And of those clients, I have two of them that have been with me for four years out of the five years I've been freelance now. And that last point you made about a not very stressful engagement. These are the people that I'm riding the roller coasters with, and they are bought in. And it's a lot easier to maintain and keep existing clients happy that are bought in and have resources than it is to turn over new clients that are just going to sit there for six months and then be like, "We don't get SEO. You know, it's snake oil. We're out." Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's really the whole problem with the whole getting them to sign the deal, put their name on the bottom line, whatever it is. That whole question is a faulty premise. I mean it's good for podcasting, it's good for radio, but it's a long process. It's a relationship. It's a whole build. It's a whole lead-up. It's a whole slow burn until you finally land the client. It doesn't happen in one shot with this "sign on the dotted line", which I think again is the problem with the premise of that question is it makes it seem like it's an instantaneous one-time thing, no problem. Nick Leroy: So Mordy and Crystal real quick, you'll appreciate this. And I don't actually mean this as a plug, even though it will inadvertently be. But we are in a situation, no surprise to you guys, where there are a lot of really good salespeople that can sell anything they want. And our industry has gotten a little bit muddied because of that. So what I have done is I actually created an advisor services where I have CEOs reaching out to me. And I'll just use, for example, I have one that recently reached out to me and said, "Nick, I just inherited this team, this company. I'm the brand new CEO. I'm paying $18,000 a month for SEO agency services, but I have no clue what the heck they're doing and I just genuinely don't engage well with them. And we have nobody internally now that can basically gauge whether we're getting the value or not." So my service is I'm coming in and being an advisor. And the first thing I did to build trust is I told the CEO to her face, I was like, "I would love to help you. $18,000 is a big investment, so you should have high expectations, but also realize while there's as much of a chance of me calling these individuals out for maybe not doing as great of work as they could, it may very well be your team is not executing on your part of the agreement." So I was like, "As long as you're okay in a situation for me to say your kid is ugly, you have to allow for that." And I've always kind of pitched it as almost like an insurance policy. I hate that it has to exist, but this is where we are in our industry, is people are able to sell dreams and then they try to execute with checkbox SEO, which does not work today like it did five years ago. So now I am trying to keep a fairly low retainer just to be able to come in and be the true advocate or brand champion for SEO, and unfortunately it just means holding other people accountable. Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's definitely the case. And again, this goes back to when you're pitching and when you're thinking about how much it's going to cost and how much the lift is on your site, you need to know are they able to do the thing? So if it's an $18,000 retainer or something, if it's the case that every month, let's say... Because sometimes in SEO as an agency, you don't even have access to the CMS. You're making recommendations, you're looking at documentation, you're looking at all that sort of stuff, you're making recommendations, but sometimes they don't implement. And sometimes they need the dev to implement or sometimes you need the team to implement. So if you have the case where this person's like, "Oh, the SEO team is not doing any good," like you said, if they're also not implementing, then when you're pitching in terms of the bottom line for them and whether or not the ROI is there, you also need to understand whether or not they're willing to invest on their side as well. So, so, so important. And I've definitely seen that. And also sometimes the alignment is incorrect. So sometimes maybe the SEO is going for traffic or downloads or whatever, but maybe the CEO actually wants a different outcome. So sometimes it's just that no one's told the SEO that this is the important thing we need to be driving people towards. Maybe they're just doing their best, and maybe that needs to be moved along as well. So when you're thinking about the pitching and you're thinking about the ROI and how it's going to be valuable, it's definitely good making sure that they align as well. Nick Leroy: Yeah, and it's funny Crystal, because actually right now I have two advising clients, and it's each side of the spectrum. One is just making sure that the agency is doing great work and guiding them, getting the most for what they're being paid. And then the other side, they have an internal SEO team where some of the leadership just maybe don't have the right expectations. So I am being the guy that's just not afraid to speak the truth and tell them what they don't want to hear, but it's really championing that team because they're just going in circles so it just goes back to what you're saying. Mordy Oberstein: That's kind of what I feel it means to be a consultant, right? You're coming in and you're telling them what they need to know that they don't see. Nick Leroy: Exactly. No, and unfortunately it requires having the conversations that are uncomfortable. I mean, the amount of CMOs and CEOs that I've had to say, "Your expectations are completely irrational or for the budgets that you're doing," and it's like just help them contextualize. It's not about being a jerk. It's just you don't know what you don't know. And if someone in a CMO or a CEO role has so many hats that they're wearing, I don't even expect them to know everything about SEO. That's my job to help them understand. Mordy Oberstein: Let's say people don't know where to follow you and they want to know where to follow you. How could they know? Nick Leroy: Yeah, how could they know? They could do a Google search and check me out on Twitter, X, or I just joined Bluesky so- Mordy Oberstein: That's the new hot thing. Bluesky. Nick Leroy: Yeah, exactly. And I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, so definitely follow me there. Nick Leroy SEO on LinkedIn. Crystal Carter: They should also join your awesome newsletter, SEO for Lunch. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Come on Nick. Nick Leroy: Yeah, look at that. See, look at that. I'll just have Crystal and Mordy promote me. They do a better job than I do. Mordy Oberstein: Look for Nick out there on social media. Check out SEOjobs.com and SEOforlunch.com and Nick Leroy Consulting. Sorry I'm confusing all your URLs together. Nick Leroy: Thank you guys. I love talking about careers and freelancing and making money and spending money. Who doesn't? So definitely looking forward to chatting with you guys more as well as anybody else in the industry. Mordy Oberstein: Cha-ching. Catch you next time, Nick. Once again, thank you so much, Nick. Make sure you give Nick a big subscribe on SEO for Lunch, check out SEO Jobs and Nick Leroy's own consulting. So much Nick, but check out all of it, please. Crystal Carter: There's some great stuff. He also has a great webinar over on the Wix Partners channel where he talks about lots of the things he was covering about qualifying leads and making sure that clients are ready for that and stuff. So he gets into that in a lot of detail, so highly recommend checking out that deep cut. Mordy Oberstein: Absolutely. You know who also talks a lot? Crystal Carter: Who's that? Mordy Oberstein: Barry. Barry talks a lot. He's been talking for 21 years. As we're recording this, we're coming right off the 21st anniversary of SEroundtable.com. Barry, that's a lot of talking. A lot of passionate talking from Barry Schwartz. Crystal Carter: So much, so much. I listened to a podcast with him and the team from Google and they were talking about how he started RustyBrick when he was 14 years old. Little Barry Schwartz. Mordy Oberstein: Did he have the goatee back then? Do you think he had the goatee? Crystal Carter: I don't know, but I feel like rust accumulates over time, so maybe he was just a regular brick then. Maybe that was before he became- Mordy Oberstein: He was like a regular brick. Crystal Carter: ... the RustyBrick. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but by the time 20 years from now, he'll become a crusty brick. You know, I once had a fake social account called Crusty Brick. Crystal Carter: That tracks. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I tried to get some engagement on it, but it didn't take, I don't know why. But it's Crusty Brick. Anyway. Crystal Carter: There we go. Bring it back. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Anyway, here's the real RustyBrick with some... Well, it's me covering him with some snappy SEO news. Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. I got a juicy one for you, but I'm going to make you wait for it. For the not so juicy one, from Search Engine Journal from Matt said the LinkedIn report reveals most in-demand marketing skills. LinkedIn released a whole report. I wouldn't say a whole report. It's not like it's a huge deep dive. It's basically a couple of paragraphs and an infographic, but one of the things they showed was that marketing-related job postings on LinkedIn increased by 76% year over year. Yeah. We're back baby. Okay, next up from Search Engine Roundtable, from the Barry Schwartz, Google Search quality rater guidelines gain 11 new pages. I have not read all 11 new pages, and I highly doubt I will. I will wait for people to summarize them so I can read them. Thank you, Lily Ray. On Thursday the 23rd of January, Google updated the Quality rater guidelines PDF document. Barry says the last time this was updated was back in March of 2024, so that's 10 months ago. Barry did the math. I didn't. So if that math is wrong, blame Barry. What's changed? Barry writes that Google changed the page level quality lowest and low sections, and that was to better line with Google's web policies. We've seen a lot of change in Google's web spam policies. We've seen a lot of changes in the web spam policies over the last year. I'm looking at you, Parasite SEO. Okay. They also expanded on guidance related to assessing minor interpretations and intents and minor changes throughout, Barry says, updated rating ranges, removed outdated examples, fixed typos. Huh? Fixed typos. That's strange. Okay, and last but not least, and here's the doozy. From the Dan D. Goodwin, man of integrity and character. HubSpot's SEO collapse, what went wrong and why? So basically, the SEO community has been abuzz with HubSpot, who was once the gold standard of content, getting crushed, absolutely crushed on the Google SERP. They've lost a ton. I wrote it in a LinkedIn post, they lost all of their search traffic. I meant that hyperbolically, if you read that post, like, "They didn't lose everything, Mordy." They went from 13.5 million organic hits or traffic hits from organic search to 8.6 million. It's a huge drop-off. That data is per Semrush, by the way. Everyone and everyone in SEO are losing their minds about this for various reasons. I don't want to dig into the mudslinging that's going on. I really don't like that. It actually does really bother me personally. I know people are also slinging mud. I wasn't referring to slinging mud at HubSpot. I was referring to other mud slinging, which I don't like. Why would you want to throw mud? It's icky. It's gooey. It's gross. Throw a snowball. Snowballs don't hurt and they're fun. Anywho, there's been a lot of mud slinging also or stone throwing at HubSpot. "This is what they get for doing this and what they get for doing that," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I also don't think that's super mature. You could look at what HubSpot did and learn lessons from it. I don't think people at HubSpot were like, "Yeah, let's ruin the internet with garbage content." I'm not even saying their content was garbage. What I do say, and it ties into my post that I wrote, I'll link to that in the show notes with the show out in the Wix Studio SEO Hub about brand being first and brand being primary, that if you don't have strong brand identity, you might end up kind of all over the place. You might end up not being focused or targeting the right audience, and it might impact the overall quality of your content. I know this is an SEO podcast and saying this is heresy, but if you lead with an SEO-first content strategy, it inevitably leads to a decaying quality, it inevitably leads to a decay in topical focus, and it inevitably... If I say inevitably one more time, I'm going to lose my tongue, inevitably causes you to lose your focus audience. What's happened because, and I think it's kind of the real cause, is that it's worked for so long, companies have to double down that SEO-first content strategy. So I don't blame anybody. I want to say this. I don't know what happened behind the scenes at HubSpot. I don't work for Hub Spot. I have no clue. We're all kind of just speculating. With that, and I'm not talking about HubSpot in this case necessarily, because again, I don't know what happened behind the scenes at Hub Spot. What I do know is this idea of a SEO content-first strategy is slowly decaying. It's something I recently talked about on an SCJ webinar also. You have to have a brand-first strategy and fit the SEO content into that because again, you can't escape this reality of the content quality decay, the content audience decay, the content topical focus decay. It's inevitably what happens. So I urge you to take a different kind of focus because maybe it seems like Google is really catching up here. Also, it would be really nice if Google were to just come out and say, "We're really catching up here," so we don't have to sit here and speculate on the SERP'S Up podcast in the snappy news. Barry's not actually crusty. He comes off as a little crusty, but he's actually not. Crystal Carter: No, he's all right. And he also has a limited amount of time that he likes to engage with folks at conferences. So he came to Brighton SEO San Diego for one day. He was there for one day. He flew in and flew out on the same day from New York to San Diego. Mordy Oberstein: And then he showed up by the next morning on no sleep for It's New. Like me and him recorded It's New, which you should also check out if you're listening to this. It's our daily SEO. Crystal Carter: Yes, do that, do that. Great tips. Mordy Oberstein: And he wasn't crusty about it at all. He was happy. Crystal Carter: No he was happy- Mordy Oberstein: Well, happy by Barry standards. Crystal Carter: He was happy because he was able to go back home. That's why he was happy. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway, make sure you check out our It's New series with Barry and Greg Finn Mondays through Thursdays right here on the Wix Studio SEO Hub, and on the RustyBrick YouTube channel, which brings us to our follower of the week, which this week is Zoe Ashbridge, who has been a former guest on this very podcast. Crystal Carter: Yes, Zoe is fantastic. So he has a great TikTok account where she talks about- Mordy Oberstein: What? What's TikTok? Crystal Carter: TikTok. Mordy Oberstein: TikTok. Crystal Carter: Yes. It's a place where they make clocks. No, I'm kidding. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, really? Crystal Carter: So she has a great TikTok account where she talks about freelancing and her freelance journey, and she talks about money. She talks about money and how you get paid from clients, how you navigate that whole situation. She's really, really frank and really, really clear about it. And cannot shout enough, if you're going on that journey, if you're getting into the freelance space, if you're setting up your own shop, then go and check out Zoe's TikTok account. So follow her on TikTok. That's our follow of the week. I think she might be our first TikTok follow of the week. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I got to make sure to put a TikTok profile in the show notes. I'm going to mess that up. All right. Crystal Carter: I know. Okay. It's fine. Let me see if I can- Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm making a note right now in the show notes, my show notes, not the actual official show notes. Those are not released yet to- Crystal Carter: Yeah, so she's @ZoeFreelanceSEO. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, show notes. Zoe. I got to go to TikTok. Ah, that's going to be difficult for me. Okay. I'll do it for you, Zoe. To be frank, it'll be hard for me. By the way, I never understood that. Is like frank this very direct person who is always like no facade with Frank? He's Frank. You get the real deal from Frank. Why don't you say like, "Yeah, to be Tom," no, but it's to be frank. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. It's also like, "Bear with me." Why do I have to be a bear? And I think the bear with me is spelled bear, B-E-A-R, like I think it is. Mordy Oberstein: Because maybe originally everyone was dressing up in bear suits, like "bear with me", and everyone's dancing in bear suits. Crystal Carter: Maybe. Mordy Oberstein: Everyone bear with me now. Crystal Carter: I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's bear with me like B-E-A-R, and I don't wait for bears. If I see a bear, I'm running. I'm sorry. I'm not waiting. Mordy Oberstein: To be frank, I really need you to bear with me here. I don't want to be Frank, by the way. To be frank, I know some Franks, and the one in my mind that I'm envisioning, I do not want to be Frank. Sorry, Frank. Crystal Carter: The Frank I'm thinking of is Frank Sinatra. He was all right, I think. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know if I want to be Frank Sinatra. I mean, I want to have his fame and fortune. I don't know if I want to actually be him. Does that make sense? Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: He was a little rough around the edges, and his liver seemed to have issues. Crystal Carter: Okay. That's- Mordy Oberstein: On that happy note, thanks for listening to this SERP'S Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week as we dive into your inbox with a look at how email marketing impacts SEO in 2025. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and our SEO course at the Wix Studio 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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Massive news in the SEO world on this special edition podcast! Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter give their impressions of Google I/O 2023 to deliver the inaugural SERP’s Up SEO Podcast BONUS episode. Google bounces back with its AI capabilities as a search engine. Taking a hard look at all the changes soon to come in search, Mordy and Crystal discuss their takes on the 2023 Google I/O conference while surveying what other notable SEOs had to say. Plus, the scary reality of AI, and some big changes in how Google rewards input with human ‘experience’. Dig into this exciting SEO news on this special BONUS episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back What’s up for SEO at Google I/O? Massive news in the SEO world on this special edition podcast! Wix’s Head of SEO Branding, Mordy Oberstein, and Head of SEO Communications, Crystal Carter give their impressions of Google I/O 2023 to deliver the inaugural SERP’s Up SEO Podcast BONUS episode. Google bounces back with its AI capabilities as a search engine. Taking a hard look at all the changes soon to come in search, Mordy and Crystal discuss their takes on the 2023 Google I/O conference while surveying what other notable SEOs had to say. Plus, the scary reality of AI, and some big changes in how Google rewards input with human ‘experience’. Dig into this exciting SEO news on this special BONUS episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Special episode | May 12, 2023 | 43 MIN 00:00 / 42:32 This week’s guests Google I/O Google I/O is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. The name "I/O" is taken from the number googol, with the "I" representing the "1" in googol and the "O" representing the first "0" in the number. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to a special episode of 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 and boy are some things happening in SEO this time. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the always up to date on all of the things happening in SEO, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. Hello, Mordy Oberstein. I am here. I am here with some original organic material intelligence rather than artificial intelligence. I'm coming with some authentic intelligence, I hope anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I'm artificial, but I'm citing. Crystal Carter: Are you grounded? Is your intelligence grounded in something? Mordy Oberstein: No, definitely not grounded. Crystal Carter: No? It's not? Mordy Oberstein: That's an easy question. You want me to cite you references? Crystal Carter: So large language Mordy is what we've got. Mordy Oberstein: This is better than foul language Mordy, I guess. Crystal Carter: Oh no, that's every other day of the week. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can subscribe to our newsletter, search light over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. And where you can now utilize our headless CMS. Crystal Carter: So excited about the headless. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Mordy Oberstein: We've lost our heads. Crystal Carter: Lost our heads, but gained a friend. We gained a friend in Netlify. Just like launching with Netlify, but also get involved with your GitHub, like it's super exciting. Very exciting. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Now, if this is your first time tuning into the SERP's Up podcast, this is a bonus episode of the SERP's Up podcast. SERP's Up podcast usually, typically, comes out each week on Wednesdays. We have all sorts of wonderful guests, from John Mueller to Barry Schwarz to Cindy Crumb. Fabulous guests, fabulous topics. Check it out. But this episode is a very, very special episode because Google I/O 2023 was upon us and it left us with some impressions. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, there's a lot to talk about and I think it's a really good example of them coming back from their previous conference experience. So they had a conference in February. Mordy Oberstein: In Paris. Crystal Carter: In Paris, Google in Paris, and it was less than optimal for them, if I can say that. And I think that this is the conference that I think they wish they could have had then. And I think that it's been a real good redemption for them to be able to come out and really show what they can do in terms of AI and where they're planning to go in terms of search. Mordy Oberstein: In Star Trek terms, this is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan after that disaster of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Just for the people who speak Star Trek, that's what it is. I don't know why every episode now, we always default back to Star Trek. I have no idea. I'm not even watching Star Trek at the moment. Crystal Carter: Resistance is futile. Mordy Oberstein: Link, nice. Good way to phrase that. Wait, so I think what we're going to try to do in this particular episode is run through I think some of the larger AI themes that we saw and then dive into obviously how it's going to impact search and kind of get a consensus and a roundup from the wider SEO community. So I'll kick this off. I was blown away by the AI ability to answer emails and to heavily handedly modify images. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And it scared the crap out of me, I'm going to be honest. Crystal Carter: I think that there's a lot of some of the familiar tools that people have gotten used to in the generative AI space of creating text, creating images and things like that. I think what Google has in this particular thing is an audience that's already engaged with a lot of their products and they are already so integrated into our lives and how we use the internet and how we create content, how we edit content, how we update content. So the idea that when you're in Google Slides and they demoed this, in Google Slides you can sort of say, "I would like to add in a picture of this," I mean, that is solving a pain point that so many people have had. When you're making a deck or you're trying to do a presentation and you don't have an illustration, but you need one so that people aren't staring at a blank page or a wall of text, it's solving a really real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: That was brilliant. I think one of the things you and I cry about every once in a while is trying to find things in Gmail threads. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: But now you don't need to do it. It will find it. I thought that's brilliant. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think using the AI is information retrieval within their products, fabulous idea. What scared me is how do you know what's real at this point? And when I'm saying that I am not putting this on the tech providers, I kind of feel like they're just giving us what we want. I am putting this on humanity. Are we OK with things not being real? And then how do we handle that? And I'll give you an example from what they showed yesterday, yesterday from the day we're recording this, from Google I/O 2023. When they gave the example from Gmail, the scenario was you wanted a refund from a flight that you canceled, something like that, and you gave Gmail a prompt to write you an email and reply back to the answer that the airline gave you. And you can now expand, so not now, you will be able to expand on that answer. Say, "Hey, Gmail, make it longer. I feel like if this is a longer, more forceful email, I'll get the refund." And if you notice what the prompt returned was, "I am a loyal customer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give me my refund." How do you know? Maybe I'm not a loyal customer. How did you know that? And are we OK with this? "Yeah. All right. Google will return that. I'm a loyal customer, it'll probably work. Let's just go with that." Is nothing real anymore? And the images, you're manipulating it and then it never actually happened that way. How do you know what's real? And that to me is scary. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So I think that we're kind of entering a space sort of now as well. And I think somebody writes something and you're like, "Did you write that though?" If somebody posts a picture and it's like, "Did you take that though?" And I think AI has been in our space for a long time, so on in Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok, there are tons of filters and people are going around. I have a cousin who whenever she posts anything on Facebook, there's like a million filters, I have no idea what her face looks like anymore because she always has so many filters on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And so we've were like, "Oh my God, you look so young." It's like you look have a young person's filter, but they will completely change the bone structure of your face. And we've been in that space for a long time now. So one of the sections of I/O was James Manyika was talking about some of the guardrails that they had for helping us manage this reality. And he was saying that they're planning to add in and about this image panel as a guardrail and also giving meta tags for people to declare that something is an AI generated image. I think that these are great tools. My question is how many people are going to actually use them for these things? Mordy Oberstein: And that's sort of the problem. And I'm sort of summarizing a lot of sentiment that I saw out there. I know Kavi Kardos was interacting on Twitter a lot about this. She said, "This is my takeaway too. I feel like I'm the old man in the room." Because I said I feel like I'm the old man in the room. Do we not care what's real anymore as humanity? Jamar Ramos was jumping in there, he hit a line, "Yeah and I understand how loaded the phrase do our own research is." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But I think the person who summed it up best to me was Blake DeMond from Rickety Rue who said a quote from Edward Wilson, I don't know who that is by the way, "The real problem with humanity is the following, we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God-like technology and it is terrifically dangerous and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall." That's from 2009. But it's a great way to sum this up because you can literally fake things and no one will know the difference. And I don't think we care. Crystal Carter: But I hate writing emails Mordy. I just... Mordy Oberstein: I'm OK with it writing the prompt. Crystal Carter: I think that I'm just saying that. I agree with all of those caveats. I think the challenge that we're facing though is that the technology is so, like they said, God-like technology. The technology is incredible. And so I think that we are going to be seeing more of this. And also there's that sort of singularity theory, which basically, if you think about where we are now compared to where we were when sort of ChatGPT kind of broke back in the autumn, miles, miles streaks ahead. We've moved forward so much, search has changed so much and the way we create technology and the way we create content and things has changed so much in just those few months. If you think about that compared to the rest of the web before, it's been a much, much bigger thing. So I think that it's true that these are challenging conversations, but I think we're going to have to keep having them. And I think that this is one of the reasons why Google's putting so much emphasis on experience, why they've added that experience caveat. But I think also, you say what's real, people lie on those emails all the time, like when they're trying to get, but anyway. Mordy Oberstein: The AI is just doing what we want it to do, which is lie, cheat and steal. Crystal Carter: So this is the other thing. So when you get generative images, it comes back, it's like a funhouse mirror kind of hodgepodge of various different things that it's seen. And this tends to be what you see on AI. I was talking about this, Garrett Sussman had a space which is on Twitter as well, you can play that recording. There's a few people talking about Google I/O hot takes there. And yeah, one of the troubles is that the models are based on what's on the web. So if what's on the web has some less than stellar content or opinions, then that's what we're going to get reflected back to us for, I think, there was somebody who was talking about Midjourney. Midjourney does a lot of, if you look up doctor on Midjourney, then you'll get a man. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Natalie Slater did a lot of this. Crystal Carter: Right. So she was looking at all of the things. Mordy Oberstein: Engineer and it's all white men. Crystal Carter: Right. And so you get all these sorts of things coming through and that's a reflection of what's been on the web before. So no, it's not great, but it's also a reflection of the work that we as humans also need to do because the models are trained on what we had. But that's the existential things. Let's look into some of the additional. Mordy Oberstein: Let's go to Search. You brought up the helpful content update, I really want to get into that a lot because I think Google fired a shot across the bow kind of thing. But let's just first talk about does the functionality, in case you haven't seen what happened or what Google announced, so Bard itself is, which I would equate Bard to ChatGPT and that ecosystem, it's a separate environment. There are links being more interspersed into it now. It's now open for all, but then there's Search itself. And that looked, I thought, amazing. That looked amazing. So in certain cases, Google will return an AI prompt back to you. They said they won't do it for YMYL, so health, finance, where the information, if the AI's hallucinating, you will die. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That's not going to have an AI response. You'll have your initial summary. There won't be citations like you have in Bing, but there will be little cards of websites that you can go to. So it's a little bit more visual in a way. And then you can refine the questions. And what I thought was super, super cool and I stand corrected, I thought we were getting a whole bunch of things that were not going to make me happy about Search because I am a curmudgeon fundamentally. What we got back has literally been asking for for two, three years. You can expand the AI response that Google will give you into a deeper dive. What it'll do is it'll break down the answer that it gave and it will essentially cite along the way. So if it says, you ask, "Where's a great place to go on vacation?" And it starts talking about if you have kids and you're going on vacation, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. When you expand the chat feature, it'll take that chunk and show you results about places to go on vacation with kids. And if in the next sentence talks about if you're going in the wintertime, it'll then show you a bunch of things about going on vacation in the wintertime. What it lets you do is A, give you the opportunity to see more organic links. What it really does is is that it breaks down that topic so well. So if you ask, "Was Michael Jordan a good basketball player?" And you get all different aspects of Michael Jordan and his career, it'll break that down for you and then give you links to explore more about that particular subtopic within the topic of Michael Jordan, which is amazing. It'll let you explore topics, it'll let you explore subtopics and it'll give you the links in order to do it. I thought it was awesome. Crystal Carter: I mean, this is Google achieving their goals. So they say that their goal is to organize the world's information and to make it as accessible to as many people as possible. And that's what they say their goal is. And this is them working to achieve that. And I think that this is something that works really well for introductions to topics, for instance. When I think about how I use ChatGPT, my best to use for ChatGPT is Googling rules for games. So George Wynn, the editor of the Wix SEO Hub, very kindly gifted me a set of Magic: The Gathering cards and Magic: The Gathering has a lot of complicated rules. I was trying to play this with my kid and I did a turn and I was like, "Oh, I think my gargoyle or my guide can play." And my kid says, "No, he has summoning sickness and he can't do that and he can't do this. " And I tried to look it up online and there's all these massive posts of 3,000 words of how to do the whole thing of Magic: The Gathering and stuff. And I'm like I don't need to know every single thing about it, I just need to know can I play my turn. Right? So I can say in Magic: The Gathering for instance, can I do this with this card. And they can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's some links," some links, I'm like, "OK, but if it's like this, can I do that?" And then it can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and you can do this." And if my kid who can be very suspicious sometimes of these things, if he doesn't like what I've returned, we can click through to the link and then we can say OK, this is what it says on this website. And I think this will work with a lot of their systems because I think the way that they're looking at this is they're stacking a lot of their AI. So you'll be able to also go straight to the passage as well where it's quoted from most likely in order to verify the information. So they'll give you the summary, they'll give you the link and then you can verify it. And that is a really good workflow in terms of being able to corroborate information and see that you're getting the right information. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going to run through, I just pulled it up on the screen, the exact example that they gave about the query was what's better for a family with kids under three and a dog, Bryce Canyon or whatever it was, another national park. Because I can't see the rest of the query, it's like too long. And when you expand out from the AI answer, so first, the answer is both Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks are family friendly. Stop. It gives you a link that talks about the park being family friendly. Next part of the prompt that it returned, "Although both parks prohibit dogs and unpaved trails, Bryce Canyon is two paved trails that allow dogs." Stop. It now gives you a whole bunch of links about pets and the two locations. It's letting you explore these topics in such an easy way. Because one of the things as a user, I don't always know what I'm actually looking for. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me all the things I need to consider and then it's doing that and then it's giving me the links to do it. I think a couple of things about this from an SEO point of view, SEO tools, red alert. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Red Alert because the blue links are not, as Cindy Crum pointed out on Twitter, David pointed out on Twitter, Nati Elimelech, our Head of SEO at Wix in my DMs, about this, Idan Segal was out there on Twitter talking about CTR is going to go down. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: For the 10 traditional blue links. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And what's going to matter more, I think it will use the expanded feature here because I will, are being featured in here. Now how do you track that? You might be able to give a tool the various long tail keywords that are relevant to you. I guess the tool can then run the scrape by running the query, seeing what the AI returns and then saying what URLs are in there, I guess is possible. But imagine organic research where you're not specifically telling the tool what keywords you want to track, but you want to research a competitor and see what keywords are they ranking for and where are they ranking. How is a tool going to do that? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's going to be tricky. I think that tools are kind of probably need to think more about entities because large language models have entities at their core and their understanding of entities is a sort of core sense of it. I think if you think about something like Kleenex for instance. Kleenex is a brand which is synonymous with tissues for instance. So if you have a brand, so I think that from an SEO point of view, I think those links are going to be getting few and far between. If Google understands that your brand is synonymous with a certain entity, if your brand is essentially that entity, then I think that you're more likely to show as part of those things and more likely to show more frequently. So I think that maybe pools might need to start thinking about how they're able to show the correlation between a certain brand or a certain website and certain entities. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's really interesting. I feel like it's a topic I haven't spoken about in a long time and trying to remember when I really was into this, it was when the core updates kind of came out back in 2018, of looking at your website as an entity. Because your website is an entity because it has a unique identity. Because I think if you're looking at how is Google going to decide what to rank or what to show, I hate to use rank in this case, what to show when it breaks down its AI response into smaller parts and then shows links associated with that. It's very entity based. If they're talking about pets and national parks, if your website is viewed as an entity that discusses, that is about, that is identified as parks and pets, national parks and pets, that's what's going to be, I would say not the difference maker, I don't know the algorithm, but it's going to be one of the very, very focused things that I think Google's going to use in order to say this URL should be here because as an entity it makes sense for it to be here. Crystal Carter: Right. So on that Bryce Canyon one, the results that they showed were from the national parks, that's what showed. It was national parks and pet friendly was one that was showing. And so those are all… Mordy Oberstein: So having a niche identity is going to be really important. Especially because, I'm a little bit worried actually, so is Nati about this, that yes, I'm so happy there are URLs and there's so many opportunity for URLs, but I'm a little bit worried that the big branch or the big websites are going to be the ones that show there are not the niche sites. Although maybe if you have really strong niche identity, you will. Crystal Carter: I think that for going forward, the kinds of opportunities that I think that this will present is the kind of content, and we've seen this, we've seen this, so Lily Ray has reported on this a number of times. So we've seen this over the few of the last few years. Google's not that into dictionary websites, encyclopedia websites. If you're encyclopedia website and you're not Wikipedia, what are you doing? And I think that these LLMs are kind of covering a lot of that stuff. If you want to know what is gee butter or something and they'll be like, "Oh gee butter is a clarified butter that's blah blah blah, blah, blah," they'll tell you that and that information will be fairly accurate. It's also not that sensitive. You just kind of need to know what it is while you're, I don't know, cooking or something. But I think the opportunities will lie in doubling down on your entity, on your brand entity, your website entity, the entities that are within your business, et cetera. But also I think that, potentially, there are opportunities around new ideas and around staying ahead of the curve. So where people are going to need to go to drill down into what's going on, it's going to need to be new content. So the historic content might be super competitive because Google, and I've seen this with Bing, bing is relying on very high authority sources, content that's been indexed for years in order to ground some of their LLM responses. So I think that for newcomers, for smaller businesses, being cutting edge, being on top of new ideas is going to be something that's beneficial to them. So for instance, trending topics is something that's going to be something that's really useful because when things are trending, people are looking for what's going on, what is happening, why is this a thing, what is this new term? And I think we're going to have a lot of new things going on anyway. So I think that where people are able to capture new ideas, they're going to be able to show in that space if they're a smaller business. Mordy Oberstein: I think I want to get back to that more, about the smaller business and all of that, because I want to talk about the helpful content update, which I think it's one of the more under discussed themes of what came out of there. My personal opinion. But before we do that, there's one in terms of the AI chat experience that Google has, we're going to have on the SERP. So Aleyda Solis made a great point, "Interesting how Google is highlighting the new AI search experience for commercial transactional queries rather than informational ones." And I think what she's referring to is all of the stuff they showed about the bicycles. So it's bonkers. So if you're searching for something related to getting a new bicycle, Google's going to give you an answer. I don't know, what do I need to consider when I'm looking to buy a new bicycle? I'm going to give you a bunch of information and then it'll show you a bunch of products. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: In the chat that you can click on and see a panel about and click on and go to and buy. And I thought to myself, "Holy cow, that is brilliant." Because if you're Google, there's no way, in my personal opinion, that you're going to be able to compete with Amazon and take them head on. Right? I'm looking to buy a product, I default many, many times, sometimes not, many, many times to Amazon and I bypass the SERP altogether, which is a problem for Google. But if I can catch you while you're in the research phase, then I've got you and you don't need to necessarily stop, now go to Amazon, I already got you in the research phase where Amazon can't get you. And I thought that was brilliant. If I was Amazon, I'd be a little bit concerned seeing that. Crystal Carter: I think also particularly the bicycle one that they showed, it's got a hybrid of there's also some of the search results there. So they've got the summary of your key points, they've got some deep dive blog posts and things and they've got the products there. And it's a pretty nice UX as well. It's not too cluttered, it doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels helpful. And I think the other thing that it highlights, and I started seeing this a lot more around product things, is unique content around products. So in order for the bicycles to show in different ways, having unique content around these things will be useful. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because the layer of content they're showing is one level deeper than you would normally see for let's say a product description. Crystal Carter: And I think also the connection with Google Merchant here is going to be absolutely critical here. So they're using that as essentially a knowledge graph for products and that's really, really important. So for instance, they show one, it's like Avinton level two commuter bike and it's saying, "Oh, it's listed here and it's listed in seven other stores as well." So it's important to be on that. Mordy Oberstein: The importance of Google Merchant Center just increased a hundredfold. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. And it's super useful. And there's so many different ways, again, to define your entities and add structured data. They talked about structured data, they talked about being able to look at unstructured data as well when they're looking through content. And I think that they're kind of, after what happened in February and Bing came out very confident with their presentation. And I think Google's just like, "We have tons of bells and whistles. We've got lots of stuff," and they've put the full force of their AI might here behind this. And I think it'll be interesting to see. Mordy Oberstein: It's really interesting. But before we get into the, I want to round up some of the thoughts in the community. Before we do that though, I want to go back and touch on the helpful content update. By the way, if you haven't watched the keynote, we'll link to the keynote in the show notes of this episode. Also check out Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz, it's like an unbelievable amount of content that he produced very timely, in a very timely manner, going through all of the major changes. So definitely check out that. We'll link to a bunch of that in the show notes. And one of the articles that Barry wrote was, "Google to update helpful content system algorithm in the coming months. Google said its update will help it understand content created from a personal or expert point of view as part of the release for Google I/O." On the Google product blog, whatever you want to call it, there's a post, "Learn from others' experience with more perspectives on search." And at the bottom of that post, and the reason why I'm saying this, this is part of the official release at Google I/O, and I've never seen this before, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen them talk about an algorithm update as part of I/O. And they're right. I think it's like the second or third H2 on the page, how we help you find the expertise you need. And I'm just going to read it real quick, the first paragraph or two. "In addition to making it easier to find authentic perspectives, we're also improving how we rank results in search overall with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience." By the way, the fact that expertise and experience are linked is because expertise is linked to experience. They're not separate things. Anyway, "Last year, we launched a helpful content system to show more content made for people and less content made to attract clicks. In the coming months, we'll roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on Search. Helpful information can often live in unexpected or hard to find places," addressing my point from earlier, "a comment in a forum, a thread, a post on a little known blog," OK, good, we're going to see that, "on an article with unique expertise on a topic. Our helpful content ranking system will soon show more of these hidden gems on search, particularly when we think they'll improve the results." I kind of think this is a shot across the bow. It's a warning shot. OK? They're being far more specific about what they're trying to do with the helpful content than they ever been before, which is one difference to me. And also it's part of Google I/O, it's part of their official launch. You have to feel real confident in what you're about to do to announce it as a brand in that kind of way. So I think this is going to be legit and I think it's going to be impactful. I don't know if it's going to be one big update that's going to be, it might be a series of updates over time, but the net effect I think is going to be real and I think it's going to be legit. And if I could say, I think this whole time, back to your point like, "Oh, we looked at the Paris event link. Maybe Google's off its game." I think Google got off its game a little bit because Bing came out and had to respond to that. But I think if you take that little moment of time out, this entire time, Google has been playing three-dimensional chess with us. Go back to the product review update. What I think that they did there was they said, "OK," they knew the AI was coming because they were making the AI. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And they said, "OK, we need to figure out a way to handle this algorithmically." And they said, "OK, let's focus on one place on the internet where we can train ourselves to highlight expertise and experience in a very tangible way." What better place than product reviews where the actual firsthand experience is completely manifest in the content. It's not like an underlying theme, it's not latent or embedded. It's supposed to be actually manifest in the content itself and let's train ourselves on that. Crystal Carter: And also reviews, when people write reviews, it's full of all sorts of emotions and maybe might be good grammar, might not be the good grammar. It might be like, "This refrigerator sucks, it leaked and I didn't like it at all." Mordy Oberstein: It's the perfect place. It's the perfect close environment to train yourself on a particular thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And then what did Google do in April? It said, "Let's expand this. Let's go to all reviews. No more product review. It's review update." And now, and I called it, what's Google doing now? It's zooming out again and saying it's not just product and reviews, it's everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: And I think it's used a product review and now the review update in order to train itself so it could ultimately do this. I think Google knew they wanted to do this and they were training themselves the whole time for years. I think in 2021, the first product review, they came out, to do this, which is analyze content for experience and experience with expertise. Because it's one thing to say, "I went to Disneyland, it was fun." That experience has no value. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think the other thing that's interesting about that is that what I've seen when I look at reviews and pages, I've seen a couple of times where there was something that was reviewed and it was ranking, or one channel that was a review page and it was ranking and it didn't even have as many reviews as the other ones were below it. And I was like, 'Well, why is this? Why is this page? It's got fewer reviews." Then I looked at the reviews and the reviews were much more unique. The reviews there were much more nuanced, they had much more experience of actually interacting with that entity, with that actual thing. And I think the other thing is that I think we can think of experience as shorthand for human because we, in this space where everything's AI, the experience element is basically there was a human that touched this, there was a human that sat in this chair and said, "This chair is too small and I don't like it." Mordy Oberstein: It smelled weird. Crystal Carter: Right. Or I plugged this toy in and it was really noisy and it scared my cat. Mordy Oberstein: No AI is going to do that. Crystal Carter: They're not going to write that, but people who have cats want to know if the thing's going to be noisy. Mordy Oberstein: One of the pages I was looking at in my analysis on this February, 2023 product review update, they wrote, "Pro: Whatever, whatever. Con: It smelled funny out of the box." There's no way, either you completely made that up or you actually used it. So I think when Google says experience, it's interchangeable for AI, it's this code word. We don't want to say AI, so we're just going to say experience. Crystal Carter: Right. We're saying experience. So experience like we're saying this shows expertise, authority, trust and a human have something to do with this. And there's going to be, again, with YMYL things, it's going to be much more important that a human was involved with whatever was going on with, I don't know, that medicine or that particular tool or whatever that's to do with your money, your life, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason why they're mentioning in here, they're mentioning surfacing things from comments or from forums or from Reddit or from wherever is that's where humans are and that's where humans are speaking in a candid way, often unfiltered, often unedited. And I think that that's what they're trying to do. With regards to how you include that in your content, I think that's going to be an interesting thing, how we pull that in. The other thing that Google's doing, and they talked about this in Google Workspace, they're like, "Oh yeah, we're adding all these things so that you can just add a prompt and then it will write the essay for you. Or we're adding this thing so that you can take your notes and then format it." Mordy Oberstein: This is a cure to that disease, I think. Crystal Carter: Right. But I feel like people say, "Oh, can you find something that's 100% human written?" But I use Grammarly all the time and Grammarly... Mordy Oberstein: Right. 100%, well, I don't think, you can help me write it. I can write it, "Hey AI, make this better. Take out all of my weird syntax idiosyncrasies in my writing." Crystal Carter: But then it's less human. Mordy Oberstein: Well, in the case of my mind, let me better explain, I'm writing something that I want to be cold and generic. Crystal Carter: OK. Mordy Oberstein: And I am not good at writing cold and generic, so please do that for me. Whatever the use case actually is. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I can't imagine a time when you would ever write a thing that wasn't in your tone of voice. Mordy Oberstein: Right, see. So that's why I immediately thought of using AI to take my tone of voice out it of because maybe you don't want so much Mordy in your content. Crystal Carter: Everybody wants more Mordy, more Mordy-fication of their content. Mordy Oberstein: It converts. But I think you're right. I think it's going to change how we, I'm hoping it changes content fundamentally. For example, let's say you take a look, an SEO post. OK? How to do rank tracking. Crystal Carter: What is rank tracking? Mordy Oberstein: What is rank tracking? We talk about it in a vacuum. What I would like to see is, "What is rank tracking, blah, blah, blah?" And when I've done it, I've found that this did work or that didn't work or my clients or when we and then they and when we all... Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Actually, this brings me back to when I first had my kid, and you must have had this, you have children, and shout out to anybody who doesn't have children, but this is the experience that I found. What I found was that everybody had advice. People who had kids, people who didn't have kids, people who had kids 40 years ago or whatever. Everybody had advice for me. And I got very tired of advice from everybody about what I was doing, about whether I should, I don't know, let them cry, don't let them cry. I don't know, all the things. Eat this, don't eat that. Go to sleep here, go to sleep, all of that stuff. But what I did find was experience was useful. So whatever their experience was, if they were like, "Oh, when I had my kid, I would find that I could help them get to sleep if we did this, this or this." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I know exactly what you're saying. Crystal Carter: Do you know what I mean? Mordy Oberstein: I know exactly what you're saying. Yes. Crystal Carter: If I hear their experience, I can take whatever nuggets... Mordy Oberstein: I want out of it and it's not forced on me. Crystal Carter: Right. It's just their experience. Their experience cannot be false, it can't be wrong. It's just their experience. And so I can say, "OK, well from what you've said, I can discern that actually I wouldn't do it that way, but this could work for this or that could work for that." So maybe that's a Google is trying to do, is less advice and more experience. I could give you advice on how to do parasailing, I have never parasailed in my life, but I could give you advice on it based on something that I've read. But I can't give you any of my experience because I've never done that. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. There's a post on the Wix S O about this, not about this, I think it was Sophie Brandt who wrote about SEO reporting, I could be misremembering the exact post, but I think what she did was she went through in different scenarios and you could tell the scenarios that she came across. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I remember reading that post and being like, "I love this because it's different and it's hitting on a different level. It's hitting me in a different way." And I'm hoping that's where we all go in terms of content across the web. I think this is a good thing, net good thing. With that, it does bring up a lot of the E-A-T stuff and that was a wider consensus around what was happening in the SEO world. For example, John Luca for [inaudible 00:34:24] wrote, "So very hot takes. The fact that Google AI answers is presenting links above the fold, surely is important. That also means that everything we do to stand out according to the E-A-T principles is even more important now because we must suppose that the sites that Google considers the most expert with expertise, authority and trust are the ones that not only are going to rank better, but are going to be used as a source for the AI generated answer hence linked." That's a really interesting point. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think that we're going to see how that plays out in the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's an interesting point, you have to think what's the content that Google's basing the AI off of? You want to be that. I don't know how that works. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: As a concept, you want to be that. And Garrett Sussman chimed in with his hot takes, he wrote “keyword research is going to change, Entity research is the new keyword research. Crystal Carter: I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Everything depends, yes, we spoke about everything depends on when this replaces Google search and how there will be big problems when it's first rolled out, but they'll get it right. I think we both totally agree with that. And also, a good point, there's going to be problems when this rolls out. That's what happens when you release a new product. Crystal Carter: I mean, in the last few months, Google's been all over the place. There's been a lot of updates and there's a lot of changes where I've just been like, "What? Why is that?" Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And stuff. So I think there's a lot of new things coming in. There's a lot of new features coming in. And I think the pace at which it's happening means that search is going to be very, very, very dynamic right now. Mordy Oberstein: So hard. Crystal Carter: Very dynamic. And I think also from a wider space, if people are accessing less of that sort of informational intent via Search, if people are using more generative things, like asking chatbots, "Oh, I asked about my plant," I was like, "What's another name for a mother-in-law's tongue plant?" And they were like, "Oh, it's a spider plant or it's a vipers thing or whatever. "And I'm like, "Oh, OK." Now, normally... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it makes sense a mother-in-law's viper think. Crystal Carter: So that particular one, so I would normally have done that on a Google Search, but I did it on the Bard chat and I also asked it, "Oh, why are the leaves going brown?" Because I've killed this plant. I'm pretty sure I've killed this plant. I need help. And these are different. So as those searches change and people are needing different content. What I did find for that particular one, so I tested it on Bing, I asked that question on Bing, and what I found in the chat was that they were constantly referencing this same website. So I asked it, I was like, "What is this plant called? Why are the leaves wilting? Why are the leaves brown? Should I cut it?" And I kept getting the same website, was coming back and forth with the same thing. And that tells me that that website knows all about this plant and all about this drama that I'm having with this plant. And now I'm like, "OK, I can go to that website to get good information about this thing." So I think that understanding the entities and understanding the flow of information and the kinds, people who have done topic clusters that flow all the way through the user journey. And Jonas Sticklers done a good article on the SEO Hub about this as well, but people who have a good understanding of the customer journey of, "I have a plant. I have a problem with my plant. How do I fix this problem with my plant?" That sort of thing, that flow I think will still be valid. And understanding the entities that are related to those queries will help us to rank and to perform and go forward on the web. Mordy Oberstein: And look, there's going to be so much change. There's going to be so many things that you're going to have to think about in totally new ways. All this raises all sorts of new questions and how are things going to happen? It's going to be very, I think, confusing in the beginning. Before we spoke about SEO tools, I think that's going to fundamentally change in a lot of ways. I know on Twitter, Caitlin Hathaway was saying, "Very keen to see how SEO tools are going to track the new developments, including clickable boxes with images and citations using generative name AI. Also keen to see," check this out, " if Google Search Console will let us track follow-up questions to the queries." Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's a good question. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lily Ray was saying that it's important to remember that not all searches will spark an AI answer. So it might be the case that, and I know Semrush recently launched an extra feature that said that there were SERP features or how many SERP features there are on a particular query. So it might be that they count it as a SERP feature. So whether or not this particular keyword or this particular question triggers an AI response, and if it does trigger an AI response, that's something that you should be aware of. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And just there's so many questions, so many larger questions still have to be unanswered. Brian Freiesleben was saying very in to see Google's approach for noting AI generated content with metadata and watermarking, which Google mentioned they're going to do, will let you do in images, you brought up before the guardrails. Will Google make this bold in their search results? Will they require publishers to note this? Also, a good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I mean, is this something that we're going to need to add into some of our systems and stuff? So for instance, on Wix, we automatically add meta tags, are we going to need to add that as a meta tag, for instance, for people to update. Also, what counts as an AI modified image. If I make myself look a little bit younger, is that the same? What if I dye my hair in my AI image? That's definitely an AI image. But I don't know. Where is the line? Mordy Oberstein: Right. And I'm kind of adverse to the whole thing. Which by the way, Lily Ray up a great point. Google's announcing all these features, what if there's backlash? What if people don't like them? Will they use them? That's also still left to be unanswered. In the SEO space, Brandish we're saying very interesting. I wonder how they'll incorporate local results and how accurate they'll be. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's very interesting as well though because they talked about Chrome and how Chrome's going to be super personalized and all of that sort of stuff. And I think that they're going to be using personalized results potentially for some of these AI things as well. So potentially, they'll know more about where you are. And so for instance, if you say, "Where's the best place to get a taco?" It's no good you telling me that I can get a taco, that the best taco is in Santa Fe, New Mexico if I'm not in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So it's going to be interesting. And also from the AI point of view with regards to entities and with regards to reviews and with regards to demonstrating experience and all that sort of stuff, they are all over Google Maps. The other big takeaway from Google I/O was like that they're just doing tons of stuff on Google Maps. Google Maps, they're doing as much as they possibly can. It was a meta-fication of Google Maps. They were like, "Oh, look at this sort of AI thing." And I'm like, "What?" .. Mordy Oberstein: That's bonkers. Crystal Carter: So they have a lot of proprietary stuff within Google Maps. You put your content into your Google GBP profile and they have access to that, to understand it through the reviews that are left on GBP and they can access that when they're figuring out what things are, and people check in and people review and people do all of those sorts of things. So I will guess that Google's going to add a lot of AI to local. And I think that... Mordy Oberstein: Local. I think it's one of the better places for the AI actually. I want to get into it, but we promise ourselves, because we could go on for hours with this. We literally said, "OK, we have to cap this off at around 45 minutes," and we're just past 45 minutes. So if you want to hear more of our thoughts, find us on Twitter, I guess. Crystal Carter: Yes. Find us on Twitter and thank you to everybody who shared their hot takes on Twitter. Yeah, really happy to hear from everybody. Mordy Oberstein: It was one of those moments of there's so much going on, there's so much conversation and made Twitter enjoyable again for a few moments. Crystal Carter: Awe. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, y'all. You guys are great. Well, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. There are future episodes, our regular scheduled episodes are back next Wednesday. We're talking about Momentum and SEO with Erica Schneider. So if you want more SERP's Up awesomeness, well, go check out previous episodes and keep up with the podcast with our upcoming episodes released every Wednesday over 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 we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. If you like the podcast, don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time we see you, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Nati Elimelech Idan Segal Garrett Sussman Barry Schwartz Brian Freiesleben Lily Ray Aleyda Solis Caitlin Hathaway Gianluca Fiorelli Kavi Kardos Jamar Ramos Brandon Schmidt Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google i/o 2023 Keynote Google I/O Wix Headless The new Google search generative experience: Here’s what it looks like Google to update the helpful content system algorithm in the coming months Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Nati Elimelech Idan Segal Garrett Sussman Barry Schwartz Brian Freiesleben Lily Ray Aleyda Solis Caitlin Hathaway Gianluca Fiorelli Kavi Kardos Jamar Ramos Brandon Schmidt Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Google i/o 2023 Keynote Google I/O Wix Headless The new Google search generative experience: Here’s what it looks like Google to update the helpful content system algorithm in the coming months Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to a special episode of 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 and boy are some things happening in SEO this time. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Branding here at Wix and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the always up to date on all of the things happening in SEO, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Hello. Hello, Mordy Oberstein. I am here. I am here with some original organic material intelligence rather than artificial intelligence. I'm coming with some authentic intelligence, I hope anyway. Mordy Oberstein: I'm artificial, but I'm citing. Crystal Carter: Are you grounded? Is your intelligence grounded in something? Mordy Oberstein: No, definitely not grounded. Crystal Carter: No? It's not? Mordy Oberstein: That's an easy question. You want me to cite you references? Crystal Carter: So large language Mordy is what we've got. Mordy Oberstein: This is better than foul language Mordy, I guess. Crystal Carter: Oh no, that's every other day of the week. Mordy Oberstein: The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can subscribe to our newsletter, search light over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter. And where you can now utilize our headless CMS. Crystal Carter: So excited about the headless. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Crystal Carter: Oh, yes. Mordy Oberstein: We've lost our heads. Crystal Carter: Lost our heads, but gained a friend. We gained a friend in Netlify. Just like launching with Netlify, but also get involved with your GitHub, like it's super exciting. Very exciting. Mordy Oberstein: Check that out. Now, if this is your first time tuning into the SERP's Up podcast, this is a bonus episode of the SERP's Up podcast. SERP's Up podcast usually, typically, comes out each week on Wednesdays. We have all sorts of wonderful guests, from John Mueller to Barry Schwarz to Cindy Crumb. Fabulous guests, fabulous topics. Check it out. But this episode is a very, very special episode because Google I/O 2023 was upon us and it left us with some impressions. Crystal Carter: Oh yeah, there's a lot to talk about and I think it's a really good example of them coming back from their previous conference experience. So they had a conference in February. Mordy Oberstein: In Paris. Crystal Carter: In Paris, Google in Paris, and it was less than optimal for them, if I can say that. And I think that this is the conference that I think they wish they could have had then. And I think that it's been a real good redemption for them to be able to come out and really show what they can do in terms of AI and where they're planning to go in terms of search. Mordy Oberstein: In Star Trek terms, this is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan after that disaster of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Just for the people who speak Star Trek, that's what it is. I don't know why every episode now, we always default back to Star Trek. I have no idea. I'm not even watching Star Trek at the moment. Crystal Carter: Resistance is futile. Mordy Oberstein: Link, nice. Good way to phrase that. Wait, so I think what we're going to try to do in this particular episode is run through I think some of the larger AI themes that we saw and then dive into obviously how it's going to impact search and kind of get a consensus and a roundup from the wider SEO community. So I'll kick this off. I was blown away by the AI ability to answer emails and to heavily handedly modify images. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And it scared the crap out of me, I'm going to be honest. Crystal Carter: I think that there's a lot of some of the familiar tools that people have gotten used to in the generative AI space of creating text, creating images and things like that. I think what Google has in this particular thing is an audience that's already engaged with a lot of their products and they are already so integrated into our lives and how we use the internet and how we create content, how we edit content, how we update content. So the idea that when you're in Google Slides and they demoed this, in Google Slides you can sort of say, "I would like to add in a picture of this," I mean, that is solving a pain point that so many people have had. When you're making a deck or you're trying to do a presentation and you don't have an illustration, but you need one so that people aren't staring at a blank page or a wall of text, it's solving a really real challenge. Mordy Oberstein: That was brilliant. I think one of the things you and I cry about every once in a while is trying to find things in Gmail threads. Crystal Carter: Yes. Yes. Mordy Oberstein: But now you don't need to do it. It will find it. I thought that's brilliant. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think using the AI is information retrieval within their products, fabulous idea. What scared me is how do you know what's real at this point? And when I'm saying that I am not putting this on the tech providers, I kind of feel like they're just giving us what we want. I am putting this on humanity. Are we OK with things not being real? And then how do we handle that? And I'll give you an example from what they showed yesterday, yesterday from the day we're recording this, from Google I/O 2023. When they gave the example from Gmail, the scenario was you wanted a refund from a flight that you canceled, something like that, and you gave Gmail a prompt to write you an email and reply back to the answer that the airline gave you. And you can now expand, so not now, you will be able to expand on that answer. Say, "Hey, Gmail, make it longer. I feel like if this is a longer, more forceful email, I'll get the refund." And if you notice what the prompt returned was, "I am a loyal customer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Give me my refund." How do you know? Maybe I'm not a loyal customer. How did you know that? And are we OK with this? "Yeah. All right. Google will return that. I'm a loyal customer, it'll probably work. Let's just go with that." Is nothing real anymore? And the images, you're manipulating it and then it never actually happened that way. How do you know what's real? And that to me is scary. Crystal Carter: Yeah. So I think that we're kind of entering a space sort of now as well. And I think somebody writes something and you're like, "Did you write that though?" If somebody posts a picture and it's like, "Did you take that though?" And I think AI has been in our space for a long time, so on in Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok, there are tons of filters and people are going around. I have a cousin who whenever she posts anything on Facebook, there's like a million filters, I have no idea what her face looks like anymore because she always has so many filters on it. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: And so we've were like, "Oh my God, you look so young." It's like you look have a young person's filter, but they will completely change the bone structure of your face. And we've been in that space for a long time now. So one of the sections of I/O was James Manyika was talking about some of the guardrails that they had for helping us manage this reality. And he was saying that they're planning to add in and about this image panel as a guardrail and also giving meta tags for people to declare that something is an AI generated image. I think that these are great tools. My question is how many people are going to actually use them for these things? Mordy Oberstein: And that's sort of the problem. And I'm sort of summarizing a lot of sentiment that I saw out there. I know Kavi Kardos was interacting on Twitter a lot about this. She said, "This is my takeaway too. I feel like I'm the old man in the room." Because I said I feel like I'm the old man in the room. Do we not care what's real anymore as humanity? Jamar Ramos was jumping in there, he hit a line, "Yeah and I understand how loaded the phrase do our own research is." Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: But I think the person who summed it up best to me was Blake DeMond from Rickety Rue who said a quote from Edward Wilson, I don't know who that is by the way, "The real problem with humanity is the following, we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and God-like technology and it is terrifically dangerous and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall." That's from 2009. But it's a great way to sum this up because you can literally fake things and no one will know the difference. And I don't think we care. Crystal Carter: But I hate writing emails Mordy. I just... Mordy Oberstein: I'm OK with it writing the prompt. Crystal Carter: I think that I'm just saying that. I agree with all of those caveats. I think the challenge that we're facing though is that the technology is so, like they said, God-like technology. The technology is incredible. And so I think that we are going to be seeing more of this. And also there's that sort of singularity theory, which basically, if you think about where we are now compared to where we were when sort of ChatGPT kind of broke back in the autumn, miles, miles streaks ahead. We've moved forward so much, search has changed so much and the way we create technology and the way we create content and things has changed so much in just those few months. If you think about that compared to the rest of the web before, it's been a much, much bigger thing. So I think that it's true that these are challenging conversations, but I think we're going to have to keep having them. And I think that this is one of the reasons why Google's putting so much emphasis on experience, why they've added that experience caveat. But I think also, you say what's real, people lie on those emails all the time, like when they're trying to get, but anyway. Mordy Oberstein: The AI is just doing what we want it to do, which is lie, cheat and steal. Crystal Carter: So this is the other thing. So when you get generative images, it comes back, it's like a funhouse mirror kind of hodgepodge of various different things that it's seen. And this tends to be what you see on AI. I was talking about this, Garrett Sussman had a space which is on Twitter as well, you can play that recording. There's a few people talking about Google I/O hot takes there. And yeah, one of the troubles is that the models are based on what's on the web. So if what's on the web has some less than stellar content or opinions, then that's what we're going to get reflected back to us for, I think, there was somebody who was talking about Midjourney. Midjourney does a lot of, if you look up doctor on Midjourney, then you'll get a man. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, Natalie Slater did a lot of this. Crystal Carter: Right. So she was looking at all of the things. Mordy Oberstein: Engineer and it's all white men. Crystal Carter: Right. And so you get all these sorts of things coming through and that's a reflection of what's been on the web before. So no, it's not great, but it's also a reflection of the work that we as humans also need to do because the models are trained on what we had. But that's the existential things. Let's look into some of the additional. Mordy Oberstein: Let's go to Search. You brought up the helpful content update, I really want to get into that a lot because I think Google fired a shot across the bow kind of thing. But let's just first talk about does the functionality, in case you haven't seen what happened or what Google announced, so Bard itself is, which I would equate Bard to ChatGPT and that ecosystem, it's a separate environment. There are links being more interspersed into it now. It's now open for all, but then there's Search itself. And that looked, I thought, amazing. That looked amazing. So in certain cases, Google will return an AI prompt back to you. They said they won't do it for YMYL, so health, finance, where the information, if the AI's hallucinating, you will die. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That's not going to have an AI response. You'll have your initial summary. There won't be citations like you have in Bing, but there will be little cards of websites that you can go to. So it's a little bit more visual in a way. And then you can refine the questions. And what I thought was super, super cool and I stand corrected, I thought we were getting a whole bunch of things that were not going to make me happy about Search because I am a curmudgeon fundamentally. What we got back has literally been asking for for two, three years. You can expand the AI response that Google will give you into a deeper dive. What it'll do is it'll break down the answer that it gave and it will essentially cite along the way. So if it says, you ask, "Where's a great place to go on vacation?" And it starts talking about if you have kids and you're going on vacation, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. When you expand the chat feature, it'll take that chunk and show you results about places to go on vacation with kids. And if in the next sentence talks about if you're going in the wintertime, it'll then show you a bunch of things about going on vacation in the wintertime. What it lets you do is A, give you the opportunity to see more organic links. What it really does is is that it breaks down that topic so well. So if you ask, "Was Michael Jordan a good basketball player?" And you get all different aspects of Michael Jordan and his career, it'll break that down for you and then give you links to explore more about that particular subtopic within the topic of Michael Jordan, which is amazing. It'll let you explore topics, it'll let you explore subtopics and it'll give you the links in order to do it. I thought it was awesome. Crystal Carter: I mean, this is Google achieving their goals. So they say that their goal is to organize the world's information and to make it as accessible to as many people as possible. And that's what they say their goal is. And this is them working to achieve that. And I think that this is something that works really well for introductions to topics, for instance. When I think about how I use ChatGPT, my best to use for ChatGPT is Googling rules for games. So George Wynn, the editor of the Wix SEO Hub, very kindly gifted me a set of Magic: The Gathering cards and Magic: The Gathering has a lot of complicated rules. I was trying to play this with my kid and I did a turn and I was like, "Oh, I think my gargoyle or my guide can play." And my kid says, "No, he has summoning sickness and he can't do that and he can't do this. " And I tried to look it up online and there's all these massive posts of 3,000 words of how to do the whole thing of Magic: The Gathering and stuff. And I'm like I don't need to know every single thing about it, I just need to know can I play my turn. Right? So I can say in Magic: The Gathering for instance, can I do this with this card. And they can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's some links," some links, I'm like, "OK, but if it's like this, can I do that?" And then it can go, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and you can do this." And if my kid who can be very suspicious sometimes of these things, if he doesn't like what I've returned, we can click through to the link and then we can say OK, this is what it says on this website. And I think this will work with a lot of their systems because I think the way that they're looking at this is they're stacking a lot of their AI. So you'll be able to also go straight to the passage as well where it's quoted from most likely in order to verify the information. So they'll give you the summary, they'll give you the link and then you can verify it. And that is a really good workflow in terms of being able to corroborate information and see that you're getting the right information. Mordy Oberstein: So I'm going to run through, I just pulled it up on the screen, the exact example that they gave about the query was what's better for a family with kids under three and a dog, Bryce Canyon or whatever it was, another national park. Because I can't see the rest of the query, it's like too long. And when you expand out from the AI answer, so first, the answer is both Bryce Canyon and Arches National Parks are family friendly. Stop. It gives you a link that talks about the park being family friendly. Next part of the prompt that it returned, "Although both parks prohibit dogs and unpaved trails, Bryce Canyon is two paved trails that allow dogs." Stop. It now gives you a whole bunch of links about pets and the two locations. It's letting you explore these topics in such an easy way. Because one of the things as a user, I don't always know what I'm actually looking for. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Tell me all the things I need to consider and then it's doing that and then it's giving me the links to do it. I think a couple of things about this from an SEO point of view, SEO tools, red alert. Crystal Carter: Right. Right. Mordy Oberstein: Red Alert because the blue links are not, as Cindy Crum pointed out on Twitter, David pointed out on Twitter, Nati Elimelech, our Head of SEO at Wix in my DMs, about this, Idan Segal was out there on Twitter talking about CTR is going to go down. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: For the 10 traditional blue links. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And what's going to matter more, I think it will use the expanded feature here because I will, are being featured in here. Now how do you track that? You might be able to give a tool the various long tail keywords that are relevant to you. I guess the tool can then run the scrape by running the query, seeing what the AI returns and then saying what URLs are in there, I guess is possible. But imagine organic research where you're not specifically telling the tool what keywords you want to track, but you want to research a competitor and see what keywords are they ranking for and where are they ranking. How is a tool going to do that? Crystal Carter: Yeah, it's going to be tricky. I think that tools are kind of probably need to think more about entities because large language models have entities at their core and their understanding of entities is a sort of core sense of it. I think if you think about something like Kleenex for instance. Kleenex is a brand which is synonymous with tissues for instance. So if you have a brand, so I think that from an SEO point of view, I think those links are going to be getting few and far between. If Google understands that your brand is synonymous with a certain entity, if your brand is essentially that entity, then I think that you're more likely to show as part of those things and more likely to show more frequently. So I think that maybe pools might need to start thinking about how they're able to show the correlation between a certain brand or a certain website and certain entities. Mordy Oberstein: I think that's really interesting. I feel like it's a topic I haven't spoken about in a long time and trying to remember when I really was into this, it was when the core updates kind of came out back in 2018, of looking at your website as an entity. Because your website is an entity because it has a unique identity. Because I think if you're looking at how is Google going to decide what to rank or what to show, I hate to use rank in this case, what to show when it breaks down its AI response into smaller parts and then shows links associated with that. It's very entity based. If they're talking about pets and national parks, if your website is viewed as an entity that discusses, that is about, that is identified as parks and pets, national parks and pets, that's what's going to be, I would say not the difference maker, I don't know the algorithm, but it's going to be one of the very, very focused things that I think Google's going to use in order to say this URL should be here because as an entity it makes sense for it to be here. Crystal Carter: Right. So on that Bryce Canyon one, the results that they showed were from the national parks, that's what showed. It was national parks and pet friendly was one that was showing. And so those are all… Mordy Oberstein: So having a niche identity is going to be really important. Especially because, I'm a little bit worried actually, so is Nati about this, that yes, I'm so happy there are URLs and there's so many opportunity for URLs, but I'm a little bit worried that the big branch or the big websites are going to be the ones that show there are not the niche sites. Although maybe if you have really strong niche identity, you will. Crystal Carter: I think that for going forward, the kinds of opportunities that I think that this will present is the kind of content, and we've seen this, we've seen this, so Lily Ray has reported on this a number of times. So we've seen this over the few of the last few years. Google's not that into dictionary websites, encyclopedia websites. If you're encyclopedia website and you're not Wikipedia, what are you doing? And I think that these LLMs are kind of covering a lot of that stuff. If you want to know what is gee butter or something and they'll be like, "Oh gee butter is a clarified butter that's blah blah blah, blah, blah," they'll tell you that and that information will be fairly accurate. It's also not that sensitive. You just kind of need to know what it is while you're, I don't know, cooking or something. But I think the opportunities will lie in doubling down on your entity, on your brand entity, your website entity, the entities that are within your business, et cetera. But also I think that, potentially, there are opportunities around new ideas and around staying ahead of the curve. So where people are going to need to go to drill down into what's going on, it's going to need to be new content. So the historic content might be super competitive because Google, and I've seen this with Bing, bing is relying on very high authority sources, content that's been indexed for years in order to ground some of their LLM responses. So I think that for newcomers, for smaller businesses, being cutting edge, being on top of new ideas is going to be something that's beneficial to them. So for instance, trending topics is something that's going to be something that's really useful because when things are trending, people are looking for what's going on, what is happening, why is this a thing, what is this new term? And I think we're going to have a lot of new things going on anyway. So I think that where people are able to capture new ideas, they're going to be able to show in that space if they're a smaller business. Mordy Oberstein: I think I want to get back to that more, about the smaller business and all of that, because I want to talk about the helpful content update, which I think it's one of the more under discussed themes of what came out of there. My personal opinion. But before we do that, there's one in terms of the AI chat experience that Google has, we're going to have on the SERP. So Aleyda Solis made a great point, "Interesting how Google is highlighting the new AI search experience for commercial transactional queries rather than informational ones." And I think what she's referring to is all of the stuff they showed about the bicycles. So it's bonkers. So if you're searching for something related to getting a new bicycle, Google's going to give you an answer. I don't know, what do I need to consider when I'm looking to buy a new bicycle? I'm going to give you a bunch of information and then it'll show you a bunch of products. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: In the chat that you can click on and see a panel about and click on and go to and buy. And I thought to myself, "Holy cow, that is brilliant." Because if you're Google, there's no way, in my personal opinion, that you're going to be able to compete with Amazon and take them head on. Right? I'm looking to buy a product, I default many, many times, sometimes not, many, many times to Amazon and I bypass the SERP altogether, which is a problem for Google. But if I can catch you while you're in the research phase, then I've got you and you don't need to necessarily stop, now go to Amazon, I already got you in the research phase where Amazon can't get you. And I thought that was brilliant. If I was Amazon, I'd be a little bit concerned seeing that. Crystal Carter: I think also particularly the bicycle one that they showed, it's got a hybrid of there's also some of the search results there. So they've got the summary of your key points, they've got some deep dive blog posts and things and they've got the products there. And it's a pretty nice UX as well. It's not too cluttered, it doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels helpful. And I think the other thing that it highlights, and I started seeing this a lot more around product things, is unique content around products. So in order for the bicycles to show in different ways, having unique content around these things will be useful. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because the layer of content they're showing is one level deeper than you would normally see for let's say a product description. Crystal Carter: And I think also the connection with Google Merchant here is going to be absolutely critical here. So they're using that as essentially a knowledge graph for products and that's really, really important. So for instance, they show one, it's like Avinton level two commuter bike and it's saying, "Oh, it's listed here and it's listed in seven other stores as well." So it's important to be on that. Mordy Oberstein: The importance of Google Merchant Center just increased a hundredfold. Crystal Carter: Indeed, indeed. And it's super useful. And there's so many different ways, again, to define your entities and add structured data. They talked about structured data, they talked about being able to look at unstructured data as well when they're looking through content. And I think that they're kind of, after what happened in February and Bing came out very confident with their presentation. And I think Google's just like, "We have tons of bells and whistles. We've got lots of stuff," and they've put the full force of their AI might here behind this. And I think it'll be interesting to see. Mordy Oberstein: It's really interesting. But before we get into the, I want to round up some of the thoughts in the community. Before we do that though, I want to go back and touch on the helpful content update. By the way, if you haven't watched the keynote, we'll link to the keynote in the show notes of this episode. Also check out Search Engine Land, Barry Schwartz, it's like an unbelievable amount of content that he produced very timely, in a very timely manner, going through all of the major changes. So definitely check out that. We'll link to a bunch of that in the show notes. And one of the articles that Barry wrote was, "Google to update helpful content system algorithm in the coming months. Google said its update will help it understand content created from a personal or expert point of view as part of the release for Google I/O." On the Google product blog, whatever you want to call it, there's a post, "Learn from others' experience with more perspectives on search." And at the bottom of that post, and the reason why I'm saying this, this is part of the official release at Google I/O, and I've never seen this before, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen them talk about an algorithm update as part of I/O. And they're right. I think it's like the second or third H2 on the page, how we help you find the expertise you need. And I'm just going to read it real quick, the first paragraph or two. "In addition to making it easier to find authentic perspectives, we're also improving how we rank results in search overall with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience." By the way, the fact that expertise and experience are linked is because expertise is linked to experience. They're not separate things. Anyway, "Last year, we launched a helpful content system to show more content made for people and less content made to attract clicks. In the coming months, we'll roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on Search. Helpful information can often live in unexpected or hard to find places," addressing my point from earlier, "a comment in a forum, a thread, a post on a little known blog," OK, good, we're going to see that, "on an article with unique expertise on a topic. Our helpful content ranking system will soon show more of these hidden gems on search, particularly when we think they'll improve the results." I kind of think this is a shot across the bow. It's a warning shot. OK? They're being far more specific about what they're trying to do with the helpful content than they ever been before, which is one difference to me. And also it's part of Google I/O, it's part of their official launch. You have to feel real confident in what you're about to do to announce it as a brand in that kind of way. So I think this is going to be legit and I think it's going to be impactful. I don't know if it's going to be one big update that's going to be, it might be a series of updates over time, but the net effect I think is going to be real and I think it's going to be legit. And if I could say, I think this whole time, back to your point like, "Oh, we looked at the Paris event link. Maybe Google's off its game." I think Google got off its game a little bit because Bing came out and had to respond to that. But I think if you take that little moment of time out, this entire time, Google has been playing three-dimensional chess with us. Go back to the product review update. What I think that they did there was they said, "OK," they knew the AI was coming because they were making the AI. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And they said, "OK, we need to figure out a way to handle this algorithmically." And they said, "OK, let's focus on one place on the internet where we can train ourselves to highlight expertise and experience in a very tangible way." What better place than product reviews where the actual firsthand experience is completely manifest in the content. It's not like an underlying theme, it's not latent or embedded. It's supposed to be actually manifest in the content itself and let's train ourselves on that. Crystal Carter: And also reviews, when people write reviews, it's full of all sorts of emotions and maybe might be good grammar, might not be the good grammar. It might be like, "This refrigerator sucks, it leaked and I didn't like it at all." Mordy Oberstein: It's the perfect place. It's the perfect close environment to train yourself on a particular thing. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And then what did Google do in April? It said, "Let's expand this. Let's go to all reviews. No more product review. It's review update." And now, and I called it, what's Google doing now? It's zooming out again and saying it's not just product and reviews, it's everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: Everything. Crystal Carter: Everything. Mordy Oberstein: And I think it's used a product review and now the review update in order to train itself so it could ultimately do this. I think Google knew they wanted to do this and they were training themselves the whole time for years. I think in 2021, the first product review, they came out, to do this, which is analyze content for experience and experience with expertise. Because it's one thing to say, "I went to Disneyland, it was fun." That experience has no value. Crystal Carter: Right. So I think the other thing that's interesting about that is that what I've seen when I look at reviews and pages, I've seen a couple of times where there was something that was reviewed and it was ranking, or one channel that was a review page and it was ranking and it didn't even have as many reviews as the other ones were below it. And I was like, 'Well, why is this? Why is this page? It's got fewer reviews." Then I looked at the reviews and the reviews were much more unique. The reviews there were much more nuanced, they had much more experience of actually interacting with that entity, with that actual thing. And I think the other thing is that I think we can think of experience as shorthand for human because we, in this space where everything's AI, the experience element is basically there was a human that touched this, there was a human that sat in this chair and said, "This chair is too small and I don't like it." Mordy Oberstein: It smelled weird. Crystal Carter: Right. Or I plugged this toy in and it was really noisy and it scared my cat. Mordy Oberstein: No AI is going to do that. Crystal Carter: They're not going to write that, but people who have cats want to know if the thing's going to be noisy. Mordy Oberstein: One of the pages I was looking at in my analysis on this February, 2023 product review update, they wrote, "Pro: Whatever, whatever. Con: It smelled funny out of the box." There's no way, either you completely made that up or you actually used it. So I think when Google says experience, it's interchangeable for AI, it's this code word. We don't want to say AI, so we're just going to say experience. Crystal Carter: Right. We're saying experience. So experience like we're saying this shows expertise, authority, trust and a human have something to do with this. And there's going to be, again, with YMYL things, it's going to be much more important that a human was involved with whatever was going on with, I don't know, that medicine or that particular tool or whatever that's to do with your money, your life, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason why they're mentioning in here, they're mentioning surfacing things from comments or from forums or from Reddit or from wherever is that's where humans are and that's where humans are speaking in a candid way, often unfiltered, often unedited. And I think that that's what they're trying to do. With regards to how you include that in your content, I think that's going to be an interesting thing, how we pull that in. The other thing that Google's doing, and they talked about this in Google Workspace, they're like, "Oh yeah, we're adding all these things so that you can just add a prompt and then it will write the essay for you. Or we're adding this thing so that you can take your notes and then format it." Mordy Oberstein: This is a cure to that disease, I think. Crystal Carter: Right. But I feel like people say, "Oh, can you find something that's 100% human written?" But I use Grammarly all the time and Grammarly... Mordy Oberstein: Right. 100%, well, I don't think, you can help me write it. I can write it, "Hey AI, make this better. Take out all of my weird syntax idiosyncrasies in my writing." Crystal Carter: But then it's less human. Mordy Oberstein: Well, in the case of my mind, let me better explain, I'm writing something that I want to be cold and generic. Crystal Carter: OK. Mordy Oberstein: And I am not good at writing cold and generic, so please do that for me. Whatever the use case actually is. Crystal Carter: I don't know, I can't imagine a time when you would ever write a thing that wasn't in your tone of voice. Mordy Oberstein: Right, see. So that's why I immediately thought of using AI to take my tone of voice out it of because maybe you don't want so much Mordy in your content. Crystal Carter: Everybody wants more Mordy, more Mordy-fication of their content. Mordy Oberstein: It converts. But I think you're right. I think it's going to change how we, I'm hoping it changes content fundamentally. For example, let's say you take a look, an SEO post. OK? How to do rank tracking. Crystal Carter: What is rank tracking? Mordy Oberstein: What is rank tracking? We talk about it in a vacuum. What I would like to see is, "What is rank tracking, blah, blah, blah?" And when I've done it, I've found that this did work or that didn't work or my clients or when we and then they and when we all... Crystal Carter: Do you know what? Actually, this brings me back to when I first had my kid, and you must have had this, you have children, and shout out to anybody who doesn't have children, but this is the experience that I found. What I found was that everybody had advice. People who had kids, people who didn't have kids, people who had kids 40 years ago or whatever. Everybody had advice for me. And I got very tired of advice from everybody about what I was doing, about whether I should, I don't know, let them cry, don't let them cry. I don't know, all the things. Eat this, don't eat that. Go to sleep here, go to sleep, all of that stuff. But what I did find was experience was useful. So whatever their experience was, if they were like, "Oh, when I had my kid, I would find that I could help them get to sleep if we did this, this or this." Mordy Oberstein: Yes, I know exactly what you're saying. Crystal Carter: Do you know what I mean? Mordy Oberstein: I know exactly what you're saying. Yes. Crystal Carter: If I hear their experience, I can take whatever nuggets... Mordy Oberstein: I want out of it and it's not forced on me. Crystal Carter: Right. It's just their experience. Their experience cannot be false, it can't be wrong. It's just their experience. And so I can say, "OK, well from what you've said, I can discern that actually I wouldn't do it that way, but this could work for this or that could work for that." So maybe that's a Google is trying to do, is less advice and more experience. I could give you advice on how to do parasailing, I have never parasailed in my life, but I could give you advice on it based on something that I've read. But I can't give you any of my experience because I've never done that. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. There's a post on the Wix S O about this, not about this, I think it was Sophie Brandt who wrote about SEO reporting, I could be misremembering the exact post, but I think what she did was she went through in different scenarios and you could tell the scenarios that she came across. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: And I remember reading that post and being like, "I love this because it's different and it's hitting on a different level. It's hitting me in a different way." And I'm hoping that's where we all go in terms of content across the web. I think this is a good thing, net good thing. With that, it does bring up a lot of the E-A-T stuff and that was a wider consensus around what was happening in the SEO world. For example, John Luca for [inaudible 00:34:24] wrote, "So very hot takes. The fact that Google AI answers is presenting links above the fold, surely is important. That also means that everything we do to stand out according to the E-A-T principles is even more important now because we must suppose that the sites that Google considers the most expert with expertise, authority and trust are the ones that not only are going to rank better, but are going to be used as a source for the AI generated answer hence linked." That's a really interesting point. Crystal Carter: Absolutely. And I think that we're going to see how that plays out in the SERP. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And it's an interesting point, you have to think what's the content that Google's basing the AI off of? You want to be that. I don't know how that works. Crystal Carter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: As a concept, you want to be that. And Garrett Sussman chimed in with his hot takes, he wrote “keyword research is going to change, Entity research is the new keyword research. Crystal Carter: I agree. Mordy Oberstein: Everything depends, yes, we spoke about everything depends on when this replaces Google search and how there will be big problems when it's first rolled out, but they'll get it right. I think we both totally agree with that. And also, a good point, there's going to be problems when this rolls out. That's what happens when you release a new product. Crystal Carter: I mean, in the last few months, Google's been all over the place. There's been a lot of updates and there's a lot of changes where I've just been like, "What? Why is that?" Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: And stuff. So I think there's a lot of new things coming in. There's a lot of new features coming in. And I think the pace at which it's happening means that search is going to be very, very, very dynamic right now. Mordy Oberstein: So hard. Crystal Carter: Very dynamic. And I think also from a wider space, if people are accessing less of that sort of informational intent via Search, if people are using more generative things, like asking chatbots, "Oh, I asked about my plant," I was like, "What's another name for a mother-in-law's tongue plant?" And they were like, "Oh, it's a spider plant or it's a vipers thing or whatever. "And I'm like, "Oh, OK." Now, normally... Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, it makes sense a mother-in-law's viper think. Crystal Carter: So that particular one, so I would normally have done that on a Google Search, but I did it on the Bard chat and I also asked it, "Oh, why are the leaves going brown?" Because I've killed this plant. I'm pretty sure I've killed this plant. I need help. And these are different. So as those searches change and people are needing different content. What I did find for that particular one, so I tested it on Bing, I asked that question on Bing, and what I found in the chat was that they were constantly referencing this same website. So I asked it, I was like, "What is this plant called? Why are the leaves wilting? Why are the leaves brown? Should I cut it?" And I kept getting the same website, was coming back and forth with the same thing. And that tells me that that website knows all about this plant and all about this drama that I'm having with this plant. And now I'm like, "OK, I can go to that website to get good information about this thing." So I think that understanding the entities and understanding the flow of information and the kinds, people who have done topic clusters that flow all the way through the user journey. And Jonas Sticklers done a good article on the SEO Hub about this as well, but people who have a good understanding of the customer journey of, "I have a plant. I have a problem with my plant. How do I fix this problem with my plant?" That sort of thing, that flow I think will still be valid. And understanding the entities that are related to those queries will help us to rank and to perform and go forward on the web. Mordy Oberstein: And look, there's going to be so much change. There's going to be so many things that you're going to have to think about in totally new ways. All this raises all sorts of new questions and how are things going to happen? It's going to be very, I think, confusing in the beginning. Before we spoke about SEO tools, I think that's going to fundamentally change in a lot of ways. I know on Twitter, Caitlin Hathaway was saying, "Very keen to see how SEO tools are going to track the new developments, including clickable boxes with images and citations using generative name AI. Also keen to see," check this out, " if Google Search Console will let us track follow-up questions to the queries." Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's a good question. Mordy Oberstein: Right? Good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Lily Ray was saying that it's important to remember that not all searches will spark an AI answer. So it might be the case that, and I know Semrush recently launched an extra feature that said that there were SERP features or how many SERP features there are on a particular query. So it might be that they count it as a SERP feature. So whether or not this particular keyword or this particular question triggers an AI response, and if it does trigger an AI response, that's something that you should be aware of. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And just there's so many questions, so many larger questions still have to be unanswered. Brian Freiesleben was saying very in to see Google's approach for noting AI generated content with metadata and watermarking, which Google mentioned they're going to do, will let you do in images, you brought up before the guardrails. Will Google make this bold in their search results? Will they require publishers to note this? Also, a good question. Crystal Carter: Yeah. And I mean, is this something that we're going to need to add into some of our systems and stuff? So for instance, on Wix, we automatically add meta tags, are we going to need to add that as a meta tag, for instance, for people to update. Also, what counts as an AI modified image. If I make myself look a little bit younger, is that the same? What if I dye my hair in my AI image? That's definitely an AI image. But I don't know. Where is the line? Mordy Oberstein: Right. And I'm kind of adverse to the whole thing. Which by the way, Lily Ray up a great point. Google's announcing all these features, what if there's backlash? What if people don't like them? Will they use them? That's also still left to be unanswered. In the SEO space, Brandish we're saying very interesting. I wonder how they'll incorporate local results and how accurate they'll be. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's very interesting as well though because they talked about Chrome and how Chrome's going to be super personalized and all of that sort of stuff. And I think that they're going to be using personalized results potentially for some of these AI things as well. So potentially, they'll know more about where you are. And so for instance, if you say, "Where's the best place to get a taco?" It's no good you telling me that I can get a taco, that the best taco is in Santa Fe, New Mexico if I'm not in Santa Fe, New Mexico. So it's going to be interesting. And also from the AI point of view with regards to entities and with regards to reviews and with regards to demonstrating experience and all that sort of stuff, they are all over Google Maps. The other big takeaway from Google I/O was like that they're just doing tons of stuff on Google Maps. Google Maps, they're doing as much as they possibly can. It was a meta-fication of Google Maps. They were like, "Oh, look at this sort of AI thing." And I'm like, "What?" .. Mordy Oberstein: That's bonkers. Crystal Carter: So they have a lot of proprietary stuff within Google Maps. You put your content into your Google GBP profile and they have access to that, to understand it through the reviews that are left on GBP and they can access that when they're figuring out what things are, and people check in and people review and people do all of those sorts of things. So I will guess that Google's going to add a lot of AI to local. And I think that... Mordy Oberstein: Local. I think it's one of the better places for the AI actually. I want to get into it, but we promise ourselves, because we could go on for hours with this. We literally said, "OK, we have to cap this off at around 45 minutes," and we're just past 45 minutes. So if you want to hear more of our thoughts, find us on Twitter, I guess. Crystal Carter: Yes. Find us on Twitter and thank you to everybody who shared their hot takes on Twitter. Yeah, really happy to hear from everybody. Mordy Oberstein: It was one of those moments of there's so much going on, there's so much conversation and made Twitter enjoyable again for a few moments. Crystal Carter: Awe. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Crystal Carter: Nice. Mordy Oberstein: Thanks, y'all. You guys are great. Well, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. There are future episodes, our regular scheduled episodes are back next Wednesday. We're talking about Momentum and SEO with Erica Schneider. So if you want more SERP's Up awesomeness, well, go check out previous episodes and keep up with the podcast with our upcoming episodes released every Wednesday over 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 we have on the Wix SEO Learning, I bet you guessed it, at wix.com/seo/learn. If you like the podcast, don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time we see you, 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

Over 16 years in SEO, Jeremy Rivera has worked with literally hundreds of sites, small businesses, and enterprise level companies in dozens of industries. His focus is on ensuring companies get the best return on investment for their SEO campaign. Jeremy Rivera Founder of SEO Arcade Over 16 years in SEO, Jeremy Rivera has worked with literally hundreds of sites, small businesses, and enterprise level companies in dozens of industries. His focus is on ensuring companies get the best return on investment for their SEO campaign . Articles & Resources 12 Jan 2023 The ROI of SEO for small businesses 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

Get the knowledge you need to avoid falling for SEO falsehoods! We take common SEO myths head on! When it comes to SEO, misconceptions can wreak havoc on your strategies if you don’t know what sources are reliable. So, what are the common myths that need to be smashed? Tune in as Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter kick the door in on prevalent SEO myths. Move your clients beyond the falsehoods. Andi Jarvis joins the podcast to share how he convinces clients and others to break free from their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, see what Google has cooking with their Perspectives SERP feature and how it's changing user experience on the SERP. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast as we help you uncover SEO truths! Back Be gone SEO myths! Get the knowledge you need to avoid falling for SEO falsehoods! We take common SEO myths head on! When it comes to SEO, misconceptions can wreak havoc on your strategies if you don’t know what sources are reliable. So, what are the common myths that need to be smashed? Tune in as Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter kick the door in on prevalent SEO myths. Move your clients beyond the falsehoods. Andi Jarvis joins the podcast to share how he convinces clients and others to break free from their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, see what Google has cooking with their Perspectives SERP feature and how it's changing user experience on the SERP. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode of the SERP’s Up SEO podcast as we help you uncover SEO truths! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 55 | September 13, 2023 | 44 MIN 00:00 / 44:16 This week’s guests Andi Jarvis Andi is the Founder and Strategy Director of Eximo Marketing, a marketing strategy consultancy based in Belfast and Liverpool. Andi also hosts the Strategy Sessions podcast, a show that interviews some of the best marketers in the world. He holds an MSc in Marketing and the Marketing Week Mini MBA in Marketing. He also runs a fundraising project, Eximo & Friends with Barnardo’s, where marketers volunteer to provide consultations to small businesses in return for a donation to support refugees. You should also know that Andi likes to talk, at length, about: being a dad, his BBQ, rugby league, boxing and cricket 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 branding here at Wix, and I am joined by the always true, the always accurate, the never mythological head of SEO branding here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: What do you mean I'm mythological? I'm a mermaid. I didn't tell you I'm from- Mordy Oberstein: But you are real. Crystal Carter: ...mermaid mythology? Mordy Oberstein: You're the most real person I've ever met. Crystal Carter: I'm telling you, I'm a mermaid and I like to swim in the sea and it's amazing and it's sparkly and everything's good. Mordy Oberstein: Merman. To quote Zoolander, one of my favorite movies of all time. Crystal Carter: It was mermazing. Mordy Oberstein: So good. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also find your true SEO competitors with the SE ranking app inside of Wix. Look for it today inside of the Wix app market. Why do I say true SEO competitors as opposed to just SEO competitors? Because so much about what you hear about SEO is not true. Today, we are set to set the record straight. We are busting SEO myths like a backup dancer busts a move. Does word count matter? Are LSI keywords real? Do I really need strong DA? We're kicking in the door on these SEO myths and more. And we will be joined by the great Andi Jarvis who shares how he convinces clients and others to break free of their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, we'll dive into Google's perspectives feature to see how the search engine is trying to find accuracy and harmony on the SERP. Plus, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness across social media. So sit back as we take a saw to Pinocchio's nose of SEO lies as episode number 55 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find your SEO truth. Take a saw to that nose, Pinocchio. Your nose is coming off in this episode. Crystal Carter: Coming in hot. Mordy Oberstein: Liar. That little liar, Pinocchio. Crystal Carter: He's always making stuff up and acting like he's not going to get caught. You ain't slick, Pinocchio. We know what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: You know how you know he is a real boy? Because he's lying all the time. My kids always lie. Crystal Carter: Kids are like, "No, I didn't do that." I'm like, "It's obvious." Mordy Oberstein: "Did you eat the cookies?" "No, I didn't eat cookies. Crystal Carter: You're covered in cookie dust. You're covered in the residue. It's all over your hands. I know a story of someone who made up a baddy, a villain or something, who did all of their things. So they'd be like, "Oh, who ate all the cookies?" "Oh, it was Billy Butlin." "What?" He was this fictional person. Doesn't exist, but apparently gets up to all sorts of shenanigans. Mordy Oberstein: Lovely child. Crystal Carter: Lovely child. Mordy Oberstein: You know who else is full of shenanigans? A lot of the people talking about a lot of SEO stuff. SEO, for whatever reason. Whether it be just how SEO used to work back in the day and the notions that never evolved from that. For whatever reason, there's been this fostering of many SEO myths within the SEO sphere. We hear them all the time. People propagate them, Google ranks them. And we felt it was our duty to sit back, talk about, some of these more common SEO myths. I'll say this off the bat. We can never ever hit all of the SEO myths in one show because there are just too many. Crystal Carter: Right. So many. Mordy Oberstein: So many of them. And before we dive in, I want to thank one of our listeners. Brindle Blanca reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, I was wondering about content length. Is that a ranking factor?" And I'm like, "Oh, no. It's not a thing. In fact, Google just came out again for the 800th time and Barry Schwarz covered it on SEO Roundtable for the 800th time. How the length of your content is not an actual ranking factor. Here you go." And then she said, "Hey, it'd be great if we went through some of these myths on the podcast. I love your podcast. If you could go through some of the myths and break them down for us." I'm like, "That's an actual brilliant idea. We are going to do this episode." So now we are like a radio show. We take requests. Crystal Carter: First time caller, long time listener. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Ding. We appreciate you reaching out, Brindle. Loved the idea, so we're doing it right here, right now. Let's get into breaking down some mess here. Where do we start? I have a list here. Crystal Carter: You have got a list here. It's a big list. Mordy Oberstein: We'll start with word because that's how this whole episode got started. Based on word count. People think, for whatever reason, that Google looks at the number of... Now I just want to say things on the outset. If you believe some of these myths, and you're new to SEO or you're not an SEO, you are not to blame. Crystal Carter: Right. I was just going to say that actually. I think that SEOs can be forgiven, partially because Google doesn't tell everyone. Some people describe it, the ranking factors, as a bit of a black box sort of thing. And so it's a bit of a power vacuum, or a knowledge vacuum anyway, where you don't know all of the things. So people are looking at correlation and they're assuming a causation and things. So there are some people who deep dive into some of the patents that you know... Rest his soul, Bill Slosky spent a lot of time going through a lot of patents trying to figure out and unpack and reverse engineer a lot of that stuff, and I think that Glenn Gabe picked up a little bit of that mantle recently. But I think that's one of the reasons why some of these myths become more prevalent is because we don't have necessarily a gospel of all of these things. There is a good piece of documentation within the Google documentation about their ranking systems, but it doesn't necessarily go into every single detail of every single algorithm. And even today, as we're looking at how the SGE works in AI on Google. They've said. Sundar Pichai has said, "I don't know. I don't know all of the things that it does. It's AI." So it's working with new information, it's taking a new data, all of that sort of stuff. So some of it they know, some of they don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Every SEO who's been around for a long time will tell you this. When they first started in SEO, they're researching, reading blog posts, trying Googling, getting information, and you don't always know who to trust. We actually have an episode about how do you learn SEO, and how do you sift through bad SEO advice versus good SEO advice. We'll link to that in the show notes. And oftentimes you're reading articles that are... You don't realize they're not actual experts. Or they may be experts in one area of marketing, but talking about SEO and don't really understand SEO. For example, if you Google LSI keywords and SEO, a lot of the top ranking content are basically titles like LSI keywords, how to find and use them to improve your SEO. What are LSI keywords and do they help with SEO? They don't, and they're not a thing. And you who are new to SEO, or you're a business owner, or you're whoever you are listening to this podcast. Welcome. And you might be Googling LSI keywords in SEO. You see it, you've heard about them, and you're not necessarily getting results and saying... No, not a thing. So you are not to blame. I don't know who is and we don't care. What we do care about is breaking down the myth, so let's start with word count. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Many people have talked about this idea that Google's looking at your content. Let's say a blog post. And they're saying, "Oh, it's above 2000 keywords. It is good now because you checked the box. You've hit the number." And the truth is, and Google has said this many times, and Barry on the SEO Roundtable blog as covered it many times, there's no set number they're looking at. In fact, it varies. If I'm searching for how do I tie my shoe, I'm probably not looking for War and Peace. I just want a quick little snippet of "Hey." And that's probably what's going to rank. Who invented the tying of the shoe and the full history of tying of the shoe? I'm probably looking for a much longer piece of content. So it depends. Crystal Carter: Right. I've read the quality rater guidelines. They don't talk about that. They don't say, "You got it. Oh, everything has to be over 500 words. Everything has to be over this, that or the other." And John Mueller has said, and he said again, and he said many times. One quote that he has is, "From our point of view, the number of words on a page is not a quality factor and not a ranking factor. So just blindly adding more and more text to a page doesn't make it better. Be exact. John." Thanks, John. Mordy Oberstein: As Crystal mentioned to me before the show, we're going to get into a lot of pithy John Muellerisms on this episode. Crystal Carter: Some of my favorite moments from John. Completely honest, and he's completely right. We have pages on the hub, which we didn't necessarily intend to rank. We just have them. So we have a video collection for instance, just so it's easy for users to find them. And it literally just says how to do this, and there's a video, and there's a link to a larger article. We don't expect them to rank. Google's ranking them anyway. I can canoncalize them. Google's ranking anyway because they wanted to. And it's just because sometimes you don't need a big long thing. I saw one. My favorite, it was a featured snippet. I was talking to Darth Na on Twitter about this. And he was like, "Who's got a good example of a short one?" The best one I found when I was doing some research for a... It was a veterinarian's app, and I was looking at research of this. And a competitor of the company that I was researching for, they were ranking for do male cats have nipples? And this page was the ranking for them. Mordy Oberstein: Important question. Crystal Carter: Apparently lots of people are asking this question. They were ranking for it, getting tons of traffic, and I think it was under 200 words. I think a lot of times people will say, "Oh, it should be around 500 words for a blog." But part of that is that's how long it takes to cover that topic. If it's going to take you a little bit of time to actually cover a topic, well then yeah. You are going to need to actually do the work to cover the topic. If you can cover the topic in 250 words, cover the topic in 250 words. Do male cats have nipples? Yes or no or whatever it is. I can't remember what the answer was. Mordy Oberstein: I'll Google it now. Crystal Carter: But whatever it is, yes or no. And then maybe a little bit of explanation and keep it moving. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. So bottom line, word count is not a ranking factor. You should write the amount of words that you need to address what your audience wants out of your content. And that could be five words, it could be 5 million words. I don't know the answer, only you do. Let's move on to LSI Keywords. It's like the bane of a lot of SEO's existence. So LSI keywords are basically... Think of it like synonyms. So let's say my page is about air conditioning installation. So the idea of LSI keywords is that by having other words related to installation, like air conditioning repair, air conditioning maintenance, air conditioning... I don't know another word for that. Renovation. Crystal Carter: Or home cooling- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: ...or something like that. They're semantically relevant. Mordy Oberstein: HVAC repair, HVAC installation. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That Google will now have a more contextual understanding because of all these related, synonym keywords, and they'll understand that your page should rank for air conditioning repair. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Google has said, I don't know like a gazillion times, it's not a thing. Crystal Carter: So another funny... Mordy Oberstein: It's not a thing. I don't have anything better for you outside of the fact that LSI keywords or LSI has been around. Semantic indexing has been around since the '80s. Crystal Carter: Right. This is one that people got confused about. So people started calling it LSI keywords and things like that. And I think that this is something that people have gotten confused about because the idea of talking about not just the literal keywords, but things that are in the general vicinity of that. Mordy Oberstein: Topically related. Crystal Carter: Topically related. That is a good thing to do, and that is a... That will give you better writing. Will give the user a better reading experience. And I think they're essentially confusing it with semantic generally. Mordy Oberstein: Semantic. Crystal Carter: Semantically related content. So Semrush has a great article titled What are LSI Keywords and Why They Don't Matter. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So you do want to build topical relevance. Wait, let's talk English. You want to create context. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: And when you're writing for a user, a person, you want to have contextual knowledge imparted so they understand what you're talking about. So if you're talking about air conditioning repair, you might also talk about heating system repair because heating and air conditioners are topically related. If you're talking about tables, perhaps you want to talk about chairs because they're topically, semantically, contextually, related. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. These are going to make sense. If you're talking about a record player, you might also talk about music. These things make sense. They go together. Mordy Oberstein: You talk about Bob Dylan? You're going to talk about harmonicas. LSI keywords, not a thing. Crystal Carter: Not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: So if you see it out there, ignore it. Crystal Carter: And to quote John Mueller on this one, "There is no such thing as LSI keywords. Anyone who's telling you otherwise is mistaken. Sorry." Mordy Oberstein: Is he really sorry? Crystal Carter: I don't think he is. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think he's really sorry. I think sorry was sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I think that's a sorry, not sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Can we move on now to DA? Crystal Carter: DA? Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: DA and poor Moz. DA is a metric called domain authority that Moz, which is an SEO tool, created. And what it basically does, it's a score that tries to mimic how Google might perhaps understand how authoritative a website is. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It is not a metric that Google uses. It is a simulation based on their algorithms. Not Google's algorithms. Moz' algorithm and how they're trying to determine the balance of things like rankings and backlinks to say how authoritative is this website. Basically, it's a representation. If you go to a website and you're like, "Oh, wow, this is a really great website. They really know what they're talking about this topic." DA is a way for you to simulate understanding that without visiting a million websites. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's a shorthand. It's a helpful shorthand. It's something like... If you think about something like BMI. BMI is a nonsense metric. BMI is... They go, "You're this tall, you weigh this much, you are overweight and you're underweight and you are appropriate weight." Mordy Oberstein: Right. So Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day probably had a terrible BMI because he was so muscled up. Crystal Carter: Terrible BMI. Exactly. So it's a bit of a garbage metrics, but it is as a shorthand. As a helpful shorthand before you get into the details. It's a helpful shorthand to help you keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's a very top level kind of thing. And all the different SEO tools have their own version of it. Ahrefs has DR. Semrush has AS, which is authority score. So every tool has their own version of this, but what you'll generally see out there in the ether of SEO talk is DA. And people will say to you, "I would like to sell you high DA authority links." Crystal Carter: Right. And the thing about that is that... Another quote from John that it's a helpful metric. But to quote from John, "Google doesn't use it at all. Not at all." So it's really important to bear that in mind. And also, one of the things he points out in the... There's an SEO Roundtable article where he talks about it and well... Sorry, where someone's recording him talking about it. And we can guess who that is who's recording it. And when he is discussing it, he says, "Again, they all have different metrics. So you don't know exactly how Ahrefs is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Moz is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Semrush is measuring it." So maybe treat it in the same way as your BMI. Treat it as a tracker to track progress to see if there's some movement in how they're measuring it. So if you see it go up in whatever way, maybe that's a sign that good things are happening. If you see it stay the same, that could be a sign that things are changing. It could be the sign that things aren't changing. But one of the things that's really tricky about DA is that a lot of these tools have a really tricky way of measuring subdomains. So you can see someone who's using something like... I saw a soccer club. And there was a soccer club and they had signed up to, I don't know, soccerclub.com and they got their own little subsite as part of that. So it was amazingsoccerclub.soccerclub.com or whatever it is. I'm sure there's some website called soccerclub.com. Anyway, according to all of these tools, this tiny little soccer club had a DA of 97. Why? Because the domain of soccerclub.com, which has all of these other subdomains, has tons of back links from various different things across the domain. So sometimes... Mordy Oberstein: They're all very link heavy anyway. All of these. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So there's lots of different factors that can misconstrue how those things are. So don't stress yourself out about it. And I've heard Barry Schwartz talk about it before. When you're talking about getting backlinks and things. Don't necessarily worry about the DA of something. Mordy Oberstein: No, don't. It's all about relevance of the website to what you're doing. And not only the website or the webpage is linking to you. It's way more about relevance than it is about DA. Honestly, if you're an SEO professional and you're working with thousands of sites. You're looking at thousands of sites, and you'd really need a top level understanding real quick about what this website... Where are they at? Then DA is for you. If you're not that person, don't even think about it. Trust your gut when you go to a website. This looks like a good website to you, they're running good content, they're trustworthy, they're authoritative. That's probably way more effective than DA. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Chill. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, let's try this one. Big name websites always beat smaller niche websites. And there's a ton of myths around this one. There's myths within myths within myths around this one. One myth is that Google automatically ranks big name brands above smaller niche websites. Or another myth that falls under this umbrella is domain age is a ranking factor. How old your domain is. So if my domain is 1 million years old, 1 billion years old, it'll beat out Crystal's website because Crystal's website is only 1000 years old. Crystal Carter: Again, I think this is something that comes from a little bit of confusion. Because this goes back to page rank, which is one of Google's oldest algorithms, and it was very much linked to links. Mordy Oberstein: Links. Crystal Carter: So some of the earliest information about SEO will be links. Links are really important. Don't get me wrong, links are important. It's how... When Google crawls from one page, they'll find a link. They'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page. But it is not the only thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my gosh. It's like a myth within a myth within a myth. Wow, that's a lot of mythology. That's how you use the word mythology. I understand that. You understand that. Crystal Carter: And I think that it's very much something that is super valuable. Getting links is good, but it's not all about it. And it can definitely make a big difference. But part of that isn't just because of the link itself. Part of that can have to do with how often the page that you're getting the link from is being crawled. For instance, if you get a link from a news publisher. They're publishing hundreds of articles a day, they're going to be getting crawled really regularly. That means you're more likely to have your link be discovered, you're more likely to be seen by lots of people, you're more likely to have traffic come to your website. There's lots of things that are going to be a causation of getting that link. So it's super important, don't get me wrong. But it's not everything, Mordy Oberstein: No. And Google's talked about it more recently than not trying to downplay the importance of links. John Mueller's gone on record a bunch of times saying links are not the be all end all. Barry's covered SEO Roundtable a bunch of times that Google's downplaying. Google says, "Links are not as important as you think they are because of all of this." But going back to domain age, that is not a ranking factor. If you have a great website. And I think this comes about from something that does make sense a little bit. If you've got an amazing website. You sat there, you planned the whole website out, you wrote 4 million blog posts, and then you launched the website. It's going to take Google a little bit of time to realize that you have an amazing website. And a website that it's already familiar with. They're already familiar with it, so that's going to rank already. Meaning domain age is not a thing. In fact, Google said about that, "No, not a thing at all." What is a thing though is Google being familiar with the website, understanding the website, and trusting the website. So obviously a website that's around for a while has accrued trust. And if you're a new player on the block, Google doesn't know you yet. But once Google realizes that you have awesome toys at your house, Google's going to be over there all the time trying to hang out with you. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. So, yeah. There's a lot of, again, contributing factors on this. So you're going to have more links. They're going to have more data on the kinds of traffic that normally goes to your website because they've been sending traffic to your website for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years or something. They're going to know the kinds of questions that you're able to answer. They're going to know the kinds of content that you have on your page. Most of your pages will probably be indexed by the time they've gone through all of these many years of seeing your content. Things like that. They're also going to have a lot of things that are already stored in their cache. All of that sort of stuff is going to... There's lots of things that they already know that they can bring to the table. And I think that there's ways that new domains can definitely make a big splash, and sometimes that can include a mix of marketing activity, including other channels outside of organic. But another fantastic quote from John. Someone asked, "Does domain age still matter in today's SEO in comparison to domain versus subdomain?" And John Mueller said, "No, domain age helps nothing." It helps nothing. So I think it's just really important to remember that you've got every chance in the world. I posted recently that in tennis, you show up on the match and you've got just as much chance as the other person in winning. And recently at Wimbledon, somebody who was unseeded won the women's Wimbledon. And somebody who was not ranked number one, who went up against the number one ranking men's tennis player at Wimbledon, and won. If you've got good content, then there's no reason why your new content can't do well if you send lots of signals and make sure that Google knows. That has lots of ways of knowing what you're about and what you do and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, on the subdomains versus subfolder. You kind of alluded to it a second ago. We did an episode about that a little while ago. There's, again, too many myths to get into. There's a whole bunch of myths around that. Check out that episode. We'll link to it in the show notes. We also covered duplicated content penalties. That's also a myth on another episode. We'll link to that in the show notes. Let's do one more. Okay, let's do... This is one of my favorites. Low code to HTML ratio. Crystal Carter: Oh, no. Don't get him started. Mordy Oberstein: I see that all the time. I've been asked about this a gazillion times. Basically, a lot of the SEO tools, when they run an audit, they have a category or a warning called low code to HTML ratio. Meaning you give a lot of... Or is it low HTML to code ratio? I don't even know anymore. I think I got it backwards. It's basically saying you have a lot of code on the page, but not a lot of content. And Google will not rank you well. I've talked to John about this. It's not real. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: In fact, John has called on the SEO tools to please take that out. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think this is one of the things where when you... You need to use your brain. You need to use your noggin actually. Mordy Oberstein: Just because you added a bunch of JavaScript functionality to your page does not make it spam. Because that's where this myth comes from. Back in the day there was a lot of janky code added onto websites. I keep using that word because you've used it and I've love it, and I've stolen it, and I've made it my own, Crystal. My word now. You can use it, but it's my word. Crystal Carter: You jacked it. Mordy Oberstein: I did. I'll mail you a check. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Back in the day, people would add all sorts of stuff to their page, and a lot of... It was a practice a lot of spammy pages would do. So that's where this whole thing of having a lot of code to a low text or HTML ratio came from. But today, in the world of JavaScript, you can have all sorts of carousels and expandable tabs and functionality animations that would add a lot of code to your page, and it does not mean that it's spammy. It just means that you like functionality and interaction on your webpage. Crystal Carter: This is what I'm saying. Use your brain. Look at the page and go... If you see a wording like that. Sometimes, for instance, I get people... This is another one where people are looking at schema markup, and they go into a Google Search Console and it says, "You have a warning for this." And I don't have that information on that page, so that's not necessarily relevant to me. It's like, "You haven't included reviews." I was like, "This product doesn't have reviews." It's a warning. And people are like, "What do I do?" And I'm like, "Nothing." Are you going to put reviews on there? Okay, you can look at whether or not you can add reviews to your website. Or if you're not going to do them, don't worry about it. If you are going to do it, great. That's great. Reviews are great. But don't freak out about every little thing. Look at it. Look at it with your eyes. Mordy Oberstein: If I'm not mistaken, I think it was Ahrefs who did this. They went through and said, "We're taking a bunch of these warnings out because they're really not relevant anymore." Crystal Carter: Right. So have a look, and if you see that on there... I'll be honest. I would normally have a look at the low text to what's it called or whatever. I have a look just to see. And if I can see that everything's working fine, everything's good, everything is functioning as it should, then I'm probably going to set that warning to ignore. I'm going to redo my audit and keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Move on. We're going to have to move on because, again, there are so many myths. If you feel like there's a myth that we didn't cover that you still have a question about or think, "Hey, your audience should probably know about that myth, and you should tell them that's a myth." Then let us know. Reach out to us on social, comment. We'll cover it on a future episode. Maybe we'll do round two or then maybe a round three. Again, we can probably do a round four or five also. So let us know. Crystal Carter: Too many. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway. With this, if you're working with clients or you're working with anybody and they may have all sorts of SEO myths. Or even just marketing myths because there's probably a whole episode we could do about marketing myths in general. How do you convince them to abandon those misconceptions and even often unreasonable expectations that come along with those myths? We spoke with Andi Jarvis, and here's his take on how to help your clients, your folks, abandon misconceptions and have reasonable expectations. Andi Jarvis: Hi, my name is Andi Jarvis. I am the strategy director at XMO Marketing. I should point out that I am not, and I repeat, I am not an SEO. But hopefully I can help with this SEO question because it's not really an SEO question. It's an SEO PPC, whatever marketing, topic. How do you convince clients and stakeholders to abandon misconceptions and unreasonable expectations about the marketing thing that you want to get through? So firstly, let me start by telling you how not to do it. Because if you are on social media, you will know that a lot of the time arguments these days are held by one camp shouting at the other camp, hoping that the other camp is going to accept that they are wrong and the first camp's opinion's correct. But weirdly, life doesn't work like that, does it? Because the Camp B who are being shouted at are standing there going, "I don't understand why they're shouting that because they're wrong." And then they shout their opinion back. And all that happens is you just end up with two idiots shouting at each other, banging heads like rutting bison instead of actually trying to move things forward. So you don't ever convince anyone to change their mind by basically just telling them they're wrong. Because effectively, when you say that, what people tend to hear is that I'm stupid. You say, "Oh, you're wrong." They hear, "I'm stupid." It's just a cognitive bias. So you have to walk people through and you have to use a language they understand. So the first thing I would say is stop talking about the technical part of your discipline because nobody cares. You care, that's why you have that job. Because you are great at SEO and PPC, graphic design, web design, whatever it is. That's why you've got that job. The person you're talking to, if you're talking to a boss or a director or whatever, they really don't care. Tell you what they do care about. Often it's money. Something starting with a pound sign or a dollar sign or a Euro sign or whatever sign it is. That often bothers people at the top of an organization. So if you want to get them to believe in the thing you are doing, and you want to get them to understand about the thing you're doing, you have to speak to them in their language, which means that you have to talk to them about the financial impact. "Ah, but Andi. It's SEO. It's quite hard to quantify the impact." PPC, they go, "Well, give us one. ROAS is eight, so we'll give you eight back. Yay." that's why PPC gets the investment. SEO can be quite different. Web design, good graphic design, can be really difficult to quantify. Advertising. You want to do traditional advertising. I hate that phrase. But if you want to do that, you say, "We need to spend this upfront and we hope that it might deliver this in a little bit of time." That's quite difficult to do. So sometimes you have to go to history. Past performance can sometimes be an indicator of future performance. Sometimes, and I know this is a dirty word in marketing, you can go to academia. Because amazingly, people have been studying marketing since the 1950s. And most of the problems like recessions and interest rate cuts, inflation going up, this has all happened before. It might be the first time it's happened to your generation, but this has all happened before, and there is loads of great evidence as to why you should carry on doing the thing you're doing. So look at the past and sometimes use that as a way to guide the future. Ask a lot of questions. Ask lots of questions before you start telling people anything. Ask them questions to understand what they're worried about, and then they can then take that and go... You can then go, "Right. Okay, if you're worried about this thing, here's how we can help you." So rather than just going, "SEO." And people are going, "I'm not listening." You can go, "Oh, you have this problem. Here's how we can help with that." Unreasonable expectations are slightly different, but I think that starts by right at the beginning. Good planning, scope of works. That type of thing that they call it in IT. What are we going to do? What do we think the impact's going to be? Don't over promise to get the budget, because these two things often work together. "Oh, yeah. We can do all of this if you give us the budget." You don't get the budget, then it looks like you're making it up. Be honest, talk their language, and that should help you. Hope that helps. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andi. Really appreciate you contributing to the podcast and see you around at some of the conferences out there in the upcoming months. By the way, you can follow Andi over at Andi Jarvis. That's at A-N-D-I J-A-R-V-I-S. Andi Jarvis. Follow him. He is fantastic, if you haven't realized that already. But it's a great point, by the way. As a former teacher, I'll say this. If you're trying to educate people and engage them, you have to educate them. You can't speak at them, you can't try to berate them, you can't try to make them feel bad about it. You have to really be conscious of giving them the tools to make their own decision autonomously, so that hopefully you lead them to the correct decision that they'll make autonomously. Crystal Carter: And I think also to understand why they might have had that information in the first place. Where did they get that from and why was it so convincing to them? How can you help them to... Because if you can understand how they got that information or how they came to that conclusion, then you can help them to unpack it a little bit. So again, like we were talking about. "Oh, everybody thinks that backlinks are the most important thing." Well, there'll be a reason why they thought that. So again, it'll have to do with page rank. It'll have to do with lots of the emails that they're getting all the time and the way that... Maybe some of the things they've been reading. So bridge that gap and be respectful of people who are curious and trying to learn. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. So you want to foster real learning experiences. You don't want to just win the argument. I think that's what it all comes down to at the end. Okay. With that, so Google has been trying to do some of their own truth searching. Fundamentally speaking, Google does a lot of truth searching. Their whole business model is based on showing you the most accurate, most relevant results possible. But the truth is hard. I feel like somebody has said that before me, but I'll take that as my own saying. My own idiom. And to help Google get at the multiple layers of truth that are out there, Google has launched a little new feature on mobile called perspectives. So what we're going to do is take a look at the direction that Google is going in with this new perspective as we take a directional look at the SERP as we are going Google. And it's Going, Going Google. It's out of here. So back at Google I/O. I'm terrible with time. When was that? May? Crystal Carter: May, I think? I think it's May. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: One of the M months. Mordy Oberstein: Something with an M. It was an M Month. Crystal Carter: 50-50 chance there. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: We could look it up, but we're not going to. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'd rather just say it's March. I'm pretty sure it was March, actually. So they announced a little feature called perspectives, and what it basically is. When you go search on mobile in the US, I'm not sure if it's in any other market, you get a little set of filters up top. You can look for images, shopping, news, and one of those little filters in the little carousel up top is called perspectives. And Google helps you try to get perspective, and they try to offer you all sorts of different angles and takes on that topic. So for example, if you search for something like, "Are the Beatles a good band?" You'll hopefully get some perspectives from whatever sources helping you understand the multiple takes. That's a complicated question. Are the Beatles good? I don't know. It depends. Historically speaking, they were really significant. Do I enjoy their music? I don't know. Sometimes I do. I used to be a bigger Beatles fan than I'm now. Crystal Carter: They're a mixed bag. They've got... They have some... Mordy Oberstein: They are a mixed bag. That's a good way of putting it. They are a mixed bag. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they got a mixed bag. Some of their stuff... Mordy Oberstein: That's our perspective. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: This is our perspective. You might want someone else's perspective. And what Google's basically doing is showing you a tab full of perspectives. And it's interesting because... Okay, let's break one down. I searched for "Is Aaron Judge good?" Aaron Judge is a baseball player. Aaron Judge, for some context, holds the American League Home Run record in a single season with 62 home runs in a season. That's actually the real home run record because the people who broke it beforehand were on drugs. Steroids. So in my mind, "Yeah, he's got the real record." But anyway, you break it down. Is Aaron Judge good? And it tries to give you a lot of social media stuff like Reddit threads, some Twitter stuff, there's a bunch of YouTube stuff, and it's interesting. And with any relatively new product, you're always going to have some kinks to work out in the system. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think what you're looking at now. We're recording this. There are still kinks in the system. A lot of it is outdated. It's months old. Nine months old. Which is great for the Beatles, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Are The Beatles a good band? Yeah, that question has been going on since the '60s. So I don't care if it's nine months ago or nine years ago, that perspective is still going to be the same. But on things that are more current event related. Because you can have a great season and the next season not be a good player. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: What happened before? Not in Aaron's case. Aaron's wonderful. But nine months is a long time. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, and also what good is can change. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So yeah. Okay. That's been a little bit of a hangup of mine. Let's take the Beatles one. If I were to ask you, "Are the Beatles a good band?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So I would think there's multiple... Or let me ask... Let's take it a different way. Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: Who's the best Beatle? Mordy Oberstein: Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: It's not Ringo. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Well, let's not be offensive here. But yeah, it's definitely not Ringo. Crystal Carter: Not Ringo. Bless his heart, but it's not Ringo. And I don't know. I think that all of these things will depend on the songs that connect with you and things like that. You might not even... I'm not even sure if I would agree with that as a question because you can't Beatle on your own. It's not like you can show up... Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's great. So that's one perspective. Then you have... Maybe there's... You break it down in terms of songwriting. When you say who's the best Beatle, does best mean in terms of songwriting out of all of them? Does it mean who had the best career? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity in the context of best? And there's multiple ways to break it down, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. Go back to Aaron Judge, a baseball player. If I'm asking whatever baseball player is the best. Is it best at offense, best at defense, best at promoting themselves? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity according to best? So there's multiple ways to break down an entity, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. You're just getting a social source. Twitter or YouTube. Crystal Carter: Right. So for instance, Glenn Gabe did a really big deep dive on the perspectives panel. The only thing that... I think where they're trying to make up for the nuance is with volume, so having lots and lots of perspectives, for instance, on it. But I feel like that creates noise. So for instance, Glenn showed the example of best gaming chair perspectives. And then it's just lots of YouTube things, lots of people writing about what's the best gaming chair, and lots of things from Reddit about what the best gaming chair is. And to my mind, that's the same as just going onto one of these platforms and trolling through all of the things to find it. And I think that the trickiness of wading into some of those forums and trying to curate it is that those forums tend to be a bit raw and they tend to be a bit difficult to wrangle. So if you're trying to organize that information, which never wanted to be organized in the first place- Mordy Oberstein: Good point. Crystal Carter: ...you're going to get some complex results. And I think that part of the reason why they're leading on this perspectives tab is in order to counteract the amount of AI content that we're getting. So the perspective stuff is more raw human. "Ah, this chair was terrible." Which did they tell you? The chair that I'm sitting in right now, the review for it, where someone was like, "Is this a hobbit chair? I would not wish this chair on my worst enemy." And I was like, "My guy. That's some strong experience. Strong feelings about a chair. Very strong feelings." Mordy Oberstein: That guy really likes chairs a lot. Crystal Carter: He was really upset. The chair is fine. It's a chair. And so I think trying to curate those things, they're trying to bring those perspectives literally into the SERP because I think they expect for there to be a lot of AI content coming from more traditional publishers. So I think they're trying to balance that- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Crystal Carter: ...kind of content on the web so that you can see the more curated content and you can see more, "Yeah, this is how I feel about this." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And Google knows that there's a trend out there that people are looking towards social media for information because you trust people versus search engines kind of thing. So they're trying to incorporate that into the search engines, so that you feel the search engine is a place where you can go to get that trust. I think directionally speaking, that's what this segment Going, Going Google is all about, it makes total sense. I feel like we're at the beginning of a technology, or the beginning of the product rather. And I think it has a tremendous amount of value. I think they just got to take it to the next level. Spice it up a notch. Kick it up a notch. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think... Mordy Oberstein: Look forward to that, actually. Crystal Carter: Yeah. We'll see how it all plays out. Mordy Oberstein: Now to see how it all played out in the SEO news this week, which always plays out itself with some sort of drama. Let's dive into this week's Snappy News. Snappy News. Two for you this week, both from he that is Barry Schwartz over at SEORoundtable.com. First up, Google's search language mashing systems released two weeks ago. So a few weeks back, it turns out Google released an update that better matched the language being searched for and the actual results on the results page. I will tell you, as an expat, I search in English and would often get the language of the country I'm in, especially in Google Discover. Which by the way, I'm not sure it's part of this update or not. I've seen it with folks I consult with and their sites, and it can be a very big deal if the wrong language shows up for your sites. If you have a site and you have pages in multiple languages, and let's say somebody's searching in, I don't know, Mexico. But they're searching in English and the Spanish version comes back. Highly unlikely that you're going to get a click because I don't want the Spanish version. I don't speak Spanish, I just happen to be on vacation in Mexico. So Google getting this right can be a very big deal, and it's nothing to sneeze at. Also from Barry Schwartz, and also from SEORoundtable.com, and also nothing to sneeze at. Google, August 2023. Broad core update finished rolling out. It is done. A little bit longer than usual to finish this update. Now is the time to go and look at any changes in your ranking trajectory and see what is what. It's hard to do during the update itself because there's always a little kick at the end that could reverse what you initially saw during the outset of the core update. So now is the time to go in and see what, if anything, has changed. Hopefully for the better. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. So snappy, so informative, so much news. I actually love covering news. Crystal Carter: We know you do. Mordy Oberstein: I love news. I love the SEO news. I don't like regular news. I don't listen, watch or do anything with regular news anymore. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: But SEO news, I'm all about the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Right. Read all about it, people. Mordy Oberstein: Read all about it. You know what else you should be reading all about is Pedro Dias, who is our follower of the week. Pedro Dias is an SEO OG. Former Googler, major SEO OG, technical SEO, and SEO product manager. Founder of multiple companies, I believe. He's over at Pedro Dias on Twitter. That's P-E-D-R-O D-I-A-S on Twitter. So check out Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro is great. He's a super knowledgeable SEO who's been working for ages, and is a very good follow if you want some clear no nonsense SEO stuff that is not full of myths. Mordy Oberstein: That's why he's our... Literally why he's our follow of the week. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We sat down. Who is somebody who does not tolerate myths? And it's Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro Dias. Pedro speaks... Mordy Oberstein: Zero tolerance policy for myths. SEO Myths. Crystal Carter: Right. He's speaking some truth where he can. So, yeah. He's a great fellow. Nice guy. Funny as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So definitely follow Pedro. Mordy Oberstein: Beat my butt at cornhole over at Brighton. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he did. I was there. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I got hoodwinked. I got hustled. Crystal Carter: You got hustled? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because he's like, "Oh, I never played a cornhole before." And he was like, "All right." And we go over and 1, 2, 3, 4. Boom, boom, boom. I'm like, "You never played cornhole before? Yeah, right." Crystal Carter: I saw it. That was pretty devastating. I don't know how you came back from that, Mordy. It was pretty conclusive. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm still down on myself ever since then. Really shook my confidence. Crystal Carter: You'll live to cornhole another day. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, "I have to." I've been practicing my cornhole game. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Oh, right. Mordy Oberstein: Now I'm ready. Crystal Carter: I didn't realize there was a rematch. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. In my mind there is. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I haven't talked to Pedro about it, but we should. Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, with that, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to set SEO priorities. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts 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 we have over on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love and SEO. Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Andi Jarvis John Mueller Pedro Dias Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Eximo News: Google August 2023 Broad Core Update Finished Rolling Out Google Search Language Matching Systems Update Released Two Weeks Ago Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Crystal Carter Mordy Oberstein Andi Jarvis John Mueller Pedro Dias Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Eximo News: Google August 2023 Broad Core Update Finished Rolling Out Google Search Language Matching Systems Update Released Two Weeks Ago 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 branding here at Wix, and I am joined by the always true, the always accurate, the never mythological head of SEO branding here at Wix. Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: What do you mean I'm mythological? I'm a mermaid. I didn't tell you I'm from- Mordy Oberstein: But you are real. Crystal Carter: ...mermaid mythology? Mordy Oberstein: You're the most real person I've ever met. Crystal Carter: I'm telling you, I'm a mermaid and I like to swim in the sea and it's amazing and it's sparkly and everything's good. Mordy Oberstein: Merman. To quote Zoolander, one of my favorite movies of all time. Crystal Carter: It was mermazing. Mordy Oberstein: So good. This SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our monthly SEO newsletter, Searchlight, over wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also find your true SEO competitors with the SE ranking app inside of Wix. Look for it today inside of the Wix app market. Why do I say true SEO competitors as opposed to just SEO competitors? Because so much about what you hear about SEO is not true. Today, we are set to set the record straight. We are busting SEO myths like a backup dancer busts a move. Does word count matter? Are LSI keywords real? Do I really need strong DA? We're kicking in the door on these SEO myths and more. And we will be joined by the great Andi Jarvis who shares how he convinces clients and others to break free of their SEO and marketing misconceptions. Plus, we'll dive into Google's perspectives feature to see how the search engine is trying to find accuracy and harmony on the SERP. Plus, we have your snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following for more SEO awesomeness across social media. So sit back as we take a saw to Pinocchio's nose of SEO lies as episode number 55 of the SERP's Up podcast helps you find your SEO truth. Take a saw to that nose, Pinocchio. Your nose is coming off in this episode. Crystal Carter: Coming in hot. Mordy Oberstein: Liar. That little liar, Pinocchio. Crystal Carter: He's always making stuff up and acting like he's not going to get caught. You ain't slick, Pinocchio. We know what's going on. Mordy Oberstein: You know how you know he is a real boy? Because he's lying all the time. My kids always lie. Crystal Carter: Kids are like, "No, I didn't do that." I'm like, "It's obvious." Mordy Oberstein: "Did you eat the cookies?" "No, I didn't eat cookies. Crystal Carter: You're covered in cookie dust. You're covered in the residue. It's all over your hands. I know a story of someone who made up a baddy, a villain or something, who did all of their things. So they'd be like, "Oh, who ate all the cookies?" "Oh, it was Billy Butlin." "What?" He was this fictional person. Doesn't exist, but apparently gets up to all sorts of shenanigans. Mordy Oberstein: Lovely child. Crystal Carter: Lovely child. Mordy Oberstein: You know who else is full of shenanigans? A lot of the people talking about a lot of SEO stuff. SEO, for whatever reason. Whether it be just how SEO used to work back in the day and the notions that never evolved from that. For whatever reason, there's been this fostering of many SEO myths within the SEO sphere. We hear them all the time. People propagate them, Google ranks them. And we felt it was our duty to sit back, talk about, some of these more common SEO myths. I'll say this off the bat. We can never ever hit all of the SEO myths in one show because there are just too many. Crystal Carter: Right. So many. Mordy Oberstein: So many of them. And before we dive in, I want to thank one of our listeners. Brindle Blanca reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, I was wondering about content length. Is that a ranking factor?" And I'm like, "Oh, no. It's not a thing. In fact, Google just came out again for the 800th time and Barry Schwarz covered it on SEO Roundtable for the 800th time. How the length of your content is not an actual ranking factor. Here you go." And then she said, "Hey, it'd be great if we went through some of these myths on the podcast. I love your podcast. If you could go through some of the myths and break them down for us." I'm like, "That's an actual brilliant idea. We are going to do this episode." So now we are like a radio show. We take requests. Crystal Carter: First time caller, long time listener. Mordy Oberstein: There you go. Ding. We appreciate you reaching out, Brindle. Loved the idea, so we're doing it right here, right now. Let's get into breaking down some mess here. Where do we start? I have a list here. Crystal Carter: You have got a list here. It's a big list. Mordy Oberstein: We'll start with word because that's how this whole episode got started. Based on word count. People think, for whatever reason, that Google looks at the number of... Now I just want to say things on the outset. If you believe some of these myths, and you're new to SEO or you're not an SEO, you are not to blame. Crystal Carter: Right. I was just going to say that actually. I think that SEOs can be forgiven, partially because Google doesn't tell everyone. Some people describe it, the ranking factors, as a bit of a black box sort of thing. And so it's a bit of a power vacuum, or a knowledge vacuum anyway, where you don't know all of the things. So people are looking at correlation and they're assuming a causation and things. So there are some people who deep dive into some of the patents that you know... Rest his soul, Bill Slosky spent a lot of time going through a lot of patents trying to figure out and unpack and reverse engineer a lot of that stuff, and I think that Glenn Gabe picked up a little bit of that mantle recently. But I think that's one of the reasons why some of these myths become more prevalent is because we don't have necessarily a gospel of all of these things. There is a good piece of documentation within the Google documentation about their ranking systems, but it doesn't necessarily go into every single detail of every single algorithm. And even today, as we're looking at how the SGE works in AI on Google. They've said. Sundar Pichai has said, "I don't know. I don't know all of the things that it does. It's AI." So it's working with new information, it's taking a new data, all of that sort of stuff. So some of it they know, some of they don't know. Mordy Oberstein: Every SEO who's been around for a long time will tell you this. When they first started in SEO, they're researching, reading blog posts, trying Googling, getting information, and you don't always know who to trust. We actually have an episode about how do you learn SEO, and how do you sift through bad SEO advice versus good SEO advice. We'll link to that in the show notes. And oftentimes you're reading articles that are... You don't realize they're not actual experts. Or they may be experts in one area of marketing, but talking about SEO and don't really understand SEO. For example, if you Google LSI keywords and SEO, a lot of the top ranking content are basically titles like LSI keywords, how to find and use them to improve your SEO. What are LSI keywords and do they help with SEO? They don't, and they're not a thing. And you who are new to SEO, or you're a business owner, or you're whoever you are listening to this podcast. Welcome. And you might be Googling LSI keywords in SEO. You see it, you've heard about them, and you're not necessarily getting results and saying... No, not a thing. So you are not to blame. I don't know who is and we don't care. What we do care about is breaking down the myth, so let's start with word count. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Many people have talked about this idea that Google's looking at your content. Let's say a blog post. And they're saying, "Oh, it's above 2000 keywords. It is good now because you checked the box. You've hit the number." And the truth is, and Google has said this many times, and Barry on the SEO Roundtable blog as covered it many times, there's no set number they're looking at. In fact, it varies. If I'm searching for how do I tie my shoe, I'm probably not looking for War and Peace. I just want a quick little snippet of "Hey." And that's probably what's going to rank. Who invented the tying of the shoe and the full history of tying of the shoe? I'm probably looking for a much longer piece of content. So it depends. Crystal Carter: Right. I've read the quality rater guidelines. They don't talk about that. They don't say, "You got it. Oh, everything has to be over 500 words. Everything has to be over this, that or the other." And John Mueller has said, and he said again, and he said many times. One quote that he has is, "From our point of view, the number of words on a page is not a quality factor and not a ranking factor. So just blindly adding more and more text to a page doesn't make it better. Be exact. John." Thanks, John. Mordy Oberstein: As Crystal mentioned to me before the show, we're going to get into a lot of pithy John Muellerisms on this episode. Crystal Carter: Some of my favorite moments from John. Completely honest, and he's completely right. We have pages on the hub, which we didn't necessarily intend to rank. We just have them. So we have a video collection for instance, just so it's easy for users to find them. And it literally just says how to do this, and there's a video, and there's a link to a larger article. We don't expect them to rank. Google's ranking them anyway. I can canoncalize them. Google's ranking anyway because they wanted to. And it's just because sometimes you don't need a big long thing. I saw one. My favorite, it was a featured snippet. I was talking to Darth Na on Twitter about this. And he was like, "Who's got a good example of a short one?" The best one I found when I was doing some research for a... It was a veterinarian's app, and I was looking at research of this. And a competitor of the company that I was researching for, they were ranking for do male cats have nipples? And this page was the ranking for them. Mordy Oberstein: Important question. Crystal Carter: Apparently lots of people are asking this question. They were ranking for it, getting tons of traffic, and I think it was under 200 words. I think a lot of times people will say, "Oh, it should be around 500 words for a blog." But part of that is that's how long it takes to cover that topic. If it's going to take you a little bit of time to actually cover a topic, well then yeah. You are going to need to actually do the work to cover the topic. If you can cover the topic in 250 words, cover the topic in 250 words. Do male cats have nipples? Yes or no or whatever it is. I can't remember what the answer was. Mordy Oberstein: I'll Google it now. Crystal Carter: But whatever it is, yes or no. And then maybe a little bit of explanation and keep it moving. That's fine. Mordy Oberstein: That's it. So bottom line, word count is not a ranking factor. You should write the amount of words that you need to address what your audience wants out of your content. And that could be five words, it could be 5 million words. I don't know the answer, only you do. Let's move on to LSI Keywords. It's like the bane of a lot of SEO's existence. So LSI keywords are basically... Think of it like synonyms. So let's say my page is about air conditioning installation. So the idea of LSI keywords is that by having other words related to installation, like air conditioning repair, air conditioning maintenance, air conditioning... I don't know another word for that. Renovation. Crystal Carter: Or home cooling- Mordy Oberstein: Right. Crystal Carter: ...or something like that. They're semantically relevant. Mordy Oberstein: HVAC repair, HVAC installation. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: That Google will now have a more contextual understanding because of all these related, synonym keywords, and they'll understand that your page should rank for air conditioning repair. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Google has said, I don't know like a gazillion times, it's not a thing. Crystal Carter: So another funny... Mordy Oberstein: It's not a thing. I don't have anything better for you outside of the fact that LSI keywords or LSI has been around. Semantic indexing has been around since the '80s. Crystal Carter: Right. This is one that people got confused about. So people started calling it LSI keywords and things like that. And I think that this is something that people have gotten confused about because the idea of talking about not just the literal keywords, but things that are in the general vicinity of that. Mordy Oberstein: Topically related. Crystal Carter: Topically related. That is a good thing to do, and that is a... That will give you better writing. Will give the user a better reading experience. And I think they're essentially confusing it with semantic generally. Mordy Oberstein: Semantic. Crystal Carter: Semantically related content. So Semrush has a great article titled What are LSI Keywords and Why They Don't Matter. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. So you do want to build topical relevance. Wait, let's talk English. You want to create context. Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: And when you're writing for a user, a person, you want to have contextual knowledge imparted so they understand what you're talking about. So if you're talking about air conditioning repair, you might also talk about heating system repair because heating and air conditioners are topically related. If you're talking about tables, perhaps you want to talk about chairs because they're topically, semantically, contextually, related. Crystal Carter: Right. Exactly. These are going to make sense. If you're talking about a record player, you might also talk about music. These things make sense. They go together. Mordy Oberstein: You talk about Bob Dylan? You're going to talk about harmonicas. LSI keywords, not a thing. Crystal Carter: Not a thing. Mordy Oberstein: So if you see it out there, ignore it. Crystal Carter: And to quote John Mueller on this one, "There is no such thing as LSI keywords. Anyone who's telling you otherwise is mistaken. Sorry." Mordy Oberstein: Is he really sorry? Crystal Carter: I don't think he is. Mordy Oberstein: I don't think he's really sorry. I think sorry was sarcastic. Crystal Carter: I think that's a sorry, not sorry. Mordy Oberstein: Can we move on now to DA? Crystal Carter: DA? Oh, yeah. Mordy Oberstein: DA and poor Moz. DA is a metric called domain authority that Moz, which is an SEO tool, created. And what it basically does, it's a score that tries to mimic how Google might perhaps understand how authoritative a website is. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: It is not a metric that Google uses. It is a simulation based on their algorithms. Not Google's algorithms. Moz' algorithm and how they're trying to determine the balance of things like rankings and backlinks to say how authoritative is this website. Basically, it's a representation. If you go to a website and you're like, "Oh, wow, this is a really great website. They really know what they're talking about this topic." DA is a way for you to simulate understanding that without visiting a million websites. Crystal Carter: Right. So it's a shorthand. It's a helpful shorthand. It's something like... If you think about something like BMI. BMI is a nonsense metric. BMI is... They go, "You're this tall, you weigh this much, you are overweight and you're underweight and you are appropriate weight." Mordy Oberstein: Right. So Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day probably had a terrible BMI because he was so muscled up. Crystal Carter: Terrible BMI. Exactly. So it's a bit of a garbage metrics, but it is as a shorthand. As a helpful shorthand before you get into the details. It's a helpful shorthand to help you keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Right. It's a very top level kind of thing. And all the different SEO tools have their own version of it. Ahrefs has DR. Semrush has AS, which is authority score. So every tool has their own version of this, but what you'll generally see out there in the ether of SEO talk is DA. And people will say to you, "I would like to sell you high DA authority links." Crystal Carter: Right. And the thing about that is that... Another quote from John that it's a helpful metric. But to quote from John, "Google doesn't use it at all. Not at all." So it's really important to bear that in mind. And also, one of the things he points out in the... There's an SEO Roundtable article where he talks about it and well... Sorry, where someone's recording him talking about it. And we can guess who that is who's recording it. And when he is discussing it, he says, "Again, they all have different metrics. So you don't know exactly how Ahrefs is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Moz is measuring that. You don't know exactly how Semrush is measuring it." So maybe treat it in the same way as your BMI. Treat it as a tracker to track progress to see if there's some movement in how they're measuring it. So if you see it go up in whatever way, maybe that's a sign that good things are happening. If you see it stay the same, that could be a sign that things are changing. It could be the sign that things aren't changing. But one of the things that's really tricky about DA is that a lot of these tools have a really tricky way of measuring subdomains. So you can see someone who's using something like... I saw a soccer club. And there was a soccer club and they had signed up to, I don't know, soccerclub.com and they got their own little subsite as part of that. So it was amazingsoccerclub.soccerclub.com or whatever it is. I'm sure there's some website called soccerclub.com. Anyway, according to all of these tools, this tiny little soccer club had a DA of 97. Why? Because the domain of soccerclub.com, which has all of these other subdomains, has tons of back links from various different things across the domain. So sometimes... Mordy Oberstein: They're all very link heavy anyway. All of these. Crystal Carter: Exactly. So there's lots of different factors that can misconstrue how those things are. So don't stress yourself out about it. And I've heard Barry Schwartz talk about it before. When you're talking about getting backlinks and things. Don't necessarily worry about the DA of something. Mordy Oberstein: No, don't. It's all about relevance of the website to what you're doing. And not only the website or the webpage is linking to you. It's way more about relevance than it is about DA. Honestly, if you're an SEO professional and you're working with thousands of sites. You're looking at thousands of sites, and you'd really need a top level understanding real quick about what this website... Where are they at? Then DA is for you. If you're not that person, don't even think about it. Trust your gut when you go to a website. This looks like a good website to you, they're running good content, they're trustworthy, they're authoritative. That's probably way more effective than DA. Crystal Carter: Yeah. Chill. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, let's try this one. Big name websites always beat smaller niche websites. And there's a ton of myths around this one. There's myths within myths within myths around this one. One myth is that Google automatically ranks big name brands above smaller niche websites. Or another myth that falls under this umbrella is domain age is a ranking factor. How old your domain is. So if my domain is 1 million years old, 1 billion years old, it'll beat out Crystal's website because Crystal's website is only 1000 years old. Crystal Carter: Again, I think this is something that comes from a little bit of confusion. Because this goes back to page rank, which is one of Google's oldest algorithms, and it was very much linked to links. Mordy Oberstein: Links. Crystal Carter: So some of the earliest information about SEO will be links. Links are really important. Don't get me wrong, links are important. It's how... When Google crawls from one page, they'll find a link. They'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page, they'll crawl to another page. But it is not the only thing. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, my gosh. It's like a myth within a myth within a myth. Wow, that's a lot of mythology. That's how you use the word mythology. I understand that. You understand that. Crystal Carter: And I think that it's very much something that is super valuable. Getting links is good, but it's not all about it. And it can definitely make a big difference. But part of that isn't just because of the link itself. Part of that can have to do with how often the page that you're getting the link from is being crawled. For instance, if you get a link from a news publisher. They're publishing hundreds of articles a day, they're going to be getting crawled really regularly. That means you're more likely to have your link be discovered, you're more likely to be seen by lots of people, you're more likely to have traffic come to your website. There's lots of things that are going to be a causation of getting that link. So it's super important, don't get me wrong. But it's not everything, Mordy Oberstein: No. And Google's talked about it more recently than not trying to downplay the importance of links. John Mueller's gone on record a bunch of times saying links are not the be all end all. Barry's covered SEO Roundtable a bunch of times that Google's downplaying. Google says, "Links are not as important as you think they are because of all of this." But going back to domain age, that is not a ranking factor. If you have a great website. And I think this comes about from something that does make sense a little bit. If you've got an amazing website. You sat there, you planned the whole website out, you wrote 4 million blog posts, and then you launched the website. It's going to take Google a little bit of time to realize that you have an amazing website. And a website that it's already familiar with. They're already familiar with it, so that's going to rank already. Meaning domain age is not a thing. In fact, Google said about that, "No, not a thing at all." What is a thing though is Google being familiar with the website, understanding the website, and trusting the website. So obviously a website that's around for a while has accrued trust. And if you're a new player on the block, Google doesn't know you yet. But once Google realizes that you have awesome toys at your house, Google's going to be over there all the time trying to hang out with you. Crystal Carter: Right. Precisely. So, yeah. There's a lot of, again, contributing factors on this. So you're going to have more links. They're going to have more data on the kinds of traffic that normally goes to your website because they've been sending traffic to your website for, I don't know, 10 or 15 years or something. They're going to know the kinds of questions that you're able to answer. They're going to know the kinds of content that you have on your page. Most of your pages will probably be indexed by the time they've gone through all of these many years of seeing your content. Things like that. They're also going to have a lot of things that are already stored in their cache. All of that sort of stuff is going to... There's lots of things that they already know that they can bring to the table. And I think that there's ways that new domains can definitely make a big splash, and sometimes that can include a mix of marketing activity, including other channels outside of organic. But another fantastic quote from John. Someone asked, "Does domain age still matter in today's SEO in comparison to domain versus subdomain?" And John Mueller said, "No, domain age helps nothing." It helps nothing. So I think it's just really important to remember that you've got every chance in the world. I posted recently that in tennis, you show up on the match and you've got just as much chance as the other person in winning. And recently at Wimbledon, somebody who was unseeded won the women's Wimbledon. And somebody who was not ranked number one, who went up against the number one ranking men's tennis player at Wimbledon, and won. If you've got good content, then there's no reason why your new content can't do well if you send lots of signals and make sure that Google knows. That has lots of ways of knowing what you're about and what you do and all of that sort of stuff. Mordy Oberstein: So by the way, on the subdomains versus subfolder. You kind of alluded to it a second ago. We did an episode about that a little while ago. There's, again, too many myths to get into. There's a whole bunch of myths around that. Check out that episode. We'll link to it in the show notes. We also covered duplicated content penalties. That's also a myth on another episode. We'll link to that in the show notes. Let's do one more. Okay, let's do... This is one of my favorites. Low code to HTML ratio. Crystal Carter: Oh, no. Don't get him started. Mordy Oberstein: I see that all the time. I've been asked about this a gazillion times. Basically, a lot of the SEO tools, when they run an audit, they have a category or a warning called low code to HTML ratio. Meaning you give a lot of... Or is it low HTML to code ratio? I don't even know anymore. I think I got it backwards. It's basically saying you have a lot of code on the page, but not a lot of content. And Google will not rank you well. I've talked to John about this. It's not real. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: In fact, John has called on the SEO tools to please take that out. Crystal Carter: Yeah. I think this is one of the things where when you... You need to use your brain. You need to use your noggin actually. Mordy Oberstein: Just because you added a bunch of JavaScript functionality to your page does not make it spam. Because that's where this myth comes from. Back in the day there was a lot of janky code added onto websites. I keep using that word because you've used it and I've love it, and I've stolen it, and I've made it my own, Crystal. My word now. You can use it, but it's my word. Crystal Carter: You jacked it. Mordy Oberstein: I did. I'll mail you a check. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: Back in the day, people would add all sorts of stuff to their page, and a lot of... It was a practice a lot of spammy pages would do. So that's where this whole thing of having a lot of code to a low text or HTML ratio came from. But today, in the world of JavaScript, you can have all sorts of carousels and expandable tabs and functionality animations that would add a lot of code to your page, and it does not mean that it's spammy. It just means that you like functionality and interaction on your webpage. Crystal Carter: This is what I'm saying. Use your brain. Look at the page and go... If you see a wording like that. Sometimes, for instance, I get people... This is another one where people are looking at schema markup, and they go into a Google Search Console and it says, "You have a warning for this." And I don't have that information on that page, so that's not necessarily relevant to me. It's like, "You haven't included reviews." I was like, "This product doesn't have reviews." It's a warning. And people are like, "What do I do?" And I'm like, "Nothing." Are you going to put reviews on there? Okay, you can look at whether or not you can add reviews to your website. Or if you're not going to do them, don't worry about it. If you are going to do it, great. That's great. Reviews are great. But don't freak out about every little thing. Look at it. Look at it with your eyes. Mordy Oberstein: If I'm not mistaken, I think it was Ahrefs who did this. They went through and said, "We're taking a bunch of these warnings out because they're really not relevant anymore." Crystal Carter: Right. So have a look, and if you see that on there... I'll be honest. I would normally have a look at the low text to what's it called or whatever. I have a look just to see. And if I can see that everything's working fine, everything's good, everything is functioning as it should, then I'm probably going to set that warning to ignore. I'm going to redo my audit and keep it moving. Mordy Oberstein: Move on. We're going to have to move on because, again, there are so many myths. If you feel like there's a myth that we didn't cover that you still have a question about or think, "Hey, your audience should probably know about that myth, and you should tell them that's a myth." Then let us know. Reach out to us on social, comment. We'll cover it on a future episode. Maybe we'll do round two or then maybe a round three. Again, we can probably do a round four or five also. So let us know. Crystal Carter: Too many. Mordy Oberstein: Anyway. With this, if you're working with clients or you're working with anybody and they may have all sorts of SEO myths. Or even just marketing myths because there's probably a whole episode we could do about marketing myths in general. How do you convince them to abandon those misconceptions and even often unreasonable expectations that come along with those myths? We spoke with Andi Jarvis, and here's his take on how to help your clients, your folks, abandon misconceptions and have reasonable expectations. Andi Jarvis: Hi, my name is Andi Jarvis. I am the strategy director at XMO Marketing. I should point out that I am not, and I repeat, I am not an SEO. But hopefully I can help with this SEO question because it's not really an SEO question. It's an SEO PPC, whatever marketing, topic. How do you convince clients and stakeholders to abandon misconceptions and unreasonable expectations about the marketing thing that you want to get through? So firstly, let me start by telling you how not to do it. Because if you are on social media, you will know that a lot of the time arguments these days are held by one camp shouting at the other camp, hoping that the other camp is going to accept that they are wrong and the first camp's opinion's correct. But weirdly, life doesn't work like that, does it? Because the Camp B who are being shouted at are standing there going, "I don't understand why they're shouting that because they're wrong." And then they shout their opinion back. And all that happens is you just end up with two idiots shouting at each other, banging heads like rutting bison instead of actually trying to move things forward. So you don't ever convince anyone to change their mind by basically just telling them they're wrong. Because effectively, when you say that, what people tend to hear is that I'm stupid. You say, "Oh, you're wrong." They hear, "I'm stupid." It's just a cognitive bias. So you have to walk people through and you have to use a language they understand. So the first thing I would say is stop talking about the technical part of your discipline because nobody cares. You care, that's why you have that job. Because you are great at SEO and PPC, graphic design, web design, whatever it is. That's why you've got that job. The person you're talking to, if you're talking to a boss or a director or whatever, they really don't care. Tell you what they do care about. Often it's money. Something starting with a pound sign or a dollar sign or a Euro sign or whatever sign it is. That often bothers people at the top of an organization. So if you want to get them to believe in the thing you are doing, and you want to get them to understand about the thing you're doing, you have to speak to them in their language, which means that you have to talk to them about the financial impact. "Ah, but Andi. It's SEO. It's quite hard to quantify the impact." PPC, they go, "Well, give us one. ROAS is eight, so we'll give you eight back. Yay." that's why PPC gets the investment. SEO can be quite different. Web design, good graphic design, can be really difficult to quantify. Advertising. You want to do traditional advertising. I hate that phrase. But if you want to do that, you say, "We need to spend this upfront and we hope that it might deliver this in a little bit of time." That's quite difficult to do. So sometimes you have to go to history. Past performance can sometimes be an indicator of future performance. Sometimes, and I know this is a dirty word in marketing, you can go to academia. Because amazingly, people have been studying marketing since the 1950s. And most of the problems like recessions and interest rate cuts, inflation going up, this has all happened before. It might be the first time it's happened to your generation, but this has all happened before, and there is loads of great evidence as to why you should carry on doing the thing you're doing. So look at the past and sometimes use that as a way to guide the future. Ask a lot of questions. Ask lots of questions before you start telling people anything. Ask them questions to understand what they're worried about, and then they can then take that and go... You can then go, "Right. Okay, if you're worried about this thing, here's how we can help you." So rather than just going, "SEO." And people are going, "I'm not listening." You can go, "Oh, you have this problem. Here's how we can help with that." Unreasonable expectations are slightly different, but I think that starts by right at the beginning. Good planning, scope of works. That type of thing that they call it in IT. What are we going to do? What do we think the impact's going to be? Don't over promise to get the budget, because these two things often work together. "Oh, yeah. We can do all of this if you give us the budget." You don't get the budget, then it looks like you're making it up. Be honest, talk their language, and that should help you. Hope that helps. Mordy Oberstein: Thank you so much for that, Andi. Really appreciate you contributing to the podcast and see you around at some of the conferences out there in the upcoming months. By the way, you can follow Andi over at Andi Jarvis. That's at A-N-D-I J-A-R-V-I-S. Andi Jarvis. Follow him. He is fantastic, if you haven't realized that already. But it's a great point, by the way. As a former teacher, I'll say this. If you're trying to educate people and engage them, you have to educate them. You can't speak at them, you can't try to berate them, you can't try to make them feel bad about it. You have to really be conscious of giving them the tools to make their own decision autonomously, so that hopefully you lead them to the correct decision that they'll make autonomously. Crystal Carter: And I think also to understand why they might have had that information in the first place. Where did they get that from and why was it so convincing to them? How can you help them to... Because if you can understand how they got that information or how they came to that conclusion, then you can help them to unpack it a little bit. So again, like we were talking about. "Oh, everybody thinks that backlinks are the most important thing." Well, there'll be a reason why they thought that. So again, it'll have to do with page rank. It'll have to do with lots of the emails that they're getting all the time and the way that... Maybe some of the things they've been reading. So bridge that gap and be respectful of people who are curious and trying to learn. Mordy Oberstein: Exactly. So you want to foster real learning experiences. You don't want to just win the argument. I think that's what it all comes down to at the end. Okay. With that, so Google has been trying to do some of their own truth searching. Fundamentally speaking, Google does a lot of truth searching. Their whole business model is based on showing you the most accurate, most relevant results possible. But the truth is hard. I feel like somebody has said that before me, but I'll take that as my own saying. My own idiom. And to help Google get at the multiple layers of truth that are out there, Google has launched a little new feature on mobile called perspectives. So what we're going to do is take a look at the direction that Google is going in with this new perspective as we take a directional look at the SERP as we are going Google. And it's Going, Going Google. It's out of here. So back at Google I/O. I'm terrible with time. When was that? May? Crystal Carter: May, I think? I think it's May. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: One of the M months. Mordy Oberstein: Something with an M. It was an M Month. Crystal Carter: 50-50 chance there. Mordy Oberstein: March. Crystal Carter: We could look it up, but we're not going to. Mordy Oberstein: No, I'd rather just say it's March. I'm pretty sure it was March, actually. So they announced a little feature called perspectives, and what it basically is. When you go search on mobile in the US, I'm not sure if it's in any other market, you get a little set of filters up top. You can look for images, shopping, news, and one of those little filters in the little carousel up top is called perspectives. And Google helps you try to get perspective, and they try to offer you all sorts of different angles and takes on that topic. So for example, if you search for something like, "Are the Beatles a good band?" You'll hopefully get some perspectives from whatever sources helping you understand the multiple takes. That's a complicated question. Are the Beatles good? I don't know. It depends. Historically speaking, they were really significant. Do I enjoy their music? I don't know. Sometimes I do. I used to be a bigger Beatles fan than I'm now. Crystal Carter: They're a mixed bag. They've got... They have some... Mordy Oberstein: They are a mixed bag. That's a good way of putting it. They are a mixed bag. Crystal Carter: Yeah, they got a mixed bag. Some of their stuff... Mordy Oberstein: That's our perspective. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: This is our perspective. You might want someone else's perspective. And what Google's basically doing is showing you a tab full of perspectives. And it's interesting because... Okay, let's break one down. I searched for "Is Aaron Judge good?" Aaron Judge is a baseball player. Aaron Judge, for some context, holds the American League Home Run record in a single season with 62 home runs in a season. That's actually the real home run record because the people who broke it beforehand were on drugs. Steroids. So in my mind, "Yeah, he's got the real record." But anyway, you break it down. Is Aaron Judge good? And it tries to give you a lot of social media stuff like Reddit threads, some Twitter stuff, there's a bunch of YouTube stuff, and it's interesting. And with any relatively new product, you're always going to have some kinks to work out in the system. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: I think what you're looking at now. We're recording this. There are still kinks in the system. A lot of it is outdated. It's months old. Nine months old. Which is great for the Beatles, right? Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: Are The Beatles a good band? Yeah, that question has been going on since the '60s. So I don't care if it's nine months ago or nine years ago, that perspective is still going to be the same. But on things that are more current event related. Because you can have a great season and the next season not be a good player. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: What happened before? Not in Aaron's case. Aaron's wonderful. But nine months is a long time. Crystal Carter: Right. Yeah, and also what good is can change. Mordy Oberstein: Right. So yeah. Okay. That's been a little bit of a hangup of mine. Let's take the Beatles one. If I were to ask you, "Are the Beatles a good band?" Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: So I would think there's multiple... Or let me ask... Let's take it a different way. Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: Who's the best Beatle? Mordy Oberstein: Who's the best Beatle? Crystal Carter: It's not Ringo. Mordy Oberstein: Wow. Well, let's not be offensive here. But yeah, it's definitely not Ringo. Crystal Carter: Not Ringo. Bless his heart, but it's not Ringo. And I don't know. I think that all of these things will depend on the songs that connect with you and things like that. You might not even... I'm not even sure if I would agree with that as a question because you can't Beatle on your own. It's not like you can show up... Mordy Oberstein: Well, that's great. So that's one perspective. Then you have... Maybe there's... You break it down in terms of songwriting. When you say who's the best Beatle, does best mean in terms of songwriting out of all of them? Does it mean who had the best career? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity in the context of best? And there's multiple ways to break it down, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. Go back to Aaron Judge, a baseball player. If I'm asking whatever baseball player is the best. Is it best at offense, best at defense, best at promoting themselves? What does best mean? How do you break down the entity according to best? So there's multiple ways to break down an entity, but you're not really getting an entity breakdown. You're just getting a social source. Twitter or YouTube. Crystal Carter: Right. So for instance, Glenn Gabe did a really big deep dive on the perspectives panel. The only thing that... I think where they're trying to make up for the nuance is with volume, so having lots and lots of perspectives, for instance, on it. But I feel like that creates noise. So for instance, Glenn showed the example of best gaming chair perspectives. And then it's just lots of YouTube things, lots of people writing about what's the best gaming chair, and lots of things from Reddit about what the best gaming chair is. And to my mind, that's the same as just going onto one of these platforms and trolling through all of the things to find it. And I think that the trickiness of wading into some of those forums and trying to curate it is that those forums tend to be a bit raw and they tend to be a bit difficult to wrangle. So if you're trying to organize that information, which never wanted to be organized in the first place- Mordy Oberstein: Good point. Crystal Carter: ...you're going to get some complex results. And I think that part of the reason why they're leading on this perspectives tab is in order to counteract the amount of AI content that we're getting. So the perspective stuff is more raw human. "Ah, this chair was terrible." Which did they tell you? The chair that I'm sitting in right now, the review for it, where someone was like, "Is this a hobbit chair? I would not wish this chair on my worst enemy." And I was like, "My guy. That's some strong experience. Strong feelings about a chair. Very strong feelings." Mordy Oberstein: That guy really likes chairs a lot. Crystal Carter: He was really upset. The chair is fine. It's a chair. And so I think trying to curate those things, they're trying to bring those perspectives literally into the SERP because I think they expect for there to be a lot of AI content coming from more traditional publishers. So I think they're trying to balance that- Mordy Oberstein: That's a great point. Crystal Carter: ...kind of content on the web so that you can see the more curated content and you can see more, "Yeah, this is how I feel about this." Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. And Google knows that there's a trend out there that people are looking towards social media for information because you trust people versus search engines kind of thing. So they're trying to incorporate that into the search engines, so that you feel the search engine is a place where you can go to get that trust. I think directionally speaking, that's what this segment Going, Going Google is all about, it makes total sense. I feel like we're at the beginning of a technology, or the beginning of the product rather. And I think it has a tremendous amount of value. I think they just got to take it to the next level. Spice it up a notch. Kick it up a notch. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I think... Mordy Oberstein: Look forward to that, actually. Crystal Carter: Yeah. We'll see how it all plays out. Mordy Oberstein: Now to see how it all played out in the SEO news this week, which always plays out itself with some sort of drama. Let's dive into this week's Snappy News. Snappy News. Two for you this week, both from he that is Barry Schwartz over at SEORoundtable.com. First up, Google's search language mashing systems released two weeks ago. So a few weeks back, it turns out Google released an update that better matched the language being searched for and the actual results on the results page. I will tell you, as an expat, I search in English and would often get the language of the country I'm in, especially in Google Discover. Which by the way, I'm not sure it's part of this update or not. I've seen it with folks I consult with and their sites, and it can be a very big deal if the wrong language shows up for your sites. If you have a site and you have pages in multiple languages, and let's say somebody's searching in, I don't know, Mexico. But they're searching in English and the Spanish version comes back. Highly unlikely that you're going to get a click because I don't want the Spanish version. I don't speak Spanish, I just happen to be on vacation in Mexico. So Google getting this right can be a very big deal, and it's nothing to sneeze at. Also from Barry Schwartz, and also from SEORoundtable.com, and also nothing to sneeze at. Google, August 2023. Broad core update finished rolling out. It is done. A little bit longer than usual to finish this update. Now is the time to go and look at any changes in your ranking trajectory and see what is what. It's hard to do during the update itself because there's always a little kick at the end that could reverse what you initially saw during the outset of the core update. So now is the time to go in and see what, if anything, has changed. Hopefully for the better. And with that, that is this week's Snappy News. So snappy, so informative, so much news. I actually love covering news. Crystal Carter: We know you do. Mordy Oberstein: I love news. I love the SEO news. I don't like regular news. I don't listen, watch or do anything with regular news anymore. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: But SEO news, I'm all about the SEO news. Crystal Carter: Right. Read all about it, people. Mordy Oberstein: Read all about it. You know what else you should be reading all about is Pedro Dias, who is our follower of the week. Pedro Dias is an SEO OG. Former Googler, major SEO OG, technical SEO, and SEO product manager. Founder of multiple companies, I believe. He's over at Pedro Dias on Twitter. That's P-E-D-R-O D-I-A-S on Twitter. So check out Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro is great. He's a super knowledgeable SEO who's been working for ages, and is a very good follow if you want some clear no nonsense SEO stuff that is not full of myths. Mordy Oberstein: That's why he's our... Literally why he's our follow of the week. Crystal Carter: Right. Mordy Oberstein: We sat down. Who is somebody who does not tolerate myths? And it's Pedro. Crystal Carter: Pedro Dias. Pedro speaks... Mordy Oberstein: Zero tolerance policy for myths. SEO Myths. Crystal Carter: Right. He's speaking some truth where he can. So, yeah. He's a great fellow. Nice guy. Funny as well. Mordy Oberstein: Yes. Crystal Carter: So definitely follow Pedro. Mordy Oberstein: Beat my butt at cornhole over at Brighton. Crystal Carter: Yeah, he did. I was there. Mordy Oberstein: I feel like I got hoodwinked. I got hustled. Crystal Carter: You got hustled? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, because he's like, "Oh, I never played a cornhole before." And he was like, "All right." And we go over and 1, 2, 3, 4. Boom, boom, boom. I'm like, "You never played cornhole before? Yeah, right." Crystal Carter: I saw it. That was pretty devastating. I don't know how you came back from that, Mordy. It was pretty conclusive. Mordy Oberstein: Oh, I'm still down on myself ever since then. Really shook my confidence. Crystal Carter: You'll live to cornhole another day. Mordy Oberstein: That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, "I have to." I've been practicing my cornhole game. Crystal Carter: Oh, okay. Oh, right. Mordy Oberstein: Now I'm ready. Crystal Carter: I didn't realize there was a rematch. Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. In my mind there is. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I haven't talked to Pedro about it, but we should. Crystal Carter: We'll see. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Well, with that, thank you for joining us on the SERP's Up podcast. Already going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with a new episode as we dive into how to set SEO priorities. Look for it wherever you consume your podcasts 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 we have over on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at, you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. 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is it so easy to get helpful content so wrong? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Search Engine Journal’s Managing Editor, Ben Steele to discuss why writing helpful content is not as easy as it sounds. We get into some common pitfalls when writing helpful content and how to best avoid them so that your content can rank. We’re extra “helpful” as we put some meat on Google’s advice to write “great content” on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Back Writing helpful content ain't easy is it so easy to get helpful content so wrong? Wix’s Mordy Oberstein and Crystal Carter are joined by Search Engine Journal’s Managing Editor, Ben Steele to discuss why writing helpful content is not as easy as it sounds. We get into some common pitfalls when writing helpful content and how to best avoid them so that your content can rank. We’re extra “helpful” as we put some meat on Google’s advice to write “great content” on this week’s episode of the SERP’s Up SEO Podcast! Previous Episode Next Episode Episode 92 | June 19, 2024 | 51 MIN 00:00 / 50:38 This week’s guests Ben Steele Ben is a proud content goblin with over 10 years of experience as a writer, editor, and content strategist. At SEJ, Ben manages the ebooks program and assists the Editor-in-Chief with editorial operations. You'll find his personal touch on every new ebook SEJ releases. Notes Transcript Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us, SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who makes it look so easy. It's the legit, makes it all look so easy when it is not easy, the one, the only, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. I can't remember what it is. What is it that I make look easy? Mordy Oberstein: It's all of it. It's all of it. Crystal Carter: It's all of it? Mordy Oberstein: You're doing the conferences, all the stuff. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of flapping that happens in between. Yeah, there's just a lot of flopping that happens in between. And there's a lot of many, many piles of makeup to look like I have slept a decent night's sleep- Mordy Oberstein: Oh my god. Crystal Carter: ... when I am there at the conference and having had been up for far too late the night before. There are various tactics and techniques. My top tip, for ladies anyway, and for anybody who is partial to this particular garment, is if you were traveling anywhere, basically, I only pack dresses and onesies and it just means that you can minimize how much you have to pack, and you can pack more outfits in a smaller amount of space. It's really, really useful. So if you have a onesie or a jumpsuit that's way less; Takes up way less space than having to pack a bunch of different things. That's super useful. Also, hydration. Mordy Oberstein: Wear the same clothes multiple days. The choice is yours. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. There's lots of ways to do it. Lots of ways to get to the same- Mordy Oberstein: I recommend your way. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's- Mordy Oberstein: If you're around other people. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. It's useful. It's useful. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Well, with those fashion tips, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only describe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also start building content now with a Wix CMS, as this week, we're talking about the ins and outs of just right good content and why it's way harder than you think. Hence, the whole Crystal makes it look easy. Get it? It all comes together. Crystal Carter: How easy. Mordy Oberstein: All comes together. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We're talking the temptations of quick and fast content creation for SEO, creating the content your audience craves, and why it might not be what you think. And how to write great content that actually has meaning. To help us record a great podcast, SEJ, Search Engine Journal's managing editor Ben Steele will join us in just a few moments. Plus, we see what Google's People Also Asked tells us about how Google sees "good content." And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So uncap your pens and dip your feathers in ink, or just use the keyboard, how quaint, as episode 92 of the SERP's Up Podcast helps you see how the pen is mightier than the SGE Because SGE doesn't produce good content. That's me saying SGE doesn't produce good content. Crystal Carter: Do they talk about pens on SGE? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but they say all sorts of wacky things about what you should do with them. Crystal Carter: About ballpoint pens or fountain pens or the permanent marker pens. Those are the best ones. I mean, Sharpie, they're really just- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, those are good if you have kids under the age of anything. Crystal Carter: For kids, I like the sniffing pens, which is terrible. Why would you encourage children to sniff pens? Mordy Oberstein: Whoa. No, no. You don't want to give the kids a permanent marker to sniff? Crystal Carter: No, but the ones that smell? Like the blue ones smell like blueberry and- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I know what you mean. Crystal Carter: ... like those ones, but why would you encourage children to sniff pens? It's not a good thing, but I used to love them, but now as an adult- Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. I'm bringing it up, not encouraging it. Crystal Carter: As an adult, as a parent, I'm like, "Why would I? I wouldn't want to do that. It's-" Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm not saying you should. Crystal Carter: ... It's not good. That's not good content. Mordy Oberstein: That's not good content. That might be the easy thing to do, but it's not good content. Crystal Carter: It's not good content- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So let me give a little bit of a history of this. Okay, Christina, why are we talking about just write good content if you're not super involved in the SEO space, you're a casual SEO-er? Google has been trying to rank quality content for the longest time, but it's really made ginormous shifts and paradigm shifts. We talked about this before on the podcast since around 2018, had the core updates and the this and the that and the helpful content update, which is no more, but that's confusing and I want to get into that right now. And the advice that Google has been giving, Google's Danny Sullivan, their Search Liaison, is look guys, the links and the this and the... Just write good content. Write content that's valuable to the user, write content that's helpful to the user, write content that the people are actually going to want and going to use and it's going to be meaningful to them. Just write good content. And SEOs are like, "Just write good content like, let's not make magic pixie dust." So there's been some controversy around just write good content. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that just writing good content is not as easy as you think. This is why we're doing the episode. So now let me introduce to you Search Engine Journal's own Blue Ben Steele or Ben Blue Steele, Ben Steele. Ben Steele: Hello. Mordy Oberstein: How are you? Ben Steele: What an amazing intro. I'm doing pretty good. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: I'm tired after that intro. Ben Steele: It sounds tiring. Mordy Oberstein: I should really sniff some markers. Crystal Carter: No, don't. Seriously, don't. Ben Steele: Did you see, someone posted a screenshot of an SGE answer that suggested that in order to help pass a kidney stone, you should drink at least two quarts of urine in a day? Mordy Oberstein: Not only are we aware, but we covered it on It's New with- Ben Steele: Oh, hell yes. Mordy Oberstein: Unbelievable. But you know why? Ben Steele: So wily. Mordy Oberstein: Because it's sterile and I like the taste. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: It's a little much. It really is a little- Crystal Carter: Did somebody post it on Reddit? Is that what happened? Ben Steele: Yeah, I don't get how that came up. That's weird. Crystal Carter: How did it end up in the SGE? Mordy Oberstein: It got confused. They changed it later where it meant drink two quarts of water so that it helps your urine. It got confused. It put the word in the wrong place. Crystal Carter: Did it go, "I'm an LLM. I'm sorry. I cannot understand the internet and I'm not want to talk to you anymore. Please ask a different question"? Mordy Oberstein: That's how you know, by the way, it's an LLM, not a person. The person would double down like, "No, no. You should drink two things. I'm right." Ben Steele: Is this SGE or is this Bear Grylls? Crystal Carter: Right? Right. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So just in case someone's not familiar with Search Engine Journal, please do tell us about SEJ. Ben Steele: Sure, yeah. Searchenginejournal.com is a website that covers all things SEO and digital marketing. We have prolific news writers who cover everything that's going on in the SEO industry. And we also have a team dedicated to creating really helpful content, which is what we're talking about today and about SEO and how to manage your own websites and your own businesses when it comes to existing in the digital space. We have a ton of really fantastic contributors who are expert SEOs in the industry as well, and so we've got their insights coming through the door all the time. Mordy Oberstein: You have a weekly now with Kevin Indig. Ben Steele: Yeah, we're sharing some of the content that he puts out on his newsletter, which is really exciting. Mordy Oberstein: I love Kevin. Ben Steele: He's great. Mordy Oberstein: Love Kevin. Crystal Carter: He's somebody who makes a lot of good content. Mordy Oberstein: Quite helpful. He's quite helpful as a person in general. Anyway, so we're talking about helpful content and one of the things that we talked about before we got onto the show, way back when we decided on this topic for the show actually, was Google saying, "Yeah, just write good content. It sounds super easy," and SEOs are like, "Give me something more." But at the same time, a lot of SEOs are creating, or they're trying to leverage, we'll call it fast food of content. It's super quick. We're trying to get super quick wins, super quick content. Let's get it out there, get it done, reach huge audiences. And then they feel like they're kind of wondering, why doesn't Google love me? Isn't my content helpful? But I don't think they really understand what helpful content is. Ben Steele: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So what is helpful content and can it be fast content? Ben Steele: The answer to the second question is yes, but... At least in my opinion. See, a lot of folks get hung up on the way that algorithms work. And what I've always said is, your primary responsibility as a content focused SEO or someone writing content in the first place is to meet expectations. And fantastic content will exceed them, but the primary goal you have is to set them and then meet them. And that's a problem that a lot of people struggle with is first of all, you have to do a lot of research to work out what kinds of expectations you should be looking for, and then actually properly fulfilling them is hard. So yes, fast content exists, and I think that a lot of people are trying to optimize right now especially, for quick answers and fast content. Because they know that if you can do that right, well then you can get in search features. You can potentially show up in SGE, because SGE is pulling answers from page 60 of Google if it's a good answer to the question. One lead did a great webinar on that with our own print. And so quick answers does not actually mean quick to create, is the problem. So you can create content that's good, that's fast to consume and that can even benefit you, but the amount of work that goes into that is quite significant. That's something that people get hung up on, is that like, "Oh, I can just make some quick snippets and some quick things and it'll be great." Well, no, they'll be quick. Good content should be quick for the user to understand, but that doesn't mean it's going to be quick for you to make. That's something I see quite a lot, is short means fast. Sorry, go ahead. Crystal Carter: There's that thing, that it's like, "I'm sorry this email is so long," or, "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter." There's that sort of thing as well. It takes time to make something concise. It takes time to make something that is edited down to something that's actually useful. And LLMs are terrible for this, so if you get an LLM and you say, "Give me the answer to this question," they'll go off on tangents that are unrelated, they'll talk about stuff that you don't need to hear about. They'll cover lots of different stuff just because they're trying to cover all the bases necessarily, but they don't always give you just the thing that you need until you drill down the prompt really, really precisely. And that takes time in itself, so I think that's worth considering. But I think one of the other things that came to mind while you were talking was people trying to jump ahead without going through some of the steps in between. So trying to find shortcuts with some of these tools or trying to find shortcuts to good content. Like, "Oh, if I just add this thing, that'll be the thing that makes the difference." And I think it's like I took my kid ice skating and he was trying to do a bunch of jumps and stuff, but he'd only just learned how to ice skate. And he was like, "Oh, I want to do these jumps." And I'm like, "Look here. All good ice skaters can do jumps. They can do the Lutz, then the quadruple Lutz or the double axle or whatever. Yes, good figure skaters can do that, but they're also very good at just skating. All of them are very good at skating. You can't skip that step. You still have to learn how to skate. Of course, you're going to learn how to do your double axle and you go spinning around and all that sort of stuff. Of course you'll learn how to do all that if you want to be a great skater, if you want to be really good at that. But you also have to learn to be a very good skater. Same with ice hockey players. They're also all very, very good at skating before they can do any of the other stuff." Mordy Oberstein: Except for the goalie, because he's not moving. Crystal Carter: They're good at standing up when they're covered in lots of pads. That's a feat in itself. Ben Steele: For sure. Yeah, my particular favorite YouTube rabbit hole is historical martial arts. And when a lot of those folks talk about how they train, it's interesting because in the movies when people are training to sword fight, they're doing all these fancy things. And if you watch somebody who does HEMA actually doing a training session, they'll spend hours just skipping around with no weapon in their hand, just working on their footwork. And they look ridiculous doing it, but it's like that's what you have to do. You have to get the footwork to a point where you don't think about it, and then you can put a weapon in your hands. Mordy Oberstein: Chasing chickens, right? Ben Steele: Yeah. Crystal Carter: There's lots of boring stuff that people do in order to learn how to do that stuff. And I mean, even in the age of LLMs, learning how to clean data, learning how to sort out the data that you're giving to your LLM, the data that you're giving to whatever tools you're using to help you do that stuff is something that is boring, time-consuming, and takes practice. And you have to figure out how to make sure that your prompts make sense and all that sort of stuff. And that's stuff that you have to build up. You can't skip the steps. Mordy Oberstein: But that's what I think makes it so hard for writing content because you think, I speak English, I write English, I can write content. It's not like that. I'll give you an example. I was looking at a bunch of sites that got impact... A bunch of pages rather, that got impacted by the March 2024 core update for this post that I'm supposed to be writing up for the Wix SEO hub. But by the time this article comes out, that post will be well released. But one of the things that I saw, and two of the examples that I was looking at, two of the three examples so far that I really want to focus on, the pages that did well, did a good job of addressing how the user's going to experience the thing. For example, one of them is about hip surgery. And it was about the doctor's going to do this, then the doctor will do that, and then you can expect the doctor to do this. And it was really walking you through not just like what is hip surgery, but what is hip surgery for you and what is it going to mean for you? And it was very different than the other kind of content ranking. And the way I'll define it is, it was not sterile content. It was not, what is hip surgery, what are the different types of hip surgery, how do you recover from hip surgery? It was meaningful in the sense that it was dealing with an actual person or a group of people in mind. And I was thinking, I was looking at these other pages that are still, some of them aren't ranking well, some of them are still ranking and they're still very, very sterile. And I feel like in the future, Google's going to eventually drop those off. If I was a smart SEO and I'm going to now rework this page for my client and it's completely sterile, how would I do that? And I was thinking, how would I do that on this page if I didn't want to start from scratch? That would be really difficult. And it took me a long time to figure out, you know what I would do with this page? I would probably do this, because I've spent the better part of 10 years doing that; Of thinking about how am I going to... Not just how am I going to write this page or this post. How am I going to position this post? How am I going to differentiate this post? What angle am I going to take with this post? And even after doing this for 10 years, with this particular page, I sat there for a good 20 minute, I don’t know what to do with this thing. It's creating hopeful content. It's not easy. Ben Steele: No. Mordy Oberstein: It's very hard to position that the right way. Ben Steele: Yeah, and I'm having that experience myself right now where one of my primary responsibilities is ebooks, and we're currently writing our annual ebook about our ranking factors. And when I sat down to this thing, I was like, "What the heck am I going to say about ranking factors after the last year? How could I possibly be helpful to an SEO who's like, 'What the heck is going on right now?'?" And so that took a long time to work out and we're getting there. I just submitted the draft, so- Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Ben Steele: ... fingers crossed. Mordy Oberstein: Roll back the curtains. What did you do? What was your thought process? How did you go? Because you're right. That's one of those kind of pieces of content where, okay, here are the top most important ranking factors. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's been done a million times before, and to be honest with you, we talked about this podcast, we have a whole episode about it, it's really not that helpful. So then what did you do? Could you share secrets? Ben Steele: Yeah. All right. So we did that the last, I think, three years. That's what our book has looked like of, here are a bunch of ranking factors. And we took a myth busting approach, which we found to be relatively helpful at the time, which is here are all the misconceptions. We're going to bust those myths. We're going to talk about what we have evidence for and we're going to go over... I think we did like 80 or so per book or something- Mordy Oberstein: I've referenced those before. They're good. Ben Steele: ... Oh, really? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Ben Steele: Awesome. And I sat down to it this year and I was talking with Katie, our Editor in Chief, and we were like, "We can't do that again this year. It doesn't make sense. It's not helpful anymore because everything is currently changing. Whatever we write in the book, the production process is long enough that it's highly likely to be out of date by the time it's gone to publish. So what can we do?" And so we decided on a bit of a mix. The first thing we did was we looked at the format of our most popular ebooks, and it's always the expert roundup format, when we get a bunch of SEO experts. I ask them questions, they answer them, and then I put it all together and you've got an ebook full of a bunch of varied insights from a bunch of different people. And then you have me talking about what I think the trends look like. And those are by and large our most popular books. Those are our SEO trends and PPC trends books that we do at the end of the year. And so we said, "Okay, what if we take this successful format and apply it to ranking factors so that we can have a broad diversity of opinions on what ranking factors means? We know that our audience likes hearing from these people and so let's see what happens." And so that's kind of what we did. We changed the format. We were at first a little worried, like, "We've done it in a very specific way for three years. What's going to happen?" Because like I just talked about, setting expectations and then delivering on them is one of the core parts of being a successful SEO. And I can get more into that a little later. And so we're like, "Well, we are completely overturning the expectations that we've set the last three years, so is that going to work?" And we're like, "We got to take the risk because it's better to risk this than to be unhelpful. And we think that analyzing individual ranking factors is unhelpful at this point." The book talks about the change, it talks a little bit about some of the things that we do at SEJ to account for the changes that are going on and the disruption and the instability. We asked people, "What do you think are ranking factors that matter right now?" And we ask people, "What do you think is going on? And what do you think about content in this wacky state of serfs, to be honest?" We had a lot of conversations about what does the advice make good content look like when good content isn't really being rewarded a lot of the time? How can we sit here with a straight face and repeat the same old advice when it's clearly not working right now? But we also talk about some of the things that we've done that have seen an impact, and it does ultimately come back to making good content. And it's just about being more specific about the way you do it, more intentional, unfortunately, in the end, that appears to be the secret. Mordy Oberstein: That's, by the way, a great point. You started off saying the same format wasn't going to work. And I feel that's one mentality that content writers and SEOs kind of fall into, is helpful content is one thing, and it's not one thing. It's constantly changing. It's constantly evolving. The notion of good content in general is evolving. Think of an ad. Think of an ad back then in the 1950s. That was considered good ad content. Come on down. You look at it now like it's schlocky, it's gimmicky, it's ridiculous. But it was good content back then. And a hundred years from now, people look back at our, and like, "That? Really? That was good content?" So it's constantly progressing, constantly evolving. So to think helpful content is X isn't the right way to look at it. Helpful content might mean X for Google right now, but in a year from now, it won't be. That's why we look at algorithm, because you see how is it progressing. What's different in this update versus some of the trends we've seen in previous updates? Ben Steele: Yeah. Mm-hm. Crystal Carter: And I think also the piece that you did there of looking at... You're giving us a very top level summary of how you did this, but you looked at what does our audience enjoy, what does our audience appreciate? And I think that's really important. I think that when people are making good content, and especially, especially, especially now where there's so much AI content out there, there's so much uncertainty from lots of different venues, lots of different channels, et cetera, you have a community. You have a user base that you know, you have your own data from your own sources, and you know that your audience likes this. You know that your audience likes to hear from multiple perspectives and you are able to provide them with the thing that they like. Even if it doesn't rank right, even if this content doesn't rank, you know that you're serving those users. And if you serve those users, then those users will refer to you, will talk about you, will come back to you, will reference you, will search for you on the SERP and will find you, and you will be useful to those users. And Google will see that. So I think when people think about good content, I think that it's so important to put the users first. We have a few different pieces of content around the Wix SEO Learning Hub that are around this as well. And I think that that's super, super important. And I think that you just can't go wrong. You can't go wrong if you are thinking about what your users want first because they'll appreciate that and what works with your users. At the same time, I think that what Mordy's saying about the evolution of content is really important as well. So I think that format can change as well. So what makes content good can sometimes change from the format. So you're talking about an ebook. Ebooks have really evolved. I remember when ebooks were pretty much like a PDF sort of thing. And sometimes they're that, sometimes you can also get them on a Kindle thing, sometimes you can get a combination of a few articles altogether. I know y'all do that a little bit as well. And there's lots of different ways that you can do an ebook these days. And there's lots of new channels for ebooks. And I think that that's really important. Similarly, and I'm going to date myself here, but if I think back in the day, we would get the Sears catalog and we'd go around and we'd circle the things that we wanted. And back in the day, that was- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, those days. Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... good content, right? Mordy Oberstein: Mm-hm. That's great. Crystal Carter: I'd be like, "Check out that Barbie house. This is what I want." Mordy Oberstein: That was fun, when it came in the mail. That was- Crystal Carter: Right? It was good. And to me, to 9-year-old me, that was great content. That was fantastic. But now people have their Amazon wishlist or whatever, or people have their wishlist on wherever, and that's more useful because you don't have to carry around the 600 page thing. And if the price changes, you can see it in real time and things. So the format there can also make content good. And I think that that's really important to think about as well, and for SEOs to not just necessarily fall back on what they always do, as Mordy was saying, but to pay attention to new opportunities to connect with people. And even new methods to connect with people in order to make the content good. Ben Steele: And you know what one of the biggest changes has been for the better internally when it comes to performance? It's been collaboration. So as an SEO, or I'm more editor, less practicing SEO, so as a content specialist I'll say, I don't necessarily have all of the information, all of the knowledge and all of the expertise required to front to back create an experience fully that an audience member wants. But the closer I work with my marketing team, the closer I work with my sales team, the more I can get that data, get that understanding, and take insights from the expertise of the other fantastic people I work with. And the more I do that, the closer that we collaborate, the better an idea we get of things like, what does our audience want? What do they respond to? And so collaboration and breaking down silos is a very important part around content. If you want content to be successful, you really need information from all these sources. And it's been a huge... We've been doing this internally for a while where we try and sort of, like I said, break down the silos and make everyone's reporting and everyone's expertise available across different teams so that we can make use of that information and get fully aligned on our company goals. And it's had huge impact. And we've noticed that when we make these decisions, these audience focused decisions that are backed up by good data from our marketing and sales teams, that even if Google doesn't reward us right away, we can tell that the audience rewards us, and that's when we know we're doing something right. I think that's something that is going to be critical looking forward too, is remember that Google isn't your ultimate end goal. It's one of your channels, but if you're serving your users in whichever... That works in any channel, right? And the path of the algorithms is ostensibly, allegedly to reward behavior like that. Right? Mordy Oberstein: Well and it wants to follow the user, right? It wants- Ben Steele: Right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Google wants us break it down. Google wants ad clicks. The results have to be good at being relative to what users are expecting. So Google's chasing users while we're chasing algorithms. The point you made about experience and that whole narrative and actual expertise and collaborating with people who have the actual knowledge, I think that's been one of the more healthy things that's been going on in the SEO industry for the past, I don't know, couple of years, whatever it's been. And I think it's fascinating to see that shift. That wasn't a part of the conversation when I got into SEO at all. You send the content brief over to a content writer from every content market and they create the content, you're good to go. I think now though, the next step is going to be, okay, we understand the experience, we understand the value of expertise, the value of firsthand knowledge, all that kind of stuff. Now we need to focus on the best way to transmit that knowledge and transmit that information. Because the value of the content and the helpfulness of the content is only as good as A, the actual substance itself, and B, how you transmit it. Just use a crude example, if I were to say to you, "Give me the salt now, jerk," you wouldn't really want to pass the salt to me. But if I said, "Please pass me the salt," you would pass me the salt. So it's not just the content itself, but it's how you say it that's super important. I don't think that's been part of the narrative yet at all, but I really hope that it will be. Crystal Carter: You think people should be more polite to Google? Mordy Oberstein: Now we're getting spicy. Crystal Carter: I said that. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure this is helpful. Ben Steele: I think you can actually see, in the stumbles that Google's making, you can see the intent here. For things that exactly what you're talking about, Mordy, where it comes to not just the substance, but the experience of your content. And I think that a lot of these kind of the stumbling blocks are indicative of yes, they're trying to do what they're saying. And we're in a period of big disruption and there's a lot of missteps been happening all at once, but you can kind of see the direction even in the stumbles made by the algorithms. And we had a contributor in the ebook, here's a sneak peek, make a point that, I think it was Kevin Rowe made the point that we're seeing AI algorithms get released, but training them is different to how they act in the wild. And he was saying that eventually you just have to kind of release them and let them learn in a live environment, and that's going to be full of problems and mistakes, and then you fix them as they come up. And so he thinks that's what's happening. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. I agree with that. Ben Steele: I found that to be a pretty insightful comment because it's like, okay, so yeah, we have a ton of disruption. And he likened it to learning how to box. If you can hit a non-human target as much as you want, but eventually you got to get in the ring and get hit. And this is Google's algorithms getting hit, but then they get better. And you can see in where they're as stumbling is that they're trying to account for things like how you present your content. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing issues where original content is getting pushed down in the SERPs by content that is just kind of regurgitating it, but making it a little bit more accessible more quickly. And that's obviously not an ideal use case, but you can see the attempt to be like, "Okay, what's the user experience of this? How easily can a user parse this content?" Mordy Oberstein: On that note, if somebody wanted to attempt to hit you up for some knowledge and information about writing helpful content, where could they find you? Ben Steele: These days, I am mostly on LinkedIn. I've pulled back my X, Twitter, whatever presence quite significantly. So for me personally, it's just Ben Steele on LinkedIn, and you can find me by searching my name with Search Engine Journal. Mordy Oberstein: We will link to that in the show notes. Is your LinkedIn profile a picture like you giving the Blue Steel look? Crystal Carter: From the left. It might be. Mordy Oberstein: That'd be great, if it was. Ben Steele: I'll have to get updated headshots. Mordy Oberstein: You can have AI do it for you. Ben Steele: Oh. Yeah. Crystal Carter: For anyone who does not know that reference, please go and watch Zoolander. Your life will be better for it. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Be at least 10 times as big. Crystal Carter: We're men. We're men. Mordy Oberstein: I got the black lung- Ben Steele: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Keep an eye out for the ebook. When does that come out? Ben Steele: June 11th is when the ebook comes out. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so we'll be able to link to it. Nice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because this will be out on the 19th. Mordy Oberstein: On the 19th, so- Ben Steele: Oh. Heck yeah. All right. Crystal Carter: Tell your team, you're like, "Look at me. I'm just marketing the book we just dropped. You're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: The audience get a backstage look at our scheduling. Ben Steele: Awesome. Thank you guys. Mordy Oberstein: So much fun. Yeah. Okay, so we'll link the ebook in the show notes. Check it out, have a gander at it, and check out SEJ and check out Ben. Ben Steele: Thank you guys so much. It's been a wonderful experience being on here. Mordy Oberstein: Well, it's been fantastic having you. Talk to you soon. Speaking of good content, what happens if we start running Google searches about good content? What could we learn? We'll find out as we have some fun with Google's People Also Asked box. So I decided to throw in some... When I say fun, by the way, it is not going to be fun. I'm just giving you a little spoiler alert, this is not fun. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I decided to throw a bunch of keywords into Google: What kind of content do users want, how to write good content, what is good content? And I'll tell you, I personally have been on mobile. This is an interesting point, I should tweet about this. I find myself clicking on more PAAs on mobile now than I used to and I'm- Crystal Carter: Why is that? Mordy Oberstein: ... sure it's because the things I'm searching for or Google's... Maybe it was showing them higher up than they used to, or the results aren't so great, so I'm like, "Ah, I might as well click on the PAA." Or maybe I'm not good at searching anymore, so that secondary question's really what I wanted, and Google did a good job showing me that question. Whatever it is. I'll tell you, when I searched for these things, I didn't find much of it helpful. Crystal Carter: Okay, Mordy Oberstein: Okay, here we go. Sorry, Google, you can't win all the time. What kind of content do users want? The first question is, what type of content is most consumed? That one's not bad. That one's not bad. Maybe I'm looking for, okay, what kind of content are people going to actually consume? Kind of an offshoot of that, what kind of content is most engaging? Particularly, I'm looking for something around social media content. Maybe I really meant social media content. I would look for something engaging. Okay, fine. Okay. The third one is, what is the most used content type? I don't even know what that question means. And then the fourth one is, what content gets the most attention? Which is really the same thing as the second question, it was content's the most engaging? So not very helpful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. They're odd questions. I had a look at, how do you know if content is good? That was my seed question. The featured snippet there was from Quora. Mordy Oberstein: Ah. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Where I go for all of my high quality substantive information. Crystal Carter: Obviously. And so the questions came off of that was, how to tell if content is good. There's an answer there from Sitecore. How do you know if content is successful? Another one from Sitecore. Sitecore crushing it here. And then we had, what defines good content? That's a good question as well. And how to determine good quality. A lot of these are very, very, very similar, which I think is really interesting because how to determine quality content, how to tell if content is good, what defines good content, and how do you tell if content is good, they're very, very similar. I think it's very interesting because essentially what you get with the PAAs is that they are essentially a repository for a lot of the featured snippets. So it's very interesting that you would have different featured snippets. And you see this really regularly, different featured snippets, different PAAs for very, very similar questions, which is what you found as well you were looking at- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, very similar across the board. I have other ones that are also very similar. Just to give you some contrast, by the way, if you're listening to this, if you search for how to throw a curveball, and these are the things I would actually click on, how do you throw a curveball correctly? Okay, fine. That's maybe a little bit too similar to the query itself. What is the proper curveball grip? Is it bad for an 11-year-old to throw a curveball? It's a very specific intent, which is true, it is bad for their wrist. And then, how do to throw a 12 to 6 curveball? So certain curveballs go, imagine that the curve goes from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock. That's old school curveball. The more modern curveball kind of goes from, I don't know, 1 o'clock to 1 o'clock. Not 4 o'clock, 7 at clocks. I'm bad at clocks. So it's a little bit different. They're very differentiated. They're different questions for different intents and really helps you go down the curveball wormhole. If I search for, what is good content, I get, what does good content mean? That's what I asked. That's what I asked. What is good quality content? So okay, slight variance. How to make good content? Okay, fine. What is good content versus bad content? I get you're adding in the extra contrast. Yeah. But that's a little bit like, all right, same but different. I actually threw that into people also. I actually go into Also Asked, so you could see the further breakdown. So if you go into what does good content mean, Also Asked breaks down the next PAA questions being, how would you know a good content? Crystal Carter: A good content. I love the misspellings. I love the bad grammar and the PAAs. They're my favorite. Mordy Oberstein: What is an example content? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: What is excellent content? Crystal Carter: Okay? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What type of content is best? Yes. Crystal Carter: For? Mordy Oberstein: What does bad content mean? So I was a little bit surprised that Google took the word mean very literally. Like, define the word content. That's not what I was looking for exactly. Crystal Carter: And I think it can be very surprising. I think this is one of the reasons why it's worth going through the PAAs with a tool like Also Asked. With a tool following, just going to the SERP and following that path as well. There's so many tiny subtleties that make the difference. The other thing I think that's also worth thinking about particularly, and I think of this when I'm looking at competitor research and stuff, is also checking the actual search volume for them. Because just because there's a featured snippet, doesn't mean that that's actually getting any search volume very much at all. So that's worth looking at as well because it could very well be that maybe they have... I looked up, are smoothies good for you? Because I've heard people who say that actually, smoothies have too much sugar or they take out all the fiber, where some people are like, "I juice every day." So anyway. Mordy Oberstein: That's what Barry Bond said. Crystal Carter: With something like that, it might be that more people are asking more of one particular, or phrasing the question in one particular way and getting to the serp in that way, even though they're very, very similar. Sometimes you can see that those slight differences can make a really big difference in terms of search volume. Because the chances are that you'll probably, in terms of featured snippet, PAA sort of thing, you may very well be at the top for the high search volume thing. But if you go for that one, you might also rank somewhere lower down for the other one. So that's worth thinking about as well. But yeah, the PAAs, the way that they arrange them can be very interesting in terms of the similarities between the words and everything. Mordy Oberstein: So it just goes to show you, sometimes you can learn a lot from the PAAs and sometimes you can't. Crystal Carter: I still don't know if smoothies are healthy or not. I still can't tell. Mordy Oberstein: It depends. If it tastes good, not healthy. It tastes meh, probably healthy. Crystal Carter: Does it have kale in it? That's probably healthy if- Mordy Oberstein: Kale in it is definitely healthy no matter how much sugar you put in it. That- Crystal Carter: Some of them are just like a juiced salad. Some of them are like, "We put kale and celery and thing," and you're like- Mordy Oberstein: That's healthy, but that doesn't sound too appetizing to me. Crystal Carter: Spirulina, like all these things. Mordy Oberstein: Wheatgrass. Crystal Carter: Wheatgrass. I actually like wheatgrass. Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. You know what else is interesting? Whatever's happening in the SEO news this week is always interesting, and it's usually always covered by Barry Schwartz. So here's our ode to Barry each and every week, and some other people who cover the SEO news as well, like the great folks over at Search Engine Journal. Here's this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. First up from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google, sometimes search experiments conflict causing issues. This comes from Google's Search Off the Record podcast, Gary, however you pronounce his last name, was talking about Google experiments and said that sometimes that multiple experiments can cause conflicts with each other. He wrote, "Very often these experiments that need to be rolled back because two experiments might interact very badly with each other." Glenn Gabe chimed in on X writing, "Sometimes problems in the service and maybe what we see as changes are due to multiple experiments running that don't work well with each other." You can even see this with the algorithm updates themselves sometimes, which is why I think Google tries to integrate things into the core as much as possible, in my honest opinion. And folks have covered this for a while. Glenn has some great posts on this, on warring algorithm updates. So for example, back when you had the review updates being announced before they were called the Product Review Updates, you might see a site, I don't know, gain a whole bunch of rankings with that update. Month later comes along a core update and kills all those rankings. So sometimes those systems can compete with each other. I was talking about this on LinkedIn, I don't know when. I post too many things on LinkedIn, so good luck finding it. But sometimes if you don't think about... If think SEO factors, for lack of a better word in isolation, and you don't try to think how everything kind of balances out, you could end up focusing on things the wrong way. I think the example that I gave was, oh, I'll focus on links. I'll get a lot of links. So if you're focused on the link factor in SEO, you'll grab all these links, but then what happens when the user actually gets to the site? Because Google rewards it with rankings because you get so many great links, yada, yada, yada. The user gets to the site, the site's not great. So now the user behavior side of the algorithm, however that plays itself out, whole separate controversy, would say, "Oh, wait a second. This site's actually not so great. You got all the great links. Okay, okay, I see that, but let's actually demote the website because the behavior on the site or whatever shows that this site maybe isn't what people want. Maybe it's not quality." So you have to think about the algorithm harmoniously. Anyway, getting a little bit off track with that. This from Danny Goodwin covering Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land where we got Meta Barry there. 13 SEO takeaways, some Googles, Elizabeth Tucker at SMX Advanced. Barry Schwartz interviewed Elizabeth Tucker, who's the Director of Product Management of Google Search, and Danny wrote up a summary of the 13 things you should know about what Barry and Elizabeth covered. There's a whole bunch of really cool things in there. I'll kind of roll through just a few of them. For example, there's a whole thing on why SEO should focus on the big picture. Elizabeth said, "We are trying to satisfy people with all these different informational needs with all sorts of different great types of content and websites. I do worry that when people kind of get down in the weeds on specific technical details or signals we may or may not have, it might take away from that big picture question of, is this helpful, yada, yada, yada." Absolutely a hundred percent agree. They got into why the March 2024 core update took 45 days to roll out. Basically saying that that was the biggest update that they basically ever had, with Elizabeth saying that there was some re-architecture work going on. They said that we actually had a mini war room going on. We were doing live monitoring, co-capacity and latency in our data centers, because it is unusual for us to roll out so many different changes at once. We did so successfully. Part of that was actually why the announcement about the March 2024 core update took a little bit while for Google to announce it, basically saying they want to make sure that things were... I'll just quote them. Why am I trying to put words in their mouth? Quoting Elizabeth, "We wanted to make sure all the changes were entirely rolled out. Hundreds of people were involved. So just answering the question of, are we done yet, involves so many different pings, et cetera." One of the interesting things that I took away from the article, and I'll end here because it's a whole bunch of other things about what causes radical fluctuations, how many systems are involved in Google's core updates. Danny does a really nice job kind of covering the conversation that Barry had with Elizabeth, but there's a section that Danny has about how Google defines low quality. And I'm going to reignite this debate, I guess. I don't know why it's a debate at this point in the SEO world, but whatever. Google basically said like, "We look at the Search Quality Rater guidelines as our definition of quality." I will read through this as much as I can. It's a lot. I don't want to take up too much. It's supposed to be snappy, Mordy. Elizabeth said, "We rigorously define high quality, low quality. We give examples, and this document is truly the foundation of how third party evaluators then go and evaluate results for quality, meaning the Search Quality Rater guidelines." Elizabeth wanted to say that there's no one size fits all for quality, "It's actually a fairly nuanced thing." Completely agree with that. Quality is incredibly nuanced. She offers an example of how that might be, why that might be, and then she says, "So we've laid it out in our Search Quality Rater guidelines. We take into account the quality of the main content, things like accuracy for informational content, talent and skill. We look at things like page experience. Can people find the main content easily?" So she says, "So take a look. It's all there. I said this before, I'll say it again. The Quality Rater guidelines should give you a directional look at how Google is thinking about quality. What is actually in the algorithm or not, different question, but it will give you a look inside the brain or the mind of Google." Continuing with Danny Goodwin covering Google's statements, this one is Danny covering Liz Reed and an all hands quote, or not quote, titled the article, Head of Google Search: AI mistakes won't prevent progress. Basically, Google had an all hands saying, "Hey, look, there's going to be problems. We're going to tackle them. That shouldn't mean we don't move forward with the AI. I don't know what you want to call the AI world on the SERP and so forth, yada, yada, yada." I mean, Google kind of has to say that. Obviously I think they do mean that, but they also kind of have to get that message out there. I think it's a very important message for them and then how their whole wider ecosystem works. That's all I'm going to say about that. Read into that what you want to. One thing that I took away was a quote where she said, "We don't just have to understand the quality of the site or the page. We have to understand each passage of a page." So in the AI overview, you have different links to different subsections of the AI overview. For example, one I always go back to was, how to prevent kidney stones, and in there is a section about diet. Google might have to understand, hey, wait a second, we're going to link out to that page there. We have to understand that this page has a section about diet, and that section about diet and kidney stones is really good, and that's the one we're going to link to when we cover that subtopic. It is an interesting conversation, and I think maybe we should have a little bit more of a conversation about, of how Google is understanding the subsections of pages. Anyway, that is again, not so snappy this week, Mordy. Got to do a better job. I talk fast. I try to talk fast. Maybe that's not a good thing, but I try to make it snappy by talking faster and it's not working. There's just so much news going on. Anyway, this is the not so snappy news. Yeah, so that was ever so snappy, as usual. Crystal Carter: Yeah, newsy news. There's been so much news. The news has been really tricky. Or the news has been really interesting because there's been a lot of really big things like the updates and people starting new search engines and stuff like that. And then there's been a lot of little, tiny, teeny tiny- Mordy Oberstein: If you like the teeny tiny things and the big thing, as always make sure to check out It's New over at Wix SEO Hub, and RustyBrick's YouTube channel. Speaking of news people, our follow of the week are two news people. Hey, we're going full on SEJ this week as our follow of the week this week is Angie Nikoleychuk, and Heather Campbell, both from SEJ. Crystal Carter: Angie and Heather are so, so, so, so super nice. Mordy Oberstein: They are the nicest team, by the way. Crystal Carter: They're so nice. Mordy Oberstein: Behind the scenes? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: So nice, so easy to work with. Love working with SEJ people. Crystal Carter: They're super nice and I think it's- Mordy Oberstein: Great team. Crystal Carter: ... one of those things like, sometimes folks are popular or whatever or have a big following and you sort of wonder why. And then you meet them and you're like, "Oh, this is why. Because y'all do really good stuff." Mordy Oberstein: And we had Angie on for one of our live SEO audit. Angie's great. She'll tell me she'll listen to the Edge of the News Podcast, which I do their news every week, and like, "Yeah, I really disagree with what you said there." I love that. I love that. That's great. Crystal Carter: No, it's good. She's got such great insight and she brings a lot of her CRO knowledge into the stuff that she does, and she was great on the site audit. We did a site audit on quick wins, and definitely worth having a look at. I think that's evergreen content, so go and check that out as well. Mordy Oberstein: And definitely also check out Heather Campbell, who's been fabulous on the things we're working on with her as well. Heather is the Director of Marketing at Search Engine Journal and does a lot of their write-ups also for them, so give her a big follow. We'll link to their social media profiles in the show notes. And hope you found this episode helpful. Crystal Carter: I did. I got lots of helpful tips. Mordy Oberstein: At the end of the day, just write good content. That's all. Just do it. Crystal Carter: Write good content, and may the algorithm be forever in your favor. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so I definitely let the algorithm be in your favor, and then do us a favor and tune in for our next episode. So that means 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 the unsung heroes of SEO; Those who maintain rank. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over on wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning up 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 Ben Steele Angie Nikoleychuk Heather Campbell Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Google Ranking Systems & Signals 2024 The Rise of Situational Content News: Google: Sometimes Search Experiments Conflict Causing Issues 13 SEO takeaways from Google’s Elizabeth Tucker at SMX Advanced Head of Google Search: AI mistakes won’t prevent progress Notes Hosts, Guests, & Featured People: Mordy Oberstein Crystal Carter Ben Steele Angie Nikoleychuk Heather Campbell Resources: SERP's Up Podcast Wix SEO Learning Hub Searchlight SEO Newsletter Wix Studio Wix Studio YouTube Google Ranking Systems & Signals 2024 The Rise of Situational Content News: Google: Sometimes Search Experiments Conflict Causing Issues 13 SEO takeaways from Google’s Elizabeth Tucker at SMX Advanced Head of Google Search: AI mistakes won’t prevent progress Transcript Mordy Oberstein: It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining us, SERP's Up Podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who makes it look so easy. It's the legit, makes it all look so easy when it is not easy, the one, the only, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter. Crystal Carter: Thank you very much. I can't remember what it is. What is it that I make look easy? Mordy Oberstein: It's all of it. It's all of it. Crystal Carter: It's all of it? Mordy Oberstein: You're doing the conferences, all the stuff. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of flapping that happens in between. Yeah, there's just a lot of flopping that happens in between. And there's a lot of many, many piles of makeup to look like I have slept a decent night's sleep- Mordy Oberstein: Oh my god. Crystal Carter: ... when I am there at the conference and having had been up for far too late the night before. There are various tactics and techniques. My top tip, for ladies anyway, and for anybody who is partial to this particular garment, is if you were traveling anywhere, basically, I only pack dresses and onesies and it just means that you can minimize how much you have to pack, and you can pack more outfits in a smaller amount of space. It's really, really useful. So if you have a onesie or a jumpsuit that's way less; Takes up way less space than having to pack a bunch of different things. That's super useful. Also, hydration. Mordy Oberstein: Wear the same clothes multiple days. The choice is yours. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. There's lots of ways to do it. Lots of ways to get to the same- Mordy Oberstein: I recommend your way. Crystal Carter: Yeah, that's- Mordy Oberstein: If you're around other people. Crystal Carter: This is true. This is true. It's useful. It's useful. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Well, with those fashion tips, the SERP's Up Podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only describe to our SEO newsletter Searchlight over at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also start building content now with a Wix CMS, as this week, we're talking about the ins and outs of just right good content and why it's way harder than you think. Hence, the whole Crystal makes it look easy. Get it? It all comes together. Crystal Carter: How easy. Mordy Oberstein: All comes together. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: We're talking the temptations of quick and fast content creation for SEO, creating the content your audience craves, and why it might not be what you think. And how to write great content that actually has meaning. To help us record a great podcast, SEJ, Search Engine Journal's managing editor Ben Steele will join us in just a few moments. Plus, we see what Google's People Also Asked tells us about how Google sees "good content." And of course, we have the snappiest of SEO news and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness. So uncap your pens and dip your feathers in ink, or just use the keyboard, how quaint, as episode 92 of the SERP's Up Podcast helps you see how the pen is mightier than the SGE Because SGE doesn't produce good content. That's me saying SGE doesn't produce good content. Crystal Carter: Do they talk about pens on SGE? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, but they say all sorts of wacky things about what you should do with them. Crystal Carter: About ballpoint pens or fountain pens or the permanent marker pens. Those are the best ones. I mean, Sharpie, they're really just- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, those are good if you have kids under the age of anything. Crystal Carter: For kids, I like the sniffing pens, which is terrible. Why would you encourage children to sniff pens? Mordy Oberstein: Whoa. No, no. You don't want to give the kids a permanent marker to sniff? Crystal Carter: No, but the ones that smell? Like the blue ones smell like blueberry and- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, I know what you mean. Crystal Carter: ... like those ones, but why would you encourage children to sniff pens? It's not a good thing, but I used to love them, but now as an adult- Mordy Oberstein: I don't know. I'm bringing it up, not encouraging it. Crystal Carter: As an adult, as a parent, I'm like, "Why would I? I wouldn't want to do that. It's-" Mordy Oberstein: No, I'm not saying you should. Crystal Carter: ... It's not good. That's not good content. Mordy Oberstein: That's not good content. That might be the easy thing to do, but it's not good content. Crystal Carter: It's not good content- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. So let me give a little bit of a history of this. Okay, Christina, why are we talking about just write good content if you're not super involved in the SEO space, you're a casual SEO-er? Google has been trying to rank quality content for the longest time, but it's really made ginormous shifts and paradigm shifts. We talked about this before on the podcast since around 2018, had the core updates and the this and the that and the helpful content update, which is no more, but that's confusing and I want to get into that right now. And the advice that Google has been giving, Google's Danny Sullivan, their Search Liaison, is look guys, the links and the this and the... Just write good content. Write content that's valuable to the user, write content that's helpful to the user, write content that the people are actually going to want and going to use and it's going to be meaningful to them. Just write good content. And SEOs are like, "Just write good content like, let's not make magic pixie dust." So there's been some controversy around just write good content. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that just writing good content is not as easy as you think. This is why we're doing the episode. So now let me introduce to you Search Engine Journal's own Blue Ben Steele or Ben Blue Steele, Ben Steele. Ben Steele: Hello. Mordy Oberstein: How are you? Ben Steele: What an amazing intro. I'm doing pretty good. How are you? Mordy Oberstein: I'm tired after that intro. Ben Steele: It sounds tiring. Mordy Oberstein: I should really sniff some markers. Crystal Carter: No, don't. Seriously, don't. Ben Steele: Did you see, someone posted a screenshot of an SGE answer that suggested that in order to help pass a kidney stone, you should drink at least two quarts of urine in a day? Mordy Oberstein: Not only are we aware, but we covered it on It's New with- Ben Steele: Oh, hell yes. Mordy Oberstein: Unbelievable. But you know why? Ben Steele: So wily. Mordy Oberstein: Because it's sterile and I like the taste. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Crystal Carter: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: It's a little much. It really is a little- Crystal Carter: Did somebody post it on Reddit? Is that what happened? Ben Steele: Yeah, I don't get how that came up. That's weird. Crystal Carter: How did it end up in the SGE? Mordy Oberstein: It got confused. They changed it later where it meant drink two quarts of water so that it helps your urine. It got confused. It put the word in the wrong place. Crystal Carter: Did it go, "I'm an LLM. I'm sorry. I cannot understand the internet and I'm not want to talk to you anymore. Please ask a different question"? Mordy Oberstein: That's how you know, by the way, it's an LLM, not a person. The person would double down like, "No, no. You should drink two things. I'm right." Ben Steele: Is this SGE or is this Bear Grylls? Crystal Carter: Right? Right. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. So just in case someone's not familiar with Search Engine Journal, please do tell us about SEJ. Ben Steele: Sure, yeah. Searchenginejournal.com is a website that covers all things SEO and digital marketing. We have prolific news writers who cover everything that's going on in the SEO industry. And we also have a team dedicated to creating really helpful content, which is what we're talking about today and about SEO and how to manage your own websites and your own businesses when it comes to existing in the digital space. We have a ton of really fantastic contributors who are expert SEOs in the industry as well, and so we've got their insights coming through the door all the time. Mordy Oberstein: You have a weekly now with Kevin Indig. Ben Steele: Yeah, we're sharing some of the content that he puts out on his newsletter, which is really exciting. Mordy Oberstein: I love Kevin. Ben Steele: He's great. Mordy Oberstein: Love Kevin. Crystal Carter: He's somebody who makes a lot of good content. Mordy Oberstein: Quite helpful. He's quite helpful as a person in general. Anyway, so we're talking about helpful content and one of the things that we talked about before we got onto the show, way back when we decided on this topic for the show actually, was Google saying, "Yeah, just write good content. It sounds super easy," and SEOs are like, "Give me something more." But at the same time, a lot of SEOs are creating, or they're trying to leverage, we'll call it fast food of content. It's super quick. We're trying to get super quick wins, super quick content. Let's get it out there, get it done, reach huge audiences. And then they feel like they're kind of wondering, why doesn't Google love me? Isn't my content helpful? But I don't think they really understand what helpful content is. Ben Steele: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Mordy Oberstein: So what is helpful content and can it be fast content? Ben Steele: The answer to the second question is yes, but... At least in my opinion. See, a lot of folks get hung up on the way that algorithms work. And what I've always said is, your primary responsibility as a content focused SEO or someone writing content in the first place is to meet expectations. And fantastic content will exceed them, but the primary goal you have is to set them and then meet them. And that's a problem that a lot of people struggle with is first of all, you have to do a lot of research to work out what kinds of expectations you should be looking for, and then actually properly fulfilling them is hard. So yes, fast content exists, and I think that a lot of people are trying to optimize right now especially, for quick answers and fast content. Because they know that if you can do that right, well then you can get in search features. You can potentially show up in SGE, because SGE is pulling answers from page 60 of Google if it's a good answer to the question. One lead did a great webinar on that with our own print. And so quick answers does not actually mean quick to create, is the problem. So you can create content that's good, that's fast to consume and that can even benefit you, but the amount of work that goes into that is quite significant. That's something that people get hung up on, is that like, "Oh, I can just make some quick snippets and some quick things and it'll be great." Well, no, they'll be quick. Good content should be quick for the user to understand, but that doesn't mean it's going to be quick for you to make. That's something I see quite a lot, is short means fast. Sorry, go ahead. Crystal Carter: There's that thing, that it's like, "I'm sorry this email is so long," or, "I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter." There's that sort of thing as well. It takes time to make something concise. It takes time to make something that is edited down to something that's actually useful. And LLMs are terrible for this, so if you get an LLM and you say, "Give me the answer to this question," they'll go off on tangents that are unrelated, they'll talk about stuff that you don't need to hear about. They'll cover lots of different stuff just because they're trying to cover all the bases necessarily, but they don't always give you just the thing that you need until you drill down the prompt really, really precisely. And that takes time in itself, so I think that's worth considering. But I think one of the other things that came to mind while you were talking was people trying to jump ahead without going through some of the steps in between. So trying to find shortcuts with some of these tools or trying to find shortcuts to good content. Like, "Oh, if I just add this thing, that'll be the thing that makes the difference." And I think it's like I took my kid ice skating and he was trying to do a bunch of jumps and stuff, but he'd only just learned how to ice skate. And he was like, "Oh, I want to do these jumps." And I'm like, "Look here. All good ice skaters can do jumps. They can do the Lutz, then the quadruple Lutz or the double axle or whatever. Yes, good figure skaters can do that, but they're also very good at just skating. All of them are very good at skating. You can't skip that step. You still have to learn how to skate. Of course, you're going to learn how to do your double axle and you go spinning around and all that sort of stuff. Of course you'll learn how to do all that if you want to be a great skater, if you want to be really good at that. But you also have to learn to be a very good skater. Same with ice hockey players. They're also all very, very good at skating before they can do any of the other stuff." Mordy Oberstein: Except for the goalie, because he's not moving. Crystal Carter: They're good at standing up when they're covered in lots of pads. That's a feat in itself. Ben Steele: For sure. Yeah, my particular favorite YouTube rabbit hole is historical martial arts. And when a lot of those folks talk about how they train, it's interesting because in the movies when people are training to sword fight, they're doing all these fancy things. And if you watch somebody who does HEMA actually doing a training session, they'll spend hours just skipping around with no weapon in their hand, just working on their footwork. And they look ridiculous doing it, but it's like that's what you have to do. You have to get the footwork to a point where you don't think about it, and then you can put a weapon in your hands. Mordy Oberstein: Chasing chickens, right? Ben Steele: Yeah. Crystal Carter: There's lots of boring stuff that people do in order to learn how to do that stuff. And I mean, even in the age of LLMs, learning how to clean data, learning how to sort out the data that you're giving to your LLM, the data that you're giving to whatever tools you're using to help you do that stuff is something that is boring, time-consuming, and takes practice. And you have to figure out how to make sure that your prompts make sense and all that sort of stuff. And that's stuff that you have to build up. You can't skip the steps. Mordy Oberstein: But that's what I think makes it so hard for writing content because you think, I speak English, I write English, I can write content. It's not like that. I'll give you an example. I was looking at a bunch of sites that got impact... A bunch of pages rather, that got impacted by the March 2024 core update for this post that I'm supposed to be writing up for the Wix SEO hub. But by the time this article comes out, that post will be well released. But one of the things that I saw, and two of the examples that I was looking at, two of the three examples so far that I really want to focus on, the pages that did well, did a good job of addressing how the user's going to experience the thing. For example, one of them is about hip surgery. And it was about the doctor's going to do this, then the doctor will do that, and then you can expect the doctor to do this. And it was really walking you through not just like what is hip surgery, but what is hip surgery for you and what is it going to mean for you? And it was very different than the other kind of content ranking. And the way I'll define it is, it was not sterile content. It was not, what is hip surgery, what are the different types of hip surgery, how do you recover from hip surgery? It was meaningful in the sense that it was dealing with an actual person or a group of people in mind. And I was thinking, I was looking at these other pages that are still, some of them aren't ranking well, some of them are still ranking and they're still very, very sterile. And I feel like in the future, Google's going to eventually drop those off. If I was a smart SEO and I'm going to now rework this page for my client and it's completely sterile, how would I do that? And I was thinking, how would I do that on this page if I didn't want to start from scratch? That would be really difficult. And it took me a long time to figure out, you know what I would do with this page? I would probably do this, because I've spent the better part of 10 years doing that; Of thinking about how am I going to... Not just how am I going to write this page or this post. How am I going to position this post? How am I going to differentiate this post? What angle am I going to take with this post? And even after doing this for 10 years, with this particular page, I sat there for a good 20 minute, I don’t know what to do with this thing. It's creating hopeful content. It's not easy. Ben Steele: No. Mordy Oberstein: It's very hard to position that the right way. Ben Steele: Yeah, and I'm having that experience myself right now where one of my primary responsibilities is ebooks, and we're currently writing our annual ebook about our ranking factors. And when I sat down to this thing, I was like, "What the heck am I going to say about ranking factors after the last year? How could I possibly be helpful to an SEO who's like, 'What the heck is going on right now?'?" And so that took a long time to work out and we're getting there. I just submitted the draft, so- Mordy Oberstein: Ooh. Ben Steele: ... fingers crossed. Mordy Oberstein: Roll back the curtains. What did you do? What was your thought process? How did you go? Because you're right. That's one of those kind of pieces of content where, okay, here are the top most important ranking factors. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's been done a million times before, and to be honest with you, we talked about this podcast, we have a whole episode about it, it's really not that helpful. So then what did you do? Could you share secrets? Ben Steele: Yeah. All right. So we did that the last, I think, three years. That's what our book has looked like of, here are a bunch of ranking factors. And we took a myth busting approach, which we found to be relatively helpful at the time, which is here are all the misconceptions. We're going to bust those myths. We're going to talk about what we have evidence for and we're going to go over... I think we did like 80 or so per book or something- Mordy Oberstein: I've referenced those before. They're good. Ben Steele: ... Oh, really? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Ben Steele: Awesome. And I sat down to it this year and I was talking with Katie, our Editor in Chief, and we were like, "We can't do that again this year. It doesn't make sense. It's not helpful anymore because everything is currently changing. Whatever we write in the book, the production process is long enough that it's highly likely to be out of date by the time it's gone to publish. So what can we do?" And so we decided on a bit of a mix. The first thing we did was we looked at the format of our most popular ebooks, and it's always the expert roundup format, when we get a bunch of SEO experts. I ask them questions, they answer them, and then I put it all together and you've got an ebook full of a bunch of varied insights from a bunch of different people. And then you have me talking about what I think the trends look like. And those are by and large our most popular books. Those are our SEO trends and PPC trends books that we do at the end of the year. And so we said, "Okay, what if we take this successful format and apply it to ranking factors so that we can have a broad diversity of opinions on what ranking factors means? We know that our audience likes hearing from these people and so let's see what happens." And so that's kind of what we did. We changed the format. We were at first a little worried, like, "We've done it in a very specific way for three years. What's going to happen?" Because like I just talked about, setting expectations and then delivering on them is one of the core parts of being a successful SEO. And I can get more into that a little later. And so we're like, "Well, we are completely overturning the expectations that we've set the last three years, so is that going to work?" And we're like, "We got to take the risk because it's better to risk this than to be unhelpful. And we think that analyzing individual ranking factors is unhelpful at this point." The book talks about the change, it talks a little bit about some of the things that we do at SEJ to account for the changes that are going on and the disruption and the instability. We asked people, "What do you think are ranking factors that matter right now?" And we ask people, "What do you think is going on? And what do you think about content in this wacky state of serfs, to be honest?" We had a lot of conversations about what does the advice make good content look like when good content isn't really being rewarded a lot of the time? How can we sit here with a straight face and repeat the same old advice when it's clearly not working right now? But we also talk about some of the things that we've done that have seen an impact, and it does ultimately come back to making good content. And it's just about being more specific about the way you do it, more intentional, unfortunately, in the end, that appears to be the secret. Mordy Oberstein: That's, by the way, a great point. You started off saying the same format wasn't going to work. And I feel that's one mentality that content writers and SEOs kind of fall into, is helpful content is one thing, and it's not one thing. It's constantly changing. It's constantly evolving. The notion of good content in general is evolving. Think of an ad. Think of an ad back then in the 1950s. That was considered good ad content. Come on down. You look at it now like it's schlocky, it's gimmicky, it's ridiculous. But it was good content back then. And a hundred years from now, people look back at our, and like, "That? Really? That was good content?" So it's constantly progressing, constantly evolving. So to think helpful content is X isn't the right way to look at it. Helpful content might mean X for Google right now, but in a year from now, it won't be. That's why we look at algorithm, because you see how is it progressing. What's different in this update versus some of the trends we've seen in previous updates? Ben Steele: Yeah. Mm-hm. Crystal Carter: And I think also the piece that you did there of looking at... You're giving us a very top level summary of how you did this, but you looked at what does our audience enjoy, what does our audience appreciate? And I think that's really important. I think that when people are making good content, and especially, especially, especially now where there's so much AI content out there, there's so much uncertainty from lots of different venues, lots of different channels, et cetera, you have a community. You have a user base that you know, you have your own data from your own sources, and you know that your audience likes this. You know that your audience likes to hear from multiple perspectives and you are able to provide them with the thing that they like. Even if it doesn't rank right, even if this content doesn't rank, you know that you're serving those users. And if you serve those users, then those users will refer to you, will talk about you, will come back to you, will reference you, will search for you on the SERP and will find you, and you will be useful to those users. And Google will see that. So I think when people think about good content, I think that it's so important to put the users first. We have a few different pieces of content around the Wix SEO Learning Hub that are around this as well. And I think that that's super, super important. And I think that you just can't go wrong. You can't go wrong if you are thinking about what your users want first because they'll appreciate that and what works with your users. At the same time, I think that what Mordy's saying about the evolution of content is really important as well. So I think that format can change as well. So what makes content good can sometimes change from the format. So you're talking about an ebook. Ebooks have really evolved. I remember when ebooks were pretty much like a PDF sort of thing. And sometimes they're that, sometimes you can also get them on a Kindle thing, sometimes you can get a combination of a few articles altogether. I know y'all do that a little bit as well. And there's lots of different ways that you can do an ebook these days. And there's lots of new channels for ebooks. And I think that that's really important. Similarly, and I'm going to date myself here, but if I think back in the day, we would get the Sears catalog and we'd go around and we'd circle the things that we wanted. And back in the day, that was- Mordy Oberstein: Oh, those days. Yeah. Crystal Carter: ... good content, right? Mordy Oberstein: Mm-hm. That's great. Crystal Carter: I'd be like, "Check out that Barbie house. This is what I want." Mordy Oberstein: That was fun, when it came in the mail. That was- Crystal Carter: Right? It was good. And to me, to 9-year-old me, that was great content. That was fantastic. But now people have their Amazon wishlist or whatever, or people have their wishlist on wherever, and that's more useful because you don't have to carry around the 600 page thing. And if the price changes, you can see it in real time and things. So the format there can also make content good. And I think that that's really important to think about as well, and for SEOs to not just necessarily fall back on what they always do, as Mordy was saying, but to pay attention to new opportunities to connect with people. And even new methods to connect with people in order to make the content good. Ben Steele: And you know what one of the biggest changes has been for the better internally when it comes to performance? It's been collaboration. So as an SEO, or I'm more editor, less practicing SEO, so as a content specialist I'll say, I don't necessarily have all of the information, all of the knowledge and all of the expertise required to front to back create an experience fully that an audience member wants. But the closer I work with my marketing team, the closer I work with my sales team, the more I can get that data, get that understanding, and take insights from the expertise of the other fantastic people I work with. And the more I do that, the closer that we collaborate, the better an idea we get of things like, what does our audience want? What do they respond to? And so collaboration and breaking down silos is a very important part around content. If you want content to be successful, you really need information from all these sources. And it's been a huge... We've been doing this internally for a while where we try and sort of, like I said, break down the silos and make everyone's reporting and everyone's expertise available across different teams so that we can make use of that information and get fully aligned on our company goals. And it's had huge impact. And we've noticed that when we make these decisions, these audience focused decisions that are backed up by good data from our marketing and sales teams, that even if Google doesn't reward us right away, we can tell that the audience rewards us, and that's when we know we're doing something right. I think that's something that is going to be critical looking forward too, is remember that Google isn't your ultimate end goal. It's one of your channels, but if you're serving your users in whichever... That works in any channel, right? And the path of the algorithms is ostensibly, allegedly to reward behavior like that. Right? Mordy Oberstein: Well and it wants to follow the user, right? It wants- Ben Steele: Right. Exactly. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. Google wants us break it down. Google wants ad clicks. The results have to be good at being relative to what users are expecting. So Google's chasing users while we're chasing algorithms. The point you made about experience and that whole narrative and actual expertise and collaborating with people who have the actual knowledge, I think that's been one of the more healthy things that's been going on in the SEO industry for the past, I don't know, couple of years, whatever it's been. And I think it's fascinating to see that shift. That wasn't a part of the conversation when I got into SEO at all. You send the content brief over to a content writer from every content market and they create the content, you're good to go. I think now though, the next step is going to be, okay, we understand the experience, we understand the value of expertise, the value of firsthand knowledge, all that kind of stuff. Now we need to focus on the best way to transmit that knowledge and transmit that information. Because the value of the content and the helpfulness of the content is only as good as A, the actual substance itself, and B, how you transmit it. Just use a crude example, if I were to say to you, "Give me the salt now, jerk," you wouldn't really want to pass the salt to me. But if I said, "Please pass me the salt," you would pass me the salt. So it's not just the content itself, but it's how you say it that's super important. I don't think that's been part of the narrative yet at all, but I really hope that it will be. Crystal Carter: You think people should be more polite to Google? Mordy Oberstein: Now we're getting spicy. Crystal Carter: I said that. Mordy Oberstein: I'm not sure this is helpful. Ben Steele: I think you can actually see, in the stumbles that Google's making, you can see the intent here. For things that exactly what you're talking about, Mordy, where it comes to not just the substance, but the experience of your content. And I think that a lot of these kind of the stumbling blocks are indicative of yes, they're trying to do what they're saying. And we're in a period of big disruption and there's a lot of missteps been happening all at once, but you can kind of see the direction even in the stumbles made by the algorithms. And we had a contributor in the ebook, here's a sneak peek, make a point that, I think it was Kevin Rowe made the point that we're seeing AI algorithms get released, but training them is different to how they act in the wild. And he was saying that eventually you just have to kind of release them and let them learn in a live environment, and that's going to be full of problems and mistakes, and then you fix them as they come up. And so he thinks that's what's happening. Mordy Oberstein: Yep. I agree with that. Ben Steele: I found that to be a pretty insightful comment because it's like, okay, so yeah, we have a ton of disruption. And he likened it to learning how to box. If you can hit a non-human target as much as you want, but eventually you got to get in the ring and get hit. And this is Google's algorithms getting hit, but then they get better. And you can see in where they're as stumbling is that they're trying to account for things like how you present your content. And I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing issues where original content is getting pushed down in the SERPs by content that is just kind of regurgitating it, but making it a little bit more accessible more quickly. And that's obviously not an ideal use case, but you can see the attempt to be like, "Okay, what's the user experience of this? How easily can a user parse this content?" Mordy Oberstein: On that note, if somebody wanted to attempt to hit you up for some knowledge and information about writing helpful content, where could they find you? Ben Steele: These days, I am mostly on LinkedIn. I've pulled back my X, Twitter, whatever presence quite significantly. So for me personally, it's just Ben Steele on LinkedIn, and you can find me by searching my name with Search Engine Journal. Mordy Oberstein: We will link to that in the show notes. Is your LinkedIn profile a picture like you giving the Blue Steel look? Crystal Carter: From the left. It might be. Mordy Oberstein: That'd be great, if it was. Ben Steele: I'll have to get updated headshots. Mordy Oberstein: You can have AI do it for you. Ben Steele: Oh. Yeah. Crystal Carter: For anyone who does not know that reference, please go and watch Zoolander. Your life will be better for it. Thank you. Mordy Oberstein: Be at least 10 times as big. Crystal Carter: We're men. We're men. Mordy Oberstein: I got the black lung- Ben Steele: Oh my gosh. Mordy Oberstein: Okay. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Keep an eye out for the ebook. When does that come out? Ben Steele: June 11th is when the ebook comes out. Mordy Oberstein: Okay, so we'll be able to link to it. Nice. Crystal Carter: Yeah, because this will be out on the 19th. Mordy Oberstein: On the 19th, so- Ben Steele: Oh. Heck yeah. All right. Crystal Carter: Tell your team, you're like, "Look at me. I'm just marketing the book we just dropped. You're welcome." Mordy Oberstein: The audience get a backstage look at our scheduling. Ben Steele: Awesome. Thank you guys. Mordy Oberstein: So much fun. Yeah. Okay, so we'll link the ebook in the show notes. Check it out, have a gander at it, and check out SEJ and check out Ben. Ben Steele: Thank you guys so much. It's been a wonderful experience being on here. Mordy Oberstein: Well, it's been fantastic having you. Talk to you soon. Speaking of good content, what happens if we start running Google searches about good content? What could we learn? We'll find out as we have some fun with Google's People Also Asked box. So I decided to throw in some... When I say fun, by the way, it is not going to be fun. I'm just giving you a little spoiler alert, this is not fun. Crystal Carter: Okay. Mordy Oberstein: I decided to throw a bunch of keywords into Google: What kind of content do users want, how to write good content, what is good content? And I'll tell you, I personally have been on mobile. This is an interesting point, I should tweet about this. I find myself clicking on more PAAs on mobile now than I used to and I'm- Crystal Carter: Why is that? Mordy Oberstein: ... sure it's because the things I'm searching for or Google's... Maybe it was showing them higher up than they used to, or the results aren't so great, so I'm like, "Ah, I might as well click on the PAA." Or maybe I'm not good at searching anymore, so that secondary question's really what I wanted, and Google did a good job showing me that question. Whatever it is. I'll tell you, when I searched for these things, I didn't find much of it helpful. Crystal Carter: Okay, Mordy Oberstein: Okay, here we go. Sorry, Google, you can't win all the time. What kind of content do users want? The first question is, what type of content is most consumed? That one's not bad. That one's not bad. Maybe I'm looking for, okay, what kind of content are people going to actually consume? Kind of an offshoot of that, what kind of content is most engaging? Particularly, I'm looking for something around social media content. Maybe I really meant social media content. I would look for something engaging. Okay, fine. Okay. The third one is, what is the most used content type? I don't even know what that question means. And then the fourth one is, what content gets the most attention? Which is really the same thing as the second question, it was content's the most engaging? So not very helpful. Crystal Carter: Yeah, I don't know. They're odd questions. I had a look at, how do you know if content is good? That was my seed question. The featured snippet there was from Quora. Mordy Oberstein: Ah. Crystal Carter: There's a lot of- Mordy Oberstein: Where I go for all of my high quality substantive information. Crystal Carter: Obviously. And so the questions came off of that was, how to tell if content is good. There's an answer there from Sitecore. How do you know if content is successful? Another one from Sitecore. Sitecore crushing it here. And then we had, what defines good content? That's a good question as well. And how to determine good quality. A lot of these are very, very, very similar, which I think is really interesting because how to determine quality content, how to tell if content is good, what defines good content, and how do you tell if content is good, they're very, very similar. I think it's very interesting because essentially what you get with the PAAs is that they are essentially a repository for a lot of the featured snippets. So it's very interesting that you would have different featured snippets. And you see this really regularly, different featured snippets, different PAAs for very, very similar questions, which is what you found as well you were looking at- Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, very similar across the board. I have other ones that are also very similar. Just to give you some contrast, by the way, if you're listening to this, if you search for how to throw a curveball, and these are the things I would actually click on, how do you throw a curveball correctly? Okay, fine. That's maybe a little bit too similar to the query itself. What is the proper curveball grip? Is it bad for an 11-year-old to throw a curveball? It's a very specific intent, which is true, it is bad for their wrist. And then, how do to throw a 12 to 6 curveball? So certain curveballs go, imagine that the curve goes from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock. That's old school curveball. The more modern curveball kind of goes from, I don't know, 1 o'clock to 1 o'clock. Not 4 o'clock, 7 at clocks. I'm bad at clocks. So it's a little bit different. They're very differentiated. They're different questions for different intents and really helps you go down the curveball wormhole. If I search for, what is good content, I get, what does good content mean? That's what I asked. That's what I asked. What is good quality content? So okay, slight variance. How to make good content? Okay, fine. What is good content versus bad content? I get you're adding in the extra contrast. Yeah. But that's a little bit like, all right, same but different. I actually threw that into people also. I actually go into Also Asked, so you could see the further breakdown. So if you go into what does good content mean, Also Asked breaks down the next PAA questions being, how would you know a good content? Crystal Carter: A good content. I love the misspellings. I love the bad grammar and the PAAs. They're my favorite. Mordy Oberstein: What is an example content? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: What is excellent content? Crystal Carter: Okay? Mordy Oberstein: Yeah. What type of content is best? Yes. Crystal Carter: For? Mordy Oberstein: What does bad content mean? So I was a little bit surprised that Google took the word mean very literally. Like, define the word content. That's not what I was looking for exactly. Crystal Carter: And I think it can be very surprising. I think this is one of the reasons why it's worth going through the PAAs with a tool like Also Asked. With a tool following, just going to the SERP and following that path as well. There's so many tiny subtleties that make the difference. The other thing I think that's also worth thinking about particularly, and I think of this when I'm looking at competitor research and stuff, is also checking the actual search volume for them. Because just because there's a featured snippet, doesn't mean that that's actually getting any search volume very much at all. So that's worth looking at as well because it could very well be that maybe they have... I looked up, are smoothies good for you? Because I've heard people who say that actually, smoothies have too much sugar or they take out all the fiber, where some people are like, "I juice every day." So anyway. Mordy Oberstein: That's what Barry Bond said. Crystal Carter: With something like that, it might be that more people are asking more of one particular, or phrasing the question in one particular way and getting to the serp in that way, even though they're very, very similar. Sometimes you can see that those slight differences can make a really big difference in terms of search volume. Because the chances are that you'll probably, in terms of featured snippet, PAA sort of thing, you may very well be at the top for the high search volume thing. But if you go for that one, you might also rank somewhere lower down for the other one. So that's worth thinking about as well. But yeah, the PAAs, the way that they arrange them can be very interesting in terms of the similarities between the words and everything. Mordy Oberstein: So it just goes to show you, sometimes you can learn a lot from the PAAs and sometimes you can't. Crystal Carter: I still don't know if smoothies are healthy or not. I still can't tell. Mordy Oberstein: It depends. If it tastes good, not healthy. It tastes meh, probably healthy. Crystal Carter: Does it have kale in it? That's probably healthy if- Mordy Oberstein: Kale in it is definitely healthy no matter how much sugar you put in it. That- Crystal Carter: Some of them are just like a juiced salad. Some of them are like, "We put kale and celery and thing," and you're like- Mordy Oberstein: That's healthy, but that doesn't sound too appetizing to me. Crystal Carter: Spirulina, like all these things. Mordy Oberstein: Wheatgrass. Crystal Carter: Wheatgrass. I actually like wheatgrass. Mordy Oberstein: That's interesting. You know what else is interesting? Whatever's happening in the SEO news this week is always interesting, and it's usually always covered by Barry Schwartz. So here's our ode to Barry each and every week, and some other people who cover the SEO news as well, like the great folks over at Search Engine Journal. Here's this week's snappy SEO news. Snappy news, snappy news, snappy news. First up from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google, sometimes search experiments conflict causing issues. This comes from Google's Search Off the Record podcast, Gary, however you pronounce his last name, was talking about Google experiments and said that sometimes that multiple experiments can cause conflicts with each other. He wrote, "Very often these experiments that need to be rolled back because two experiments might interact very badly with each other." Glenn Gabe chimed in on X writing, "Sometimes problems in the service and maybe what we see as changes are due to multiple experiments running that don't work well with each other." You can even see this with the algorithm updates themselves sometimes, which is why I think Google tries to integrate things into the core as much as possible, in my honest opinion. And folks have covered this for a while. Glenn has some great posts on this, on warring algorithm updates. So for example, back when you had the review updates being announced before they were called the Product Review Updates, you might see a site, I don't know, gain a whole bunch of rankings with that update. Month later comes along a core update and kills all those rankings. So sometimes those systems can compete with each other. I was talking about this on LinkedIn, I don't know when. I post too many things on LinkedIn, so good luck finding it. But sometimes if you don't think about... If think SEO factors, for lack of a better word in isolation, and you don't try to think how everything kind of balances out, you could end up focusing on things the wrong way. I think the example that I gave was, oh, I'll focus on links. I'll get a lot of links. So if you're focused on the link factor in SEO, you'll grab all these links, but then what happens when the user actually gets to the site? Because Google rewards it with rankings because you get so many great links, yada, yada, yada. The user gets to the site, the site's not great. So now the user behavior side of the algorithm, however that plays itself out, whole separate controversy, would say, "Oh, wait a second. This site's actually not so great. You got all the great links. Okay, okay, I see that, but let's actually demote the website because the behavior on the site or whatever shows that this site maybe isn't what people want. Maybe it's not quality." So you have to think about the algorithm harmoniously. Anyway, getting a little bit off track with that. This from Danny Goodwin covering Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land where we got Meta Barry there. 13 SEO takeaways, some Googles, Elizabeth Tucker at SMX Advanced. Barry Schwartz interviewed Elizabeth Tucker, who's the Director of Product Management of Google Search, and Danny wrote up a summary of the 13 things you should know about what Barry and Elizabeth covered. There's a whole bunch of really cool things in there. I'll kind of roll through just a few of them. For example, there's a whole thing on why SEO should focus on the big picture. Elizabeth said, "We are trying to satisfy people with all these different informational needs with all sorts of different great types of content and websites. I do worry that when people kind of get down in the weeds on specific technical details or signals we may or may not have, it might take away from that big picture question of, is this helpful, yada, yada, yada." Absolutely a hundred percent agree. They got into why the March 2024 core update took 45 days to roll out. Basically saying that that was the biggest update that they basically ever had, with Elizabeth saying that there was some re-architecture work going on. They said that we actually had a mini war room going on. We were doing live monitoring, co-capacity and latency in our data centers, because it is unusual for us to roll out so many different changes at once. We did so successfully. Part of that was actually why the announcement about the March 2024 core update took a little bit while for Google to announce it, basically saying they want to make sure that things were... I'll just quote them. Why am I trying to put words in their mouth? Quoting Elizabeth, "We wanted to make sure all the changes were entirely rolled out. Hundreds of people were involved. So just answering the question of, are we done yet, involves so many different pings, et cetera." One of the interesting things that I took away from the article, and I'll end here because it's a whole bunch of other things about what causes radical fluctuations, how many systems are involved in Google's core updates. Danny does a really nice job kind of covering the conversation that Barry had with Elizabeth, but there's a section that Danny has about how Google defines low quality. And I'm going to reignite this debate, I guess. I don't know why it's a debate at this point in the SEO world, but whatever. Google basically said like, "We look at the Search Quality Rater guidelines as our definition of quality." I will read through this as much as I can. It's a lot. I don't want to take up too much. It's supposed to be snappy, Mordy. Elizabeth said, "We rigorously define high quality, low quality. We give examples, and this document is truly the foundation of how third party evaluators then go and evaluate results for quality, meaning the Search Quality Rater guidelines." Elizabeth wanted to say that there's no one size fits all for quality, "It's actually a fairly nuanced thing." Completely agree with that. Quality is incredibly nuanced. She offers an example of how that might be, why that might be, and then she says, "So we've laid it out in our Search Quality Rater guidelines. We take into account the quality of the main content, things like accuracy for informational content, talent and skill. We look at things like page experience. Can people find the main content easily?" So she says, "So take a look. It's all there. I said this before, I'll say it again. The Quality Rater guidelines should give you a directional look at how Google is thinking about quality. What is actually in the algorithm or not, different question, but it will give you a look inside the brain or the mind of Google." Continuing with Danny Goodwin covering Google's statements, this one is Danny covering Liz Reed and an all hands quote, or not quote, titled the article, Head of Google Search: AI mistakes won't prevent progress. Basically, Google had an all hands saying, "Hey, look, there's going to be problems. We're going to tackle them. That shouldn't mean we don't move forward with the AI. I don't know what you want to call the AI world on the SERP and so forth, yada, yada, yada." I mean, Google kind of has to say that. Obviously I think they do mean that, but they also kind of have to get that message out there. I think it's a very important message for them and then how their whole wider ecosystem works. That's all I'm going to say about that. Read into that what you want to. One thing that I took away was a quote where she said, "We don't just have to understand the quality of the site or the page. We have to understand each passage of a page." So in the AI overview, you have different links to different subsections of the AI overview. For example, one I always go back to was, how to prevent kidney stones, and in there is a section about diet. Google might have to understand, hey, wait a second, we're going to link out to that page there. We have to understand that this page has a section about diet, and that section about diet and kidney stones is really good, and that's the one we're going to link to when we cover that subtopic. It is an interesting conversation, and I think maybe we should have a little bit more of a conversation about, of how Google is understanding the subsections of pages. Anyway, that is again, not so snappy this week, Mordy. Got to do a better job. I talk fast. I try to talk fast. Maybe that's not a good thing, but I try to make it snappy by talking faster and it's not working. There's just so much news going on. Anyway, this is the not so snappy news. Yeah, so that was ever so snappy, as usual. Crystal Carter: Yeah, newsy news. There's been so much news. The news has been really tricky. Or the news has been really interesting because there's been a lot of really big things like the updates and people starting new search engines and stuff like that. And then there's been a lot of little, tiny, teeny tiny- Mordy Oberstein: If you like the teeny tiny things and the big thing, as always make sure to check out It's New over at Wix SEO Hub, and RustyBrick's YouTube channel. Speaking of news people, our follow of the week are two news people. Hey, we're going full on SEJ this week as our follow of the week this week is Angie Nikoleychuk, and Heather Campbell, both from SEJ. Crystal Carter: Angie and Heather are so, so, so, so super nice. Mordy Oberstein: They are the nicest team, by the way. Crystal Carter: They're so nice. Mordy Oberstein: Behind the scenes? Crystal Carter: Yes. Mordy Oberstein: So nice, so easy to work with. Love working with SEJ people. Crystal Carter: They're super nice and I think it's- Mordy Oberstein: Great team. Crystal Carter: ... one of those things like, sometimes folks are popular or whatever or have a big following and you sort of wonder why. And then you meet them and you're like, "Oh, this is why. Because y'all do really good stuff." Mordy Oberstein: And we had Angie on for one of our live SEO audit. Angie's great. She'll tell me she'll listen to the Edge of the News Podcast, which I do their news every week, and like, "Yeah, I really disagree with what you said there." I love that. I love that. That's great. Crystal Carter: No, it's good. She's got such great insight and she brings a lot of her CRO knowledge into the stuff that she does, and she was great on the site audit. We did a site audit on quick wins, and definitely worth having a look at. I think that's evergreen content, so go and check that out as well. Mordy Oberstein: And definitely also check out Heather Campbell, who's been fabulous on the things we're working on with her as well. Heather is the Director of Marketing at Search Engine Journal and does a lot of their write-ups also for them, so give her a big follow. We'll link to their social media profiles in the show notes. And hope you found this episode helpful. Crystal Carter: I did. I got lots of helpful tips. Mordy Oberstein: At the end of the day, just write good content. That's all. Just do it. Crystal Carter: Write good content, and may the algorithm be forever in your favor. Mordy Oberstein: Yeah, so I definitely let the algorithm be in your favor, and then do us a favor and tune in for our next episode. So that means 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 the unsung heroes of SEO; Those who maintain rank. Look for wherever you consume your podcast or on our SEO Learning over on wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO, check out all the great content and webinars on the Wix SEO Learning up 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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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. 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Back Your resource is ready Use this SEO blog writing Google Doc template for a smoother SEO process. We’ve emailed you a link so it’s easy to access. Make a copy Get more SEO insights right to your inbox * * By submitting this form, you agree to the Wix Terms of Use and acknowledge that Wix will treat your data in accordance with Wix's Privacy Policy . Subscribe Subscribe to our newsletter and stay on the pulse of SEO